029 | The Trust Fall: Julian Assange, Wikileaks and Free Speech | Kym Staton

The Open Forum Podcast

This time I speak with Kym Staton, Award winning film director having started with Films for Change, a way to host, promote and distribute documentaries the globe over. We're going to be discussing the documentary he has made - The Trust Fall - Julian Assange and the implications the Assange trial has for press freedoms, global freedom of speech & democracy at large, or the glaring indictment against democracy.

At the end of this episode I play the collateral murder video for posterity.
00:00 Intro
00:41 The Trust Fall documentary Trailer
04:05 Why did you decide to make the documentary?
09:50 Why did Julian go into exile in the Ecuadorian embassy for 7 years
10:45 Julian is constantly accused of r@pe, what really happened with the Sweden case?
13:40 Did Julian's journalism put any lives at risk? Did he redact names?
17:05 "The Big Lie"
18:55 Wikileaks being debanked, but criminals not.
21:30 How much more info would we have with Ukraine & Gaza if Julian was still free to disseminate info?
23:16 What does this say about the state of Journalism as a whole?
27:16 Why do we have so few whistleblowers?
32:00 What are they charging him with in the Espionage act?
33:30 The erosion of our free speech over the centuries
39:15 How is it they're giving Assange a "slow death" through his imprisonment and mental torture?
43:30 Why is there so much unawareness on a societal level?
51:00 parallels between Julian Assange and Alexei Navalny
53:40 Why haven't the UK just handed him over anyhow?
53:50 What is the Collateral Murder video?
01:01:10 Where can people watch The Trust Fall: Julian Assange and how can we get our cinema to show it?
01:07:10 How can people get in touch and find you?

www.TheTrustFall.org
www.filmsforchange.stream

Journalists imprisoned - 779 jailed in 2023.
https://rsf.org/en/779-journalists-were-jailed-2023-547-will-spend-new-year-s-eve-prison

Vault 7 (along with documents, handily available on wikileaks!)
https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/

Nobody harmed due to wikileaks pentagon testimony
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/bradley-manning-sentencing-hearing-pentagon
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/02/wikileaks-us-government-admits-no-one-was-physically-harmed-due-to-publications-on-first-day-of-extradition-trial/

Assange stripped naked and put in isolation
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/06/24/wtti-j24.html
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/01/05/assa-j05.html

Collateral murder
Video
https://collateralmurder.wikileaks.org/
download
https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Collateral_Murder,_5_Apr_2010
Article by the guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/15/all-lies-how-the-us-military-covered-up-gunning-down-two-journalists-in-iraq

CIA Torture from John Kiriakou podcast
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/dont-ever-forget-the-cia-tortured-prisoners-to-death-c787b13a4e88
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2009/08/tort-a25.html
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/
Daniel Elsberg/Pentagon papers
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57341592
029 | The Trust Fall: Julian Assange, Wikileaks and Free Speech | Kym Staton