 Okay, Jimmy, I'm going to count you in now. Five, four, three, two. Everybody and welcome to our, our panel that is here to discuss the free free and Julian Assange. I just want to let you know what's that bring you up to date what's happening. As you can tell, we have a great panel with us. And I just want to start by saying that Orwell is credited with having said journalism is printing something that power doesn't want printed and everything else is public relations. And right now journalism is on trial free speech is on trial. US authorities are seeking to extradite Julian Assange. They are charging him under the espionage act. His hearing is happening in London in two days. And why is Julian Assange in prison? Because he exposed the crimes of empire, the crimes of war, the crimes of corruption. And there is no greater crime to the establishment than exposing the truth. For seven years as publisher, Assange has been persecuted for publishing what power doesn't want published. This is meant to put a chill on all journalism. As long as Julian Assange is in prison, we are all in prison. The truth is in prison. And that is why we must help free Julian Assange. Today we'll be speaking to an illustrious panel of champions for free speech. Alice Walker is a poet Pulitzer Prize winning author of books like The Color Purple, a fine essayist and a civil rights activist. She is one of our greatest writers and greatest social activists. Noam Chomsky is a professor of linguistics and social critic and one of the foremost intellectuals of our time and Daniel Ellsberg joins us. He was US military analyst who bravely released the Pentagon Papers in 1971. These documents expose the lives of our government about the Vietnam War. The fallout of his whistleblowing helped bring an end to our military involvement in Vietnam. And all three of these guests are co-chairs of the new US support group for Julian Assange called Assange Defense. And if you want more information, you can always go to assangedefense.org and you will find coverage of the trial and updates on Julian's hearing. That's assangedefense.org. Ellsberg, Professor Chomsky, Ms. Walker, thank you all for being here. Thank you. Thank you. So let me just start. There was some confusion. Let me start with Noam first. There is some confusion with the public. Many think that Julian Assange is on trial for something to do with Russia and the DNC and the 2016 election. He's being prosecuted for the release of a video showing the US air attack in Iraq that killed dozens of people, including two Reuters media workers. Now, if they are successful in prosecuting Assange, won't it allow governments around the world from the US, UK to Europe and Australia to outlaw any reporting about national security? Let me just put that to you, Noam. I don't think Noam got any of his address to you, to him. Okay. He was directed to me. Yeah, I was directed towards you. Sorry, I couldn't hear. Well, Julian Assange has, as you said, performed the, met the responsibilities of a journalist in the most effective and courageous fashion. He has released information to the public that the public should know. Journalists, scholars are making extensive use of the information that he provided, something that all of us should know. Those in power have their own reasons to suppress facts that display to the general public what they are doing. The essence of a free democratic society is that the public should know, understand, be, have critical awareness and analysis of what their elected leaders are doing. The highest mission of journalists is to fulfill that responsibility that Julian Assange has done so with great merit and courage. We should stress that this effort to, he's been punished brutally for years for having achieved, carried out this crucial mission of journalism at the highest level. He is now being threatened with extremely severe punishment by a government which wants to silence the revelations of its actions. The, what will happen at the trial and afterwards will depend very significantly on public actions and reactions. A public uproar over this criminal prosecution is sure to have an impact on how it will eventuate and not only is Julian Assange fate at risk in this sorted affair, but so is that of journalism, freedom of speech, democratic rights, quite generally. We can't stand by and permit this monstrous offense against our highest values to proceed. If I could just ask you a follow up on that. Why is the world of journalism so silent about the persecution of Julian Assange? We have to ask them they shouldn't be. This is maybe people are afraid. Maybe they have other reasons, but it's not a great tribute to journalism to see them back away from supporting someone who has lived up to the highest ideals of the profession, being savagely persecuted for doing so. This is a mission that journalists should applaud. They should be in the front lines of defending Assange and in fact themselves against state power that is out of control. It seems to me maybe it's because a small internet outlet like WikiLeaks accomplishes, what it accomplishes poses a great threat to institutions like the New York Times and the Washington Post because they're not accomplishing much. Let me move on to Alice Walker and this next question is for you. If Julian Assange is successfully prosecuted, what effect will this have on free speech and activists and why should Americans care about this extradition trial? Alice, could you unmute yourself please? Okay. How is that? Is it unmuted? Okay. We need to know that we have people in our country and in the world who stand for something and who stand up for the people and who stand up for the planet. And if they're persecuted in the way that Julian Assange is being persecuted, we may never know. I mean our children won't even know that there was someone who said, hey, you should not shoot anyone from a helicopter, there are a few people who are not bothering you. They won't know. In the same way that we have lost so many wonderful people, I mean how many people know anything about John Brown for instance, you know, this great abolitionists who died for fighting for black people for our freedom. They hide these people from us in this very way that they're doing with Julian Assange. They just lock them away, they kill them. And who are we to let this happen? Who are we? Who are we to let this happen really? You know. So we need to press on, you know, all the people who awaken to the condition that Julian Assange is suffering under and his family. I am especially concerned about his family. This is just a wrong, it's an evil. And we have the power to change it. It takes waking up and it takes acting. That's all. And so because we are now all of us locked down, locked in, locked up with the virus, what a perfect time to just revolt and say enough already, you know, free all these people like Julian, although I don't know how many people are quite like Julian, he's quite exceptional. But it's time to stand up and say free the people. Yes, agreed. Let me just ask you one more. Senator Douglas once said to suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the right of the hearer, as well as those of the speaker. Can you talk about how free speech is integral to the struggle for social justice? Well, totally, because if you can't talk about it, how can you do anything about it? And if you're afraid to speak, how can you ever move anywhere is absolutely essential. If you disagree, that's their right. But it should not be their right to lock you up for saying something they don't like. That's ridiculous. And we actually outnumber these people who are making these laws. And that's what has to happen. We have to awaken to that fact. I mean we should just everybody, every one of us should say what can we do to get Julian Assange and people like him. That's what we can do. And just find a way, find whatever you can do. It may be small. It may be whatever. But that's what we can do. Let me, well, thank you very much. Let me now turn to Daniel Ellsberg and you were subjected to an FBI manhunt after you released the Pentagon Papers. Today, Assange is at risk of being tortured and facing a potential 175 year sentence. Do you see parallels with your case in Julia Assange's case? Certainly very close parallels. On the point you just raised, of course, Julian Assange is not in the potential of being tortured. He has been tortured for, I could really say for about eight years now, but in particular for the last 18 months, he has been kept in a cell in isolation in a prison for terrorists here for telling the truth. At a time when he had in the Ecuadorian embassy already was suffering from severe pains in his shoulder from terrible dental problems, which could not be dealt with in the Ecuadorian embassy. And the British would not give him any assurance that he would not be extradited to the United States if he left there to get dental care. That he's gotten the care that he needs even now that he's in British custody all this time. So he is being tortured for that. What Ells reminded me of here is of course the video of the killings that Julian first released, which had the title he put on, which was very problematic in many people's eyes. He was questioned for it and that was collateral murder, murder. And as someone I was a battalion training officer in the Marine Corps and taught the laws of war, not very long, but briefly and long enough to know that what I was seeing on that video when I first saw it was murder. It was the deliberate shooting down of unarmed civilians. It turned out one of them, a Reuters journalist and his photographer both killed hunted down actually as they tried to as they tried to shield themselves while they were laughing in the helicopter at this turkey shoot. And the people who tried to help them were actually told to go mind their business by the superior officers actually people on the ground. So this was murder. It was like the Rodney King shooting, which got, remember, which had an enormous effect video or of course, recently, the George Floyd murder, which we just saw all on television. It didn't have that same effect because it was Americans killing foreigners. And as the people, many people including the people who tried to rescue people on the ground pointed out this was a daily occurrence in Iraq. And it didn't get the attention, the response, but it got enough attention that he's still being charged with it 10 years later. And all those wars, of course, are still going on. They have been going on for nine years in 2010 when this was revealed and now it's 19 years still going on. So the question has been answered in a way that is coming up a great deal this year. What if a president gives unlawful orders to his subordinates to military subordinates, either the military to exercise police or vigilante purpose in American cities right now, or to start a nuclear war. The question has arisen directly for the first time under this president. And the answers come back. Well, of course, we'd point out to him that it's illegal. And we assure that he didn't do that. Actually, not. That's really not very likely at all. And that state of affairs is of course all hidden by the veil of secrecy. You asked the question of the relation to my case. I was the first person charged for giving information to the American public under the same statutes and charges as Julie Massange. We do not have an official secrets act in this country, as in the mother country Britain, because we have a First Amendment of freedom of the press freedom of thought freedom of association, which has always before my case in 1971, held a preclude, either a prosecution like mine under any statute, or specifically an official secrets act, which would criminalize any release of information that the public that the government wanted to keep secret from the public. And in this case, then they tried the espionage act which was meant for spies who give information secretly to another country, especially in time of war, had been used very much for that. And then he said on someone who gave information to the American public, me for the first time. Since then, really 10 years went by before there was another prosecution. Mine was dismissed for reasons of governmental misconduct against me during the trial criminal conduct, which led actually to the resignation of Nixon in the end, and to the prosecution the conviction of a number of his subordinates would been involved in that. And then another 10 years before there was another case, and then about 10 years after that a third, only three before President Obama, none having gone to the, one went to the Supreme Court and they refused jurisdiction. So the Supreme Court has never to this day addressed the question of whether it can be constitutional to prosecute someone for telling the truth to the American public. To address that was a very strong constitutional case against that, whether the majority on this court would notice that or not. Nevertheless, it hasn't been tested. President Obama brought nine such cases three times more than the three that have been tried before. But even he did not apply it to someone, unlike me, who was an official who had had a security clearance, all the other cases involved those. He tried to apply it to a journalist. As the wording of the SBN Ajax permits, it's extremely broad under earlier constitutional doctrines that SBN Ajax would almost surely be thrown out on grounds of over breath, because and because it actually applies in the way that anyone on author giving class doesn't use the word classified but information relating to the management of fence that's being protected to an unauthorized person, or reading it or possessing it or keeping it, any of that, in other words, the wording literal wording would apply even to readers of a newspaper who were warned that this is a leak of classified information. And if they give it to their spouse or whoever, and they protected they don't give it back to an authorized authority as the lawyers, they could be subject to this too. Well, nobody had ever tried applying the law that far was so clearly lead to, if it got to the Supreme Court to a judgment of unconstitutionality and then we wouldn't have any threat to hold over people at all in terms of legal prosecution. Obama considered using this against a sonnage, actually, in 2010 and 11. And remember he had he gets out in 2017, early 2017. In all those years, he did not apply it to a sonnage because of the reasons I've given. And for the practical reason that he could not explain using that against a sonnage and not against the New York Times. And, or for that matter, the London Guardian or observer who use this, a sonnage after all, who's not an American citizen, is being faced with extradition by the British to a country to another country for having allegedly violated its laws on on security. Now, a lot of countries have laws even a lot tougher than ours on security in China. Imagine how this could have applied elsewhere. So, in this case, then a sonnage backed off from charging a sonnage rather than charge the New York Times as well who had published the same material. The ACLU warned at the beginning of this administration that this president was very likely to extend the law further to apply to journalists and publishers for the first time. And that is what we see with a sonnage. And the very fact, Jimmy that you mentioned earlier that some journalists have chosen to remain aloof from this on the grounds that he's not really a journalist as Bill Keller put it of the New York Times, not a journalist as he could see it. The fact is that if he is extradited and prosecuted here in the current climate, I would say he would almost surely be convicted. We couldn't count on the Supreme Court to recognize that this was a clear violation of the First Amendment. We would have a First Amendment applying to government secrecy to national security at all. We'd have nothing but handouts from then on, and we would have more wars based on lies like Iraq and the others. And I think that's a great deal of Vietnam for that in my case, Pentagon Papers. So a great deal hangs on this. And finally, Jimmy, if I may address your question, you asked, I think, Noam, why is the press staying aloof from this? Since my case. And that was 1971. That was 49 years ago. And I have been seeing, I can tell you throughout that time, to audiences of journalists, some cases publishers, AP editors and whatnot. This is a buried bomb, a mine, in effect, waiting for you. If you do not examine, investigate the secrecy system and the abuse of it, and the wrongness or the use of this law against this, it is going to be used directly against you, as well as to your sources. They were surprisingly acquiesced at the notion of it's being used against sources, actually, the legal aspects of that. In my case, we're hardly ever examined, or in the other cases, which have been going on under Obama. The very frail, lovely unconstitutionality of really what's being done. And so they stayed aloof from it. Oh, this will never touch us. We have an arrangement with the government. We do our best to find secrets. And they do their best to keep them and it works out pretty well for democracy. Well, it hasn't worked out well for democracy or for our victims in Iraq and Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, all these other places that are victimized in secret wars. And it hasn't worked out well for our democracy at all. So the Assange case gives journalists a chance now to write to focus their attention at last on the direct threat to their freedom of speech, and the unauthorized disclosure, which is the life's blood of a You know, Barack Obama did not prosecute the people who ordered a torture program or carried it out and he said the reason he wasn't going to prosecute them was because all those crimes happened in the past and Barack Obama was looking towards the future. And I guess all those people in prison are upset they committed their crimes in the future, I guess, but he rose recently at the Democratic Convention Barack Obama said that nobody's above the law, including the president. Yet war criminals are walking free and Julian Assange is on in jail. Do you have any ideas how we can bring war criminals to justice in this day and age. In countries like the US superpowers, victorious or defeated. As in Vietnam, we don't have more, we don't have crimes trials and we refuse of course, the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, which I think was an American idea to in a considerable extent I could be wrong there in the beginning but of course then we saw no no no that's not going to apply to us. In fact, I think there have actually been statements and even legislation to the effect that we would use force to free prisoners Americans who were otherwise going to be brought to trial in the Hague and the International Criminal Court. And of course, the very collateral murder video which was the first big release on Americans that I saw, by the way, people have forgotten that Julian had been revealing crimes of state in other countries, including China for years before that. And, but this caught people's attention because was Americans. Okay. The truth is that Americans have not shown any interest in prosecuting war crimes by Americans when there there have been some trials. And in this case, of course, we have the obscene spectacle of this president using Eddie Gallagher as actually a campaign supporter in this a convicted war criminal who he pardoned for this. And I, as I mentioned earlier, as a former lieutenant in the Marine Corps platoon leader and company commander. I still have enough of that identification in me despite the sorrows of recent decades of the Marines to be shocked and shocked as a Marine leader as a platoon leader on that at the idea of the message that sends to everybody that atrocities of which Gallagher was possibly accused by his fellow, his other people working in the military on that are no problem if it's an American, meaning that our wars, whether they're of aggression like Iraq, or possibly otherwise. There are no laws of war as far as Americans are concerned and that will mean even far more victims than otherwise. The one last thing. What I did was there been such a pursuit of Obama and of Chelsea Manning, who is his source, actually at that time, it struck me that one of the things that hit home to the Obama administration was that the torture that Chelsea Manning revealed going on in Iraq was put to the White House itself to Obama because it extended into the Obama administration that she revealed these were clear cut war crimes. What she revealed was that as a intelligence operative at that time, analysts, she became aware, then Bradley Manning in the military, that we were turning over Iraqi prisoners to the Iraqis people we'd captured with the clear knowledge that they would be tortured, and that they had been tortured. And part of the law of torture in this case, which is international, it's even called just Kogan's crime that cannot be legitimized cannot be legalized by any legislature goes beyond that it's an international crime that under any circumstances, whatever. And part of the law of that is that to fail to investigate a credible accusation of torture and to fail to prosecute it and punish it is itself a crime equivalent to the torture itself. And for us to turn those people over was as criminal as to do it ourselves. Chelsea revealed, and what Julianne published was a huge pattern of these crimes showing that it wasn't an isolated instance, but clearly was a policy. She had been told and many people that she revealed in the Iraqi reports the war logs. And this is Julianne when he released the Iraq war logs in in London had actually done what she done, which was say, these people are going to be tortured in every case, clearly as a matter of policy. They were told, let it alone. Don't follow that up. That was an illegal order. Everyone but Chelsea, who spent seven and a half years in prison as a result essentially. And, but a policy like that goes up the chain, and clearly was allowed by the White House, by the president. So she was revealing crimes war crimes by President Obama, and his predecessor, George W Bush, and I suspect that has a lot to do with why this is continuing pursuit goes on. That was Alice has said. If crime stops at the foot of the government, if what officials can't be prosecuted and what what Obama did, essentially, was to decriminalize torture by refusing to prosecute Jimmy you were quoting him as saying, Well, that's in the past. Speaking prosecutions referred to the past, certainly still in this country. And that means if you're not going to prosecute. It's effectively not a, not a crime he is decriminalize that, which I say I think is a terrible stain on Obama, and it's it's not too late to reverse that. Well, you know one of the reasons why you punish a crime, you prosecute a crime one is for punishment but the other is to is to discourage it from happening in the future and when you don't prosecute a crime it guarantees it's going to continue to happen in the future if it's not happening at right now. Let me just one point you made you know that you talked about the, the message it sends to the troops when Trump goes around with a war criminal and pardons him and the message that sends. What is what message does it send when Barack Obama tortures Chelsea Manning, which is what he did for revealing war crimes what message that's that send. That answers itself doesn't it. Namely, you know, it's just this pattern that I described, I suspect that's not, that's not solely an American problem. Other countries, I'm sure are not quick to recognize crimes by their by their own people. But really, I remember following the Nuremberg trials. When I was young, and very struck by Justice Jackson's, which I remember from the time actually saying these we are applying laws that are meant to be universal here. And if these, this is a paraphrase now but if these are not to be applied equally to Americans in the future. This will have been a mockery. That's what happened. They haven't been applied they're not being applied. And they should be. Let me take it back to you, Professor Chomsky, and you know the International Corporate State fears investigative journalism. What does the fact that all major news outlets are controlled by billionaires and corporations does that. Does that pose a threat to our democracy. If the United States notices one of the very few countries that does not have any substantial meaningful public broadcasting, it's only under private control. Actually, this was a battle. What goes way back to the days of the framing of the Constitution. One of the parts of the Constitution is establishing the post office. Why the this is very much under threat today. Why the post office. The post office was instituted by the framers as a way to support a free and independent press. Almost everything that the post office is doing in the early years of the Republic was providing very inexpensive distribution of press journals magazines to the country I think that was maybe 80% of what you're doing. This was intended as a way to ensure that there would be a free and independent press, given back to given a certain amount to subsidy to be adversarial and independent. That's the source of the post office. The reason is why there are such major attacks against it today. We don't want to those the corporate sector and those who work for them don't want to free and independent press. They want to control it. It's called neoliberalism turned decisions away from government, which has the flaw that is that it is responsible responsive to some extent to the population. Turn it over into unaccountable private hand, then you're safe. This is going on through American history. When radio came along in the 1920s 1930s. It was a great battle. Very significant battle about whether the airwaves publicly owned should be used for the benefit of the public and controlled by the public. British groups, educational institutions, other groups wanted it to be free and open public radio under public control. Corporates business sectors were strong enough to be able to beat that down. Radio became private privately controlled, tiny friends. Same thing happened in the late 1940s with television. Same battle. Should it be in the public domain, public property after all, or should it be handed over to private institutions to run the way they do? Well, we know the outcome of that. The United States has nothing like BBC, their friends, others. It's just, it's a privately owned system. Well, the system works. We shouldn't overlook the fact that the press does perform a major service. Our journalists are overwhelmingly honest, courageous, describe what they see. You can trust what they say. It's the best. Just speaking of myself, first thing I do every morning is read the New York Times, knowing the flaws of the company. Once we understand we can compensate for the way the news is framed for what's chosen and what isn't chosen. We can fill in the gaps. We can correct for the ways in which things are modified and presented. But that is the main, that and others like it are the main source of information. However, the idea that there should be, that the media should be truly under the public control, independent, free, the way the founders interpreted the First Amendment. That's the way they interpreted it. The First Amendment wasn't just what are called negative rights. The government can't interfere with the press. The First Amendment was understood by the framers as conferring positive rights. The government should actively, they should take action to ensure that there is a free and independent press. Well, that's again why the Post Office is in the Constitution. Just compare that till today when the government is trying to savagely punish and viciously prosecute someone who is carrying out that mission. And it tells you something about what we have allowed to happen to our own freedoms. We can take them back. We don't have to abandon them to a powerful, accountable institution. Alice, let me ask you, you've been an activist your entire life. Can you speak to how the current period of protest is unique and what are the most alarming aspects that you're seeing today? Well, there first of all are very many positive. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Dr. Tuffy, that question is for Alice. Well, I'd actually rather continue talking about Assange if you don't mind. Because I'm really concerned about him and his family and what is going to happen to them if we fail to free him. I have lived long enough to witness so many assassinations, for instance, where the person is killed or put in some dungeon. And then the family is just left to, you know, sink or swim as it will. And this is an area where I really think we should spend a lot more time, you know, really thinking about what we're doing when we can sign people to these dungeons, and go on about our lives as if they don't exist. I mean, the talent for forgetting is just amazing to me. Now, these are people who actually give us so much of their very substance. You know, I mean, Julian didn't have to do this, but he did because this is the kind of person that he is. He's made like that. You know, some people are just made to stand. And he is one of those people. I mean, this is a good person. And it's really just shocking to realize that people can't any longer tell when someone is good. I mean, they've just lost that ability. And we used to have it. You know, you used to just know, oh, that's a good person there. And now, you know, you just, anyway, so this is, you know, this is an area where we need to do some soul searching, homework, whatever it takes to regain that ability to at least to say grok somebody. You have to be able to grok somebody and know that this person is really the medicine that your community and your world needs right now in order to stay worth living in. You know, we're losing the planet because we've forgotten how to tell when somebody is trying to save it. We just can't tell. And this is a tragedy. You know, it's a human tragedy. And we're catching it. You know, we're really, you know, inheriting what we have, what happened, and also back to gnome, you know, I'm listening to him and thinking how all that early stuff about this country didn't even apply to people of color and that is also what you're seeing in the way war is made on them. You know, the people who are making the war still believe that the people of color in the world don't really count as people and so you can just do whatever you want. And that's the deep, deep racism, which coming back to your earlier question, I would say, you know, some of the people now, some of the youth especially, or attempting to address I mean the white youth. You know, they're actually now in many, many numbers, which is great to see a white people trying to deal with the history of racism, which has to be dealt with in order for the United States to live and for the rest of the world to live. I mean, it is a terrible wounding that has affected this land. And we have to figure out a way to deal with that. Otherwise we're sunk. And I see you're very distracted. What are you doing with me, you What am I doing? I'm listening to you. Well, well, you, you see totally somewhere else. And that's the other problem. You know, we have to cultivate better listening, you know, and right along with better seeing. And we had to forget about, you know, how things looks perfect. None of it's perfect. You know, it's perfect in its imperfection. And just go on with that. Okay. You know, let me just ask you this question. I was searching for this next question. Maybe that's what you were seeing my eyes go down to the paper. We tolerate horrors of foreign policy in order to achieve the smallest reforms and domestic policy. We adjust to internet censorship until it affects us. We live with unspeakable cruelties towards the earth and the planet focusing on human rights, although they are unshakably interconnected. Can you speak to what the danger of accepting the war on whistleblowers is as many liberals have done throughout the Obama administration and beyond. They've been banned a lot in my lifetime. You know, I mean, I've been called everything but a child of God. So, what that does is it, you know, it hurts. And sometimes you're, you know, you look for your books or whatever you produced and they're just not there because well they've been banned. Right. So then you have to think about your livelihood. So that's, that's totally reasonable. You know, you have to eat, you have to live yet but I'm housing. I don't really have to take care of them. So all these things have to be considered when you then make the decision whether you're going to just step up anyway. And that is what is called for now. Just step up anyway. Okay. Let me go back to Professor Chomsky if I could you know the internet has given us an extraordinary platform for dissenting journalism my show being an example but now we're seeing monopolies of big tech. It works with government to silence free speech. What is the future of dissenting journalism in the world when big tech seems to have the power of censorship and people accept it because it's a quote unquote private company. Accept it is the crucial phrase. If people accept it, if people accept to be submissive to private power. Then of course it'll take over, but we then don't have to be. I mean, Alice mentioned the books being being banned. When books are banned by private power. civil libertarians. Don't take notice. I've actually had experience with this as well. Going back to 1971, which Dan mentioned. I often wrote books jointly with my friend Edward Herman. The first book we published was in 1971. It was a book on counter revolutionary violence. The violence used to suppress popular movements, thinking primarily about Vietnam, but others. What was published 20,000 copies public pretty small publishing publisher, the conglomerate and executive of the conglomerate that owned the publisher. Time Warner was in different name. Didn't like the book ordered the publisher to retract it. When they refused, he put the entire publisher out of business, destroying all of their books. This was brought to the attention of civil libertarians. They didn't see any problem with it. After all the conglomerate owns the publisher. They want to put them out of business and destroy every one of their books, not just ours. That's Liberty. I think there was one major exception. Ben back dig in the did stand up and say this is wrong. Virtually no one else. When we part of the genius of what we call neoliberalism, the, what we've been living under for 40 years. Was encapsulated in Ronald Reagan's inauguration speech. Everyone knows the phrase government is the problem, not the solution. Translate that into English. That means that this decisions are going to be made somewhere, but they shouldn't be made in government. This government is somewhat responsible responsive to the pop to the public and somewhat under the control of the public to take them out of public hands. Put them in the hands of private tyrannies, which are totally unaccountable to the public in law and practice. And then we will have what's called Liberty. If you abandon everything to unaccountable private power. That's what we've been living with for 40 years. And this is very closely connected to the government itself. If we lose even the capacity to influence the government to permit. Not only to permit, but to support and advocate freedom of an independent adversarial journalism. We've given up everything. We've given up the freedoms that the founding fathers established in the constitutions. We've been given up giving up any hope to influence control the fairs that affect us and others. Very serious issues around the line. You know, Julian Assange said that power is a thing of perception they don't need to be able to kill you they just need you to think they can kill you. Can you speak a little bit about how Julian Assange imprisonment has already had an effect on dissenting journalism. Julian Assange, first of all, provided a vast amount of material. We've been talking about one particular case, exposing the war crimes. But there's a huge amount of important material there, which is being widely used by journalists by scholars in all sorts of domains I have as well. So in the first instance, he provided a great spur to independent journalism. But then the silence that you've been talking about is casting a poll over that and saying we tolerate suppression of independent journalism that we ourselves benefit from. We're tolerating its oppression by looking the other way when there's a sacrifice being made by a person who stood out for achieving the goals of true independent journalism. These being sacrificed will stay silent. That's very dangerous threat to the to the independence and freedom, not only of the press, but of a free democratic society altogether, something that the framers of the Constitution understood very well. We want to give it up. Let's do it openly and honestly. Let me go now to Daniel Ellsberg. Let me just put that same question to you. Have you seen the imprisonment of Assange with the effect that it's had already on dissenting journalism. Remember, I'm not a journalist. So I see it from that aspect. There's no question that the various prosecutions you've seen especially under Obama and now even more as was predicted. President Trump has brought more prosecutions actually an Obama for against sources as well as this one against the journalists here. And the intent of that obviously is to dry up the sources, which is which journalists in general, by the way, I would my impression as a sources. Okay, journalists don't see sources as part of the journalist process, their raw material or their resources of some sort. Journalists tend to see sources, including me, the way that cops feel about their informers, their informants in the gangs, their snitches, their criminals are breaking the law which they aren't as I was trying to explain that the journalists assume there is a law that applies to sources, not themselves. And I have to say, one more time, the same law that applies to sources can be directed at the journalist and now is being directed in the form of Julian and he will not be the last. So the intention of this of course is to confront people with extreme punishment. And to go back to the nature of this punishment, by the way, let's say Snowden, despite the fact that this week, there was actually some good news for the first time, which is that a court has held that the law that Snowden revealed actually, that is to say the process that he revealed of hearing everybody in America, having denied that they were doing that, and having been forbidden by law to do that, that that was criminal, the law was illegal and probably unconstitutional. That doesn't mean, does that mean that Snowden then is home free that he can't be prosecuted for breaking a law that was held to be unconstitutional here or exposing a practice was unconstitutional. No, no, revealing it. It's still, you know, the offense. And, and what would happen to him if he came back, I can predict that on the excuse of keeping him from telling more secrets to inmates in a general population in the prison, he will be held in solitary confinement for the rest of his life, I would say, like my friend Mordechai Venonu in Israel, who spent 11 and a half years of a 17 year sentence in solitary confinement. And when Alice mentioned about the human aspects of this. And it was really this applied also by the way to Jeffrey Sterling CI person was not given proper medical attention when he was in having revealed a total bundle by the CIA and they wrote to get him as a result. Chelsea's case where she was held in solitary confinement for 10 and a half months in chronicle, which led to a lot of public protest, made people aware of how common this solitary confinement actually is. Jimmy you started out by asking a question about torture. It's clear that that is torture as the rapporteur for torture in the UN, two of them now actually in succession have said that this is torture. And I think Chelsea's own case, made a lot of people aware for the first time was happening to a white person that made him aware wait a minute this happens all the time people are held for years in solitary confinement. And of course, mainly people of color are convicted of that. That is torture that is going on right now, and should be illegal. So that's, that's a practice that should change. Totally. One last thing. When Alice mentioned how so much of this is done to people of color. Well, so many of our illegal war imperial wars in the world are to keep hold of former colonies. They're almost always people of color, right. So they've been screwed over, in other words, for centuries now, and by us in turn. Well, when, when Julian published Chelsea's revelation of the State Department cables. A lot of point was made of the fact that a lot of that didn't involve crimes by us. It involved offenses and crimes and oppressions by other people. And Chelsea, you know, what was our, why was that worth her risking prison and actually suffering prison for what Chelsea said at the time, her intention was to show how the first world us deals with the third world. In terms of busting unions in Haiti, for example, and a very good example is what was revealed about Tunisia that had Julian not given had Julian given the information, let's say, only to the New York Times, and not to six or seven newspapers competing with each other, assuring that a lot of it would get out. The information about Tunisia was not put out by the New York Times and would not have been about the extreme corruption of their dictator. Le Monde was one of the people that Julian gave us to, and they gave it to their former colony, Tunisia, it was printed in Le Monde picked up in Tunisia. And that led to the freeing of Tunisia from Tunisia from that from that dictator who fled his later, there should be a statue in Tunisia in Tunis to Chelsea and to Julian, actually. And that's one of the rare cases where the Arab uprising which it led to actually really has worked out reasonably well so far a genuine, a genuine liberation that would not have happened without Julian's and Chelsea's putting out this massive information from which people could find oppressions all over the world. So it isn't just American freedom of speech that's at stake here. The imperial order as a whole is maintained by secrecy and needs to be challenged. Let me just give everybody a chance to give our closing statement and wrap up as we're coming to the end of our panel here. Let me start with Professor Chomsky. I know if you would like to any last words you'd like to add. I would just like to stress once again that popular action in support of Julian Assange will be critical in determining the outcome of this process of prosecution of someone who is standing up for rights. Silence is not an option. Thank you very much and thanks for being a part of the Assange defense team and doing this and now let's move to Alice Walker. Alice, go ahead. Do you have any final thoughts you'd like to share? Well, I think ignorance is our greatest enemy and lucky for us ignorance is something that can be defeated, you know, and I think if people take the time to actually look into this case and understand what Assange did and what he's doing and what he's standing for, it would be fairly simple to realize that this is someone who is trying to give us all a fuller life, a freer life, a happier life. This man is actually bringing us a gift. And we should be very, very, you know, intelligent enough to see that to see that if we look into our lives, there will be all these areas where we can be free people. We don't have to be just stooges and slaves of whatever the media is telling us is the flavor of the week. You know, this is really something. I mean, it's a great, great offering. And we should rise up and accept it as the offering that it is. I mean, I don't want it to be his life, though, that's being offered or the father, the children of Julian Assange. I don't want them to be like so many of the children of, you know, assassinated and prison people where they grow up without a father. If that happens, how can we bear it? How can we bear it when we can prevent it? We can prevent it. So I would just say for all of us, you know, just start studying. I believe in study. I believe in learning. I think learning is one of the greatest things you can do to free yourself. I'll learn everything you can about this case. You know, it'll reveal your country to you in a way that perhaps you've never seen it. And let's just get on with it. You know, we are the many. They are the few. All right, and let me go to Daniel Ellsberg. Any closing thoughts? Yes, I can't help feeling that it's an honor to be on this panel and to see the faces of my fellow panelists here. I had to laugh when you raised the question about censorship and one of us, Alice said, Oh, I've been banned. Very good. And when it comes to, in my case, I was prosecutors like last night, I was reading a book that was one of my great inspirations, actually, before the Pentagon Papers. I don't know if you can see this. It's Noam Chomsky's book. Well, I was reading this now because I was looking up his is on this chapter on the beginnings and the rationale for World War Two in the Pacific. And it's the 75th anniversary of Hiroshima has put me on to studying from the Japanese point of view actually the ending of the war. And this book is the one that first really put in my head as a former official. And as Noam says over and over again in the logic of withdrawal in this book, that time that Americans act as if we had a right to be doing what we're doing to be invading Vietnam to be regime change as it's now a common place in the idea very definition of imperialism is, yes, we don't like that country leaders, let's get rid of it, assassinate or not. Is assassination possible. What is happening to Assange right now I can only be understood as a desire by British and American authorities to see him die, rather than to make his case in court. That is my belief. That's the speculation if you're like that's just the judgment. It's outrageous. It is criminal the way he is being treated. Many jurists and many doctors in Britain have signed petitions exactly to that effect that for medical reasons alone as Alice keeps mentioning, he should be released or put in totally in prison for life or even be killed to get this information out. And if it wasn't acted on, she would have been in prison for life or even be killed to get this information out. So, as each of them said, Chelsea said that she was prepared to inform it unfortunately that she prepared to go to prison for life or even be killed to get this information out. And if it wasn't acted on, she would despair of the human species. Snowden said who by the way, Julian was critical in keeping Snowden in getting Snowden out of Hong Kong. He was his assistant, his aide, Sarah Harrison, who accompanied him on his trip and helped him in Russia, get exile in Russia and Julian I think hasn't gotten the credit that he deserves for that on Snowden. But as Snowden said, there are things worth dying for. Well, that's true. And these people should not have to die for what they did. And it's up to us to help keep that from happening. There's no assault on journalism that is happening right now, right out in the open. So I just want to say my honor to be a part of a re-moderate this panel with such great champions of speech. I want to say thanks to Elder Walker, Joplin, and all of the great artists and great, great, and all of the traditional journalists,