All right. Hey, we're in my office. I want to walk through our new website codyaskins.com We something we literally just Built over the last few months So I want to kind of walk through what this theme is the purpose of cody askins the new logo The domain the website the company in general is to help train insurances. We do a lot of leads But my true passion is helping you succeed. So that's what we built the site It's because not only are you able to reach out to us? Not only can you actually we can do some one-on-one coaching I can actually do some speaking to your company training. I've done book. I've done one day boot camps I spoke a couple different conferences Our latest videos go up here. We've got an insurance wealth University. That's not got a hundred and forty five plus I don't know how many we have now Training videos that are focused on helping an insurance agent succeed. I mean, it's tons of content It's a lot also able to connect with me on social media We've got our Coaching programs. So we've got four different coaching programs from enterprise executive elite all the way down to express little is 37 bucks a month as much as 997 a month and They're Express is more focused on like the general insurance agent that wants to focus on resources Coaching private Facebook group like it's more focused on face-to-face sales for the average insurance agent that wants to learn, right? Then you've got elite which is more focused on Telecells only 97 a month, but it's more focused on telecells. There's some coaching. There's some support There's our my telecells Academy There's tons of resources scripts private Facebook group a lot of other stuff and we're building these out Obviously we have executive 297 a month that's more focused on the agent that wants to like build a brand and market and grow a company 297 a month and this one's more focused again on Marketing mastery agency building. I'm talking SEO. I'm talking brand hacks. I'm talking YouTube I'm talking about coaching calls with me all the stuff that we've done over the last three years to freakin scale this I Release a lot of that content in this coaching program and then the fourth one which my buddy Todd's in right now And we've got a lot of agents inquiring about it, which is enterprise 997 a month, but I'm talking live coaching calls with me every single month Tons of support Access to my cell phone to call and text anytime Discounts on retreats tickets all the other stuff. This is the all-encompassing program to where there's a lot in here We've also got apres nation 2018. So you can actually look back at last year's recordings and Watch tons of the keynotes Freakin Ray Lewis Grant Cardone. I mean there's there's a lot in here. There's also bonus content It's really really cool. We've also got Obviously I talked about this earlier the insurance wealth University. It's 97 bucks a month or A thousand but dollars and it's got a hundred and forty five different training videos from from Introductions setting goals favorite questions words to remember breaking down the numbers weekly system There's 10 videos just in this one chapter and there's 15 different chapters over a hundred and forty five videos Mastering insurance telecells, which is also in the coaching program for the same price There's also obviously talked about coaching we talked about University You can also link over to our secure agent leads website where you can actually brand new leads website You want to check it out secure agent leads calm? We've got a blog Tools as far as like how to close our leads training a lot of other things and then Anyone that wants to hire me to speak give a keynote Also do some training and some boot camps maybe come train your team Maybe come meet with you for a day. Maybe fly to you hang out with you. Whatever it is. This brand is all focused on training Mentoring and helping agents become successful at whatever it is you want I've got a ton of experience filled cells telecells starting a call center taking a taking a Agency two millions per year in premium all the above So I want about I want to be able to help and this cody askins comm new website is all about helping you No matter where you're at in your career. So check that thing out cody askins comm


I would like to welcome all of you here today. This particular topic, Dalits and how they are treated, has been an interest of mine from long before I joined politics. I remember, I don't know how these things happen, but I remember I was working in London as a consultant and I was walking on a street there and suddenly I got the idea. I don't know where it came from because I was not really informed about these things. In those days I was not even interested in these things, but suddenly the idea came into my mind. Maybe something I had read, I cannot accept that there could be people in my country who other people would refuse to touch. I could not understand how a human being comes to such a conclusion. I could understand that human beings might not like other human beings, might detest them, might be angry at them, I have been angry at people, but I simply could not get my head around the idea that a human being who would be ready to touch a dog, would be ready to kill an insect like this, would be ready to pet a horse, that same person would suddenly for some reason decide that he refuses to touch another human being. I could not understand this and for me it's been a very long journey and now I think that must have happened in 96, 97. It was a thought in my mind how does this happen, how do people do this, why do people do this and that was the thread which I used to start understanding my country. It was like, if there is a thread in a corner, then you can open the thread and open it. By the way, I wanted to understand my country and I got a very big contradiction that there is a country like this in the world and brothers and sisters, there is only one country, not two. There is only one country in the world. I read about this and then I saw that in Japan, years ago, this idea used to happen, but today there is only one country in the world in which people say that I will touch a country, I will kill a country, but I will not touch a human being. On the one hand, I did not like that this could happen, but maybe I read my grandfather's book Discovery of India, so in my mind it came that I want to understand this, why exactly does this happen. And I have studied it now, certainly since I was in politics, from 2004 to today, it has been in the back of my mind. What is this? What is this? Why is this happening? Why is this happening? I cannot answer the question for you fully. I cannot tell you that look, this is the precise reason it happens, but I have a sense now, much better than I used to before, that this is actually what is going on inside the person's mind when he says I will refuse to touch him. I want to tell you, as you go along in politics and especially if you are searching, there are many politicians who are just interested in power, that is the only thing they are searching for. They wake up in the morning and ask, how will they get power? They wake up in the night and then go to sleep, and then they wake up the next day and ask how will they get power? Yes, and today I am in India, now I have a problem, it is strange, I was born in the middle of power, in the middle, and I have been hit in a very strange way, I am not interested in that. I wake up in the morning and try to understand my country, I wake up in the morning, I am in love with my country, that is why I try to understand the love that I love. So I wake up in the morning and try to understand, in a way I am a beggar. No, no, listen, why? Because my country has a debt on me, and I wake up in the morning and say, how can I fulfill the respect that my country has given me, my country has given me. Okay, the country has only given me love, the country has given me shoes, no, you cannot understand how much violence, how much violence this country has hit me with. So I thought, why is this happening? And when I got the answer, the country wants to teach me that you learn, you understand, there is no pain, learn and understand. So there are stories on the way, sometimes you get incidents on the way to learn, sometimes you get stories, today I will tell you two or three stories. The first story, you all will know, you will remember that one day on WhatsApp, one day I showed a video on WhatsApp on which the youth were being beaten by a stick. Do you remember?  One person was not being beaten, one stick was being beaten. Do you remember? Parker said in his book, the day I was happiest was the day me and my friends went, friends and me went and beat up a Muslim boy. What do you mean? What do you mean? What do you mean? Parker said, I did not want to use any words. But I did. There is a culture. But I was going to tell you, don't say anything. Yes, don't say anything. But I said, let's go. There is a culture. I said.  I saw one more thing. Once there was a fight between Russia and Ukraine. Russia thought that they would take the medicine. But there was a fight. There was a fight on both sides. It was not like that. On one side, the weak people were not going for a long time. I went. I went to them. And one of them went to a boy's house. And I sat with his father on a stick. And I held his hand like this. And where was his hand? My hand was on his hand. Where was his hand? I was scared. Like this, the media was a little far away. I came in front of the media to hide their fear. And I did it a little so that they could not see the media. That where is their hand? This has to be done in politics. They have to hide their fear. I told them, today you must be very sad. I came here to stand with you. They said yes. Very sad. I told myself that I cannot live in such a country. I listened to them. Then they told me, Rahul Ji, But I was happy too. I said, are you happy? I was happy. They said, Rahul Ji, For the first time, Dallito gave a response. No, now you are playing the music. Don't play the music. Listen to the whole thing first. You might not like it. But what I saw, they said, Why are you happy? Because when my son was killed, After that, 10-11 youths, Drinking Insecticide, They committed suicide. I was shocked. I said, what are you saying? Response? It was suicide. The response that I killed myself. I was completely shocked. I did not say anything to them. As I said, Discovery of India, I wanted to understand. At that time, Alankar was with me. I said, Alankar, The 12 people who committed suicide, What is this? Everyone died. Check it.  You were alive. I said, where are you? In the hospital. From here, 500-200 km away. I said, let's go and see. Let's go and understand What is this response of the Dalits? What happened? Did he go in the car? He reached ICU. In ICU, One boy, The second, The third, The fourth, The fifth, The sixth, The first one has his family. The second one has a family. He was standing on a stick. He was scared. The person who gave us food, He died in ICU today. I went to the family first. I said, hello. And I asked, How is this boy? The family did not know anything. I took the doctor to the side. I told the doctor in English. Because I I came to understand. I said, doctor, What is his condition like? The doctor said, he is not going to survive. He will not survive. What do I do now? The family cannot say that. But I know That this thought will not survive. I went to the second one. The doctor said the same thing. I went to the third one. The doctor said the same thing. I thought, Where did I go? I went to the fourth one. The doctor said, he will survive. I was very happy. He will survive. But he was not conscious. The boy near him He was a little conscious. I asked the doctor, Will he survive? He said, he will survive. Then I said, I was a little confident. I said, he will survive. The doctor said, He will survive. I was very happy. The one who was conscious, I went to him. I asked him, how are you? He said, I am very sad. I said, what? He said, when I saw the WhatsApp That my brother Is being killed like a dog. I could not bear it. I could not bear it. I said, what did you do? He said, I went to his house. I picked up the insecticide bottle. I picked up the insecticide bottle. I picked up the insecticide bottle. After that, I woke up here. After that, I woke up here. Nothing to do with suicide. I held his hand. I told him, You are absolutely fine now. There is no problem. The doctor said, you will survive. Don't worry. We will do whatever help you can. I went to the next boy. I asked him, what happened? When I saw the WhatsApp I had a storm in my heart. That my brother One side And I cannot do anything. And that same violence Every day It is against me. So when I saw that WhatsApp I went to my house. I picked up the insecticide. And I went here. Until then, I had thought That this was a suicide pact. I had thought That these 10-12 people Together, they were taking the insecticide. But I understood later That this was not a suicide pact. This was burning fire. There was a kerosene in the heart. And as soon as it started burning It started burning in 12 different places. I went to the boy. I said I was a little bit conscious. I said, what happened? How did you come here? The same answer. I saw the WhatsApp In my country It is against me. Every day this happens. I did not get the insecticide. Every time I went behind the house. And the insecticide. Why behind the house? Why behind the house? The insecticide. As soon as I was thinking My mind also had another idea. It is a very strange thing. From what I am saying From what I am saying I came to my mind That if I had His place And I was ready to die So before dying Who had killed my brother He would have killed him. I came to my mind That if My sister Someone had tied How he would have killed So before I committed suicide I would have killed him. My father My father was killed. And I did not do that. I am in my heart. My father's murderers There is no hatred against murderers. But when I was in the hospital I thought But He was with me. I would have killed him. So I asked him I said brother tell me one thing Do you read the newspaper? He said yes. I said you In the newspaper The one who killed him You can find out his name. He said yes I can find out. I said I am a girl. He said yes I am a girl. What are you asking me?  What did you say? I said what did you say?  He said you don't know If I had killed him I would have been born again I moved I said what did he say? He said Mr. Rahul I can't kill him If I would kill him I would have been born again I was shocked I understood I thought that There is a burden The burden of thousands of lives Is on his shoulders He is unable to remove the burden That's why he is saying that I can't kill him This was the first story The second story A few days ago I met a senior politician In the BJP parliament house I was talking about diet I was talking about exercise And I asked him Do you believe in full life? In the BJP parliament house Do you believe in full life? He said I don't Then I said If you don't believe in full life Then how can you believe in Ram? I was shocked He said it's true Don't tell anyone Don't tell anyone So what is happening today? You talked about Constitution Constitution Is the weapon of India But Without the Constitution There is no meaning Listen again Without the Constitution There is no meaning Without the Constitution We are Surrounding the Constitution You say I want to protect the Constitution I say I want to protect the Constitution I want to protect the Constitution But how is the Constitution Implemented? From the Constitution The Constitution Is in the hands of all the RSS The Constitution Is not in your and our hands If the Constitution Is not in your and our hands Then the Constitution Is not in our hands And this Is not a new religion When the Mahatma Gandhi Had three bullets in his chest Ambedkar Ji Ambedkar Ji Worked to develop To protect the Constitution And that's why we Put flowers In front of the photo Because Ambedkar Ji Gave us a weapon But today There is no meaning There is no meaning The car The car is very beautiful You have to go to Jaipur There are five people in the car Four people have to go to Jaipur And the driver wants to come Then you understand Five people in the car The democracy Four people say that we have to go to Agra The driver says that I am going to Jaipur This is happening This is happening And how are we going To control the politics With Pegasus I am telling you I am telling you on the stage If I had taken one rupee I would not be able to give this speech I would not be able to give this speech I would not be able to give this speech So Pegasus CBI ED They control the political system There was no politics like You must have seen that We have given a message to Mahiawati Be the Chief Minister I respect Mr.Kanshiram I am sweating blood I have raised the voice of Uttar Pradesh I have raised the voice of Uttar Pradesh I have caused the loss of Congress That is different But I have raised that voice But I have raised that voice Today Mahiawati Ji says That I will not fight for that voice I have given the right path Why? ED Pegasus You can only fight for people Until Until the Indian That the voice of people Until it emerges Until then the institution I will not sell the constitution I will not sell the constitution This is the truth of India Many people like People like Not people If the constitution doesn't work, then the direct weakness lies with the people. Who are they? The Dalits, the Alps, the Adivasis, the unemployed, the small farmers. And today, look at the economic situation, look at the unemployed. It's time to fight. And what Ambedkar Ji said, what Gandhi Ji said, he showed us the way. There is a way. You just need to walk on it. It's not easy to work in difficult times. There is a way. You just need to walk on it. Thank you.


I'd like to start with our first speaker, Stefania Marisi. Stefania has done some wonderful work and covering what really goes on behind the scenes in the corridors of power. She has done what good investigative journalists do and it's indeed quite surprising and in a way disappointing that it has taken an Italian journalist to follow through on the corruption and the nepotism that we see in Britain today. I'd like to start by asking Stefania to say a little bit about her book and then inviting Jonathan Cook, who is to my right, to say a few words as well about his analysis of the book and Craig will then come in with his wide-ranging experience of the case and experience of being a whistleblower who brought to light torture in the specky style and suffered for it. So Craig is here both as a journalist, one who we regard very highly given his well-read blog and also as a journalist. So we have three wonderful journalists on the stage and I invite Stefania first to please kick us off. So thank you Diba, thanks to all. It's a great honour to be here and I feel honoured that we started with a song which I really love, Bella Ciao, a song about our fight against fascism, being Italy the country which invented fascism. I think this case really goes to the heart of what a totalitarian state he is and the first victim of totalitarianism, the very first features, the very first thing that should make people horrified about the direction taken by society is the destruction of freedom of the press. That's how Mussolini started. One of the very first thing he did was to establish who was a journalist, who was a legitimate journalist and who was not. Because that's how you control who publish, what get published. So when I saw the US government saying in its indictment and its press conference when the charges against Julian Assange were basically unsealed, Julian Assange is not a journalist, is not a legitimate journalist. It reminds me the dark days when the fascist regime was in charge of deciding who is a journalist and who is not a journalist. And it reminds me those dark days. Obviously we are not in a fascist society. Obviously we are not in a fascist society otherwise we wouldn't be here discussing the Julian Assange weekly case. But what is happening in this case should scare everyone. And I'm the first to be really scared about what I have seen, what I have witnessed in this case. I have been there from the very beginning, very, very beginning, 2009, when very few knew about Wikileaks. They hadn't published their bombshells like collateral murder, which made them famous around the world. And it all started because one of my sources, one of my journalistic sources had stopped talking to me. She was convinced she was under illegal interception. And of course there is no way to know whether you are under illegal interception. It could be paranoia, it could be a real paranoia or it could be real. There's no way to know whether you are under illegal interception. So that journalistic source at that time I was already working for the Italian leading news magazine Les Presso, a progressive news magazine heavily focused on corruption, mafia, exposing threat, fascist threats. And I was working for Les Presso and that source that never ever revealed me anything. I still, after 15 years I don't know what she knew, basically changed my journalism forever. Usually our journalistic sources change our journalism because of what they tell us, what they reveal to us. But in that case my source changed my journalism forever for what she didn't tell me. She didn't want to talk to me, she didn't want to meet me, she was convinced we were under control. We were followed, we were spied so she didn't want to meet me. And it was at that point, precisely at that point, was 2008, one year before I was contacted by Wichlix. It was at that point that I realised that I needed better source protection because what we have, what we all use, telephones, emails are very easily to penetrate, especially if you have money, if you have good technologies. So in these days it's very, very easy to penetrate these technologies. They are no longer suitable for the 21st century. And even if they are using your newsroom around the world, most of the journalists use telephones, most use emails. I realised I needed better source protection and for me it was natural to look at cryptography because I'm a mathematician. Before journalism I got a degree in maths so I knew there was this thing called cryptography but I knew very little. I just had, you know, theoretical knowledge. I didn't have any practical skin in using cryptography. You use cryptography, as I said, all the time. You use cryptography even if you don't realise it that you are using it. You use WhatsApp. You use, you know, systems for making home banking. You don't go to your bank physically. You don't go to your hospital to download your medical records. You do it from the internet or someone do it for you from the internet. And they can do that because cryptography allows you to do this kind of operation without all others seeing your medical records, all others accessing your bank records. That's cryptography. And, you know, at that time there was nothing, there was no WhatsApp, there was no signal, there was nothing. There was just, cryptography was really unfriendly. Very few knew that cryptography existed at all. Just the military, computer scientists, mathematicians, spies, diplomats, which use cryptography to protect their communication. And there was only one media organisation in the world using cryptography. And that media organisation was not the New York Times, was not the Washington Post, it was not the Guardian, that media organisation was Wikileaks. And when one of my sources in the field of cryptography told me, you should have a look on that bunch of lunatics. It was joking, but he appreciated the work of Wikileaks. I didn't know Wikileaks. I didn't know Julian Assange. And that source put Wikileaks on my rather screen. I established the first contacts with Wikileaks. I was deeply impressed by what they were doing. They were able to obtain documents which no one was able to obtain. Why? And the explanation was cryptography. In the darkness of state secrecy, many, many, many would disagree with extremely brutal techniques and tactics used during the war on terror, torture, brutal torture, extrajudicial killing. In the darkness of secrecy, there were many, both on the left and on the right, because even if you are a right-wing person, it doesn't mean you are a torturer or you stand by torture, of course. We link to send these documents anonymously, protected by cryptography. And this is why they received this documentation. And one of the very first documents which deeply impressed me was the Guantanamo manual. Guantanamo manual about the military task force operating Guantanamo, which no other organization, civil rights, human rights organization, had been able to obtain. Not even the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU, which have tried over and over, and they have good lawyers and they have good litigation capability. And yet they had been unable to obtain it. But Wikileaks obtained it, Wikileaks published it, and not only that. What also deeply impressed me was the fact that they had obtained it, and when the Pentagon had told them, please remove it, because you are not authorized to publish it. They said, no. I was so impressed because I have been a journalist for the last 21 years, 16 in the field of investigative journalism, and believe me, I have known very, very, very few people willing to say no to the Pentagon. So that courage deeply impressed me, deeply impressed me. And since then, the first time I worked as a media partner with them was 2009 when they called me in the middle of the night because they had an important file, and they want some help to verify it and to understand the local context. And I understood that we were working as a media organisation because this is what media organisations do. They receive documents, they establish whether they are true, and they establish if they are in the public interest, whether it is not gossip, it's not silly things. And if it's true and in the public interest, they publish. So since 2009 I worked on all their documents, all their secret documents, especially those US secret documents for which Julian Assange risks 175 years. I think this case is absolutely outrageous. I'm here, I have published the very same documents for the last decade. I was never arrested. I was never put in prison. He has paid for all of us. It's absolutely crucial that we win this case, and we free Julian Assange. Because if the government can win this case, if they can put in prison a journalist for revealing work crimes, our society will go directly to fully authoritarian. So this case goes behind Julian Assange. Of course his life hangs in balance. So the first thing is to save his life. But this case is about the kind of society in which we want to live. Do we want to live in a society in which you can expose work crimes, you can expose torture? This is what a democracy is. In a totalitarian state you cannot expose state criminality at the highest level.  They send you killers. They send you in a prison, in a dungeon for life. In a democracy must be possible. So this is why I take every opportunity, and I want to thank Deepa and you all for being here, to tell you that we have few months, few months to save him. And if he lives this country, if he lives Europe, he's gone. If he extradited to the US, he will be his death. And with him it will be the death of the free pass and the death of your right to know what the government is doing, the darkness of secrecy with your money as a taxpayer and in your name. Thank you. Our next speaker is someone who someone once described to me as an heir to Chomsky, because of his ability to look at the big picture and extract from smaller pieces of information what we really need to know and what we really need to discuss as a society. Jonathan is an author, a very courageous journalist and someone who doesn't shy from the truth, but does so in a very measured and meticulous way, which is why he has the reputation he has. Jonathan, can I invite you to speak, but before you do may I ask you to double check that everybody can hear you, because I'm not sure how that... Can you hear me all, all of you? Yeah. Okay, great. Well, thank you very much Deepa that's very kind and thank you so much to Stefania for writing a book that an important work on giving us the chronology of what happened to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. I thoroughly recommend it, but what I want to do in my contribution is to focus on the title of tonight and look at how WikiLeaks challenged the model of democratic media, how it presented a challenge to how we think democratic media operates. I want to quote at length a comment that Julian Assange made back in 2011 when he was talking about what he called perceived moral institutions, such as the liberal media. This is what he said. What drives a paper like The Guardian or The New York Times is not their inner moral values, it is simply that they have a market. In the UK there is a market called educated liberals. Educated liberals want to buy a newspaper like The Guardian and therefore an institution arises to fulfil that market. What is in the newspaper is not a reflection of the values of the people in that institution, it is a reflection of the market demand. Now Assange presumably came to that insight having just spent a year working with those two newspapers on the Afghan and Iraq warlogs. I think one of the mistakes we typically make when we think about the so-called mainstream media is imagining that its outlets evolve in some kind of gradual bottom-up process. We are encouraged to assume that there is at least an element of voluntary association in how media institutions form. At its simplest we imagine journalists with a liberal or left-wing outlook coalescing, gravitating towards other journalists with a similar outlook and together they produce a left wing or a liberal newspaper. I think we sometimes assume the same thing about the right one too. All of this requires ignoring the elephant in the room, billionaire owners. Even if we think about the owners and we are usually discouraged to do so, we tend to suppose that their role is to provide funding for these free exercises in journalistic collaboration. For that reason we infer that the media represents society. It offers a marketplace of thought and expression in which ideas and opinions align with the vast majority of the population. In short, the media reflects a spectrum of acceptable ideas rather than defining and imposing that spectrum. Of course this idea is ludicrous if we pause to think about it. The media consists of outlets owned by and serving the interests of billionaires and large corporations. Or in the case of the BBC, a broadcasting corporation entirely reliant on state largesse. Furthermore, almost all media corporations need advertising revenue from other large corporations to avoid hemorrhaging money. There's nothing bottom-up about this process. It's entirely top-down. Journalists operate within these ideological parameters. They're strictly laid down by their outlets' owners. The media doesn't reflect society. It reflects the interests of a small elite and the national security state that promotes and protects the elite's interests.  But the parameters are narrow enough to restrict reporting analysis and commentary so that dangerous ideas, dangerous to corporate state power, almost never get a look-in. Put bluntly, media pluralism is the spectrum of allowable thought among the power elite. If this doesn't seem obvious, it might help to think of media outlets like any other large corporation. Let's take an example, a supermarket chain. Supermarkets, a large warehouse-like venue stocking a wide range of goods, a range similar to the other ones, but usually there's a slight variation in pricing and branding. Despite this essential similarity, each supermarket markets itself as radically different from its rivals. It's easy to fall for this pitch, and most of us do, to the extent that we end up identifying with a particular supermarket over another one, believing it shares our values or it embodies our ideals or it aspires to things that we hold dear. We all know there's a difference between a waitrose and a Tesco, but we might struggle to identify exactly what that difference amounts to. It's hard to know beyond the competing marketing strategies and the targeting of different shopping audiences. All supermarkets share a core capitalist ideology. All are pathologically driven by the need to generate profits. All try to fuel rapacious consumerism among their customers. All create excessive demand and waste. All externalise their costs onto the wider society. Now let's bring it back to the media. They're there to do essentially the same thing, each of them. They can only monetise their similarity by presenting marketing it as a difference. They brand themselves differently, not because they are different, but because to be effective, if not always profitable, they must reach and capture different demographics. Supermarkets do it through different emphases, maybe promoting coca-cola over wine or accentuating their green credentials and their promotion of animal welfare over value for money. It's no different with the media. Outlets brand themselves as liberal or conservative on the side of the middle classes or on the side of the unskilled worker, as challenging the powerful or being respectful of the powerful. The key task of a supermarket is to create loyalty from a section of the shopping public to stop those customers straying to other supermarkets. Similarly, a media outlet reinforces a supposed set of shared values among a specific demographic to stop readers straying to other publications looking elsewhere for their news, their commentary and their analysis. The goal of the media is not unearthing the truth. It's not about monitoring the centres of power. It's about capturing readers. It's so far as a media outlet does monitor power or it does speak difficult truths. It does so because that's its brand. That's what its audience has come to expect of it. So how does that relate to this topic today? Well, not least it helps clarify something that baffles me at least and probably some of you as well. Why haven't journalists risen up to support Julian Assange in their droves? Especially once Sweden dropped the longest preliminary investigation in its history and it became clear that Assange's persecution was as he always warned, paving the way to his extradition to the US for exposing its war crimes. The truth is that were the Guardian and the New York Times to have clamoured for his freedom, had they investigated the glaring holes in the Swedish case, as Nils Meltzer has done, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, were they screaming about the dangers of allowing the US to redefine journalism's core task, not as treason, but if they had the screaming about how the Espionage Act was being used to redefine journalism as treason, had they used their substantial muscle and resources to pursue a freedom of information request as Stefani has done on her own dime, were they pointing out the endless legal abuses taking place in Assange's treatment in the UK, had they reported rather than ignored the facts that came to light in the extradition hearings in London, in short had they kept Julian Assange's persecution in the spotlight, he'd be free by now. The efforts by the various the efforts by the various states involved to gradually disappear him over the past decade would have become futile, they would have been self-sabotaging. At some levels journalists understand this, which is precisely why they try to persuade themselves and you that he's not a proper journalist. That's why they tell themselves they don't need to show solidarity with him and why some of them even amplify the state's demolization campaign against him. By ignoring Julian Assange, by othering him, they can avoid thinking about the differences between what he has done and what they do. Journalists can avoid examining their own role as captured servants of corporate power. Assange faces 175 years in a maximum security prison, not for espionage, but for publishing journalism. Journalism doesn't require some special professional qualification as brain surgery in conveyancing does. Doesn't depend on precise, abstruse knowledge of human physiology or legal procedure. At its best journalism is simply gathering and publishing information that serves the public interest. Public, that's you and me. It doesn't require a diploma, doesn't require a big building or a wealthy owner. Whisper it, any of us can do journalism and when we do it, journalistic protections ought to apply. Assange excelled at journalism like no one before him because he devised a new model of forcing governments to become more transparent and public servants more honest, which is precisely why the elite who wields secret power want him and that model destroyed. If the liberal media was really organised from the bottom up rather than the top down, journalists would be incensed and terrified by states torturing one of their own. They'd be genuinely afraid that they might be targeted next because it's the practice of pure journalism that is under attack, not a single journalist. But that isn't how corporate journalists see it and truth be told their abandonment of Julian Assange, the lack of solidarity they've shown, is explicable. Journalists aren't being entirely irrational. The corporate media, especially its liberal outlets and their journalist servants, understand that Assange's media revolution embodied by the WikiLeaks venture is far more of a threat to them than the national security state. Put crudely, the liberal media views WikiLeaks as a threat much as the high street does Amazon, though of course that analogy unfairly strips out WikiLeaks far more noble purpose and methods than Amazon's. WikiLeaks offers a new kind of platform for democratic journalism in which secret power, along with its inherent corruptions and crimes becomes much harder to wield. And as a result, corporate journalists have had to face some difficult home truths that they'd avoided until WikiLeaks' appearance. First, the media revolution threatens to undermine the role and privileges of the corporate journalist. Readers no longer have to depend on these well-paid arbiters of truth. For the first time, readers have direct access to original sources, to the unmediated documents. Readers no longer have to be passive consumers of news. They can inform themselves. Not only can they cut out the middleman, the corporate media, but they can assess whether that middleman has been playing it straight with them. That's very bad news for an individual corporate journalist. At best, it strips them of any aura of authority and prestige. And at worse, it ensures that a profession already held in low esteem is considered even less trustworthy. And it's also very bad news for the media owners, those billionaires. They no longer control the news agenda. They no longer serve as institutional gatekeepers. They no longer define the limits of acceptable ideas and opinion. Second, the WikiLeaks revolution sheds an unflattering light on the traditional model of journalism. It shows it to be inherently dependent on and therefore complicit in secret power. The lifeblood of the WikiLeaks model is the whistleblower, who risks everything to get public interest information that the powerful want concealed, because it reveals corruption, abuse and lawbreaking. Think Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden. The lifeblood of corporate journalism, by contrast, is access. Corporate journalists make an implicit transaction. The insider delivers snippets of information to the journalist that may or may not be true, and that invariably serve the interests of unseen forces in the corridors of power. For both sides, the relationship of access depends on not antagonising power by exposing its deep secrets. The insider is only useful to the journalist so long as he or she has access to power, which means that the insider is rarely going to offer up information that truly threatens power. If they did, they'd soon be out of a job, and they'd no longer be near power or useful to the journalist. But to be considered useful, the insider needs to offer the reporter information that appears to be revelatory, that holds out the promise for the journalist of career, success and prizes. Both sides are playing a role in a game of charades that serves the adjoined interests of the corporate media and the political elite. At best, access offers insights for journalists into the power plays between the rival elite groups with conflicting agendas between the more liberal elements of the establishment and the more hawkish elements. The public interest is invariably served only in the most marginal sense. We get a partial idea of the divisions within an administration or a bureaucracy, but very rarely the full extent of what's going on. For a brief period, the liberal components of the corporate media swapped out their historic access to join WikiLeaks in its transparency revolution. But they quickly understood that the dangers of the path they were embarking on, as the quote we began with from Assange makes clear, it would be a huge mistake to assume that the corporate media feels threatened by WikiLeaks simply because the organisation's made a much better fist of holding power to account than the corporate media. This isn't about envy, it's about fear. Journalist Artemis of the interests of media owners and advertisers, these corporations are the concealed power running our society. The pillars upholding this system of elite power, those disguising and protecting it, are the media and the security services, the mind and the muscle. The media corporations are there to protect corporate power using psychological and emotional manipulation just as the security services are there to protecting using invasive surveillance and physical coercion. WikiLeaks disrupts this cosy relationship from both ends. It threatens to end the role of the corporate media in mediating official information, instead offering the public direct access to official secrets. In so doing, it dares to expose the tradecraft of the security services as they go about their law-breaking and abuses, and it imposes unwelcome scrutiny and restraint on them. In threatening to bring democratic accountability to the media and the security services, and exposing their long-standing collusion, WikiLeaks opens a window on how sham our democracies truly are. The shared desire of the security services and the corporate media is to disappear Assange in the hope that his revolutionary model of journalism is abandoned and forgotten for good. It won't be. The technology is not going away and we must keep reminding the world what of what Assange accomplished and the terrible price that he's paying for his achievement. Thank you very much. Thank you, Jonathan. Our next speaker is someone who has worn many hats, whether it is as a vector at the University of Dundee or as whistleblower or as the star in a BBC4 play or indeed as a journalist revealing the inside workings of power. In various situations, as an independence campaigner for Scotland and as somebody who has always spoken up for the public in the public interest. Our next speaker is author, blogger, journalist Craig Murray. Thank you. Thank you. It's lovely to be here again and to see so many people I know here again and also happily to see some people I don't know. It's great to have some new faces along. I should start by saying I think I'm the only person in the United Kingdom who officially is not a journalist according to a decision by the High Court of Scotland which is extraordinary as well because I'm also the only person in the United Kingdom who is officially, according to the High Court of England, not an anti-Semite after another court case I was involved in. So how I get myself into these legal cases which are always the law having a go at me and me defending myself rather than me initiating anything. I'm really not quite sure why I'm seen as such a threat to the state when all I do is publish on a blog which they feel has to be delegitimised, harassed by continual attack and de-prioritised by suppression of social media. It's extraordinary, but somebody like me who has really done nothing except write true accounts for example of what happens at Julian Assange's trial, write the detail of what happens in the courtroom itself. All I've ever tried to do is publish aspects of the truth not in the spectacular mass fashion that WikiLeaks managed it but putting away at insane cause. That nowadays has deemed such effect to the state that they have to suppress you and even imprison you. And I think that there's something deeply, deeply worrying. And I think we ought to think, here am I telling you I am officially not a journalist? And let's look at what people are doing who officially are journalists. How many people have seen the Daily Telegraph today? That is the front page of the Daily Telegraph. I'll send this into the audience so you can pass it round in a moment. Dominated by a huge photo of two men in Ghislaine Maxwell's bath and the headline is the photo that clears Duke over bath sex and the purpose of the photograph is to convince everybody that Prince Andrew could not have molested a sex trafficked minor in that bath because the bath is too small. Now, not only does that tell us something very interesting about the sex lives of Daily Telegraph journalists, it's an astonishing exercise in poor taste. You've got a convicted sex trafficker in the United States and the photo that the article tells us is posed by two of her victims with the objects of attempting to show that a member of the royal family could not have taken part in the sex trafficking which he paid over $12 million to get out of. Who finds that at all reasonable? Who finds it reasonable that one of the adults poses in the bath presumably as a joke because there can be no other reason for it with a mask with the face of the sex trafficked young woman on it?  That is one of the United Kingdom's oldest and most respected broadsheets and the newspaper which is the closest to our current government at Westminster. That's what the establishment think journalism is.  That is a model. You don't go to prison for that. You go to prison for publishing the truth about war crimes. We live in a society where the spect for true journalism is non-existent and the little journalists are punished and the most disgusting signifants and smears are those who get on in the journalistic profession. If someone could grab this and you could pass it around to the audience so people could look and see what I was talking about while I continued. It's wonderful to see the artwork from Gran Tatlow here today, the copies of it and I very much hope that we do manage to raise the funds to get the original artwork over here because artwork from Gran Tatlow is a real triumph of the human spirit over terrible oppression and reminds us of the evil that we are fighting against, the evil that collected people in Afghanistan and shipped them off to Gran Tatlow deliberately by design to put them beyond law so they could be systematically tortured. Think of that. The whole purpose was to put people where they might be tortured and the dreadful tortures people suffered in Gran Tatlow have been, I've heard, I've sat beside people while they inuminate the tortures they were subjected to and it reminds us of what Wicolig's helped reveal and the kind of behaviour the state is attempting to cover up and make sure it can do in secret in future by its persecution of Julian. It also reminds me of the war on terror period and the collusion of the media in the terrible waves of Islamophobia in the oppression of entirely innocent Muslim people in this country and elsewhere in the attacks on civil liberties that were carried out under that excuse. I remember the front page stories on things like the ricin plot and on the Easter bombing in Manchester where seven people were arrested and it was the headline TV news on every channel and it was the front page in every newspaper that the police had foiled a bomb plotter Easter in Manchester by descending on this house and that they had removed materials, including materials that could be moved in bomb making. And several months later, when the poor people who had been imprisoned throughout that period were eventually released without charge, it turned out that the materials that could be used in bomb making was a bag of granulated sugar in the kitchen. None of which, the vests having been all over the front pages, the release I think got one very small paragraph on page seven of The Guardian and that was about it. The fact that it was all simply untrue was never published and that was a deliberate ramping up of fear and the stoking of Islamophobia by the security services amplified by the media. A ricin extraordinarily further lies by the media the famous story of Manafort calling on a sange in the embassy which was utterly untrue, simply never ever happened and for which with no shame at all The Guardian refuses still to this day to recant despite it obviously being false. I add into that and I think Jonathan brilliantly outlined the reasons we have this media and the use of the media for exerting social control and I add into that the corruption of the legal system that we have seen in Julian's case and corruption is the only possible word. Funnily enough I was first alerted to it before the American extradition case when the Swedish extradition process was still in train by of course the extraordinary gap between what was happening and the lack of any actual serious evidence from the investigation but also when there was a judgement by the House of Lords called Philips was the lead judge in that extradition case where the decision that Julian could be held for extradition turned on the question of what was a judicial authority because an extradition request had to come from a judicial authority and in the Swedish case it didn't. It didn't come from a court or a judge it came from a prosecutor, a politically motivated prosecutor after other prosecutors had dropped the case and a prosecutor is plainly not a judicial authority and this went all the way to the House of Lords and in the House of Lords they ruled and this is absolutely true, I'm not making this up but while a prosecutor is not a judicial authority in English the extradition arrangement, European extradition arrangement was in French and English and both languages were equally valid and if you looked at the French version of the treaty it said Autorité Judicière and while judicial authority in English does not encompass prosecutors in French judicial authority does encompass prosecutors this is absolutely astonishing I was a diplomat for more than two decades I was involved in negotiating and drafting treaties it has never ever been the case but in signing a treaty the United Kingdom government has preferred the French language version to the English language version before that is a simple impossibility and the idea that when they signed the treaty the UK authorities were signing in French not in English is plainly an utter nonsense plus it's simply untrue but if there is an English in French being exactly the same thing it doesn't mean something different in French this incredible bit of judicial sophistry this simple lie and this extraordinary precedent setting but in future we're going to prefer the foreign language version of treaties all of that was done as a rws to keep Julian in custody and all of it was complete and utter obvious bollocks to anybody who was closely followed what was going on and that was when I first realised and that was about 2011, 2012 that was when I first realised something is very very wrong here then of course I started attending the hearings after the United States extradition proceedings came in and they were even more astonishing the ruling that you can be extradited under an extradition treaty but the article 2 forward of that extradition treaty that forbids political extradition does not have effect because the treaty does not have effect in English law but still you're being extradited under it was a piece of judicial gymnastics that was almost impossible to understand the fact that the prosecution the United States government had all Julian's legal papers after having stolen from the Ecuadorian Embassy that was absolutely astonishing it went on and on as an absolute circus and we are at a stage where something needs to change we need a massive uprising in public opinion because we have a controlled media we have a controlled judiciary we have increasing restrictions on freedom of speech where it's almost impossible to find any platform not even a meeting hall in which you can voice opposition to the war in Ukraine for example we are living in a society which has crept further and further towards fascism and is continuing to do so and it gets worse year after year after year the point when we really are almost there getting Julian out of jail has to be the start of a fundamental change in society in the way society is heading but until we manage to wake up more of society and to wake up the so-called liberal left into what they are going along with and what they are allowing to happen in our country that won't happen it's been a hard campaign I'm actually more optimistic for Julian than I have been for a long long time there have been many signs of particularly senior politicians his own government in Australia and of the media finally waking up and smelling the coffee and realised what's going on I think we are making progress we get a far better hearing in public and far better public reception and I'm sure you will find that too when campaigning when we did four or five years ago I do believe that things are going our way we have to redouble the fight to make them continue to go our way thank you very much Thanks Craig and as the legal observer in the hearings I have been astonished at the kind of rubbish that we get including being told that I could take in pen and paper but I'm not allowed to write I mean it is just astonishing but I'm so glad that Craig talked about brought everything together and explained how our campaign for Julian is not just about him it's also a campaign for justice for the men whose art you see around the room and our next speaker Ian Overton who's CTC there unfortunately due to being ill really wanted to be here but he's not been able to travel he will come to our next event but we have in his place and in fact in his own place actually a wonderful young man who spent 14 years at Guantanamo without trial or charge and this is his voice I hope you can hear him he doesn't yet have his passport in his hand although he's finally been granted one an innocent man finally been granted a passport but hopefully he will have it soon and he will hopefully be with us for the exhibition in the summer to tell you a little bit more about his art and the art from his colleagues I also wanted to highlight our friends from Cage who are here today we are grateful for their solidarity this is 21 years since Guantanamo was opened 35 men are still there many of them cleared for release and it is astonishing that many people don't even know that Guantanamo is still open so here is Mansoura Dayfee's voice I'm going to test the sound with our live stream audience so first I'll check if that works and then you can hear him sorry that's not seeming to play I will translate Mansour's message Mansour's message is one of solidarity and a great deal of I think forgiveness and a sense of horror at what continues to happen at Guantanamo he and his fellow colleagues many of whom are struggling financially would be grateful for your solidarity over time that is I will share on the event bright side and also with those who are interested details of the art from Guantanamo if anybody wishes to buy pieces from any of the artists but unless Eileen Chubb is here if she is in the audience I can't see Eileen, is she? great fantastic Eileen are you ready to is Jeremy here as well? or do we is Jeremy here? okay so he's running late okay thank you so if you wouldn't mind taking a seat up front as soon as Jeremy arrives we can do this we will now move to the question and answers which will be moderated by my colleague Professor Ian Mundrow from Newcastle and myself unfortunately this mic is no longer working so we're going to stick with one mic so we might just have to share it between us I hope you can still hear us so we'd now like to start with questions from the audience if you would please raise your hands it's watching on the live stream it's watching through things like YouTube where your question is being handed over I believe some colleagues in the audience are going to bring your questions through as well so if you're on the live stream and you have any questions of any of the speakers please let us know questions from the audience please yes Eileen Eileen Chubb is here with us and Eileen will of course introduce herself later but she's here on behalf of a number of whistleblowers so we'll get the microphone over to Eileen just a second can you hear me I just wanted to comment on what Craig said about the kind of stories that are making the media recently here we've had a man who's responsible for tens of thousands of elderly people dying in care homes splattered over the front pages for weeks on end of newspapers in the UK and it's an absolute shameful situation that tens of thousands of families who are grieving see somebody being celebrated as a celebrity in newspapers every day so I totally agree and I think that real journalism is precious and we need to demand and buy only publications that tell us the truth I break up a moment it really is an excellent account of the weekly story it's evolution from the beginning right till the current times but I wanted to know a little bit more about the struggle that you've had getting these freedom of information requests on going and where you feel the maybe why and how you'll be frustrated in your efforts to get some kind of transparency going and maybe I'll raise a little controversial issue here but I mean some of us are wondering how involved was Keir Starmer at the time of the CPS um Keir are there fingerprints is it possible to see I mean the official story is he didn't know anything about it but given these were huge issues of transatlantic interests all three I'll take all three of them obviously these issues that you're trying to get sheds and light on are a huge significance and were at the time and the correspondence that was going on and international repercussions I find that the idea that the head of this CPS knew nothing about what was going on just simply incredible I just wondered in addition to the other question whether you've seen anything to indicate that Keir Starmer was involved in making this decision so thank you for this question so in the book I have reconstructed 13 years of investigative work in this case so it has been put together in a way that is narrative and anyone can read because otherwise if you cannot read the book you don't read it you read the book because it is a pleasure to read it and the book is based not just on 13 years of investigative work but on eight years it has become eight years of fighting in UK tribunals US courts Australian courts tribunals, Swedish courts to get the full documentation on Julian Assange why I'm so obsessed why a journal dedicated so much time and it's so expensive initially I paid myself when I reached 6,000 euros I could not afford anymore and I said I had to find a way to pay the legal fees in the US the legal fees have reached 100,000 of dollars in two years fortunately the US lawyers are working completely pro bono otherwise I would have been unable why this work in 2015 after Julian spent five years basically confined initially under house arrest then in the embassy not even an hour outdoors and I was basically witnessing how his health started collapsing collapsing and every time I visited him this was a very visible process his health collapsing in 2015 I realised that no journalist had tried to get the document about this case how can you win a case if you don't know the facts you cannot and an Italian prosecutor our Italian prosecutor can be very good very good and it is not it is not a coincidence that basically we are the only country in the world which nailed the CIA agents which kidnapped a person in Milan we were the only to identify them and to get a final sentence to charge them and to get a final sentence because of our prosecutors and their independence so an Italian prosecutor told me why this case is parallelised this is there is nothing normal about this case and I said because the Swedish prosecutors don't want to go to London to question Julian Assange and to decide whether to charge him for rape if they have enough evidence or to drop the charges and he said this is not normal it shouldn't be like this the prosecutor should go there to question him immediately and to decide whether to drop or charge him drop the case and charge him and he said this is not normal we Italian prosecutors travelled through Brazil to question very dangerous mafia people and they cannot fly from Stockholm to London to question him you must discover why they don't want to go there of course I am an Italian journalist I have no sources inside the Swedish prosecution so the only option I had was to use the freedom of information I filed this freedom of information request in Sweden in August 2015 and what I obtained was incredible basically the Swedish authorities provided evidence that it was the crown prosecution service at that time headed by Sir Keith Starmer who told the Swedish prosecutor don't come here to question him doing so they basically advised the Swedish prosecutor against the only legal strategy which could have brought to a quick solution of the case questioning Julian in London and decided how to go ahead so I got this documentation and it was clear that the crucial decision on Julian Assange case were taken between 2010-2013 when Keith Starmer was heading the crown prosecution service as director of the prosecution however there is not a single email documented that instructed the crown prosecution lawyers to take this decision about Julian Assange however we cannot say who took this decision we know the name of the lawyer Mr Porclos but we don't know whether he received any instruction from the top of the crown prosecution service headed by Sir Keith Starmer the only way to know is to obtain the full correspondence probably means that the crown prosecution service destroyed destroyed the correspondence about the case why it was still ongoing and highly controversial and again I ask our prosecutors we have all sorts of judicial scandal legal scandal in Italy and I ask very experienced prosecutors is it normal do we have any example of destruction of documents as the crown prosecution service did and prosecutors said now this is not normal at all we not even have ever had a scandal like this so these documents have been destroyed and I have discovered this in 2017 November 2017 a month after I went to the embassy to discuss this with Julian Assange December 2017 I discovered two years later what happened while we were talking someone secretly access all my devices and screw my phone extracted the scene we were spied secretly fortunately they took picture so we have evidence that this really happened since 2017 when I discovered this destruction of crucial documents I have been fighting against the crown prosecution court to obtain information about who destroyed the documents on whose instruction how and they refused to provide explanation yesterday we had a new hearing here in London about this documentation and basically I'm still fighting to get this documentation and soon new important revelation will come out thanks to this litigation and we I really hope to get any information about the role of the crown prosecution service any any alleged involvement of Kirstadmer because I try to ask I try to contact this person I try to email I got no reply and I'm trying to get this documentation at all cost at all cost but these documents are dynamite and that's why four governments are denying me access to this documentation if it was normal documentation they would have released it they are not revealing these documents because these documents contain evidence of serious mishandling serious corruption in the case thank you thank you Stefania I will take the three people who are speaking here waiting here to ask their questions and then we have a contribution from Norway from John Jones John if you will be ready and finally hopefully by then Jeremy Corbyn will have arrived to provide an award for Julian which Jeremy is going to share with us so could I invite somebody to please pass the microphone this one definitely could I request you all to maybe if comments are welcome if any comments will agree and focus on the questions because we have about 20 minutes more time could I also make a specific announcement to those watching on the live screen please stay on the live screen after you have the speakers explanation because our client steamers are going to take you around to CBR to be able to bring you in so I see Jeremy is arrived and we will take your questions then you will have the contribution from John Jones and then we will have Jeremy present for you sorry to ask do you agree type question but I'll keep it short it's to do with the language that we're using do you agree we should stop using the language of alienation that belongs to the enemy because Chelsea Manning just did what any human being is supposed to do when you become aware of a crime being committed you are supposed to tell everybody and Julian Assange did what any normal publisher should do tell everybody but we use the term whistleblower which is a minority term and a slanted term the only thing abnormal about any of this is the horrendous intimidation that stops people performing a normal absolutely normal public duty and second we should also stop using the term leaks because it suggests that any vessel needs repairing whereas any vessel that contains and hides the stinking substance of crime should be smashed I've got a quick question for Jonathan recently I met some young journalists and very ambitious beautiful kids and I said to them if you join a major organisation and it starts doing the things that you've done to Julian Assange what would you do what advice would you give them in that situation? I'd just like to congratulate you on this meeting it's the most amazing meeting I've ever been to with three of the most cogent and compelling speeches I've ever heard and I've wondered all my life I've always suspected there was a massive conspiracy against democracy and the people and I always wondered whether I'd face the sort of question that people face in the 20s 30s in Italy especially and in Germany Spain and across Europe and I think we're now facing that sort of question and I think you're incredibly brave along with Julian Assange and the other people who support him in putting your heads above the parapet but my question really would be where's the next generation look around I mean with all due respect I don't see anybody under 50 or 40 here oh I'm terribly sorry there's one alright well with one exception where are they? it's going to be their world that they're going to live in and God help them if we lose this battle thank you very much I will now request the speakers to both respond to the three queries that were raised and also make their concluding comment well let me address the question that was was addressed to me what advice would I give to young journalists who are starting out and want to achieve a kind of transparent society that WikiLeaks was and is still trying to achieve for us the issue here isn't really what advice we can give to young journalists it's what kind of support are we going to give because the journalists are operating in a society which can choose can want to be a transparent society or not to be one there are lots of platforms now for young journalists more than when I was a young journalist you worked your way up the ladder you started on a local provincial newspaper you got your exams done and then you hoped you could get your break in London and the whole thing was controlled you may have read and Edmund Herman's book manufacturing consent it was a filtering system and each step of the way you had to convince somebody that you deserved to stay there or to get promoted and if you weren't a team player if you didn't abide by the rules if you didn't fit in you weren't going to survive there for very long and if you couldn't sustain a position in a newspaper you were you were doomed as a journalist you could maybe publish your own little newsletter and put it out somewhere and hope a few people would read it we're in a totally different world now where you can create your own readerships you hope we have platforms like substack where you can send out to potentially tens or hundreds of thousands of readers we have social media where you can develop your own followings and we have a world where people can share information almost instantly so there's the the platforms and obviously Julian Assange WikiLeaks were at the very forefront of developing those platforms to make our societies much more transparent the problem here is how where is the support for those kinds of ventures where's the support for Julian Assange where's the support for WikiLeaks if we allow our society to become to wield secret power veiled from us then then young journalists won't have that kind of support this is why it's so important that we stand up and make a noise about what's going on to Julian because if we don't other journalists will get the signal that they're in danger should they try and follow his path should they try and echo what he's tried to do it will be too dangerous so the responsibility isn't on those journalists really it's on us as a society to start to prioritise greater transparency to uphold the kind of journalism support the kind of journalism that is prepared to take the risk on when people get isolated when they're when they're attacked in cases like Julian and Craig here when they come up against the law that we make a noise about it we shout we scream and journalists also need to be doing that as I said in my talk so that's we can't have a transparent society we can't expect journalists to break ranks and say things against power if there isn't a wider support for that to happen if people are just going to keep their heads down keep quiet then no journalists is going to do it so the message isn't really for the journalists it's for us we've got to support that kind of journalism we've got to rally behind people when they're being victimised and persecuted and show that we care and that it's important to us so it's a lesson for all of us to start making a noise as much noise as we can think that's a lesson yes I definitely agree there is hope and you know you and I would like also to say to journalists fight fight because it's worth I mean I had to leave my the major newspaper and I had to leave my the major newspaper La Repubblica the Italian Daily Repubblica and I had very little hope of finding another job as a journalist but I did I did and I saw my income collapsing which is not a good thing but I would do it again to do my job absolutely would do it again and compared to what Julian Assange has experienced I have experienced nothing I have experienced intimidation some intimidation yes but many of you have seen I have seen I have seen I have seen I have seen I have seen I have seen I have seen yes but not death threat for example and I had been advised back in 2011 after the big revelation on the cables of young warlogs, warlogs cables, one time of documents well why you risk your reputation for them you got your scoops from them drop them because it will close many doors to you and it was true it did close many doors professional but absolutely was worth so to a young journalist I would say do it because it is definitely worth absolutely and I just want to reply to the question on the young people yes I noticed there are many we need the young people many of people have seen the darkness and they see the dark days coming again with the return of authoritarianism with the destruction of free press so they are the first to be alarmed but I noticed that when I when I explained to the young people what this case is about they need to understand what is at stake so I am not pessimistic I would say Thank you Stefania Craig final words quite not to make that thank you and reply to the questions the first question about not allowing the state of my corporate media to frame the language and to put us on the defensive I think that's a very good point it was occurring to me Julian is of course now charged to under the espionage act I haven't yet heard the BBC refer to him as a spy but maybe that's coming but you're right we should be careful and we should exactly I'm a Chelsea Manning as a hero and a hero who blew the whistle on crime and we should be entirely positive on that on the involvement of young people I think the forms of social interaction are changing none of us die in the same society we were born into because society changes as it goes along and I think in the UK it is increasingly unlikely to get younger people out of this kind of public meeting interesting I did a tour of Germany with Niels here before Christmas for a month and there the audiences were definitely younger than you get in the UK but when we did the hands around parliament demonstration where we went across both bridges and both sides of parliament I was delighted that the number of young people on that younger people were definitely in the majority on that so it depends the kind of activity and what you're doing it's not that young people aren't interested or aren't involved it's just that attending this kind of public meeting is not the current generation's method of doing politics there's no point being nostalgic for it we have to accept that the way society has gone but to conclude I think the gentleman who said we all face a question of what would we have done in the 1930s would we have stood out from the crowd I think with theism of speech it is coming to that situation Julian certainly is jailed for nothing more than standing up against war crimes and for telling the truth I myself lost my job for blowing the whistle on torture an extraordinary rendition and I didn't ever think when I joined a civil service that I would face the dilemma of what will I do if my government starts torturing people but society unfortunately has slipped away on an increasingly illybil, dangerous and increasingly totalitarian certainly authoritarian path in the last couple of decades and there's no sign of it getting better and we have to bring that alarm bell very strongly and persuade more and more people that they have to stand up in the way that Julian has done I'd like to now invite John Jones to bring a message from the both as a journalist but also in his capacity from Norway thank you Deepa I have some good news for you and greetings from Norway a year ago we gathered in a church like this a year ago we gathered in a church like this with a jazz concert in combination with good voices like John Shipton and Christine from WikiLeaks and after that the smearing of Julian has stopped in Norway the leading broadcasters are actually speaking nicely of him which is a shock to me but it's great it's possible to turn the tide I have greetings from you maybe I should say that I think that church concert was headed by the set julien free campaign together with Pen Norway because it's a rather good group I have two greetings from you to you from Norway one from Professor Mott's underness you might know him as the former chief or chair of the UN working group on arbitrary detention and Mott says Dear Julian we will forever be grateful for what you have done and still do and what you represent together with WikiLeaks your work touches on and upholds the very essence of what our civilization and society's yes are very alive rest upon justice and a legal system we can all have confidence in your contribution cannot be overestimated that was Mott's the second comes from a leading in an icon of free speech in Norway a publisher called William Nygår was almost killed after he published the satanic verses in Norwegian he survived the bullets but he says Dear Julian and friends gathered here this evening justice will prevail the British and the US authorities will have to let you out we say justice will prevail thank you thank you John and before our final contribution which is the award to Julian which Eileen is going to introduce and Jeremy is going to present and Craig is kindly going to accept on behalf of Julian as a friend I want to introduce two other people in the room we have our picket artist sitting at the front she's been doing little sketches of those at the table and around there she has an exhibition across the road for those of you supporting the RMT and the other the nurses pickets so please do take the details from Inga and please visit the wonderful art that she has displayed I'd also like to thank the people who make this event possible firstly the stewards from the JADC who came in early set everything up organized everything and provided the wonderful cakes as well thank you all for what you do and for standing outside Belmarsh in the cold, in the wet standing in Piccadilly standing in other places and for those around the world in the various free Assange groups who are taking action to stand up for democracy human rights and press freedom thank you also to the the donors who provided me with the money to book this hall and to buy the copies of the books that some of which you see at the door so I'm very grateful to you I'll now hand over to Eileen Chubb who has a wonderful history of whistleblowing as one of the original Bupa7 care home whistleblowers and who now through her organization and the work of so many whistleblowers brings together the best in society to allow us to know what happens behind closed doors to our friends in prison to our friends in care homes you know when these are the whistleblowers who speak up in national security cases these are the whistleblowers who speak up when there is a problem with with those we care about wherever it may be so solidarity to all the whistleblowers that I lean over to you and if you would take my place please can I just say amazing speakers and thank you to everyone who's organized this tonight it's been really really informative the Gavin McFadgin award is aimed at improving free press a really truly independent media that stands up for truth and informs us what's going on and the idea of the award in memory of Gavin is to take a stand and try to say this is the way journalists should report this is the way it should be done and to try to make it the norm why is a free press so important we recently called for evidence from whistleblowers and other witnesses who had at considerable risk to themselves reported abuse and other wrongdoing to the relevant authorities such as regulators we knew people were being failed by these authorities and we expected hundreds of witness statements that deadline has been extended because the evidence continues to flood in and at the last count we had received over 23,000 accounts of people being failed by police, regulators safeguarding where do you go when the established authorities are failing on this scale journalists are not the regulator of last resort they are often the only hope of getting wrongdoing exposed and such wrongdoing one of our whistleblowers from probation this week in the news two people killed five people in fact were killed and one young girl raped and murdered on a driveway walking home those offenders had been downgraded from high risk to medium risk one of our whistleblowers in Liverpool lost her job for reporting exactly that risk so every day we see the consequences behind every whistleblower there are hundreds and sometimes thousands of lives at risk of serious harm avoidable death and horrendous abuse may there always be whistleblowers and journalists with the courage to publish the truth because we've never needed them more we all know that journalists have to protect their sources but the whistleblowers who vote in the Gavin McFadgen award believe that duty of care runs both ways the Gavin McFadgen award is the only award in the world where whistleblowers vote for journalists who have made a real difference by exposing wrongdoing corruption and human rights abuses whistleblowers are the toughest crowd so to get their votes you have to be simply extraordinary before I go into the special category awards that we are here to present tonight I'd just like to pay tribute to a young journalist whose work has won the Gavin McFadgen award this year computer weekly a tiny little publication and a young journalist called Carl Flinders whose tireless work exposed the horizon post office scandal the biggest miscarriage of justice in the UK legal history people would still be jailed today if it were not for this young journalist so there is hope and every year we see excellence this year whistleblowers also voted for one special category winner the journalist whose work and case most exemplifies the importance of a free press we're honoured to have Jeremy Corbyn here to present this award thank you thank you very much just to say I've just come from Adalante the Latin American annual conference which we held at the Hamilton House the National Education Union place and there were colleagues there from Ecuador who were genuinely very supportive of Julian Assange and we expressed our support for Julian that conference which is overwhelming well received by everybody there and indeed his cause is supported by a number of very important leaders across Latin America particularly President Lopez Obrador in Mexico Lula in Brazil and others they're all making the case to the US to stop the appeal and so that Julian Assange can be freed and so our campaign goes on everywhere we can raise it I'm very proud to present this award Gavin McFudden Award 2022 special category the journalist whose work most exemplifies the importance of a free press Julian Assange sadly Julian cannot be here to receive it but we had a wonderful event in Strasbourg this week where we had a very long session of speeches music and presentations about Julian Assange and the high point of the evening was when Julian came on the phone to the meeting, he didn't say anything he was just on the phone and so he heard our applause and so as I present this to Craig very grateful to Craig for receiving it on his behalf can we just have a thunderous round of applause so Julian can hear it even behind those Tony Walls of Belmarsh Thank you, if I can thank Jeremy very much on behalf of Julian there couldn't be a better winner than Julian and there couldn't be a better person to present the award than Jeremy Jeremy's contribution to freedom and equality over many many decades is something which we're very very proud to be associated with so thank you very much Jeremy Thank you It's also even though only as a proxy it's rather nice for me to have an award with Gavin on it I remember after one evening with Julian in the Ecuadorian Embassy Nadir and I had stayed too late and probably drunk too much to get home to Ramsgate so we lived at the time and Gavin offered us to go and stay with him at his home with his lovely wife and he took us there and he disappeared up to bed and he said you can sleep on the couch in the study we wandered into the study where we could see no couch but there was a huge pile of books and manuscripts so we dug into it like an archaeological dig for some time and eventually a couch appeared underneath it all where we spent the night so I have fondest memories of Gavin I'm delighted this prize is named in memory of him and thank you all so much for being here today thank you and we will end as we started with the wonderful choir choir please do join us and thank you very much for being here just a reminder to those watching on the live stream please stay online so you can see the art as it is walked through the room those who are here please feel free to look at the art as you walk around please look at the books at the back and please don't forget to collect the memento in aid of the exhibition in the summer shall I get this to you pleased to have been part of this and thanks everybody who have spoken it's been wonderful to be part of this song which is our second song is called legal illegal it was written by Ewan McColl in 1977 sung by him and Peggy Sieger and there have been cover versions by others the song reflects on the fact that in the justice system of many countries small crimes by ordinary people are illegal whereas similar but much bigger crimes by the very wealthy by corporations or by governments are legal and I've just lost but I'll try and remember the last bit which is we're going to sing a version with a new verse written by Ross to reflect Julian's situation and the trial that's described in Mills Meltzer's book we're really proud of Ross who's one of our members for writing this excellent verse which is the last verse this five verse version thank you it's illegal to rip off a payroll it's illegal to hold up a train but it's illegal to rip off a million or two that comes from the labor that other folks do to blunder the many only half of the few is a thing that is perfectly legal if you fashion a bombing the kitchen you're guilty of breaking the law but a bloody great nuclear plant is okay the plutonium process is hastens the day when there's time if the line may be blasted away nonetheless it is perfectly legal if your grandmother wishes to end it it's illegal to poison her tea but poison the rivers the seas and the skies and poison the minds of the nations with lies if it's done in the interest of free enterprise then it's proper and perfectly legal to report from the front line is legal embedded with our voice out there but to find out the truth about crimes of our side and share it to counter the government lies could lead to a show trial and decorate inside but to ever set truth was illegal to find out the truth about crimes of our side and share it to counter the government lies could lead to a show trial and decorate inside if you are cut out for street action join us it would be a pleasure for our members to grow he's just fucking what this yes okay so hi everybody come along and let's have a look at this exhibition so where is it starting from right so here we are with Selbrie 2014 this is a statue of liberty should move over now to the next one what this beautiful picture as well with a heart and some swan wings this is actually a really nice picture to be honest in terms of how it's coming out of the man's body I'm actually feeling this one next one this is a church now to have a good look at what the pictures are saying so let's go around so here's another one from Selbrie as well and so this is Guantanamo Bay prisoners on their knees with the officers around them this is a really hard hitting one to be honest in terms of how the drawing is set out and this picture was actually done in 2012 of a prisoner's feet shackled with chains and here we have a prisoner actually being tortured so this is a very very hard hitting one and shows exactly what took place during those times in the prison and here we have a prisoner that's been shackled and got his head covered so for this picture here brings truth for me really because we actually saw these pictures exposed in newspapers during New York War so this is a perfect example of what took place out there so as we move along around the rest of the church I'm enjoying me over here this is a prisoner looking outside with a small little window in terms of their actually an elderly person holding a stick so this just goes to show what lengths the prison guards went to by resting people who were elderly as well this is just some of the tactics that the US and the British obviously used against the prisoners as well here we have a dog barking at a prisoner whose face is covered up so just imagine how these prisoners must have felt going through this what impacts that it has on them even now the exhibition is actually taking place in May we haven't had a date confirmed yet as the event needs to be fundraised for and then we can officially find out the date that is going to be taking place but so far all we know is that it's going to be in the summer and it's going to be in May but when the details do come out we will be sure to share the links around and obviously promote the event so make sure you have a look out for it in May


Thank you My name is Claudia Reinhardt. I'm from Germany. I'm living in Berlin and I'm teaching in Norway as well. So I live in Norway part-time as well and I work there as a associate professor at the Academy in Bergen Yeah This photo which you can see here and which is shown in the exhibition as well is called Sylvia and It's it's one photograph out of ten stage Photographed from the series called killing me softly to this art. I I Recreated suicide of female artist by imagining the very last moment and pictured myself in the roles of these personalities and This one Sylvia refers to Sylvia Blas Which I think is Well known in in the US I all Started with Sarah Kane, which is this one. It's it's called Sarah And Sarah Kane committed suicide in 99. I Was very shocked when I was reading about her suicide and I was very Sad as well as well because I just discovered her writings and I was very Into her work So I couldn't get this this Sadness out of my head and and I noticed that That there are quite many writers and Artists who committed suicide. So this was a trigger. So to say that I started to to deal with this female artists and I was going into biographies and In the work of Yeah, of artists who committed suicide and What what I was interested in and I was and what I was thinking of Was if there is any connection to to these artists why in a way I of course I was thinking why did they committed suicide, but of course it was not Possible and in the end I I don't think that I was really looking for this answer But I was looking for yeah, is there something they have in common and And I I Think I can yeah, they have something in common It's difficult to explain in few sentence and I don't want to do that But that was the reason why why I I did the whole series and And if if you if you watch the Images and the book I made I think you can follow and you can Find this connection these artists have but I should go on with my notes and otherwise I talked too much Yeah, I just go on and tell Some some facts and details about these artists This is Anne Sexton and Sexton committed suicide in 1974 and She was an American poet and she discovered writing as a way to save her own life that was that that was what she was saying about herself or her work and Later on when she Was already famous She took her mother's fur coat went into the garage sat down in her car and left the engine running and This this story about That she was wearing the fur of her mother I was reading in a book and I don't know if this is true, but I found of course many Stories about how how they commit suicide and and like this this legends days always Material you can find about their deaths and it's and I don't know if it's true But sometimes I use it and sometimes not in this and in this case. I thought This is a nice picture in a way This is Diane Diane Abbas. She lived from 90 from 1923 to 1971 she was an American photographer and She slit her wrist in the bathroom of her studio There is a persistent legend that she photographed her own death Which I also can't prove but I thought this is interesting idea as well and This is the only photo I Photographed with time How do you say self-timer in the other photos? I have a assistant who is Putting the trigger, but of course the scenery I am I'm staging and Putting everything arranging everything This is Ingeborg. Ingeborg Bachmann She lived from 1926 to 73 Austrian writer and she burnt to death in her bed after falling asleep with a cigarette It's not known to this day whether it was an act of suicide or a tragic accident This is Unika Unika Tzüren She lived from 1916 to 1970 German writer and anagram Anagram poet Through herself out of the window of her company on Hans Belmas apartment after being released from a mental hospital This is Adelheid Adelheid Du Vanell She lived from 1936 to 1994 she was a Swiss writer and and she put She took poison and was going in the forest and Was actually freezing to death in a summer night. This is really strange, but it's true This is Clara Imava Clara Imava is the only Character I who is not an artist I have in in the series But I picked her because when I was researching and for this for this matter Yeah, I my sister actually she told me do you know Clara Imava and I didn't so but then I read her Biography and that was very interesting because yeah, she belongs in in in this series. She was Scientist Living yeah in the yeah, I mean she was born in 87 and she died in 1915. So she was one of the first Women in Germany who did her doctor in in Chemie chem chemie chemistry And her husband Fritz Haber as well. He's very well known as as Scientist and because he invented the poison gas which was used in the first world war and and Clara Imava was totally against his investigation and in his involvement in in this war and She killed herself with his gun in in their garden in Berlin as a protest. I Suppose or I'm sure but they the family they destroyed all her letters where she was complaining and and and Describing her Anger against this action of her husband, but they destroyed and burned all her letters This is Karin Karin Boyer She lived from 1941 and she was a Swedish writer. She wrote poems and two novels She fell in love with the female German writer with whom she experienced the rise of the Nazis in Germany and Killed herself with poison on a wooded hilltop with a valley of you. This is I Didn't know this writer before I started with the series and my students told me about her and When I was researching as well, there are not so many her poems are all not translated and There's there are only two novels translated in Germany, but very badly. I think but I could get it that she is a great or was a great writer and very interesting Biography and this image I Created this image because when I was looking for material of her I Discovered a web page made by her brother who's now 80 or 90 years old and it was it was really Nice it was in the beginning when when you open when you come on the on the web page. It said that She That she was going to her favorite spot where she lived and that she took sit down on an on a tree to poison and a Child was coming along to bring her flowers because this child was looking for her and This child knew where her favorite spot was and was going to her. It's also a legend, but I thought this is a really beautiful Picture again and the last one. It's the only male Artist I have in a series. It's it's called Pierre and refers to Pierre Molinier I Have him in this in a series because I I'm I'm a Fan of Pierre Molinier like I'm a fan of all these Artists I have in a series. It's a homage in a way and Yeah, and PM Molinier was dressing up as a woman usually and was doing self portraits very beautiful black and white collages with him and with mask and Wigs and very fantastic and And he committed suicide because he was old or he was thinking he's old. I mean he was 70 and he had Prostata cancer Yeah, and so he he left a good buy letter saying I'm bored to death. I don't want to live anymore so Yeah, that's That's a whole series and I did a book with all these images and Texts about all these artists and these texts are written by ten female Ossos which I Have a close relationship with their friends or Or we became friends during this work and Yeah so There are like more information about these Artists, yeah, I think that's all


What's up guys, Michael with Jaspy's doing a quick recap for our Dynasty mixer, Random Team number 7. This break was one box of 2022 Dynasty and one box of 2020, sorry, Top Scrum Sapphire update series. This was done auction style on Fanatics Live. Here's the list. And again, just two boxes, so a very quick recap, had a Nico Horner rookie, a Andy Burns 9 of 10 purple, a Jake Fraley rookie auto, and then the Dynasty hit was Spencer Torkelsson, rookie patch and autograph 2 of 10 for the Tigers. Beautiful card there, nice patch, probably, I think also from their City Connect jerseys, but very very nice there. So that's it, thank you to everyone who got into the break, thank you guys for watching and I'll see you guys in the next one, bye guys.


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