Gabriel Shipton & Stellar Magnet: AssangeDAO – The NFT Funding the Julian Assange Case #432

Transcript

welcome to epicenter the show which talks about the technologies projects and people driving decentralization and the blockchain revolution i'm friedrich ernst today we're speaking with gabriel chipton and stella magnan who are involved in the assange dao and before we talk with them let me talk about our sponsors today are your crypto assets sitting idle in your wallet start earning rewards and contribute to network security by staking with course one is taking providers securing 5 billion in assets on over 25 decentralized networks including solana cosmos and ethereum chorus 1 recently airdropped over 3 600 exclusive nfts to solana delegates

according to their delegation profile in december 2021. the nfts are also available on the secondary market on platforms like magic eden if you missed out on this airdrop don't worry you can still participate in the upcoming airdrops for cosmos chains by simply delegating to course 1 nodes and are you interested in running your own branded node the manage white label node as a service offering leverages course one's highly available in proven infrastructure and enabling you to participate directly in decentralized networks head over to corals.one to start your staking journey our other sponsor is power swap and paraswap is a dex aggregator on ethereum you can get the best market price as they have the fastest and cheapest liquidity they just launched their version five which has a new contract

and new apis and is pretty guest friendly and they recently added support for avalanche polygon and bsc um as well as phantom you can use periswab directly from your legend let your life in addition to that they are also becoming a dow so if you have the psp tokens that's something you can participate in go check it out at paraswap.io gabriel and seller um thank you so much for coming on um we're here to talk about um the assange court case and um the wikileaks backstory and the assange dao today um but briefly could you two introduce yourselves let's see i

have been in the dow ecosystem since about 2017 contributed to projects like molok dao giveth bright id and aragon and i've also been a product manager and ux designer since about 2008 um that's like a brief introduction um one of my main projects right now is called black sky network and don't really need to talk about that that much right now because that's not the focus of this podcast and i'm gabriel shipton i'm a film producer and julian assange's brother i've been advocating for julian publicly for about three years now you know across across the world in the

us and europe as well as australia cool thank you guys for coming on so let's talk about the backstory to the assange trial and the entire dow coming into existence um first so um julian um founded wikileaks a platform where whistleblowers could anonymously drop information what was the service that wikileaks provided um because in principle i mean did they fact check did they publicize or how did they how did they serve the whistleblowers you know wikileaks they so they used i guess cryptography and tor to go and

combine those together to make the anonymous dropbox uh so that um these mass leaks uh could be you know submitted anonymously then they would um use their network to check the you know check to verify uh the leaks and then they would uh publish them uh they started in 2006 and you know they've got a perfect record so uh they became became a magnet for basically because it's uh it's very difficult to actually stay anonymous right so basically when when you intend to um publicize large amounts of data staying anonymous is a major concern so basically they kind of inserted

themselves as a buffer yes and they were censorship you know they were totally censorship resistant as well so um you know their their legal setup allowed them to uh carry on you know keep keep their servers up and carry on publishing uh under under any circumstance basically did they also fact check or did they did they self-censor some of the information that was selected that was transmitted to them uh i don't think so no but and they did fact check yeah so they've like i said they've got this perfect they've got this perfect record where um nothing has been uh proved to be fake or or or any of the documents have found to be fake so yeah they were fact checking and making sure that everything was

everything that they published on on the wikileaks website was you know true to that source and yeah it was original source documents that were published okay and um so julian started this um this undertaking obviously there were lots of other people um involved um can you briefly talk about um the sort of leaks that um brought julian into the crosshairs of law enforcement yeah well i guess i can talk about it and maybe from a uh my personal perspective so when you know wikileaks started um you know we sort of i looked watched it grow curiously you know they had um things about the church

of scientology different sort of leaks like that originally uh and so you know it was interesting and and and you know watching it form uh but the first time that uh the first time that i became you know really saw the power of wikileaks was when um julian published some documents from kenya a report in kenya that led to a led to a change of government and that's that was the first time when um you know we when i started hearing that you know some people who julian uh had worked with you know were turned up dead and things like that so that that was the first time that really you know this is something that uh is

confronting power is making power the power structure is afraid uh so afraid that they will you know act out and do something so that that is the first time around that time when when wikileaks sort of uh you know confronted that sort of resistance i think so i mean there's different sorts of resistance right so basically there's resistance from what we would see as illegitimate actors and then there's resistance from legitimate actors or people we think ought to be legitimate actors so basically western democratic governments i mean if if you're in the crosshairs for something where the democratic record is less than

stellar um that that's um that's maybe not completely surprising um but julian actually also made it into the crosshairs of the american administration um through the the um uh the leak um from children right that's right so the afghan war diaries the the afghan war diaries the iraq war logs uh the cable set of diplomatic cables um and also the guantanamo bay detainee files so since it was basically after after that was published um you know months later that's when all these uh attacks started

on julian you know the uh allegations in sweden uh he was trapped in the uk so shortly after that uh publishing those leaks is uh when you know these larger forces or um you know what we could you know i guess i don't really consider them to be uh you know law-abiding governments but most people do uh that's when they started really ramping up their attacks on julian and and you know limiting his freedom so he was invited to the uk by the guardian and and he's been trapped there ever since you know like uh so he left sweden um and he was invited to the uk and uh that's when he was an interpol red

notice was issued and he was um arrested and yeah he's he's been stuck in england ever since now he's in prison just outside of london why do you think it was only julian because i mean basically there's a number of people involved with wikileaks right yes that's right i think you know in the beginning julian um you know he was he became the lightning rod for to sort of protect the other people so uh you know in the beginning it was a bit of that um but then you know as his profile grew and grew then uh you know he he he was he became the lightning rod i mean you know support for these sort of um regulatory

attacks that have been coming at him uh for the past 11 years but there are the other people in wikileaks the other wikileaks people have been investigated spied on by the cia you know andy muller-mcgann that was confirmed that he was spied on by the cia that was confirmed by 30 sources from within the cia last september in a yahoo news investigation so it's not just julian but he is the most prominent prominent one that is um you know suffering at the moment so what are the charges that are being levied against him well he's he's charged under the i mean you know basically he's charged for

publishing um these chelsea manning leaks that's that's what he's been charged with it's this is charged under the espionage act but if you if you look at the if you look at the indictment it's it's it just sort of outlines well you know he received these leaks and he published them and therefore that's illegal so he's charged 17 counts of the espionage act which carry 170 years in prison and one charge under a computer intrusion which carries five years so a total of 175 years uh maximum sentence um the it was brought under the trump administration so this indictment was uh obama the obama administration looked

into the intercharging uh julian and they found that they could not charge julian without charging the new york times as well without induction in that and they called that the new york times problem so they uh put the indictment aside and then uh when trump came in in 2017 uh and it was just after uh julian leaked the vault 7 or published the vault 7 leaks which were the cia hacking tools and that's when mike pompeo made this speech and he called wikileaks a non-state hostile intelligence service so what everyone sort of scratched their heads at the time and and it was his first speech as the cia director so it

was um he he focused on wikileaks and he's you know that's a really you know big thing and everyone scratched their head at the time saying like what does this mean what is a non-state hostile intelligence uh service like that that's like a new a new a word and what it actually meant is that the cia could use the same techniques and tools that they use against say uh you know iranian secret service or or the russian fsb or something like that they could then use those on wikileaks without getting congressional approval without um taking it to those sort of checks and balances level so it was uh from that moment onwards that uh

that things really the that you know julian's uh persecution really ramped up there was a time inside the ecuadorian embassy where the ecuadorian government changed and a security guard as the security company that was hired to protect julian uh became a cia asset and they started ramping up surveillance inside the embassy they installed cameras that had listening devices on them they would start taking i remember i went there they take your passport they take your phone they open your phone they take pictures of your ima and everything like that they take pictures of your passport and then when you leave they give it back to you and at that time julian had a jammer so we'd go in and he would put on like a

you know a static jammer when we when we spoke because he knew there were microphones there uh recording because of this hostile environment uh they we then later on there was um some this was all sort of exposed in a spanish court case because some people from the security company uh leaked out that these things were were going on and that the plans were actually worse they were agents who were stealing julian's children's nappies to find their dna just to sort of prove that he was the father they found out that there were plots to poison julian and that there were plots to kidnap julian from the embassy and so then

last september there was this investigation by yahoo news by these three reporters and the all these claims were confirmed by these 30 sources from inside the intelligence committee uh they were confirmed that there were plots within the cia to murder julian uh plots to kidnap him and in fact the plots to kidnap him became before the indictment so the cia went to the white house with this plot to kidnap julian and the doj said well what are you going to do with him like you're going to kidnap him we can't put him in guantanamo like what are you going to do when he what are you going to do with him when you get us here let us do the indictment first and then we can get him out and so

that's what kicked off this this current indictment and that was back in 2017 and uh you know that's when we saw things ramp up in the embassy and the plan to get julian out of the embassy really uh ramped up and there was this it's a uh it's actually uh it's called uh what's the code name it's like uh pelican i think something pelican it was actually um a codenamed um operation by uh by the british british intelligence to get julian out of the embassy and uh along with the ecuadorians so the the british government uh conspired with the ecuadorian government to uh eject uh julian out of the ecuadorian embassy so

it's almost like a you know they've came up with this plot to kidnap him but they turned it into a judicial kidnapping and that's what we're seeing now julian's still uh you know being held hostage basically uh in belmarsh prison and uh yeah that's the that's the sort of story of how he's gotten there uh at the moment why why are the things that he did not covered um by uh the first amendment rights i mean so basically free speech and freedom of the press is something that the u.s have historically held up really high yeah that's true and i think it you know i think there's a lot of you know resistance to the case actually going to

the u.s because it would really test this out and it would be very publicly unpopular uh to have this you know the prosecution of a publisher in accord in the us so uh what's what what's happening at the moment it's like this continuation of this judicial kidnapping is that there is a very very weak extradition agreement that was put in place in the uk after after 9 11 so that they you know the idea being you know we can come in and just grab whoever we want and take take terrorists and and try them in the u.s so that weak extradition agreement has been exploited by the doj in order to keep julian uh in prison in the uk

and one thing about the uk it's its journalism laws aren't uh as strong as the us uh and i think you know after you know we've seen you know after the snowden leaks you know uh mi6 agents going into the guardian and smashing up computers um they have the d notice uh board where that that as basically the intelligence community sits down with all the editors of the newspapers and says you know they work out what to publish so uh the uk press is is the press rights are non-existent basically so uh that's that's why he's sort of been kept there through these uh through

these extradition laws and and just sort of letting it run on because every you know the the idea is to keep him in prison to show everybody that uh if you publish this information this is what's gonna happen to you we'll move you from place to place and we'll exploit these laws and we'll exploit the court systems uh to keep you in prison to keep you uh locked up until you either die uh you know it'll be until you die except that's it that's pretty dire so why do you think the trump administration at the time kind of why do you think um they made this distinction between bringing charges against julian and wikileaks and

the new york times is it because um bringing charges against the new york times would not carry popular support and basically they can do they can kind of paint julian and wikileaks as this broke organization yes so there's a you know a 10 year long propaganda campaign to sort of destroy julian and wikileaks as reputation and so what that created was a political situation in the u.s where uh it was um you know it was it was okay people thought oh this person is you know this person uh say one of the one of the um one of the ones that's most worrying at the moment

and and stops a lot of people from supporting julian is that they think he got trump elected so this narrative is pushed into the into the democratic party and into the democratic voters that julian got trump elected julian got trump elected and so uh they believe you know well he's our political opponent so we don't actually mind if he's uh if he's been uh you know if his rights are abused you know it's convenient to us it's convenient to our uh political situation so i think that's that's this sort of uh you know this these narratives that are created in order for this uh to happen and but and so he julian's political julian's constituency has been taken away from him by all these media this

propaganda campaign uh over the years and um whereas the new york times they are you know aligned with the democratic party so they have the the protection of the democratic party you know when it comes to that those sort of stuff so you see things like um you know requests for uh access to reporters emails that came under the trump doj you see when when when it changes to the biden doj merrick garland the current doj goes in and says oh we're not going to do that anymore you know because we're we're the democrats now we're going to go after project veritas which is a right-wing newspaper so it's you know as long as you've got one side uh you're okay but if you're actually you know if you want

to communicate the truth to everybody without a political allegiance uh then you're in a very difficult uh position because when they come after you uh you know you're uh you're vulnerable to attack from each side i mean it's also the core of civil liberties that everyone has allowed them right so basically you can't just go after the people who say things um that you don't agree with let's talk about um the administration change so i mean obviously um the charges were first brought by the trump administration and now it's the biden administration so does this does this change things because as you said earlier the obama administration had decided that the charges were too weak

to bring so shouldn't that kind of inform what's happening now yeah i mean that's what you would expect um you know like we went to the u.s last january to try and lobby the incoming administration um because we sort of yeah we we you know had some hope that you know when they came in that they would uh wind this um wind this back but uh they there was some promising signs like i said like they've uh uh they withdrew those um subpoenas for the new york times journalists uh emails and things like that they even amended the um uh the computer fraud and abuse act as well so that uh you know what they had charged with what they had charged aaron

schwartz with was potentially uh now not possible uh so there were some promising signs uh from the administration but uh not uh on julian's case so it it they sort of have doubled down on it now and then they're pushing it uh they're pushing it forward you know they're appealing to the highest level uh you know they appeal to the high court where they won and the extradition was ordered and now julian's just submitted his application to appeal to the supreme court he has submitted that on the 7th which is when the nft auction was launched so that is the sort of next step in the supreme court but i don't you know there are some

uh you know the biden administration i don't really um think that they're gonna do do anything without any sort of major political costs you know there has to be a you know sort of there has to be some political pressure on them uh for them to to drop this case so basically looking at last year i mean there were extradition proceedings in the uk um and then basically in the in january um the judge ruled that um assange could not be extracted to the united states because of concerns about um mental health and risk of suicide in in the u.s prison um and then basically the u.s appeared i

mean that's a very active act right so basically this is something that where basically if you're handed if you're handed a court case um and you don't really agree with it in the first place and then you then you lose um um then basically deciding to appeal this is very active i mean they could have decided to not appear this i mean it would have been an easy way out right so basically if you don't really agree with the case yeah but i don't i think you know they're scared of julian they're they're afraid of um you know being exposed uh you know julian invented or you know the julian and wikileaks invented this system uh that was a magnet for leakers you know

these huge data sets uh and what we see now is you know that these sort of uh these things that that have been created by a cypherpunk have been co-opted by by the institutions that uh julian you know was fighting against so you know you have the new york times has an anonymous drop box you have like washington post has an enormous drop box but like you can submit anonymously but then it just goes into the same filter like you know it's it's you know it's really they've sort of co-opted co-opted the wikileaks model and um turned it into their sort of part of their institutional power system that they've been running for years and years so yeah

but yeah but yeah and i think there's they're just very scared of it and uh you know i you know they want him dead basically you know that's the crust that they want him dead so in this appear um on december 10th um the judge actually sided with um the us um and this was and basically said that julian could be extradited um this is now being basically there's an appeal hearing at the supreme court um in the uk the uk supreme court um so what's the course of action now in terms of legal recourse yeah so the supreme court appeal will

come up uh well so julian's applied to the supreme court for uh permission to appeal uh he'll probably we'll probably find that out i guess an appeal might be heard before the summer and if that appeals rejected then you know he could potentially be extradited uh he could appeal to the european court of human rights but the uk is sort of you know trying to pull back from from from that um and then there's potential for a cross appeal to the lower uh to uh to cross appeal to the lower court's rulings on all the substantive press freedom grounds uh so that so there's potential for that court uh for those proceedings to happen but i you know in my opinion um i think a sort

of extradition is is like very likely highly likely uh that he'll be extradited sooner than sooner than we think but that the decision on 10th of december really kicked off um when the extradition was ordered there was this like global outrage uh around the world that that was um you know started that you know we saw so much sort of people became really angry and and uh there was some a few then we saw that ross dow had just just uh come about and it was and everyone saw how successful that was and they you know bought the the ross's first snft collection and it was this sort of global outrage that kicked off some

calls so people on twitter were calling oh what about a free assange dao or whatever about assange dao and uh you know uh one of our multi-six signers mckenna posted a tweet and then harry halpen who's uh ceo of nim he you know reposted a tweet saying this is a great idea and uh i'd been talking to stella about dowse you know a couple of months before and you know it all just started to move so quickly after that everyone sort of came together uh into a telegram group and yeah that was in december 10 and now we have uh you know now there's a thriving community of ten thousand people who are in free assange tower cool yeah let's talk about um the

assange now so um there was um people who could could contribute east to the assange down right and um uh the dow collected i believe 1600 500 16 500 so that's 50 million dollars um and then uh that was spent on an nft by pac with um the understanding that the money would go to a foundation the wow holland foundation can you tell us about the entire um what happened and why did it happen whenever the dow was starting to form on december 10th of last year many people were joining the telegram group and

mentioning nfts as a way for the assange dao to form and this was because december 10th was actually shortly after the success of the free rostow so we wanted to emulate that successful use case as much as possible so gabriel had also joined the telegram group around that time and he mentioned that there was there was indeed an nft in the works from the julian assange side but the details uh weren't fully revealed yet as far as when that would be launched or what that would look like okay so um can you describe the the nft

that was actually bought so the nft is a collaboration between assange and pock called clock and it displays in words the number of days that assange has been in belmar prison so basically every day the clock updates counting up the number of days and whenever he gets released the clock will go to zero this mechanism is also tied to an open edition of vanguard nfts that pac allowed people to mint for free when the auction was underway where people can type in a message and it and it looks censored on the nft like there's a

line going across it going across the message but also all of these nfts that people are minted they're locked in their wallets and as soon as julian assange becomes free they'll unlock and they'll become uncensored and by becomes free you mean leaves bear marsh because those are not the same thing right it you know it's dynamic but in multiple ways so um yeah as julian's situation changes i i believe that uh that the clock will change um and but if julian will i think one of those ones that we know about is that if julian walks three free you know is released and is free

actually free that the clock will turn to zero so i guess it's a you know i think you know what's interesting about it is you've got i think 29 i think there was almost 30 000 people who um who minted one of the open edition so they've all linked all these open editions that people have they're all stuck in their wallets they're all sort of being censored they're all not free right so this concept that um you know all these people have this julian puck nft but they uh are they're linked to julian's freedom so it's this interesting sort of interplay i guess with with people and i guess one of the ideas would be that you know it motivates them to

you know advocate for julian's freedom or do something for julian's freedom because uh you know their nft is tied to that if they want to trade it i guess so the the entire um sum that the dow raised um sixteen and a half thousand keith was bid on this nft right so basically the second highest bidder um is uh was jesse powell from from kraken uh you can he he did it with his uh ether dress so basically it was very obvious why did the dow decide or why do you think the dow decided to outbid him by like 11 000 eth because i mean in principle the dao could have also just kept those east whoever their disposal right

yes yeah so uh this was there was a very it was a lot of um debate within the dao about within the sort of core group about this uh this you know this strategy uh that we used and there was uh so yeah it was a hotly debated strategy uh but you know this this is the sort of uh the path that was chosen in the end you know we had some some in the some in the group has supported some who didn't and and this is the sort of uh way we way we went in within the dow structure there is uh um you know some representatives from yeah some representatives from julian's family uh and and uh we sort of

uh we were the sort of you know deciding vote basically between the between the the two group the two groups in the core who were uh going either way and so we went with uh the tried and tested uh well holland foundation who um uh you know have been supporting julian and his legal fees uh for for a long time uh who have um you know been resist you know resisted uh you know these regulatory attacks before uh so so it was a pathway that was um yeah tested pathway to get this money to where it needs to be as soon as possible so um what what were the arguments

um against that course of action well i think uh so the arguments against were um you know that with that the dow could uh use this treasury um and potentially you know uh you know put put it through its governance structure and create a sort of uh a dow model that would have been um you know more sustainable the dao still has some treasury there will be i think five percent left in the dow for dao operations uh that would that would be the jbx yeah yeah they'll be like the jbx tokens that that we we're going to uh the dow will apply to

uh get back but yeah i think that that was you know the the arguments were against against where well we could we have this dow structure here you know let's let's use it and and uh you know use the treasury and put it through the dow structure so that was the arguments for maybe let's let's let's go to the future of the dao in a second but basically just to kind of close this line of uh increase so basically the the the 50 million they kind of went to park with the understanding that he would um they would uh uh that they would give them to the holland um foundation yes yeah yeah so that's the the pathway

there and it's a it's also it's a julian collaborate so it's a collaboration so it's a julian's julian's first nft as well so uh you know that's uh a good good thing to spend the money on this you know if julian feels like he's going to do other nfts as well okay and i'm i mean the wow holland foundation this is a german foundation right so in principle you can actually give to the wow holland foundation and everything that you give is tax deductible what were their thoughts of just um having a public call to um to ask people to give to the well holland foundation on julian's behalf because obviously doing things tax-free

is always an additional incentive right yeah i mean with i've been sort of tr you know i've been advocating uh you know in the crypto community for um you know almost uh you know almost two years now and it's uh people that this it's very hard to get people to part with their uh their crypto if you're just asking for a donation you know you have to offer they all want some value so you can offer them you know uh an nft uh or something like that so i think that that was the the catalyst and the sort of pathway like following on from rostow and seeing how successful they were uh that you know we coincide the dow

launch uh with the nft sale and it really just um you know blows things up you know like it just it just makes everything uh bigger and i think you know we've seen there's been worldwide news now like you know on the nft cell all around the world which i don't think would have happened otherwise um you know it's been reported all over the world reuters put out a report and it's just picked up and it's been taking you know it's in mexico in the us all over the place uh people reporting on a positive story about uh julian with a different narrative uh you know about how many people are supporting him how much money he's able to raise so getting that positive message uh you know about julian's cause and the people who are

supporting him is uh you know it's in like every single most most publications around the world is uh you can't really buy that you know you can't buy that so that's one of the great things about about the um you know the nft purchase and the dow's race so what's going to happen with the nft now that it belongs to the dao the dao has to decide what happens with it essentially understand there's no set course of action but um what are the options that the dao is considering well i believe that the main option the community is talking about is the potential fractionalization of the nft but for that to happen there would have

to be a proposal put through and approved by the justice token holders and uh justice is the token of the assange doubt i understand that basically for every eth contributed you got a million justice tokens right and um in principle they are tradeable on the open market so you can actually trade them on uni swap or wherever you want what are the plans um for the holders of the justice token so basically what are the plans for for the dao in principle what do you think is in its future do you think it's it's like it's it's a one-time thing which is basically it's it's a kind of a gofundme crossed with an nft so as to get media attention um or do you think the the assange dao is

gonna make it into the future and kind of find um find and find a mission with um their justice tokens kind of like um i'm sure you guys are familiar with constitution doubt right i don't think the dao has necessarily ended right now but let me just explain a bit what gabriel was mentioning before as far as these jbx tokens so assange dial used juicebox as a platform to raise its funds but juicebox took five percent of all the ethereum raised which is about 2.5 million usd worth uh but what they did was give the dow their juicebox aka jbx tokens in

exchange for taking this eth so right now there's a proposal under review in the juicebox dow to upgrade their jbx eth bonding curve from 70 to 95 meaning that if this proposal is approved assange dial will be able to exchange the jbx tokens into juicebox's bonding curve and get back 95 percent of this five percent each fee that juice box took which is still you know close to 2.5 million so then this will give the assange dao a bit of a treasury to work with beyond uh

just the jbx tokens which do not have that much liquidity so that's one of the steps that needs to be taken and then the other major step though is really formalizing the governance processes and governance model of the dao so the justice holders need to vote in and approve the dao's governance model and also formulate potential governance models so that has not happened yet asanja is going to open up a snapshot space and start to enable justice governance though so those are the next steps basically solidifying the governance model but at

the same time in the dao's mission you know there are very clear constraints on the website as far as what assange dao's primary focus should be essentially freeing and liberating assange but right now there are you know many people joining the community and sometimes they you know bring up software ideas or becoming a more generic dao for justice but it is called assange dao so i believe that it's important um you know i i believe it's personally important for the mission to be highly specific to julian assange you know in my opinion but essentially

justice holders need to vote and and approve on like make sure that everyone is aligned with a common mission are there considerations of kind of becoming a decentralized freedom of the press foundation or decentralized wikileaks so there are definitely many people in the community that have brought up that idea or want that to be a focus of assange dao i personally don't think it makes sense as far as that being a project that assanged out incubates but i do believe in general that it is a worthy idea to fund but it's better off being funded by

creating a more focused free software dow but you know that's my opinion other than kind of fund julian assange's um legal uh costs which is which i understand um should be more or less taken care of with um the the money that's that's going to wow holland so i mean i uh fortunately i have never had to face trial anywhere particularly in the us but i mean i can't imagine that um i mean even um that i mean the legal proceedings are going to be more than like 15 or 20 million right i mean that should be ample money for the defense right yeah i don't know i mean

yeah i guess if you look at like some of the for some of the stratfor emails and and it says uh you know move him from remove him from um place to place and and have him involved in endless uh you know legal cases for the next 30 years so if you divide that amount by 30 years of legal it's it's you know it doesn't really at the end of that it's not you're not left with that much you know if you're talking about um you know going to the supreme court in the us or or other places like that it's very very costly and uh in the in the us as well you'll have to run a we will have to run a dual campaign like lobbying uh and all that sort of stuff because this is a political case right it's not uh the courts uh provide this veil of

legality uh for people so that so that's so that it allows allows a whole section of society to switch off and and say oh the court's doing their job you know he'll be he'll get the benefit of justice his rights are okay but really it's just another arm of the state so it's really a political case it has to be won politically as well but you still need the best lawyers because if they make a mistake then um you know it can't really wind it back so you know in terms of uh is it is it enough funds i think you know we could easily uh spend more than that on a case like this this is very much a political case right

so basically winning it in the arena of uh public relations is probably the way to go i would assume as someone who wants to be re-elected you make sure a widely unpopular case is dropped um against if it seemed like a big injustice so basically what what what are the plans for um assange from the people within the dao who want who wanted to stay um centered on assange as a person well the dow is still in a nascent phase so there is not necessarily any clear or strategic plans that have been fully formulated yet

the current phase is really about seeing what emerges from the community and then the dow can start acting on ideas after it has a treasury of eat that it will get back from juice box what we achieved so far like what the dao has achieved so far has been you know absolutely like it's it's history you know like i think correct me if i'm wrong elder we i mean stella we started forming it like two three weeks ago right like like literally we were sort of in a holding pattern the group the dow group was in a holding pattern and then you know we had the nft auction date and then we everyone just like dropped everything and literally i think most of us haven't slept

for three weeks um and and this is the sort of we're we're all still sort of coming down now i don't know i think i've aged like two years or something in three weeks yeah basically as soon as the date uh of the pack and assange nft auction was announced there was not that much time and there's so much to do and it was so very very intense for sure yeah i can imagine that it must have been a mad scramble so do i understand this correctly that um gabriel um you and the rest of the family kind of brought back to the table yeah julian was thinking about an nft after you know obviously uh snowden had

a wildly successful nft uh you know all the proceeds of that went to the freedom of the press foundation which he's the chairman of and it was you know wildly successful and after that we started uh you know julian started thinking about an nft you know who would be good to collaborate with and that's when we you know looked at looked at a range of looked at a range of artists and um yeah spoke to pack and he was well they were um you know they had some ideas and that you know it sort of just went from there and that was i think we that was back in may so there was there's been a lot of

schedule wrangling like julian is obviously going through court proceedings and uh puck has a sort of schedule of releases so uh we eventually settled on the 7th of 7th of february yeah super super interesting um so where can people come to kind of find out more about assange down also probably shape the future of the organization right so you can learn more by going to the assange dao website assangedaw.org the forum is the best place right now to participate in discussions and that is at forum.assanjow.org

and that's basically where the future of the governance will be formed and where people can submit proposals for discussion and you can also follow assange dao on twitter with the at assange dao and oh yeah on the website there's also a link to the sub stack blog as well gabriel have you spoken to your brother since all of this has gone down i haven't spoken to him directly i spoke to his fiance stella and um yeah he's very very moved um you know it's there's not much good news uh for julian um you know over these past years so

uh this sort of thing really makes a difference uh to his mood and and lifts it lifts everyone around the world it really lifts every single support network whether they're street activists whether they're uh you know podcasters who are on side whether they're you know at the 10 000 strong community that are in the dow like you know this has been a super successful uh initiative you know raised more than anyone else ever and so i think everyone around the world all the supporters all the activists are sort of lifted by this they can see you know the tide is changing and and and i think that's what we're feeling and i think that's what julian feels

if people want to get involved in a non-dow way what are the best ways to contribute uh you there's there's depending where you are there's a few different websites that don't extradite uh assange or is is um the big one in the uk um assange defense.org is in the us um but yeah that you know get on there's like facebook groups twitter twitter groups that are all the different um activists around the world there's like there's so many activist groups um that that there literally is anywhere you go there is an assange support activist group so yeah get get involved with them um i think one of the main things is talking to your neighbors talking to your friends about it

uh you know if you're a if you're updating them and getting them to support the case and telling them the real story about what's going on and not what it's not like what they read in the media or what they're exposed to you know on the television or whatever um yeah so give them the give them the actual news how much value is then reaching out to your political representatives because it is at its core a political case right yeah and uh yes so that that that works as well that's that's very successful if you um you know like i in my in my lecture at home i if i i see the mp on the street i go up to him and go hey what are you doing

you know what are you doing about assange like you know you got to do something i think that's you know if you're confronting them on the street they can't hide they can't hide from you so i think that's one really good way uh localized petitions uh are really good so if you're you know in your local area and you have a representative get together people and do a localized petition submit them to your representative there are groups of of parliamentarians in most like france has a group of 49 parliamentarians who support assange britain has 26 australia has a group of 28 in greece there's a hundred a third of the parliament uh is in assange support group so encouraging uh parliamentarians

to join these groups is is a very important part as well and something that every normal person can do because they need our votes cool thank you both for coming on this was super interesting thanks