Julian Assange finally free!

full version at cointribune

End of the ordeal for Julian Assange. The Wikileaks founder has reunited with his loved ones after 12 long years of confinement in London.

Free Assange

The 52-year-old journalist admitted to participating in a “conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information”. It goes without saying that the heir of Mandela doesn’t believe a word of it and his sacrifice will remain a long-time source of inspiration.

The agreement reached with the American authorities is expected to be ratified this Wednesday by a US federal court. There is a high chance that he will be released as he has already served 1901 days of confinement. Julian Assange has been languishing in Belmarsh prison for five years. And this after already enduring seven years locked in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

His crime? Doing his job as a journalist by disclosing documents revealing the war crimes of the US army in Iraq. These revelations were relayed via WikiLeaks, an organization Julian Assange founded in 2006.

Wikileaks offers a platform to whistleblowers by hosting classified documents (leaks). Several million documents shedding light on corruption scandals, espionage, and human rights violations have been uploaded since its inception.

The United States targeted Julian Assange after the leak of diplomatic cables on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Some may remember the Collateral murder video in which an Apache helicopter opens fire on Iraqi civilians, including two reporters, Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldin:

Wikileaks and Bitcoin

One of the last messages from Satoshi Nakamato was to Wikileaks, which, betrayed by Paypal, intended to use bitcoin to continue receiving donations.

“The project must grow gradually so that the software has time to strengthen. I ask WikiLeaks not to use Bitcoin. The small Bitcoin community is still in its early stages. You wouldn’t get more than pocket money. The attention you bring could destroy us”, he wrote in 2010.

“It would have been better to attract attention in another way. WikiLeaks has kicked the hornet’s nest and the swarm is heading towards us”, he later added.

Message received by Wikileaks who waited until June 14, 2011, to post a bitcoin address. At the time, WikiLeaks had its Paypal account frozen by order of the US government. Amazon, which hosted its content, eventually also dropped WikiLeaks.

It was then the turn of Julian Assange’s personal bank account (Swiss bank PostFinance) to be frozen. MasterCard and Visa also ceased processing transactions affiliated with WikiLeaks.

In the absence of alternatives, WikiLeaks and bitcoin ended up growing hand in hand, both rooted in the cypherpunk community. This alliance allowed them to continue their work with revelations such as Guantanamo Bay files, Spy Files, Global Intelligence Files, NSA spying, Macron email leak, etc.

We might never have heard of these scandals without bitcoin. WikiLeaks saved an emerging bitcoin community from excessive political pressure. In turn, Bitcoin saved WikiLeaks from a financial blockade aimed at destroying it.

Bitcoin address to donate to Wikileaks: bc1qcme5u6v8a4ss855jsvgae59z20f05sky494qpa

War, Bitcoin, and Liberty

The intertwined destinies of Wikileaks and bitcoin must remind us that there is no freedom without financial freedom.

There are numerous examples. Freezing of campaign funds for political parties, freezing of bank cards for protesters, disconnection from the SWIFT network, and freezing of entire nations’ foreign reserves, etc.

This is why the prospect of a world where cash is replaced by CBDCs (central bank digital currency) is frightening. It would then be possible to silence anyone with a single click.

Many Orwellian scenarios could be envisioned. The British prime minister Rishi Sunak even stated this week that those who refuse to comply with a possible military service could be debanked.

At a time when Western political puppets are fueling the war with hundreds of billions of dollars, let’s bring back the wise words of Julian Assange:

“Almost all the wars in the last fifty years have been caused by lies spread by the media. The press prints government propaganda instead of preventing the war. People do not like war. They must be deceived to support war. If we had good media, we would live in peace.”

In this respect, let us not lose sight of the fact that Ukraine, Palestine, Georgia, Taiwan, etc., are different facets of a confrontation whose Gordian knot is Washington’s grip on the international monetary system. And while the media feeds us the usual propaganda, perhaps bitcoin will be the Bretton Woods 2.0 that will help calm geopolitical tensions.

All this to say that Julian Assange is the hero of a generation. Let us hope now that he will soon have a say in the debate to defuse this cold war climate.