Google Speech-to-Text API Automatic Transcription (Chirp). Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:00:00but even by his allies, so it's now um
00:00:03incument upon him to change that uh by maximizing Americans
00:00:07dominance.
00:00:29Welcome back. to going underground
00:00:31of broadcasting all around the world from the UAE, tomorrow marks four decades since the
00:00:35rechevic summit
00:00:36a when Reagan and USSR destroyer Gorbachov discussed
00:00:40eliminating all nuclear weapons. Gorbachov offered a historic deal
00:00:43to totally eradicate strategic nuclear arsenals by the year 2000, but
00:00:47Reagan and military industrial
00:00:49of complex imperialists like Richard Pearl, the Prince of Darkness who
00:00:53later engineer the 203 WMD Iraq Warlies refused to
00:00:57abandon fantasy policy called star. wars, talks
00:01:01collapsed at the last minute. Just weeks later, Reagan was in
00:01:04his Iran contra scandal, illegally trading arms to Iran to funnel
00:01:08profits to right-wing death squads in Nicaragua. Desperate to
00:01:12save his reputation, Reagan announced acceptance of Gorbachov's INF
00:01:16treaty terms in 2019, Trump ripped it all up. It was his
00:01:20National Security Advisor, John Bolton, who I'll be interviewing tomorrow on New
00:01:24Order who
00:01:24of flew to Moscow to personally inform Vladimir Putin that Washington
00:01:28was walking away today.
00:01:30the threat
00:01:30of of thermonuclear catastrophe is higher than any
00:01:33of point in the cold war, 85 seconds to midnight.
00:01:36of Washington remains trapped and desperate after defeat by Iran, while
00:01:40western European vassels continue reckless war mungering against the
00:01:44world's largest
00:01:45of nuclear power, with NATO nation so-called journalists promoting
00:01:48genocide in the path to nuclear war, but real
00:01:51a journalists are
00:01:52of out there even as press freedom faces its darkest hours.
00:01:56Last week marked 20 years of Wikileaks, the platform that...
00:02:00exposed US UK EU War crimes. Today we celebrate the freedom of
00:02:03Julian Nassage and his return to public life after years of
00:02:07British
00:02:08of
00:02:09of of incarceration and torture. Joining me again from Reckivigan Iceland is the editor and chief of
00:02:12Wikileaks
00:02:13in Christian Raffenson. Christian, thanks so much for coming on going
00:02:17underground. You're talking to us from Reckevic where tomorrow marks
00:02:20that anniversary. Of
00:02:23of a course, um, there is another 20-year anniversary, arguably
00:02:27slightly less important, but probably on the same level.
00:02:30of How is Julian
00:02:31of Nassange? when was the last time you spoke to him?
00:02:34he he returned to ex after eight years, his wife's pregnant with the third
00:02:37child due this
00:02:39of month? i spoke to him yesterday actually
00:02:43and we're regular contact and i visited him in Australia last
00:02:46winter uh in the Australian summer, he is
00:02:49doing well considering, mean it's been a little over two
00:02:53years since he regained his freedom
00:02:56finally and he's been using the time in.
00:03:00recovery and the family life, which is
00:03:03natural, and just recently he removes some
00:03:07social media and announced that he was
00:03:10returning, so I am certain we're going to hear
00:03:13of more for him now in the future, and that is much needed, his voice is
00:03:17needed in the current atmosphere, there's a lot
00:03:21lot to lot of challenges in today's world, yeah, I mean,
00:03:25while he was tortured by the British, I should say you was
00:03:28psychologically impact. at 16
00:03:31of years uh for
00:03:31of you at Wikileaks, the anniversary also also marks, before we get into the
00:03:35most significant leaks uh, what about the
00:03:39legacy for whistleblowers and journalists? it's been a terrible
00:03:43three years obviously for journalists, more than 250 journalists and
00:03:47media workers killed in Gaza, that's more than the combined
00:03:51number killed in world war one, world war two, all the conflicts of the 20th century
00:03:55and this one
00:03:55of so far combined, more censorship uh
00:03:59without - a free price, of course there is no such thing as
00:04:02democracy, what, what would you say before we get to the
00:04:05leaks, how significant it has been for whistleblowers and
00:04:09a journalists? well, I mean, the state of journalism today is bleak,
00:04:13and as you mentioned, the worst spot of
00:04:17of course is Gaza, where very brave people have been
00:04:21sacrificed in their lives
00:04:23of literally and have been targeted and killed and
00:04:25of assassinated in in for trying to get a truth
00:04:28out on the general. site uh, but journalists are
00:04:32facing challenges all over the
00:04:35of place, they've been
00:04:36of stopped at borders, on on
00:04:40furious terrorism charges or
00:04:44suspicions
00:04:46of and the british border, i know you're talking about the british
00:04:49border,
00:04:51but but actually
00:04:54yeah, well i know all about that british border, but julian chose to spoke about speak
00:04:58about gaza,
00:05:01of after
00:05:02of he regained his freedom of all the places in the world where things are happening,
00:05:05he chose Gaza, he did, that is where our
00:05:09focus
00:05:10of should be, "we are facing
00:05:14nation there which is
00:05:17committing
00:05:18a most horrendous crime before our eyes
00:05:21and is dictating the
00:05:24empire to into wars
00:05:27in my mind the most dangerous country in the world
00:05:31today um so we should maintain our
00:05:35focus on on that front and journalism's under attack as you
00:05:38if we continue on that front that is indisputable and quality
00:05:42journalist, those who actually are true to
00:05:46the the spirit of true journalism are being
00:05:50marginalized push to the
00:05:54fringe or silenced, that is still
00:05:57going on and that needs to be addressed, and mean
00:06:00if we want to go to wikily's
00:06:04legacy, it's a 20 years, i'm very proud of
00:06:08be have been a part of that for the last 16 years in one former.
00:06:12another, it has been exceptionally
00:06:16important um actor in our contemporary
00:06:20history, which I think we will appreciate more
00:06:24as time goes by, maybe it will be the role of historians, but uh,
00:06:28certainly it's been an very, very important
00:06:31overall input in our
00:06:35our understanding the world, and you could, you could
00:06:39argue that it's now... for a century
00:06:43into the century, and if you look back
00:06:46into how things have progressed, after
00:06:509/11, it was just slippery slope down
00:06:54hill or um for
00:06:57journalism, and of course we
00:07:00had the power abuse growing
00:07:04day by day, you had to torture chambers in blacksides
00:07:07in Europe, you had quantano bay, you had illegal wars and you had very little
00:07:11push back and journalism because secrecy just
00:07:15increased year on year, it that all
00:07:19changed in 2010, mean that that
00:07:22was without any doubts the the
00:07:26biggest demonstration
00:07:29of of objection to the power abuse
00:07:33that you had, and that needs to be acknowledge
00:07:37that we certainly
00:07:41the saw. into the depth the
00:07:44darkness of what was going on and we couldn't
00:07:48avoid looking at it. up until then for the
00:07:51first decade the century that was just not the case and i can atest to
00:07:55that as a journalist working the mainstream i
00:07:59was getting very desperate about situation so it
00:08:03was a fresh input that
00:08:06wikily is brought about in on so many fronts
00:08:10and there is so much. remember of of of all
00:08:14these years in after yeah if there's any
00:08:18journalist out there who's not using wikileaks today then they're not really
00:08:21journalistts arguably if they're talking about the contemporary world because the
00:08:25relevance continues of course we've had the
00:08:29mass killing in minab in Iran the triple
00:08:32tack tomock strike not sure of course the
00:08:36Americans say they're doing investigation into it I don't know whether it
00:08:40reminded you I mean we don't have. a collateral murder
00:08:43video the tomahawk strike on the elementary school
00:08:47for girls in southern Iran. Tell me about collateral murder and how
00:08:51that put Wikileaks on the map? Well, I
00:08:55was instrumental in in working on the collateral murder video that was
00:08:59released on April 5th, 2010. Um,
00:09:03it was, it was an
00:09:06explosive video evidence of war crime
00:09:10that was real. uh site
00:09:13and uh it
00:09:16it it was something that will
00:09:20always be a an
00:09:22iconic part of how we
00:09:26view the Iraq war, it was
00:09:30the uh the Nepalm girl photo
00:09:34of uh the Iraq war if you wish, that is
00:09:38the way
00:09:38we will see the Iraq war, it will be through that video uh and
00:09:42alongside the photographs from Abu Ghraib, that is the
00:09:46visual portrayal the nature the Iraq
00:09:49war, when it came out, it was a shock, it went
00:09:53viral, went all over the place,
00:09:55it was watched by millions opon millions and of course it was, as
00:09:59you remember showing the assassination of
00:10:02civilians, innocent
00:10:04civilians, attack upon children and the
00:10:08killing of two righters journalists who are working on the ground.
00:10:13there uh a photo journalist
00:10:16name and his assistant said. yes, I did travel
00:10:20to Iraq prior to the release the video and to do an
00:10:24onground. on the ground investigation and verification,
00:10:28talked to 2000 people who were either direct or indirect
00:10:32witnesses to the the event
00:10:36and met the two children who survived the
00:10:39incident sides and doa whose
00:10:42father mat was basically
00:10:46assassinated, his only crime was to drive upon the scene and and wanted
00:10:50to save the wounded routers sther
00:10:54sid small. and these are apache
00:10:58apache helicopters obviously from from the US
00:11:01military two apache
00:11:04helicopters safe high up in the air barely visible
00:11:08from the ground with powerful zoom lenses with
00:11:12stabilizers and 30 millimeter cannons
00:11:16that spew bullets that explode upon in
00:11:19impact as as little hand grenades
00:11:22designed to penetrate our vehicles and
00:11:26tanks, but used against civilians on the
00:11:29ground, basically
00:11:32exploding upon impact, so you can imagine the
00:11:36carnage, it was
00:11:39horrific imagery,
00:11:41but what was chilling as well and what many picked up on was
00:11:44the fact that how the apache
00:11:48crews were discussing in between
00:11:51themselves over the intercom and in the communication with ground?
00:11:55control, how the blood lost that was
00:11:59seeping through and the calculated approach
00:12:03to try to remain within the so-called
00:12:07rules of engagement, and
00:12:10but so much willing and trip trigger happy to to finish the
00:12:14job. I still, I watched this hundreds of times before it
00:12:18was released, studying it before, and it's still in my
00:12:22mind, every word uttered in that... "that
00:12:25interaction is with me and especially when they
00:12:28talk about their achievement,
00:12:32and one them says, "look at all these dead bodies," and another
00:12:36one replies, nice. the word nice doesn't have the
00:12:40same connotation in my head after that,
00:12:43and the way they were looking at sidesma heavily wounded on the
00:12:47curve with crosser on his back and seeing that he was
00:12:51unarmed and being very unhappy and say, "
00:12:55well all you got to do is pick up a a
00:12:58weapon becuse then they knew they had reason
00:13:02enough to open fire and finish him off, but they wait a
00:13:06little longer and was on just until the until
00:13:09the mini one approach on the scene
00:13:13and al was the good
00:13:16samaritan trying to save him and then they created a
00:13:20pretext saying they were possibly picking up weapons and that
00:13:24this was a... bongo truck
00:13:27or made it sound like it was this was insurgence and
00:13:31got to go ahead to open fire
00:13:34and obliterate the vehicle killing all the idols
00:13:38inside and the only reason why the two children's reid
00:13:42and doa was the fact that the father just threw his body
00:13:46to seal them and and taking the bullets and
00:13:50the trabnill and to his own body
00:13:54christian ravens and stop you there, more from the wikileaks editor and chief
00:13:57after this
00:13:58break,
00:14:17what if everything you think you know is only part the
00:14:20story. bold economic moves, high stakes battles on the world.
00:14:25stage, war and peace, the very future of
00:14:29America. The headlines are loud, the debates are
00:14:32fierce. Now it's time for closer look. Know the
00:14:35policy, understand the impact. America first, with
00:14:39Scotty
00:14:40Nelview.
00:14:50Welcome back to Going Underground. I'm still here with the editor and chief of Wikileaks,
00:14:53Christinafinson. Christian, you were telling us in part one about the
00:14:57collateral murder video, interestingly, not in the indictment actually
00:15:01of Julian Assange, but in the indictment of Chelsea Manning who was
00:15:04tortured by the United States authorities, whereas Julian was
00:15:08tortured by the British. I i don't know whether uh, it
00:15:12also demonstrated, I mean Reuters had filed a uh
00:15:15freedom of information request, Reuters, an agency that
00:15:19arguably looks more and more ridiculous uh, during the
00:15:23Gaza genocide, scripal incident in
00:15:26Britain, it also showed how journalists in
00:15:30NATO countries arguably collaborate, and we've seen that in recent
00:15:33years over Gaza, to two sides a story to make...
00:15:38out to make out that, I don't know, the situation
00:15:42in Gaza has two sides to the story, the
00:15:45Afghan War diary 2010, Iraq war logs 2010, half million
00:15:49classified battlefield reports revealed more
00:15:53lies, 66,00 previously unreported
00:15:56civilians killed, I think you want to look at the reporting from res and
00:16:00this all in Iraq, of course the Iraq war 23 would have
00:16:04shown that everything that they were print. or
00:16:08broadcasting was was to promote the
00:16:11war, yeah,
00:16:15the the critical reporting on the war both in Afghanistan and Iraq was was
00:16:19dismal and there was very very few were actually reporting the
00:16:22truth out of those countries and especially, I
00:16:26mean imagine the fact that when the first part of that
00:16:30the afghan war diary, the locks from
00:16:32Afghanistan, when
00:16:36when it came out... the the narrative, the
00:16:39predominant in
00:16:422010, and and this was this is very close to me
00:16:46because I had, I had traveled in to Afghanistan twice in 2004 and
00:16:502007 and didn't stay there long and I didn't
00:16:54have capacity to dig into things there, but the
00:16:57over over
00:17:00predominant narrative about Afghanistan, but this was was almost
00:17:04over, the the it was, I mean I even... interview the had
00:17:08the NATO American general the had the NATO force in
00:17:11Afghanistan in in Kabul who told me in 2007
00:17:15oh it's it's almost over and they always use the word well there are small pockets of
00:17:19resistance but when you got then the the
00:17:23war logs from Afghanistan and you you look
00:17:27through it you saw the escalation the
00:17:30conflict and it was getting from bad to worse year
00:17:33on year certainly not over basically.
00:17:37November of that same year, they were lying through the teeth, and in that
00:17:40November through the teeth. November that same year, US diplomatic
00:17:44cables, quarter of million, including one them, which is pertinent to the
00:17:48possibly the the annihilation of Europe a nuclear conflict
00:17:52today, arguably, the US ambassador to Moscow Bill Burns
00:17:56showing he well knew what would happen in Ukraine, the
00:17:59the warnings the red lines of NATO
00:18:02expansion, um, tell me about that
00:18:06one, well... was one the many many revelations in
00:18:09there, of course the there was a
00:18:13story that let there's a back
00:18:16story to to the events that are often
00:18:20forgotten, that applies to Ukraine, that applies to
00:18:24gaza, the the the cionists and the
00:18:27Israelis will will let will try to
00:18:31convince you that it all started on October 7 th years
00:18:34ago, recently that... recently
00:18:38passed, but that is not the case,
00:18:41but yeah, the war in Ukraine started in
00:18:44February 22, apparently,
00:18:48not 2014, yeah, I mean, there is back
00:18:52story to everything, all the events, I'm not going to start justifying
00:18:56the invasion, I'm against war in all forms
00:18:59and and and not conton
00:19:03gillins any front, but it it amplifies the
00:19:07fact. we we really get a glimpse of of what really is
00:19:11going on behind the scene and what is in the the story
00:19:14and how how could you for years and years hide the
00:19:18real truth about these two wars in Iraq and
00:19:21Afghanistan uh can you imagine this and in 2010
00:19:25actually if you looked at Afghanistan and the war diaries from
00:19:29there it was clear to everybody who was looking
00:19:33objectively at the data there that this was an
00:19:35unwinnable war. "but then of course you had
00:19:39to continue for another 10 years,
00:19:42unnecessarily, everybody should have known in 2010, 2011,
00:19:46this was over, this was unwinnable,
00:19:48and we and we did, some of us did even without the cables,
00:19:52Israel of course in one the cables saying
00:19:56they're happy about Hamas taking over Gaza, the
00:19:59attempts to destroy Syria, the bug bugging the United Nations
00:20:03officials in in those logs,
00:20:06and of course Syria." was important required arguably for the genocide in Gaza
00:20:10later, all of those are in those
00:20:13diplomatic cables before we get to Snowden, yeah, and I mean the
00:20:17diplomatic cables actually revealed something that actually led
00:20:21to the withdrawal the US troops out of Iraq,
00:20:25so maybe we could say weak did end that war, but at least the presence of US
00:20:29troops in the country, that was the the information
00:20:32being discussed in the cables about a cover up of a
00:20:36hideous war crime. where where where actually
00:20:40people were shackled and down to very young children and
00:20:43assassinated and then they they they threw bombs
00:20:47on the house to try to cover up, this was being discussed. and this
00:20:50was led to such so much protest in Iraq that the
00:20:54al-Maliki government said is impossible for us
00:20:57to continue guaranteeing immunity for us soldiers
00:21:01in the country and that led to Obama pulling out the the
00:21:05remaining soldiers in Iraq um
00:21:09it there was there are so many stories in there I mean the cable
00:21:12gate release is was just phenomenal
00:21:16of 25000 diplomatic cables from all over the world.
00:21:20exposing underbelly the empire, we we use them all the
00:21:24time, we use them all the time. Snowden, then still being
00:21:28used, yep, Edward Snowden, um, explaining to the world how
00:21:32all our phones are bugging us, but particularly Shirak, Sarkozi,
00:21:35orland, Merkel, Banky Moon, has been on this show, the former secretary general
00:21:39the United Nations, what does it tell us about the
00:21:42EU's independence from the United States and
00:21:46their ability to forge any kind of policies when all
00:21:50them and their most intimate moments are being surveiled
00:21:54by American intelligence agencies, well the
00:21:57reaction to that, the revelations were remarkable actually, because
00:22:01nobody did protest and that says a
00:22:04lot, well it was very muted
00:22:08protest, of course the independence there
00:22:11is is and was
00:22:15quite hinch upon the economic and and military...
00:22:21uh situation there, we still have what up to 8
00:22:249000 US troops in Europe are stationed
00:22:27there, so it is
00:22:31aascue situation and
00:22:35Europe has been trying um
00:22:38lately to create some kind of
00:22:41um independence strategy and
00:22:45position, but not sure they
00:22:49will... handle that economically and and that will take
00:22:53a quite quite a lot of effort if if they are doing so,
00:22:57but yes, especially if any them, especially if them being
00:23:00blackmailed on information that has been got through
00:23:04different programs of that Snoden revealed to
00:23:08the world, March 2017, the false flag
00:23:11manual for some, vault seven, I should say we always credit
00:23:15Wikileaks when we talk about it on going underground, we use use them a lot on
00:23:19this show, the revelations that you responsible
00:23:23for, the largest ever CIA document leak in history.
00:23:26um, tell me about umbridge, which can be used to
00:23:29hack computers and put different
00:23:33languages, Russia and Chinese in the code, how useful that
00:23:37might be for NATO nation powers? well,
00:23:41I mean, obviously useful, and there was so much in the world seven leaks
00:23:45that that exposed
00:23:48the the cyber. arsenal of CIA
00:23:51and the embarrassment that it caused CIA was
00:23:55was tremendous,
00:23:56it was huge, and the reaction was
00:23:58strong, you to recall that Mike Pompello
00:24:02was director the CIA at the time,
00:24:06and the first thing he did when he went to made made his
00:24:10public speech, I think it was in April 2017 was
00:24:14to outline the the dangers facing the US
00:24:17and mentioned to... on the top the
00:24:21list Wikileaks and designated
00:24:24a foreign hostile intelligence service and
00:24:28of course at that point we knew that it was gloves off towards
00:24:32Julians and the rest of us and Lawing behold we later
00:24:36learn that they were plotting assassination against
00:24:39Julian who was at that point in the equatorial empacy they
00:24:43tried to kill him in Britain i'm just speeding us along
00:24:46buse as you say we can only get a cursory uh view
00:24:50of uh your work, um, the of course Trump famously
00:24:54said, we love wikileaks, because the pedesta Clinton DNC
00:24:58emails showed how dark and
00:25:02anti-democratic was Hillary Clinton and the entire Democratic
00:25:05national uh committee, um, was that
00:25:09where, and then the Russia hoax then came out of
00:25:12that, um, well, that that love affair
00:25:16and that that love was didn't last very long, any
00:25:20invitations recently to the trump? well, it didn't, it
00:25:24didn't,
00:25:25it didn't take long for Trump actually to when when
00:25:29pompeo suggested that Julian would
00:25:33be should be targeted, and and he chimed
00:25:37according to good resources, well we can we take
00:25:40out the SOP or something of that nature, so that
00:25:44was a shortl law affair, but the
00:25:48the the expose of... the under the inside
00:25:52the the democratic party was was extraordinary, it was good
00:25:55journalism, it was necessary to expose what
00:25:59was going on behind the two door the closed doors and the smoke
00:26:02filled rooms, how they were plotting and and manipulating the
00:26:06scales against Bernie Sanders would have
00:26:10according to all Pauls probably done much better
00:26:14against Trump if he would have won the
00:26:17primaries, but the scales were tipped against him,
00:26:21and then of course it was the two
00:26:23faced rhetoric
00:26:26by Hillary Clinton who said one thing
00:26:30officially, but when she was taking... money speaking
00:26:34to wall street donors, she she said another things and she
00:26:38admitted it, it was different message on that
00:26:41front, so that was of
00:26:44course led to then the the the democratic party
00:26:48losing itself in the the rosa collusion
00:26:52story with ended
00:26:55ended in them not finding any
00:26:59and yeah meanwile forgot that they
00:27:03actually had other elections to prepare for and and didn't have
00:27:06candidate when it came up and and had to
00:27:10yeah prop
00:27:11up
00:27:15biting at that point which of course led to criticisms of
00:27:18wikileaks saying that you're
00:27:20a russian operation that you were somehow and we have
00:27:24emphasize that parties all around the world can
00:27:28use wikileaks to uh investigate their oppositions and it's
00:27:32completely non-partisan, it's on all sides that you've
00:27:36investigated including Vladimir Putin, what have you made the persecution
00:27:40of RT of channels that
00:27:43don't subscribe to the prevailing
00:27:46narratives the way the world is at the
00:27:49moment? I don't agree with with the measure taken against
00:27:53our team,
00:27:57and we we
00:27:59do have of course...
00:28:04stay sponsored journalism
00:28:07practicing all over the world and it
00:28:10is known that somehow they
00:28:14sometimes they have a sland towards the sponsors,
00:28:17sometimes not, you will know as well what the
00:28:21bpc is like
00:28:22in in in in Britain, you it's hard to say that
00:28:26they are void of
00:28:30influence of of. towards their rulers
00:28:34and the the financiers so to speak,
00:28:37but it is, it is not a good idea
00:28:40to go through these measures.
00:28:44christina ravenson, thank you, thank
00:28:47you, that's over the show, our condolences of course to all those
00:28:51of you bereeved or affected by Washington's wars of aggression, we'll be back on Monday
00:28:55with former Top UN advisor Jeffrey Sachs on how NATO's proxy
00:28:59war in Ukraine is pushing the world to the brink of world.
00:29:03Until then, you
00:29:03can keep in touch for all our social media, if it's not sensor in your country and head to our channel going underground tv on
00:29:07rumble.com to watch new and old episodes are going underground, see you
00:29:10monday.
00:29:46I think that this um um hegemonic kind of
00:29:49mindset um is um deeply um
00:29:53within Donald Trump's personality um he think that the
00:29:57American of course is is is still the the greatest and most
00:30:01powerful country ' on the planet and and the United
00:30:04States according to his uh him and his followers
00:30:08has been short changed by it by his allies so it's
00:30:12now um incument upon him to change that uh by
00:30:16maximizing American's
00:30:17dominance.