 I am really happy that you're here, that will be a virtual, virtual, and thank you so much for accepting the honour, the honour for us to give you the first ever worldwide Julian Assange award. First let me introduce Sander Kupainer and Marie-Marie Klinghammer. They're both founders of the Dutch only real paper independent newspaper, The Andere Krant, but they'll introduce themselves. Yeah, I'm a founder of the newspaper The Andere Krant, we published weekly and I'm also the chair of the Free Journalist Association that we founded. It's an association with approximately 100 journalists that are members and we try to serve the interests of free spirits that still exist in journalism in the Netherlands and in the Netherlands. And the prize award has also been given by the Free Journalist Association. I'm co-founder also of The Andere Krant and with Jamila we are now and then doing all types of actions everywhere, mostly in Holland and sometimes in England. For Julian Assange, yeah, we both travel to London together often. My name is Jamila Leper, I'm a member of the association that Sander just mentioned and I work as a freelance journalist sometimes publishing in The Andere Krant. But what I wrote to Joe already is that last year at the start of the Bitcoin Amsterdam conference, Gabriel Shipton was here and we had dinner with him. It was on the eve of the conference and Estella Assange was to speak at the Bitcoin conference and we invited the organizer of tomorrow's conference where the award will be presented physically. And we got talking about what could Holland do, what could the Netherlands do more for Julian Assange and then the organizer of the conference suggested what about an Assange award. And, you know, to my surprise Gabriel said, well, it isn't actually there yet, you know, it hasn't been done, lots of people have talked about it but it hasn't been realized. So I'm absolutely delighted that we have realized that now. We have divided the Julian Assange award really consists of two prizes. One is a Dutch award, the Julian Assange prize. It will go to a Dutch journalist or Dutch journalist organization that has done in Assange's legacy style. They have brought a lot of information to a large audience which otherwise the large audience wouldn't have had. But for the international award which we're very delighted to give to you this year as the first, it's for journalists, international journalists who have really done a lot at the Keith Julian Assange on the radar. And of course it was a very difficult task selecting who should we then award. But luckily Consortium News is a platform giving space and voice to lots of excellent reporters. You have John Pilger on your board of directors. You have Chris Hedges on your board of directors. You have lots of contributions and you've got a total of 700 articles on Julian Assange, which is amazing and they're all factual. They're not guardian style like. So because you give such a platform and because you keep him on the radar because he's silent, we thought you were the best organization to give it to. Because that way we thank you and we honor all those journalists that published through you and that keep Julian Assange alive as much as possible. Of course it's enormously gratifying to know that you appreciate our work and you gave us this award, the first Julian Assange award. I think it's really an excellent idea that he came up with in collaboration with Gabriel Shipton, whom of course we know very well. It's kind of amazing how the mainstream media is ignoring this unbelievably incredibly important story. Before I go on about Consortium News, I want to introduce my team. With me right now is we have a very small team with me right now is Kathy Volgen and she is the executive producer of our webcast. You also did the tweets during our coverage of the extradition hearing of Julian Assange, which you cited in your email to us announcing that we'd won this award. We have an addition to Kathy, who has produced over 350 videos about Julian Assange, which means if you put that 350 together with our 700 articles, we've produced over a thousand pieces on WikiLeaks and Assange since 2010. That's 13 years, over a thousand pieces. And that just is an indictment as far as I'm concerned of the mainstream media that has not been covering this story. Now, in addition, we have with us Michelle Steinberg who runs the business side of our publication and helps us out of technical difficulties with the web host. Without her, we wouldn't be able to continue without anyone on our team. We wouldn't be able to continue. Corinna Bernard, who's not with us is our deputy editor. And while we're distracted with the Assange stories, she keeps the publication going, publishing stories on many other issues that we also cover. And Elizabeth Voss, my co-host on CN Live, our webcast, who also contributed many articles to Consortium News, particularly our series that we did on WikiLeaks revelations. We look back over the major publications and explore them in depth. And we have Dino Zonic, who is actually a Bosnian orchestra conductor, who puts out our twice a day newsletter via email. Without this small team, we could not do what we did that earned us this wonderful award that you've given us today. And I really appreciate that. Bob Perry was the founder of our website in 1995. Bob was an Associated Press investigative reporter and a really good one and a real one. He broke many important stories of the Iran-Contra scandal in the U.S. in the 1980s. That was one of the biggest scannels in American history. He revealed the name of Oliver North, who was the colonel running this illegal operation out of the White House basement. Bob found out that his Associated Press editors were spiking his stories critical of the U.S., of the Reagan administration, U.S. foreign policy in general. And he quit and he went on to Newsweek and the same thing happened with his editors there. So completely utterly fed up with the protective nature of the mainstream media in the United States. In other words, protecting the government instead of criticizing it. Bob started in 1995 Consortium News. He brought together a consortium of other journalists that had gone through the same kinds of problems. That is that their editors were spiking their stories. Bob ran this thing from 95 was really the first independent news site in the United States online. We're talking about 30 years ago, which is ancient history in terms of the Internet. And Bob then made his mark with Consortium News by publishing articles that questioned and opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003, that exposed that the intelligence was faulty. And he went on to write about the Ukraine coup in 2014, the role of neo-Nazis there, the anti-terrorist operation, the war against Donbass, people who opposed the coup in Ukraine. And he even warned in 2015 of a possible nuclear war coming out of Ukraine, which now we all see is a real possibility. He wrote that eight years ago. And Bob also picked apart the Russia gate scandal and pretty much father wanting that it was a hoax that there was really nothing to that story. It's meant even though many people still believe it to this day. Now Bob died in 2018 and I became editor-in-chief in May 1st of that year. Five years ago. And we continued and made our main story, the Julian Assange story, as well as mostly U.S. foreign policy. That's our focus critiquing U.S. foreign policy. That's one reason why we colleagues became so interesting to us is because of what it revealed about U.S. foreign policy, but also the story of Julian himself as a man and most importantly as a journalist of what it means to the future of free press and free speech. And even without being hyperbolic, democracy, whatever's left of it in the United States and in the West. So we focused on that story as it became more and more dramatic when he was kicked out of the embassy, arrested the extradition hearing. We went to London. We sat in the courtroom there and then every other hearing that's happened that we have participated on video. Kathy and I watched all of it. She did the tweets. I did stories all day long and we did videos every night and on the weekend. So we found that this is such a dramatic story, such an important story about free press, and it's such an expose of what the U.S. Empire does when they are exposed, how they will react, what kind of revenge that they will take against a publisher. So that we don't understand how the mainstream media or we do, we shouldn't be understand how the mainstream media is ignoring this story. And that's how we got more and more involved. And Bob Perry started it in 2010. He wrote the first article consortium news ever wrote about Julian Assange. It was called all journalists are Julian Assange. That was his headline. And what he said in that article in December 2010 was that the work that Julian Assange was doing was exactly what he did as an associated press investigative reporter working on the Iran Contra scandal and other scandals. And that was namely to talk to government employees and encourage them to break the law. In other words, violate their nondisclosure agreement in order to leak class fund information that could prevent a larger crime from being committed that it was worth them committing a small crime to stop a larger crime. And some of them did it. That's what you call a brave whistleblower. And then there was Chelsea Manning who gave the material to Julian Assange. So Bob Perry said in 2010 that Julian Assange was the same as the work he did. And that really kicked off our extraordinary coverage of Julian Assange, which led. And we're so grateful to this award that you're presenting to us today. I will now turn it over to Kathy to say a few words. Hi, I'm very grateful. For the team that has received this award. It's been 13 years that I've been following and writing about the case making films. And in 2019, I joined the team of consortium news. So my job is to do the videos and to I've done 345 actually, let's not exaggerate about Julian Assange, as well as other subjects. I do the live tweeting from the courtroom. And I write about forensics. That's my job because I'm a technical person. And the forensics and Julian Assange case are really important need to be more known. So I hope that this award becomes highly coveted in years to come. I can see it going for a long time. And hopefully there are investigative journalists from all over the world that want to get this award. They want to live up to Julian's standard. We're not exactly like WikiLeaks, but we report as truthfully as we can. And we never stop working. So thank you so much. Thank you. Michelle, you want to say, I'm sorry. But then we can change the criteria that we don't need to give it out anymore to keep him on the radar because he'll be able to keep himself on the radar. But go ahead, Joe. I just want to ask if she would like to say a word or two. Yeah, just briefly, my husband and I were freelance independent writers back in the 1980s when we first met Bob Perry. And I think I can say he would be so proud and honored to accept this award and to know the work that Joe has done. Just unbelievably, energetic, brave, courageous and good. Yeah. Since I'm 2018. So thank you so much. We're very honored. Just giving you a raise Michelle for that. Thank you very much. But I was hoping. And if now if you'll let us do the honor of unwrapping it or we can keep it closed until you come in December. No, I think we should see it now. Yes, thank you. It looks like a birthday cake. Well, this keeps a little longer. Hopefully. The theme was transparent. And it's a little book. Oh, wow. It's a glass book. It's made in the city in Holland where they are glass specialists. The pages are, well, they're not really transparent, but they're symbolizing transparency. And underneath it says Julian Assange Award 2023 for steadfast coverage of the Assange case. That is absolutely wonderful. Thank you very much. It's absolutely lovely. And then you went to that effort to get that award and that you created this award at all. We didn't know we had much of an audience in the Netherlands. And that's also great news for us. All right. Well, thank you so much for taking the time. I think it's bedtime for you now, Joe. Yes, Virginia. It's a bright new day. Thank you all very much for attending. And thank you for all the hard work that you do. Thank you. Thank you again. Bye-bye.