 Thank you for inviting me to speak to this important event tonight. I'm in London having last Tuesday attended John Pilger's funeral. It's been a great loss to Australia, to the United States, to Britain, and to the world. Since the US began its legal pursuit of drilling Assange, the world has changed dramatically, bringing new risks to the United States if it continues to pursue him to the end. The geostrategic situation and the state of the media are today nearly unrecognizable from 2010 when the US impaneled a grand jury to endide Assange. Conditions have changed significantly, even since 2019, when he was dragged from the embassy and the indictment was unveiled. The United States is in the midst of suffering its third major strategic defeat since the process against Assange began, bringing potentially significant consequences for the United States, the world, and possibly Assange. In just the past three years, the United States has experienced humiliating defeats in Afghanistan, Ukraine, and now Gaza. Afghanistan heard Americans sensitivities about their precious prestige, which American elites care so much about. The rest of the world takes it into its geostrategic calculations. The US instigation of war in Ukraine intended to weaken Russia and bring down its government has instead turned into a debacle for the United States and Europe of world historical proportions. A new commercial, financial, and diplomatic system has emerged in opposition to the US dominated West. This had been slowly developing, but was accelerated by Washington's provocation in Ukraine. It is a way more serious problem for the United States than mere loss of prestige. Add to this the worldwide condemnation the United States is facing for its blatant complicity in Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza. It's in a war that both United States and Israel is not winning. The result of all this is that US legitimacy has significantly weakened around the world and at home. Is this the moment then to bring a journalist to the United States and chains to stand trial for publishing truthful material that exposed earlier crimes by the United States? The risks of doing so at this moment, a very different moment from 2010, are serious for the US at home and abroad. Domestically the bill of rights is at stake. Internationally the bully is losing its credibility. This is seen in the forthrightness of some world leaders, particularly in Latin America, who in the spirit of this new non-US world have confronted the United States on its treatment of Assange and have demanded his release. The established media, which by definition runs cover for the US to commit crimes and abuses wherever its interests are challenged, is suffering its own precipitous loss of legitimacy. The spectacular growth of both social and independent media's influence since 2010 has helped create a worldwide movement in defense of Assange and the basic principles of a free press. The question is, how aware is the Biden administration of this new world and how will it react? At a certain point, US hubris and intransigence would seem to be headed for collapse. But until then, Washington will no doubt double down in denial and inventions. It's not giving up on Ukraine nor in a Gaza. The neocon grip on power in Washington over the realists remains. Will the extremists remain ascendant on Assange too? In December 2010, Vice President Joe Biden told the television news show Meet the Press that the Obama administration could only indict Assange if they caught him red-handed stealing government secrets and not receiving them passively as a journalist. The Obama administration concluded he was acting as a journalist even if they refused to call him one and didn't indict him. So what changed for Biden? Why does he persist in this prosecution begun by his mortal enemy Donald Trump and Trump CIA director Mike Pompeo? The indictment until today still only deals with events in 2010. Nothing has changed legally, but everything has changed politically for President Biden, the head of the Democratic Party, with the 2016 DNC leaks and the CIA Vault 7 releases the following year. Biden would have held to pay from the DNC and the CIA if he dropped the case. Still, he's probably not so foolish to want a shackled journalist showing up on US shores to stand trial in the midst of his reelection campaign. The High Court here in London has been good at dragging things out and could easily do so until after November. The Assange case is thus a centerpiece of this global challenge to US dominance that did not exist in 2010. To the extent that US leaders are aware of what is happening to US standing in the world, their propensity is to lash out with the only argument they have left, lethal force. In Assange's case, it is legal force with lethal consequences. Leniency towards Assange would win back some respect the United States has lost, which would mean it couldn't suffer another blow and had finally woken to the new world it inhabits. Crushing him would be yet another step towards its demise. The US really doesn't need him. It has enough blood on its hands.