 Let's see, in live season four, so 10, doctors' orders don't extra die to Sange. I'm Joe Laurier, the editor-in-chief of Consortium News. And I'm Elizabeth Boss. Secretary Patel, this week is expected to decide whether to sign an extradition order sending in prison WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange to the United States to face up to 175 years in prison on espionage and computer-intrusive charges. The extradition order landed on Patel's desk after the UK Supreme Court refused to hear Assange's appeal after the High Court overturned a magistrate's court's decision not to extra die to Sange. That decision was based on Assange's mental health conditions combined with the harsh conditions of U.S. prisons. The High Court overturned that decision in favor of a U.S. appeal after the United States made conditional assurances that Assange would be humanely treated. The High Court did not contest Assange's mental issues and suicidal tendency, nor the conditions of U.S. prisons. They simply accepted the U.S. assurances. But this week, more than 300 medical doctors from 35 countries wrote to Patel, telling her it would be medically and unethically unacceptable to send Assange to the U.S. And they made a crucial point that the U.S. assurances were made before Assange suffered a mini-stroke on October 27, the first day of the High Court hearing. They wrote to Patel, quote, predictably Mr. Assange's health has since continued to deteriorate in your custody. In October, 2021, Mr. Assange suffered a mini-stroke. This dramatic deterioration of Mr. Assange's health has not yet been considered in his extradition proceedings. The U.S. assurances accepted by the High Court, therefore, which would form the basis of any extradition approval, are founded upon outdated medical information in rendering them obsolete. The doctors charged that any extradition under these circumstances would constitute negligence. They write, under conditions in which the U.K. legal system has failed to take Mr. Assange's current health status into account, no valid decision regarding his extradition may be made by yourself or anyone else. Should he come to harm in the United States under these circumstances, it is you, Home Secretary, who will be left holding the responsibility for that negligent outcome. We'll now watch a short video clip from Dr. Arthur Chesterfield Evans, who notes that very quick medical attention is required to respond to a stroke. Should Assange be extradited? He would be held at the Alexandria Detention Center in Virginia. Should he suffer a stroke there, there will be no medical attention until outside help could arrive, since there are no doctors permanently on staff at that prison. Julian Assange was assessed from a health point of view, assuming that he had mental health issues. But there was a suggestion, and I gather there's been a diagnosis of stroke, which occurred actually during the hearing last time, wasn't addressed. Issue of stroke, of course, the acronym that publicizes fast, face, arm, speech, time is what it stands for. And the face groups, the arm becomes weak, speech becomes slurred, and the T is the time to get some action. And that action is to get someone in the hospital to do a scan, and then assuming that there's a plot, which there is in 85% of this sort of case, you give some anti-coagulants quickly. And the time recommended is within three hours of the onset. Four and a half hours, there's less use and so on beyond that. So going to a prison where he's not being watched, he can't get treatment quickly, is obviously a very bad thing and a neglect of his medical needs. And it would seem from the description that the small cell in the US where they wanted to put him does not have a medical backup that can do this. And therefore, it would be dangerous for him to go there. Business should have their rights and should have their health looked after. And I think that's the basic of the civilized society. And from Dr. Sue Warram of the Medical Association for Prevention of War. Elizabeth. Thanks. Yeah, I'd like to start out just by asking you both to give us an outline of the press release published by Doctors for Assange today and add any thoughts you have about the current situation and the likelihood of Pretty Patel denying, sorry, Robert Stamping, the extradition order. Bill, if you want to go first, jump right in. Sure, so Doctors for Assange wrote the Home Secretary of the UK, Pretty Patel in November of 2019, based on the evidence provided by four experts in the assessment of victims of torture, cautioning her that the continued detention of Mr. Assange and maximum security conditions and the ongoing arbitrary nature of the legal proceedings against him could have consequences for him medically. In particular, we called out cardiovascular events. And sure enough, he had a cardiovascular event during the High Court proceedings in October of 2021, October 27th. A proceedings during which, by the way, the court was discussing the fact that he had no physical component to his medical conditions, to accompany his mental illness, to strike any analogy being drawn to the case of Lowry Love, which I don't want to get into too many details there, but it was viewed as an analogous case on which extradition could be denied and was denied in that case. So therefore the facts have changed out from under the legal proceeding. The legal proceeding has now, as we say in the letter, obsolete. It does not address the entire mental and physical condition of Mr. Assange, and therefore he should not be extradited. It's even worse now, because he has a physical component added to the medical component. And we just call again for the whole call for the torture to end, the persecution to end. It's past time. Things are just going to continue to deteriorate. And I'll jump in there, shall I? And I think Bill gave a really great outline of what we said. And I'll just add to that. We use the words that doctors' orders to pretty patel, that to extradite Julian Assange now would be medically and ethically unacceptable. And I think we can even go beyond that and say not only unacceptable, but absolutely negligent and a violation of basic human rights and health protections that should be a part of the extradition process. And there are really two components to the health threat to Julian Assange. And everybody was so focused on the psychological threat to him of this extraordinary confinement on top of his extraordinary persecution, which really constituted psychological torture over the past 10 years. And that's not torture light. That's really significant and life-threatening torture as documented by Nils Melzer, the UN reputor on torture, and other medical professionals specializing in torture who documented all of this. And basically everything they said has been validated by the course of history. And so the two categories that you really worry about in terms of medical impacts of torture are psychological impacts and suicide, depression, and just generally failure to thrive and survive. And then physical impacts, whereas Bill was saying, cardiovascular consequences that is heart attacks and strokes are especially well-documented in the literature as consequent to extraordinary stress and also cancers and other forms of chronic disease. But it was so ironic that while the High Court was so busy providing assurances that Assange's mental health would be well cared for in prison, there he was having a physical health emergency before everybody's eyes right there on the video stream from Belmarsh prison into the courtroom. And it was just swept under the rug. It was really only the journalists who recognized that that was happening. So there he was having an actual physical emergency while the court was very busy trying to foist these preposterous assurances on everyone, the public and the court and observers and the whole legal process pretending that legal assurances could be provided for Assange's welfare. And it just makes such an incredible mockery of the whole system that there it was telling us, oh, he will be fine while he was actually having a life-threatening emergency. And one thing I think we don't really say in the press release or in our statement, but it's sort of important and kind of assumed here is that a small stroke can be a stepping stone to a larger stroke. A mini-stroke can be a warning sign of more to come. His symptoms were also described as a TIA or a transient ischemic attack, which is also a warning sign of something potentially bigger to come. And as Arthur was saying in his piece, you have about three hours to get to an emergency room, to get diagnosed, to have a scan, and to have very special forms of blood thinners that basically can dissolve clot, which help in most instances of stroke, but not all, which is why you have to have a study because it can also cause harm. It's a medication that comes with potential side effects and harm, so you have to be in an emergency room. And there it was as clear as day that the prison system and even the court system is absolutely incapable of providing actual assurances of health. Yeah, another thing, you mentioned the psychological torture aspect. And one thing I noticed in your press release was this reference to the Home Secretary, her office's response to your earlier letter to them and their flat refusal that there was any psychological torture. Can you just talk about how divorced from reality that is? Yeah, I can start if that's OK. So it's a fact-free assertion that he was not subjected to torture. The evidence is all overwhelmingly in favor of psychological torture. I mentioned four experts. Jill alluded to three of them, which was the UN special rapporteur on torture who visited Julian in Belmarsh prison. And he took two medical experts with him, both experts in the assessment of victims of torture. They all followed the standard protocol, international standard protocol for assessing victims of torture, the Istanbul protocol. And they independently, the three of them, each examined Mr. Assange and then conferred afterwards. So they each reached their own conclusion and then conferred. And when they conferred, they said, yes, he's a victim of torture. The reason Mr. Meltzer was there in the first place was, despite his initial skepticism, he was prompted by a letter by Dr. Sandra Crosby, who's such an internationally renowned expert in the assessment of victims of torture that it was her stature alone that caught his attention and changed his mind about the case and prompted him to investigate. So you have four experts in the assessment of victims of torture all reaching the same conclusion independently against a home secretary who has no medical background whatsoever, no expertise in the assessment of victims of torture, making fact-free pie-in-the-sky assertions. It's an absolute insanity and an absurdity. And it's a real affront, I think, to human rights and to the integrity of the judicial system that its assertions are so preposterous, including a pretty Patel's assertion that torture does not exist and is irrelevant. And in that way, I feel like it's very striking that what's going on with Julian Assange is really a microcosm of this assault on our democracy. And the health of Julian Assange is desperately at stake, and so is the health of our democracy. And that's both with regard to the integrity of the judiciary, with the critical importance of freedom of the press, censorship, propaganda, all of that, which is really raining down upon us right now. And the case of Julian Assange was sort of the opening event for this new chapter that we're in and also the assault on human rights. And it's just shameful. It's embarrassing. To me, it also, there's a direct line between what's happening right here before our very eyes and the absurdity that this court case represents. It's like, if you follow it, you have incredible cognitive dissonance and just like shock and horror for what's being foisted on us as a judicial process. And Nils Melser, who is an expert, the UN repertoire on torture is also an expert in international law. And he documents, for example, in the Swedish allegations alone, there were 50 violations of due process and rule of law. So how is this, we're calling this a judicial process. This is an absolute mockery of a judicial process. And the point I was going to make is that to my mind, this has everything to do with why we sort of have this crisis of confidence right now in our public institutions and in our democracy. And if you look at the statistics, confidence in government runs at about, I think, it's 25% of people who say that they are confident in our government. And it's about 21% among young people, among the rising generation between 16 and 25-year-olds. And it's like, who do they think they are fooling here by really this assault on our democracy and its basic foundations? And this is as destructive to them as it is to the rest of us. And it's just a case of really needing to purge ourselves of this predatory oligarchy, which is just consuming our democracy in an all-out assault. I think, Jill, that poll you just cited shows that the people aren't as dumb as the leaders think that they are. And that's one reason they have to keep some information from them and try to narrow and press one narrative only on various issues so that they don't start thinking wrong thoughts. But on the Assange case, you just said about Nils Meltzer mentioning 50 violations. I mean, this is a virtual mountain of evidence that keeps piling higher and higher and higher. Now we have now this medical issue to add to it. And yet it seems to be impenetrable to try to get anywhere near justice. It's often besaid by Nils and others that this is not a normal case. For example, we now know in the Spanish court just this week said that the CIA received surveillance of Julian Assange while he was in the embassy. With his attorneys, with his doctors, we know that the CIA was at least discussing plots to kill him or kidnap him. Even Mike Pompeo gave a backdoor confirmation of that. We know that in the extradition treaty, it says it's oppressive to extradite someone when they're facing these medical conditions. And yet, most of us expect Pretty Patel here in London where I am to sign that extradition order possibly this week. Jill, why is this not like a normal case? You'd be hard pressed, I think, to turn the question around and find a way in which it is a normal case. And you can look at really all the characteristics of the case, the ludicrous assurances that they're trying to shove down our throats, the concocted Swedish allegations, and Nils Melzer happens to speak five languages so he could actually read the documents in their original Swedish and really just cut through the BS and established that this was just a smear job being conducted. Charges had never been filed against Julian Assange. There was just an effort to prolong this investigation and try to make something out of it, including his departure from Sweden, which Swedish authorities had said, OK, that's fine. You can go. And then the minute he hit Europe, they sounded a red alert as if this was a terrorist who had fled. I mean, it's just strange. A movie needs to be made out of this because it's kind of like a thriller that I'll have you on the edge of your seat, but Assange has been living it. The whole false premise of Assange's arrest and the basis for his jumping bail had to do with this frame-up that had been concocted. And consider that the star witness in his trial was this Thor Darson guy from Iceland who was a known sociopath with convictions, a record of convictions for fraud, forgery, financial crimes, and child sexual abuse, serious, such that some of his victims, at least one of his victims, committed suicide. And this is the star witness, a sociopath. A sociopath is a diagnosis that means you lie. You don't even know what a lie is. You're just like an inveterate chronic liar. And that's who the case was based on. That's kind of like a fitting symbol for what this case is about. So the case is extraordinary. And it's no secret to anybody what the many political motivations are around this case. And Julian Assange is being punished for exposing lies, corruption, torture, and more crimes on the part of our government. These horrendous illegalities committed in our name. And we have a right to know. And a publisher has not only a right but a duty to inform us. That's why the First Amendment is the first amendment. Because everything else really depends on our being informed and being an educated electorate so that we can exercise our democracy. And without that, it's really awful. So Julian Assange, he carried out his duty as a publisher and he exposed horrible things that are being routinely conducted by empire. And empire doesn't like that. It never has. And you can go through history and find out all kinds of people who've paid the price for blowing the whistle on empire. That's what's going on here. But it's not as though the solution to that is just to back off because look where we are. We are on the verge of a nuclear annihilation and confrontation that has really been engineered very much thanks to the influence of the war profiteers in the weapons industry who pull the strings in government in the US, above all. I'm sure in other places too, but particularly here. And it's just not OK in this age of empire that is powerful beyond anything in history. It cannot be left to its own devices. This has always been a threat to democracy. And it's a bigger threat. That is foreign entanglements. That's what the founders hope to avoid. And we have to reassert those basic principles which the founders got right. They didn't get everything right, but they did get the First Amendment right. And we really need that if we're going to survive into the next decade, let alone the next century. I'd forgotten about Siggy Thornton's and Jill. Thank you for your mind. It's another incredible fact about this case that would, in any other case, the things that I mentioned, the spying, the plotting to kill him, his medical conditions would throw this thing out immediately. And that's another one. The chief witness on the computer intrusion charges. Absolutely recanted and said we'd lied. He was an FBI informant. He told that lies to the FBI. Far as I know, he hasn't been charged for that. And they're sticking with his story, even though he did that. Now, this sange is too big to fail. That's the way I've described it. And there's also, I should add, as Kathy just pointed out on a note here, that the Crown Prosecution Service in Britain, and one of the emails that was obtained by Stefania Modicita and journalist and her foyer, said, words of this effect, that don't think this is a normal extradition case. So they've admitted it. They know this is not normal. They have to get this to make an example of him. What separates, I want to ask you, Bill, for you to weigh in. But right, so I want to ask Jill one more. Quick one, what separates this behavior by two Western governments who pretend to be, or say they're the biggest democracies, purveyors of democracy around the world, lovers and defenders of the free press. What separates them from a ruthless, tin pot dictatorship that throws journalists in jail? Oh, there is a journalist in jail in this story, I forgot. Yeah, what is the difference? What is the difference? Yeah, I mean, it's a very fine line. And you could say, well, maybe the numbers are different. That there are more journalists who are shot in the street or murdered in their beds asleep at night in other countries. But that is like the measure. That's the yardstick for a democracy. It's like having to help us if that's our claim to democracy and a free press that we're not assassinating journalists in the street. It's not OK to muzzle journalists either. And it's not OK to disappear them and to destroy their reputations. We're seeing this happening all over the place now with particularly anti-war journalists who are present company included whose reputations are very much under attack, whether it was going to be by the Ministry of Truth, the Bureau of Disinformation Management with that lovely singer at its head that sort of had to dissolve under embarrassment and public attack and all that. But that was just like that was the government part of it. And now they have the what is it called News Guard, which is guarding us from the news, which has the former heads of security agencies on its board and gets money from the government. And they have their own standards for deciding what's true and what's not. It's outrageous. And a number of people who've been de-platformed on social media and YouTube and really Abby Martin, Lee Camp, they're after the gray zone and Max Blumenthal. And people who have dared to challenge the empire are really on notice that they are being really, they are under assault as journalists. And it's very scary for all of us because we really rely on journalists to tell us what's going on. Yeah, I mean, I doubt which things we're useful idiots have been sort of news. But the dynamic is the same for any government that needs to protect their interests, their power, and the misdeeds that they commit from their press revealing it to the public. And when you have a compliant media like the corporate media in the West, it becomes a lot easier to do that because you feed them what they need to know about foreign policy. And it's regurgitated to the public. And then here comes along somebody like Julian Sange, let alone small actors like Oscar Greyzone. He has to be stopped, Bill, when you want to weigh in on this. It's the same thing, whether it's Turkey throwing journalists in jail or Assange, in my opinion. Yeah, sure. So a couple of quick points. The sociopath witness is such a compulsive fraudster. The authorities in Iceland had to preemptively arrest him to stop him from doing more crime. And this is a very progressive government in Iceland that isn't normally going to preemptively arrest somebody without an actual criminal charge. That's how crazy he is. The other thing in terms of irregularities, then I'll get back to the First Amendment issues. The authorities, the prosecution, the lawyers for the US actually concocted a lie to say that the reason Assange was put in the medical wing of Belmarsh was as punishment for the video that was leaked to them from the prison that a fellow prisoner took on a phone and released to the internet, released to a journalist, Cassandra Fairbanks. They would rather be seen as using the medical system as punishment than admit the full extent in reality that Assange was severely depressed and was in crisis at the time. They tried to paint him as a malingerer. So they would rather be seen, what kind of people would rather be seen as using medicine as punishment? That's just such an asthmatic physician that you would use the medical system as punishment. But words fail me to describe how cruel and brutal and barbaric and disgusting it is to use the medical system as punishment, but they would gladly take that on. They would gladly take that on to avoid admitting that Assange was really mentally ill and severely so and needed to be in the medical ward. And that came out in the extradition period. It's all fully documented and it's there. It's unbelievable. Okay, First Amendment. Well, the United States talks a big game about the First Amendment but has had a hatred of it from the very beginning. How long after the passage of the First Amendment did it take before our glorious founding fathers passed the Alien and Sedition Act? And then a white supremacist president in 1916 or 17 passed the Espionage Act, which is what Assange is charged with to suppress anti-war dissent and activism going into World War I, avoiding the foreign entanglements of Europe like we should have according to the gospel of the founding of America. So, America has always, the American government from its very founding has militated and resisted and attacked and trampled the First Amendment. It doesn't have a very good record. And now we see the assassination of a journalist in Israel, a very prominent beloved journalist, a Christian journalist, an American citizen journalist and we see no protest from the corporate media in the United States. We see no protest from our even other elected officials. And Israel got away with that one, so they committed another one. They just assassinated another journalist. So, the United States talks a big game about the First Amendment, but it's all a lie. And if I could also jump in there about our judicial system and is Assange a one-off and I just want to underscore that there are many ways in which our judicial system is a farce. And it's not always about journalists. You have the case of Stephen Donziger where a private corporation, Chevron, basically hires the judge because they don't like the verdict of the actual court. They create their own corporate court system and kind of manipulated the laws to be able to incarcerate Stephen Donziger for whatever it was, home arrest and then several months in a prison. And then there's kind of what routinely happens to the community of color and whether it is the outright tampering with evidence and witnesses and false convictions and then refusal to review those convictions when evidence arises that those cases are false. So, I mean, there's just systemic corruption and bias that's built into our legal system in many ways. And it just reminds us that it's not only in the case of journalism but that there's many problems in our judicial system and with the election of judges and basically the buying of judges through their election sponsors. So, our democratic traditions and the judiciary are not in such good shape all around. Not to mention, go on, go on. No, no, please. One of the few nations that has the grand jury process still which was what tormented Chelsea Manning to where she nearly committed suicide in prison in relation to the Assange case. Let's not forget that Nils Meltzer also found that the United States tortured Chelsea Manning. And that was all through the grand jury process which is arbitrary and a grand jury. You can get into the famous saying that people like to bend the around like it's a good thing is a grand jury could would indict a ham sandwich. It would, that's true. And it's that ridiculous and disgusting we should change that system. Most, even like European nations have ditched the grand jury process because it's so awful. And likewise to look at what happens to whistleblowers as a rule, the case of John Carriacou and really anybody who comes up under espionage charges our court system in Alexandria, Virginia where just cause, do cause is not, it's not admissible evidence. It's not an admissible part of the discussion. This happens in environmental cases all the time too. So the whole system, I mean, look at the Supreme Court. It's like our system has, some things are okay but there's a lot that's just really in crisis like the rest of our democracy right now. Bill, you gave a nice historical overview there going back to John Adams, the second president who had that sedition alien act passed. However, Thomas Jefferson just his administration let it lapse, so it was only around a few years. Then Woodrow Wilson, who you refer to as a white supremacist, accurately a man who loved the birth of a nation film and had it shown I think at the White House. He tried to get official censorship in that 1917 espionage act under which Julian Saad Jess has been charged but he was defeated by one vote in the Senate. So they could not, he could not get official government censorship into that bill but then he came up with a year later in 1918 at this edition act which was added to the espionage act under which hundreds of people were jailed for speech. Eugene Debs being the most famous one of them. But likewise, the next administration let that lapse. It only lasted a few years in both cases but now we're looking at a situation where we don't have necessarily that kind of formal act of Congress, although the disinformation governance board of which Nina Jankiewicz was the head which has now been mothballed because of Republicans, we have to admit it Joe, it was the Republicans who stood up, not Democrats who really stood up against this and the backlash was fierce and they backed away because this looks like formal government censorship. What Wilson was dreaming of looks like Biden was trying to get into the law without even an act of Congress just by creating this thing as part of the Department of Homeland Security. So my question is they seem very secure, the rulers, not only in the U.S. but in other governments like Israel, you just mentioned to get away with these things, to get away with the Sange to get away with the disinformation governance board. The pressure being put on, it starts with a Sange really this latest episodes of this, but now it is extended to other ways to try to stop people like consortium news and gray zone, et cetera. What tell me about what you think their psychological situation is the leaders of this country? Are they so full of themselves that they think nobody could touch them and they can continue with impunity to suppress the press, a free press and particularly Julian Assange. Do they have some worries and doubts that their protestations that they are democratic may actually be questioned at some point? That's a good question. Do you wanna go first? Yeah, I was just gonna say in the Assange case I haven't seen any sign of them pulling back from the brink of overreach, of persecution, of oppression. And yes, the Republicans got rid of the disinformation board but it was Trump who's the first president to ever indict a journalist under the Espionage Act and that's of course Julian Assange. And Mitch McConnell threatened, according to some reports to impeach Trump, remove him from office. The second, for the second impeachment if he did pardon Assange and several other Republicans were purportedly in favor of that move as well. So, Mitch McConnell's no First Amendment hero nor is Lindsey Graham or anybody else of that hill. But in each case she described it. Let me interrupt you just to say that this is a bipartisan effort. I was in no way defending Republicans to whom I have never voted for one night. I'm guilty of voting for Democrats. There was a group of Democratic senators who wrote about Assange, a letter that was very in WikiLeaks that was very unhelpful to put it the least. So you're right, it's bipartisan and Mark Warner is no saint when it comes to the First Amendment, Assange. But in each case you describe, pulling back from the brink has come from popular dissent and the people rising up and saying, no, we shouldn't do this. And that's what it's gonna take in the case of Assange and that's why we're here. We're trying to build support. We're trying to alert the public. We're trying to alert our colleagues and bring them to the cause. And so doctors out there watching, please join us, add your voice to the chorus. We have to stop this if we're gonna save the First Amendment. And I'll just add to that, that the struggle in democracy is pretty much the same as the struggle within healthcare for a healthcare system that people can actually afford to use. We have something like 70,000 deaths per year and that's outside of COVID, where one in three COVID deaths were linked to the lack of health insurance. But even COVID aside, it's about 70,000 deaths per year according to a study published in the Lancet within the last year. 70,000 people a year who are dying just cause they can't afford health insurance. Student debt, 47 million people who are basically living as indentured servants with no real hope of getting out of that. You have this very exciting uprising now within the union movement, which has really been revived because jobs are so lousy. And yeah, there are more jobs being created, but as the cost of living and skyrocketing and inflation is big, wages really aren't going up. And it's a huge proportion of people who, well, it's said to be about half of Americans who are either in poverty or low income and barely above poverty. So no matter what dimension you're looking at, housing some 11 million people, I think the number is that are just like barely keeping a roof over their heads. A new statistic like within the last two weeks that one out of every two American families with kids now is food insecure. And they don't have enough resources to put food on the table for all their kids. This while we are spending, I just came across this number today, $110,000 a minute renovating a new generation of nuclear weapons to kill us all more efficiently. It's like, who are we kidding here? Our political system is run by an economic and political elite. And it's a very nice self-reinforcing system because the more bad legislation they support from both sides, the more money is concentrated into fewer hands and the more efficiently that money flows back into the hands of the politicians who are running on bigger quantities of money than ever. It was something like, I wanna say $14 billion in the 2020 election that went into all elections, more than twice as much as just four years earlier. So the system is increasingly corrupt, increasingly disastrous by way of crushing inequality, crushing inequality, endless war, the approaching nuclear confrontation and that doesn't even mention climate change, which is really going to a hell in a hand basket now because the concocted proxy war in Ukraine is used as an excuse to basically throw out climate regulations and give away more to the oil industry. So the predatory state, the predatory economy, the oligarchs are doing better than ever. They're making out like bandits and they have the system under lockdown, which is why the system really needs, I think, censorship and propaganda to try to push back against these harsh realities which really are driving and uprising. And you can see that uprising is there, although mainstream media doesn't wanna cover it a lot, but between this incredible resurgent labor movement, the student debt movement is becoming far more vigorous and militant in many ways. People are really fighting back. We just had the largest movement out in the streets around George Floyd's murder that has ever been seen in this country. So people are in an uprising mode, but against steeper constraints all the time because the same way that the First Amendment is really under assault in terms of speech-free and the same is true for freedom of protest and the odds of getting arrested now and having a really serious punishment. Like you can get, I think it's 10 years for being on a sidewalk without a permit in certain states and automobile drivers have a license to run you down in some states if you are trying to block traffic. So the system is becoming more draconian. It's like empire is doubling down because it's days are numbered and it is kind of in its last clutches really at power. And look at the way the economic warfare against Russia has backfired. The ruble is in better shape, as I understand. It's certainly in as good shape as it was before the conflict. And the US hegemony over global currency is really very much in jeopardy now. And we have forced China and Russia to work together and basically start building an alternative economy so that we can't control it anymore. It's pretty crazy that one country can inflict sanctions on, I think it's one third of the world's population right now that's under US sanctions. And which means death and disability and destruction to lots of people. I mean, what kind of world are we in where one country basically runs the show? So it's no surprise that empire has really been challenged internationally. And there's a counterpart to that here at home too. You know, the politics as usual and the propaganda as usual just doesn't hold sway in this day and age when people are really suffering in jobs and income, putting food on the table, health insurance, you name it. So the system is failing under its own weight right now. It's like US government sanctions against the American people. You said one third of the people. It's as if they're sanctioning their own people with the kind of policies they've given up. But so the answer to the question I asked was you still think that the rulership is pretty secure but there's a lot of unrest circling and coming about around them and they're very well aware of that and you think they're doubling down on propaganda, the assault on a free press because they see that their rule is not as secure as they might think, but as of right now they have pretty good sense of being in charge. That's the thing, right? But it's- Well, I think it's an illusion. I think it's an illusion and they are wrong if they think they're secure. I mean, they're probably gonna think they're secure and that's typically what happens to ruling elites. They don't see it coming. I mean, to hear Chris Hedges talk about what happened in East Germany when the wall came down and nobody saw it coming. And he said that progressives there would talk about oh, maybe in 10 years or 15 years something will happen. I don't think things are gonna happen easily and I don't think they're gonna happen quickly but I think it's really clear that we have entered a really profound stage of imperial decline abroad and domestically. That's not to say it can't be fixed but as long as the elite and the oligarchy maintain their stranglehold on our economic and political system, it's not going anywhere. But I'll tell you, it's like I'm sort of a litmus test or like I'm like a walking thermometer because a lot of people recognize me as a political dissident and I can really tell when people are happy with the system, I just get a lot of negative vibes. And when people are really exasperated, then I just find myself having lots of conversations with people walking down the street who really want to vent or who want to vent, I should say. They want to vent their frustrations with the political system and I just see lots of random people seeking another way forward. And I just think it's just another sign that the system is in a very unstable realignment right now which makes it incumbent on us to keep doing what we're doing and just continue turning the crank because the more organized and prepared and the better communications networks we have, the more ready we are to help the transformation happen when the time is right. Okay, I just want to add that I was not praising the Republicans. I was trying to shame the Democrats by saying they were the ones who did it. Elizabeth. I know that Elizabeth. Yeah, I have a question, it's kind of a statement and a question because I'm observing that one institution that we haven't yet discussed as much as far as its corruption and role in upholding the status quo of corruption, in addition to the judicial system in the US and the UK and the state in general is journalism and just how corrupt journalism is and not only in terms of actively participating in the propaganda against Assange and now not standing up for Assange, the silence is deafening when it comes to Assange right now from the mainstream press. But also in, now we also see in these attacks against the gray zone and against consortium news, you have journalists demanding that the state attack independent media. They're actively asking the state to go after journalists that they don't like the angle that they produce. So I just wanted to talk about the role of the media and just how corrupt it is in addition to the corruption everywhere else that we've already talked about. And the fact that we see what side of the propaganda war there on when it comes to the state, billionaires in war and Assange included in all of that. Sure, so I'll start if I may. Meltzer and his writings about the psychological torture of Assange describes the public mobbing is the term he uses and that is the public casting aspersions at him and that's been fomented and cheerleaded by the media. So the lies about what he did in the embassy I'm not going to even repeat them to give them dignity. That's public mobbing. So the media relished that, they enjoyed it, they participated in it. They absolutely participated and there is culpable in the torture of Assange as the attorney general, the president, the home secretary, Judge Beritzer, James Lewis, the prosecuting counsel. I mean, the media is as guilty as everybody else in this and the CIA and GCHQ, MI6, MI5, they're all culpable in the torture of Assange. The media is equally culpable for the public mobbing. And then you mentioned the censorship of journalists by journalists. That's really, you know, that's really been stunning. And where I first saw the slip where they just threw the restraints off and said, we're going full on to not even be impartial or, you know, where pro censorship was with Trump. So like the New York Times editor said, oh, Trump's such a mortal danger to democracy, such a fascist, he's a Hitler, that we can't allow him to have any free speech or believe anything he says, or we don't have to follow journalistic standards in covering Trump. And they just threw the shackles right off and said, we're going to suppress everything that doesn't toe the line and enforce the narrative. Yeah, which is exactly why, you know, you can't compromise on free speech because you don't like the, you know, the offender, you know, that point's been made forever. And I think we're really living it right now. And yeah, I'll also just agree that we have now this culture of lap dogs instead of a culture of watch dogs and media has to be a watch dog. If it's a lap dog, you know, it's not just useless. It's, you know, it's just like, it's totally harmful, you know, in becoming a cheerleader for billionaires for war. It's my dog making her little debut, you know, the power of the state. And I'll also sympathize with what Joe was saying before about how Republicans and Democrats have changed places on a lot of things. And Democrats are now really kind of the leading proponents of war, of bigger military budgets, of a more aggressive position in Ukraine and also, you know, on censorship, they're certainly leading the charge, which, you know, in a way it dissolves the arguments about the lesser evil. And for progressives, I think it's given them a lot of cognitive dissonance now about which party is the lesser evil when, you know, it's Democrats who are really, you know, leading the charge on war. Yeah. You know, just to add, you know, the smearing of fellow journalists and dissenting people like myself as Russian assets or Russian agents, that's been used against Greyzone recently, that's Paul Mason. I mean, that's like the last refuge of a scoundrel to call, you know, just to accuse somebody of being a Russian agent. It's not an argument. It's not a debate team in the country that can win with that argument. It's just a total non sequitur ad hominem. It's just so silly, but it's so pervasive. And, you know, the Jen Sackie, the White House press secretary was calling people Russian agents. So the media, the press and its supporters are just, you know, they're delusional and unhinged by just calling everybody a Russian asset. It's just, it's almost comical by now, but they still do it. And people are really angry and they really get heated on Twitter and social media saying, oh, you just believe Russia, you're, you know, how much are you getting from Putin? And, you know, I got nothing from Putin. There's the banking blockade on, right? So he's cut off from the Swiss system. He couldn't send me a nickel if he wanted to and he doesn't want to. So it's just silly. And if I go on, Joe. So yeah, just to finish this off, I want to like recognize that there's this like convergence of existential crises that's going on right now, you know, and I think it's important not to get too, you know, contained in any one of them because they're all very much connected to each other. And the more we can cross link, you know, across crises, the more energy for transformation that can be harnessed, you know? So just like to look, for example, at climate and the crisis around climate, you know, people are aware of the forest fires and the floods and the drought, but I want to especially drive home, you know, and we always hear about disasters somewhere else and think, oh, it's not going to hit us, you know, we're immune from this, but I want to remind people that the Colorado River has run out of water and the Colorado River supplies the California agriculture system, which supplies half of our fruits and vegetables, you know, and lots of other stuff too, but just like to look at that, you know, we are facing imminent food crisis here too on top of the food crisis that's happening really all over the world with drought and aggravated by U.S. sanctions, not just Putin's war, but U.S. sanctions and U.S. policies that really drove this war when there was a solution that was readily available in the form of the Minsk Accords that we could have provided some support to, but we did not and there were early negotiations, which we also did not support, you know? So it's not just to be blamed on Putin, there's a lot that we have done, we meaning the U.S. government has done to exacerbate food shortages, but they are really coming home to ruse. So, you know, I just, I think it really helps to underscore that we are in very uncharted waters, you know, and that's not like even to look at the nuclear crisis and the potential for war to really, you know, progress in very unexpected and big ways, which could be extremely catastrophic, extremely quickly. And I think it's just helpful to, you know, help people articulate that, you know, because people kind of feel it, especially younger people who aren't operating through some veil of how they've lived the last couple of decades, young people are really seeing the world the way it is and kind of in clings of what the future looks like, you know? They're really hungry to turn this around in a big way. And if you look at the public opinion of polls now on the mainstream establishment parties, they are all underwater, you know, they both have approval rates of around 30 or 33% and disapproval rates more like around 40. And, you know, it hasn't been like this before. So, you know, and the numbers of people who say that they want a new independent political party because the others are doing such bad job of serving the public interest, you know, that's at unprecedented high levels around 62%. Faith in the media, you know, just as we were talking about the media, faith in our media is at 29% in this country, which is the lowest among some 40 industrialized countries. So, you know, we have had this really profound and deserved loss of faith and confidence in our institutions as they have really been hijacked by an ever more powerful economic elite, which translates into a political elite. So changes here, you know, and the powers that be can stave it off only for so long. And the crisis of our democracy and the crisis of Julian Sange is very much a part of that. So it's important not to feel too isolated in our crisis because we're in very good company with working people and poor people and marginalized people and indigenous people, you know, who's ever kind of struggling with the reality of the climate and the younger generations who are struggling with student debt. So there's really the profound making of a very powerful uprising. And I think it's inevitable it is going to happen. It's just a question of when and how. Jill, first of all, you talked about a lap dog and not a watchdog. Watchdog, yeah. Is your dog, what is your dog that we saw? As you said that, your dog appeared on the screen. Is your dog a watchdog or a lap dog? Both, actually. And also a hundred. Yeah, no, she's definitely bold. The other thing I wanted to say was, yeah. What's that? I was just going to add now that Bill was talking about the weakness of the journalists. I tell the journals a question from Elizabeth, but Wilson lost that very much so because the editors of newspapers in the U.S. totally opposed him, it was an outcry. The kind of outcry we're not seeing about Julian Sange. I've seen a few, few that the mainstream media and the editors at the top understand what's at stake here because they put out such editorials, but then they've just dropped it. They have not campaigned for this man, which is what they need to do. And as far as smearing people's anti-rush, we remember from the anti-war protests, those of us old enough that they were immediately smeared as pro-Hanoi or Beijing. Same thing happened. The same trick government's been using for decades. Move forward now to the case. Let's assume that Deepattel signs this actually this week. It's not the end of the road, Julian Sange. Legally, he can appeal her decision to the high court and also do it what is called appeal, which would be to appeal those parts of the original court's decision that sided with the U.S., even if Judge Baraites ultimately decided not to extradite, but she agreed with a whole box then. But even now the health issue, since there's a new medical condition that was not available to those courts. I wanna ask you Bill, is that if there's gonna be across an appeal of her decision, you think that that's gonna be an important part of what an appeal was to put to the high court. Listen, the decision you made was made without the knowledge of his stroke, even though it happened on the first day of there. Yeah, I think there absolutely should be. This is a new fact of the case. It's very relevant. I don't know the legalities of how successful they could be by bringing up the medical issues again, but it should be possible. You know, we do have a lawyer who helps us with doctors for Assange, very critical person, who says that medical issues really do have great importance in the legal system. So, yeah, they should appeal it if the decision by Pretty Patel is against Assange. And yes, then cross appeal all the other issues, you know, the First Amendment issues, the Attorney Client Privilege issues, the, you know, there must be five or six of them that I'm forgetting in real time here. But, and then just to go back, you know, we say the why aren't, you know, the editors and the owners of the media speaking out for Assange, I think they do realize what's at stake and they don't care because they're not really interested in holding people, you know, they're rich billionaires too, so they don't want to be held to account any more than any other rich billionaire. They absolutely know what it's at stake. They're money. Jill, not about the medical being an important part of an appeal after Patel's decision. Yes, absolutely. And the medical part, I think, is sort of easier for people to understand too, you know, because it's not special language and you don't have to know sort of abstract concepts, you know, to know what depression is about or, you know, kind of have a basic idea of what a stroke is about. You know, this is just kind of a plain, compelling human language that tells the story of, you know, this really, you know, agonizing struggle that Julian Assange and his family are going through. So I think it really helps. I don't know what's going to tip the balance here because the system is so irrational and it seems to be completely, you know, defended against any kind of embarrassment or truth or whatever. It's really hard to know what will make it work, but I think it's just, people are getting more educated about it and many of the old illusions and the smears have really fallen away. So people, you know, my hope is that people will feel really pissed off about this, you know, and feel like it really is an attack on our democracy, on our, you know, on our press freedom, on our right to know and our freedoms of speech and all that. And so, you know, I feel like we just have to press on and things are going to happen, you know, we've got a drought. We've got melting ice sheets, you know, which could accelerate in a big way. I mean, we can just, things are going to happen that are fairly, you know, they're sort of like black swan things. They haven't happened before and they're going to start happening more and more. And I think it just, it stands to sort of shake the system up and help people reboot and throw off the old chains of oligarchy and create a system that's more responsive to us. And, you know, it's like the old institutions that are constraining us are widely reviled, you know, this press that has such control and tries to assert such control over our minds and tries to exercise censorship itself. And remember, people despise it, you know, it has a 29% confidence rating, you know, people don't like what they're getting. And when, you know, when something happens and I don't know what it is, but a lot of things are going to happen and it's just going to shake up the old assumptions about things. And, you know, that's when you see things really change and you can't predict exactly when it's going to happen. But the more you can do to organize for it and help educate people about what the alternatives are, you know, the more we can help that transformation happen when the time is right. Thank you, Jill. I think now we're going to watch a video of Mary Kostakidis, the Australian journalist who watched every session of the court hearings. She has something to say about the health issue as well. And then Dr. Sue Warren, who was a medical doctor and is now with a medical, let me get the name of her organization, Medical Association for Prevention of War. I think that's a wonderful sounding organization, Jill. I think you'd agree with that. So I think Kathy's ready to roll those two videos and then we'll come back and say goodbye. Great. There are a few things that are unclear about this whole episode of the mini-stroke and the lawyers and high court's failure to take it into account during the US appeal hearing. I'm not a doctor, but I don't think symptoms of stroke precede a stroke they appear during or after. And it would appear that Julian is likely to have had the episode just prior to the hearing and his inability to animate the left side of his face or keep his head up without supporting it with his palm would have been an effect of the mini-stroke or transient ischemic attack. This may also be the reason his lawyers were told he would not attend the video link due to an increase in medication, which was unexplained and which Fitzgerald announced at the beginning of the hearing. The implication, I think it was in fact made explicit, was that Julian did not wish to attend. And I subsequently asked Stella about that and she told me that he had wanted to attend but the prison had not allowed it. When Julian unexpectedly appeared and was obviously extremely unwell and or very drugged out, unable to keep his head up with the left side of his face obviously drooping, nothing was made of his appearance. This is also odd as on previous occasions the court was certainly able to see him on the video link. Now, were they unable to see him or was the terrible nature of his appearance ignored? And why would the court not be able to see him when journalists on the video link could? Regarding his mental faculty at the time, Julian obviously had still been able to prevail. He did attend despite an attempt to prevent him from doing so. He also made another decision during the hearing. He rose and stepped out of shot. He gave up propping his head up. He would have known we were all watching him. I have a sense that these two decisions showed that though Julian was in a terrible state physically and his thinking clouded, a small part of him refused to be switched off, said, I'm alive. I have agency. I want to be present at something so significant to me. And then I'm not able to control my body. I don't want to be gawked at. The whole episode is very muddy and it occurs to me that the very reason an attempt was made to ensure that he did not appear and the court either were not able to see him or ignored the way he looked was precisely so that his newly deteriorated condition and its possible cause would not become an issue. That was certainly the result. Thank you for this opportunity. I'm Sue Wareham and I'm speaking for the Medical Association for Prevention of War in Australia. So representing hundreds of doctors and other health professionals in Australia, but we're joining with doctors, as we know, hundreds of other doctors from around the world in stating basically at the moment that Julian Assange must not be extradited to the United States. Today, we've called our association and I know others are doing this, have called on our newly elected Labour government in Australia to intervene to ensure that Assange is not extradited to the United States. And we've also written to the UK Home Secretary, Preeti Patel, who, as we know, is expected to make a decision on this coming week in the coming days. So there are a couple of main reasons for the very serious concerns that medical doctors and other health professionals hold about Assange and about everything that his case represents. And the first thing, of course, is that there's a serious risk, not only to the health of Assange, which is already severely compromised, but there's a serious risk of him dying because of what is being inflicted upon him. There's been ample medical evidence presented and accepted during the extradition proceedings in the UK, which indicated that extradition would likely bring a significant suicide risk for Assange. We know he's been subjected to torture and that this is continuing. So the risk of suicide, of course, remains, but it not only remains, the state of his health generally, including his psychological health, appears to be getting worse. In October last year, 2021, Assange suffered a mini-strike. Now what this indicates is that there is a significant risk of further cardiovascular events. It's a serious sudden event in the heart and circulatory system, including the brain. Now, the risk of cardiovascular events is augmented by psychological stress and there's been ample psychological stress inflicted upon Julian Assange. Now, we believe that this heightened risk of deterioration in his health is a key piece of information, which as far as we can tell, hasn't been taken into account in the extradition proceedings thus far. So in other words, the proceedings seem to be going ahead based on an inaccurate and out-of-date picture of his health and this is not satisfactory. We've been reassured, meant to be reassured by the United States that Assange would in fact be safe in their custody in the United States and the US government has stated that he would not be placed under special administrative measures, which apply in some of the prisons for particular prisoners. But our understanding is that he would still be in a different category called administrative segregation under which he would still be in isolation for long periods, very long periods of the day. Anything up to 22 hours a day is my understanding. Now for a man who's had a mini-stroke, this length of time to be in isolation is just not acceptable. If there is a further cardiovascular event, then treatment needs to be very prompt. So nothing about this is reassuring and indeed really we don't have good reason to trust the United States government, which if it were acting in good faith would not have persecuted and pursued Assange to the point of planning possibly his death, kidnapping and death, which we are told the evidence emerged around such a possibility. So nothing that the US government has done really indicates that their word is necessarily trustworthy in this or that there are not political games being played to get the outcome that they want. The other serious concern in relation to this is much broader than that. And it goes to the importance of a free press and the role of a free press in our democracy. And we can all recall that when our nations, and I'm referring here to the US UK and Australia, when they go to war, we're generally told that it's because we're upholding our democracy. And yet Assange's crime, so-called crime was the publishing of evidence and this evidence has not been disputed of war crimes committed by our allies. Now, this is a travesty that the man who publishes information on what appear to be war crimes is persecuted, detained for years and put in the grave danger in which he is. All this is happening while those who commit these war crimes walk free. This is a real perversion of justice. It's harder to think of any more absurd abuse of the legal process. And the persecution of Assange is a clear attempt to intimidate and silence other journalists who might in the future consider disclosing extremely important information as Assange has and information that we have a right to know. We have a right to know what is committed in our name. And listeners I'm sure will be familiar with these statements and the quite lengthy explanations of the concerns of the UN Special Rapporteur on torture Nils Meltzer. And as mentioned, he's written quite a lot on this case because he can see the significance of this. He talks about the fact that Assange has been subject to torture. He describes Assange's case as the story of a man who has been persecuted and abused for revealing the dirty secrets of the powerful. And he talks about it as a deliberate, the whole process as a deliberate judicial arbitrariness in Western democracies that are otherwise keen to present themselves as examples of human rights, good examples of human rights. Now in Australia, we have communicated with our government, previous government, previous coalition government on the case of Julian Assange over some time. Our Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade informed MAPW members in communication in January this year that the government is unable to intervene in the legal proceedings related to Assange. And yet we note that our government has managed to intervene to good effect to ensure the safety of other Australian citizens in other circumstances who have also been prosecuted by governments elsewhere for political reasons. So we see no reason why the Australian government cannot intervene now, intervene strongly and ensure the safety of this Australian citizen. We have a new government now as of a few weeks ago and we're quite heartened to read that our new Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese in December last year stated in relation to Assange's case that enough is enough. We would hardly agree with that, enough is enough and we're calling on the Australian government to ensure that this really terrible saga in our nation's history is brought to an end. Thank you. Oh, it's Cathy Vogan here, your producer speaking. Look, I just have a couple of comments on what we've just seen. Of course, Joe Laurier and I have been in the courtroom with Mary Costa-Caitis for the last two years in person in February 2020 and every day of September 2020 as well. My goodness, the time flies. So we can back up everything that Mary said there. We had eyes on Julian as well and it was absolutely clear that the man was very, very ill. Now, I just need to correct a little bit your assumption, Jill, that they were talking about assurances when all this was happening. No, they weren't. They were talking, it was a hideous conversation about the probability of Julian committing suicide. The defence was arguing that he would. This is why we're watching Julian in the lead-up, if not the event of his mini-stroke and the prosecution was, you're right, they were calling him a malingerer. So Mary raises some very important questions there about why, if this happened during the High Court appeal, why this has never passed before the courts and why he was hidden from the people in the court. We don't really know, but we saw him and we are backing up everything that Mary Costa-Caitis says. The other thing I'd like to say in addition to what Dr. Sue Wareham said is that one detail that is crucially important as well and this harkens back to evidence, actually a witness statement that we heard in the courtroom from Yancey Ellis. And he was talking about the William D. Truesdale Adult Detention Centre, which we call ADC. Now the assurances, the bogus assurances said that Julian would not be put in ADX Colorado in pretrial detention. Well, perhaps that was a convenient way of not talking about ADC, which Yancey Ellis told us a lot about and the crucially important detail is that there are no permanent doctors on staff. So not only is he shut up for 22 hours a day and sometimes they don't even get out at the end of a day and the chances of actually seeing him, discovering him if he has a major stroke are slim. He would have to be lucky, but also there are no permanent doctors there at all. So I really support what Doctors for Assange are doing, not only in the United Kingdom, in America, but Australia and right around the world as well. But I think a lot of the pressure has to be put in the United Kingdom for to have a pretty pateau say no and I really feel that people need to get in contact with Anthony Albanese, the Prime Minister of Australia, the leaders of the countries and give them this crucial information which was kind of hidden, but I'm bringing out now that Julian doesn't have a dog's chance of survival. We've already shown, it was already shown to us that his risk of suicide was extremely high. Now his chances of survival, his very survival, if he has a stroke, another stroke are really minimal. And I thank you for supporting him and defending him, Doctors for Assange. Thank you. Thank you very much. So we're gonna conclude now with a final thoughts. What we learned on this show is certainly that a real dog can be both a watchdog and a laptop, but the press can never be both. But let me ask you, Bill, for your final thoughts, what we discussed today. Yeah, so yeah, in conclusion, the case of Assange is unusual in every respect, as we've described at length. And the latest is that he's now got a new medical condition that makes his extradition oppressive and the courts have not yet heard the evidence about that condition. And based on what we know, just from what we've seen with our own eyes and heard reported about that medical condition, he should not be extradited. It would be, as we said in our letter, medically and ethically inappropriate and wrong to extradite Julian to the United States. So we call on the Home Secretary to free Assange. We call on the U.S. Department of Justice and Attorney General Merrick Garland to drop the prosecution of Assange. We call on President Biden to end the prosecution of Assange. And we call for all four states credibly accused of torture by the special rapporteur of the U.N. to do the investigation required under the Convention Against The Poacher. And that's where we stand. Thank you, Bill. Jill. You have to unmute. Sorry. Yeah, I'll just ditto that and give a big thank you to all of our colleagues at Doctors for Assange that all help kind of create these resources for us to tell the story of Julian Assange in a way that I think a lot of people can understand without people who may be intimidated by the complexity of the legal system and all its rules. The way in which his health and his human rights are being abused is just easy for us to understand. And I think at the end of the day, this is really about our asserting our right to oppress that can inform and empower us, our right to First Amendment without censorship and propaganda, our right to protest for redress of grievances, our right to a judicial system that we can have confidence in and our right to human rights. These are just kind of basic infrastructures of our democracy, which is crumbling around us. And what is happening to Julian Assange is happening to all of us. And I think what will make a difference here is for everyday people that just own this and write a letter or make a phone call to your head of state, your secretary of state, your attorney general, and in the US here, Merrick Garland and Joe Biden, and tell them to just drop this case and let the healing begin for Julian Assange and for our democracy. And big thank you to Consortium News for being the real press as opposed to the oppress, you know? It's like our press has become the oppress and the oppressor, we need real press. And thank you to Consortium for having led the charge for however long we've been in existence. What is it, 25, 35 years? 27. What's that? How long? Going to be 27 this November, yeah, 27. 27, yeah, yeah. And I really encourage people to support Consortium News because it is, you know, it's kind of at the cutting edge of the fight for real press freedom and a watchdog press, not a lap dog press. And it's so important that we support it because the fight that Consortium's been fighting for decades has really now come home all over the country and all over the world. So thank you for hanging in there. And, you know, it's a badge of honor to be under attack by empire. So I know it's not easy, but, you know, consider it a compliment that you're on the right side, you know? And we need you. So thank you. And thanks to everybody out there for listening and support Consortium and the free press and Jill and Asanj and let your voice be heard. Thank you. Thank you very, very much for those kind words, Jill. And with that, we're going to end this program. We've been talking to Bill Hogan and Jill Stein, both members of Doctors for Asanj about the latest medical developments and legal developments in the case of Jillian Asanj with all of its political and social ramifications. So for Elizabeth Vossa and Kathy Wogan, our producer, this is Joe Lawyer saying goodbye until next time. That's your notebook, this is Mark. If you are a consumer of independent news and the first place you should be going to is Consortium News and please do try to support them when you can. It doesn't have its articles behind a paywall. It's free for everyone. It's one of the best news sites out there and it's been in the business of independent journalism and adversarial independent journalism for over two decades. I hope that with the public's continuing support of Consortium News, it will continue for a very long time to come. Thank you so much.