 No, thank you. Hello, hello, hello, and welcome. I'm Merron Kivili. We are DM25, a radical political movement for Europe. And this is another live discussion with our coordinating team featuring subversive ideas. You won't hear anywhere else. Hello, hello, and I've made exactly the same mistake as last time where I can hear my voice too much. I just turned it off. There we go. Okay, back to business. A few days ago, the UK decided to extradite Julian Assange, the co-founder of Wikibix to the US. Julian Assange, who's already spent three years in a high-security prison in London, now faces potentially 175-year sentence in another high-security jail in America, likely with prolonged solitary confinement. But Julian has not been convicted of anything. What he did do was investigative journalism. He simply revealed what the US would rather have stayed hidden, most prominently evidence of war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, the NSA spying on world leaders, and abuse and torture at Guantanamo and other sites. And so the British Home Secretary's decision a few days ago opens the door now for journalists anywhere in the world to be extradited to the US for exposing information that Washington would rather keep secret. At the same time, much of the world's media and a large chunk of leftist activists have ignored Assange's persecution or have even cheered it. These are people who you might think would be concerned with holding power to account. So tonight we're going to try and sift through all this and what it means and what if anything can still be done to help Julian and press freedom in general. So you out there, this is live on YouTube. If you've got anything you want to say, thoughts, reflection, rents, comments, concerns, please put them to us in the YouTube chat and we will put them to our panel. Let's kick off now with Julia Moore from the UK, Julia. Hi, good evening, Miran. I hope the sound level's okay. Good evening, everybody who's watching. Yeah, Assange where we are. If we look at the broader picture, if I take people back to the constitutional crisis of Brexit and the politicians, the government pointing a finger at our Supreme Court and calling them the enemies of the people, if everybody remembers that headline. And so what we have in this timeline of investigative journalists and Assange being the extreme and contemporary version of this relationship between the judiciary, the legal system, and the government, and governments becoming increasingly more aggressive and interfering in the judiciary. And the current issue with Assange and the final decision which extradites him is in a long history of the judiciary attempting to be the last bastion of independence. We have a long history in the UK of left-wing journalists who have been prosecuted. The use of the Official Secrets Act being bent which way and ever by successive governments in order to successfully bring about prosecutions. I can remember and some of my contemporaries can remember various journalists being prosecuted over revelations of satellite companies in the past. Small left-wing journals like New Society Magazine were at the vanguard. A tiny, tiny periodical but was very brave in the investigative journalism that used to take place with that small team of investigators who were continually, continually harassed with the Official Secrets Act being used as the beating stick. So here we have Assange which is a representation of the power play between the US and the UK. And the very thin line of our judiciary where its independence is being challenged on a daily basis being chewed away at despite some very, very tough and courageous defences that are going on within the judiciary and the legal system. And I'm afraid to say that Assange is very much like Brexit. Assange is showing a light to the world about what happens when aggressive governments start to become bigger than the rule of law that they themselves have set. And of course for those of us who have been watching the dreadful party allegations over the last couple of months, we know that the rule makers then become the rule breakers. And our colleague and our courageous colleague Assange of course is but an extreme victim of that particular process. So yes, one of our colleagues here asked a very good question. Has there been a tradition of this in the UK in English law? Oh yes is the answer to that courageous journalist. And in the week where we were born two very brave activists, one of whom was a journalist who lost their lives in the fight of environmental aggressive banditry, we have to mourn and support the brave work of journalists. And of course Assange will be the benchmark for which all others are followed. So yeah, it's as much to do with the interplay of the challenges to the legal system which happens when you have an extreme government who is now bigger than itself and is out of control. The British government was called a thuggish government in the week. And I think that's something that I'd like to probably finish on and leave you with that thought. Thanks Judy. Can I just ask you, I mean since you're on the ground in the UK, what do you think might explain the relative silence around this case in the British press? I mean, the Guardian wrote something very short on it. There was one op-ed and a rather quiet editorial. I mean, where is the left? Where is the press on this critical issue? And why are they prioritising it? Well, Miran, I think we all know the answer to that, do we? If I may come back with a sort of an anecdote for the same reason that the Guardian, it's hardly bear's imagining that that amazing journal that started in the teeth of the more accurate reporting for the Peterloom massacre is now running articles telling people how to cope with austerity by wearing more than one jumper in the winter that's coming up. Now, I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound to me like a left-wing press that's challenging a structure anymore. And the simple answer to your question, Miran, is that we have a concentration of right-wing bias. We have as you say, a few lines of Assange. It is almost relegated to the sports page. You would have to look very hard, but that's because the left-wing press itself, there are no more new society magazines, which was the little creature that dared to speak above everybody else. If you think that the biggest challenge to the mainstream press is probably private eye, which has a very different approach to challenging main stories. But in terms of the mainstream press, you have to go online now. There are good left-wing progressive, as we know, online platforms. But as you're talking about mainstream, the mainstream is right in the way that Australia's in the past, the mining companies bought up the two major press outlets in order that they could obviously protect the storyline on mining because mining and extraction is a very important of the Australian government. So back in the day, the Guardian was funded specifically to be the voice of investigative journalism as the left-wing balance against that, which is an irony, as you were saying, about how the Assange look where it's come when there's hardly any not only coverage, but critical challenging coverage. Thanks, Julia. And someone notes here, Andreas, on the chat that the Guardian isn't left-wing anymore. Renata Avila. We've just been joined by Renata, our old colleague and someone who has worked on the Julia Massange case with Julia Massange and his team since 2008. Renata, can I ask you, if we've just opened our eyes to this now, if I just landed, could you put us in the picture about what's going on now? Renata Avila. Yes. And I will do it like a full disclaimer. This is not the official position of the legal team. This is my personal view as someone who has been involved in this case since 2008 and who has been involved in similar cases and similar situations of people surrounding me who were elevating their voice to expose the powerful. The way that I see it is as there are in torture many methods that try to kill someone slowly. This is very similar. The power of the ideas of Julia Massange, the ideas were so powerful, so rapidly out of control of the most powerful forces in this world, so difficult to tame, so difficult to stop. The strategy basically that the powerful decide, the powerful is not only governments, it's a complicity of sectors. You mentioned one, you mentioned the press and we cannot disconnect the press from the private sector and from governments that dictate the news in many times. It's a lawful strategy. Lawful is using the law as a weapon to destroy someone. We have seen it in the case of Lula da Silva, for example in Brazil. We have seen it through the years, like before, in the 70s, you used to assassinate people. Now you kill people slowly by process and you do it by, and I mean, I put it in context. I remember Julian was dedicated, devoting each and every minute of his time. Advanced truth and revolution, the way that news are produced and distributed and shared with people in a very dynamic way, which he called scientific journalism. Like show me the source, analyze together what this information is exposing and then act on it. That was his formula, full documents, full disclosure, not treat people like children, treat people like mature individuals and collectives that could like, you know, like understand, like, you know, evolve the level of understanding of people, like democratizing the power of journalism, not India is like, okay, like, let's film everybody, like, you know, like idiots with phones everywhere. But analyze what we have with your, with the collection of knowledges, we can make something better. That was really threatening to journalism in itself, you know, like, because they had been like, as the guardian name says, you know, the guardians of truth. And this very disruptive method, like, you know, he was dedicated all his technology, knowledge, collecting people from all over and so on. The moment that the cases started against him, all his brain power, all his resources, all his networks were completely diverted into that. It's a little bit of what happens when, when they, you know, a community leader or social leader is killed in a dramatic way. All the resources, all the causes, everything is like diverted into this effort of find the truth of coo, kill, coo, right. And all the message and all the fights behind, like, forgotten this, but in the case of Julian, is fun, is the most sophisticated case of love for I have seen in my life. And it has deployed, I remember that the WikiLeaks task force that was set up by Barack Obama against WikiLeaks and against Julian, had taught it was the unprecedented in nature because of number of disciplines that were involved. And a number of people, there were thousands of people on the other side of the Atlantic dedicated to one, one man with a computer, one case, you know. And that's, it has been an investment over a decade. Like I would say a 14 years investment from the CIA, from, you know, the Department of Justice, from the FBI and other agencies, from intelligence units from different other countries and so on to destroy one person. And it is not only like, you know, like, and even if they have tried and tried evidence of the case is so weak, the evidence of the case is so fragile, that they decided to go for the bureaucratic, it's almost Kafka, you know, approach of delaying to the maximum a process that I mean, delay delay in the process, making it like, you know, like as irregular as possible, placing in courts, people favorable to to prosecuting him and destroying him with legal means by legal means, applying all the exceptions possible. I mean, the right of asylum was ignored. I mean, no, no, no big surprise now in the UK, you know, like because that that seems to be the standard these days, but in the past, you know, like if we think 20 years ago, you know, the right of asylum was something on an embassy was recognized and saved millions of decisions all over the world. And maybe millions is an exaggeration, but thousands of decisions all over all over the world. So where we are now, like if we bring it to now is someone who has been four years in pre-trial detention, that might in my face, six months more of pre-trial detention, and in my face, a sentence of 175 years in prison. Can I ask you something? Because I mean, this is also a question that's just come up on the chat. In relation to the smearing of Julian Assange's character and something which has changed the, well, let's say, peeled away at a lot of his support on the left, which is where you think you would think a lot of people would be supporting him. Can you explain that and explain the legal cases? Yeah, like it's very simple, you know, and it was and it was progressively done, you know, like it was very, very, very clever because you only needed, like, not to us today, 2022 is very natural, you know, you really only needed data analysis and the data analysis just of the WikiLeaks account, you know, like in 2010, for example, the Facebook account will indicate that his biggest supporters were precisely, you know, like left-wing young to middle-aged women. You know, like it was incredible, like, you know, like it was included, you know, like at that time, when I started volunteering at WikiLeaks, I had like 25, 26, we were very excited, we were like, you know, the transition kids that were very clever with technologies back then and interconnected, it was a lab, and FACA, for example, was that generation, you know, like, and obviously, if you have a feminist, if you have people who really care about feminism and feminist values, it's an old technique, you know, it's a super old technique, you want to trigger or destroy the base of someone by making him completely unacceptable to his more loyal supporters. Luckily, together with feminism, we were embracing scientific journalism and the right to trust. So even if it had a very bad effect on many, many, many people, but for women like me, you know, like I understood that case and many people understood what was behind and the intentions behind that. And it is very interesting because up to this day, not feminist questions, why they just, why there are like evidence produced by journalist Stefania Morizzi saying that there was collusion between the UK prosecution service and the Swedish prosecution service to delay that case as much as possible. Right, this is a reference just to say there's a reference to the accusation of which Sweden has now dropped the investigation. There were some allegations, there were like, you know, he was never charged. And that's the most important thing, you know, like, you know, and he was like, please interrogate me. I'm here one month. Interrogate me, interrogate me, interrogate me. I have to go on a trip, but interrogate me as soon as possible. And the prosecutor got sick and got delayed and then it got delayed. Then he was like, interrogate me by a video conference. Come on. And we can see now after COVID, you know, like all the video conferences, all the trials were taking place on video conference. And they refused for years. They said, no, we need to go there. We need to go there because the secret intention was interrogate him, say like, okay, there's no charges, and unseal the indictment, which was exactly, exactly what happened when Julian was arrested at the UK Embassy. That's, that's super interesting because journalists like James Ball from The Guardian and others were saying how he's paranoid. There's no such thing. He's, he's hiding in the embassy to avoid, and all the time, those who claim all fake news, blah, blah, blah, all the time they were saying, he's hiding on the embassy to avoid rape charges. They didn't even bother to do not to a fact check that there was no charges. Well, and that's certainly been very effective with the social justice left and me too, and so on, in terms of peeling away a lot of support from the left, unfortunately. And something else I would like to ask you, something I often hear about, you know, from leftist friends of mine who I don't necessarily agree with on everything, that, that Julian, that his work was somehow helping Trump, like the connection with that. Could you burst that one for us? Yeah, they needed to update because, you know, after it was like proven that we were in the, in the right side of history and the, the case, the investigation sooner was closed, they needed to, they needed something more, you know, like, and the interesting thing is, the, it was, it was one of the most interesting things showing the partiality of journalism, you know, like is on how little reporting about the revelations, it was not revelations about Trump, you know, like there were revelations about the Democratic Party, but back then, you know, like, back then it was the party with the largest number of endorsements from media, explicit endorsements from media, you know, and, and with the, with the largest amount of power, you know, they were like the, the power, the, the, the party in power. So it is not, it's only natural to think that the press would be very interesting of accountability of the government in power and allocating the blame on the terrible candidates that the Republican Party, like, you know, the liver in that election to the journalists reporting on facts, reporting on factual evidence about something, regardless of its origins, you know, like one of the things is, is, oh, but that's, that's, I mean, if today, for example, someone leaks all the content of the Putin's cabinet, will be celebrated, you know, but it will not be celebrated if it's all the content of the, of the, of the Biden's, Biden's cabinet of Zelensky cabinet. And, and it is very interesting why there's a, there's a, it seems to be a choice by people, not willing to know some truths. Well, let me, let me ask you, that's against journalism. I would like to ask you about that. I mean, I'm just, I'm just going to quote an article here from Matt Tebe, who actually gets back to the source of what this was all about, the, the 2010 collateral murder video that WikiLeaks released. He says, in the 2010 collateral murder video, in Apache helicopter crew falsely claims to have encountered a firefighter, lights up a Baghdad street, killing a dozen people, including two Reuters employees, but somehow even more disturbing than the killing is the dialogue captured between the pilots and the base. They're laughing in parts, saying things like, just fucking get them, just open them up, all right, hit them. Hey, you shoot, I'll talk, etc. Now, I want to ask you something, Renate, and I've got you here. Like right now, we're seeing evidence of war crimes in the Ukraine war and war crimes are back in the public consciousness. And yet these war crimes of the US are that Julian exposed, utterly forgotten about. And you see that whenever his name is mentioned, it's often mentioned in conjunction with all this other stuff that happened afterwards. And we forget the actual original embarrassments to the US. Can you speak a little bit about that? And again, it is, it is, it is the interesting thing that, you know, so Julian started like, you know, like just uncovering and exposing events, like, you know, like he was like the massacres in Kenya, again, and extrajudicial killings of students, for example, or corruption in Peru. I mean, all these leaks are not mentioned anymore. And he even won human rights awards because of that, you know, or banking corruption in Iceland. And then when more revelations came and we had more data and more documents and government documents to analyze what was going on in the world, his analysis got more interesting. Because his analysis was not of isolated facts. He started connecting the dots and that makes him like a very, very interesting person for anybody, you know, like he started connecting the dots, the arms industry, trade agreements, security agreements, a technology that it is designed to be to spy on us. And to, and now we can see all the exploits with the years after Julian already warned us about with the Pegasus case, for example. So, you know, like it's Julian, as a journalist, showed people the big picture of power. And of course, he didn't, he didn't, he wasn't able to, he exposed the big picture of Anglo power, basically, because it's his language and it's his culture, like blaming him, blaming someone, for example, oh, but you didn't expose anything about the Chinese and the Russians and blah. Julian, it has been like, you know, loyal to what he belongs and what he can understand the most. You cannot practice, you cannot do journalism unless you spend a lot of time and you spend that and you create lots of networks. You don't have to be like, and that's difficult when you have to litigate law for cases against you. So that's, that's something interesting, you know, like, because they don't say the same, you know, to many other, like, you know, journalists that only report about one single issue, you know, like why he had the obligation, it seems, in this, this very perverse narrative, he had to report about each and every issue in the world, to be fair. He was just doing his job. Something else I want to ask you before I bring some other people in here, because it's been really interesting. We often hear a criticism level that WikiLeaks was that the way that they put a lot of information out there, as opposed to filtering, et cetera, et cetera. And this apparently, in certain circumstances, I can't speak to which, but in certain circumstances, according to the narrative, affected people negatively or exposed to people or confidential information about civilians rather than just the powerful. Can you explain that? Yes, yes. I just wanted to, like, it is very ironic because, you know, like, we look at other content industries, like the health and fashion industry, they publish on a daily basis, tremendous amount of information that ends up hurting people, actually, you know, and destroying the health of many, many, many people across the world, and nobody says a word about it. Anyway, that said, that said, because why? Because it doesn't threaten power. It destroys the little people, you know, it destroys the young people, the most vulnerable, basically. It exploits the masses, instead of exposing the elite. So to me, you know, like, it's very interesting because it wasn't proven, like, Chelsea Manning trial, after she was subject to solitary confinement, and after she was tortured, was alone, like, you know, like the same, the same, like, huge investigation task force that they deployed in this, for this case, they couldn't find a single history of harm, a single person that was harmed, except, you know, like the ego of so many people, or the deteriorated relationships between the powerful, because they were like, they discovered how, I mean, how, what was going on really behind closed doors and how hypocrites, they were to each other. So, so that, that was to me, like, you know, like, to me, that is evidence and people keep repeating and claiming that showing unredacted information is bad for people. Actually, I think that is the opposite. And actually, I think that, you know, like, we can trust, I can only trust what I read from a journalist when I see the document that backed that claim. Why should I trust the journalist if the journalist is refusing to show me all the data? And I think that if the information was sensible, and that's the principle of any privacy lawyer, you know, it shouldn't have been collected in the first place. Okay. And share with, well, imagine, just, just for context for the people unfamiliar with the databases that Chelsea Manning allegedly leaked. They were accessible to millions of users. You cannot claim that it's highly sensitive information that you are putting the lives at risk. If you are sharing it with millions, too many points of failure is insecure, and it is negligent by design. The US government should be sued by those allegedly exposed sources, not Julian. Thank you for that, Renata. Okay, I would like to bring some other people in. But before I'm going to just read a couple of comments from the chat, we've got Kat mentions that Netflix is now pushing three shows smearing Julian Assange. I can't verify, but it wouldn't be surprising. Yassimid asks, how likely is it that the UK would abide by a positive ruling down the line by the ECHR, the European Court of Human Rights? Perhaps we can return to that at the end. And Celia wonders how much time was wasted over the years by prosecutors trying to argue that Julian wasn't a journalist. Beryl Madra from Turkey, if I can bring you in and Renata will return to you later. Go on, Beryl. Thank you. I think Julian Assange case is emblematic for the period we are living in, post-truth. For post-truth, it's really emblematic. But let us, through Assange's case, we should also mention all the journalists who are in jail at this period. I mean, over 200, maybe 300 journalists are in jail all over the world. So let us remember them too. And also the ones who were killed. Just I would like to remember Shirin, the Al Jazeera journalist who was killed in Palestine just a few weeks ago. So I think the whole history is full of these cases, especially 20th century history. And in Turkey we have numerous examples of these investigative journalists in prison. At the moment Turkey is, according to the reports, Turkey is in the least in sixth position. And China and many other countries are in the third one, third one, etc. But Turkey is the sixth country. Now there are maybe over 100 journalists are in jail. And very similar to the case of Julian Assange is Osman Kavala and also the seven other persons who talked and who really criticized the political situation in Turkey. So I wonder, is there any other example in United Kingdom related to the case of Assange or is it a unique case? Julia, I'm really curious about it. Were there other important examples in 20th century, for example? So is this a very familiar practice or not? Julia, please go on. Julia Morton from the UK. Thank you. Good question Bural. Without taking you through sort of our whole history of those people who've been brave enough to challenge for people who remember the history of the Falkland Islands, we had Clive Ponting, a civil servant who decided to reveal some strategically sensitive things about how the government took some decisions in Falklands Island. He was treated and he was certainly supported by a team of journalists at that time. That's an interesting example to look at. Most of the cases Bural link somehow back to the Official Secrets Act, which is what I was talking about earlier. It's how the government usually bring about a prosecution that there's been a somehow a breach in the Official Secrets Act. I think Renata is the expert here that can tell us how the navigation went with Assange around whether or not to question here was whether or not he was a journalist and what he was doing was as a journalist or as a as a proprietor of WikiLeaks and whether or not he had the responsibility of that. So there's a number of ways that governments have maneuvered this question Bural, but it is a very good one and the answer is yes. As a convention journalists are protected by the editorial teams. I'm sure you know that there's a maxim that journalists don't reveal their sources and editors take responsibility for publishing as a general principle, but just occasionally the government break through that and I just wanted to bring up this point and through the chair Miran has allowed me to do this and Bural this is a link and something that Renata who was just saying is that going back to Brexit but the Assange case really brings it into focus. The whole judicial system especially the process of judicial review which for those people who are not aware of it without giving a law lecture is the system which is a corner stone which always been seen as a cornerstone of democracy in English law the way that the government can be held to account by its citizenry through agencies and through organizations where public sector decisions and constitutional decisions can be challenged by any member of the public acting as a class acting as a group. Now with the bitterness and the vitriol and the manipulation of Brexit where judicial review was used to finally push for the process of voting to go through Parliament because the government was going to take an executive decision to trigger the final process for Brexit the government have been out to challenge that and to roll back the judicial review process and there's a bill being prepared for that to go through the process and any government that feels under threat that it will not be held to account by its own population is the reason why DiEM25 exists it's the absolute cornerstone of democratic deficit and of course the Assange case we have a figurehead sadly and tragically here where for all the processes that Renata has gone through all the the legal team have navigated all of the ridiculous ways that the technical process has been subverted has been manipulated and the rolling back of judicial review and the attempted decimation of it is a very dangerous democratic process and it's something that we should scrutinize as a progressive organization globally we need our colleagues in progressive international to take a look at the process of dismantling the UK's judicial review because it is a dangerous dangerous indication of an extreme government and Assange I'm afraid is a part of that history at the moment. Thank you thank you for fitting us in on that Julian and also the precedent that this sets and the fear it must strike into the heart of anybody who's thinking about exposing crimes how many stories have not been written how much has power not been held to account as a result of this prolonged torture of one person that stood up to power it's unimaginable let me bring in Ivana Nenadovich please from Serbia Ivana. Hi hello and this is a very valuable spectrum of overview I think and especially comparing you know what we hear these days quite often what's western values and the verses Russian and non-democratic authoritarian dictatorship where journalists end up in prisons if they try to speak out the truth and then you look at the other side of the mirror and and you see it's happening on a much greater scale because it's happening for 14 years in front of our eyes and today I really end up asking myself how is this possible how is it possible that in the 21st century with all of the knowledge information and sources we are still observing a prolonged murder of a person of course everything was mentioned of course the contribution of the media who is which is owned by corporations and so on and all the guards and then the private sector the the the governments and it goes down on the food chain to to the activists to everyday person and mehan you mentioned that left was either or it still is either silent or cheering this prosecution basically for me it's the same if you're silent during all of this you are cheering it whether you want it or not but this is the layer that adds on the basics the truth was exposed the government's crimes were exposed it's most probable that this wasn't the only one and that collector murder video was one of the the war crimes that were committed in the name of western democracy in which we trust today versus russian autocracy right so we're left made a mistake and will fail every time I think is because there wasn't a distinction between two acts of one man and if there was an allegation of rape or whatever it was an allegation and in the legal system you're not guilty until until proven otherwise right however everything was done here to cast this smudge on julian's name which is a big one in the leftist circle circles so as renata already mentioned feminists were repelled and most of the left either out of conviction or out of the fear that if you do support asange you will be also labeled as a misogynist or uh whatever add a layer of conspiracy theory he is a russian spy which is a magic component of every uh dish and there you have it why and then the questions why did he expose everything that he exposed right after ahead of the us election he helped trump and blah blah blah so it all becomes a hot mess and we are far away from the basics where we started that he exposed he didn't steal it he got those documents let's remember that as well they were exposed and then a government the holy government of the us was uh attacked so they are doing everything in their power for the last 14 years to kill him slowly because they couldn't just drone him as uh they suggested at one point thank you iberna and and of course to set an example um johannes fair from germany you've been doing thanks madame and thanks everyone for already so rightfully putting the case and all the facts on the table i wanted to tell everyone a little bit about the reaction of the german government which is like a very i call themselves a progressive government um it's a centrist liberal social democratic green government um and some examples here the the leader of the german liberals our finance minister he is repeatedly calling rightfully so for the release of navani from russia uh from prison he says nothing about assange nothing the speaker of the german government now that the pretty patelle in in the uk took the decision um last week she was asked and she's speaking for the head of the government the social democratic chancellor mr schultz she says she cannot she hasn't had time to look at this specific case and the decision now and in general she can say that there needs to be a balance between freedom of expression and freedom of the press against legitimate security interests of states in this case we know the legitimate interest is the keep secret war crimes right and they kind of put it on the same level as press freedom which is just mind blowing actually um of course they do it in a language where you know it's hard to you know it all sounds not so bad um and then the third example it's from the greens uh claudia roth who is actually our federal government commissioner for culture and the media so someone who should be you know very much in favor of press freedom and a democratic uh government um she said that she will not comment on the decision in london when she was asked and that she expects a fair trial that's all and all of that is just i think probably an example of i don't know more um details and um quotes of other liberal centers governments around europe and around the west but i guess it's it's a very good example and um yeah what can i say i guess we have to just stop supporting hypocrites like that because i guess the rule of law if we call for it for russian war crimes rightfully to be investigated and prosecuted it's not worth anything if we yeah on the other end don't follow up on it on our own doorstep thank you johannes um a little comment here from the chat from david otnes the us is self-proclaimed self-proclaimed rules-based international order directly contravenes the united nations jurisdiction and laws voted for and agreed upon by the nations of the world and there's a lot of anger at the guardian here shame on the guardian for abandoning julian says one love after having used his journalism and sources for years so if nothing else maybe we've lost the guardian of you subscribers for their their terrible stance on on all matters julienne assange um let me bring in juliana juliana zeta also from germany juliana uh thank you um can you hear me well yep um yeah i think with the german government it's you can see evidently that i think before the election many of or a few green politicians said that they would support assange and once they came into government they changed their opinion and it just shows where the boundaries start once they get in power because it doesn't sound to me like they personally changed their opinion but there is no other opinion for a german government that is an ally to to the us for example and i think that has to do much more with this than uh whether they find it right or wrong um because everyone pulled back and it's obvious that if everyone pulled back once they're in power um one thing i wanted to touch on is on activism and assange because uh thankfully there are many people and many organizations um in many cities also initiatives who fight for assange for years now and i've been at many events and protests and what i found very interesting on the street is that if people come up to you who are interested in figuring out who that is what's happening there the topic of assange has become so complex although it starts with a really clear evident uh you know uh case of what's the problem here it became it became so complex that everyone has heard something about him so one will ask you yeah is he not this guy who was persecuted in sweden and then you start there to clear it up or you know it's it's just not the topic itself it's very very difficult to transport to people and i think when it comes to where what we have reached as activists with assange i i guess you could fairly say that we really failed to to you know transport the message of what is important here to everyone to a mass of people i mean i say failed as in he's not free uh but i don't mean that we people have not done a good job to be clear um but it's really difficult and the problem is that you can see also that media is no ally to the people so they don't see assange as somebody on their side to protect they see assange as somebody who's far away maybe even people believe even that he's some kind of part of the establishment and i think that came at that moment where he got connected so strongly to trump i mean he even here in germany people started to to ask questions around but he's not involved with trump you know and that makes him kind of a figure that is so far away from from all of us and that brings additional confusion into the topic it makes it even more difficult to get through to the people but um but yeah it's it's it's really for me a horrible moment now with this decision because it shows us that with every topic there is a point where we can run out of time really so it's not just that we can act you know we can activist on every topic forever everything has an expiration date when it comes to being successful or not so so yeah it's not like i have the idea but i i think we have strongly to reevaluate um also as movements the strategy on how to to go the next step and be even more convincing when it comes to the topic and in terms of showing what the problem is and why standing up for assange is standing up for yourself in the last consequence thank you juliana and yes i mean you've you've sketched very well a lot of the challenges there in terms of activism on on julien's case um and it's kind of like yvana said that the establishment has been very successful in sort of flooding the zone somebody put on the chat here muddying the waters with plenty of negative information about julien assange depending on your character you'll be more receptive to certain certain narratives than others but there's always going to be something there for you connected to julien assange thanks to this this very effective campaign against him um for people to want to distance themselves from it um so i would like to sort of move away from that negative note and try to end on a positive one especially as we're at the top of the hour and renata i'd like to bring you back in to ask you firstly for your reaction to anything that you've heard here of course in in this chat and we've covered many different angles of this very complex story um but second to ask you what what are the options at this point the legal options for julien and also what can as as somebody mentioned on the chat here as a layperson what can people do out there today um to help julien assange aside from joining dm25 uh who obviously is a is a friend of julien and i'll give you the details on how to do that uh at the end of the show renata yeah being conscious of time uh the thing that i want to address is what the claim this uh claims in the official script on the third trial i was a spy on i'm a lawyer and i was a spy on while defending him my computer was you know like stolen and given to the fbi computer containing you know legal documents i was not the only one all our communications intercepted evidence of all our meetings being recorded evidences of you know witnesses being bribed how can we speak about a third trial that's the most important point how can we speak of a third trial when the lawyers were a spy on how can we speak of a third trial where when you know like it is an obvious collusion between governments to evidence and to delay process we need to like you know like i think that that's something uh that anybody even if they don't know anything about the assange case can understand all his defense was a spy on all his lawyers were you know like a spy on he didn't have the you know like the right to uh to have to prepare his defense in private i think that that's a very strong point that anybody can understand that it's easy and accessible i think that an important thing is to avoid legal technicalities because you will lose interest of people like basically what's what's going on next is a series of decisions that are falling into like you know british courts um that you know like uh consistently british courts have been like you know the lawyers the the judges appointed have been connected to very dark power and the rulings have been very weak and generally against assange what happens then is very very i think that all the appeals should be focused on bringing him somewhere safe bring him give him home bringing him to and but for that we don't need lawyers actually we need political will of an equally powerful actor you know like of a courageous state and it can be the state of any of the states of of what the dm membership is of a courageous state it has to be a diplomatic effort but we know that diplomatic efforts are not activated with those do not pay back on political currency so i think that the combination of activism demanding it strongly and pushing for political and diplomatic ways to bring this person who has suffered so much and to like make make very strong like they claim that he will not receive a fair trial uh i think that the combination of two is what can save him and it's political it's political as is our movement it's not legal it would not be a legal technicality in the end you know like even if it's resolved because of a legal technicality it would not be the result of genius lawyers at all it would be like the result of a combination of grassroots uh bottom up and top down push so to make it to make it in our society is absolutely unacceptable to send him to send him to a supermax prison in the US Thank you Renata and if you would like to join dm25 where we of course have actions for Julian Assange and regular news pieces about the current state of the case and what can be done um the address is dm25.org slash join we've done a lot of talking here today but we are a movement of action with political movement and we're interested in in changing things and having an impact thank you to all of you we're at the top of the hour now especially to Renata Avila who joined us good to see you again and to our panel here and to you out there on youtube for your comments and questions thanks for watching and see you again at the same time same place two weeks from now take care as they say