Posts Tagged ‘Phillip Adams’
via WACA 07/06/2012 by kazamcasrane sourced: WL Central – by m_cetera
Julian Assange interviewed on Late Night Live Radio, 6 June 2012. Full audio is available via the RadioNational website.
Phillip Adams: Good day, beloved listeners. Last night on this little wireless program, I was talking to Shapiro about the Obama kill-list. It’s pretty dangerous being deemed an enemy of the American people these days, because at any moment a drone will come in and take you out. And of course tonight we’ve learned that another member of Bin Laden Proprietary Limited has been killed by one of those precision attacks. I think if I was Julian Assange, I’d be more concerned with a drone attack than with mere extradition, but let’s see how Julian is feeling at this time of, well, endless strife. Julian, who’s talking to us from his hideout in the English countryside where he’s under house arrest, joins us on the program. How are you coping with this incredible stress level?
Julian Assange: Good day, Phillip. Well, over the last few years we’ve gotten used to it. I’ve gotten used to it. It’s not necessarily a good thing, I suppose. Y’know, people in quite adverse conditions get used to those conditions and they start to normalize.
Phillip Adams: Of course, it’s not only your physical and mental health that’s been under attack; your financial health has taken a bit of a dive, hasn’t it?
Julian Assange: Yes. That’s been one of the most interesting aspects of all we’ve done. So we released a lot of information about how the US empire works. And I don’t want to use that word ‘empire’ in a sort-of classic 1960′s Latin American radical way, because people close their minds. But if you read the State Department cables, for example, you see that that is the brain of the US empire’s relationships with its foreign counterparts. And that’s got everything from how it conducts its business relationships to arms sales and various procedures to get young leaders from around the world embedded into Washington think tanks and then send them back out. Now, it’s not just information that we’ve released that’s interesting, but the back reaction to that. So everything we’ve released is some degrees in the past, but the reaction to our publishing is happening right now. And that defines certain contours of power relationships in the United States and between the United States and the UK and England which were unexpected to a lot of people.
Phillip Adams: Julian, I’m talking about your personal bank account which was shut down. I understand that you’re now technically bankrupt. Your bank accounts have been closed, many people associated with you have lost their jobs, even some who were quite indirectly connected. You’ve been… You’re under the hammer, aren’t you?
Julian Assange: Yes. I’ve been declared a PEP, a politically exposed person, and that means in practice that I can’t open any bank accounts. So they have to go through extra steps to do that. There’s a worldwide financial blockade completely outside the law by Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, American Express, Moneybookers, Western Union, Bank of America – all US organizations. They closed my Swiss accounts that we were using publicly to raise legal defence money and my personal ability to move money – even as far back as September 2010 – from Australia into Sweden, was also blocked on the network. The Vienna to Australian blacklist, a US watch-list, at that time, back in 2010. Read the rest of this entry »
