Monday, November 7, 2016

Assange, Julian. "Secret World of US Election: Julian Assange talks to John Pilger" (05 Nov 2016) RT.



1.       Pilger: What’s the significance of the FBI’s Intervention in this last week of the U.S. Election Campaign in the case against Hillary Clinton?

2.       Assange: If you look at the History of the FBI, it has become effectively America’s political Police. The FBI demonstrated with taking down the former Head of the CIA over classified Information given to his mistress. Almost no one was untouchable. The FBI is always trying to demonstrate that, “No one can resist us.” Hillary Clinton very conspicuously resisted the FBI’s Investigation, so there’s Anger within the FBI because it made the FBI look weak. Well, we have published quite a number of different sets of emails, so, about 33,000 of Clinton’s emails while she was Secretary of State. They come from a batch of just over 60,000 emails. In that 60,000 emails, Clinton has kept about half, 30,000, to herself, and we have published about half.
  Then there’s Podesta emails we’ve been publishing. Podesta is Hillary Clinton’s primary Campaign manager. There’s a thread that runs through all these emails. There is quite a lot of “pay for play,” as they call it, giving Access in exchange for Money for many different States, Individuals and Corporations. Combined with the cover-up of the Hillary Clinton emails while she was Secretary of State has led to an Environment where the Pressure on the FBI increases.
3.       Pilger: The Clinton Campaign has said that Russia is behind all of this. It says that Russia has manipulated the Campaign and is the source for WikiLeaks and its emails.
4.       Assange: The Clinton Camp has been able to project that kind of neo-McCarthyist hysteria that Russia is responsible for everything.
5.       Pilger: Yeah.
6.       Assange: Hillary Clinton stated multiple times, falsely, that 17 U.S. Intelligence Agencies had assessed that Russia was the source of our Publications. Okay? That’s false. [omitted] We can say that the Russian Government is not the source, yes. Wiki has been publishing for 10 years. In that 10 years, we’ve published 10 million documents, several thousand Individual Publications, several thousand different sources, and we have never got it Wrong.
7.       Pilger: All the emails that give Evidence of Access for Money and how Hillary Clinton herself benefited from this and how she is benefiting politically are quite extraordinary. I’m thinking of where the Qatari Representative was given 5 minutes with Bill Clinton for a million-dollar check and many other examples. Can you?
8.       Assange: Or $12 million from Morocco.
9.       Pilger: $12 million from Morocco. Yeah.
10.   Assange: For Hillary Clinton to attend.
11.   Pilger: Yeah. In terms of the Foreign Policy of the United States, that’s where, for me anyway, where the emails are most revealing, where they show the direct connexion between Hillary Clinton and the foundation of Jihadism, of ISIL in the Middle East. Can you talk something about that? How the emails demonstrate this connexion between those who are meant to be fighting the jihadist ISIL are actually those who have helped create it?
12.   Assange: There’s an early 2014 email from Hillary Clinton, so not so long after she left Secretary of State, to her Campaign manager John Podesta. That email, it states that ISIL, ISIS is funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the Governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Now, this is a. Actually I think this is the most significant email in the whole collection, and perhaps because Saudi and Qatari Money is spread all over the place, including into many Media Institutions. All serious analysts know, even the U.S. Government has mentioned or agreed with that some Saudi figures have been supporting ISIS, funding ISIS. The dodge has always been that’s, well, it’s just some rogue Princes, using their cut of the Oil Money to do whatever they like, but actually the Government disapproves. That email says that no, it is the Governments of Saudi and Qatar that have been funding ISIS.
13.   Pilger: The Saudis, the Qataris, the Moroccans, the Bahrainis, particularly the Saudis and the Qataris are giving all this Money to the Clinton Foundation while Hillary Clinton is Secretary of State and the State Department is approving massive Arms Sales, particularly to Saudi Arabia.
14.   Assange: Under Hillary Clinton, and Clinton emails reveal significant Discussion about it, the largest ever Arms Deal in the World was made with Saudi Arabia, more than $80 billion. In fact, during her tenure as Secretary of State, total Arms Exports from United States in terms of the dollar Value doubled.
15.   Pilger: Doubled. Of course, the Consequence of that is that this notorious terrorist jihadist Group called ISIL or ISIS is created largely with Money from the very People who are giving Money to the Clinton Foundation.
16.   Assange: Yes.
17.   Pilger: That’s extraordinary.
18.   Assange: Look. Hillary Clinton is just a Person. I actually feel quite sorry for Hillary Clinton as a Person because I see someone who is eaten alive by their Ambitions, tormented literally to the point where they become sick. They faint as a result of going on and going on with their Ambitions. [Typical statement of a detective who has studied a perpetrator.]

  She represents a whole Network of People and a Network of Relationships also with particular States. The question is, how does Hillary Clinton fit in this broader network? She’s a centralising cog, so that you’ve got a lot of different gears in operation from the big Banks, like Goldman Sachs and major elements of Wall Street, and Intelligence and People in the State Department and the Saudis, and so on. She’s is the, if you like, the centraliser that interconnects all these different cogs. She’s the smooth central representation of all that, and all that is more or less what is in Power now in the United States. It’s what we call the Establishment or the DC Consensus and its Influences. In fact, one of the most significant Podesta emails that we released was about how the Obama Cabinet was formed and half the Obama Cabinet was basically nominated by a representative from Citibank. Quite amazing.
19.   Pilger: Well, it is. Didn’t Citibank supply a list?
20.   Assange: Yes.
21.   Pilger: Which turned out to be.
22.   Assange: Which turned out to be.
23.   Pilger: To be mostly Obama Cabinet.
24.   Assange: Yes.
25.   Pilger: Wall Street decides the Cabinet of the President of the United States.
26.   Assange: If you were following the Obama Campaign back then closely, [Unlike Joyce Carol Oates & Jim Jarmusch & Seymour Hersh.] you could see it had become very close to banking Interests. It wasn’t so close to Oil interests but it was very close to banking Interests.
27.   Pilger: Yeah. Yeah.
28.   Assange: I think you can’t properly understand Hillary Clinton’s Foreign Policy without understanding Saudi Arabia. The connexion with Saudi Arabia are so intimate.
29.   Pilger: Why was she so demonstrably enthusiastic about the Destruction of Libya? Can you talk a little about just what the emails have told us - told you - about what happened there? Because Libya is such a source for so much of the Mayhem now in Syria: the ISIL, Jihadism, and so on. It was almost Hillary Clinton’s Invasion. What do the emails tell us about that?

30.   Assange: Libya, more that anyone else’s War, was Hillary Clinton’s War. Barack Obama initially opposed it. Who was the Person who was championing it? Hillary Clinton. That’s documented throughout her emails. She put her favoured agent in effect, Sidney Blumenthal, onto that. There’s more than 1,700 emails out of the 33,000 of Hillary Clinton emails we published just about Libya. It’s not about that Libya has cheap Oil. She perceived the Removal of Gaddafi and the Overthrow of the Libyan State something that she would use to run in the general Election for President. Late 2011, there’s an internal document called the “Libya Tick Tock” that is produced for Hillary Clinton, and it’s a chronological Description of how Hillary Clinton was the central figure in the Destruction of the Libyan State. As a result, there was around 40,000 Deaths within Libya. Jihadists moved in, ISIS moved in. That led to the European refugee and migrant Crisis, because not only did you have People fleeing Libya, People then fleeing Syria, destabilisation of other African countries as a result of Arms flows. The Libyan State itself was no longer able to control movement of People through it, so Libya faces on to the Mediterranean. It had been effectively the cork in the bottle of Africa, so all problems, economic problems, Civil War in Africa. Previously, the People fleeing those Problems didn’t end up in Europe because Libya policed the Mediterranean. That was said explicitly at the time, back in early 2011 by Gaddafi: what do these Europeans think that they are doing, trying to bomb and destroy the Libyan State? There’s going to be floods of migrants out of Africa and jihadists into Europe, and that is exactly what happened.
31.   Pilger: You get a lot of complaints from People saying, “What is WikiLeaks doing? Are they trying to put Trump in the White House?”
32.   Assange: My Answer is that Trump would not be permitted to win. Why do I say that? Because he’s had every Establishment offside. Trump doesn’t have one Establishment, maybe with the exception of the Evangelicals, if you can call them an Establishment, but Banks, Intelligence, Arms Companies.
33.   Pilger: They don’t want him.
34.   Assange: Big foreign Money, etc, is all united behind Hillary Clinton. The Media as well, so Media owners and even journalists themselves.
35.   Pilger: The Accusations that WikiLeaks is in league with the Russians and you hear People saying, “Well, why doesn’t WikiLeaks investigate and publish emails on Russia?”
36.   Assange: We have published over 800,000 documents of various kinds that relate to Russia. Most of those are critical; and a great many books have come out of our Publications about Russia, most of which are critical. Our documents have gone on to be used in quite a number of Court cases, refugee cases of People fleeing some kinds of claimed political Persecution in Russia, which they use our documents to back up.
37.   Pilger: Do you take yourself a View of the U.S. Election? Do you have a preference for Clinton or Trump?
38.   Assange: Donald Trump, what does he represent in the American mind and in the European mind? He represents American “white trash,” deplorable and irredeemable. Basically, the same Thing. It means from an Establishment or educated, cosmopolitan, urbane perspective, these People are, they’re like the rednecks, and you can’t, like they’re just, you can never deal with them. Because he so clearly, through his Words and Actions and the type of People turns up at his rallies, represents People who are not the middle, not the upper-middle-Class-educated, there is a Fear of seeming to be associated in any way with that, a social Fear that lowers the Class status of anyone who can be accused of somehow assisting in any way Trump, including by criticising Clinton. [Joyce Carol Oates.] If you look at how the Middle Class gains its economic and social Power, it makes absolute sense.
39.   Pilger: I’d like to talk about Ecuador, a small Country that has given you Refuge and given you Asylum in this Embassy in London. Now, Ecuador cut off the Internet from here, where we’re doing this Interview, in the Embassy for the clearly obvious reason that they were concerned about appearing to intervene in the U.S. Election Campaign. Can you talk about why they would take that Action and your own Views on Ecuador’s Support for you?
40.   Assange: Let’s go back 4 years ago. Ecuador. I made an Asylum Application to Ecuador in this Embassy because of the U.S. Extradition case, and the Result was after a month, I was successful in Asylum Application, and then the Embassy has been surrounded by Police. Quite an expensive Police operation, which the British Government admits they’re spending more than 12.6 million pounds. They admitted that over a year ago. Now there’s undercover Police and there’s Robot Surveillance Cameras of various kinds so that there has been a quite serious Conflict right here in the heart of London between Ecuador, a Country of 16 million People, and the United Kingdom and the Americans who’ve been helping on the side. That was a brave and principled Thing for Ecuador to do. Now, we have the U.S. Election on foot. The Ecuadorian Election is in February next year. You have the White House feeling the political heat as a result of the true Information that we have been publishing. WikiLeaks does not publish from the Jurisdiction of Ecuador from this Embassy or in the territory of Ecuador. We publish from France, we publish from Germany, we publish from the Netherlands and a number of other countries so that the attempted squeeze on WikiLeaks is through my refugee Status. This is really intolerable: that you try and get at a publishing Organisation to try and prevent it publishing true Information that is of intense Interest to the American People and others about an Election.
41.   Pilger: Tell us what would happen if you walked out of this Embassy?
42.   Assange: I would be immediately arrested by the British Police and I would then be extradited either immediately to the United States or to Sweden. In Sweden, I am not charged, I’ve already been previously cleared, etc. We’re not certain exactly what would happen there, but then we know that the Swedish Government has refused to say that they will not extradite me to United States. They have extradited 100 percent of People that the U.S. has requested since at least 2000. Over the last 15 years, every single Person the U.S. has tried to extradite from Sweden has been extradited and they refuse to provide a Guarantee. So it’s, yeah.
43.   Pilger: People often ask how you cope with the isolation here.
44.   Assange: Look, one of the best attributes of human beings is that they are adaptable. One of the worst attributes of human beings is they are adaptable. They adapt and start to tolerate Abuses. They adapt to being involved themselves in Abuses. They adapt to Adversity and continue on. In my situation, frankly, I’m a bit institutionalised. This is the World. Visually, this is the World.
45.   Pilger: It’s a World without sunlight for one Thing, isn’t it?
46.   Assange: It’s a World without sunlight, but I haven’t seen sunlight in so long like I don’t remember it. Yeah, you adapt. The one real irritant is that my young children, they also adapt. They adapt to being without their father. That’s a hard, hard adaption, which they didn’t ask for.
47.   Pilger: Do you worry about them?
48.   Assange: Yeah, I worry about them, I worry about their mother.
49.   Pilger: Yeah. Some People would say, “Well, why don’t you end it and simply walk out the door and allow yourself to be extradited to Sweden?”
50.   Assange: The U.N. has looked into this whole situation. They spent 18 months in formal adversarial Litigation: me at the U.N. vs. Sweden and the UK. Who’s Right? The U.N. made a conclusion I’m being arbitrarily detained, illegally deprived of my Freedom that what has been occurred has not occurred within the Laws that the United Kingdom and Sweden must obey. It is an illegal Abuse. United Nations is formally asking what’s going on here, what’s your legal explanation for this. He says that you should recognise his Asylum. Sweden formally writing back to United Nations, says “No, we’re not going to,” so leaving open their Ability to extradite. I just find it absolutely amazing that the narrative about this situation is not put out publicly in the Press because it doesn’t suit the Western Establishment narrative that, “Yes, the West has political prisoners.” It’s a Reality. It’s not just me, there’s a bunch of other People as well. The West has political prisoners. No State accepts to call the People it is imprisoning or detaining for political reasons “political prisoners.” They don’t call them political prisoners in China, they don’t call them political prisoners in Azerbaijan, and they don’t call them political prisoners in the United States, UK or Sweden. It’s absolutely intolerable to have that kind of Self-perception. Here we have a case. Talking about the Swedish case, where I have never been charged with a Crime, where I have already been cleared and found to be innocent, where the woman herself said that the Police made it up, where the United Nations formally said the whole Thing is illegal, where the State of Ecuador also investigated and found that I should be given Asylum. Those are the facts, but what is the Rhetoric?
51.   Pilger: Different.
52.   Assange: The Rhetoric is pretending, constantly pretending that I have been charged with a Crime, never mentioning that I have been already previously cleared, never mentioning that the woman herself says that the Police made it up, trying to avoid that the U.N. formally found that the whole Thing is illegal. Never even mentioning that Ecuador made a formal assessment through its formal Processes and found that yes, I am subject to Persecution by the United States.

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