 and national organizer at the Stop the War Coalition. And I will be chairing this meeting tonight, organized by the Dawn Extra Diet Assange campaign, which is the WikiLeaks's official UK campaign to stop the extradition of Julian Assange to the US. And today we are going to concentrate, specifically on the campaign on the Assange case and the effects of free speech on arts and politics. And for that, we have three distinguished speakers on our panel, a very warm welcome to all of you. Our first speaker is Brian Eno, one of the most innovative musicians in the UK, best known for his pioneering work in ambient music. He's also known for his political activism and he's also the president of the Stop the War Coalition. Our second speaker is Susie Gilbert. She is a filmmaker and has worked on several high profile visible or defense campaigns. And our final speaker is Alexi Selle. He's one of the UK's most legendary comics and now also a well-known actor, author and political activist. Before we move forward just quickly, if you wanna ask a question, please add it to the comment stream. And also the Dawn Extra Diet Assange campaign is a voluntary campaign that survives on the kindness of donors. So yeah, the legal team is fighting for Julian's freedom and need your financial assistance. So please consider making a donation so that they can continue their work. And also if you wanna know more about the campaign and the legal updates of the case, please visit their website. So let's begin the session now. We'll start with Brian. So Brian, over to you. Thanks for tuning in. So let's start by actually talking about what this case is about. He didn't actually source the material. He simply published something. So a lot of people are trying to sort of suggest that there was some kind of espionage involved. But in fact, he didn't do anything like that. He published some material that was handed to WikiLeaks. That's the first thing. So the first question is, are publishers prosecuted for what they publish? If they are, then why isn't also the Guardian in the dark? Because it was, this material was published with the Guardian and with Frankfurter Zeitungel, a German paper. I can't remember which one there. It was something that was done and the New York Times was involved as well. So the first question is, why is Assange being expected to take the can for this case? When clearly there were a lot of other people involved. A lot of people who now seem to have deserted him rather shamefully, you know, the Guardian doesn't ever write much about Assange anymore. And they really ought to because they did this in collaboration with him. The second question is, if somebody has published something, even if it is controversial, do you then pursue them through the courts for 10 years of their life and force them into a kind of solitary confinement, which is effectively what he's been living in for the last 10 years during embassy when he was there. And it was not a nice way to live. And I'm sure his last year in Belmarsh has been a lot worse as well. Then, of course, then you have to pull the camera back a bit and look at the world in general. We have a prime minister in England and a president in the United States who've made their lives by lying. They are well-known habitual liars who are now occupying two powerful political positions. On the other hand, we have Julian Assange who is imprisoned for having told the truth about something. So that seems to me a very badly inverted scale of values that we're rewarding the wrong people for the wrong things. Assange, if you've read anything about the report by Niels Meltzer, who was the UN rapporteur on torture. So he's asked to adjudicate in cases where prisoners seem to be receiving bad treatment. Niels Meltzer initially didn't want to take on this case because he thought, of course, he couldn't be tortured by the Swedes and the English because we're civilized people who don't do that kind of thing. He finally did go to see Assange and he said the conditions he was living in, the psychological stress he was under was so appalling that this had to be defined as torture. So we have for the last year been torturing him and he is not in a good way. He's suffering quite badly from all sorts of PTSD, actually, I suppose is what it is. So in everything about this case really stinks and it stinks of one particular fact that the Americans were so embarrassed by what Assange did and are determined to get revenge and to make it so bad for Assange that nobody else tries to do the same thing. So you can see what side of the story I'm on. This isn't about whether you think Assange is a wonderful human being or whether he raped those women in Sweden, which it seems now that he didn't, that seems to be becoming clearer, but it isn't about that anyway. It's about whether somebody has the right to publish something which is clearly in the interests of all of us except the people in government. So that's all I have to say at the moment. Thank you, Brian. I'll bring in Susie now. Susie, yeah, go ahead. Hi, thanks everyone for joining us from all over and we know we've got people in Australia who are awake in the middle of the night watching this. I just wanna add a little bit to what Brian was saying and I think what's interesting to notice now is I think there has since Julian's arrest in April of 2019, been actually a change in the narrative in the mainstream media and amongst mainstream human rights groups and press groups in that there's actually a consensus now. Everyone's able to sort of get beyond maybe personal differences, they work together and that kind of thing. But there's consensus amongst all the leading groups, all the leading newspapers, all the press freedom groups that these charges are outrageous and that this poses the greatest threat to press freedom arguably of our lifetimes. So whether that's Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, the ACLU, Freedom of Press Foundation, various UN special reporters, as Brian mentioned, they've been editorials from the New York Times, the Guardian and even Alan Rusbridge from the Guardian said, I had my bumps on the road with Julian, definitely had problems but I absolutely am against these charges and this is not about him, this is about what this means to the press globally. So I think that's a really, really welcome development. We've also seen from the Guardian just in the last few days a really powerful couple of stories from somebody that I hadn't heard from before who was the Reuters bureau chief around the time of the collateral murder video which I'm sure most people on this call know that Chelsea Manning had seen that video and was horrified by the murder of Iraqi civilians and two Reuters journalists and out of sort of her moral conscious sought to make those documents public through WikiLeaks. Now the Iraqi bureau chief from Reuters, Dean Yates, just did a couple of really powerful pieces on the Guardian Australia and I think it's really worth looking at that story and looking at, as Brian was saying, what were the lies that were covered up? And basically Reuters had been shown, I think a little bit of the video and Reuters had asked to see the full video, they weren't and the video was really a sort of incredible historical document because you see these US gunmen basically laughing when they're blowing up these rescue workers, when they're murdering these civilians and journalists and it made me think of these uprisings we're seeing around the world today around state violence against black people in America and the kind of smirk of that cop in Minneapolis, the smirk as he held down George Floyd and it just reminded me of the laughter that we had in that collateral murder video and I personally feel that there's a connection to be drawn with looking for transparency and accountability with US state violence in the US against black and brown people and journalists as we've seen in these riots and US state violence around the world with black and brown people and journalists. So I think there's a connection to be drawn and as Brian said, this is about transparency and accountability and truth and just to remind you what this case is actually about. People try to complicate it because it's convenient to complicate it but it's actually quite simple. It's not about 2016, it's not about Sweden, it's quite simply about the 2010 Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and the State Department cables and as Brian said, incredibly embarrassing for the US and it brought out a lot of war crimes and WikiLeaks in coordination with other global media outlets like the New York Times and the Spiegel and others published these and these were hugely historic and impactful events arguably led to the withdrawal of troops from Iraq because Iraq said, we're not gonna give immunity to US troops anymore. So the question is, do we wanna live in a culture where we can fight for transparency and accountability or do we wanna make it okay to persecute the publishers who work on these materials? Chelsea was imprisoned, they're trying to give Julian life in prison and this is a watershed moment. Are we gonna sit back and sit this out or are we gonna show up and realize that if they do this to Julian they're gonna do this to journalists around the world. So I think it's an extraordinary opportunity for folks like folks on this call to sort of stand up and get engaged and see what can be done ahead of September 7th which is when the extradition hearing will be in London. Sorry, I forgot to unmute. Thanks, Susie. I'll bring in Alexi now who's our final speaker and then we'll start taking questions. Alexi, please. Mutant lecture, mutant. Thank you, thank you. That was my wife. I think you managed to get on this call. Well, that was weird. All right, to start again. I have tended not, I tend not to give her political speeches, I tend not to sit on panels. My choice has always been as a political comedian to do, to express my opinions through my work and then I feel it's more nuanced and more in my control, more rounded. I suppose I wanted to do this because I support Julian. I've read recently, I think, I think it's in the London Review of Books stuff about him which I didn't read. I also wanted to do this because I'm bored out of my mind. I'm glad that Susie feels that she's got some good news. I don't know whether it's partly lockdown or just I feel we are going through a period of terrifying change, really bad. The artist ability, anybody's ability, the particular artist ability is being more and more constrained. There are multiple forces acting to shut down free speech, speech challenges, the orthodox point of view. I just think it's a terrifying, there are multiple levels. The oppressors are many different guys who now paint themselves as the oppress. There are multi-agency attacks on anything you say. And I just think it's, I've never felt like this before. I think we live in a very frightening world in a way. So I really wanna, I mean, by doing this, I wanna, hopefully I can answer more articulately than I'm speaking at the moment. But also, I'm also interested to learn, I think, about it's already been very illuminating what I've heard from the other two speakers so far, but I'm also, I'm here to be a resource, but I'm also a vessel to learn as well. Cool. Thanks to all the speakers. We've got a few questions now. So I'll probably start with a question for probably Brian and Susie. So like the US establishment, they will go to any extent to suppress anyone who tries to expose their war crimes. And so the first question that I'd like to ask both of you is that, how important were the Wikileaks stories to our understanding of the Afghan and the Iraq wars? Whoever wants to respond first. I think Susie should take that. You probably know more about that than I do. Sure. Well, I think, again, I would refer you to look at Dean Yates's story in The Guardian the other day. Again, he's the poet's bureau chief. But really, you know, Chelsea Manning's bravery and letting those Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and the collateral murder video come out really just showed how many lies there were, how much cover up there was as with every war. And it led to the Iraqis saying that they wouldn't allow US soldiers to have immunity for what they were doing in Iraq. And it led to the withdrawal of Iraqi troops. So it had a real impact. And you can just, if you just Google the number of stories that there were from every major media outlet, it got so much coverage, not only Iraq and Afghanistan, but the whole world. I've worked on a number of projects also about Latin America where what the cables revealed about relations between countries, old business of the US interfering in Latin America so much was revealed. So it makes you think of key moments in the Vietnam War when there were revelations about atrocities and that turn the tide in the conversation with Vietnam. So it's a huge, huge service. And there's a lot of sort of films and documentaries you can look about it and I'd sort of encourage everyone to do that. Thanks, Lucy. Perhaps I can add something to that. All of the countries that are called democratic in a way think they have to survive by having a huge machinery to maintain their self-image. And part of the self-image that has to be maintained is that all the foreign interventions we make are for the good of the people that we're intervening in. And of course, what this kind of revelation shows, the collateral damage revelation, all of the things that WikiLeaks revealed is that the well-being of the people that we're intervening upon is the last thing that we're thinking about, in fact. So this is why it's so embarrassing to governments because it sort of shows what the real geopolitical game is and the populations are relatively insignificant in that. And this is why I think it's such an important service that people are doing this because it reminds us that what we're actually doing, not what we claim to be doing. Thanks. The next question, it's from a viewer from social media. It's probably more for Alexi and Brian. And the viewer asks, where are all the pop stars and artists on this? Because we know that Roger Waters has been quite involved, but other than him and Brian and now Alexi. I mean, they're not too many famous people and artists who are involved in the campaign and who are coming forward to support the campaign. Would you like to respond to that, Lysin, as to why do you think they're not supporting the campaign actively? Yeah, well, I did some work doing workshops for freedom from torture with torture victims. And just from my own interest, I asked the people from various countries, what would happen if you did something which criticized the government? They all laughed uproariously and said, the best would be you'd be imprisoned or you'd be beaten to death. You'd be killed in some way. And so it made me think, given that that in those countries, the price for speaking out is so high, why are celebrities in Britain such fucking cowards, really? And the stakes aren't that high, but then, you know, they kind of, maybe they are. I mean, I think people have been intimidated. I mean, I think that the atmosphere now is so much more sensorious than it was and people kind of, I mean, fear for their, you know, fear for their livelihoods, I think. And they haven't, maybe they haven't also been given a reason to be brave. I don't know, I don't know what you feel, Brian, I don't know. Well, I think one of the arguments that artists tend to use for their apathy, one of the excuses for apathy is to say, I'm an artist and the best thing I can do is to just make shun there, which is not an assumption I agree with actually. The assumption is that good art all automatically makes the world a better place. So you don't have to do anything about it. You just sort of dump this good art out into the world and everybody somehow mysteriously gets better. Well, this is of course the way people justify, for example, not joining, not supporting BDS in criticising Israel. They say, well, how can I withhold my art from those fans? And this is the assumption there is that your art is so powerful that it will sort of mysteriously transform people into better people. This clearly doesn't happen. Otherwise, Himmler, who had the biggest art collection in Europe at a certain point, would have been a more wonderful human being. He was surrounded by the best paintings of the Renaissance and of the Dutch. So I don't really accept that argument, but I honestly think that a lot of people really believe that. I'm an artist. I should stay out of all of that. I should just keep my vision pure. I personally can't do that. My vision doesn't, it happens to include the world. It doesn't sort of separate it off as something I'm not interested in. But the other thing is, of course, that you don't get particularly favourably reviewed for getting involved in things. You tend to be, the kind of criticism you get is what right do they have to talk about this? What do they know about it? What does a comedian or a pop star know about what's going on in the world? Of course, the question you have to ask is what do any politicians know? What do any of us know what's going on in the world? We're all in a position where we could say something and we pretty much have access to the same information. So as far as I'm concerned, anyone is free to talk about it. But this sort of sneery thing, the biggest crime in England, I always say, is not murder or rape or all the other terrible things you can do to people. The biggest crime is to rise above your station and the criticism you always hear in England is, what right do you, who do you think you are? And I think people are really frightened of that because they don't want to be seen as upstarts or uppity or whatever the word is. Yep, thanks. We've got so many questions. So the next one is for all the panellists actually. It's from Deepa Driver and she asks, could the panellists suggest how we could push through the media and lock out on the facts of the such case? And the second part of the question is, what could be done to make this more mainstream and how could the panellists contribute to doing that ahead of September 7th? Susie, do you want to go first? Yeah, yeah, you tell us. I would urge everyone to write some suggestions in the comments to be honest, because I'm sure we've got an amazing audience of people around the world. So I'm not going to give my humble ideas, but I actually am going to ask you all to put your ideas and I'm sure there'll be some eccentric ones, but I'll give you my two cents. I think one is reminding people that there is an amazing opportunity right now and there's been some great journalism done. There's an investigative journalism outlet in the UK called Declassified. They did some amazing coverage of the hearings, thus far around the extradition and they found some really glaring and egregious conflicts of interest of people involved in the case in the UK. Really, like if that had been picked up by the mainstream media, that would have had huge impacts. So all to say, we have the opportunity to amplify the journalism that's being done. We have an opportunity to share journalism that's being done by the Guardian, like the Guardian Australia in recent days around deniates, for example, and to remind folks that there's a lot to be covered and there's a lot of sort of opportunities to bring back focus to what this case is really about. We can remind people that when Bernie was asked in the debates, I think, would you prosecute under the Espionage Act? He said, no. And we can remind people that the Obama Department of Justice, who was no friend to whistleblowers and was highly litigious, but even the Obama Department of Justice was not able to prosecute WikiLeaks. And so it is the Trump DOJ that is doing this. So to remind people, no matter your feelings or massage, that if you are supporting this prosecution and this extradition request, you are supporting the Trump Department of Justice and you could be asking Biden to pledge not to prosecute. I think in the UK, we can draw some attention to the fact that even Boris Johnson has said that the extradition treaty between the US and the UK is worth looking into and it's probably lopsided. Jeremy Corbyn, I think, asked him a question in Parliament a few months ago, like in February, regarding to another case. And Boris Johnson, himself, formerly a journalist, said, you know what, it's worth looking into and this seems like it's a lopsided agreement because the US always seems to be sending people that way, but not the other way. So there's a lot to dig into. There's a lot of strong arguments against the extradition. There's a lot of mainstream support. So there are opportunities there, but I think we'll all be digging through the comments here and would welcome your input because I'm sure you've got lots of suggestions. Hi, Susie. Brian, do you want to respond as well? Yes, well, I think something Susie said earlier is important, which is that this isn't such a complex issue. There's been a sort of, I think quite a deliberate strategy to make it seem like it's very, very complicated and you couldn't possibly understand it, but it is actually very simple. The background, like any background, is full of tangles and twists and turns, but what the case is about for publishers should be prosecuted for publishing stuff that embarrasses governments. That's all it's about. And we know for sure that if we were looking at Iran doing this, for example, or Pakistan or China or something, we'd all be saying, oh, that's what you get in totalitarian states, but we're behaving in this respect like a totalitarian state. So I think that simple fact has to be spoken again and again, forget all the complications. They aren't relevant to this single question. Should publishers be allowed to publish stuff? And for more to the point, should they be kept in solitary confinement for 10 years for publishing it? Thanks. Thanks, Brian. Alexi, do you also want to add? Yeah, I mean, I just talk in sort of generalities really, but I mean, one of the things, they're looking at like the, I mean, maybe I'll imagine this, but looking at the Labour Party output in the 2017 election and then the 2019 election, then in the 2017 election, it seemed very fleet of the foot and very guerrilla-ish and then somehow it got kind of caught in the machinery in the 2019 and became much more stodgy. And I just think if you, because we're dealing with serious issues, if you're doing stuff from the left, if you're promoting good ideas, then there is a danger sometimes because you're dealing with these serious ideas that you can become sanctimonious, I think. And you have to be funny, you have to be light on your feet and you have to, in a sense, mock yourself as well, I was thinking. One of the things that I've always done, I think one of the things that sometimes allows me to be freer as a performer is that I am happy, criticising the left. I mean, although it comes from a supportive point of view, I make fun of the left as well as the right, really. I am always critical of myself at my own point of view as well as the point of view that I'm pointing which I think is, you know, the truth. So I just think you have to be, yeah, you have to be light and I have to be original, you know, they can get away with recycling the same. If you share time after time, you know, we have to be better than them, really, I think. Obviously, there is, you know, for any thrust, I mean, there must be a gap, really, there must be, you know, for any thrust in young comedian, there must be the space for at least, do I have to do it again? Why is it me, why is it that I have to, you know, be the left comedian, there must be like, you know, there must be space for at least one young brave comedian. Yeah. But I think you do have to be, you also have to go, you know, it's like, you have to find an original angle, I think, as well, you know, it's, it's not easy, you know, but like the, I know, like, you know, like the worst thing, if you're doing stuff about coronavirus, the worst thing you could do would be do something about Dominic Cummings going to Barnard Castle because he's like, you know what I mean? You have to find something more original than that. I don't know whether I'm drifting off top with you. Can I just add to that? It's interesting to make that point because Julian's partner Stella was actually saying that comedians have been actually pretty good on this case. And she was wondering if it was because comedians are, you know, truth tellers, I guess most artists are trying to be that, but she, she'd noticed that I think Louis Theroux had done an episode recently. I didn't know if he's not really a comedian. I didn't know whether he's a comedian or not. But, you know, I know Russell Brand in the past had visited Julian. I don't know how much he's saying now, but she felt comedians were actually generally quite good on this. And also that point you made about being self-critical, I think is great because just as, I think Brian was mentioning the UN Special Rapporteur who evolved his position on the case, it's, I think it's important for people who are onside in this campaign to welcome people who are gonna change their position and not be like, oh, you were terrible on this. It's like, we can all be self-critical. We can all change. It's a position of strength to evolve, you know, what you think about some things. So like we can also, like I say this to myself, be welcoming of people who might, you know, have been one way and coming another way. So yeah. The thing about comedy, particularly British comedy, is that it's very often about perspective shift. So you lead people to believe at the beginning of the joke that you're looking at the world in one way and suddenly there's a flip and you're looking at it in another way and it's funny. And I think perspective shifting is actually what we should be thinking about doing. And the reason comedians can get away with it is because they do it in a context where people are prepared to laugh and people like having their perspective shifted in that context. It's funny, you know, it's interesting to do it. But it's very interesting when you get a comedian like Alexei or Amanda Yonichu or Chris Morris who actually start putting content into what they're shifting the perspective about. So they're making what are effectively political comments but kind of in disguise. Thanks, Brian. Thanks, Susie. Thanks, Alexei. The next question is also for all the panelists and they ask what effect do you think this attempt at prosecution will have on aspiring journalists and whistleblowers? I'll let Susie go first again. I think, I can't even begin to imagine really. I think some people maybe now definitely are falling for this. There's a bit of a red herring around, oh, Wikileaks, was it really journalism or not? Maybe it doesn't apply to me. But that's not the point. They're criminalizing the practice so all journalists will be affected. So I can't imagine how it can't have the most enormous impact ever and not just on what the US does around the world. But if the US can extradite an Australian citizen from the UK to the US, what does that mean? Like the Saudi can do that with a journalist in some country or Modi or Netanyahu, like where does it end? So I just can't imagine. I think I can't even imagine what it's like and I think it's really fascinating if people wanna sit this one out thinking, like, oh, I'm at this like, I'm a different category or something. So, I'd love to be wrong, but what do you both think? I mean, I'm not very closely attached to journalism, but it does seem to me there's been a terrifying shift and I would say that one of the things that happened is with the press's treatment of Corbyn, the Corbyn project, that more or less the entire media has got kind of used to lying and got addicted to kind of just making shit up. And also, you've now got these political correspondences and I know Peter O'Bourne mentions specifically Laura Kuhnsberg and Robert Pest and who don't see their job as holding the government's feet to the fire, but see their job as getting scoops and they trade, I think, contacts from close contact with Dominic Cummings basically. So that they get first dibs on stories, but there's a quid pro quo for that, that you seem to get so many journalists pumping out stuff that had come straight. I read in an article, I think it was in Baili, just Laura Kuhnsberg's tweets about that Dominic Cummings's trip to Barnard Castle where she said, this was all perfectly within boundaries and it was all acceptably did nothing wrong. And then Dominic Cummings kind of like surveyed all that itself, but she was putting out Laura Kuhnsberg's essentially put now a government statement as a BBC political correspondent and it's, I think that's a paradigm shift really. I think that it comes out at the last few years of particularly of their entirely subversive attitude to Corbyn where he was never, he was never, good stories about him were ruthlessly suppressed and bad stories were amplified. And I think they've all become addicted to that really. And it's a problem, you know. Brian, do you want to respond as well? I don't have much to say because I'm so depressed about the state of journalism at the moment. And it's not entirely the fault of journalists actually, it's because the papers are losing their readership in general, in favor of social media, which is possibly the worst way to get your news. So the papers are forced into competition with social media, which means that they are trading in clickbait essentially, they're trying to find things that are sort of sexy enough or powerful enough to get you off Facebook and to read the paper instead in whatever form that takes. And unfortunately, this has produced the worst period of journalism in my life actually. As Alexei says, the Corbyn episode was completely shameful. It would have been shameful for any country, but for one that claims to, I don't know if you've, if you read the piece in Jacobin this week or recently about the destruction of the internal destruction of the Labour Party and the external destruction. And it's a very sad read. And I suppose the future is going to come out of some revulsion against, and some re-embolts start to think again that their job is to tell what's happening rather than to opinion. Thanks, Brian. We just have about 15 minutes left. So I'll take like two questions and then we'll have to end this meeting. So the next, the two questions is from James Mealy. So he asks, how high does the body count have to be before any Western political figure is subject to the kind of heavy-handed legal treatment dished out to a Sange? And the second question he asks is, British legal profession have been largely signed and signed the shameful events at Belmarsh. Why is there a lack of outrage by professionals at the scandal that is unfolding? Susie, would you like to go first? Yeah, I think there has been a bit of outrage. I mean, I hate to sound like Mary Poppins like keep trying to sort of plug good news, but I think there was just the other day, a big letter that came out. There was a big jurist's letter signed by, I forget, dozens or hundreds of jurists around the world. You know, there was a big doctor's letter with about 60 doctors from around the world saying that, you know, Julian could die at Belmarsh. You know, he's got chronic lung conditions from having been in confinement for so many years. So I think the sort of organizations that, you know, it's being covered, but it kind of needs to be amplified a lot more, I think. But, you know, as others have said on this call, I think there's an effort to make things sound a lot more confusing than they are and make a lot of noise. And yeah, to make things just, you know, it's a pretty simple situation. You know, if you're looking at legally, this is clearly, you know, a political case. Julian, we know, was spied on in the embassy. All the celebrities who went and met with him, everything was spied on. All the lawyers' meetings were spied on. There's a Spanish legal case right now about the surveillance company that was hired to give all the surveillance materials of Julian's legal meetings. So that's a huge, huge breach of due process. Not to mention the fact that one of the points they're trying to use in this extradition is saying that there was huge damage done by the leaks, but that's never been demonstrated even in courts in the U.S. They've under oath, the prosecution have said that there's actually no demonstrable damage in terms of loss of life or anything like that. So, you know, the points of the case are fairly clear in a way. And I think there is institutional support, but whether that can sort of break through and everyone can kind of get a little bit more activated like folks on this call remains to be seen. It's a difficult news cycle. And there's been an excellent job done in kind of trying to demonize him. But, you know, as many people have said, they obviously go for the person who seems like most controversial, like they weren't going to go and do this against the New York Times or the Washington Post at this point, but that doesn't mean they won't. You know, we've just seen in the last few days, journalists blinded in the U.S. on U.S. streets by police and that's now sort of business as usual. There's sort of war on the press around the world. So, yeah, I'm curious what the others think. Yeah. Alexi, do you want to add to that? Well, I think one of the problems is, I think I'm not wrong in saying this, that one of the people who led the persecution of Julian is the new leader of the Labour Party. Is that not right? I'm the director of public prosecution, so he's going to be doing fuck all about it, isn't he, really? So that's a problem. I mean, Starmer was, you know, active, yeah, in the DPP, making sure that the cases weren't dropped and so on and so forth. And that's quite a thing, isn't it? You know, that the leader of the opposition, the Labour Party should have been instrumental in the persecution of this man, a man who's done, you know, a lot of good for the world in terms of making these revelations. If that makes you think, what's going on? It seems like a conspiracy to me. Thanks, Alexi. Brian? So I sort of have this optimist feeling that when the Trump project clearly starts, as I think it's starting to happen now, themselves, so that they're clearly on the other side and they'll want people to think they were always on the other side. So I think as soon as that project starts to collapse and it's quite visible to everybody, there'll be a lot of space for articles that actually are in support of Assange, anything that is against Trump will suddenly become fashionable again and there'll be a lot of airspace and a lot of media space for people who are telling another story because everybody who was quite happy to play the game as long as Trump was on the up will want to show that, in fact, they were never really part of that awful project. And in fact, they always thought Assange should have been set free nine years ago. So I can expect there'll be a flurry of optimistic. Maybe I am. Thanks. We just have about 10 minutes. So I'll just take two more questions related. Hang on one second. Yeah. Joe Cole asks, says that the court proceedings seems from the court proceedings, it seems like that the outcome of this trial has already been determined and what can we do to resist this? And a similar question is asked by John Cramer from America and he asks that, what can he do as an American other than contacting the senators and congressmen kind of support the campaign? And I guess that goes for the British people as well and activists as well, that other than lobbying, what can we do to support the campaign and especially before the 7th of September? So I think these are the final two questions. Susie. Susie, yeah. Briefly, so the Don't Extradite Assange website has a bunch of actions that can be done, contacting MPs, petitions, all sorts of campaign actions. So I go there and see what's going on. There's a number of different campaigning groups around the world. There's a really good European ones, Australian ones, but I check out Don't Extradite Assange. I would say, you know, I don't think it's a done deal at all in the UK. The hearing begins on September 7th in London, but then depending on what happens, there are various appeal procedures and then it can go to the European courts. So this could take a few years if Julian survives Belmarsh, which for those folks abroad, you know, is sometimes talked about a little bit like a British Guantanamo. You know, there are COVID cases, he's, you know, in really difficult prison situations there, but I think Julian's partner, Stella, has said this needs to be resolved, you know, in UK, ideally, or in Europe, once it's gone to the US, God forbid, it's, you know, there it's more of a, excuse my language, it's a shit show, but there's still a lot of time, not a lot, but there's some sometime pre-September 7th and then there are appeal processes. So that would be my two cents. Thanks. Alexi? Oh, I don't know, I mean, make her forcefully. I was just thinking, it's not really relevant to the question really, but I kind of read somewhere that somebody was talking about Julian's case and Chelsea Manning's Twitter, somebody in the security services and they asked what the security clearance was on the information that Chelsea Manning had taken. And it's quite low that a lot of people have got access, you know, had access to that information and the security services guy said, well, this is quite a low clearance. He said that if that's the case, then there's much worse shit that they're covering up. This is only the tip of the iceberg really, that they're appalling as, you know, the helicopter gunship footage is, there is tons of stuff probably you can't imagine that they are, that's more classified and is, you know, being suppressed really. So, you know, maybe, you know, we could at least we can stop it here, we can try and protect Julian by, you know, campaigning in whatever way we can, but there's much darker stuff going on. Yeah, I think we have to make a lot of noise. I think we have to make a lot of noise because governments still don't like people making a lot of noise. They kind of can't ignore that. And I think the type of noise we shouldn't be making is to keep saying that this is essentially a Trump, a Trumpian project. I think the more we can link this extradition to something that Trump would want to happen, the better chance we have of it never taking place. Because as I said, I'm convinced that Trump will be absolutely toxic within a few months, or even a few weeks at this rate. And so I think if you can connect a project to him, nobody will want to touch it. Nobody in the British establishment will want to look like they were a Trump supporter or a Trump assistant. So that's, if I were writing to my MP, which I have done actually, I would say this is a Trump project. This is the type of thing he would do. That makes people increasingly uneasy to be part of that. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Susie. And thank you, Alexi. That was a fantastic discussion. We've come to the end of this discussion now because we've only got a few minutes left. But before I leave, I'll urge all the people from the audience today who've joined us to support the Don't Extradite Assange campaign and make the donation if you can. Watch Susie's movies, documentaries, watch Alexi's comedy, listen to Brian's music and do support the campaign and do your best before the 7th of September to help Assange. Thanks and bye, everyone. Thank you, Sparta. Thank you. Bye, bye. Bye. Please, bye.