 who publishes anything BAD about the US Government Be dragged somewhere else in the world Taken to America to face the So-called Justice of that dysfunctional political system the answer must be NO Does anything BAD about the US Government Be dragged somewhere else in the world taken to America to face the so-called Justice of that dysfunctional political system the answer must be NO Bad about the U.S. government, be dragged from anywhere in the world, taken to America to face the so-called justice of that dysfunctional political system. The answer must be no. Good morning. My name is Lorraine Jacobs and Mark Miller and I are co-chairs of the Sunday Morning Forum Planning Group. We welcome you this morning and thank you for supporting the Sunday Forums. For over 50 years at First Unitarian Society, Milwaukee, the Sunday Forum lecture series has showcased speakers of interest to our members and friends. Forums are one hour in length and provide a presentation followed by questions. Scheduling and hosting these weekly programs is accomplished by volunteers. The presenters do not receive honoraria. The content of each forum may not always align with the viewpoint of First Unitarian Society, Milwaukee. They are meant to offer topics which can be pursued further independently by those attending. Before we begin today, I'd like to remind you that next Sunday, January 9th, our presentation will be by Andre Brown, who is the employment specialist at Project Return in Milwaukee. And today, before we get started, just one more reminder for everyone. It doesn't have a speaking role to mute themselves. We catch all kinds of background noise and that interferes with things. Today, we welcome to our forum, the Julian Assage can exposure bring justice and they'll be introduced by Anne Batisa and she's our forum host today. All right, Anne. Well, thank you, Lorraine. I want to welcome our wonderful guest today, Hedell Narvez, who was the consul in the Ecuadorian embassy, overlapping Julian's day there in London by about six years and John Kiriaku, who blew the whistle on torture. Just a few weeks ago, John Nichols was our guest here on the forum and shortly afterward, he wrote an article for the nation entitled, The Prosecution of Julian Assange Absolutely Threatens Press Freedom. Now, why did he say that? If merely possession of classified information by a publisher becomes a crime, then waste, fraud, abuse and even war crimes covered up through classification cannot be brought to light no matter who is in office. But the American people are not aware of the implications of the prosecution of the publisher Julian Assange. It's nice to see you again, Hedell and John and all of you who are joining the conversation today. Today, Hedell and John will use their intimate knowledge of Assange and you muted yourself. May have inadvertently. Yeah, I think someone else needed me, but that's okay. So I'm not sure where I was, but I was saying today, Hedell Narvez and John Kiriaku will use their intimate knowledge of Assange, the Spanish court and the intelligence community to discuss how media blackouts and misinformation have affected the public's perception of who Julian Assange is. Perhaps the oft repeated smears are meant to make us feel all right about jailing a publisher and destroying our press freedom. However, the news blackouts may suggest a remedy that exposing the truth about Julian Assange and his work might shut down this case through pressure brought to bear by the American people. Today, I'm going to introduce both of our speakers. They will each speak for about 15 minutes. And then we will go to questions in the chat. And if times allow questions from individuals who raise their hand. So please put your questions in the chat. And I'll add some references to the chat as well, including actions that you can take to help stop this prosecution. And then our speakers will give some closing remarks. Hedell Narvez is the former Consul General at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and was a senior diplomat there for eight years. He overlapped Julian Assange's asylum there until 2018 when all staff friendly to Assange were replaced by the newly elected Lenin Moreno administration. In 2019, he wrote 40 rebuttals to CNN's bias article on Assange by someone who was actually there documenting many of the false smears against Assange. In 2021, he gave a passion speech after Judge Vanessa Berets are handed down the no extradition verdict. He said he was called very proud of my country protecting Julian Assange for so many years against all international pressure, unquote. However, recently, the High Court in Britain reversed that no extradition verdict and Assange's lawyers have launched an effort to appeal. Welcome, Hedell. John Kariaku is the U.S. torture program whistleblower and former CIA chief of counter terrorism operations in Pakistan who led the CIA team in the arrest of Abu Zabeda. Erroneously thought at the time to be number three in Al Qaeda. John would later learn that Abu Zabeda had been waterboarded 83 times and subjected to multiple forms of torture by the U.S. In a 2007 interview on ABC News with Brian Ross and while serving as senior intelligence advisor for the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kariaku became the first CIA officer to publicly confirm that the CIA had waterboarded prisoners and that torture was an official U.S. government policy, not just the wrongdoing of some rogue agents. After being tried by the Obama administration for espionage and related charges in the Eastern District of Virginia, in 2012, he served 23 months in federal prison. However, as is the case for Assange's revelations and war crimes, none of the CIA agents involved in torture have ever been prosecuted. While John's courage in providing this information to the American public came at great personal cost, he's been honored for his courage and also wrote the book Time Like a Spy to document his experiences. John is on the board of consortium news which is simulcasting this event and is co-host of CN Live. Welcome, John. So let's begin today's conversation with former Ecuadorian consul general Fidel Nervez. Fidel? Hello, everybody. Could you hear me, Claire? Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much. First, I want to wish you all of you a very happy new year and I very much hope that this will be the year that the pain of Julian Assange basically ends. It's my privilege to be here with you today and to share a panel with John Kiriako, somebody who I and many people admire so much. This year is going to be 10 years since Julian asked my country for political asylum. But I know Julian before he came to my embassy and I have the privilege to help him get in that asylum from my country which as you know had him living in my embassy in London for seven years. Six of those seven years I worked for the embassy. I was not there the last year of Julian in the embassy, so I did not see him how he was handed over to the Americans. But I stay very close to the case and I saw how in the last year basically my country stopped protecting Julian and handed him over to the British at the request of the Americans. That should be very clear. This is not Julian Assange versus the UK judges or the UK courts. This is Julian Assange against the more powerful economic and military country in history. So I want to mention that one of the things I value the most from my experience next to Julian for so many years seeing him at the daily basis apart from getting to know him of course and apart from meeting very courageous people around him all the time. One of the things that most strikes me is to learn how the media is used to position certain narratives either directly with disinformation or simply with self-censorship in order to avoid fulfilling its fundamental mission which is to hold the powerful accountable. So the corporate press tends to have bias approaches. We know that depending on their own agenda. When the choice is between their duty to bring the truth to the public and defending the interests of the public between that and the financial interests of the private corporations, unfortunately, the private interests almost always prevails. So a good parody of this sad reality I just watched yesterday basically this new release film Don't Look Up where the political power colluded with the financial and the media power wants us to look in only one direction. They want us to look down so we don't see the truth. In previous decades in the last century the political power used to use mostly brutal force to silence dissent and to silence those who dare to challenge those in power and to expose their crimes. Dictatorships of civil democracies used to disappear people, torture them, murder them, or imprison them by hundreds or thousands. In Latin America we have many examples of those practices in killing Argentina and Uruguay in Central America as well but and those things still happen in some places all over the world but my point is that before the internet era it was easier for the powerful to hide their crimes and to act with impunity. Nowadays it's not that easy to hide that although those practices are still happening in some places as I said. Nowadays the new practice is what we know as loafer basically the use of the judiciary hand in hand with the power of the media to destroy people's reputations and to persecute them judicially and the case of Julian the case of Julian Assange is the best example of this. Julian is not only persecuted by the pentagon and by the military-industrial complex and by the intelligence community of the United States of America. Julian is persecuted also by the corporate media machinery used by and colluded with the world criminals that he and WikiLeaks exposed as nobody else has dared to do it before. Julian and WikiLeaks not only exposed and humiliated the world criminals of every color republicans or democrats the CIA or the NSA but also the powerful corporations like google or amazon and by doing so he has also challenged the press which by complicity or by omission is also responsible for so much impunity that is the reason for him being persecuted for more than a decade and imprisoned for more than for nearly three years already in a maximum security prison without being convicted of anything with a sinister prospect of being extradited and spend the rest of his life in the darkness of the most oppressive prison conditions in the world so Julian's persecution is so grotesque that by now every major human rights organization and press freedom organizations opposes his extradition even the big media that have attacked him so much during the last decade oppose his extradition and although Julian is defended by some of the best lawyers in different countries in the UK in USA in Spain in Australia in Ecuador in Iceland in many countries his case is close to be lost it's closest to be lost than to be won in court why i want to point out to main reasons for that are basically the combination of those two reasons first one the ones opposing the extradition the NGOs amnesty international human rights watch reporter without borders and those big media that used to attack him the new york times the washington pause the guardian these they have stepped forward too late and still too mildly too cautiously only when they saw him already falling to the precipice they have a step in but mostly not to be exposed themselves in such a disgrace so the damage on his reputation has been so great that even those who are opposing the extradition came always closely oh he should not be extradited but he's not a responsive journalist um i disagree with him in these and these and these and these points but he should not be extradited that's one of the main reasons why he's in this situation now second one well the power of his persecutors is too big basically it's too big that the uk establishment won't have the strength to oppose the extradition the uk is basically a puppet of the united states i always say that it might be one of the few cases if not the only case where the roles the historical roles between a colonizer and a colony have shifted so dramatically yeah so the trial of julien assange in the british court is is a charade is a kangaroo tribe so his case basically is like this catastrophic comet that will destroy the earth in this film don't look up but hardly anybody talks about it why well because the war criminals do not want you to look up and see the crimes and stop the wars and the data corporation surveilling us uh all of us do not want us to look up and see how our privacy is violated every day through our phones through our computers through our emails and because the destructive multinationals the old giants the mining giants do not want us to look up and see how the planet is being destroyed basically by greed all they want us to see is something in existence something they have created to distract us from the reality so instead of looking at the brave journalists they want us to see a hack but nobody has ever put evidence that julien assange has had anything instead of a pacifist intellectual who is not violent who is not a threat to the society they are they want us to see rapes and a misogynist instead of the fearless publisher they portray him as a russian asset so after julien was so shamefully evicted basically kidnapped from the embassy i realized that he was much less resilient to the media deformations then i thought i know him closely and he's he's very strong in every sense but especially spiritually but even him after so many years of attacks that had a tremendous psychological impact on him something that the united nations repertoire on torture refers as psychological torture and says that in 20 years years of his experience in the field he has never seen such a severe case of so many countries colluding colluding in order to destroy one single man so julien's case is the tyrant basically for future publication of this kind anywhere in the world but we should not see this as a future event future risk to his life which it is yes but we should think that he's losing his life right now he's already being killed if he continues in indefinite detention while the court decides about his fate and the deterrent is already established for the free press we don't need him to be extradited or sentenced for his publications in order to to to uh cause fear in journalists because who is going to want to follow his example after seeing what has happened to him until today so even if he wins his case the deterrent is already established so stopping his extradition is the more important fight for freedom of expression of this generation without any doubt and we should not be under the illusion that the british judges are going to independently save or kill julian asanj because if they extradite him it's because basically the powerful were too powerful to be challenged in the same fashion like the invasion of iraq happened in the uk the vast majority of the population was opposed to the world in iraq millions of people basically came out to the streets to say we don't want to go to war only a few powerful people were interested in going to war and they went to war ignoring the wishes of the majority of the people so if he's extradited those few people will win but if they decide not to extradite him be sure that it's only because of you and of us who have resisted and challenged them so strongly that will be impossible for the judges not to look up the spider wishes of the powerful so let's not be afraid of fighting this and winning this because i think together we can do it thank you thank you so very much fidel those were very powerful words um john karyaku um you want to follow that it's hard to follow that uh but i'm gonna try first of all thank you for inviting me and uh and thank you to fidel too i've gotten to know fidel a little bit over the last couple of years and it's an honor to be associated with him he stands up and speaks his mind um at at risk you know the world has changed his government has changed and and this is hard i'm also going to begin by apologizing to our viewers if what i say they've heard before i i risk repeating myself here but i think that this is important and i think every american should understand what the process is uh in the federal courts and it's ugly so let's start julian has been charged with multiple counts of espionage in the eastern district of virginia uh that is in arlington virginia it's known as the espionage court for several reasons one the eastern district is home to the cia it's home to the pentagon it's home to innumerable um intelligence community contractors and defense contractors including the biggest defense contractors in the world um in the event that julian would go to trial here his jury would be made up of employees and the family members of employees of the cia the fbi the defense department uh north work grumman uh you name it every enemy of of freedom and of transparency is based in the eastern district of virginia edva is also called the espionage court because no national security defendant has ever won a case here so look at who's been charged in the eastern district julian um i was charged and tried in the eastern district of virginia ed snowden has been charged in the eastern district of virginia jeffrey sterling the cia whistleblower was charged and convicted in the eastern district of virginia chelsea manning was imprisoned in the eastern district for for refusing to testify against julian in the grand jury uh so this is uh this is a tough place if you're charged with a crime especially if you're charged with the national security crime in the eastern district of virginia there's no reason to feel optimistic about the way things are going to work out for you uh i've complained many times about judge leonnie brinkama who is a ronald reagan appointee and one of the uh judges in edva she was my judge she was sterling's judge she's snowden's judge and for a long time i assumed that she was going to be julian's judge she's not julian's judge is going to be judge claud hilton who's the senior judge in edva uh that's worse than leonnie brinkama and it's worse than leonnie brinkama because claud hilton also a reagan appointee what did claud hilton do before he was a judge or the senior judge in the eastern district of virginia he was a judge on the fisa court the foreign intelligence surveillance court now let me tell you why that's a problem uh the fisa court is stacked against everybody uh if you are the subject of a surveillance warrant in the fisa court you don't have any idea and you are not permitted to be represented before that court it's a secret court it meets in secret uh on the top floor of the justice department uh nobody is allowed to see what the warrants say and when i was working at the cia if we wanted to tap somebody's phone or uh tap their emails we would just write a little memo send it to the fisa court and automatically get approval and when i say automatically here's what i mean over its entire 33 year history the fisa court has granted 33,942 warrants there have been 12 denials that's a denial rate of three 100s of one percent so if that doesn't scream judicial bias to you i don't know what does but that's julian's judge judge claud hilton now one of the things that the justice department is going to invoke in the event that julian is sent to the united states and we can certainly talk about that maybe i'm overly optimistic but we can talk about that in a minute what one of the things that the justice department is going to invoke is called cipa cipa the classified information protection act uh the the purpose behind cipa i i suppose when it was written was you know laudable you don't want to unnecessarily expose classified information to a dangerous terrorist for example um but that's not how it's used not at all cipa was invoked in my case it was invoked in the sterling case it was invoked in the in the uh the manning case um it's it's something that the justice department uses and abuses in every national security case now what it is uh is well it's several fold what it does is several fold uh number one the only people that will be allowed in the courtroom will be the judge the attorneys julian julian's jury the bailiff and the clerk that's it everybody else will be cleared out and then the bailiff will take plastic sheeting and cover the windows with plastic sheeting and then tape it around the edges why so that the russians or the iranians or whomever can't fire a laser at the window and detect the vibrations on the window to then discern what's being said in the courtroom ridiculous out of a bad spy movie then they will uh seal the doors again with duct tape so that nobody can put their ear on the crack in the door and listen to the unbelievable secrets that are going to be exposed in the courtroom and then they play white noise i've been in the court where where they turn the white noise on and it's deafening it's not just white noise it's like being tortured with hard rock it's so loud that it's utterly impossible for anyone to hear anything that's going on more importantly the justice department is going to tell the jury that there are some things some words that are so highly classified that they can't be uttered in court so the justice department will give each juror a piece of paper and it'll have the word and a code word that the word has to be replaced with now think for a minute how ridiculous this is so let's say that uh the words vault seven right are so highly classified the ci is so upset about vault seven that they were going to kill julie or kidnap him recall so you can't say vault seven if you want to say vault seven you have to replace it with the words swimming pool so anytime someone wants to say vault seven they'll say well in in the swimming pool revelations that this was very damaging very serious crime committed here well listen if you're on the jury you're thinking to yourself i know technically this guy is innocent until proven guilty but these words are so highly classified that he must be guilty they're so highly classified that we can't even say them we our ears can't hear them so he must be guilty we have to find him guilty so this is the crooked system that julie and would be would be tried in um another point that i want to make is sentencing the justice department is lying when they say that they can promise that julie and won't be sent to solitary confinement to a maximum security penitentiary or to to a communications management unit they are lying and the reason why i'm so adamant and positive that they're lying is that i know from firsthand experience that it is not up to the prosecutors it is not up to the judge to decide what prisons and in what conditions a prisoner is held it is solely up to the bureaucrats in the bureau of prisons now when i was sentenced i was sentenced to 30 months in prison i knew that i would do 23 months and my attorneys asked judge leany brinkham up to send me to a minimum security work camp now at a minimum security camp there are no bars on the windows there are no fences doors are unlocked you're free to come and go as you please you just have to you're on your honor not to abscond and uh most people uh work in town as janitors or garbage men or whatever and then you go back to the prison and sleep at night so what you do in most cases is on the day of your incarceration you drive to the prison you knock on the door as crazy as that might sound and you say hi i'm john kiriyaku i'm here to turn myself in which is exactly what i did and i was told oh no no you're supposed to go to the actual prison across the street they'll process you and then they'll walk you back over to the minimum security camp i said great i walk across the street i turn myself in they cuff me behind my back and they start leading me outside around to the back of the prison i said no no i'm supposed to be at the camp across the street and the prison guard laughed at me and said not according to my paperwork you're not i ended up doing every minute of my time uh in the actual prison with the concertina wire and the armed guards with the towers and everything because i learned the hard way that it's not up to the judge to decide where you go to prison just a few months ago the drone whistleblower daniel hail uh was was sentenced to 45 months in prison and his judge uh judge liam o'grady who's a terrific understanding honest fair judge uh ordered that he be sent to a low security prison hospital at buttoner north carolina so that he could receive treatment for post traumatic stress disorder instead he was sent to a maximum security penitentiary in mary in ohio and the bureau of prisons gave the middle finger to judge uh o'grady and to the media and to anybody else who thought that daniel was actually going to go to a low security prison like i did so when the justice department sends their envoys to the uk to stand in front of these very important judges with their robes and their wigs and everything and and they say your honor we we promise that julian assange will not be put in solitary confinement let me tell you what it takes to get somebody into into solitary confinement you walk up to any guard in the in the prison and you say hey guard i heard two guys talking they're gonna kill julian assange julian will be in solitary confinement in 15 minutes for his own protection and he'll stay there until they decide he's ready to come out which will be never now we're the only western country industrialized country that doesn't put a limit on solitary confinement we have prisoners that mind you mind you the united nations has determined that solitary confinement for longer than 15 days is a form of torture we have prisoners in this country that have been in solitary confinement for as long as 44 years that's 44 years without any human contact anybody would go crazy anybody would go insane there was a piece in the new york times just a couple of years ago about solitary confinement and the effects that it has on people and one prisoner at the maximum security penitentiary in uh in colorado was so desperate to speak to another human being that he smashed a window and ate the glass just so that he could be taken to a hospital and have human contact so they're lying to us and they're lying to julian when they say that we can trust the u.s judicial system we can't trust the u.s judicial system and if julian is extradited to the united states which would be a crime in and of itself he won't make it out alive that's what our fight is so thank you very much i look forward to answering whatever questions anybody may have thank you so much john um so um i i see a question uh in the chat and i would encourage people to add their questions to the chat or raise the hand function um down under reactions you can electronically raise your hand or or do so um you know and if we can see you um so someone asks is there any chance to move julian's case to another venue that's a good question um the answer is a hard no not a chance um and the argument is that um is that the victim uh in this case is in the eastern district of virginia and they would argue that because they have so much experience prosecuting these cases in edva that it ought to stay in edva these judges too they're they're all hawks when it comes to uh secrecy and um and national security none of them would ever admit that they're biased or that a jury couldn't be impaneled uh to uh to give julian what they would describe as a fair trial unfortunately um let's see i don't cannot can i can i can i ask a question yes absolutely hi john um nice to meet you um my name's my name's chris borg and i really appreciate uh you joining us and i value everything that you've been through um i have personally demonstrated on behalf of julian assange you know i sat in front of uh judge garland's house with my own protest and i have sat in front of the washington post and what i realized what i realized is especially at the washington post i realized that it was a um a uh disease issue nobody wanted to touch it yes even when i saw the reporters come out they were fearful they were frightened yes um this is to me a fundamental you know first amendment issue and that's what got me motivated to to do my limited actions um but i feel like the lack of public awareness and understanding which is totally created by the oligarchs and the people in power have forced this issue they they have kept us in the dark but my real question is how do we where do we go from here i mean i know these forums are helpful in in educating a limited few but it seems to me we need to really get much more feet on the street um and how so how do we how do we get 10 000 people in front of judge garland's house how do we get 10 000 people in front of the washington post or even the new york times so so so your your it is a train wreck i mean this this is a train wreck that is happening and we're watching it and i've been watching it for a whole year and i'm not saying i'm discouraged i'll be the first one out there but i need we need support we need to get this 10 we need we need a real movement that we're all trying to do but it seems like we're not coordinated in our effort enough to get this to the 10 000 people level so what do you think totally completely agree with you chris um and i feel like i feel like my own analysis of the situation has changed recently i was i was part of a panel with the with two journalists from night ridder recently and one of the participants what one of the the people who had logged on to watch it uh asked in the q and a period why they haven't spoken out on behalf of julien assange and they looked at each other and then one of them said uh he's not a journalist he's an activist well even if that were true he's certainly a publisher and certainly these journalists would have to would have to acknowledge that this is a very slippery slope and if julien is prosecuted for doing his job then there'll they'll be the next to be prosecuted for doing their jobs i mean washington runs on leaks you can't be a national security journalist for the washington post of the new york times or any of the other big outlets if you're not actively soliciting classified information so why aren't they standing up for him well i've come to the same conclusion that you have that we're not going to get 10 000 people out there but julien's brother told me recently this was gabriel chippton he told me reason recently that uh that they think they found a different strategy that maybe we don't need 10 000 people in the streets in australia 10 years ago julien was wildly unpopular right people saw him as an outlaw a troublemaker a big mouth well here we are 10 years later and elected officials of both of the major parties in australia have begun coming out publicly in support of julien to the point where a bipartisan letter came out of the australian parliament a few weeks ago uh asking the uk government to release julien to the custody of the australians so that he could return to australia and live in peace uh that's that's a big deal it's a big uh change i've detected and it's it's small but i but i feel like i've detected a change in washington among some elected officials here in congress finally people are beginning to talk about julien and the constitutional problems that a prosecution would cause you don't have to like julien you know to understand that if julien is prosecuted then we're all liable for prosecution if we talk about national security you know i i write a column for consortium news every couple of weeks and um i'm supposed to submit everything that i write to the cia for clearance well i don't submit some things to the cia for clearance because it has nothing to do with cia if i'm writing for example about prison reform or about gardening you know or about the weather i don't need to send that to the cia for clearance but then what happens if the cia decides they want to go after me again and they decide that you know what i said about xyz was uh was actually classified and even though i don't have access to classified information maybe i have access to somebody who has access to classified information and they can go after me or then go after the washington post reporter the new york times reporter the cnn guy so i think that members of congress are finally just now coming around to the point that you know what this is actually more serious than we thought it was and maybe we should say something in support of julien asanj so i think that's where we should be focusing now is on our elected officials we we need to demand that members of congress uh make statements in support of julien or in opposition to julien's extradition it's not too late for the justice department to say all right you know what we're going to declare victory this guy has been essentially incarcerated essentially in solitary confinement for a decade we win we win so we're just going to drop the charges and go home i think they could legitimately do that and julien could return to australia so thank you john um i've noticed some some more questions appearing in the chat uh diane dantino i don't know if she's um i i can't i only see a limited number of people on my screen uh she asks um how is such an injustice allowed to happen uh in terms of our justice system or or our injustice system how is this allowed to happen um fidel or um john do you want to weigh in on that fidel do you want to do you want to talk about the international aspect here that's true um i refer a bit on my on my intervention this is allowed to happen because there's a collusion up there between the different powers media allows it to happen they have damaged his reputation to such extent yeah that people do not want to come up uh in his defense yeah uh when john was answering the previous question i was remembering so many people used to support him at the beginning even when he went into the embassy um celebrities many i remember lady gaga visited julien she was the first one to come and visit him at the time she had something like 40 million followers on twitter and she was so supportive when he talked to him and she offered that she will come out and gather those followers in support of julian and campaign for him but i don't recall seeing one tweet or one public statement from her supporting him something when she left the embassy changed her mind his media advisors his sponsors whoever is much stronger than her and that's why this is this is uh happening but we do need more obviously we do we do need the the decision makers the political the politicians are under uh supporting julian i think there's a shift is is the situation right now even when he's closer to this tradition in terms of people coming out and defending him is better for example in this country in uk uh jeremy corbin who used to be the second most important politician in recent years has come out fiercely in defense of of of of julian and that's a that's that's that's a step forward and i don't recall seeing lately opinion pieces in the in the newspapers favoring the extradition saying he should be extradited for this and this and this reason i i haven't seen so many many attacks in the last three years uh we are shifting but this is is slowly um and hopefully hopefully we will manage to to stop this tradition there the united states basically is this political muscle is is too powerful for for for many countries and julians need needs political protection not just lawyers winning a court decision he needs political protection because even if he wins the case in in london that sentence is only valid in the united kingdom if he moves to france to ireland even to australia the united states come come after him because it will be a new case new tradition case to be fought in different uh jurisdiction so he needs political protection unfortunately maybe for the rest of his life hopefully not thank you thank you fidel um i see that vince de stefano has his hand up and he's had his hand up for quite a while um or had it up earlier as well vince do you want to ask a question here riz actually asked my first question but i'd like to do a little shameless self promotion on behalf of ann chuck alan mincey and myself which i believe are the members of the assange defense group right here john you are absolutely correct getting to the press to speak too late is too late we need to put pressure on our elected officials and i would ask you to join our efforts moving forward in the new year that is going to be the focus of lobbying our elected officials because ultimately this will come down to two individuals america arland and joe biden to their external shame they should have dropped this god damn excuse my language they should have dropped this a long time ago but we need to put pressure on them through our elected officials alan mincey i know asked in the chat who are supporters in the house and senate and they're few and far between so only direct action by citizens saying you must drop this case now is what's going to change it and vince let me add one thing here this is not a partisan political issue not at all we have we have friends like members of the squad for example or or senator mike lee this extreme right wing senator from from utah ran paul ran paul is another one i i hired a former trump campaign person to lobby for a pardon when trump was uh at the tail end of his his administration it didn't work for me and what i heard later and i got this from kory luandowski so i i went to the top right trump was prepared to pardon julian ed snowden and me we had been lobbying hard behind the scenes i spent money that i didn't have i had to borrow it to to beg for a pardon and he was going to do it and i had some great supporters in that well i like alan dirshowitz for example or um uh tucker carlson and um tucker carlson told me that luandowski told him on the last day of the trump administration that mitch mcconnell called trump and said if you pardon julian asanj you're going to lose the republican senators in the conviction on impeachment vote and you'll be removed from office on your last day as president so he said if you want to keep your presidency you're going to drop this asanj craziness and so that's what killed any chance donald trump was seriously considering this joe biden isn't but donald trump as crazy as he is was considering doing the right thing on this issue and mitch mcconnell said oh no you don't so this is not a partisan political issue we should be cultivating julian supporters in both parties both parties so i want to get back to our um questions in the chat bruce asked uh where is this case now in the courts and alan minsky said who are our allies in congress i want to address alan's question just briefly uh rocona actually came out very strongly recently to um to clearly say this is a threat to press freedom and john nichols cited him in his article um i know personally that i have uh through peace action wisconsin who is very supportive of julian reached out to mark pocan and to temmie baldwin and went more and um maybe just by getting information um i've heard new rumors that the progressive caucus is is actually you know considering this call your congressperson call your representative call your call your senators go to their offices we have offices downtown here in milwaukee for when more and temmie baldwin um and temmie baldwin um go to the local offices and contact these people i put a number in the chat for the capitol switchboard um so i'm sorry i don't want to interrupt here um can someone answer where is this case now in the courts yeah it's it's in the process well i should say julian's attorneys are in the process of appealing it to the supreme court of the uk regardless of who wins there whether if julian wins and and they overturn the extradition the justice department is going to appeal to the european court of human rights and vice versa if julian loses in the british supreme court he will appeal to the european court of human rights and you know that that might not be a bad thing because there's a precedent there are three precedents in the european court of human rights where that court has refused to extradite europeans to the united states solely because of the practice of of solitary confinement in the u.s prison system it's a form of torture and so julian's attorneys have successfully uh argued that he has um post traumatic stress disorder that he's on the spectrum that he would be likely to at least attempt suicide and that may be enough for the european court of human rights but either way this is going to take at least another year um thank you very much um and so um i um i don't see any more questions in the chat do people are there's is there anyone who would like to ask a question of john or fidel in person and you can raise your hand electronically or um raise it here um i i'd like to make you have you guys fill it on one other one other thing i think a lot of this abusive power comes from the patriot act if i'm not mistaken oh yes okay so and this this is an act that now we've been going on 20 years um so if we lobby these congressmen you know the real issue is lobbying against that act yeah and once power is given it's so hard to get it away and this is all done for you know this is all military interests right all these crimes that we committed that they want to keep quiet is all done under capitalistic military interests under the guise of the patriot act right so this is a real crime and julian gets caught up in that right because he exposes that war crime and it's a crime that's been legitimized by the patriot act so how do we you know how do we move beyond the julian issue which is again um it's a horrible injustice it is our first amendment rights we are all julian assange we are all giving up our rights when we don't stand up for him both for the positive and the negative of the government when they do things it's our right to speak out and when julian exposes that him not even being an american citizen yeah okay which is kind of crazy that we would we would go after a non-american citizen under our own laws and think that we have that right which i don't think we do but again the imperial american um whatever we are uh has decided that we have that right so i guess my point is we need to be like yelling at our congress people saying you've got to get rid of it you got to re revamp this patriot act this is nuts these illegal FISA courts that take place i mean this is just crazy how we have allowed our country to go down the evil path of the empire you know that's how i look at it so i'm sorry i'm gonna take a little time here for i see another comment in the chat asking if anyone would comment on the gelman article um and um trying to think is that relevant to our discussion here today i don't see a response so um i'm i'm going to ask a question um so recently uh last night pbs um aired uh margaret hoover her interview of i way way who has been a very vocal prominent supporter of julian in london and um in her interview she repeated two smears two smears that if she had just looked at the recently unredacted pages from the moral report basically pages 173 to 189 she would have seen why the moral report found that they could not find any collusion between russia and wiki leaks and therefore did not charge wiki leaks or julian assange they did not indict them but you had to do your homework you had to read these pages that all of a sudden were unredacted and and that the media did not report on for the other smears all she had to do was follow the trial and uh learned that daniel elsberg made an eloquent defense of julian and countered the um well and and stated again that the prosecution had found no evidence for anyone being killed as a result wiki leaks revelations the prosecution itself in its statement from cronberg admitted they had found no evidence of anyone killed but when margaret hoover pervised her questions to i way way she made conditional statements as though none of this had been shown to be false um so my my question is do we do we try to do we try to counter all of this negative smears by the way neils melzer who spoke at this forum uh a year ago has a book coming out it's coming out in english the trial of julian assange a story of persecution it's coming out february 8th where he documents um the the whole swedish fit up and he shows very clearly it was a prosecutorial fit up how do we you know do we counter the smears so that people can feel empowered to defend this person who has been smeared relentlessly for a decade or do we just focus on the fact that they're losing their freedom of press what do we do where do you even begin well it is it is very vast uh and and that's why this is so complex they they not only managed to create very strong disinformation but they create many many so you you get confused by by all of that but of course we need to challenge this information and we need to try to learn the the most effective responses to each of one but without losing the the focus on the main thing which is this guy has not killed anybody he has exposed the killers yeah so there are crimes here but not his it's the crimes that he exposed and that is why the criminals are trying to distract us with so many uh the exceptions um i i just wanted to to comment on what was said here about the patreon patreon act and i will act the espionage act do you realize that these are u.s legislation they are very important and concerning for your country but they are being imposed extra territorially all over the world all over the world the other day i was seeing a documentary and i saw obama justifying the bombings and the anti-terror war saying that it's all legal it's all legal because congress has passed i don't know the act it might be legal in your country but it's illegal anywhere else internationally just international legislation of human rights the united nations um act should be binding for everybody equally but we cannot impose national laws in other countries otherwise we are proclaiming ourselves the courts of the world and the police of the world entitled to imprison anybody anywhere and apply our national legislation that's why this is important and the gravity the gravity of this problem is obviously there because if they they drop the charges nobody in the uk will be interested in pushing the persecution of julian asanche if united states takes the pressure out they will forget about julian while the united states still wants julian he's not safe anyone so can i just interrupt for a minute i'm sorry it's a it's a programming issue uh we had said and many people came in later that we were going to close at uh 1215 i just heard from bruce he can stay another 15 minutes but i don't know about our speakers and please let me know if um that would continuing another 15 minutes would work that's fine with me fidel okay so we're going to hang in there for another 15 minutes but um uh it's just keep the questions coming i yeah thank you thank you um i want to um thank you so much uh john and fidel for your answers here i want to break in i've put in the chat uh three different things that you can do um to that action items to help this cause one of course is to call your congresspeople but another is i want to point out this book uh this is an advanced copy of the trial of julian asanche please contact your local bookstore owner and i know we have a wonderful bookstore owner here at mausoleum books in milwaukee to host a conversation with neils melzer the human special repertoire on torture and it will take multiple calls for the bookstore owner to realize that people will buy this book that people will come to the conversation that people aren't interested so please please call uh here in milwaukee uh call our local bookstore owner you know who that is at basal books and ask him to host a conversation with neils melzer by the way neils documents the undermining of democratic institutions at every level in this case and he has you know he has the receipts um so um uh with that i'm going to go back to questions are there any additional questions um people in the in the room uh who have their hands raised is there anyone who would like to ask a question yeah there was a question a while back in the chat who are the uh any current allies in congress yeah uh rokhana is a is a great one believe it or not mike lee rand paul is one of the the strongest in the senate um there have been great comments from uh oh a yalla oh shoot what's her name ilhan omar has supported and ilhan omar you know what i forgot that ilhan omar might might even be the best so they're out there let me add one more thing too i i've worked over the years on both the house side and the senate side i was the i was the chief investigator in the senate foreign relations committee and i worked as a staff member on the house side and you'd be surprised how far an email to your member of congress goes they take those very seriously if you're a constituent and you're a voter in that district they really do take those simple emails very seriously so it's it's worth taking the five minutes and doing okay um are there any other questions if not i'm going to ask both john and fidel if they can give us kind of a summing up um um excuse me just quick what there were two hands up um jj and denis do i don't know if they you see that in uh what either of them like to unmute and ask a question sure um not so much a question but um last night i finished watching um um the four-part miniseries that my son sent me uh hbo miniseries on Chernobyl and it was so disturbing it really gave you a sense of what it's like to live in an authoritarian society where there's spies everywhere and i mean we we don't have a uh a stasi or a kgb situation here's kind of as blatant as there was in germany or russia but it seems like what you're talking about first amendment rights and all this type of spying they can do uh with the internet and everything that it's a it's a that we're moving in that direction and we have to be so careful that this could happen in a supposed uh democracy like we have here in the states may i add something to that it's a it's a little bit of a personal story i've i've been divorced for the last uh what three and a half years i guess and i'm still involved in a in a custody dispute so i find myself in in court every once in a while and the last time i was in court i was um on the stand and my attorney asked um was she a good wife and i said yeah she was an amazing wife when i blew the whistle on the cia's torture program she went with me to abc news and sat just off camera and when i finished my interview uh um i said how did i do and she said great and i said i didn't say anything classified right and she said no you did great and um and then when she got up on the stand her attorney asked her is it true that you went with him to uh when he blew the whistle on the cia's torture program and she said yes and her attorney said why did you do that and she said under oath i was instructed by the cia's office of security to go with him and to report back on his activities now we were married for another 12 years after that so don't underestimate the cia and the fbi and the national security apparatus in this country um we think that things just got bad they didn't just get bad they've been bad for a very long time we don't live in a free society we live in a national security state the patriot act is one of the greatest affronts to our freedoms since the constitution was written um i'm at the point now and i hate to be cynical but i don't trust anybody um i thank you john i see uh jj and then kathy bowden i think you have a question as well uh yes thank you um um this is for uh anybody i guess but especially fidel and and john suppose you had a mass mobilization of poor people you could do anything you wanted with it yes um to directly free assange or make give them some larger goal that includes freeing or indirectly makes it likely let your imagination go nuts what would you like to see happen i know it's a weird question you know i like to brag that my grandfather um once told me that he at great risk he took a day off of work to go to a saco and venzetti rally in pittsburgh pennsylvania um it would it would be great to raid the prison and to liberate julian um that won't happen but you know we've had marches on washington farmers and world war one pensioners and you know there've been there are a handful of examples where we've been able to affect real policy change uh just by mass movements i i don't see it in this case as much as i might like like to see it okay thank you thank you so um i i think that kathy bowman here representing both joe loria and kathy from consortium news had a question hi uh john this question's for you uh we heard from mooring baird who was who gave testimony at the september hearing that um that the cia have a role to play an advisory role in uh to the bureau of prisons uh in terms of who who gets sam's or administrative segregation whatever kind of communications management unit it is can you can you speak to that a little bit because it's it's terrible that they have been spying but also they get to determine that he goes to solitary i'm sure that that's true i'm kathy i am absolutely sure that that's true i don't have a document that proves it but um but the cia in these national security cases is considered to be the victim the cia was the victim in my case right and they had cia people who whom i had never met come and testify about how i had victimized them right by blowing the whistle on the torture program so i'm i'm confident that this is true you know one of the things that that my attorneys warned me about just as i was leaving for prison they said that the justice department was was angry at the the light sentence that that i got you know 23 months they they had originally asked for 45 years uh and i i got 23 months and so my lead attorney said look they're going to try to set you up once you get to prison so don't trust anybody well next thing i know uh one of the other prisoners comes up to me i had been there about six weeks one of the other prisoners comes up to me and said hey there's a there's a new prisoner he wants to meet you he used to be the taliban spokesman and i said not interested and uh he said okay i'll tell him so he told the guy i'm not interested in meeting him i'm out on the yard one day uh walking exercising and i see this obviously afghan looking guy with a beard down to his waist approaching me with his hand out like to shake my hand and i i put my hands up and just as i put my hands up to show him that i'm not going to shake his hand i saw one of the prison guards in the woods outside the fence with a camera with a long distance lens oh my goodness and i said don't fucking touch me i said to the guy and he said come on man we have a lot in common i said the only thing we have in common is i used to try to kill people like you and i said don't touch me and he said come on we can be friends and i said walk away or i'm going to knock your teeth out and he walked away and i saw the guard put the camera down that he couldn't get his picture but they will do anything to get you into solitary confinement or to get you to a higher security prison to make your time as difficult as they possibly can and that's why i said in the very beginning of this presentation that when they tell these judges in the uk that they pledge not to send julian to maximum security to cmu to sam to whatever they're lying that's exactly what they're going to do so i'm going to break in here and thank you this has just been a wonderful wonderful forum i want to give each of you one minute to do some summing up of your remarks i think we'll start with john and we'll end with fidel so john oh thank you i'll keep this very short and i just want to sort of restate the obvious um we're all in this together and we're all that julian has you know we're up against governments we're up against the most mighty governments in the world we're up against the cia and the fbi and the justice department mi6 and mi5 and scotland yard and the british courts and god knows who else um but we're not in prison uh julian is and so it's up to us to help him reclaim his life and even if we have to take baby steps to do that we should all be willing to take those baby steps we should ride our members of congress we should continue having these events or the events that that consortium news has on a regular basis we need to inform as many people as possible all around the world the status of this case and why this case is so wrong not just for julian but for humanity um this this is the job that we have and we have to take it very seriously so thanks for inviting me uh and thanks to fidel this was a pleasure and it was an important event i was very proud to participate thanks for having me thank you fidel yes uh i want to thank you as well for having me here and for doing this for doing this as i said if the judges finally finally decide not to extradite him is because of you because of us that uh have put so much pressure that we will defeat them it's the only thing and this is this is urgent this is urgent because we are talking about court cases that could last months and months perhaps even years but his execution is already happening in a slow motion they are not in a hurry they they are fine with julian in a maximum security prison basically isolated not being able to defend himself he's been diagnosed with severe stress that is damaging his health every day he spends in prison so this is this is an urgent matter and uh i can't uh with all of you to to put this together and and save him we will do it well um i want to thank both of you so much for being here today i want to thank our audience for being here i want to ask people to please call your congress people and call your local bookstore owner and request the book by neils melzer the trial of julian assange a story of persecution um and um and talk to your friends and share this video the video will be up i put the address for the uniter inform youtube channel in the chat um thank you all very much um lorraine any parting words and a quick hop over and unmute unmute myself i can just same thing and thank you very much i have to find a niche to get involved and um i'm going to do that so thank you very much and um we'll keep working at it i i wish i could thanks thank you fidel and john so very much for being here today people can unmute and uh let's give them a big hand as we go thank you thank you thanks everybody