“I think Bitcoin has had similar problems when it comes to demonization,” said Gabriel Shipton, a film producer and staunch defender of his brother Julian Assange.
After a 14-year long legal battle, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange returned to Australia in June 2024 after reaching a deal that guaranteed his freedom but required him to plead guilty to violating US espionage law .
Shipton was present the Plan B Lugano conference with Assange’s wife and human rights defender Stella Assange and John Shipton, Assange’s father, who has been at the forefront of defending his son’s freedom as an advisor to the Assange campaign .
“Julian has been demonized in the press for many, many years, and that’s a narrative that we, as advocates of the game, have had to unravel,” Gabriel said.
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What did it take to free Assange? More than 30 million dollars and the Bitcoin community!
Assange’s father, John, acknowledged the contribution of Bitcoin and said that “using Bitcoin to keep publishing, to stay online, to make WikiLeaks completely uncensorable, and to have this uncensorable money combined with the architecture of the Internet which made the website uncensorable, is a testament to the power of Bitcoin and the power of Bitcoin to give us this personal freedom of transaction.
"What it took to free Julian!" featuring @Stella_Assange, @GabrielShipton and John Shipton. Moderated by @natbrunell. A powerful discussion not to be missed!#PlanBForum #FreeAssange pic.twitter.com/sYsDUgwVWB
– Plan Lugano ₿ (@LuganoPlanB) October 25, 2024
"What it took to free Julian!" featuring Addressing the room full of attendees, Gabriel said: “Everyone here understands the outsized contribution of the Bitcoin community and the broader crypto community in funding Julian’s freedom. »
“I think what the Bitcoin community and the broader crypto community really felt was that this was a very expensive exercise: getting Julian for free,” Gabiel said. “I think we’re still tallying everything up, and up to $30 million was spent on campaign costs and legal fees alone.”
It was a global campaign. “Tens of thousands of individual donations as well as large donations from very wealthy Bitcoin owners and very wealthy people in the crypto community have come in, who have really put their money where their mouth is when it comes to this which they defend in terms of freedom of expression and the general freedom to be able to say what you want, like what Julian represented: freedom of information.
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Has the United States essentially criminalized journalism?
“Unfortunately, there has always been cowardice in journalism,” Stella said. “And there have also always been courageous journalists, generally individual, sometimes working in difficult conditions within their editorial offices, where editors try to have them closed, etc. And what Julian and WikiLeaks were able to do was break that kind of existing mold and do journalism in a different way. »
“There was a distaste for the prosecution of Julian Assange within the US administration,” Stella insisted.
Julian Assange was first arrested in 2010, just seven days after WikiLeaks began publishing data. He was arrested in the United Kingdom.
“He wasn’t officially charged with anything until he was forcibly kidnapped, essentially, from the Ecuadorian embassy in April 2019. And then the reality of what was happening in the background became public, in view of all. The United States indicted him and, after about a month, indicted him on 17 counts,” Stella Assange said.
“The case should have been dismissed from the start, but the UK, of course, essentially facilitated this extradition,” Stella added. “Subsequently, the Wall Street Journal published a behind-the-scenes article about reaching a plea deal.”
After pleading “guilty to journalism,” Assange chose freedom. “But at the expense of justice,” Stella said.
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