 Good evening everyone and welcome to the 10th episode of the School of Resistance, a live stream format that invites experts on change around the world to discuss valuable alternatives for the future and to create a blueprint for politics of resistance. Today's episode is called Speaking the Truth is not a crime. And in this 10th episode of School of Resistance, the Turkish author and ex-journalist Ece Temelkuran will discuss together with the former drone program technician and whistleblower Sean Westmoreland and international human rights lawyer Renata Avila, the right of free speech and its responsibility in an age of disinformation. My name is Kasia Vojcik and I am more than happy. Frankly, I am quite honored to introduce our guests to you today. I will start with Ece Temelkuran is one of Turkey's best-known novelists and political commentators and her journalism has appeared in The Guardian, New York Times, New Statesmen, Der Spiegel, etc. She won Penn Translate Award with Women Who Blow on Knots 2013 and with her political long essay Turkey, the Insane and Melancholy 2016, she received New Ambassador of Europe Prize from Poland. Her latest book How to Lose a Country, The Seven Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship was internationally acknowledged. Her new book Together is coming out in May 2021. Let me introduce to you another guest. In 2009, Sean Westmoreland was one of the U.S. Air Force communications personnel who built a critical component of the global communications infrastructure underlying the drone program in Afghanistan through the 73rd Expeditionary Air Control Squadron. Its area of responsibility covered 620,000 square kilometers over Afghanistan and assisted the networking drones and other disparate ground and air assets across coalition forces and service branches. It helped connect the battlefield in Afghanistan to the Combined Air Operations Center in Al Udeid, Qatar, and DSGS-5 at Dramstein, Germany. At the end of his tour, he received a document stating that he assisted in 200-plus enemy kills while the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan reported over 300 civilians killed that year due to airstrikes. Sean began speaking openly about his role in November of 2015 alongside three other former servicemen. He is an outspoken advocate for the removal of weapons from drones and against overclassification. In 2018, he has been working at the Mexican-American border helping refugees seeking asylum. Let me introduce you to our last guest, Renata Avila. Renata Avila is a lawyer, author, and advocate. She brings more than 15 years of experience in technology and human rights. She's a 2020 Stanford Race and Technology Fellow at the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity in partnership with the Stanford Institute of Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. She's a co-founder of the A-plus Alliance for Inclusive Algorithms, which aims to bring more equality and social justice to digitization and automation and future labor policies. Expert in digital rights, she studies the politics of data, the evolution of transparency, and their implications on trade, democracy, and society, alerting about a phenomenon she describes as digital colonialism. She advocates for the right to publish and defend whistleblowers and journalists speaking troops to power. She is also a board member for Creative Commons. She also serves as a board member of the Common Action Forum and the Global Trustee of the Think Tank Digital Future Society. Okay, one last thing for our audience. This is really important. Before we start the conversation, I quickly want to remind you all of the possibility for you to engage in the conversation by asking questions. For everyone who's watching now live, you are welcome to send us your questions by emailing to schoolofresistanceatantigans.be or by commenting on the live stream on the Facebook pages of Antigant or IPM. We also use via Twitter the hashtag School of Resistance. Okay, so that was an introduction. Thank you all for being here. Sean, I would like to start off this conversation by asking you about your story. Could you tell us more about why you decided to speak out the truth about the US drone program in Afghanistan? Yeah. So this is kind of relevant to something that's happening right now, but I mean, and I would say I come from a different background than a lot of people who joined the military. But in 1997, my family moved to Armenia and my father was working with the United States Embassy and we lived there for four years. It was about three years after the end of the war with Azerbaijan, the first one. And of course, the fall of the Soviet Union. So in the time that I was there, we saw quite a bit of suffering. Our school visited the orphanages. We would perform shows and stuff for them. And then my father would take me out into the countryside quite often. And there would be a lot of people who were in really desperate situations. And I'd say that that kind of painted over my experience in Afghanistan later. I would say that when I was in the Air Force, it wasn't really like wanting to go to Afghanistan. It was just our unit was called up and I felt obligated to. And once we got there, we set up a communication site that relayed a lot of data that the aircraft were using to the Combined Air Operations Center. And then, of course, to the 24th Intelligence Squadron or the Distributed Ground System number four in Ramstein and something that I kind of realized while I was there and something that kind of, I guess, bothers me now. And one reason that I really spoke up is because, you know, the drone itself isn't the it's not the weapon system. That's not the only weapon system. The real weapon is the network behind the drone. And everything that makes that drone function and there's a lot of different people that are making decisions within that system. And it's, you know, so there's there's there's a lot of potential for error because all those people are, you know, doing different, you know, jobs within in that program to make that function. So it's so I saw how the conversation around drones was really oriented towards drones, but not really of how these drones operate and, you know, what makes them fly where the intelligence goes, who makes the decisions in the process and how, you know, all this comes together so that a pilot can, you know, make the decision to do an air strike. And, you know, I thought it was really important for the countries that are involved, countries that are housing the infrastructure for the U.S. drone program to actually, you know, have an idea of what's happening on their own territory, because it's it's it's, you know, it can potentially make these countries targets for retaliation, but also, you know, there's a lot of, you know, what the international community would consider to be war crimes that are happening through these these drones and these networks. So, you know, I think I think it would be really helpful if people watching this would visit killchain.org because it's it kind of gives you an idea of how, you know, not only just the network, but also the technology and the applications that are used in this technology are, you know, can make mistakes on their own, like there's there's a lot of room for air with different sensors, different programs that are being used and how people interface with these programs. And of course, when they're working together, there's there's a lot of potential for unforeseen errors to occur. And as most people know, like there have been quite a few incidents where civilians have been killed in drone strikes. You know, some of those may have been a, you know, cost benefit analysis, while, you know, others were genuinely mistakes. But these these types of things that, you know, the public need to know about so they can hold their politicians accountable. And they can adequately question the policies that are being put forth to, you know, use these drones, because the drones themselves are tools. But, you know, it's a very politically expedient weapon system to use for politicians, you know, trying to, you know, see their own objectives met in these war zones. And I think it's, you know, we've been at war for 20 years now. And, you know, and I think it's, you know, far past time we start questioning, you know, why, why have we been in these wars? And what is the ultimate objective? You know, Donald Trump said that they're going to pull out by Christmas. There's nothing really, you know, showing that in concrete terms, that that's actually going to happen. And I wouldn't necessarily trust Joe Biden to do that either. So really the only thing that can, you know, affect this is public pressure. And, you know, that's, that's something that can happen across international boundaries. And in fact, I think it should, because we're all involved. So, so I got Thank you, Sean. Thank you, Sean, for starting the conversation with this explanation, even about holding accountable the politicians we vote for. And then I want to ask you about a very prominent case that is happening. And for our audience to know, on January 4, court will announce its judgment in the extradition trial of Julian Assange, journalist and founder of the media organization WikiLeaks, that revealed among others several war crimes committed by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan. Being charged with 17 criminal counts under the US Espionage Act, and facing 175 years of jail time, not only Assange, but the whole of press freedom and free speech is at risk. So, Renata, could you, as one of the lawyers in the team of Assange, explain to our audience what exactly is happening in this case, and why in the end, it's so fundamental to fight for Julian Assange's freedom? Yes, you know, like the interesting thing is that probably the expectation from the audience will be like that I will go, I will go through all the technicalities of an extradition process. And this is not what a school of resistance should be about. That you can do it later. I will point out the resources. I will point out all the all the paperwork that has been filed in this case. Because at the end of the day is not about the dozens of lawyers and the thousands, thousands of hours invested in this case, trying to defend what is just. At the end, what I want the people to understand and what I want the people attending the School of Resistance to bear in mind that this case is not about Julian Assange anymore. This case is more about us than about him. Because what what says at stake in this case is our right to know is whether we are authorized to even know that terrible crimes against humanity have been committed. All the things that the Sean was was explaining, that is what is at stake. It is if this case sets a precedent, we are the ones the society as a whole, not only us, but the future generations that are going to face the most challenging times confronting corporate power and confronting the most powerful governments in the world just to survive. That's what's at stake in this case. It's a case that basically is saying that a journalist has no right to publish. But on the other side, saying that a journalist has no right to publish, it means that you don't have right to know. And that you cannot exercise any form of accountability when we know what's going on. I mean, like the last 10 years, if we learned any lessons is that we cannot take democracy for granted. And we cannot even trust the resilience of repress. And in the last 10 years, there have been assassinations of journalists in Europe and nearby. It has been it has been I mean, it has been like an absolute erosion of rights and a complete change of narrative. So the three most more important things I will say and the most important lessons and the most important battles that we have in this case is number one, the public is smart and the public equipped with the truth can change their outcomes and can effectively transform societies because we have at least in the last five years, we have been hearing every every day that that the people do not know that they spread fake news that are incapable that they you know, like, basically, the narrative that Wikileaks elevated and that drove movements like the Arab Spring, indignados in Spain, Occupy Wall Street, Occupy London Stock Exchange and other other very, very powerful citizen driven initiatives was that we when the people know the truth, what one when the truth is not mediated is not with makeup on and when when the facts when people is equipped with facts and when injustice is exposed without all the PR preparation that usually media has, then you activate changes. Second, the people can use the internet to organize and the the global availability of this truth will mobilize thousands. And the third thing that that Wikileaks and Julian Assange said, did is we are invincible invincible in the sense that you cannot shut us down. You cannot censor what we are publishing and any person all over the world without paying without, without holding a specific passport has the right to truth has the right to know and especially has the right to know and to access that pieces of knowledge that are just hold by the elites. So democratization of access to the key information, information to make informed decisions. That that narrative, we are at the opposite side today. Imagine if Wikileaks was I mean, this is still active and this is still resistant. But imagine if it was if it was not crushed in so many attempts, if it wasn't attacked in that way, the culture of today will be a culture that will have us equipped with the best citizen initiatives and the most resilient press to combat combat fake news to challenge this global emergency that we're leaving and to effectively confront power and distribute the power of publishing, removing it away from elites. What we have today is just the opposite. It's just the opposite because we didn't resist and responded enough to the threats and to the effective attacks against Wikileaks. That's one of my in my opinion. Why is really, really, really important to stop this case here? Because we are like almost at the limit. If we let this case set a precedent, we're in serious trouble. We are in serious trouble because the ability for us to publish the ability for the public know and the ability to hold others accountable will be completely removed from us. So this case is not about Julian. This case is about us and the future of what we will know and what will be hidden from us. If now we are giving corporate power the power to select what we see, select what we read and select what should be removed and and just five companies in one jurisdiction. And if we are on the other hand, we are like a letting a system torture a man in the center of London, in the center of London, in pretrial detention in really bad conditions that a man that never hold a gun that never hurt anybody, a journalist, a father, a friend of many of us, then that that that's the parameter we don't want. So it is more an exam about our values and about us. We do not want to know it seems we want our speech to be controlled by Silicon Valley companies, or by Nanny State. And the the third thing is that we accept injustices, even if we claim to care about injustices very, very far from us, we accept injustices in the heart of the West. And so those are my initial reflections on why why this case is important, very brief, because I know that it's important to know the timeline. This is just the pretrial detention for the extradition for a case that is it hasn't even started in the US. So the road is really, really, really long. But ideally, I mean, ideally, what we need to do is similar with with the drones mobile mobilized enough pressure to declare this unacceptable, we will not accept that our rights are removed from us. And stop this case here, because if this case arrives in the US with the current composition of the Supreme Court and the current composition of the of the tech industry, we are in serious trouble. Thank you, Renata. It's a Renata mentioned already the threats to journalists in Europe. And I want to for our audience, state quote from the reporters without borders about Turkey. Before I ask you the question, which states Turkey is the world's biggest jailer of professional journalists spending more than a year in prison before trial is the new norm. And long jail sentences are common. In some cases, as long as life imprisonment with no possibility of a pardon. Detained journalists and closed media outlets are denied any effective legal recourse. Can you tell us more or elaborate on this quote? And I would really like to know your own story as a journalist or writer in this country. Ah, well, Turkey is a tragic joke that nobody know, you know, nobody loves any longer. And this is where the entire world, the proud Western world will end up if they don't follow what Renata and Sean are saying right now. Let me pick where Renata left. Renata said when it's happened when these, you know, violation of freedom of expression happened in other countries, we are so, you know, sensitive. But when it happens in the heart of best, we are not that, you know, we don't bother to react. And let me add to that, that people like Renata or Sean, when they are in Second World War movies, we watch them as heroes. And we never understand why the other people do not do what they do. Why not the other people say what they say. And that is why we have to talk about why now is less magical or less, you know, less clear than it is in Second World War movies. Hannah Irons is so popular nowadays. And also George Orwell. And everybody's talking about a dictatorship. But I think they all that many people think that dictatorships come in fully, you know, in uniforms and in goose stips, they walk towards the power, you know, capture the White House or Westminster, it doesn't happen like that. It happens. Like, like, in the way Renata explained or Sean explained, when Sean and Renata become the heroes, they require to be, you know, they need to act heroically in order to say the truth. When that is the normal condition, that is when the dictatorships are built, actually. And the rest of the, you know, from far is just happens very quickly. We, we tend to understand things when we look at the history. But we, we don't really dare to see what is happening in front of us. Renata talked about Julian Assange and Sean is another Julian Assange in that sense. And what what is most important in their situation, the whistleblowers situation, or for, you know, all those people who are telling the truth, is that they are their solitude. And why that solitude is happening is the crucial question in our times. Renata and thousands of other people are supporting Julian Assange. Sean is probably surrounded with a lot of people. But these numbers are not enough in order to mobilize in order to resist the words and the bodies have to come together. No resistance is composed of only words and no resistance is formed. No effective resistance can only be consistent of thousands of people. It has to be many, many more. So what is, you know, when we, we, I think we have to in school of resistance, maybe this is a good question to ask, why so many people are so sure where to stand when they're watching a Second World War movie about Nazi era. But why they are so hesitant when it comes to today? The question is, the reality is, they don't see the propaganda that is shaped around people like Julian Assange or Sean. All this time, I am sure millions of people in the world today, if they hear the world Julian Assange, the first thing they would remember would be the rape cases, or, you know, how megalomaniac he is, or whatever, all the negative stuff. And data, we are not maybe saying enough, these are, you know, discrediting propaganda. It is a political tool. It's a classic political tool used by the power by fascist by fascism itself for, you know, several in several ways for several times history, it has been used. So that solitude is arising from this propaganda. And when it's happening to us, when it's happening in present time, it is not easy to see through the propaganda. So our job, if we are interested in telling the truth, is making sure that propaganda is is made ineffective or eliminated by the number of voices that are telling the truth, which is not an easy, easy thing. You ask about my personal story, which I think is not important at all in this case. But I know through my own story, that when you're telling the truth, the most troublesome thing is not actually the pressure that you are receiving from the power. But actually, it is to feel completely alone. And even by those people who you consider closest to you are becoming hesitant to support you. And that hesitation is where fascism begins. And the resistance fades away. So I think this is what we have to think about, because we're living in a world where post truth somehow became the word post truth, somehow became a sexy word even, because now, you know, as opposed to, you know, beginning of 20th century, now, the post truth, the alternative facts, whatever you call them, can be produced not only by single power, by the oppressive power, but also by the supporters of the power. So it is a chaos. And as Renata mentioned it briefly, we are using a communication sphere, which actually belongs to few people in the world. And we tend to we tend to think that we are in a agora, where everybody is equal where everybody's free to speak. No, we are actually Twitter, Facebook, all those social media outlets, we are in someone's private garden, and we are speaking as much as we are allowed to speak. So and on top of it, this garden is unregulated. And in any unregulated space, I'm a lawyer as well, Renata, there is no law. And when there is no law, there is chaos, there is jungle rules, where the powerful beats the powerless. So our communication sphere where truth is shaped is a horrible space. And in that horrible space, the powerful is allowed to produce propaganda to produce discrediting propaganda about the truth sayers. So if we see this picture clearly, we can understand where we should be standing and with whom we should be standing with. You don't have to like Julian Assange, he has all the, you know, not only discrediting but also unpleasant portrayal in the mass media. There are so many articles about him, you don't have to like him. You don't have to be even friends with him, you don't even have to admire him for what he's done. The problem is, do you want to live in a world where the truth sayer can be executed digitally in the most easy way possible? This is where we have to start resistance. It's not only resistance against the oppressive power, actually. What we have to resist against is our hesitation to stand with those people who would be heroes in a Nazi era movie. But when things are too colorful, when they're not black and white, like in those movies, people get confused and they start changing the subject, you know, step in, taking a step back, just waiting the subject to be over. They mute themselves. And that is when things go really, really ugly. I'm coming from Turkey, as you said. And I have been trying to tell the other, tell the peoples of other countries that you are going to end up in the same troubles that Turkey is suffering through now. It's not because I'm a Cassandra trying to impress people with my horrible predictions. There is a logic to the new fascism of our times. And it's this logic, this pattern is repeating itself exactly the same way in every country, like it's happening in United States right now. And I was actually thinking during the election days in United States, how lucky they are, and how they're not aware of their advantage, because they still have a reasonably free media. They are still allowed to speak to truth. They're not going to be imprisoned. Somebody will not come to their door at five o'clock in the morning, and then they will be taken away, or they're not going to be threatened with their lives. So it is time for Americans, for other peoples of the other countries, if they have reasonably free media to use this power to show who the people are supposed to stand by today in order for the world not to end up in a total fascism, just like Renetta mentioned in her speech. Thank you. First of all, I was wondering, and Hia was mentioning it already. First of all, what is it like to express truth in the so-called post truth world? And as Hia spoke about the solitude of the truth teller, I first want to ask Sean, so my, when I was preparing this talk, I was really wondering, how do you really feel about this? Like, what is it for you and your own personal truth? How can one seek for that? And to expose truth when it's a world where we don't even know anymore what's true in the internet? And I also, the question about the solitude that Hia mentioned. So I don't know if you can follow me, but these are the what I'm a little bit struggling right now with. So there's there's a quote. It's, it's, it's from ancient Greece, from Aselis. And it's that in war, truth is the first casualty. So this is something that's been persisting for for a long, long time. The United States has been at war for 225 years of its 243 year history. I think right now, because there's so many different narratives, you're seeing, it's more of a crisis of narratives. And I mean, truth, truth is truth, truth never goes away. Truth shines through, you know, historically. So, you know, while, you know, we're kind of in this like, fog of war of the global war on terrorism, and, you know, how politics have kind of abandoned this, this, you know, this idea that truth can even be attained, or that it's even something to strive for. I mean, in a sense, like truth has always been kind of on the back burner, as far as politics goes. But I mean, you know, we're, we're definitely seeing the penalization of people who've brought up, you know, certain truths to, to the public that challenge the powers that be. I mean, myself, I mean, Daniel Hale is being currently being prosecuted. He's facing up to 50 years in prison. And, you know, people like Julian, yeah, Edward Snowden and, and Brandon Bryant is gonna legal pickle at the moment. I mean, it's certain, like, certain narratives, our nerves are being challenged. And they're being suppressed. You know, the, the question is, is like, you know, has this made a chink in the armor? You know, has has our, you know, drops in a bucket actually accumulated into something that, you know, people are starting to realize, you know, more like, systemically what these issues are. I mean, I couldn't imagine people in the United States, like, you know, I think I think over half, half of the country now opposes the war in Afghanistan. Let me they see it as futile. I mean, when I started speaking out, that wasn't really the case. You know, people are actually starting to understand, you know, what encryption is, you know, you look at the gender generation Z. I mean, they're the preferred, you know, chatting applications are encrypted now. I mean, despite the fact that it's, you know, it's WhatsApp, and it's under the realm of Facebook. But I mean, the sentiment is there, the understanding of the need of privacy is there. I mean, whether or not like my individual voice is, you know, revered, I don't I don't really care. All I really care is if if there's positive movement. And right now, there's there's a lot of chaos. But you know, at the same time, you know, there's there's a lot of pressure being put on power. You know, maybe we're not really paying attention to because, you know, we're so nervous about what's happening in power at the moment. But you know, I mean, in terms of people being jailed, like, people know that's unjust, like people know that, you know, Julian Assange being extradited to the United States is unjust. I mean, it's outrageous. It's, you know, I mean, he's a, first off, he's not an American citizen. He didn't do any of that in the United States. And he's, you know, the things he's being prosecuted for, you know, aren't the things that everybody's really mad about, like, like they think that he had something to do with Trump being elected, you know, that's that's really why the left is mad. But, you know, so did a lot of things. Namely, you know, the United States has a big racism problem. Like, I mean, it's pretty obvious. But, you know, I'm not, I'm not entirely disheartened despite the fact that, you know, like, the pressure is on us. And I mean, you know, if I go to jail, then I go to jail. But I think it's, you know, I'm seeing a lot more people actually, you know, willing to resist than ever before. So I mean, that's, to me, that's what I look at, you know, and I'm encouraged by that. I really, because we are already quite at the end of our conversation, I still want to ask the audience, of course, to send us some questions if they have some. But for me, it's right now the question of hope, Bernata. I always hope, but I was ready, because I saw it coming, you know, I have to speak about hope, because other than that, I was to this, we are learning in this School of Resistance. And we are learning every day by doing, and I think that no year prepares better to train the muscles of resistance than this year. You know, like, if something we learn, if anything, we learned about this was to be more resilient, to be more critical, and to be, and to be more aware of our well-being as a key piece to these battles ahead. And the three things that I want to say is, number one, saving freedom of speech, and saving the right to know, and saving the right to protest, and saving the right to be ourselves, and create new political projects and change the world for better. Number one, is not too difficult. It is not too difficult. You don't need a PhD. You don't need a million dollars to make it possible. That's true. And if you think that it's difficult is because media and groups in power repeat it every day, and elevate some very few cases that they want of heroes, and put them above us. But this is not true. It's not too difficult. It's something that all of us can do every day. And it shouldn't be heroic. It should be daily action, accumulation of actions and mass. One example, very quick example on this, after a coup, it only took one year to organize peasants in Bolivia to take power back. Good example of very resilient organization at the community level. You don't need a lot of money. You don't need degrees. You need a really, really carefully needed societal space. Second, we don't need to outsmart these technologies. We do not need to be very technical, or not technical at all. There are like actually like, oh, we cannot live without Facebook, we cannot live without Twitter, we cannot live without this. Actually, there are plenty of alternatives right now, ready for us to occupy, ready for us to make our own. But technology is not the answer. It's the answer. It goes back again, to this point of how do we organize as a community and how we become become aware and strategic. And the best technology that we can install in our brains is critical thinking, which is what's missing from the operative systems of many. And which is the thing that we, it requires, you know, like it's not, it's not as fun as putting a nice filter on your Instagram picture of the perfect breakfast, or satisfying is more challenging, you know, like, if you make people start thinking, that process, that process to think together, to discuss, to think deeper, to exercise that muscle is far more, more exciting than any time that we spend doing this on the screens. But the key ingredient of this is that it has to be fun and it has to be intimate. And it has to be personal. And it has, it doesn't have to be like, you know, like, people need to understand that they don't need to become the next essential, the next snowden. People need to know that people like you, or people like me, can do it as well. I mean, if, if it doesn't require a special superpowers, it is on all of us to activate it and to then eat the more we are, the less likely there will be a snowden or there will be an assange. And that's very, very important to remember. And it's not too late. That's the other thing to remember. It is not too late at all to change things. We need to be strategic. We need to be creative. We need to be smart. But the most missing ingredient of most people that I want to get together with critical thinking needs to be developed is courage. We are one of the most important things I learned at the time that I was helping Julian and working closely with him was that we are too afraid for nothing. We over dimension risk. We always think that we cannot go a little further. And actually, we need a big space of action. Because often, we don't want to go alone. So the key and the lesson in here is, let's go and occupy, slowly move that space instead of being resistant, resistant, resistant, let's push and push even slowly, you know, but with many behind. So we can create better, better, more democratic spaces. And the task is listed. It has a date is 4th of January. Let's be courageous. Let's be creative. Let's be strategic. And let's try to save Julian. We will be like with full energy after the Christmas break. I received some questions from the audience. And I will just state it to the three of you and you can just see who answers first. And I talked about creative strategies. And so we are an art format. We use art as a means of our activism. And there's the question of the audience. Art is of course about exploring alternative narratives. But how can we really use art as a means of fighting this fight for truth? I think that it is that one if we have an art and a remarkable artist here is scared. I mean, Well, I was thinking actually, well, when it was speaking, why do we use the word activist? Now and then I'm like, sometimes I use I see this word stitched to my name when people are talking about me. And I think, am I an activist? I'm just telling the truth. I'm just doing what I am supposed to do. It's not activism, as if it's another category of human being, you know, you are an activist, and then you are not anymore living a normal life. One. And second, you are now described as an activist. And I think, you know, this idea can be explored in terms of art as well. I do not think there is such thing as political art, or non political art. One, everything is political, you know, needless to say. And second, art is doing what it's supposed to do. And it's becoming political through that, you know, stands anyway. If you are seeing the world, and if you are trying to retell the story of the world, which is art, then you are supposed to tell the truth and keep telling the truth, easy as that. And by the way, you don't even need hope for that, because, or let me put it this way, because the only thing you have to understand that we are humans. But of course, a certain understanding of human is necessary here, not the one that we are that is imposed upon us, but the real one, the real definition of human is, includes a lot of determination, or inherent determination to create beauty. And here we are, we are creating a political beauty now, by talking about the truth. So what either you do art, or anything else, you paint a wall or you go out to programming, whatever. If you know, or if you believe that human being is something is beautiful, it's something beautiful in its essence, and it's supposed to create beauty. There is no other chance than telling the truth because truth has its beauty. Everything is everything real has has some kind of beauty in it. So I think Renata was telling that and this is important when it comes to resistance, because when people think or talk about resistance, they imagine a clash, a concussion, a shake or a hit or you know, something violent, whereas resistance is something beautiful, because it reminds us the joy of dignity. And that is the most joyful thing on earth. You would know this, if you lose your dignity, that joy is sucked out of you, you're not alive anymore. And we are as humans are prone, or you know, pro we are hardwired towards that joy and towards creating beauty in order to keep the joy of dignity. So whatever you do, art, not art, anything, this is what you believe if you if this is what you believe, you have no other choice than telling the truth. But as Sean said, one becomes kind of like, doubtful, let's say, you know, I know the feeling, why am I like, is this all in wing? Am I doing this for nothing? Does it really change anything? And school of resistance, how to know? You don't have to know the outcome of what you did. I have a French friend who's a poet, and she has this amazing poetry, it's two lines, and I love it. And it tells a lot about resistance or what is human. It says, don't believe in the seed that you're throwing, believe in your hand that's throwing the seed. Just throw the seed and then don't think about the rest. And this is how I endured my love, life, and my love as well for several people. So we have to believe in our hands, and we have to believe that these hands are made to create beauty, and they are there to resist when our joy of dignity is attacked. So actually, we don't even need Thank you, that really resonated. I have one question that is, I think, an interesting question to from the audience. And I think this will be our last question. And then we have to end this very beautiful conversation. How can we make sure the right of freedom of speech is a right that can be actually used by minority voices as well? I'm asking this because I feel the right of free speech is often appropriated by big voices in order to silence resistance or criticism. I will go for this quickly. I think that it is, it goes hand in hand with this critical thinking, because people who do not, who do not have a, you know, I think that we need to equip people with diverse as many narratives as possible, and as many points of view as possible. And I think that there's, we have faced, and I might sound controversial, we have faced, I have, I have lived this very closely with working in the Assange case, we really are shrinking our view to only say certain words, only read certain things. We are self censoring ourselves all the time. I'm pretending, I'm pretending to be defending rights while doing so, which is not, is not the case, because I think that it happens with women, for example, it happens, it happens with, with, with many, many issues have become so sensitive to even be discussed out loud that I feel, honestly, I feel less free than 10 years ago, and then 20 years ago on what I say, what I write, and the consequences of having my thoughts on the record. And so I think that, I think that we need to be very, very, very careful on the limits that we want, on limiting the right. I think that, I think that delegating, delegating what can be said or what can be, or what cannot be said about a minority doesn't do any favor to the minority. Of course, hate speech is not speech, and hate speech is, it shouldn't have a place in our societies. But we need to draw the lines very clearly, because I have, I, I am afraid that not because an algorithm suppresses some words and, and, and a browser takes some ideas, those ideas stop existing. And, and, and what it, what it leave us is with an incomplete picture of what's going on, and false impression of things are okay. So I, I rather deal with, I, I rather have divergent points that, that are defended, and I'm exposed to divergent points, and I can make up my mind, than having just, you know, a reduced, a narrow vision of what's going on. And, and I think that WikiLeaks was very, very, very good at that, because instead of just showing us the interpretation of a piece of news, which often in the media is the interpretation of two lines in a document, it offers us the full picture, it offers, offered us the full docs. And from, from the same document, maybe a right wing journalist will make, will, will say some things, an expert in the topic will say different things, and a left wing journalist will say completely different things. And maybe I will read the three versions, and then I will read myself the full document and come up with a conclusion. But less and less, we are like, we, we, journalists and academics disclose the full data sets, the full sources, the full documents that they, they use to come up with, to the conclusions that they arrive. And I think that and all the conversation has moved to feelings and hurt feelings, and not about facts and substance and documents and things back in your claims. And I think that we need to go back to that WikiLeaks culture of full docs on redacted documents, and enabling us on the other side to make up our mind and arrive to our conclusions. Thank you, Renata. Thank you. It's been an hour. I thank the audience for asking the questions. I thank you, Aiche, Renata and Sean for being here today. And let's, I will try to be in that kind of ambivalence between the fear what can come, but also a hope. And I want to thank you all for this beautiful conversation. And I hope you enjoyed it too. And I wish now the audience a very good evening. And see you soon. Thank you, Kasia. Thank you, Renata. Thank you, Sean. It was great meeting you.