In these dark times, it's magnificent to have
a few rays of light to pierce through the darkness
and to allow us to celebrate that the human spirit cannot be
confined into the darkness forever, that the human spirit
cannot be defeated, that resistance is never futile
even when it seems to be so. There were times when with Srećko Horvat
and with others of you here, we felt that the struggle to
save Julian was probably lost. There were bleak moments,
there were stony years, especially after 2015-2016. I'll get back to this in a moment,
but let me first, because there are
quite a few people who don't understand what
exactly has been going on. As most people know,
at this very moment, Julian is on an airplane. It is disgraceful that
he has to pay for it himself, that it is a chartered private flight,
that the Australian government, the British government,
the American government who have caused all this pain
are not paying for. So remember, we need crowdfunding to
help pay for the half a million dollars necessary to take Julian to Guam, to somewhere in the
middle of nowhere in the Pacific. So let me act as a pseudo-journalist
for one moment for the benefit of those
viewers and listeners who do not know exactly
what has been going on. Look, it was around nine months ago
when Julian's family informed me that there was an offer by the
American government of a plea deal. It sounded simultaneously
like good news and bad. You agreed to drop your resistance
to the extradition process in the United Kingdom, you come to the United States,
you appear in front of a court, you declare yourself to be guilty
of a lesser espionage charge, but not the top notch which would qualify
him for the death penalty or a thousand years in prison or whatever. You will be sentenced
to 5 years in prison, and then because
you've already spent 5 years in Belmarsh,
this will be considered time served and then
you will be released and you'll be extradited to Australia. That was months ago that
it was proposed to him. I can tell you that he said no because he's not guilty of anything, and also because of the fear
that once you end up in the jurisdiction of Virginia
where the process started 12 years ago of persecuting him and making sure
that he dies in a supermax prison. Two parallel processes: one is his family has been
pushing Julian to accept because this is a family that
has been completely wrecked by all those years of having Julian
dying slowly inside that prison and I understand that entirely. And at the same time,
there were negotiations on how to ensure that he does
not spend one hour in prison and especially not a supermax prison, not in any cell
even of the judicial system of the court system in the State
of Virginia, in the District of Columbia. So in the end, it's clear now - that I learned from the media myself,
I didn't have any inside information - that the deal was completed. They found the nearest American judicial jurisdiction, which
is as near to the territory of the Australian Commonwealth,
which is somewhere in a God-forsaken little Island near Guam. And he's being flown there
on the understanding that he would not be
incarcerated for one hour. He'll appear in front of a judge. The fact, however, remains,
and this is crucial, that he will have to appear in front
of a judge with his lawyer. The prosecutor will be there. The judge will address the prosecutor
and ask if a plea deal has been made. The prosecutor will say yes. Then Julian will be instructed
by the judge to express in his own words, his guilt. So he's not just going to plead guilty;
he will have to explain why he's guilty and not contest his guilt. And then, it will be up to
the judge, at least formally, to accept this elocution, as it's called: the expression of remorse
and guilt by Julian. I'm explaining this in sordid details so that we know exactly what is
happening and to understand why, while it is a major victory for
Julian Assange and for all of us who have been tirelessly
working towards his release - because the United States
government has been shamed into giving up the task of killing him -. The United Kingdom has completely,
completely been humiliated by this. Because remember, the United Kingdom
was saying for 12 years now that there's nothing they can do, that since an extradition
has been asked for, first by Sweden, remember Srecko? and then by the United States,
well, their hands have been tied. BULLSHIT! How can I prove that?
It's really very simple. You know, they let him fly
out of Britain without the extradition process
having been rescinded. So it is clear that they were not obliged
to respect the extradition process, - either the Swedish one
or the American one - because clearly today, they let him
leave the country without the extradition process
being formally suspended. So the United Kingdom as an entity,
as a state, should be hanging its collective head
in shame today, as should the Biden Administration
and Trump Administration. But nevertheless, while we have
every reason to celebrate because it just goes to show
that the pressure from the movement has borne fruit, and that is
a great moment for us. For the movement, for Julian,
for everybody who's been fighting against all odds, the powers that be,
the totalitarianism that be. It's a great day for us, for the movement
but it is a major defeat for journalism. The editors of the New York Times,
the Washington Post, the Guardian, Der Spiegel, Le Monde should also
be hanging their heads in shame because they have been defeated. The fact that Julian, in order to survive and to be reunited with
his family and his friends, the fact that he needs to tomorrow
stand in front of a judge and accept the jurisdiction
of the United States outside the borders
of the United States, accept the right of
the United States government to imprison somebody for 5 years
- remember, time spent - five years, for a crime committed outside
the United States by a non-US citizen. And what crime? The crime of
telling the truth as a journalist. You know what this means? It means that the
legacy of Dan Ellsberg, the hero, our hero
of the Pentagon Papers, who published damning information
right from within the Pentagon about the Vietnam War
and who stood his ground - in the end, he never acquired
a criminal record, he was never
convicted of anything. So journalism survived the
persecution of Dan Ellsberg - by the way, Dan was a great supporter
until he died very recently - of Julian Assange. But Julian Assange is now
going to have a criminal record, which of course is a
badge of honor for him, but it is a badge of disgrace
for the New York Times, for the Washington Post, for
the Guardian, who did nothing to defend him during the
difficult dark ages where Srećko and I and all of you
were fighting for his freedom, and they were condemning him
as a rapist, as a supporter of Donald Trump,
and all that jazz. Allow me to say a few words now about
that dark age, that dark period, and Srećko will add to that, I'm sure. There was a time when we would be
in the Ecuadorian Embassy and for hours and hours and hours
be discussing with Julian the avalanche of mud that was being
thrown and piled upon him. And you know, the powers that be,
the totalitarian states - United States, United Kingdom,
and so on - they were very smart
about the way they did it. Because what they did was this:
they tried to find the weak link. They tried to find, you see,
if you accuse me of being a communist, I don't mind, you're probably right. If you accuse me of being anti-NATO,
anti-US Government, I'll say yes, that's exactly right. If you accuse me of being a rapist, if you accuse me of being an anti-Semite, which is what of course
happens all the time, that really hurts because
as feminists, as anti-racists, the mere mention of these accusations is
a major, major, major wound. It's a trauma, and that's what they did. You will recall, some of you who were
with us with DiEM25 back then, that especially immediately after Jeremy Corbyn became the
leader of the Labour Party, at the time when of course Julian was
still being persecuted and prosecuted and he was in the Ecuadorian Embassy,
and that time was when of course that incredible case by Sweden
supposedly on rape charges - which never, never were laid, never,
it was just mud, it was just innuendo. There was never a charge even for sexual assault, for rape, or
anything like that, it was just innuendo. The kind of mud that sticks and there's nothing
you can do to wash it because you can't even address a charge
that has been laid down against you. But I remember, and Srećko will
confirm that in his own words, I remember how desperate those days were
when we were losing all our comrades. Remember, DiEM25 had an agreement
to merge our efforts with a very valiant, progressive,
youthful movement in Britain called "Another Europe is Possible",
do you remember that? Do you remember why
that alliance, that merger was at the very last moment
jettisoned and blown up? Because they demanded that we ditch
Julian Assange because he was a rapist. We lost young feminists,
women and men, across the United Kingdom and across
Europe within our own movement. Do you remember that, Srećko? We had people within our movement, even in
the CC, in the Coordinating Collective, saying, "Come on, let's ditch Julian,
he costs us more than he benefits us". But we stood our ground and we said no,
and we even had an all-member vote in order to defeat that attempt for
DiEM25 to be co-opted by the, effectively, the successful wave
of vilifying Julian, which took root within the Progressive
Movement in northern Europe - not so much southern Europe,
but in northern Europe. Do you remember that in November 2018,
Bernie Sanders, myself, David Adler, and others were in Vermont and
we started the Progressive International? Well, let me be very clear on this. After we started the
Progressive International, Bernie Sanders and I proclaimed
the PI came out and said "Join us" to the world, we had a message
from Bernie's senatorial team saying: but the condition is
you drop Julian because he's too hot a brick
or a potato for us to handle. And very soon after that, one of
our comrades, a wonderful woman who was part of the
Progressive International, the Prime Minister of Iceland,
Katrín Jakobsdóttir, signaled to us that
as long as we support Julian, "a rapist" in inverted commas, she cannot
be part of the Progressive International. I'm saying that because, you know,
now everybody can be pro-Julian, everybody can pretend that
they were part of this movement. Even the Labour Party under my very, very
dear friend and comrade Jeremy Corbyn, they would not pick up the phone
when I called them to seek the support of the Labour Party
under Jeremy Corbyn for Julian. I'm saying this because our memory
is necessary to be preserved as a bulwark against what will
happen next to other comrades, to other freedom fighters
like Julian Assange. And when I say other, I mean other. The Australian Prime Minister
is presenting himself as a good guy who's helped:
No, he hasn't, no he hasn't at all. The only reason why Biden has relented
was because he's losing the youth vote as a result
of his support of genocide in Gaza. And he wants to make some
relatively costless gesture to the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,
Bernie Sanders supporters who voted for him in 2020 and who are probably
not going to vote for him now. A costless gesture, that is
what it is for him. It's great that we managed
to push him in that direction, but you know, Mr. Albanese,
the Australian Prime Minister, in my books, you are guilty. You could have said a year and
a half ago to President Biden that if America wants Australia
to spend $360 billion dollars on American submarines, the first thing
they need to do is drop the charges, not condemn him and
take him to the Guam base now. And speaking of Australia, given that we have managed to work
towards the freedom of Julian, what about David McBride? David McBride is another whistleblower
who is now inside a high-security prison in Australia. Why? Because he revealed, just like
WikiLeaks had revealed, David McBride was the person who exposed
the Australian massacre of Afghanis. The Australian soldiers'
massacre of Afghanis. A massacre which was revealed, exposed,
there was a royal commission, it found the Australian military
guilty of a massacre in Afghanistan because David McBride
did expose them. None of them ended up in prison,
David McBride is in prison in Australia. So Mr. Albanese, I look at you in the face
and I say shame on you. You have had nothing to do with the
remarkable, remarkable developments in releasing our friend and
comrade Julian Assange. We need to carry on along the lines
of this spirit of solidarity to David McBride, to Boris Kagarlitski,
a socialist activist who is being held as a political prisoner
in Moscow by Putin's regime. DiEM25 must show that
we're here for the long term, and Julian, who was with us
from the very, very beginning, is simply an inspiration that
we are going to take to the Modi fascist regime in India. They're even thinking of imprisoning
Arundhati Roy as we speak. This is just
the beginning of the struggle. It is not the end of the struggle. It's the end of the
beginning of the struggle. So let's hail Julian's success,
our success in supporting Julian, and let's mourn together
the manner in which European and American journalism has been condemned or
will be condemned tomorrow by that kangaroo court in Guam
or somewhere in the Pacific. Because that will be an indictment on the freedom of journalism
across the world. We will celebrate, we will
take the moment to, maybe even have a glass of champagne
to celebrate Julian's freedom as a reminder of the essence
of what we are all about as DiEM25, as the
Progressive International. We have not allowed even comrades
to bend our will and force us to betray Julian. We will not allow them to
bend our will and force us to end the defense of
other political prisoners and of course, the whole of Palestine. Carpe DiEM!
