In this episode, we delve into the importance of freeing Julian Assange and the powerful documentary film that sheds light on his story. We explore the psychological torture that Assange has endured and emphasize the urgent need for public awareness and activism. The film 'Trust Fall' features renowned celebrity advocates such as Roger Waters, MIA, Susan Sarandon, and Tom Morello, who lend their voices to the cause.
Our special guest for this episode is Kym Staton, the director of the documentary film 'Trust Fall'. In our interview, we delve into the challenges faced during the making of the film and the significance of press freedom. Dotcom emphasizes the need for action to protect truth and transparency, highlighting the critical role that Assange's case plays in safeguarding journalism and free speech.
Join us as we explore the compelling narrative of Julian Assange, the importance of his freedom, and the power of documentary filmmaking in raising awareness and inspiring change.
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[[episode website]]
(00:00:30) Introduction to the importance of freeing Julian Assange
(00:14:38) The significance of Assange's case for free speech, journalism, and corruption
(00:38:40) The need for public awareness and activism to support Assange
(00:49:21) The involvement of celebrity advocates in the documentary film
(00:54:07) The challenges of getting celebrities on board for projects
(00:54:38) The power of communal film experiences
(00:56:17) The importance of having an appropriate call to action
(00:57:11) Daniel Ellsberg's role in the film and the importance of his story
(01:03:00) The similarities between Daniel Ellsberg's case and Julian Assange's case
(01:09:30) The challenges faced during the making of the film
(01:15:30) The impact of the film and the importance of spreading awareness
(01:17:15) A reading from Kym Staton's book 'Trust Fall'
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(00:00:30) Introduction to the importance of freeing Julian Assange
(00:14:38) The significance of Assange's case for free speech, journalism, and corruption
(00:38:40) The need for public awareness and activism to support Assange
(00:49:21) The involvement of celebrity advocates in the documentary film
(00:54:07) The challenges of getting celebrities on board for projects
(00:54:38) The power of communal film experiences
(00:56:17) The importance of having an appropriate call to action
(00:57:11) Daniel Ellsberg's role in the film and the importance of his story
(01:03:00) The similarities between Daniel Ellsberg's case and Julian Assange's case
(01:09:30) The challenges faced during the making of the film
(01:15:30) The impact of the film and the importance of spreading awareness
(01:17:15) A reading from Kym Staton's book 'Trust Fall'
https://serve.podhome.fm/djvalerieblove
[00:00:30]
Unknown:
If wars can be started with lies, then peace can be started with truth. Julian Assange. If you're somebody who cares about freedom, freedom of the press, the first amendment, if you're somebody who cares about freedom of your financial resources not to be shut off by the government just because you said something that they don't like, you must tune into this show, and you must understand what's going on with Julian Assange and why he must be released now. My guest, Kim Staten, and I, who is the director and writer for The Trust Fall, the Julian Assange documentary, we talk about what's going on with Julian, why is he in solitary confinement, how he's been psychologically tortured, how his family, Stella, Assange, and their children have been intimidated and threatened, and how we can help get a more free world by helping Julian Assange.
Thank you. Hey. Aloha, love tribe. Welcome to Bitcoin for Peace. I have somebody here who has been dedicating the last amount of his life energy towards freeing a man who has been in I consider this a torturous situation for the last 14 years. This is Kim Staten, the director of Trustfall, the Julian Assange documentary, and he's also the founder and director of Films for Change. Welcome, Kim.
[00:01:58] Unknown:
Thank you, Valerie. Great to be here.
[00:02:01] Unknown:
Yeah. It's great to have you. How did you get started along the pathway to help Julian?
[00:02:10] Unknown:
Well, you could trace it back to 2,010. One night, I was at home, one evening watching the nightly news, and I saw, the collateral murder video of WikiLeaks, that WikiLeaks most famous release, pop up on the news. And, it was shocking footage, and, I knew it was something awful, but I didn't really look into it. I didn't understand it. I didn't know what WikiLeaks was. I didn't make the connection with Assange and WikiLeaks. And, you know, little by little by little, I started to take an interest, and I guess around 5, 6 years ago, started watching other people's films and reading books about it, trying to make sense of it all. And once I really went on that path of exploration, I did, just get a a huge interest.
My my interest just grew and grew, and my my partner, Natalia, and I, we we've, been involved with screening other people's documentaries, from from around 10 years for myself, and she came on board a little later. And we've talked about making a documentary, and so the timing just happened to be right. And, I embarked on starting the film or we started on that. And, and, you know, that was just the beginning of the of the understanding, delving deeper and talking to people and and and just learn a very steep learning curve in into this case and the story and the meaning of it all. So it just all evolved out of that.
[00:04:03] Unknown:
And and how long ago did you start this project?
[00:04:07] Unknown:
Nearly 3 years.
[00:04:08] Unknown:
Oh, wow. And so right now, we've obviously got February 20th 21st, Julian's trial case. They're gonna figure out if they're gonna let him go free or extradite him here to the United States, so it seems very timely that this is coming out right now. I feel like we're kind of in an urgent crunch to get the word out so that we can put pressure on the the politicians and the powers that be so that we can get him safe and free. How's it going right now for you, and, like, what initiatives are you seeing on the ground that are supporting this in addition to your film?
[00:04:48] Unknown:
Yeah. That's right. The 20th 21st February coming up, just in less than 2 weeks is the final hearing appeal hearing where the Assange defense is going to find out whether the UK courts are gonna allow another appeal against the extradition. So it's a 2 day public hearing at the high court in London, and there'll be a immediate decision on the second day of whether that hearing is allowed. It's a very precarious situation for for Julian because if they deny that appeal, he could be immediately extradited literally same day, put on a plane to the US.
However, if they allow the appeal, it may be, another 6 months of court hearings. So it it, but in a way that's kind of the right now, unless there's some miracle for his freedom, then that's sort of the best outcome is that his extradition to the US will be delayed. As far as activism, it's it's it's a huge, uprising going on. There's a protest around the world happening on those days, not just in London. I think they're up to about 40 cities now that are gonna be having a rally or a protest, which is called day x. We're getting over yeah. That's DayX because they, up until recently, they didn't know what day the those hearings would be. So that's why they call it day x.
So we'll be heading to London next week. We're having the London premiere of the trust fall on the 18th February at Rio Cinemas. And then we'll be staying in London for a little while to to, take part in those protests and, and and also do media and probably various screenings of of the film after the, premiere.
[00:06:56] Unknown:
Where can people find out about the like, I I've seen Stella posting day x on Twitter. Like, is there a website that people can go and find out how to participate if they wish to?
[00:07:08] Unknown:
Yeah. The if people go to Stella's Stella's site, I can't remember the the platform, but, if you just Google Stella Assange, you should be able to find it. She's I think it's called substack particular, website that she uses, and and it's all it's all basically linked there, to find out where all the locations are and if there's something happening in your city or if if you can organize something yourself.
[00:07:38] Unknown:
You know, it's so funny. I'm going here right now. Every time I've been trying to tag her in my Twitter, I she her name won't even pull up, and I just typed in LinkedIn bio, Stella Assange, and it said there's, like, multiple web threats. Don't go here. So I'm feeling I'm wondering if there's some kind of coordinated back end attack, going, this not let us get out there. Like, that's crazy right now.
[00:08:09] Unknown:
You know, the his opponents love doing that that that's I mean, countries all over the world trying to bring down the WikiLeaks website routinely and, and and, you know, whatever they can do to to stop the word getting out, and the WikiLeaks Facebook page is heavily suppressed and certain keywords, you know, like like, if I do update Kristen Raffinson in it, who is, the the current editor in chief of WikiLeaks, then then that post will be basically, you know, downgraded. Like, it it it it won't get deleted, but it will will get, like, about 5% of the usual reach of any post that we do. So they're doing this shadow banning thing and, you know, any other kind of subtle tactics that they can to reduce the reach. Like, as Elon Musk says, you know, free re free speech, but not free reach, which is just censorship.
[00:09:00] Unknown:
You know? It's total censorship. Yeah. I've been put obviously, reposting a lot of your, your tweets and things lately, and I just had a thing 2 days ago where it was like, oh, we've tagged your account for suspicious activity and la la la. And, of course, I'm like, what suspicious activity? I haven't done anything. You know? And so I just feel like there's constantly things in the background that people who are watching, you know, when I talked to them about, you know, this opportunity to interview you and share your story, people are like, oh, who cares? It's just Julian. It's it's like, you don't understand the magnitude of what this means, and I'm still learning as I keep, you know, as I got to watch your documentary, and I've watched a lot of stuff about, Julian and Edward Snowden and everything in the last several years since I became a Bitcoiner, why is it such a monumental case for free speech, for journalism, for truth, for corruption? Why do people who aren't in this space, why must they know about this story?
[00:10:02] Unknown:
Yeah. What what people need to do is look past this narrative and this certain image that's been painted of Julian Assange that the US interests and powers have, done a terrific job of painting him as a as some sort of treacherous traitor, villain, basically. And, you know, we've been people have been manipulated by that. So there's all this negativity around it and smear. He's been smeared, incredibly for years. But that's what partly what we're part of what we're aiming to do in the film is to show the real Julian Assange, expose his, his, I mean, share his achievements and, his genius and his bravery, and, and and look at it with a fresh perspective.
And it's not that difficult as soon as you I mean, even if you just watch it one single interview with him, just people just take 5 minutes, go on YouTube and search, join us on the interview. Just watch for 5 minutes. You find that this is a gentle intellectual that cares about world peace. And, and there's there's these smears that just keep going and going. And you just have to question how lazy people are to just regurgitate other people's ideas and just carry this stuff on. We see it in the comments of of any social posts that we do. Intellectually lazy people will just copy what somebody else says without doing 5 minutes of research.
It's incredible, how lazy some people are. You know, let let me just debunk one of them. You know, we see it, like, every day somebody says Julian Assange is a rapist. Excuse me. He was never even charged. How dare you? You know, there's a thing in democracy called innocent until proven guilty. Mhmm. It was an accusation. That's what it was. And what it stemmed from was 2 women who went to Stockholm, police station, in Sweden and asked the police to help them, have Assange go get an STI test because he'd slept. They they willingly slept with him, on on his trip Sweden. He's a single man, and, you know, doing what many single people do.
That's what they went to the police station for. And then by some subterfuge, some interesting thing that went on there, within 24 hours, it was all over the headlines, literally 24 hours, and this is meant to be a confidential police interview. It's out on all the major news. So there's a whole story there that, you know, someone needs to cover in a in a in a, like, in a documentary. Like, we've we just touch on it briefly in the film because it it just needs to be quickly debunked. There was never any charge and the case has been dropped. So people that wanna make that claim, it's, it's absolutely disgusting. I mean, it's, it's defamation.
You know, anyone that says that they should just be sued if he was out. He wasn't in prison, locked up in a maximum security prison, solitary confinement, 22 hours a day, he could just sue everybody that says that. It it's it's just an awful thing to to claim about somebody, and that's what, you know, that's what the CIA knew, that if they wanna bring down somebody's, reputation and undermine their work, then you just use one of these extreme smears. So this is covered quite comprehensively in the film. Anyway, back to your question, what why is this important?
Because Assange and WikiLeaks were the 1st organization to take on the mainstream narrative and say, no. We want the truth on the news. We don't want propaganda, lies. We don't want wars that start from lies. He's one of his famous quotes is wars are a result of lies. Yeah. If if,
[00:14:35] Unknown:
if wars can be started by lies, peace can be started by truth. That's the very first quote I have right here in my show notes, and I that's the most important thing, I think, for us to understand. I mean, we have a 247 war machine, and it's it's unacceptable. And, obviously, the war machine wants to keep getting its oxygen and money and power. And when the truth gets out, the war machine starts to wither and die, and it doesn't ever want to do that. So it will protect itself at all costs, including torturing somebody. Like, you know, when I was shocked.
I didn't understand that Julian has been in isolation in a maximum security prison for so long. Why is why is a journalist who's a peaceful person, he hasn't killed anybody, why is a journalist in this situation? Why is he in isolation?
[00:15:33] Unknown:
Yeah. Well, they've come after him ever since the major releases of 2010. So what, what happened was Assange, was a student at the University of Melbourne in Australia studying maths and science. Extremely bright, outstanding in in in, at that time. And, he came up with this idea and innovation to speed up the dissemination of truth into the world. And it was to protect whistleblowers so that if somebody came across, crimes that they wanted to report within their own organization, they could anonymously report it to a media outlet without fear of reprisal.
So that was the innovation. Brilliant idea, Very scary to powerful people that just want to continue to do their crimes, as you say. They, sell arms, put you know, instigate wars for profit just to sell weapons, and and other kinds of corruption, environmental corruption, and so on. Anyway, that was the innovation that that he created. And then in a very short time from 2006 to 2010, just 4 years, WikiLeaks rose to global prominence. But within a couple of years, 2008, the the US government was already looking at ways to destroy WikiLeaks to bring them down.
They already had strategies in place. They had a task force of a 100 staff on the job of that. It was such a big threat to their to their ability to just do whatever they want. So then in in 2010, that was when the big releases came out, the Afghan war logs, Iraq war logs, collateral murder video, and the diplomatic cables. And then from there, the aggression of the US, just, exploded. It it it became really intense. That's when the smear campaign started. That's when he was, debanked. It was the first time that you had this, unified thing of, Mastercard, Visa, PayPal shutting off donations, his own personal bank account closed.
They had this whole strategy in many different ways to, to destroy WikiLeaks and to destroy Julian's character. And, that that strategy is is another thing that we, document in the film. The plan was to drag him from country to country for 25 years, wipe him out financially through dozens of court cases, which is part of what they're doing now. And ultimately, get him over to the US, put him on trial, throw him in a prison, torture him, get all the information, and hopefully, he just gets murdered or dies from the psychological and physical torture. That's what they wanted to do, and that's what they're in the process of doing.
They're 13 years into the slow motion execution of a journalist, and people are still misled by these smears and, oh, he helped, he stopped Clinton getting into, power. Well, she can do that by herself. She's well capable of not getting into power because she doesn't belong in power.
[00:19:03] Unknown:
Yeah.
[00:19:04] Unknown:
You know, let's not go there. But look, you know, that's what they're in the process of slowly murdering a journalist behind closed doors because in this day and age, we don't in the west, it's not acceptable to take a printer journalist publisher out into the town square and hang them. At least society doesn't accept that. So they have this secretive sneaky way of of of rubbing out a journalist a threat is just for them to slowly rot away in prison.
[00:19:37] Unknown:
Yeah. It it's so insidious, and I think folks who are watching and listening who don't understand what's going on, I really want you guys to see this film so that you can get a little bit more background. Because I've seen some stuff and just I didn't really get the whole the torture, like, the psychological torture that's going on with this man and all the implications, what individually, with his family, you know, and in the film, one of your your guests, you know, it's a series of tortures a series of conditions that seek to break a person's will. And it he was saying that, you know, psychological torture is not torture light.
It doesn't mean that just because you're not getting waterboarded doesn't mean you're having the same types of scars and negative repercussions, you know, that will come out physically in addition to mentally. This it's it's so disturbing to see that we still operate this way in our world. You know? And, obviously, Julian is a martyr at this point, you know, and I hope he never has to die to be a true martyr because this is I think we can fix this. I hope, like, who other than the United States, I mean, why is the why is the UK, like, thinking, like, why won't they just admit, like, yeah. Let's get rid of this this bullshit. And are are we just living in a world where the CIA and our United States government and military and God knows who's operating the the strings just has so much reach that we can't ever win.
Like, can we ever get over this corruption hump?
[00:21:18] Unknown:
Yeah, absolutely. We can. All it takes is for people to wake up, to do a little bit of research every day, even if it's 10 minutes from an alternative news source. Don't just get home, turn on the TV like I was doing 15 years ago. You know? Look for alternative media sources. Look for another side of the story. Look for the truth. Take a little bit of time for that. It's difficult, you know, because the system puts us into a 40 hour a week job. Inflation keeps going up. Interest rates keep going up. So what what we're stuck in is that we just do our 9 to 5 jobs and go home exhausted, and all you wanna do is, grab a glass of wine and watch something on Netflix and go to bed. And so that's that's it all sort of comes from that. That's that's what I feel is, you know, partly we're stuck in a system of basically, wage slavery, like, you know, but, look, we we choose that too. We choose we choose how much daily expenses we have, how big our house is, how nice our car is.
But if we if we simplify our life so that we don't have to work to the point of exhaustion, we get a little bit of spare time that we can learn things. We can look at what's going on in the world. And if we do that, we find that there's a lot of work to be done. There's a lot to do. There's a lot of education needed. There's activism needed. There's things that we gotta fix in the world, and then we feel motivated to do something even if it's just a small thing towards that. You know? Before this film, and I, we, did a campaign against single use plastic for 2 years in Sydney, and they changed the laws. We showed films about plastic to, around a 100000 people.
I mean, sorry, 10,000 people in a live event setting. So we had a 100 events, that were free entry, and then we showed it to the trailer, 3 minutes of scenes of, plastic in the in the stomachs of birds and turtles to 2,000,000 Sydney people. And they changed the laws because that's public awareness. Not it's not just governments that can do public awareness campaigns, but people can do it too. And it doesn't really take that much. So, you know, we've campaigned for plastic single use plastic for, awareness around animal treatment, aboriginal, rights in Australia and various other issues.
And now we're doing free speech world peace and Julian Assange. And and look, I I I've I've, you know, my my motivation is always that I wanna just make a difference in the world, some some kind of small difference. I'm not interested in, being wealthy and having a nice house and a nice car and fancy holidays. Like, what gets me out of bed every day is, educating people and and just doing something meaningful. So I I'm I'm very, privileged gifted in in in the in the way that people have supported this film. We've had 2,000 people contribute to our crowdfunding campaign, 9 investors to make the film possible.
And it's allowed me to work full time on it for most of the last 3 years. So I I have an opportunity to be an advocate and an educator full time and, not have to do a job that, isn't isn't, you know, making, isn't in line with my passion. So but, you know, I also made that happen. I I I I put in the hard yards. I slept in the back of my car, couch surfed, and whatever else I had to do, to to sort of build up a career in education and awareness and and in this case, filmmaking now. It it just took a lot of perseverance and with that, but also, people around the world are embracing that because if they're not in a position to make a difference, they're clever enough to realize, well, let's support someone that is in the position.
This film, it's not a low budget documentary. It started out that way. It was actually I was just gonna do it at no cost, a YouTube documentary. Gonna spend a few months on it. But we realized pretty quickly that there's a big community of supporters for Assange around the world, like, probably millions of people. Mhmm. And, few months, we realized that, yeah, this could be we could build this up into a cinema worthy film, but to do that, it costs 100 of 1,000 of dollars. It's a very expensive protest, process because, for example, one image you wanna license for worldwide all medium perpetuity for a documentary.
One image can cost $1,000, and it's up on the screen for 3 seconds. And this is a 2 hour 2 hour film. There's, like, at the beginning of in the trailer, like, for example, watch the trailer, you'll see, some little bites of, like, Joe Biden on, I think it's Fox News and and a few other opponents, Hillary Clinton saying nasty psychopathic stuff. You know, this stuff, yeah, it's like a fee a collection of little 2 second bits, and each of those 2 second bits cost $1,000 to license. So, and then the editing, the post production is the biggest expense because you're talking 800 hours for a film like this, 800 hours, of paying a professional editor because I'm not a professional full time editor. I don't know all the, all the tricks of, stitching together a film. So, yeah, very expensive process, but thankfully, very grateful that we we got there in the end. And now the film is out in cinemas.
It's it's incredibly exciting time, to to see all these screenings happening, to see cinemas, mainstream cinemas, independent cinemas all around Australia and New Zealand where we've, just released the film, showing the film, and then to go to some of the screenings and see the response and talk to people and, you know, see cinemas with 100 of people, people flocking to, look into this sometimes for the first time. It's really rewarding at at this stage, after all the hard work, it's really, most of that 3 year process has just been, really, tiring, challenging, exhausting.
But now, I suppose in a way, it's, the point of where we, we get to have a little bit of enjoyment of of sharing it with people.
[00:28:14] Unknown:
And and with that, like, how can people get this in their own theaters? Can people access this to have a home movie watching party? Can are you gonna start doing some things online given the the, the hearing that's coming up on 20th 21st so that we can get more awareness and more people showing up to these protests?
[00:28:35] Unknown:
Yeah. Well, because of the fact that, as I said, we had investors covered 1 third of the total cost of the film, we we can't just put the film out for free, unfortunately. That's just the predicament, because I have, you know, that responsibility of of paying that back. However, it the film was shown and is being shown, in on a on a channel called RT. It's a satellite, subscription channel. And it's already reached millions and millions of people in, middle east, Africa, and India. So the film, it's already been a success awareness wise with its reach, into the millions. We would estimate around, 17,000,000 people have seen it that way Wow. Over the last months.
And then now, it's in cinemas. It's having a proper theatrical release, which is, a rare thing for a documentary. We thought it was possible. And, in early December last year, we started pitching it to cinemas in Australia and New Zealand. I had no idea what the uptake would be. Would maybe just a few cinemas would show it, but, we've got about 30 cinemas showing it right now and another 40 or so, about to make you know, in the process of making booking. And then we have event cinemas, which is the the largest cinema chain in Australia in Australasia, is is about to show it from the 5th March onwards.
So it it could potentially reach, if things go to plan, we could reach quite easily a 100000 people in Australia could see it in a cinema, maybe more. And, you know, in a cinema, this is the most powerful experience you can have because it's big screen. Mhmm. Big sound live audience, audience reactions, and also people are focused. And, you know, the thing about watching at home is you tend to get distracted. You check your phone. Sure. Yeah. You make a meal. And people end up watching it in little dribs and drabs, and that's not not ideal. But, you know, the main thing is in a cinema setting, it's the most powerful experience that people can have. So that's how, our strategy is to start with cinema.
So we'll be releasing in the UK very soon, probably as early as, last week of Feb. And then, probably Europe after that, and then, the US and and then many other countries. I think I think we were looking at the response of the film, the the way that cinemas have embraced it, and the way that, it's it's getting a lot of buzz and a lot of word-of-mouth because it's a shocking emotive film that really touches people. I think it will potentially be shown in cinemas in pretty much every country of the world, over over a period of time. And then, once we finish that, we'll put it out on streaming platforms, pay per view and and so on. So, you know, it's it's already had yeah. It's already been seen by millions of people. And, and now we're focused on, not as much the the reach, but the the very powerful experience that you have in a cinema, you know, quality over quantity, that way. And, and it's it's really building up and growing. So, you know, cinema is actually the the major chain cinemas have the ability to put it out to many, many people very, very quickly.
If it if a major chain in the US takes up the film, you know, it could be seen by a 1000000 people on the opening night. So, on online digital streaming is not the only way to get, a lot of reach really quickly.
[00:32:20] Unknown:
But given the time sensitivity that we're dealing with, if, like you said, if they decide they want to extradite him, he could be extradited the next day, which could lead to god knows what if he gets here to the United States, you know, for his safety and his life and well-being. Is there an opportunity for the next you know, it's not even 2 weeks away, to just push it somehow and, you know, obviously, get your funders their money back, and you can do a livestream for donation or something just to get the awareness out? Because I don't see this in my theaters around here, and I wouldn't I don't even know how to approach a theater to get it to play in my, you know, my little town. You know? And so in the interest of saving this man's life, can we figure out a way to get it out quicker or faster between now and this hearing.
[00:33:11] Unknown:
Yeah. Well, then if we did that, then we would just basically ruin the the opportunity of showing it in cinemas, which means that everyone's watching it on a tiny screen at home with all the distractions. So it's not that's not our strategy. Certainly, there's a urgency with educating people, but this film is not the the only way that people can be educated. And so we don't, you know, we don't feel like we're responsible for solving this and and getting Julian Assange free just solely through this one piece. There's there's many documentaries people can watch online, that are excellent, you know, and and they're out there for free. For example, Juan Pasarelli's war on journalism is freely available on YouTube and various Assange documentaries are available, but people don't watch them because there's no publicity.
How do you get publicity? Well, you get the cinemas to to show it, to to to actually participate in the advertising. How do we get it into the cinemas? People can suggest it to their cinema. It's very simple. Like, there's actually a page on our website. How how to suggest it to your cinema, and it's, just as simple as send them an email, recommend the trustful, you know, message them on Facebook. The cinemas really take notice of of, suggestions from locals. That's what we're finding. So, yeah, that's our strategy. And when it does go out in America, it will be in cinemas, and people will have the most rich powerful experience that they that they can.
In my view, you know, as much as we we we feel like, oh, let's, let's do whatever we can right now to get Assange free. But in reality, we're not. We're doing other things with our day. We're doing a little bit little bits where we can. And, you know, it's it's not, you know, just because, a bunch of people, you know, post on Twitter, free Assange, that doesn't mean he's gonna get free. It it's gonna take a lot more. We're dealing with the most powerful empire that's ever existed. This is a this is a US government has been at war for 235 out of its 247 years of existence.
It's a war country, and those interests are incredibly powerful. So, unfortunately, it's not just as simple as, hey, everyone on Twitter. Let's all post about Assange today, and maybe he'll get free. It's it's just it's not gonna solve that quickly, even if Assange is trending on Twitter every day because people are not willing to look into it. There's not enough awareness, not enough public outcry. So what we have to do is get, you know, increase the scale of this movement. We need to build more awareness from, each individual, you know, from the ground up.
How did, you know, the the the Egyptian uprising, how did they get rid of the government in in Egypt in 2011? Because a million people, surrounded the parliament house. And so the government just ran for their lives. I I'm not advocating that we, you know, storm the parliament, storm storm the government. But I'm just saying you need numbers. And so when you have, unfortunately, you know, if you have 200 people at parliament house Canberra with Assange signs, that's not gonna get him free. If you have, a 173 people in some place in New York handing out flyers, like, this is all important. It's grassroots. It's gonna build up.
But at the core of it, it's education. It's awareness. And that's why we made this film because people need a really powerful experience. They need to sit down for a couple of hours and really take it in. Not just not just see a catchphrase on Twitter. Free Assange, you know, no extradition. Like, what what is that about? As you said at the beginning of the interview, you know, they don't people don't know, and they haven't taken the time to look into it. So, the idea of this film is that, hopefully, with the involvement of, you know, celebrity narrators, Tom Morello, Susan Sarandon, Roger Waters, MIA, you know, fans of those people will go, oh, maybe I should look into this Assange story.
Fans of John Pildraw or Daniel Ellsberg or Stella Assange might see, oh, that those people are in this documentary. I'm interested in what this story is. And so we're trying to make it interesting enough, enticing enough that people will spend that time to actually explore it and understand it. Because when they do that, maybe they'll do something significant, to actually, make a difference to the campaign. So in in my view, it needs to, build up. It might take 6 months, a year, 3 years to really get to critical mass where you have enough public pressure that it becomes a political, issue. It becomes a campaign, sticking point where, you know, the next US election, the next Australian election, it becomes a main point of concern for is, you know, does my prospective leader support the freedom of Assange?
It's gonna take a lot of public awareness for that. So, we're not gonna solve this by, by next Thursday, in my view, You know? And that's otherwise, we wouldn't have made the film if we thought that it was so easy to solve.
[00:38:49] Unknown:
Clearly, yeah. It's not I agree. It's not an easy to solve. It's not a just make one call to your rep. It's not just go to one viewing or one protest. It's clearly a huge issue that this Kraken machine doesn't want, to be solved. You know? And so it's gonna take a lot, a multi, a multi tiered approach, you know, to get this. And and, you know, this is just one thing. I think Stella had posted this about calling our US reps for congress. There's, house resolution 934 expressing just for those of you listening that aren't watching the screen, expressing the sense of house rep of reps that regular journalistic activities are protected under the first amendment and that the United States ought to drop all charges against an attempt to extradite Julian Assange.
And so you guys I'll put this in the show notes and everything, but you guys can go call your reps, and who knows if they'll listen or not depending on what state you're in and who was the cosponsor of the bill. All these little things hopefully can add up, but
[00:39:55] Unknown:
I mean, clearly, like like, I don't wanna give the impression that I'd that that I don't think these things are worthwhile. Rallies, protests, flyers, petitions, letters to your parliament. All of that is important, but this is a marathon, not a sprint. It's been going on for 13 years. We're not gonna solve it in 2 weeks, unfortunately. You know, but at the same time, I always hope for a miracle. I get up every day. First thing I do is check the news. You know, I Google Assange news, and I'm hoping that there's some good news. And sometimes you see good signs, and then we get our hopes up. Like, for example, when Anthony Albanese, the labor government, got in, into power about year and a half ago, Albanese, the the current prime minister of Australia, was quoted as saying in a backroom meeting, enough is enough, you know, in regards to Assad. Like, he doesn't see the point of continuing this, which is a pretty weak statement. Right? And it took 6 months for him to finally, in parliament, say, yes. I've said enough is enough.
And, you know, sort of may indicate that he's going to make some representations for Assange. But he's the 1st Australian prime minister to basically not be against Assange, to be sort of neutral or sort of playing each side. And, you know, he does have the the nickname each way elbow. So he's a very talented, politician. Anyway, another 6 months passed and all the Assange supporters got very optimistic. Oh, this is it. He's gonna he's gonna free Assange. But 6 months later, some journalists or lawyers, went through some FOI requests through the government to to see what sort of documents have been exchanged between the US and Australia, and there was basically nothing.
And so then the government said, yes, we've been doing quiet diplomacy, you know, which is ridiculous for bureaucrats because they love paperwork. And then, you know, a few months later after that, which is just coming up to current times recently, he said, you know, I've done my best, but, Joe Biden can't get involved with legal cases that are in the courts, which is complete lie because they do it every day. They get involved with the legal cases. And so this has been a merry dance, of Anthony Albanese to try to pacify those Assange supporters. And what I've seen a lot of Assange supporters do is just stop stop doing any activism because they think, oh, yeah. Should be alright. You know, it's gonna sort itself out.
But no, you know, we need to keep going constantly. And if you're a busy person, you you you can't put a lot of time in, you know, doing these little 5 minute things, a Twitter post, sign a petition, and once a month, go to a rally or once a year even. All of that adds up, but my point is, awareness needs to grow astronomically. You need to next protest you know, in in 6 months' time, we need to have a protest in all the major cities where you have a 100,000 or a 1000000 people come out, and then it becomes undeniable for these, leaders and authorities to to actually if they wanna stay in power to to do the right thing and and free this this heroic journalist.
They're not gonna do that if everyone's asleep and uneducated.
[00:43:23] Unknown:
Yeah. Exactly. Well, it's interesting because, you know, here we've got our elections coming up in in November, and all we see is the Democrats and Republicans and Biden and Trump and, you know, that's it. You know, Robert f Kennedy junior said he would pardon Assange on day 1, and I've not seen even one line that he's even running in Fox or CNN or any of these mainstream media news outlets. The only way that I know that this man is running for president from any media is through Twitter or through Instagram, on his posts. And so I find it to be reprehensible and disgusting, you know, that we're just I mean, obviously, these big mainstream medias are just puppets for propaganda, for the chemical companies, for the banks, for the government.
They have no journalistic integrity at all. It's 0, and so I don't understand why more people aren't in outrage. They're just sleeping. People are asleep at the wheel. You know? And, you know, you had mentioned earlier just about the way that the the money system is. Right? And we have inflation that everybody's dealing with, and this is why I became a Bitcoiner 3 years ago because I learned about, oh, this 40% money print during COVID. And I'm like, well, that sounds like that means my purchasing power is less. And so, that sounds like theft. I need to go deeper into learning about what is money, what is fiat. And I thought I knew because I was a, a business person, and I went to business school and worked at Deloitte and Touche and all these things. Right? And so I thought, I know, and then I realized, holy shit, I don't know anything.
What else don't I know? And it really, really every time you, you know, cover some truth on a rock, you're like, woah. There's more rocks over here to keep on, you know, turning. And I always you know, I've been saying, like, the powers that be want you numb, dumb, sick, scared, broke, hungry, angry, lonely, tired, and horny so they can control you and manipulate you so that they can keep extracting your life energy from you in the form of taxes and inflation. And so, when I woke up to that truth, you know, because I'm a hippie. I'm like, yay, let's go take some acid and save the world and go play some music and everything's gonna be great and let's meditate and kumbaya. But once I really, really understood that this broken monetary system, no matter how much you have that, that's why obviously, you know, the the hippie movement in the sixties, if we would have Bitcoin back then or any kind of sound money, what could have happened?
You know? But because we were in this broken system still of lies and greed and corruption and manipulation and then going off the gold standard in 71, it's just like, oh, wow. There's a lot more things that we all need to know, and people who are artists, creators, documentarians, musicians, healers, activists. A lot of us have been just like, no. No. It's just a consciousness shift. We've just gotta, you know, love everybody. And it's like, yes, and you have to have this base layer of sound money that's not confiscatable.
You can't shut it down because you spoke out against the government and, you know, unbank you at the press of a button with these powers that be. That's what happened with the the Canadian truckers a lot, and that got under my skin too because I was like, these people are just peacefully protesting, and now you're shutting their bank accounts down. You're shutting people who donated to them down, not even people who were at the protest, but if you donated $50 to the truckers, your bank accounts got shut down in Canada. And I was like, what?
That's crazy. Are you sure? You know? And that just kept giving me more fuel to keep learning, like, what is the alternative solution, a solution. Obviously, we still need a consciousness shift, and we need people to use their voices and stand up for truth and dig deeper for truth every single day of their life and not just accept what's been spoon fed to them. But having this sound money is so, so important because it gives you at least another layer of protection so that you can go move about on a parallel system, you know, from the evil system, you know, and get this work done in a way that hopefully will reveal truth so that we can have a more peaceful and harmonious planet for everybody. We don't have to live this way. It's not required that we live in a warmongering world.
We have abundance, we have prosperity, we have love, we have connection, and I would venture a bet that 99.9% of us want to see that happen. You know, I believe in the human spirit and love, and I believe that's what Julian believes, and I believe that's what you believe. You know? And and it's like how we cannot keep letting these tiny, tiny percentile of humans destroy the planet and destroy the humans and the life on the planet. And so it is scary speaking truth to power, and they are using Julian's story as an intimidation tactic for anyone else who comes along, just like they did with Ross Albright. Like, hey, you're gonna go to jail for life in solitary because you made a website, you know, and it's unacceptable. And so we have to keep using our beautiful voices if we're lucky enough to have the ability to do so in these countries that so far we get to use our voices. But, like I said, I think, you know, I noticed my accounts when I started reposting a lot of this stuff recently, I'm getting tagged and flagged and not enough, you know, this not that I'm some huge account, but I'm noticing I'm getting throttled, you know, and I know and I'm small and it gets easy to just go, okay, small voices, we're gonna smoosh you, you know, and and that's what they're doing.
Tell me about I mean, you've got some big names here, you know, Roger Waters, MIA, Susan Sarandon, Tom Morello. Fuck. I won't do what she told me. Let's go. Right? And so how are they treating this experience, you know, by being a part of it? Are they really pushing this forward right now, and do they understand, like, it's time to put the pedal to the metal in the next, you know, 6 months?
[00:49:40] Unknown:
Yeah. These are, you know, particularly, Roger, Susan Roger and Mia have been, advocates for Sanj much longer than me. And and Cool. You know, and as I say, like a marathon, not a sprint. And Roger, it's incredible how much advocacy he's done. Every single concert that he does, he puts up the collateral murder video footage. I think he, has a song about WikiLeaks, and he he gives statements and, you know, he he gave a speech at the the the really the biggest sort of London protest at the beginning of the extradition trial. MIA is, I understand, is is the boys, Julian and Stella's 2 boys, their godmother.
She's worked with Anj while he was in the embassy. She was writing music for his TV show because he was hosting a TV show called the world tomorrow at the time, and she wrote a jingle for that. And so these these 2 have been very much a part of the movement for a long time, and they and they will fit in work wherever they can and get involved. And, hence, the participation voluntarily, in the film. It was fantastic to have them in the film because it does potentially expand our reach and our results and our ability to encourage, to entice people, to get curious enough to to spend the 2 hours to watch the film.
Susan Sarandon is very new to the campaign. It was only, I think, 6 months ago that she first publicly spoke out for Assange, and it takes so much bravery to do it because basically she's really restricting her career by siding with someone that, you know, Hollywood is obviously very establishment. And, I I know from, communicating with a lot of, actors and part of this project is that they're they support Julian, but they don't wanna do it publicly because they don't wanna ruin their career. But Serendon, I guess, just decided it's more important to support what she believes in than to, you know, win more awards and and get more movie roles.
So it's fantastic. And then Tom Morello has been very active in all kinds of activism for for years. And, you know, so, there was a few other celebrities that we wanted to have involved, but but who didn't want to. And and as I say, we're scared to. But having these four brave enough to lend their voice, to put their name on the poster, and then, you know, and just and just take that risk and be outspoken and, you know, be on the right side of history, is an incredible thing. And I think, hope we're hoping MIA will come to the London premiere next week. And and, Roger wasn't in London at the time, but he said he'll, catch the film soon when, you know, if it it should continue in London for quite some time.
And, when we get to the US, we're really looking forward to having Susan's and Tom's help with connections and getting it out there, because if if we can get it onto a major cinema chain in the US from from the get go, as I say, it would reach, you know, a 1000000 people really quick and then and then even many, many more straight away. And with that very powerful, rich experience of of of that only a cinema can can give.
[00:53:18] Unknown:
What about, like, doing concerts? Can we get the film shown at, like, a concert venue and with the artists? I mean, obviously, MIA and Roger Waters and Tom Morello are all musicians.
[00:53:32] Unknown:
I think this Tuesday night in Adelaide, we're probably gonna get around 5, 6, maybe 700 people coming. It'll be our biggest event. Maybe maybe there'll be some screenings in the US that that could be, bigger, a bigger crowd, and and, you know, certainly, Roger Waters would have the ability to sort of instigate that. But, you know, we can also achieve a lot of reach just by showing it in, you know, hundreds of cinemas every night for 10 weeks or something, you know, before it goes to digital. So, yeah, there's lots of lots of things we could do. But, look, you know, these celebrities, really famous people, then they're very busy too, and they always they've their their inboxes are just next level. Like, it's they must they must open the inbox, and it just it just, blows up every day. So, you'll you know, it's hard it's hard to even get them on board for for one project, let alone some sort of ongoing thing. But at the same time, you know, I think I know that Susan's watching the film today for the first time.
[00:54:45] Unknown:
Really? Oh, cool.
[00:54:47] Unknown:
That's exciting. And and Roger, I don't think has seen it yet. So, and I don't think the others have either. And and I you know, again, I would I prefer they watch it in a cinema with the audience response because that's another beautiful thing is, this film, some some it's got some x factor, some unique power where the audience applause is during the film, like, around 6 or 7 times. And I've never seen that in a documentary. You're lucky to get a clap at the end, but this is like midway and all these, comments and reactions. And and, that makes it a communal, very powerful experience.
[00:55:23] Unknown:
It really is. And the energy of it. And I obviously thank you for sharing it with me. I got to watch it. And I had to pause it several times because I was crying a lot, and I was pissed off. And and I felt alone, and I'm home alone watching it. I'm like, you know? There's something to be said when there is a resonance in an audience, whether, again, as a DJ and somebody who plays music and we're all vibing together when you're in a film. Whatever it is, when there is something that you're all getting to experience, whether it's euphoric, whether it's outrage, whether it's sadness, whether it's compassion, it amplifies that emotion, I think. And then it leaves a larger I guess, I call it like a tattoo on your soul. You know? And so you do, I think, have that memory, and then I think it causes people to take more action. And so then having an appropriate call to action at the end, you know, is just so important. Right? It's not just like I I remember when I saw, what was it, inconvenient truth, I think, and I just didn't at the end, I was like, well, what the fuck are we supposed to do now? Like, everything's gonna blow up. I didn't feel empowered. I felt disempowered and depressed, and I was like, okay.
You know? And so when you have when you've taken an audience member, a listener, a user on that journey, that emotional, experience, have the you know, taking care of them after and going, this is what now we have action. Now we're empowered. You have information, and now we have action. And so, in your film, Julian was saying that people ask him, what can I do? And then he says the answer is not so difficult. Number 1, learn how the world works. Number 2, challenge the statements and intentions of those who seek to control us beyond the facade of democracy and monarchy. And then the third is to unite in common purpose and common principle to design, build, document, finance, and defend the truth. And so having the action afterwards, I think, is is is critical.
You know? And so that's what you're doing, and I think it's great. You know, again, these multi tiers, multi prongs that we can address this problem because it's not gonna go away. You know? And and they're still gonna even if this happens and we can get Julian free or something less, it's like, are what are they gonna keep trying to do so that they can keep their secrets secret? You know? And so we have to keep demanding transparency. We have have to keep demanding truth and fairness, and not allow people to bully truth tellers, you know, and and intimidate them with violence and financial violence, which is what they did, obviously.
I mean, and that's my thesis is Bitcoin is a tool for peace, and it it allows you to be able to go do these other things in the world with at least having some financial sovereignty. And obviously, as you're sharing, you need to have finances to get messages out there in a broad, scalable way. And so if they shut that down, we're screwed. You know? So we have to have financial sovereignty. We have to have freedom of speech. Otherwise, we have no freedom, period. You know? What have you seen, Who have you seen in your path recently that has been an Who was just kind of like, oh, I don't. Who cares? I'm discounting Julian. It's just this. And, you know, and they're believing the rapist nonsense.
And then all of a sudden, they're, like, on board, and they're like, woah. I gotta change my direction now and go do something.
[00:59:12] Unknown:
Yeah. We've been to a bunch of there's, I guess, there's been around 50 or so cinema screenings so far. We've been to quite a few of them, a handful of them, and, chatted to the audience. And, the interesting thing is when when somebody brings along a friend that's sort of a bit reluctant and they think they know what it's all about. And they may be very conventional sort of, you know, closed off person that just basically follows the mainstream in every way. And then to see a film like this, it's it's very impactful, and and it really challenges all their beliefs about the whole system. And and I think, it's I think the the footage that we present, the collateral murder footage and plus the never seen before interviews with some of the victims of that incident, it's undeniable, and and it gives people a different sense of the, significance of that incident, as the basis for the persecution of Assange.
And I and I think, you know, even though the film has some emotive, elements, you know, devices used to to stimulate emotion, is extremely factual. It's it's, now all the people we interviewed, these are not people that throw around rumors or or just kind of hypothesize on things and, make up whatever they wanna say. They it's all very factual. And we we did, you know, very intense research. It's all based on fact. And, you know, that that from from the conclusion of, the 3 doctors that went to visit Julian in Belmarsh prison and concluded onto the Istanbul protocol that he's a victim of psychological torture through to, you know, the the thorough sort of legal, process of of looking at, the, you know, Swedish documents between Sweden and the UK based on that that Swedish incident that showed more than 40 violations of due process and, destroying of evidence and, and then the the star witness, against Assange in the extradition hearing has admitted that he lied on radio in his testimony.
You know, we we don't, go into supposition and rumors. It's all based on fact, and I think it's very convincing. And when people, take the time to watch the film, whether they have no knowledge at all of the topic or they very typically have preconceived ideas, it's all blown away. It's all debunked, and they can actually have a factual, real, truthful view on what all of this means.
[01:02:11] Unknown:
Yeah. And and so and I know we've only got a few minutes left, so I wanna respect your time and really appreciate you taking time to talk about this and obviously all the thousands of hours you've put into this project. You know, you've you have Daniel Ellsberg in your film quite a bit, and I'm still learning about this. Again, I'm new to this. So and one of, his son, is somebody who's a Bitcoiner and who we've been you know, we worked on, Satoshi, the cyber opera a little bit, and he was helping us with some copy and writing. He's a wonderful, wonderful man. And so as I'm learning about this, can you help people understand, like, what like, why Daniel Ellsberg was so important in this and, like, getting the mistrial and everything helped you. I'll let you explain more than me.
[01:03:00] Unknown:
Sure. Yeah. We we chose to have a whole chapter in the film of Daniel Ellsberg story. The chapter is called the Pentagon Papers because Ellsberg was the first American citizen to be charged under the antiquated 1917 espionage act, which is the same act that is being used to indict Julian Assange on 18 counts. So Assange on the other hand is the first journalist which sets an extremely scary precedent in regards to press freedom and the decline of press freedom. So in late sixties, Daniel Ellsberg was working for the US army as an analyst. He served in Vietnam and he saw firsthand the conflict that, the ratio of, Vietnam people, civilians mostly being killed was 10 to 1 versus the US, forces. And also more importantly, that Nixon was gonna keep the war going on for years years.
It was gonna be an endless war and probably involve air power and massive, massive loss of life. Typical a typical US business war, war business of war. And so Ellsberg leaked the document that he'd coauthored, leaked it to the press. So he was a whistleblower. He saw something wrong that he thought the public should know. He wanted to save people's lives. And at that time he was having a change of heart. He was going from being an establishment, you know, government employee, do what you're told. America's great. We should own the world kind of person. I'm I'm kind of making some assumptions here because I don't it's not like I know everything about what he says and thinks, but I'm just sort of rambling.
But, you know, he the point is he made a a big shift in his life, to becoming a peace activist. He was influenced by his the the the woman that he was dating that became his wife, that she was a peace activist. He went along to, a lecture of some kind where people that were dodging the draft that were refusing to go and fight in Vietnam. Even if they went to prison, they were, they were taking a stand for peace. And he also was influenced by, a, a woman who gave a speech, saying that, in the Gandhi philosophy, we know no enemies.
So even people that wanna fight us and hurt us are our friends. So it's basically a compassion, you know, love thy neighbor, kind of concept. And so he was influenced by these beautiful ideas of peace and compassion and decided to put his life on the line just like Assange has done and, and put out the information. But the thing is, during the trial, the Nixon government spied on him. They broke into the office of his psychiatrist and stole document evidence. And, alt ultimately, his case was dropped, And we've had exactly the same thing happen with Assange. He's been spied on the in the embassy. The he's been filmed, videoed, his lawyers, without him knowing, this is all part of another court case that's going on right now against, Mike Pompeo and and the US, for that spying activity. But here we are, 50 years later and, it's a repeat of history. So it's the same Espionage act, similar circumstance. You know, in this case, it's a publisher rather than a whistleblower.
And they've spied on him. They've used the same tactics, but the case is still ongoing. And so that tells us that in 50 years, our rights and freedoms, are in a worse state. Like things are getting worse in the world. There's more censorship. There's more, there's a rising, technocratic fascism that's happening, and press freedom is is declining, in every in all around the world.
[01:07:40] Unknown:
Yeah. And and so what you had said earlier though about having this be the strategy where they're just gonna move them around for 25 years, you know, and then just drain everybody who's participating in this process, it seems like. You know, I think I just think of the old days when I used to have to call, like, AT and T or Sprint. I mean, it would take hours just to get ahold of somebody and do something simple, and then you would just give up and you're like, screw it. I'm gonna let my phone bill, just have that extra charge on it. And this is that on a exponentially more, huge and horrific scale.
You know? It's just kinda like, cool. We're just gonna keep stringing this along and seeing how long we can, I mean, torture him and his family and all of the folks who have been supporting for so long? It's it's such a horrible I I just can't imagine being a human being that would do that. I I don't I just can't imagine that. And then thinking in terms of the compassion and love and peace and all of this, and I'm obviously a hardcore peace lover, but as a mom, I get very I get very defensive if I think somebody's gonna mess with my kids. You know? And I think about what Stella sounds like has been going through with her and her children and everything, I can't imagine it's like, how can we open up our hearts to people who are truly, you know, possessed by evil.
And and it's we have to, I know, but it's doesn't it's not easy. And so I'm just I applaud anybody who can continue this this journey and still have a a heart and a soul like you and like, obviously, Julian and everybody around this case. How has this changed your life?
[01:09:27] Unknown:
Oh, that's a good question. I haven't had that one, but I yeah. It's a it's a really good question. Yeah. I I think I think pressure creates diamonds and, you know, the challenges of this project have, stretched my really stretched my abilities. Like, there's been dozens of times when I just felt like giving up. We ran out of funds many, many times, and I just feel like, are we ever gonna finish this project? You know, things go wrong, like, things people that you wanna interview reschedule twice, and you sort of just feel like it's never gonna happen and just all kinds of challenges, challenges with with licensing, with people providing ridiculous quotes that you just can't afford, and and are they going to come down to something affordable? And just all this stuff where where it just feels like there's there's big barriers in a way to, making the film that we wanted to make.
It really stretches you, but, but also intellectually, like I'm, I'm not someone that's really ever been into politics. And that's part of that's why the film is in a different style. It includes philosophy and poetry because I knew that I, like, I don't watch political documentary. I I I've seen citizen 4 and a couple of Assange films, but I I'm not gonna go look for a political doco because it's all just like you just swamped with information and you have to sit there and just go take notes. Like, it's full on. It's not relaxing. And so I wanted to, you know, somehow breathe some life into it that people can see the trailer and go, oh, it's not just a cold, dry, serious political intellectual film that's gonna be, you know, out of my head, off, you know, above above my understanding, you know, and try to lay it out really clearly and simply.
But, you know, intellectually, yeah, it was a challenge, and and it was very daunting to sit down in front of people like Ellsberg and Pilger and Stella Assange and people that are very, very bright and and very knowledgeable, and may come in with, you know, very little knowledge and just try to ask the right questions and really and and just, also a big pressure to have 2,000 people support the film and sort of feel this immense pressure to to do a good job and do something that sort of makes everyone feel like their money was well spent.
I think at this point, we can safely say that, we did do a pretty good job, like, without blowing my own trumpet, like, you know, from the the response reports that reviews that people have given. You know, I think we did we did in the end, but we had so much help. And, you know, particularly with getting all the facts right, we had Jennifer Robinson, Julian's lawyer, and also Juan Pastorelli. I mentioned already with, the war on journalism, which is a film you can watch for free anytime. You know, those 2 people, did yeah. Just just did a great job to sort of go through the film multiple times, point out things that were unclear or or inaccurate, and then we could go rework it, which which was quite a just such a tedious, difficult process of editing. But, you know, we got there in the end, and and I'm really happy with the result. And and I think in the end, we did do justice in some way, you know, as a as a ode to Julian's tremendous self sacrifice and achievements and his bravery, and also to get the facts, clear and accurate and, and for it to be, effective advocacy tool.
[01:13:14] Unknown:
Yeah. It's definitely changed my perspective in in an even more broader way, and I think the way that you've presented it, like, again, you're a poet and a musician. I loved all of the audio in the film. I was noticing you had a good array of sound effects. You had a good array of different sound clips that you used, so it wasn't just the same repeated boring documentary loop, you know, of 5 of them. You did a great job of really coloring the the experience, you know, with facts and data and then with emotional, tools. You know, I call it the windshield wiper effect when you're creating things for people. You wanna get the left and the right brain and the heart and the mind and stuff. So you've nailed it really beautifully.
So I I love it. I can't I want tons of people to go see this. So just if I were to go approach my you said to there's the link up on is it on the, is it on this site, on the GoFundMe site where people can go learn how to invite their
[01:14:14] Unknown:
local theater how to do this? It's on our website. So that's the trustful.org. There's a page just in a few little steps of how to approach your cinema and, indicate your interest in that. Surprisingly, it really works. Just it can just take only a few people and the cinema will, take notice and, and show the film. And that and that's how we can spread the awareness and just keep it keep it rolling on, from one crowd to the next. You know, one one screening can lead to another screening, and then that in in intensely, effective experience of of a communal live in person screening on big screen can really, make such an impact.
[01:15:02] Unknown:
Yeah. I think so. So I know I'm gonna be calling my my house of reps later. I don't think they're probably open now because it's they're it's too late, and I wanna go fight figure out if we can do a screening here in Colorado somewhere. I know Bitcoiners would appreciate this, and, yeah, it would be great. Any final things you wanna let anybody know who's watching this, who's, you know, ready to go take some action other than go host a screening, go to the protests? What what can we do as individuals?
[01:15:34] Unknown:
Yeah. I I've probably, maybe a nice way to finish you. If you like, I can read something from my, book here.
[01:15:43] Unknown:
Do it. Let's go. Let me take this off.
[01:15:48] Unknown:
Yeah. You know, that way we're not finishing with just sort of typical blood, bloody, blah. Cool. I love it. This is, yeah. This, this is a book I'm just coming bringing out because it's basically like the narration of the film that I spent a few months writing. And, you know, most of it didn't make the film, and I just chucked it into a book and because I thought some of it was maybe bring some value to people. I recognize this one because it's the last, the last bit of the film. So it's called trust fall. If he knew that they had committed crimes and he had a river of leaks on his computer screen revealing their felonies and the choice of whether to publish them, if he knew that their empire is run by dark 3 letter orgs and CEOs in camo gear, if he knew that they would chase him to the ends of the earth, if he knew that they are rich, angry old men capable of hideous acrimony and vengefulness, If he knew that humans have an ability to realize that we've been deceived, to finally and critically and profoundly and devastatingly open our eyes, then this is a trustful, an incredibly brave trustful.
And we are the ones who are meant to be doing the catching.
[01:17:15] Unknown:
I love that. I cried when I heard that. It it's so beautiful, Kim. You've done such a great job. I wanna ask you just just my brain just remembered this. Like, I'm gonna be in Madera for Bitcoin Atlantis, and there's a Bitcoin film festival that's going on on Monday that day. And I think I texted you, but I know you're probably at 10,000 texts. Like, is that something that we could show this film there to the Bitcoin or something? Yeah.
[01:17:42] Unknown:
I I should have mentioned we are it's not just the actual we are also doing institutional screenings at universities and festivals. Okay. So we can do a festival screening at this point, in our in our release strategy. That's that's, that yeah. We'd love to do that.
[01:17:59] Unknown:
Okay. I'll talk with the the coordinators, and I I don't know how much time slots they have or how they're doing the whole thing, but I will, I'll put you in touch with them. And That's it. And then they all are doing a a main Bitcoin Film Festival in at the end of April, I think. And so there'll be another opportunity that'll be a full on festival, not just an add on to this other thing. So do that. Yeah. Okay. Cool. I'll connect you with these guys. They're amazing. Alright. Well, thank you so much for everything you've done and that you continue to do, and I really do hope and pray that this is a wing on the, you know, the the bird of freedom that so we can go and have a better future for ourselves and our kids. And, I really, really appreciate what you're doing. So, everybody, follow Kim. You guys can go to the at trust fall doc on Twitter. You can also go to the trust fall dot, org. Is that right?
Yeah. Here. And, go get a screening and watch this film and get a box of Kleenex, and then go get your your marching boots because you're gonna wanna take action afterwards. So
[01:19:11] Unknown:
thanks again, and I really, really appreciate you taking time. And for those of you out there, thanks. Pleasure. Thanks to you. Thanks for covering it. Thanks for caring about Assange and free speech for future generations.
[01:19:23] Unknown:
Yeah. Absolutely. Alright, everybody. Until next time. Peace, love, and warm Aloha. Thanks so much for tuning in. Mhmm.
If wars can be started with lies, then peace can be started with truth. Julian Assange. If you're somebody who cares about freedom, freedom of the press, the first amendment, if you're somebody who cares about freedom of your financial resources not to be shut off by the government just because you said something that they don't like, you must tune into this show, and you must understand what's going on with Julian Assange and why he must be released now. My guest, Kim Staten, and I, who is the director and writer for The Trust Fall, the Julian Assange documentary, we talk about what's going on with Julian, why is he in solitary confinement, how he's been psychologically tortured, how his family, Stella, Assange, and their children have been intimidated and threatened, and how we can help get a more free world by helping Julian Assange.
Thank you. Hey. Aloha, love tribe. Welcome to Bitcoin for Peace. I have somebody here who has been dedicating the last amount of his life energy towards freeing a man who has been in I consider this a torturous situation for the last 14 years. This is Kim Staten, the director of Trustfall, the Julian Assange documentary, and he's also the founder and director of Films for Change. Welcome, Kim.
[00:01:58] Unknown:
Thank you, Valerie. Great to be here.
[00:02:01] Unknown:
Yeah. It's great to have you. How did you get started along the pathway to help Julian?
[00:02:10] Unknown:
Well, you could trace it back to 2,010. One night, I was at home, one evening watching the nightly news, and I saw, the collateral murder video of WikiLeaks, that WikiLeaks most famous release, pop up on the news. And, it was shocking footage, and, I knew it was something awful, but I didn't really look into it. I didn't understand it. I didn't know what WikiLeaks was. I didn't make the connection with Assange and WikiLeaks. And, you know, little by little by little, I started to take an interest, and I guess around 5, 6 years ago, started watching other people's films and reading books about it, trying to make sense of it all. And once I really went on that path of exploration, I did, just get a a huge interest.
My my interest just grew and grew, and my my partner, Natalia, and I, we we've, been involved with screening other people's documentaries, from from around 10 years for myself, and she came on board a little later. And we've talked about making a documentary, and so the timing just happened to be right. And, I embarked on starting the film or we started on that. And, and, you know, that was just the beginning of the of the understanding, delving deeper and talking to people and and and just learn a very steep learning curve in into this case and the story and the meaning of it all. So it just all evolved out of that.
[00:04:03] Unknown:
And and how long ago did you start this project?
[00:04:07] Unknown:
Nearly 3 years.
[00:04:08] Unknown:
Oh, wow. And so right now, we've obviously got February 20th 21st, Julian's trial case. They're gonna figure out if they're gonna let him go free or extradite him here to the United States, so it seems very timely that this is coming out right now. I feel like we're kind of in an urgent crunch to get the word out so that we can put pressure on the the politicians and the powers that be so that we can get him safe and free. How's it going right now for you, and, like, what initiatives are you seeing on the ground that are supporting this in addition to your film?
[00:04:48] Unknown:
Yeah. That's right. The 20th 21st February coming up, just in less than 2 weeks is the final hearing appeal hearing where the Assange defense is going to find out whether the UK courts are gonna allow another appeal against the extradition. So it's a 2 day public hearing at the high court in London, and there'll be a immediate decision on the second day of whether that hearing is allowed. It's a very precarious situation for for Julian because if they deny that appeal, he could be immediately extradited literally same day, put on a plane to the US.
However, if they allow the appeal, it may be, another 6 months of court hearings. So it it, but in a way that's kind of the right now, unless there's some miracle for his freedom, then that's sort of the best outcome is that his extradition to the US will be delayed. As far as activism, it's it's it's a huge, uprising going on. There's a protest around the world happening on those days, not just in London. I think they're up to about 40 cities now that are gonna be having a rally or a protest, which is called day x. We're getting over yeah. That's DayX because they, up until recently, they didn't know what day the those hearings would be. So that's why they call it day x.
So we'll be heading to London next week. We're having the London premiere of the trust fall on the 18th February at Rio Cinemas. And then we'll be staying in London for a little while to to, take part in those protests and, and and also do media and probably various screenings of of the film after the, premiere.
[00:06:56] Unknown:
Where can people find out about the like, I I've seen Stella posting day x on Twitter. Like, is there a website that people can go and find out how to participate if they wish to?
[00:07:08] Unknown:
Yeah. The if people go to Stella's Stella's site, I can't remember the the platform, but, if you just Google Stella Assange, you should be able to find it. She's I think it's called substack particular, website that she uses, and and it's all it's all basically linked there, to find out where all the locations are and if there's something happening in your city or if if you can organize something yourself.
[00:07:38] Unknown:
You know, it's so funny. I'm going here right now. Every time I've been trying to tag her in my Twitter, I she her name won't even pull up, and I just typed in LinkedIn bio, Stella Assange, and it said there's, like, multiple web threats. Don't go here. So I'm feeling I'm wondering if there's some kind of coordinated back end attack, going, this not let us get out there. Like, that's crazy right now.
[00:08:09] Unknown:
You know, the his opponents love doing that that that's I mean, countries all over the world trying to bring down the WikiLeaks website routinely and, and and, you know, whatever they can do to to stop the word getting out, and the WikiLeaks Facebook page is heavily suppressed and certain keywords, you know, like like, if I do update Kristen Raffinson in it, who is, the the current editor in chief of WikiLeaks, then then that post will be basically, you know, downgraded. Like, it it it it won't get deleted, but it will will get, like, about 5% of the usual reach of any post that we do. So they're doing this shadow banning thing and, you know, any other kind of subtle tactics that they can to reduce the reach. Like, as Elon Musk says, you know, free re free speech, but not free reach, which is just censorship.
[00:09:00] Unknown:
You know? It's total censorship. Yeah. I've been put obviously, reposting a lot of your, your tweets and things lately, and I just had a thing 2 days ago where it was like, oh, we've tagged your account for suspicious activity and la la la. And, of course, I'm like, what suspicious activity? I haven't done anything. You know? And so I just feel like there's constantly things in the background that people who are watching, you know, when I talked to them about, you know, this opportunity to interview you and share your story, people are like, oh, who cares? It's just Julian. It's it's like, you don't understand the magnitude of what this means, and I'm still learning as I keep, you know, as I got to watch your documentary, and I've watched a lot of stuff about, Julian and Edward Snowden and everything in the last several years since I became a Bitcoiner, why is it such a monumental case for free speech, for journalism, for truth, for corruption? Why do people who aren't in this space, why must they know about this story?
[00:10:02] Unknown:
Yeah. What what people need to do is look past this narrative and this certain image that's been painted of Julian Assange that the US interests and powers have, done a terrific job of painting him as a as some sort of treacherous traitor, villain, basically. And, you know, we've been people have been manipulated by that. So there's all this negativity around it and smear. He's been smeared, incredibly for years. But that's what partly what we're part of what we're aiming to do in the film is to show the real Julian Assange, expose his, his, I mean, share his achievements and, his genius and his bravery, and, and and look at it with a fresh perspective.
And it's not that difficult as soon as you I mean, even if you just watch it one single interview with him, just people just take 5 minutes, go on YouTube and search, join us on the interview. Just watch for 5 minutes. You find that this is a gentle intellectual that cares about world peace. And, and there's there's these smears that just keep going and going. And you just have to question how lazy people are to just regurgitate other people's ideas and just carry this stuff on. We see it in the comments of of any social posts that we do. Intellectually lazy people will just copy what somebody else says without doing 5 minutes of research.
It's incredible, how lazy some people are. You know, let let me just debunk one of them. You know, we see it, like, every day somebody says Julian Assange is a rapist. Excuse me. He was never even charged. How dare you? You know, there's a thing in democracy called innocent until proven guilty. Mhmm. It was an accusation. That's what it was. And what it stemmed from was 2 women who went to Stockholm, police station, in Sweden and asked the police to help them, have Assange go get an STI test because he'd slept. They they willingly slept with him, on on his trip Sweden. He's a single man, and, you know, doing what many single people do.
That's what they went to the police station for. And then by some subterfuge, some interesting thing that went on there, within 24 hours, it was all over the headlines, literally 24 hours, and this is meant to be a confidential police interview. It's out on all the major news. So there's a whole story there that, you know, someone needs to cover in a in a in a, like, in a documentary. Like, we've we just touch on it briefly in the film because it it just needs to be quickly debunked. There was never any charge and the case has been dropped. So people that wanna make that claim, it's, it's absolutely disgusting. I mean, it's, it's defamation.
You know, anyone that says that they should just be sued if he was out. He wasn't in prison, locked up in a maximum security prison, solitary confinement, 22 hours a day, he could just sue everybody that says that. It it's it's just an awful thing to to claim about somebody, and that's what, you know, that's what the CIA knew, that if they wanna bring down somebody's, reputation and undermine their work, then you just use one of these extreme smears. So this is covered quite comprehensively in the film. Anyway, back to your question, what why is this important?
Because Assange and WikiLeaks were the 1st organization to take on the mainstream narrative and say, no. We want the truth on the news. We don't want propaganda, lies. We don't want wars that start from lies. He's one of his famous quotes is wars are a result of lies. Yeah. If if,
[00:14:35] Unknown:
if wars can be started by lies, peace can be started by truth. That's the very first quote I have right here in my show notes, and I that's the most important thing, I think, for us to understand. I mean, we have a 247 war machine, and it's it's unacceptable. And, obviously, the war machine wants to keep getting its oxygen and money and power. And when the truth gets out, the war machine starts to wither and die, and it doesn't ever want to do that. So it will protect itself at all costs, including torturing somebody. Like, you know, when I was shocked.
I didn't understand that Julian has been in isolation in a maximum security prison for so long. Why is why is a journalist who's a peaceful person, he hasn't killed anybody, why is a journalist in this situation? Why is he in isolation?
[00:15:33] Unknown:
Yeah. Well, they've come after him ever since the major releases of 2010. So what, what happened was Assange, was a student at the University of Melbourne in Australia studying maths and science. Extremely bright, outstanding in in in, at that time. And, he came up with this idea and innovation to speed up the dissemination of truth into the world. And it was to protect whistleblowers so that if somebody came across, crimes that they wanted to report within their own organization, they could anonymously report it to a media outlet without fear of reprisal.
So that was the innovation. Brilliant idea, Very scary to powerful people that just want to continue to do their crimes, as you say. They, sell arms, put you know, instigate wars for profit just to sell weapons, and and other kinds of corruption, environmental corruption, and so on. Anyway, that was the innovation that that he created. And then in a very short time from 2006 to 2010, just 4 years, WikiLeaks rose to global prominence. But within a couple of years, 2008, the the US government was already looking at ways to destroy WikiLeaks to bring them down.
They already had strategies in place. They had a task force of a 100 staff on the job of that. It was such a big threat to their to their ability to just do whatever they want. So then in in 2010, that was when the big releases came out, the Afghan war logs, Iraq war logs, collateral murder video, and the diplomatic cables. And then from there, the aggression of the US, just, exploded. It it it became really intense. That's when the smear campaign started. That's when he was, debanked. It was the first time that you had this, unified thing of, Mastercard, Visa, PayPal shutting off donations, his own personal bank account closed.
They had this whole strategy in many different ways to, to destroy WikiLeaks and to destroy Julian's character. And, that that strategy is is another thing that we, document in the film. The plan was to drag him from country to country for 25 years, wipe him out financially through dozens of court cases, which is part of what they're doing now. And ultimately, get him over to the US, put him on trial, throw him in a prison, torture him, get all the information, and hopefully, he just gets murdered or dies from the psychological and physical torture. That's what they wanted to do, and that's what they're in the process of doing.
They're 13 years into the slow motion execution of a journalist, and people are still misled by these smears and, oh, he helped, he stopped Clinton getting into, power. Well, she can do that by herself. She's well capable of not getting into power because she doesn't belong in power.
[00:19:03] Unknown:
Yeah.
[00:19:04] Unknown:
You know, let's not go there. But look, you know, that's what they're in the process of slowly murdering a journalist behind closed doors because in this day and age, we don't in the west, it's not acceptable to take a printer journalist publisher out into the town square and hang them. At least society doesn't accept that. So they have this secretive sneaky way of of of rubbing out a journalist a threat is just for them to slowly rot away in prison.
[00:19:37] Unknown:
Yeah. It it's so insidious, and I think folks who are watching and listening who don't understand what's going on, I really want you guys to see this film so that you can get a little bit more background. Because I've seen some stuff and just I didn't really get the whole the torture, like, the psychological torture that's going on with this man and all the implications, what individually, with his family, you know, and in the film, one of your your guests, you know, it's a series of tortures a series of conditions that seek to break a person's will. And it he was saying that, you know, psychological torture is not torture light.
It doesn't mean that just because you're not getting waterboarded doesn't mean you're having the same types of scars and negative repercussions, you know, that will come out physically in addition to mentally. This it's it's so disturbing to see that we still operate this way in our world. You know? And, obviously, Julian is a martyr at this point, you know, and I hope he never has to die to be a true martyr because this is I think we can fix this. I hope, like, who other than the United States, I mean, why is the why is the UK, like, thinking, like, why won't they just admit, like, yeah. Let's get rid of this this bullshit. And are are we just living in a world where the CIA and our United States government and military and God knows who's operating the the strings just has so much reach that we can't ever win.
Like, can we ever get over this corruption hump?
[00:21:18] Unknown:
Yeah, absolutely. We can. All it takes is for people to wake up, to do a little bit of research every day, even if it's 10 minutes from an alternative news source. Don't just get home, turn on the TV like I was doing 15 years ago. You know? Look for alternative media sources. Look for another side of the story. Look for the truth. Take a little bit of time for that. It's difficult, you know, because the system puts us into a 40 hour a week job. Inflation keeps going up. Interest rates keep going up. So what what we're stuck in is that we just do our 9 to 5 jobs and go home exhausted, and all you wanna do is, grab a glass of wine and watch something on Netflix and go to bed. And so that's that's it all sort of comes from that. That's that's what I feel is, you know, partly we're stuck in a system of basically, wage slavery, like, you know, but, look, we we choose that too. We choose we choose how much daily expenses we have, how big our house is, how nice our car is.
But if we if we simplify our life so that we don't have to work to the point of exhaustion, we get a little bit of spare time that we can learn things. We can look at what's going on in the world. And if we do that, we find that there's a lot of work to be done. There's a lot to do. There's a lot of education needed. There's activism needed. There's things that we gotta fix in the world, and then we feel motivated to do something even if it's just a small thing towards that. You know? Before this film, and I, we, did a campaign against single use plastic for 2 years in Sydney, and they changed the laws. We showed films about plastic to, around a 100000 people.
I mean, sorry, 10,000 people in a live event setting. So we had a 100 events, that were free entry, and then we showed it to the trailer, 3 minutes of scenes of, plastic in the in the stomachs of birds and turtles to 2,000,000 Sydney people. And they changed the laws because that's public awareness. Not it's not just governments that can do public awareness campaigns, but people can do it too. And it doesn't really take that much. So, you know, we've campaigned for plastic single use plastic for, awareness around animal treatment, aboriginal, rights in Australia and various other issues.
And now we're doing free speech world peace and Julian Assange. And and look, I I I've I've, you know, my my motivation is always that I wanna just make a difference in the world, some some kind of small difference. I'm not interested in, being wealthy and having a nice house and a nice car and fancy holidays. Like, what gets me out of bed every day is, educating people and and just doing something meaningful. So I I'm I'm very, privileged gifted in in in the in the way that people have supported this film. We've had 2,000 people contribute to our crowdfunding campaign, 9 investors to make the film possible.
And it's allowed me to work full time on it for most of the last 3 years. So I I have an opportunity to be an advocate and an educator full time and, not have to do a job that, isn't isn't, you know, making, isn't in line with my passion. So but, you know, I also made that happen. I I I I put in the hard yards. I slept in the back of my car, couch surfed, and whatever else I had to do, to to sort of build up a career in education and awareness and and in this case, filmmaking now. It it just took a lot of perseverance and with that, but also, people around the world are embracing that because if they're not in a position to make a difference, they're clever enough to realize, well, let's support someone that is in the position.
This film, it's not a low budget documentary. It started out that way. It was actually I was just gonna do it at no cost, a YouTube documentary. Gonna spend a few months on it. But we realized pretty quickly that there's a big community of supporters for Assange around the world, like, probably millions of people. Mhmm. And, few months, we realized that, yeah, this could be we could build this up into a cinema worthy film, but to do that, it costs 100 of 1,000 of dollars. It's a very expensive protest, process because, for example, one image you wanna license for worldwide all medium perpetuity for a documentary.
One image can cost $1,000, and it's up on the screen for 3 seconds. And this is a 2 hour 2 hour film. There's, like, at the beginning of in the trailer, like, for example, watch the trailer, you'll see, some little bites of, like, Joe Biden on, I think it's Fox News and and a few other opponents, Hillary Clinton saying nasty psychopathic stuff. You know, this stuff, yeah, it's like a fee a collection of little 2 second bits, and each of those 2 second bits cost $1,000 to license. So, and then the editing, the post production is the biggest expense because you're talking 800 hours for a film like this, 800 hours, of paying a professional editor because I'm not a professional full time editor. I don't know all the, all the tricks of, stitching together a film. So, yeah, very expensive process, but thankfully, very grateful that we we got there in the end. And now the film is out in cinemas.
It's it's incredibly exciting time, to to see all these screenings happening, to see cinemas, mainstream cinemas, independent cinemas all around Australia and New Zealand where we've, just released the film, showing the film, and then to go to some of the screenings and see the response and talk to people and, you know, see cinemas with 100 of people, people flocking to, look into this sometimes for the first time. It's really rewarding at at this stage, after all the hard work, it's really, most of that 3 year process has just been, really, tiring, challenging, exhausting.
But now, I suppose in a way, it's, the point of where we, we get to have a little bit of enjoyment of of sharing it with people.
[00:28:14] Unknown:
And and with that, like, how can people get this in their own theaters? Can people access this to have a home movie watching party? Can are you gonna start doing some things online given the the, the hearing that's coming up on 20th 21st so that we can get more awareness and more people showing up to these protests?
[00:28:35] Unknown:
Yeah. Well, because of the fact that, as I said, we had investors covered 1 third of the total cost of the film, we we can't just put the film out for free, unfortunately. That's just the predicament, because I have, you know, that responsibility of of paying that back. However, it the film was shown and is being shown, in on a on a channel called RT. It's a satellite, subscription channel. And it's already reached millions and millions of people in, middle east, Africa, and India. So the film, it's already been a success awareness wise with its reach, into the millions. We would estimate around, 17,000,000 people have seen it that way Wow. Over the last months.
And then now, it's in cinemas. It's having a proper theatrical release, which is, a rare thing for a documentary. We thought it was possible. And, in early December last year, we started pitching it to cinemas in Australia and New Zealand. I had no idea what the uptake would be. Would maybe just a few cinemas would show it, but, we've got about 30 cinemas showing it right now and another 40 or so, about to make you know, in the process of making booking. And then we have event cinemas, which is the the largest cinema chain in Australia in Australasia, is is about to show it from the 5th March onwards.
So it it could potentially reach, if things go to plan, we could reach quite easily a 100000 people in Australia could see it in a cinema, maybe more. And, you know, in a cinema, this is the most powerful experience you can have because it's big screen. Mhmm. Big sound live audience, audience reactions, and also people are focused. And, you know, the thing about watching at home is you tend to get distracted. You check your phone. Sure. Yeah. You make a meal. And people end up watching it in little dribs and drabs, and that's not not ideal. But, you know, the main thing is in a cinema setting, it's the most powerful experience that people can have. So that's how, our strategy is to start with cinema.
So we'll be releasing in the UK very soon, probably as early as, last week of Feb. And then, probably Europe after that, and then, the US and and then many other countries. I think I think we were looking at the response of the film, the the way that cinemas have embraced it, and the way that, it's it's getting a lot of buzz and a lot of word-of-mouth because it's a shocking emotive film that really touches people. I think it will potentially be shown in cinemas in pretty much every country of the world, over over a period of time. And then, once we finish that, we'll put it out on streaming platforms, pay per view and and so on. So, you know, it's it's already had yeah. It's already been seen by millions of people. And, and now we're focused on, not as much the the reach, but the the very powerful experience that you have in a cinema, you know, quality over quantity, that way. And, and it's it's really building up and growing. So, you know, cinema is actually the the major chain cinemas have the ability to put it out to many, many people very, very quickly.
If it if a major chain in the US takes up the film, you know, it could be seen by a 1000000 people on the opening night. So, on online digital streaming is not the only way to get, a lot of reach really quickly.
[00:32:20] Unknown:
But given the time sensitivity that we're dealing with, if, like you said, if they decide they want to extradite him, he could be extradited the next day, which could lead to god knows what if he gets here to the United States, you know, for his safety and his life and well-being. Is there an opportunity for the next you know, it's not even 2 weeks away, to just push it somehow and, you know, obviously, get your funders their money back, and you can do a livestream for donation or something just to get the awareness out? Because I don't see this in my theaters around here, and I wouldn't I don't even know how to approach a theater to get it to play in my, you know, my little town. You know? And so in the interest of saving this man's life, can we figure out a way to get it out quicker or faster between now and this hearing.
[00:33:11] Unknown:
Yeah. Well, then if we did that, then we would just basically ruin the the opportunity of showing it in cinemas, which means that everyone's watching it on a tiny screen at home with all the distractions. So it's not that's not our strategy. Certainly, there's a urgency with educating people, but this film is not the the only way that people can be educated. And so we don't, you know, we don't feel like we're responsible for solving this and and getting Julian Assange free just solely through this one piece. There's there's many documentaries people can watch online, that are excellent, you know, and and they're out there for free. For example, Juan Pasarelli's war on journalism is freely available on YouTube and various Assange documentaries are available, but people don't watch them because there's no publicity.
How do you get publicity? Well, you get the cinemas to to show it, to to to actually participate in the advertising. How do we get it into the cinemas? People can suggest it to their cinema. It's very simple. Like, there's actually a page on our website. How how to suggest it to your cinema, and it's, just as simple as send them an email, recommend the trustful, you know, message them on Facebook. The cinemas really take notice of of, suggestions from locals. That's what we're finding. So, yeah, that's our strategy. And when it does go out in America, it will be in cinemas, and people will have the most rich powerful experience that they that they can.
In my view, you know, as much as we we we feel like, oh, let's, let's do whatever we can right now to get Assange free. But in reality, we're not. We're doing other things with our day. We're doing a little bit little bits where we can. And, you know, it's it's not, you know, just because, a bunch of people, you know, post on Twitter, free Assange, that doesn't mean he's gonna get free. It it's gonna take a lot more. We're dealing with the most powerful empire that's ever existed. This is a this is a US government has been at war for 235 out of its 247 years of existence.
It's a war country, and those interests are incredibly powerful. So, unfortunately, it's not just as simple as, hey, everyone on Twitter. Let's all post about Assange today, and maybe he'll get free. It's it's just it's not gonna solve that quickly, even if Assange is trending on Twitter every day because people are not willing to look into it. There's not enough awareness, not enough public outcry. So what we have to do is get, you know, increase the scale of this movement. We need to build more awareness from, each individual, you know, from the ground up.
How did, you know, the the the Egyptian uprising, how did they get rid of the government in in Egypt in 2011? Because a million people, surrounded the parliament house. And so the government just ran for their lives. I I'm not advocating that we, you know, storm the parliament, storm storm the government. But I'm just saying you need numbers. And so when you have, unfortunately, you know, if you have 200 people at parliament house Canberra with Assange signs, that's not gonna get him free. If you have, a 173 people in some place in New York handing out flyers, like, this is all important. It's grassroots. It's gonna build up.
But at the core of it, it's education. It's awareness. And that's why we made this film because people need a really powerful experience. They need to sit down for a couple of hours and really take it in. Not just not just see a catchphrase on Twitter. Free Assange, you know, no extradition. Like, what what is that about? As you said at the beginning of the interview, you know, they don't people don't know, and they haven't taken the time to look into it. So, the idea of this film is that, hopefully, with the involvement of, you know, celebrity narrators, Tom Morello, Susan Sarandon, Roger Waters, MIA, you know, fans of those people will go, oh, maybe I should look into this Assange story.
Fans of John Pildraw or Daniel Ellsberg or Stella Assange might see, oh, that those people are in this documentary. I'm interested in what this story is. And so we're trying to make it interesting enough, enticing enough that people will spend that time to actually explore it and understand it. Because when they do that, maybe they'll do something significant, to actually, make a difference to the campaign. So in in my view, it needs to, build up. It might take 6 months, a year, 3 years to really get to critical mass where you have enough public pressure that it becomes a political, issue. It becomes a campaign, sticking point where, you know, the next US election, the next Australian election, it becomes a main point of concern for is, you know, does my prospective leader support the freedom of Assange?
It's gonna take a lot of public awareness for that. So, we're not gonna solve this by, by next Thursday, in my view, You know? And that's otherwise, we wouldn't have made the film if we thought that it was so easy to solve.
[00:38:49] Unknown:
Clearly, yeah. It's not I agree. It's not an easy to solve. It's not a just make one call to your rep. It's not just go to one viewing or one protest. It's clearly a huge issue that this Kraken machine doesn't want, to be solved. You know? And so it's gonna take a lot, a multi, a multi tiered approach, you know, to get this. And and, you know, this is just one thing. I think Stella had posted this about calling our US reps for congress. There's, house resolution 934 expressing just for those of you listening that aren't watching the screen, expressing the sense of house rep of reps that regular journalistic activities are protected under the first amendment and that the United States ought to drop all charges against an attempt to extradite Julian Assange.
And so you guys I'll put this in the show notes and everything, but you guys can go call your reps, and who knows if they'll listen or not depending on what state you're in and who was the cosponsor of the bill. All these little things hopefully can add up, but
[00:39:55] Unknown:
I mean, clearly, like like, I don't wanna give the impression that I'd that that I don't think these things are worthwhile. Rallies, protests, flyers, petitions, letters to your parliament. All of that is important, but this is a marathon, not a sprint. It's been going on for 13 years. We're not gonna solve it in 2 weeks, unfortunately. You know, but at the same time, I always hope for a miracle. I get up every day. First thing I do is check the news. You know, I Google Assange news, and I'm hoping that there's some good news. And sometimes you see good signs, and then we get our hopes up. Like, for example, when Anthony Albanese, the labor government, got in, into power about year and a half ago, Albanese, the the current prime minister of Australia, was quoted as saying in a backroom meeting, enough is enough, you know, in regards to Assad. Like, he doesn't see the point of continuing this, which is a pretty weak statement. Right? And it took 6 months for him to finally, in parliament, say, yes. I've said enough is enough.
And, you know, sort of may indicate that he's going to make some representations for Assange. But he's the 1st Australian prime minister to basically not be against Assange, to be sort of neutral or sort of playing each side. And, you know, he does have the the nickname each way elbow. So he's a very talented, politician. Anyway, another 6 months passed and all the Assange supporters got very optimistic. Oh, this is it. He's gonna he's gonna free Assange. But 6 months later, some journalists or lawyers, went through some FOI requests through the government to to see what sort of documents have been exchanged between the US and Australia, and there was basically nothing.
And so then the government said, yes, we've been doing quiet diplomacy, you know, which is ridiculous for bureaucrats because they love paperwork. And then, you know, a few months later after that, which is just coming up to current times recently, he said, you know, I've done my best, but, Joe Biden can't get involved with legal cases that are in the courts, which is complete lie because they do it every day. They get involved with the legal cases. And so this has been a merry dance, of Anthony Albanese to try to pacify those Assange supporters. And what I've seen a lot of Assange supporters do is just stop stop doing any activism because they think, oh, yeah. Should be alright. You know, it's gonna sort itself out.
But no, you know, we need to keep going constantly. And if you're a busy person, you you you can't put a lot of time in, you know, doing these little 5 minute things, a Twitter post, sign a petition, and once a month, go to a rally or once a year even. All of that adds up, but my point is, awareness needs to grow astronomically. You need to next protest you know, in in 6 months' time, we need to have a protest in all the major cities where you have a 100,000 or a 1000000 people come out, and then it becomes undeniable for these, leaders and authorities to to actually if they wanna stay in power to to do the right thing and and free this this heroic journalist.
They're not gonna do that if everyone's asleep and uneducated.
[00:43:23] Unknown:
Yeah. Exactly. Well, it's interesting because, you know, here we've got our elections coming up in in November, and all we see is the Democrats and Republicans and Biden and Trump and, you know, that's it. You know, Robert f Kennedy junior said he would pardon Assange on day 1, and I've not seen even one line that he's even running in Fox or CNN or any of these mainstream media news outlets. The only way that I know that this man is running for president from any media is through Twitter or through Instagram, on his posts. And so I find it to be reprehensible and disgusting, you know, that we're just I mean, obviously, these big mainstream medias are just puppets for propaganda, for the chemical companies, for the banks, for the government.
They have no journalistic integrity at all. It's 0, and so I don't understand why more people aren't in outrage. They're just sleeping. People are asleep at the wheel. You know? And, you know, you had mentioned earlier just about the way that the the money system is. Right? And we have inflation that everybody's dealing with, and this is why I became a Bitcoiner 3 years ago because I learned about, oh, this 40% money print during COVID. And I'm like, well, that sounds like that means my purchasing power is less. And so, that sounds like theft. I need to go deeper into learning about what is money, what is fiat. And I thought I knew because I was a, a business person, and I went to business school and worked at Deloitte and Touche and all these things. Right? And so I thought, I know, and then I realized, holy shit, I don't know anything.
What else don't I know? And it really, really every time you, you know, cover some truth on a rock, you're like, woah. There's more rocks over here to keep on, you know, turning. And I always you know, I've been saying, like, the powers that be want you numb, dumb, sick, scared, broke, hungry, angry, lonely, tired, and horny so they can control you and manipulate you so that they can keep extracting your life energy from you in the form of taxes and inflation. And so, when I woke up to that truth, you know, because I'm a hippie. I'm like, yay, let's go take some acid and save the world and go play some music and everything's gonna be great and let's meditate and kumbaya. But once I really, really understood that this broken monetary system, no matter how much you have that, that's why obviously, you know, the the hippie movement in the sixties, if we would have Bitcoin back then or any kind of sound money, what could have happened?
You know? But because we were in this broken system still of lies and greed and corruption and manipulation and then going off the gold standard in 71, it's just like, oh, wow. There's a lot more things that we all need to know, and people who are artists, creators, documentarians, musicians, healers, activists. A lot of us have been just like, no. No. It's just a consciousness shift. We've just gotta, you know, love everybody. And it's like, yes, and you have to have this base layer of sound money that's not confiscatable.
You can't shut it down because you spoke out against the government and, you know, unbank you at the press of a button with these powers that be. That's what happened with the the Canadian truckers a lot, and that got under my skin too because I was like, these people are just peacefully protesting, and now you're shutting their bank accounts down. You're shutting people who donated to them down, not even people who were at the protest, but if you donated $50 to the truckers, your bank accounts got shut down in Canada. And I was like, what?
That's crazy. Are you sure? You know? And that just kept giving me more fuel to keep learning, like, what is the alternative solution, a solution. Obviously, we still need a consciousness shift, and we need people to use their voices and stand up for truth and dig deeper for truth every single day of their life and not just accept what's been spoon fed to them. But having this sound money is so, so important because it gives you at least another layer of protection so that you can go move about on a parallel system, you know, from the evil system, you know, and get this work done in a way that hopefully will reveal truth so that we can have a more peaceful and harmonious planet for everybody. We don't have to live this way. It's not required that we live in a warmongering world.
We have abundance, we have prosperity, we have love, we have connection, and I would venture a bet that 99.9% of us want to see that happen. You know, I believe in the human spirit and love, and I believe that's what Julian believes, and I believe that's what you believe. You know? And and it's like how we cannot keep letting these tiny, tiny percentile of humans destroy the planet and destroy the humans and the life on the planet. And so it is scary speaking truth to power, and they are using Julian's story as an intimidation tactic for anyone else who comes along, just like they did with Ross Albright. Like, hey, you're gonna go to jail for life in solitary because you made a website, you know, and it's unacceptable. And so we have to keep using our beautiful voices if we're lucky enough to have the ability to do so in these countries that so far we get to use our voices. But, like I said, I think, you know, I noticed my accounts when I started reposting a lot of this stuff recently, I'm getting tagged and flagged and not enough, you know, this not that I'm some huge account, but I'm noticing I'm getting throttled, you know, and I know and I'm small and it gets easy to just go, okay, small voices, we're gonna smoosh you, you know, and and that's what they're doing.
Tell me about I mean, you've got some big names here, you know, Roger Waters, MIA, Susan Sarandon, Tom Morello. Fuck. I won't do what she told me. Let's go. Right? And so how are they treating this experience, you know, by being a part of it? Are they really pushing this forward right now, and do they understand, like, it's time to put the pedal to the metal in the next, you know, 6 months?
[00:49:40] Unknown:
Yeah. These are, you know, particularly, Roger, Susan Roger and Mia have been, advocates for Sanj much longer than me. And and Cool. You know, and as I say, like a marathon, not a sprint. And Roger, it's incredible how much advocacy he's done. Every single concert that he does, he puts up the collateral murder video footage. I think he, has a song about WikiLeaks, and he he gives statements and, you know, he he gave a speech at the the the really the biggest sort of London protest at the beginning of the extradition trial. MIA is, I understand, is is the boys, Julian and Stella's 2 boys, their godmother.
She's worked with Anj while he was in the embassy. She was writing music for his TV show because he was hosting a TV show called the world tomorrow at the time, and she wrote a jingle for that. And so these these 2 have been very much a part of the movement for a long time, and they and they will fit in work wherever they can and get involved. And, hence, the participation voluntarily, in the film. It was fantastic to have them in the film because it does potentially expand our reach and our results and our ability to encourage, to entice people, to get curious enough to to spend the 2 hours to watch the film.
Susan Sarandon is very new to the campaign. It was only, I think, 6 months ago that she first publicly spoke out for Assange, and it takes so much bravery to do it because basically she's really restricting her career by siding with someone that, you know, Hollywood is obviously very establishment. And, I I know from, communicating with a lot of, actors and part of this project is that they're they support Julian, but they don't wanna do it publicly because they don't wanna ruin their career. But Serendon, I guess, just decided it's more important to support what she believes in than to, you know, win more awards and and get more movie roles.
So it's fantastic. And then Tom Morello has been very active in all kinds of activism for for years. And, you know, so, there was a few other celebrities that we wanted to have involved, but but who didn't want to. And and as I say, we're scared to. But having these four brave enough to lend their voice, to put their name on the poster, and then, you know, and just and just take that risk and be outspoken and, you know, be on the right side of history, is an incredible thing. And I think, hope we're hoping MIA will come to the London premiere next week. And and, Roger wasn't in London at the time, but he said he'll, catch the film soon when, you know, if it it should continue in London for quite some time.
And, when we get to the US, we're really looking forward to having Susan's and Tom's help with connections and getting it out there, because if if we can get it onto a major cinema chain in the US from from the get go, as I say, it would reach, you know, a 1000000 people really quick and then and then even many, many more straight away. And with that very powerful, rich experience of of of that only a cinema can can give.
[00:53:18] Unknown:
What about, like, doing concerts? Can we get the film shown at, like, a concert venue and with the artists? I mean, obviously, MIA and Roger Waters and Tom Morello are all musicians.
[00:53:32] Unknown:
I think this Tuesday night in Adelaide, we're probably gonna get around 5, 6, maybe 700 people coming. It'll be our biggest event. Maybe maybe there'll be some screenings in the US that that could be, bigger, a bigger crowd, and and, you know, certainly, Roger Waters would have the ability to sort of instigate that. But, you know, we can also achieve a lot of reach just by showing it in, you know, hundreds of cinemas every night for 10 weeks or something, you know, before it goes to digital. So, yeah, there's lots of lots of things we could do. But, look, you know, these celebrities, really famous people, then they're very busy too, and they always they've their their inboxes are just next level. Like, it's they must they must open the inbox, and it just it just, blows up every day. So, you'll you know, it's hard it's hard to even get them on board for for one project, let alone some sort of ongoing thing. But at the same time, you know, I think I know that Susan's watching the film today for the first time.
[00:54:45] Unknown:
Really? Oh, cool.
[00:54:47] Unknown:
That's exciting. And and Roger, I don't think has seen it yet. So, and I don't think the others have either. And and I you know, again, I would I prefer they watch it in a cinema with the audience response because that's another beautiful thing is, this film, some some it's got some x factor, some unique power where the audience applause is during the film, like, around 6 or 7 times. And I've never seen that in a documentary. You're lucky to get a clap at the end, but this is like midway and all these, comments and reactions. And and, that makes it a communal, very powerful experience.
[00:55:23] Unknown:
It really is. And the energy of it. And I obviously thank you for sharing it with me. I got to watch it. And I had to pause it several times because I was crying a lot, and I was pissed off. And and I felt alone, and I'm home alone watching it. I'm like, you know? There's something to be said when there is a resonance in an audience, whether, again, as a DJ and somebody who plays music and we're all vibing together when you're in a film. Whatever it is, when there is something that you're all getting to experience, whether it's euphoric, whether it's outrage, whether it's sadness, whether it's compassion, it amplifies that emotion, I think. And then it leaves a larger I guess, I call it like a tattoo on your soul. You know? And so you do, I think, have that memory, and then I think it causes people to take more action. And so then having an appropriate call to action at the end, you know, is just so important. Right? It's not just like I I remember when I saw, what was it, inconvenient truth, I think, and I just didn't at the end, I was like, well, what the fuck are we supposed to do now? Like, everything's gonna blow up. I didn't feel empowered. I felt disempowered and depressed, and I was like, okay.
You know? And so when you have when you've taken an audience member, a listener, a user on that journey, that emotional, experience, have the you know, taking care of them after and going, this is what now we have action. Now we're empowered. You have information, and now we have action. And so, in your film, Julian was saying that people ask him, what can I do? And then he says the answer is not so difficult. Number 1, learn how the world works. Number 2, challenge the statements and intentions of those who seek to control us beyond the facade of democracy and monarchy. And then the third is to unite in common purpose and common principle to design, build, document, finance, and defend the truth. And so having the action afterwards, I think, is is is critical.
You know? And so that's what you're doing, and I think it's great. You know, again, these multi tiers, multi prongs that we can address this problem because it's not gonna go away. You know? And and they're still gonna even if this happens and we can get Julian free or something less, it's like, are what are they gonna keep trying to do so that they can keep their secrets secret? You know? And so we have to keep demanding transparency. We have have to keep demanding truth and fairness, and not allow people to bully truth tellers, you know, and and intimidate them with violence and financial violence, which is what they did, obviously.
I mean, and that's my thesis is Bitcoin is a tool for peace, and it it allows you to be able to go do these other things in the world with at least having some financial sovereignty. And obviously, as you're sharing, you need to have finances to get messages out there in a broad, scalable way. And so if they shut that down, we're screwed. You know? So we have to have financial sovereignty. We have to have freedom of speech. Otherwise, we have no freedom, period. You know? What have you seen, Who have you seen in your path recently that has been an Who was just kind of like, oh, I don't. Who cares? I'm discounting Julian. It's just this. And, you know, and they're believing the rapist nonsense.
And then all of a sudden, they're, like, on board, and they're like, woah. I gotta change my direction now and go do something.
[00:59:12] Unknown:
Yeah. We've been to a bunch of there's, I guess, there's been around 50 or so cinema screenings so far. We've been to quite a few of them, a handful of them, and, chatted to the audience. And, the interesting thing is when when somebody brings along a friend that's sort of a bit reluctant and they think they know what it's all about. And they may be very conventional sort of, you know, closed off person that just basically follows the mainstream in every way. And then to see a film like this, it's it's very impactful, and and it really challenges all their beliefs about the whole system. And and I think, it's I think the the footage that we present, the collateral murder footage and plus the never seen before interviews with some of the victims of that incident, it's undeniable, and and it gives people a different sense of the, significance of that incident, as the basis for the persecution of Assange.
And I and I think, you know, even though the film has some emotive, elements, you know, devices used to to stimulate emotion, is extremely factual. It's it's, now all the people we interviewed, these are not people that throw around rumors or or just kind of hypothesize on things and, make up whatever they wanna say. They it's all very factual. And we we did, you know, very intense research. It's all based on fact. And, you know, that that from from the conclusion of, the 3 doctors that went to visit Julian in Belmarsh prison and concluded onto the Istanbul protocol that he's a victim of psychological torture through to, you know, the the thorough sort of legal, process of of looking at, the, you know, Swedish documents between Sweden and the UK based on that that Swedish incident that showed more than 40 violations of due process and, destroying of evidence and, and then the the star witness, against Assange in the extradition hearing has admitted that he lied on radio in his testimony.
You know, we we don't, go into supposition and rumors. It's all based on fact, and I think it's very convincing. And when people, take the time to watch the film, whether they have no knowledge at all of the topic or they very typically have preconceived ideas, it's all blown away. It's all debunked, and they can actually have a factual, real, truthful view on what all of this means.
[01:02:11] Unknown:
Yeah. And and so and I know we've only got a few minutes left, so I wanna respect your time and really appreciate you taking time to talk about this and obviously all the thousands of hours you've put into this project. You know, you've you have Daniel Ellsberg in your film quite a bit, and I'm still learning about this. Again, I'm new to this. So and one of, his son, is somebody who's a Bitcoiner and who we've been you know, we worked on, Satoshi, the cyber opera a little bit, and he was helping us with some copy and writing. He's a wonderful, wonderful man. And so as I'm learning about this, can you help people understand, like, what like, why Daniel Ellsberg was so important in this and, like, getting the mistrial and everything helped you. I'll let you explain more than me.
[01:03:00] Unknown:
Sure. Yeah. We we chose to have a whole chapter in the film of Daniel Ellsberg story. The chapter is called the Pentagon Papers because Ellsberg was the first American citizen to be charged under the antiquated 1917 espionage act, which is the same act that is being used to indict Julian Assange on 18 counts. So Assange on the other hand is the first journalist which sets an extremely scary precedent in regards to press freedom and the decline of press freedom. So in late sixties, Daniel Ellsberg was working for the US army as an analyst. He served in Vietnam and he saw firsthand the conflict that, the ratio of, Vietnam people, civilians mostly being killed was 10 to 1 versus the US, forces. And also more importantly, that Nixon was gonna keep the war going on for years years.
It was gonna be an endless war and probably involve air power and massive, massive loss of life. Typical a typical US business war, war business of war. And so Ellsberg leaked the document that he'd coauthored, leaked it to the press. So he was a whistleblower. He saw something wrong that he thought the public should know. He wanted to save people's lives. And at that time he was having a change of heart. He was going from being an establishment, you know, government employee, do what you're told. America's great. We should own the world kind of person. I'm I'm kind of making some assumptions here because I don't it's not like I know everything about what he says and thinks, but I'm just sort of rambling.
But, you know, he the point is he made a a big shift in his life, to becoming a peace activist. He was influenced by his the the the woman that he was dating that became his wife, that she was a peace activist. He went along to, a lecture of some kind where people that were dodging the draft that were refusing to go and fight in Vietnam. Even if they went to prison, they were, they were taking a stand for peace. And he also was influenced by, a, a woman who gave a speech, saying that, in the Gandhi philosophy, we know no enemies.
So even people that wanna fight us and hurt us are our friends. So it's basically a compassion, you know, love thy neighbor, kind of concept. And so he was influenced by these beautiful ideas of peace and compassion and decided to put his life on the line just like Assange has done and, and put out the information. But the thing is, during the trial, the Nixon government spied on him. They broke into the office of his psychiatrist and stole document evidence. And, alt ultimately, his case was dropped, And we've had exactly the same thing happen with Assange. He's been spied on the in the embassy. The he's been filmed, videoed, his lawyers, without him knowing, this is all part of another court case that's going on right now against, Mike Pompeo and and the US, for that spying activity. But here we are, 50 years later and, it's a repeat of history. So it's the same Espionage act, similar circumstance. You know, in this case, it's a publisher rather than a whistleblower.
And they've spied on him. They've used the same tactics, but the case is still ongoing. And so that tells us that in 50 years, our rights and freedoms, are in a worse state. Like things are getting worse in the world. There's more censorship. There's more, there's a rising, technocratic fascism that's happening, and press freedom is is declining, in every in all around the world.
[01:07:40] Unknown:
Yeah. And and so what you had said earlier though about having this be the strategy where they're just gonna move them around for 25 years, you know, and then just drain everybody who's participating in this process, it seems like. You know, I think I just think of the old days when I used to have to call, like, AT and T or Sprint. I mean, it would take hours just to get ahold of somebody and do something simple, and then you would just give up and you're like, screw it. I'm gonna let my phone bill, just have that extra charge on it. And this is that on a exponentially more, huge and horrific scale.
You know? It's just kinda like, cool. We're just gonna keep stringing this along and seeing how long we can, I mean, torture him and his family and all of the folks who have been supporting for so long? It's it's such a horrible I I just can't imagine being a human being that would do that. I I don't I just can't imagine that. And then thinking in terms of the compassion and love and peace and all of this, and I'm obviously a hardcore peace lover, but as a mom, I get very I get very defensive if I think somebody's gonna mess with my kids. You know? And I think about what Stella sounds like has been going through with her and her children and everything, I can't imagine it's like, how can we open up our hearts to people who are truly, you know, possessed by evil.
And and it's we have to, I know, but it's doesn't it's not easy. And so I'm just I applaud anybody who can continue this this journey and still have a a heart and a soul like you and like, obviously, Julian and everybody around this case. How has this changed your life?
[01:09:27] Unknown:
Oh, that's a good question. I haven't had that one, but I yeah. It's a it's a really good question. Yeah. I I think I think pressure creates diamonds and, you know, the challenges of this project have, stretched my really stretched my abilities. Like, there's been dozens of times when I just felt like giving up. We ran out of funds many, many times, and I just feel like, are we ever gonna finish this project? You know, things go wrong, like, things people that you wanna interview reschedule twice, and you sort of just feel like it's never gonna happen and just all kinds of challenges, challenges with with licensing, with people providing ridiculous quotes that you just can't afford, and and are they going to come down to something affordable? And just all this stuff where where it just feels like there's there's big barriers in a way to, making the film that we wanted to make.
It really stretches you, but, but also intellectually, like I'm, I'm not someone that's really ever been into politics. And that's part of that's why the film is in a different style. It includes philosophy and poetry because I knew that I, like, I don't watch political documentary. I I I've seen citizen 4 and a couple of Assange films, but I I'm not gonna go look for a political doco because it's all just like you just swamped with information and you have to sit there and just go take notes. Like, it's full on. It's not relaxing. And so I wanted to, you know, somehow breathe some life into it that people can see the trailer and go, oh, it's not just a cold, dry, serious political intellectual film that's gonna be, you know, out of my head, off, you know, above above my understanding, you know, and try to lay it out really clearly and simply.
But, you know, intellectually, yeah, it was a challenge, and and it was very daunting to sit down in front of people like Ellsberg and Pilger and Stella Assange and people that are very, very bright and and very knowledgeable, and may come in with, you know, very little knowledge and just try to ask the right questions and really and and just, also a big pressure to have 2,000 people support the film and sort of feel this immense pressure to to do a good job and do something that sort of makes everyone feel like their money was well spent.
I think at this point, we can safely say that, we did do a pretty good job, like, without blowing my own trumpet, like, you know, from the the response reports that reviews that people have given. You know, I think we did we did in the end, but we had so much help. And, you know, particularly with getting all the facts right, we had Jennifer Robinson, Julian's lawyer, and also Juan Pastorelli. I mentioned already with, the war on journalism, which is a film you can watch for free anytime. You know, those 2 people, did yeah. Just just did a great job to sort of go through the film multiple times, point out things that were unclear or or inaccurate, and then we could go rework it, which which was quite a just such a tedious, difficult process of editing. But, you know, we got there in the end, and and I'm really happy with the result. And and I think in the end, we did do justice in some way, you know, as a as a ode to Julian's tremendous self sacrifice and achievements and his bravery, and also to get the facts, clear and accurate and, and for it to be, effective advocacy tool.
[01:13:14] Unknown:
Yeah. It's definitely changed my perspective in in an even more broader way, and I think the way that you've presented it, like, again, you're a poet and a musician. I loved all of the audio in the film. I was noticing you had a good array of sound effects. You had a good array of different sound clips that you used, so it wasn't just the same repeated boring documentary loop, you know, of 5 of them. You did a great job of really coloring the the experience, you know, with facts and data and then with emotional, tools. You know, I call it the windshield wiper effect when you're creating things for people. You wanna get the left and the right brain and the heart and the mind and stuff. So you've nailed it really beautifully.
So I I love it. I can't I want tons of people to go see this. So just if I were to go approach my you said to there's the link up on is it on the, is it on this site, on the GoFundMe site where people can go learn how to invite their
[01:14:14] Unknown:
local theater how to do this? It's on our website. So that's the trustful.org. There's a page just in a few little steps of how to approach your cinema and, indicate your interest in that. Surprisingly, it really works. Just it can just take only a few people and the cinema will, take notice and, and show the film. And that and that's how we can spread the awareness and just keep it keep it rolling on, from one crowd to the next. You know, one one screening can lead to another screening, and then that in in intensely, effective experience of of a communal live in person screening on big screen can really, make such an impact.
[01:15:02] Unknown:
Yeah. I think so. So I know I'm gonna be calling my my house of reps later. I don't think they're probably open now because it's they're it's too late, and I wanna go fight figure out if we can do a screening here in Colorado somewhere. I know Bitcoiners would appreciate this, and, yeah, it would be great. Any final things you wanna let anybody know who's watching this, who's, you know, ready to go take some action other than go host a screening, go to the protests? What what can we do as individuals?
[01:15:34] Unknown:
Yeah. I I've probably, maybe a nice way to finish you. If you like, I can read something from my, book here.
[01:15:43] Unknown:
Do it. Let's go. Let me take this off.
[01:15:48] Unknown:
Yeah. You know, that way we're not finishing with just sort of typical blood, bloody, blah. Cool. I love it. This is, yeah. This, this is a book I'm just coming bringing out because it's basically like the narration of the film that I spent a few months writing. And, you know, most of it didn't make the film, and I just chucked it into a book and because I thought some of it was maybe bring some value to people. I recognize this one because it's the last, the last bit of the film. So it's called trust fall. If he knew that they had committed crimes and he had a river of leaks on his computer screen revealing their felonies and the choice of whether to publish them, if he knew that their empire is run by dark 3 letter orgs and CEOs in camo gear, if he knew that they would chase him to the ends of the earth, if he knew that they are rich, angry old men capable of hideous acrimony and vengefulness, If he knew that humans have an ability to realize that we've been deceived, to finally and critically and profoundly and devastatingly open our eyes, then this is a trustful, an incredibly brave trustful.
And we are the ones who are meant to be doing the catching.
[01:17:15] Unknown:
I love that. I cried when I heard that. It it's so beautiful, Kim. You've done such a great job. I wanna ask you just just my brain just remembered this. Like, I'm gonna be in Madera for Bitcoin Atlantis, and there's a Bitcoin film festival that's going on on Monday that day. And I think I texted you, but I know you're probably at 10,000 texts. Like, is that something that we could show this film there to the Bitcoin or something? Yeah.
[01:17:42] Unknown:
I I should have mentioned we are it's not just the actual we are also doing institutional screenings at universities and festivals. Okay. So we can do a festival screening at this point, in our in our release strategy. That's that's, that yeah. We'd love to do that.
[01:17:59] Unknown:
Okay. I'll talk with the the coordinators, and I I don't know how much time slots they have or how they're doing the whole thing, but I will, I'll put you in touch with them. And That's it. And then they all are doing a a main Bitcoin Film Festival in at the end of April, I think. And so there'll be another opportunity that'll be a full on festival, not just an add on to this other thing. So do that. Yeah. Okay. Cool. I'll connect you with these guys. They're amazing. Alright. Well, thank you so much for everything you've done and that you continue to do, and I really do hope and pray that this is a wing on the, you know, the the bird of freedom that so we can go and have a better future for ourselves and our kids. And, I really, really appreciate what you're doing. So, everybody, follow Kim. You guys can go to the at trust fall doc on Twitter. You can also go to the trust fall dot, org. Is that right?
Yeah. Here. And, go get a screening and watch this film and get a box of Kleenex, and then go get your your marching boots because you're gonna wanna take action afterwards. So
[01:19:11] Unknown:
thanks again, and I really, really appreciate you taking time. And for those of you out there, thanks. Pleasure. Thanks to you. Thanks for covering it. Thanks for caring about Assange and free speech for future generations.
[01:19:23] Unknown:
Yeah. Absolutely. Alright, everybody. Until next time. Peace, love, and warm Aloha. Thanks so much for tuning in. Mhmm.
Introduction to the importance of freeing Julian Assange
The significance of Assange's case for free speech, journalism, and corruption
The need for public awareness and activism to support Assange
The involvement of celebrity advocates in the documentary film
The challenges of getting celebrities on board for projects
The power of communal film experiences
The importance of having an appropriate call to action
Daniel Ellsberg's role in the film and the importance of his story
The similarities between Daniel Ellsberg's case and Julian Assange's case
The challenges faced during the making of the film
The impact of the film and the importance of spreading awareness
A reading from Kym Staton's book 'Trust Fall'
