on air 24 seven. This is today's news talk TNT. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back. I'm Patrick Henning, senior host, we're live and direct here on Tuesday. It's still in the first hour. Great report. Appreciate Taylor hood act. Great independent journalist. On this story, she's really dedicated the majority, I think, of her reporting in the last couple of years with this story. And herself, many other independent journalists, activists, advocates, everybody has just been so dedicated. Emi from London, I just had a Twitter conversation with her. She's one of the first people I met on the street. She was doing the candlelight vigils in front of the Ecuadorian embassy years ago in Belgravia. I mean, she's never given up hope that he would be free. He's just one of them, one of the many amazing people I've met. As I was covering the Assange case, I wasn't really covering the case. I was like, I was doing some journalism, but it was really an activist. It was really an activist effort because the fact of the matter is, and this is one of the things that we launched a successful shaming campaign against many of the journalists who were just ignoring Julian Assange's plight. And it's a fine line between being an activist and a journalist. But if you're a journalist, and there's another journalist or publisher locked up in a maximum security prison for doing journalism, then it's more than journalism. You're doing it for the survival of your industry, for the survival of the career sector of journalism, of media. Because if you allow, you think it's okay that they'll lock Assange up for doing journalism, then you're basically inviting some of these governments, these authoritarians to do the same to anybody and everybody. And worse, to be able to reach out and do an extraordinary rendition, like you would with a terrorist. And kidnap somebody off another country's soil, which is what Britain did when they invaded the Ecuadorian embassy to basically kidnap an extraordinary rendition of Julian Assange in April 2019. That's what they did. They came in and basically kidnapped him through him in a maximum security prison, unconvicted prisoner, not charged of anything. But basically holding him on a, I guess, a spurious bail jumping charge. That was based on a Swedish sex case that was dropped twice. It was no longer on the books. But Britain had the the spurious 10 year old jumping bail jumping charge. And that was the basis for his incarceration. And he's been held as a terrorist, really arbitrarily and in detention for 15 years. So you know, anybody who didn't think that this was any journalists who didn't think that this was about them. Because it's not just about Julian or Wikileaks, it's about everybody, every blogger, every independent journalist, every mainstream reporter should have made this story a priority. If they did early on, he wouldn't be where he was the last five years. That's, that's for certain. But because everybody thought, Oh, we'll just leave that one away because we don't like Julian Assange, what Wikileaks publishes, which is what many of the Democrats did, because they used it as a foundation of Russiagate, the Russiagate hoax. They said that the Russians gave the Podesta emails or the DNC emails to Wikileaks, ergo, it was a Russian disinformation op. Nothing could be further from the truth. Likely those emails came from a DNC whistleblower, somebody in the DNC, maybe somebody who might have even got shot and killed for doing that leak. That will also come out eventually. That'll be a scandal that nobody will want to touch until it just becomes blatantly obvious what happened. Anyway, we will continue to discuss this is going to get very interesting as Taylorhood X said, very interesting in the coming weeks, months and years to unpack this one. If we're still here and we still survive and we're able to unpack it, it's going to be very interesting. Let's bring on TNT's political editor right now. Basil Valentine, Basil appreciates you joining us firstly. And I mean, as I was saying to our previous guest, Basil, it's not often we get good news. We've been covering and talking about this story, Basil, for years. And I didn't think there would be good evening, Patrick, good with you and hello to our viewers and listeners all around the world. It's not universally being greeted as good news for two different reasons. First of all, the establishment war hawks camp, the deep state, if you like, they're riled by Mike Pence amongst those tweeting on X that the full force of the law should have been used to continue with the prosecution of Julian Assange. He was backed up in that opinion by Alistair Campbell, Blair's former press secretary, who was on Good Morning Britain this morning, saying that Julian was a very anti American activist. And that's because he imposed war crimes. Apparently, if you seek to expose war crimes, you're very anti American. And Campbell went on to say that Julian's supporting us will feel that he's got away with it. On the contrary, Alistair, it's you that got away with it. You're the only war criminal, not people exposing your crime. So although it's obviously good news for him personally, that he'll be back on Australian soil, a free man within a day or two, a long way to go before we see the prosecution of Tony Blair and George Bush, but their part in the atrocities and others, their parts in the atrocities that Julian Assange uncovered. And the other point, of course, is that he is pleading guilty to one of the espionage charges, which means that that act will have established a new precedent for the prosecution of journalists. He had been a opening earlier this year together with his lawyers, that the plea deal would be based on a charge relating to the mishandling of classified documents, or some other hacking charge. But no, he's had to plead guilty in order to secure his release to one of the espionage charges. So Julian Borger, quite rightly pointing out in the Washington Post and the Guardian, that this isn't necessarily the victory of freedom of press that a lot of people have assumed it is. No, rightly, rightly so, Basil, because what's most disturbing about a lot of this is to see all of the people that basically threw him under the bus for the last years, are now coming out, specially Democrats like Nancy Pelosi, everybody's on the bandwagon. Oh, this is a great victory for transparency. So I'm going to ask you about the timing of this. Why now? And why why is this coming from the Biden administration now? Well, there was the vote in the Australian Parliament, which was seemed to be then backed up with varying degrees of enthusiasm by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. That represented a sea change. Gabriel Shipton, his brother, was reported this morning as highlighting the key roles played by two men, former Labour Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, who is now the Australian Ambassador in Washington, and Stephen Smith, the Australian High Commissioner to the Court of St. James in London, those two men representing Julian diplomatically, the only people who are qualified to do so, they were the ones working directly with the Justice Department of the Biden administration to secure Julian's release. And Gabriel Shipton was very fulsome in his thanks and praise for their efforts. As for the Biden administration, well, I don't think they really felt there was anything to be gained by continuing with the prosecution. It's worth remembering that they picked up the baton from the Trump administration. Obama had decided not to go ahead with the espionage charges for fear of their chilling effect on free speech. So if he is indeed the eminent squeeze behind the president, someone's got to be making the decisions. It can't possibly be senile Joe. Perhaps Obama played a part in this. But the Democrats with one eye on November may be hoping that the release of this one one, excuse me, one individual will help shore up their progressive base. The fact that they've endorsed a genocide, of course, is causing support among progressives to hemorrhage. So maybe with this no win, no win, people have called it others are calling it a win win. But in some ways, it's a no win, no win outcome, because Julian has a felony charge against his name in the United States. And he has served, you know, five years, which is, you know, time off, basically his sentence, which is why they're releasing him immediately. So neither side can really claim a total victory. Yeah, well, you're right, you're right. But I think on the family and his supporters side, it is a complete victory in the sense that there were a lot of concerns about his health being kept as an unconvicted prisoner in the category of prison, like Belmarsh, alongside terrorists, serial killers, murders, and perhaps worse. So now that he's out, it sounds like his family wants to focus on rebuilding his health, getting him into a better place, health wise, and psychologically, as well, I was pleasantly surprised to look to see he looked rather well fed in the pictures that we've seen today of him stands to airport and on the plane. I mean, a lot of us have been fearing he might leave Belmarsh in a pine box, or at least in an ambulance or something. But he appeared to be in reasonable physical shape from what we could see. Yeah, yeah, it's not like he's being held in Israeli detention center. We've seen we've seen what some of those people look like when they've been released from the Israeli detention they come out and they may be lucky enough to survive, Patrick, you know, yeah, tortured, emaciated, basically on death's door. So that is definitely a positive thing, Basil. So a great victory, certainly for his family to be reunited with him and all the supporters. So in I talked about this with our last guest, Taylor Houdek, who's been following the Assange story very closely for a couple of years now. And it's going to be interesting once the dust settles on this basil. What happens when Julian Assange opens a Twitter account? You know, he's already got one, apparently. I believe he tweeted out a picture of himself flying home today. So yeah, I mean, how influential will he be? How influential will he be allowed to be? Will WikiLeaks sort of leap back into public prominence again and start publishing more cables from around the world? We just don't know the answer to that at the moment. But my I would imagine that he may take on a more sort of eminence, greeze role and pontificate on global affairs rather than be at the cutting edge, because I certainly don't think he wants to go through the same sort of experience game. And we have to ask ourselves, you know, has his incarceration and persecution and in one sense, successful prosecution under the Espionage Act, worth remembering 98% of federal cases in the United States are settled with a plea deal, which probably the Supreme Court in 2010 to say, we have a police system, not a justice system. So, you know, are other whistleblowers going to be inhibited from coming forward in the coming months and years? Because Julian did suffer very greatly at the hands of the US authorities. Yeah, no, all good points, all good points. I think the conversations, all these are going to be brought up in the wider, the broader conversation, we'll be covering it, certainly on the show, I'll be getting some of his fellow whistleblowers on the program already next week. We have a few already booked to come in and sort of talk about it. But in the meantime, breathe a sigh of relief that at least he'll be free in Australia. The invitations from heads of states are already pouring in right now. Basil, the Colombian presence invited him for a state visit. There'll be others. Evo Morales in Bolivia, former president. Certainly, there's a lot of figures. He has a lot of fans, especially in Latin America, particularly, but in Asia as well. So that's going to be interesting. The long sour grapes from one of Australian's own, supposedly senior politicians, former Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer, appropriately named, who said, Julian, will not receive a hero's welcome when he reaches Australia. Speaking to the BBC this morning, he said that Assange had done something morally terrible. He said he has pleaded guilty that he's part of the plea bargain. So what he did was a criminal offence. And it was a terrible thing to do morally as well, endangering people's lives in that way. It is just completely inappropriate. And I don't think many Australians have sympathy for it. Well, that remains to be seen Alexander. I think he's probably a lot more popular in his native country than you are. That Lexi Lexi Downer, as he's known to his close school chums and friends. This is the guy that basically pushed the entire Trump dossier. He's the he's one of the people that was involved in framing George Papadopoulos, one of Trump's campaign advisors who we had on the show, Alexander Downer, working for maybe what Australian intelligence, British intelligence, they had this sort of entrapment game going on. And that kicked off the crossfire hurricane, the FISA warrants, and then ergo Russia gate after that. So he is actually one of the key progenitors of this complete boulder dash that turned into a tsunami of a hoax called Russia gate, Alexander Downers are not not surprised to see Debbie Downer issuing a statement like that. And he's lying in fact, because Julian Assange didn't actually put anybody in danger. He in fact, he was working with it with the New York Times, The Guardian, a number of other publications to put out gradually put out the thing that caused the the problem there was a book by Luke Harding, who is a serial propagandist who is employed sometimes by The Guardian. He put out a book and put the password in the book. And when this came out, Assange had to go and basically emergency phone call to the State Department, and everybody else warning that you know, that there could be people's names that are exposed in Wikileaks documents that might put agents in the field at risk. So he did his due diligence. It was Luke Harding in his book that he published at the time, I think he co wrote. And that that caused the the actual risk to agents in the field. And by the way, how come none of the journalists for the New York Times or The Guardian or any of these other publications weren't also dragged into Belmarsh, because they were working on the same material. Well, I can't answer why, you know, Assange was singled out like that, but you, you make very good points, Patrick, certainly a lot more fallout from this no doubt. Be interesting to see what other countries like Columbia hail him as a hero and where he continues to be vilified. I shouldn't imagine he'll be visiting the continental United States anymore. But in the global south, it may be a very different matter. Indeed. So anyway, we'll keep an eye on that, that story definitely. And in terms of other news, right now, Basil, what's peaking your interest? Well, elections, elections, elections, isn't it? Very quickly, first of all, Jamal Bowman is under real pressure in his New York congressional seat because he did to speak out against the genocide. So unsurprisingly, he has found himself pitted against a particularly well financed opponent. And it looks, I'm afraid, as if he's going to lose that seat. The latest opinion poll I can find shows him trailing by 35 to 21 with a lot of undecideds. George Latimer leads Jamal Bowman 48 to 31, I should say New York 16 congressional district. That's what happens if you go against Israel, it's as simple as that 15 million dollars have been spent by a super pack, again, with negative ads against Bowman. In the UK, the Conservative Party campaign to remain in power led by Rishi sumac is in meltdown, total turmoil, just 10 days to go till Britain goes to the polls. And a fifth Tory, Russell George has now been told by the gambling commission, he is part of the inquiry into the betting scandal that today saw the Tories drop Craig Williams and Laura Saunders, both of whom is standing for Parliament. That, of course, stays in place. It's too late to do anything about who your candidates are, but they've been disowned by Conservative Central Office for placing bets on the date of the general election. Both of them, of course, very close to Rishi Sunak's inner circle. Sunak himself was forced to say that he hadn't placed a bet on the date of the election. Well, you're the one calling the date Rishi. If you're betting on it as well. I mean, it's unbelievable stuff. It's totally mired and already failing reelection campaign for Sunak, who is absolutely furious about how some of his closest states and some policemen, also a number of the personal protection squad afforded the Prime Minister by the Metropolitan Police, they're under investigation as well. You know, it couldn't get any worse for the Tories than this. Totally unable to get any message out if they've got a message just mired in corruption. Also today, we've discovered that Britain wasted 1.8 billion assets with a B billion pounds sterling, two and a half billion dollars on personal protection equipment at the height of the so-called pandemic that was never used. It's just gone into landfill. In fact, it's rotting somewhere on a building site in Hampshire. Absolutely ridiculous stuff. Pretty, pretty incredible how the Tory party is an absolute freefall, Basil, because as we've remarked many times on this program, in terms of its knack for survival is sort of indestructible, organic political organism, the Tory party, one of the most successful political vehicles, really of the modern era. They've always been able to pull out some Machiavellian card at any moment to sort of rescue their poor fortunes. But are they really down and out right now? Well, it's starting to look like it. You know, people always say when voters get into the polling booth and are forced to place their ex, you know, somewhere, then they revert to the ruling party and they all better the devil, you know, but a survey published this morning by UGov of attitudes in different European countries. Britain had the highest four out of five people saying they're basically unhappy with the way the country is being around that figure mirrors other polls which show 80% dissatisfaction amongst the electorate. And yet the corporate media in Britain have been very quick to corral everybody to sheepdog everyone into the two horse race, presenting them purely with the options of Sunac, whose unpopularity is almost legendary status now is totally underwater. And Starmer, who isn't much better. I think increasingly that the date of the election may have been influenced considerably by the success of George Galloway in the February by election and not only Galloway success, but the fact that a non politician, a local garage owner who ran as an independent came second. He got more votes than labor and conservative combined. Now, there are a lot of independence running in this general election, but they don't get any of the national television or press publicity that the major parties get. It is effectively a closed shot. So while people like Pippa Bartolotti was on TNT yesterday and Debbie Hicks, who's running in Swindon North, who will be on tomorrow morning, while they get terrific support on the ground and on the doorstep. And while the policies that they propose may be far more popular than the ones of the two main parties, unfortunately, people are being browbeat and into submission by corporate media. And Starmer is going to be the next prime minister a week on Thursday. Depressing thought. It's like you can see the the media are coming. And there's nothing to to stop the impact. You've got a arch globalist, a Zionist, a pro war enthusiast, a Russia hater, probably will be a China hater within time. So we basically got Tony Blair on steroids. This is like new labor 2.0. I feel it absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Tony Blair without the charisma. Simple as that. Blair is in Starmer's kitchen cabinet. He relies on him heavily for advice apparently. The Labor Party is totally unrecognizable from what it was five years ago. And that's for the worst. The membership has dropped. It became the single largest political organization in Europe under Jeremy Corbyn, with half a million members. And three quarters of them have now let yet Starmer is somehow claiming that the Labor Party has been improved. They've dropped the commitment to renationalize the waterboard. So we're all swimming in sewage and are likely to continue to do so. All that Labor is really offering to do is manage neoliberalism better than the Tories did. They're not offering anything new at all. Certainly not on foreign policy, which simply isn't being discussed. I mean, half a million NATO troops on the move in Northern Europe. And we don't hear a word about anything to do with Ukraine or the Middle East and the genocide for that matter from the politicians on that note. I want to add that the Guardian Health Ministry says that at least 32 people have been killed today and fully Lazarini, the UN end voices. Ten children in Gaza are losing one or both of their legs every day. I'd like to know what Kia Starmer has to say about that. Oh, he'll say, well, that's a terrible tragedy. But we must be resolute in our support to our great ally and friend Israel and allow them to continue to continue this genocide as long as they feel it's necessary. And let's give them all the support we possibly can. And we need to defeat the Russians in Ukraine because, you know, Ukraine is the bastion of European democracy. And if we don't protect them, then we're going to have a Putin authoritarianism sweeping through Europe in a blitzkrieg and knocking on the door of the English Channel. It's World War Two all over again. It's the Sudetenland all over again. That's what I feel is coming with with Starmer. And by the way, if there's any any whiff of any potential pandemic candidate virus on the loose, you know, Kia Starmer is going to be head first all in with total lockdowns and total fear mongering in hysteria, because he absolutely he was in his element during the whole fake pandemic, Basil. Oh, absolutely. I mean, I've long since had my doubts about who his ultimate paymaster is, shall we say, but I don't want to finish the segment without going back to Gaza, the Secretary General of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent societies said the food crisis in the coastal enclave has reached a critical point. Many people are already facing severe food insecurity and the situation worse since each day. Children are especially affected with many suffering from malnutrition that according to Jagan Chapagian. What I want to know is what happened to that floating bridge? Isn't that supposed to have solved all Gaza's problems by now? It's it's floating. It's floating along the coast in pieces. Last time I checked. Yeah, no, that didn't work too well. It was very good for getting military equipment and black ops personnel and so forth into Gaza. It was very good for that. But for the for the aid in the humanitarian support that they promised, not so not so good, not so good. It's a disaster, especially for the people living in the nursery refugee camp, Basil Valentine political editor at TNT really appreciates you joining us. Thank you, Patrick. Great analysis is always from TNT's political editor Basil Valentine top their news headlines coming up. We'll be back in just a moment. A lot of Middle East stuff.
