u. s. u. k. canada new zealand for the next 25 years. what do you expect him to do now that he's most really a? well, i don't know what he will be doing. i think that what most of us would just like for him to we would like for him to do is to rest, recuperate, recover from this unbelievably long and difficult side of it. it's not just the 5 years in belmore, obviously there were the many years in the embassy and frankly, has been in some form of illegal and arbitrary confinement for over a decade, 14 years or so. that takes a toll on a person. i mean, i don't know, personally, you have far more experience there, but i think that that anybody just objectively looking at that know that that takes a total on a person in every way possible, mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally. so he does have a lot of recovery time. i hope that he spends a great deal of time. i think i read somewhere that stella said that he wants to swim every day. so i hope that he gets to do that. i hope that he gets to take walks on the beach there in australia. i hope you read this kid's bedtime stories and kicks walks in the park and you know, gets to take naps and eat real food for a change. get proper medical care. be able to go and see a doctor for all of the many things that have been troubling him with his health over the years and an address and deal with those issues. so i hope that's what he does. i do hope that we will hear from him soon. i think that obviously we should respect his privacy and his need for time to recover. and to, as you said, spend some time with his kids who have never really known him outside of prison. i think that he is entitled to that he certainly doesn't owe us anything. but i think a all of his supporters and really the world is waiting with bated for us to hear from him. especially his supporters who have thoughts so long and so hard to see this moment. i think that we're all very excited to hear from him, especially given the fact that you know, prior to his release we hadn't seen him in years and we still haven't really heard from him in a very long time. so i think many are very i have a lot of anticipation for that moment, but i think that we certainly are entitled to it. and i think that we should definitely respect that need for privacy and for that time to recruit, recruit from this ordeal for sure. as long promoted, we can, leaks as the only place where would be national security whistle blowers can go and have their identities protected. god knows that many who have gone to the media and especially to the intercept, for example, have been found out and prosecute and, and imprisoned is we can, we still that place to go? is that where whistle blowers should go? i'm not sure that it is now. i think that obviously wiki weeks has had to devote a lot of time and energy and resources to uh, saving julian, a sanchez life. but they really haven't been super operational over the past few years. i would like to see it return to that. certainly, i think that, i mean, i say this all the time i, there is nothing i would love more than to see a 1000 wiki leaks operating across the globe. and that's the way journalism should work. i mean, join us on revolutionize journalism, you really turn it into a science. i mean, the idea that what you weeks offer up to the world, what wasn't conjecture? it wasn't like an opinion piece and the new york times were a bunch of talking head screaming on each other on a sunday morning. new show. it was 100 percent verifiable and authenticated source documentation. it was just the truth. here are the facts in black and white from the people who are making these deals and all of that stuff. and you can read it for yourself and discern from it what you will and apply it to whatever you think it applies to. when i think that that is such an unbelievable service and i wish that we had more journalistic outfits operating in that fashion. i think that, um, uh, we might see that we might see uh, i mean the independent media space has been growing and driving. uh, as the main stream media dies have very slow and painful death. so. so hopefully we will start to see, especially with his release, we will start to see people develop a kind of courage that it takes to really hold power to account. but as far as what you weeks currently being the place to go, i'm not i, i, i don't know, i mean, i'm not behind closed doors. i don't know what the operational function is of what you weeks right now, or if they're really in a position to kind of offer any protections or anything. i know that the website's been under a top for many years, things like that. um, but i would certainly like to see it return to its former glory, continuing along the same thread which he leaves, of course, is not the same organization that it was 10 years ago. most of the people who were with julian at the very beginning are no longer there. a lot of them went into academia or just on to do other things. journalism or whatever we came weeks is more of a confederation. let's say that a centralized organization. so where do you think it goes from here, or where should it go from here? does it rebuild? does it break up or does it just keep on pushing forward? so i think that's an interesting question. um i think that rebuilding is certainly an option, but i would like because it has become such a lightning rod. i'm not sure that that would even work. i think that governments around the globe now have their eyes a very keenly directed out with you, leaks and what it will do in the future. i, again, i would love to see, you know, a 1000 what you least across the globe. so if there's any way for them to sort of build on the move in that they've already created and to empower other people to take on this kind of work, i would love to see something like that take place. but, but again, that all takes time. it takes money, it takes resources, it takes stuff, it takes, you know, all of those types of things. so i think that i'm very interested into the focus on where what julian assange does, what it, what role he will play if any n with you weeks future. i don't know if he will return to his work or not. but i think all of us are very excited to see where it goes, and i think that frankly, we need what he weeks and in journalism lights out now more than ever. so i hope that regardless of whether or not he chooses to be an active participant, and i really hope that what you weeks moves forward in some way, whatever way they see fit. um, whatever way that they can make happen. um, uh you know, with the limited resources that they obviously have, but we definitely need to have that type of journalism in the world. really holding power to account. we can see how an accountable they are and how completely out of control they are. and so i think that having that type of revolutionary journalism and you know, the ability for people to learn information about what's being done in their name and attempt to hold power to account is so unbelievably necessary. right now. thank you, misty. we're going to take a short break and when we come back we're going to talk about the mechanics of julia, massages, plea deal. so say to there's a lot more coming up the. 2 the, [000:00:00;00] the, [000:00:00;00] the take a fresh look around there's a life kaleidoscopic, isn't just a shifted reality distortion by power to do vision with no real opinions. fixtures, design to simplify will confuse who really wants a better wills, and is it just as a chosen few fractured images presented to this, but can you see through their illusion going underground? can the welcome back to the whistle blowers. i'm john korea. we're speaking with misty winston. she is a political activist organizer and co host of action for assange. she's one of julian's long time supporters and you can find more of her work on her sub stack at misty winston. thanks again for joining us. misty, thank you for having me. i really appreciate it. let's see, i'd like to get into the plea deal itself. julian took a play to one count of conspiracy and was sentenced to time served in my view. that is actually a major victory. he faced 175 years in prison in the united states. there was no fine, there was no restitution. there's no federal probation, which is now called supervisors release. and another important aspect is that julian was never extradited to the united states. he was instead processed inside pan in the northern marietta islands your australia. what did the us get out of this other than the ability to just save face by trumpeting or conviction? i think that's really all that they did get. they got the ability to say phase, i think that that was really the sticking point over the past couple of years. i think that they saw the momentum that was building the support that was growing for us on. and i think that there were a lot of really desperate conversations about how can we get out of this without looking like we've given everything away. so i think that they did certainly say face also, i mean again, just the idea that this persecution has gone on for this long. that is, i mean, that they've really gotten what they set out to do, which is to cause a chilling effect across whistle blowing in journalism. i don't think that anybody can deny that that's been very effective over the course of the, of this whole situation. so, and again, it's a while, it might not set a legal precedent, this pre deal. it does certainly set a political pressure and it does give the united states um, you know, at least the perceived power to go after and prosecute journalist. and that's huge . sure. again, that's something that we were going to be battling regardless of outcomes. so i think that and i think that they frankly avoided a catastrophe of trying to deal with this in an election year. i think certainly they didn't want to expedite him to this country in the middle of an election year i. i frankly thought that they would try to push the appeal decision back to pass the election. i was not expecting him to walk out this early. i thought that they would try to get through the election 1st, but they definitely avoided katasha be that would have been a really bad luck for both so called sides. i mean, obviously trump was responsible for, you know, him being arrested and being spied on the plots, to assassinate him, all of that, and then also by didn't being responsible for the continuation of that. so i think that would have been a bad book for both teams. and so they've avoided that, but i think really this, this was just a face saving operation. they just wanted to make sure that they got him on something so that it didn't look as if they've gone through this whole entire, drawn out process for nothing whatsoever. one of the things that is fascinating to me and it doesn't seem to be getting much press coverage, is it proviso in the plea agreement that we get leaks must destroy all of the unpublished information provided by chelsea manning. that information actually is still in. we can weeks possession and much of it is on the we can weeks website. what do you make of that? especially in light of the fact that the manning download was mirrored hundreds of times, maybe thousands of times and it's still all over the internet. yeah, there's no deleting that i don't know if they were just intending for him to delete or destroy anything that he may currently still be holding onto. i can't imagine that there would be anything that he's still holding onto. i think if and if there was anything, a relevance certainly with you weeks would have already published that or one of the publishing partners who works with you leaks on those releases would have published it. so i'm not really sure that was a very curious stipulation that i saw in a, in the plea agreement. so yeah, i'm not really sure what the function of that was as you meant. and all of these releases have been on the internet for a very long time. and once it's on the internet, we all know it doesn't go anywhere. it doesn't matter how quickly you erase that. and certainly, you know, after over a decade it's not going anywhere that these, the stories have been written. articles have been written, debates have been done, it's out there. and so that information is definitely not going away. but definitely a curious piece of the pre agreement. i don't know that it may be which weeks was in fact holding something back or something like that. i don't know, but i think that if they were attempting to destroy the information that's already been released, that's just a silly endeavor. there's just no way for that. to be possible, one of the things that the plea agreement didn't even address was the volt 7 involved 8 revelations. those have been described as the crown jewels of the c i a, the most sensitive documents ever leak from the c i a. and yet there they are sitting on the we can weeks website for everybody to see. what do you make of that? i don't know. it's interesting that they didn't address that. i think that that frankly, i'm of the opinion that the volt 7 release is, was really the tipping point. i think up until that point there was a, a pretty weak consensus that will just let them hang out in the embassies for a while. he's not like a super big strata or whatever you, what can you do? and then bolt 7 happened, and i think especially my palm pale. he took that personally, it made him look really bad. the largest ca week in history under your watches, certainly not something to write him about or, or brag about. so i think that he definitely took that personally and, and really started his, his own personal crusade. again, showing assigned to me. i think he took office it early on and towards the beginning of that release. and then i think his very for speech was in april 2017, just a month after those releases came out. and he dedicated essentially his entire for speech as the i a director to destroy truly massage and wiki links, which i thought was very interesting. but yeah, i don't know why they didn't address that. um it's all of this is very curious. i think to as time goes on and as the weeks and months progress and we get some more analysis and things like that. and i know that there will be a lot of journals. i know julian himself cannot do for a request on all of this stuff, but their stuff on you marie, see obviously a degree is high in journalist who's been embroiled in a multi year battle with several different countries. and for a request regarding this case, she will continue that hopefully we'll be able to get some information from those types of requests. and i think that we're going to be learning more more about this plea agreement and, and why they requested the things that they did as time goes on. but i agree definitely very weird that that wasn't even addressed or brought up in any of this misty, tell our viewers where they can find more of your work and where can they listen to the misty winston show. and so i will be starting a new, a new spin off of the misty ones to enjoy was on t and t radio for a couple of years. and that was cancelled in march. but we're going to do a continuation of that uh, probably on youtube rumble rocks. and honestly, all of those places we have not yet started that we've been pretty busy with the us on stuff obviously as of recently. so action for us on is the organizing group that i am an organizer with. and we also host a show. we've been operational since 2019 we've we, we don't just cover songs. we also cover people like daniel hell and david mcbride and joshua shulty and all of the other whistle blowers and drug suppressed freedom that we hear about and even other political prisoners like one or helps. yea, and let me uh, things like that. so, um, action for saunders on all of the various platforms you to rough and ramble, all of those places. um and we do fairly regular shows. um, obviously we've been very busy as of recently numerous shows. we're hoping to organize an event for september and d. c. both to celebrate julian's release, but also to kind of come together and, and, and re focus our energies and try to figure out how to move forward in the fight for press freedom. as i mentioned earlier, that fight doesn't stop here. so we need to regroup, re focus, come together and build those coalitions so that we can continue this by then testing misty. thank you so much for being with us and for keeping the fight for press freedom. good luck. thank you. i appreciate it. this fight is not over, even though julian assigned just free the fight now goes to washington. and to revision of the espionage that the espionage act was written in 1917 think about german saboteurs. during the 2nd world war, it's never been meaningfully updated. never, it doesn't even mention the term classified information. why? because the classification system hadn't even been invented yet. it mentions only national defense information and then never defines what that means. that's why presidents, when they want to use it as an iron fist to stop whistle blowers. now there have been measures on capitol hill that has not been taken terribly seriously. to scrap the espionage to insert into its something called an affirmative defense that would allow people who have been accused of espionage but who are really whistle blowers to stand up in court and to explain to the judge and to the jury, why they did what they did to explain that what they did was in the service of the american people. that's where this fight is going. now, it goes to the halls of congress. we should never fear the truth. we should never fear, via thorns. when we have troops on our sides, that's all that matters. president franklin roosevelt famously said on the day after the japanese air force attack pearl harbor, that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. he was right. and so it was duly in the sun. he looked fear in the face. he took the american government's best shot and he came out on the other side. welcome home joey. i'd like to thank our guest, misty woodson for being with us today, and thank you to our viewers for joining us for another episode of the with of lowers. i'm john kerry onto please follow me on my subset at john kerry onto we'll see you next on the . 2 2 the new president, high speed elected in a wrong answer the 1st time in 2 decades. it's a performance candidate. the young gary and climbing swung soft weston allegations of appeasement itself. that his main thing would apply them at present in most fit to open se z, u, v o. rock receive preventing a pace still on ukraine, and also a have this out for more money came out to joe, get out of the race. i gather a lot of money is not coming down the course of democrats quoting for joyce, i didn't to step down aside. likewise now the, the incumbent, us president said that only a high, a power performative to bow wow of the right.
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