 This part of the show you'll enjoy because, not show really, it's a conference at the beginning of a censorship industrial complex and it'll be carried away, of course. We're going to take some questions from the audience if you have a question. Please raise your hand, although we haven't been chatting to the star, I think we're running the world's favourite movie, The Shawshank Redemption, Mr Tim Robbins, with the question. And of course, the great Tom Robbins. As far as communicating with people, that perhaps felt a different way in the past few years. And how do we reach out to these people? You know, help people to start a communication again in such a tribal environment. What I'm planning to do is to continue to be open-hearted and loving and faithful in the conversations I have with other people, particularly people that I disagree with. I suppose this is a unique opportunity, a divisive time that seems to be defined by conflagration, conflict and opposition and yet as we touched upon in the earlier part of our conversation, the facility for an entirely different society already exists. Sometimes I think what's required is a gratitude for the institutions that we have been imbued with. Now we have the facility for great media, we have the institutions for wonderful health, we have incredible technological and scientific advancement and even in the opposition that we have with others, we have to, I suppose, and we're approaching this in good faith, assume that people we disagree with have comparable values and principles to us. I suppose that, in particular, my worldview is undergirded by spiritual principles and I don't mean that in a deracinated woman way. I mean that kindness, service, a willingness to forgive and be forgiven seem to me to be an absolute necessity. If we don't progress, it's more than that, though. It's morally correct to be forgiving and loving to other people. It's that it is a necessity of the necessary victory in order that we do not yield to centralised authoritarianism because for me it seems like that's where this is going. It seems that it's almost like you could see the shapes forming of, oh, one minute, the American government using taxpayer dollars to acquire private data of its citizens from private companies in order to bypass its own legislation. The military industrial complex appears to require forever wars in order to underwrite its economic model. We're going to find ourselves literally somewhere between the twin dystopias of those great literary prophets, Orwell and Huxley. Already the name has been invoked, of course, orwell by Matély. Of course, though, Michael Schellerberg's reference is usually the born identity. Anyway, give a ten-minute speech in a minute based on part two of John Wick. So, good bait, good humour, good grace, and a willingness to acknowledge that we've all made mistakes. How are we going to get anywhere together? Or what are you going to do? You're the one that's clearly going to traffic my politician any minute. Yeah, I mean, there's obviously something that is broken, you know, with us, with the internet. I mean, there's the treatment of each other on Twitter. We lose sight of the fact that, you know, we're all here for this very short period of time, and then we're gone. And we lose that we're losing that humanity. And I think we're also losing that sense in which, I mean, we don't want to be ruled by the police. You know, we don't want to be ruled by our military intelligence and security services. I mean, I think that most of the people in those agencies don't want to do anything. They don't want that responsibility. They want to, the best people want to be of service. And I guess the last thing I want to say is, I mean, this whole thing came because I was feeling really drawn to London right now. And particularly in this year, there's so many people here who I admire. Francis who gets up here does this incredible podcast that's very psychologically rich and very humanistic. And I knew I wanted to come, but I didn't have any reason to come until we figured out that there was the censorship industrial complex. And then when we put out the call to come and we see people that we know, we see their faces. And so there's something that's been missing, and then you feel like you're coming back to it when you're together. So I hope that, I thought that during the pandemic that there would be this moment when we would have sort of the pandemic as it goes for a day. You know, where it'd be like, it's, you know, September 1st and the pandemic is over and everyone burned their masks, you know, you know, masks. And that never happened. And it feels like everybody wants to get back together and they want to travel and they want to be together. So I hope this is the beginning of a series of international in-person gatherings of people that love freedom and that love community, because I think we really all, I know I needed it, and I think that other people really needed it. August of 2016, the New York Times came out with an article that was called, Trump is testing the norms of objectivity in journalism. It was a column by a guy named Jim Rittenberg. And basically the premise of it was that journalists no longer needed to worry just about being true, but had to worry about being true to this speech judgment. And what I think they meant by that basically was the old version of what we do for a living, which was we just gather facts and give them to you and trust you to do the right thing with that information. That doesn't work anymore because we don't trust you. So we are going to shape the information in such a way that you do the right thing with it. And I think this is just deeply off-putting and inevitably unsuccessful. And I think the only thing that you can do, if you're in the media for instance, is to continue to invest in that relationship with your audience and say, I do trust you. Whatever I say, I'll pass on to you, and I don't need you to behave one way or the other. I don't think you can drop one conclusion or another. And I think people can sense that. What's a genuine attempt to connect versus what's digaptic and directional and ordering and using techniques of fear to try to manipulate. I think those things are inherently unpopular. They will fail when we see it in the way that the ratings are going in the States. And a new thing will come up. We just have to stick with it. And eventually I think this thing, it just doesn't have an ability to appeal to people organically. Yeah, that's a fascinating take. I've been very encouraged by how often during this conversation we've returned to a subject matter that feels inter-personal and emotional. That it's not entirely about cybernetics and networks, power and the way that machines integrate and interact with one another. It's encouraging to deal with them on an emotional level. It occurred to me then when dealing with that great climber and weather vane. There is Donald Trump that with both of the recent, two recent examples of whistleblowing have demonstrated again how we were, one example was going a number of the story around the classified documents in the possession of the trip that Trump has in his possession. And the other story that I'm referring to is a young buddy, Roy Teixeira, in the land of the Pentagon Papers that revealed that there was an entirety of perspective on the Ukraine war within American military circles that was being conveyed through media. And the stories around the, the maritalization around the story was all about the individual and the morality and virtues of the individual. And similarly with Trump, obviously he's a much more divisive figure. No one is talking about what the sense of material is and there's at least one article by Greco, Mark Teixeira based on the paper that I also was just understanding that the plans for a war with Iran is some of the sense of information and it's like we've become unable to identify what is, what information is important and also the idea that people want to be subject to censorship. That should be censored, don't tell me that information. In the post-assange, post-slogan world, you can't take on good faith but what's being censored is all your own good. You can't have that perspective anymore, we've instructed that. I think I find your sort of easy neutrality coupled with what appears to be virtue, encouraging that it's not governed by non-vast and zeal and evangelism, which I've rather liked myself. Kind of, well no, at least in fact, excuse the information. I've enjoyed the various ways this has been sketched out. I do have another question. Yes, there's a human, female, I believe, over here in that area and there's a gentleman offering a new microphone. You can say your name if you want, unless you were also in short-shack production in which case we'll go about it. Hi, this is my name is Jennifer Lewis. I have a question for Michael actually. I know you guys forgot that I've been in a reduced screening hall. I did it for you. And I was wondering how much human experience during that time, whether this is, you know, being censored, I don't know how much for any sort of forces of the people we have to weigh in on each other. I look at you and we all move to come and come from different places, different little backgrounds. One thing I noticed in this question, as well as when I go back to California, is it's kind of the old school of liberals getting together with some of our senators, I think, and say, let's forget these issues because we're not going to have a country for countries unless we get the basics, right? Obviously, speech, re-movement of money, civil liberties, all. How much did you experience when you were running for government and do you have any hope for California going forward seeing as, you know, the statement as well as California so those are the rest of the nation? One thing that one benefit for running for political office is that you are supposed to have somewhat more protection of your speech. And so I'm not a fan of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s position on vaccines or his position on nuclear power, but I admire him actually responding to the call and speaking out for freedom of speech and then disturbs that he's having his videos taken down from YouTube. This is a very significant form of censorship and I'm troubled by it. I'm very troubled by my adopted state of California. I mean, we had a woman on the street, she was suffering from schizophrenia, addicted to fentanyl and meth. They would not enter off the streets, the lower parts of her legs rotted, they took her to the hospital, they mutated her legs and they put her back on the streets. I don't understand how anybody can think of that as the humane, compassionate thing to do. We're letting ideology overtake just basic human response and those of us that have been in recovery or are in recovery and understand that all addiction requires a form of intervention. And so, yeah, for me, I think California requires an intervention. We need to stand up and say, this is at some fundamental level not right when you're not intervening in lives of people who are destroying themselves in the downtown of your cities and you're destroying your cities. I mean, I'm sorry, I don't have a more positive thing to say about it. I think that when my book, San Francisco, came out in 2021, people were like, that's really rude. I can't believe you would say that. And now I need to say that it shows that it's like 170 cities in the country San Francisco is considered like the worst managed, not like you needed a survey to show it. So I'm afraid I don't have a lot of optimism about it. I think that reform may need to be reversed and that reform may need to start in the East and sweet West rather than the other way around. It seems to me likely possible perhaps even necessary that independent media will by virtue of the role it will play in this issue among others become politicized. Perhaps it already is and will necessarily become activated and organized in ways that I think are becoming clear in the fact that you're perhaps expediting through your actions and through your foresight in holding this event. I saw some hands over there. I think I'm going to have to say the question is nearest because otherwise I'll have to go, no, not you, you for me, which is a little, well, I'll do my end. So you may in sort of then and you looking sure of what had, thanks mate. Thank you. Quick question. With the actions of very white, is this an imprisome? Yes, it is. Good confidence going with this would be happy to hear you. The other thing I wanted to mention was I noticed a change in Gardi's standards right after his point was being investigated for her college scandal. He doesn't remember that. Did you notice that happen about the same time? It's related, but yeah. But it seems that he tended to talk online as soon as we tried to do it tomorrow. If you can bring up that. Yeah. So I knew Gardi quite, quite well. I mean I did a story. One of my favorite stories in my whole life I got to tag along with him and he was still in the house. He just let you follow him around and there was no off the record, nothing for like a month. And his whole purpose was he wanted to show me how screwed up it was. And I always admired him. I admired his honesty. I think he's like really sincere about all these issues. My interpretation of what happened to Bernie and I knew a lot of people who worked on this campaign there was this crucial moment in 2016 when he was really scoring against Hillary Clinton I don't even remember this. It was like January, February 2016 and the polls were going the wrong way for Hillary and she was trying to come up with some kind of answer for anything that he was saying. Nothing was working until one day she came out and said if we broke up the banks tomorrow would that end racism? And it was basically, they had coded caring about income inequality a sort of privileged white issue and you know Bernie grew up in through a circle so he was equally sensitive to that kind of criticism. I just think he never got over that and I don't think he ever found an answer for that and it was difficult for him to respond. What kind of getting Washington in the next election? I mean he allowed himself to get Washington in. And if he came, is Bernie the same guy that he was before? Do you think Bernie is the same guy? I'll let Michael handle that. It's weird being in my position as the emcee because I've got to say take that Michael's like easier and then I think, oh it's a free speech event. Because I don't know very much so it'll be pretty succinct I reckon. I was talking to people that ran you know, Jimmy knows that primary series and they said to me that they felt that the Democrat Party would rather lose with Hillary than win with Bernie they would rather have Trump in office than win with Bernie so the internal, so that still shows you where they stand ideologically and where their affiliations might be given what Bernie represented during the period I worked with that gentleman. In which case, please ladies and gentlemen how about a round of applause for Stella Assange? Because I speak all the time but for some reason right now probably because you guys are on the stage I'm really nervous to speak. But anyway, I ask you... Would you feel more comfortable coming up here? Most of you are probably aware that this gentleman is on... he's in a very precarious position right now but the High Court, England has made a completely inexplicable decision to not even allow him to appeal to the High Court. He made an application to appeal in September last year and it took a single judge 10 months to issue a three-page decision which without engaging in any of the arguments said that Julian is not allowed to appeal he still has one final opportunity to go to two different High Court judges but the situation is now critical and you might say well this is different to the censorship industrial complex but it is not. These are two sides of the same coin whereas all of you who have experienced and seen the censorship that occurs on social media this kind of unseen effect kind of turns you a bit paranoid to my paranoid was it really happening? We now know thanks to you guys that we have the evidence that it was happening is happening and how it's happening but in Julian's case this is the overt side of censorship this is a publisher someone who received information from a source who was a U.S. soldier in Iraq posted in Iraq an intelligence analyst who witnessed who was reading reports showing information about civilian killings there are tens of thousands of civilian killings in Iraq and Afghanistan evidence of war crimes including a video that was released collado a murder in 2010 showing how a helicopter gunship mowed down civilians literally picking them off including two journalists critically injured two children mowed down the rescue vehicle who came to try to bring one of the dying journalists to a hospital and kill them all as well except the two children survived because their father threw his body on top of them they were severely injured but they survived collado a murder it's age-restricted on YouTube because it might hurt your sensibility to witness a war crime well Julian and WikiLeaks put that into the public domain and the record of tens of thousands of civilian killings in Iraq and Afghanistan an evidence of torture an evidence of how the US government was using its embassies to inhibit and derail the investigations in Germany and Spain and Italy of CIA renditions to stop the people who were responsible for being brought to trial for having their day in court because it is an enforcement of impunity and the case against Julian is of impunity against accountability and the fact is that Julian is in prison because he published the truth because he exposed the criminality of the country that is trying to extradite him and that country also plotted to assassinate him when Pompeo was head of the CIA how can this country, the UK possibly extradite him to the United States the country that plotted his assassination the country that he exposed committing war crimes for whom no one has been held accountable there has been a campaign of smearing Julian for years in order to pave the way to his incarceration Julian is a symbol he's a deterrent he's a message to every journalist to not publish the truth to not publish the truth if it angers sufficiently powerful people because they'll come after you that is the message but that's also the message to all of you that's the general message that has been sent out and we have to push back we have to regain our rights it's not something about going back to hoping for a pre-COVID war or pre-war terror existence we have to fight back we have to organize because the other side is organized and they're abusing legislation they're abusing the complacency of the public in order to get their way please follow Julian's case like getting engaged it's critical now we're at the endgame he could be extradited he's facing a hundred and seventy years a hundred and seventy five years in the US in the Espionage Act there's no public interest defense you can't say why he published what he published you can't say that it was war crimes that the US government was responsible etc he has no defense defense last defense is decent people around the world here in the United States defending the truth on Saturday is a concrete thing you can do which is to come here at one o'clock there's going to be a statue here in Collins Square Edward Snowden Chelsea Manning and Julian and there is an empty chair next to them standing on chairs there's an empty chair it's called anything to say you can stand up and say whatever you need to say we all need to speak out we need to use our speech because our speech is the only thing that can shape the world we live in the significance of Julian's case for the future of journalism it shows that it's both blindness it's horrible a couple other things Daniel Ellsberg just passed and we should this is the analogous figure from the 70s once much celebrated by the liberal America very recently made a geographic movie The Post celebrating heroism Washington Post and bringing the depending on papers out and defying the government that would censor it that's sort of the cover story the reality is something we found on Twitter files there was an episode that we discovered where a number of journalists got together this was connected to the tabletop exercise that Michael talked about Stanford University academics members of the US government for a year preceding that exercise planned to overturn what they called the Pentagon papers principle they wanted to change this idea that journalism was about bringing dangerous truths to the public they believed that they wanted to reverse that whole concept that journalism was actually about protecting the public from things that it didn't need to know and so we see this dramatic shift in values where even the Washington Post which again was taking credit for the Pentagon papers as it was doing this so they're about to try to send Julian Assange to jail for 170 years, is that how much it is? 175? and at the same time they want to turn journalism to this thing that is about keeping people from knowing the truth to this and it's completely backwards and I can't be condemned enough Matt said regarding Stella Julian just that I'm totally moved by the case and I have a lot more learning to do and I look forward to getting educated speaking out on it Oh then Stella I'm very grateful to you for bringing the experience to our conversation he's very fortunate to have he was an Africa and an ally and we are fortunate to be reminded that this is not a hypothetical conversation about a foreboding and potential problem it is a tide that has already risen and claimed some territory has already been yielded and ceded and it is I'm very grateful to you for explaining that so articulately you're such evident and obvious emotion as a campaigner and as a lawyer as a wife and as a mother thank you very much for bringing that I suppose that we'll take it from this person over here let's take someone from the microphone you're going to have to shout I guess what I would say is when we were shown the visibility filtering tools that Twitter had we were almost specifically shown the negative stuff so we took pictures screenshots where you would see notations like trends blacklist or search blacklist and this was all about reducing the visibility of a person who had accumulated some kind of merit and that was useful because before the Twitter files the number of Twitter was publicly maintaining that they didn't shadow man that they actually put out a piece called I think it was like the inside story on shadow banning or something like that a short version we don't do we know they have an extraordinary array of tools that they can use to dial down visibility on the other side we didn't learn as much we've heard hypothetically from, I mean not hypothetically we've heard sort of stories from people like the author Abigail Schreier about how she was told that another author could be magnified on a site like Amazon for instance so that everybody would see the ad for that author while her book would be seen by nobody we didn't see concrete evidence of that at Twitter but I'm assuming they can do that One more maybe we could get someone from Britain Prove you're Britishness by being respectful, asking a long tangential and confusing question yes you said that at least for that that means that we'll get a mic for you they are English because they're fucking awkward thank you so much I wanted to, I mean how would you follow what Stella said but I want to follow what Stella said because I'm an independent broadcaster I'm from a show called The Pandemic Podcast and I've seen first hand the implications that's a shit we were had our channel cut down from as huge as 1.5 million views we've had endless expressions on Facebook and Twitter but I'm not alone we've seen the beginning of truth is illustrated by Julian Assange as a permanent reminder with the hype that we may not reach to but now we even have a bar with these technological platforms that we know we cannot cross and we don't need to be more alive nor will we go to a desactualised platform Odyssey Rumble which offers the opportunity to speak culture we've gone to a smaller audience where we've been preaching to the converted and the choir already so how then do we tackle the likes of Facebook and these shit and these other mainstream platforms without another money back to free character coming by on these channels how do we fight back because there are thousands of broadcasters around the world right now who are unable to speak the truth because the life has been set and we can only dance around it and go to another platform where we can't reach the masses who need to get this information some way before figure out some answers I mean the first part starts with your passion sir we need it we need some fight in us to go after this issue censorship on every platform for how much of it he can control how much of it he can't control you may have seen that Elon Musk was just in Europe this week and basically made the same agreement that he did in Turkey governments should mandate the owners of all the social media platforms about their censorship decisions and give the right of response our own laws make it very difficult to require a social media platform to carry particular forms of speech because that's compelled speech is considered a violation of the First Amendment that made to be different in different countries but I think it's going to be very hard to compel that to post a speech that means that you need multiple platforms when Facebook censored Seymour Hirsch we denounced it on Twitter and we did see a response of lessening not an elimination but a lessening of the censorship I'm personally being censored on Facebook right now to give you a sense of the story that Matt and I broke on the first three people to get COVID had 5 million views on Twitter and even though I posted on Facebook at the same time it had only 5 people sharing it not 5 thousand, not 5 million, 5 people so I think we have to be like water and just move to where we can move in this very dynamic environment I mean I never thought you had the similar concern with Rumble as anybody going there but Rust is there now I think we're interested in going there now we need to be able to go to these places where we can find these opportunities but I also think we have to get out of this thing of I think you're insimating of appealing to these powerful billionaires for mercy we need to demand that our governments require that they be transparent in their censorship demands it's got to be a citizens movement because we can't just be appealing to a forwarder we'll do well I mean because people enjoy it because it's real it's genuine you can't fake that you know that's the problem that corporate media has right now they're a losing audience they're desperate and they don't have a strategy for getting it back so just be real and you'll get audience that's important but even more important than I think is the example of Julian Assange what they want to do with cases like Julian is prevent the next person from trying right that's the whole point of being as cruel and as heavy handed as they are in that case is the next person who gets collateral murder they want them to think twice about publishing that video don't think twice do it right and those things will always get attention and they will expose the media that's not doing those stories as the frauds they are and I think it's just important to follow that sort of creates the example and you know independent media will always do fine it may not make a million dollars but it will do well it will require but you remember closing that personal moral fortitude that in the end becomes a very personal choice you alluded briefly to recovery earlier Michael and because I live within a template of personal requirements where I have to observe my own tendency to want to control my own tendency to be competitive or petty or trivial I recognize I have a personal responsibility that I see other people tackling far more gracefully even on this stage an ability to be open minded an ability to be intrepid and investigative and the contribution from Stella reminds us of the necessity of sacrifice the thing that I have continual recourse to that inspires me continually actually is that I marvel at the endeavor involved in creating these systems of control the shutting down of protest the endless surveillance the censorship the legal tools that are deployed the technological tools that are deployed the willingness to overall democracy national sovereignty to smear even the most true for endeavors as being somehow mendacious or duplicitous it also reminds me that there is a necessity to overtly obviously to plainly refute the claims that are often made to be clear about inclusivity to be absolutely open-hearted and loving towards people of all forms of identification all forms of religious, cultural national identification have to be openly embraced it has to be as we saw there when people favor one man and they favor another person's free speech above their own when we have recourse history values kindness service sweetness to one another I feel there that we have a great power a great power that they wouldn't be working nearly so hard if they did not fear us and while we have in the figure of Julian Assange a potential martyr we don't have to allow that to be the case we have to bond and bind and be vocal together and willing to sacrifice and willing to support the great work and bravery of journalists where we find them and be forgiving of other people who don't have those values it's difficult to be unspoken it's difficult to be brave sure as hell it must be difficult to endure life without trial in Belmarsh or the potential of 175 years without trial in a country he may yet be exiled to we must learn to recognize heroism we must be willing to forgive fallibility in ourselves and others we must recognize that we have a deep and powerful resource within us and it is available to all of us in this instant now