Here with us, Stefania Maurizzi from Ilfato Quotidano, she's an investigative journalist and Nils Menzer, who's the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and they are here tonight to dissect the Julian Assange and WikiLeaks case and so the stage is yours. Yes, thank you. Absolutely, we are very lucky to have the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Menzer tonight, so I will have many questions, but I expect questions for you and I hope you will have many questions for us as well. So let's start Nils about this case because I suppose you have hundreds of cases every year and why you focus on this with many cases of serious torture and all sorts of serious human rights violations. Well thanks Stefania for the question because I think that's what many people ask themselves, how are you focusing on a person who's locked up or was locked up at the time in an embassy with a cat on the skateboard, how can it be torture, right? And to be honest with you, that's what I thought in the beginning because you're right, I received 10 to 15 requests of individuals either by the victims themselves that have been tortured or exposed to a risk of torture or their lawyers and their family members or NGOs, so I get about 15 cases per day on my desk and I can do maybe one. So I really have to choose quite quickly and I remember I was writing a report for the United Nations in December 2018 so that would have been actually three years ago and I had this little message coming up on my screen saying Julian Assange's lawyers are asking for your protection and I immediately have this emotional reaction of oh no not this one, isn't this this hacker and rapist and you know a traitor and I'm not going to you know be manipulated by this guy and so I swapped it off my screen and I continued working on my report and it took me three months until I actually I got contacted again by his lawyers in March 2019 about a month before he was expelled from the embassy and they sent me some medical reports from an independent doctor a US doctor who was specialized in examining torture victims who had visited Guantanamo and so on and she had visited him in the embassy not as an Assange activist at all and she and she came to the conclusion in that medical opinion that the convention against torture was being violated that his living conditions were inhumane and I thought if if a person like this comes to that conclusion I'd probably better have a look at this case. Sorry first of all let's name her because she's very authoritative. Yeah it's Sandra Crosby is her name so she's one of the first doctors who independent doctors who visited Guantanamo and really someone who is very highly regarded and impartial so I looked at this but I also received some other evidence and you know Stefania you had a very important role in making that available through your freedom of information litigation where you received the release of some of the email correspondence between the Swedish prosecution service and the UK prosecution service because at the basis of the Assange case in the beginning was where these allegations of rape in Sweden and so on and those those these correspondence really cast some doubt on the legitimacy of this prosecution which I had never doubted before and so I started realizing that I had a lot of prejudice against Assange but I didn't really know what the evidence was and the more I looked into this case the more I saw that it doesn't hold up there's really no evidence for this narrative and I decided well I think there's something wrong here I can't rely on the governments I can't rely on what I found in the internet just like this and so I really have to go and look at this case myself and I decided to visit Julien Assange in London I asked for permission to visit him in the embassy and as soon as I asked for permission three days later they expelled him I might have sped it up also I fear although we know today that this expulsion had been planned for months before but all of a sudden everything went really really fast they expelled him and he was arrested by the British and put in a high security prison in Belmarsh in London where I visited him about three weeks four weeks later on the 9th of May 2019 with two specialized doctors I didn't expect to find torture to be quite honest with you I expected to find a man who's you know a bit stressed who is in bad health because he's you know been in a room in the embassy for six years and more and that he needed some medical treatments I would make some recommendations and I was sure we're in Britain now you know he's in British hands this is a rule of law country there's going to be due process they're not going to extrad into the US and and it's fine but then what I realized is how the authorities reacted to my comments and to my requests is that they they didn't want to engage in a discussion on this case they didn't want to listen to my assessment and both of the doctors that I took with me are very specialized people one is a psychiatrist the other is the former president of the world forensic society I mean there's very established forensic doctor they've been examining torture victims for 30 years and both of them independently from each other came to the conclusion that Jury Nassan showed all the symptoms that are typical for a victim of psychological torture and psychological torture is not some kind of a light form of torture it is really extremely grave destabilization of the identity through isolation constant threat constant stress constant also confusion through arbitrariness and the defamation humiliation all these elements together are deliberately employed to to destroy a person's you know stability and identity and we could actually measure neurological damage on Jury Nassan already and cognitive impairments that were due to that constant stress and harassment that he was exposed to in the embassy already and has been exposed to since then so we came to a clear assessment this person has been tortured and when I confronted the authorities with this they basically shut down they didn't want to engage with me in a discussion and the same happened with Sweden because Sweden had contributed to this and Ecuador and the US all of these countries basically refused to engage in a dialogue with me on this and now I have to point out I'm mandated by states I mean I'm I'm the UN special rapporteur on torture I'm not an NGO person I'm not an activist I'm not a journalist I'm not an ambilitling that I think that all of this is very important but when you talk to states as someone who's been appointed by states to do exactly that to transmit allegations of torture to them you would expect them to at least engage in a dialogue and they refused and when I see when I saw that I was sure now something's wrong here and I started really investigating this case I looked deeply into the Swedish case I looked into you know the US case where we saw that the US is accusing Assange of espionage and I really started digging into this case and the more I did the more dirt came out and not on the side of Assange but on the side of the governments and that's really a long answer to your first question why did I take on this case because I felt well if if we have a case of torture in a rule of law western democracy like Sweden and Britain and as the United Nations rapporteur I cannot if I have evidence for this and I went there with two specialized doctors to look at this I mean it's consolidated I you know by law they have an obligation now to investigate this and to you know to compensate him and prosecute those who are culpable and so on there is no discussion but if democracies can afford to simply ignore this well what does this mean for our society and that was the first thing and the second thought was and by the way what does this mean for press freedom you know what does this mean and and and I've never been a press freedom specialist but I thought well here we have a person who who is being persecuted for the fact that he has this disclosed not even stolen but he's received and this disclosed published true information that proved serious crimes on the part of government officials torture murder I mean horrible stuff I mean very serious crimes if if if this becomes a crime to bring the evidence for other crimes and we see that those criminals are not being prosecuted but the the witness basically who informs the public is being prosecuted and threatened with 175 years in prison what does this mean for people like you Stefania you know who are investigative journalists and if people like you no longer can work what does this mean for all the rest of us in society what does it mean do we have a right to know what the governments are doing with the power that we give to them in a democracy with the tax money we pay to them or does it become a crime if we ask your own questions I mean this is really that's why this is so important as science is as important as any other victim of torture you know that they're all the same but the case is a precedent case that is of enormous importance for the functionality of of democracy and the rule of law absolutely absolutely you have a book which is coming out in February and this your investigation on the case I was really impressed by the chapter on collateral murder your analysis of that brutal attack on civilians and you analyze it from your point of view as an expert on human rights law I would like to ask you to to do a quick analysis for our public to explain where the work crimes are involved what are your conclusions and so on right okay I'll quickly show the book just so people can see it it comes out in February and it's true that you know in the beginning I explain my own role obviously the role of of WikiLeaks but this collateral murder video was a very important publication actually the first big publication of WikiLeaks is this video where that was recorded by a attack helicopter in Iraq a US attack helicopter it's a standard you know tele lens camera and it shows how how those those helicopters are circling over Baghdad and and we see people walking in the streets and and then you can hear the radio communication and and the helicopters basically report that we have you know several people with AK-47s which is a form of an automatic rifle like Kalashnikov and and they they ask for permission to fire and then but on on the image we cannot see armed people really in the beginning to be to admit the truth we can see two people in a group of about 20 who might be carrying a weapon but then also we have to know that at the time in 2007 when this was recorded in Iraq in Baghdad the US occupying forces had authorized the Iraqi population to own Kalashnikov's and to carry them you know to keep them at home especially to protect themselves from the looting because when after the invasion of the British and the the US the rule of law broke down in in Iraq and and they needed people to be able to defend themselves they were actually allowed to carry that type of weapon and so and so they received permission to fire and then what we can see is that that a group of about 10 people is just being massacred they're in civilian clothing they're they're walking relaxed on the street so they're clearly not preparing any any attack or something we know that there is some some US soldiers from the radio communication we can tell that there's some US soldiers on the ground somewhere close to there but nobody is is preparing an attack you know and and so we see how these 10 people are being massacred and then obviously those we hear those nasty comments by soldiers like you know good shooting and you see these bloody bastards and these these types of remarks but the most troubling thing is that then we have the the helicopter makes a couple of circles and and they report what they see on the ground all that the dead bodies and then some of the wounded people who are crawling around and from the conversations we understand that the soldiers know that it's prohibited to attack wounded people and I want to you know I've been a law of armed conflict expert on the use of force for the international committee of the Red Cross I've been teaching this at university level for more than 10 years I've analyzed hundreds of of combat operations as an expert so I can easily see that these soldiers are aware that they cannot lawfully attack those wounded people and that also you in the law of war you cannot attack people who rescue the wounded as long as they're not fighting themselves and then we see a minibus coming with civilians trying to rescue this man and that this man we're talking about is a wounded journalist is a Reuters journalist who was wounded in that attack and the soldiers the US soldiers asked for permission to fire on these people and they receive permission and then they they basically you know massacre the wounded person and the rescuers and with a machine gun and and and there's even in the minibus the two the two children of the driver they're they're gravely wounded so I mean all of this this is a clear war crime when you deliberately attack a wounded person who's no longer participating in fighting or rescue personnel that's only trying to rescue someone that is without any question a war crime in the first scene I think we have to be fair that you know these helicopters are circling in about one and a half miles distance the video we see is recorded by a tele tele objective lens so the soldiers are not that close when they look out of the window they cannot see any details it's too far away so they have to rely exclusively on that picture and we also have to be fair that they can see this picture only once in real time and they have to decide immediately they cannot like us rewind it a hundred times and watch it again from the armchair so all of this being said though you know the first attack I think in the best case it's a very sloppy mistake and I don't you know I think it's already it crosses the line to a war crime but this would be for a court to decide but the second attack where the attack a clearly wounded person and from the conversations we we know that the soldiers know that you know they say okay he's wounded and and and and then they're saying oh now someone is coming to pick them up and picking up the weapons can be fire the law of of war is very clear this is absolutely prohibited and what happened there is is a clear war crime and the scandal is that everybody knows that the soldiers knew that I mean the Department of Defense in the US knew that the US government knew that the public knows it I mean it's obvious when you watch the film but it's and we have video evidence but nobody has ever been prosecuted for that that's the first scandal the second scandal is let me tell you why no one has prosecuted why there was no international criminal court investigation nothing well because the US is not party to the ICC treaty of course they have not you know they have made sure that no one can prosecute them for war crimes and also now legally any country in the world could and not even could but would have to prosecute these people as soon as they're on their territory because war crimes are so-called universal jurisdiction crimes which means if I commit a war crime anywhere in the world no matter what nationality I am no matter where I am the country where I am has to arrest me and to prosecute me or to extradite me to a country that will prosecute me that's what the Geneva Conventions say that's what the international criminal law says and not only the ICC treaty but actually even the Geneva Conventions that the that the US has have ratified so so but the reason is clear it's a political reason because no one dares to prosecute the US soldier if the US doesn't do it now to me the most troubling thing is that the US doesn't do it because it's in their interest to prosecute you know people who violate the law of war because we know that the you know the discipline in an army diminishes very quickly when you tolerate people committing war crimes and so it's very very important for I mean even for just the hygiene of the armed forces that they prosecute these things now not to say that you know for the humanitarian reasons and the human rights of these people who have the murder that their families that don't receive compensation and and then it also means that these types of operations proliferate you know if you don't stop it like this this becomes the normal modus operandi and that's exactly what many veterans of the iraq war have said that this is not collateral murder is not an exception this was the standard procedure this happened every day in that period and so that's really a major scandal but you know the second thing I want to say is the even you know bigger scandal is some people are being prosecuted and and that's the whistleblower that actually leaked this information and and the the journalist who published it um so so that is really turning the world of justice upside down when murderers are walking free and the witness you know who witnessed the murderer brings the with 175 years in prison that's enormous that's a bit that's more than any war criminal in the hake has ever received that's what we're looking at and and you know when you're asking well you know what what is assange actually being accused of when you look at the indictment it's all about receiving this type of information and publishing this type of information that's what I mean you tell me but that's what an investigative journalist does no absolutely absolutely this is what we do on a regular on a daily basis yeah and so and so now if i ask you an honest question stefania if i gave you today a usb stick with collateral murder video number two and and another 250 000 diplomatic cables would you publish them i mean 10 years ago you probably would have because at the time even the new york times the guardian at the spiegel and limon and everybody you know wanted to co-publish this together with assange but today they're not even you know they're not even really reporting on what's happening here and would you know if i ask you do you feel intimidated by what's happening to assange would you feel comfortable publishing these things today i i i do feel really intimidated i think i would approach this with serious serious concern of not being protected by anything at the end of the day because i have seen in the last 13 years which have been covering and investigating this case that julian assange and the wicked externalists that have tried everything they have tried to use the laws they have tried to you to ask for asylum they have tried to look for protection by the by the media community they have tried everything and with the exception of the un authorities the un special reporter on torture and the un a working group on arbitrary detention they have received no no protection whatsoever so i would be terrified honestly yes and i think that's i think this is the type of question we have to ask ourselves it's not about will assange be extradited or not yes it's important but it's already working you see the example has already been set for the last 10 years this man has not been free he's been underrun from a country that's accusing him for telling the truth about its crimes that's really what's happening here because nothing else that he's accused of has been proven and they they've tried hard they've invested millions in trying to create a narrative but everything else from you know rape to hacking to you know treason all these things there is no that there's no proof whatsoever so all of this is constructed to push him into a corner but and also to intimidate people like you and i think that's that's what we have to understand that's the effect of this yes it's an assange and his health and his person and that's important for the individual but my point of this being a general in our case of general importance is proven by your reaction and you i know are one of the more courageous investigative journalists and you've been fighting you know those those the the secrecy for very long through your foil litigation that has been so valuable in producing you know evidence and and we know that you know a lot of key evidence is still being kept secret by these states and so that's what we're risking to lose this access to the truth that is so essential for for democracy absolutely definitely and you know we we know that it's precisely what they want and that's why we we had to fight hard because it's it's about the society we want and if we allow to go out to if we allow them to go ahead with this persecution with this extradition they will it would be the end of the press freedom and the it would be end of of of investigative journalism and the right of the public to know it's not just about us it's not just about the investigative journalists it's about the public right to know i mean and i think it's important you know i know too many people this might sound alarmist you know oh this is exaggerated oh come on this is just our sound and he's going to prosecute and everything's going to be fine no you know when you look in history that's exactly how powerful states have behaved and dictators and you know before creating dictatorships you know you take someone and you you you destroy their reputation you accuse them of you know stupid things and and or even serious crimes you know but but they cannot be proven and you destroy their reputation and then when when when the whole public is convinced that you know this is a bad guy then you set an example to him on you know press freedom but nobody cares about him because i think it's just him and nobody likes him because of his reputation has been destroyed but the problem is the precedent case can be applied to anybody afterwards and that's exactly what they're trying to do and i think it's very very important that we are aware of this it's not whether you like or dislike ascent it's whether you like or dislike the rights that he has and that you have and that everybody else has which is the right of freedom of expression and that's not just the freedom of expression is not just the right to say anything you want and think anything you want but also to receive that information that's the public has a right under the freedom of expression to hear and to read and to see the evidence of government misconduct and that's what they're trying to suppress now if you say this is a conspiracy theory look it's very it's very obvious the torture the murder of civilians of journalists or collateral murder and other documents has been proven it's not something that the government has said it's not true no they have never they have never claimed that anything is not true that vicki leeks has has has proven so actually by law those officials have to be prosecuted and they should spend you know many years in prison some of them so but they will say but i received orders you know from up and it goes higher up and the chain of responsibility doesn't end in the attack helicopter it ends somewhere in a government building you know in a nice little office with or a big office rather with thick carpets and that's what they're afraid of because the commander is responsible for this so that's why they cut this and they cut this and they intimidate everybody and they criminalize it's basically they say reclassify the information and if you publish it you'll be punished and reclassified for reasons of national security but that's not true they're classifying it for their own impunity that's what they want to protect and it's natural you know if you if you accuse someone of murder in court and you allow him to classify all the evidence against him and to make it a crime to disclose it he will do it for sure so let's be realistic you know governments are not good or bad they're just normal human beings and if they make a mistake they want to cover it up like everybody else so that's the natural behavior that's why we really have to insist on transparency for the powerful you know we have to insist on oversight on the separation of power and that it is we have to insist that it be treated as a serious crime to circumvent these checks and balances because it threatens the very core of our society of our democracy and of our civil liberties and when you look at the legal proceedings that Assange has been exposed to I'm not going to bore you with a lot of legal technicalities but I've really investigated every single legal proceeding from the Swedish accusations or you know allegations of sexual misconduct where I was able to read original documents because I do speak Swedish and and you know luckily I had all those those documents that that you also better handle through the FOIA litigation and and I can I don't know what happened between Assange and these women but what I do know is that the government in Sweden never cared about that they clearly from the beginning wanted to create a rape narrative and maintain it and to avoid you know him getting a chance a fair day in court to actually deal with this the narrative that he abated these accusations that he was hiding in the embassy because of the sexual allegations is false he offered to come to Sweden he wanted to to testify in this case but he was afraid that the Swedish would send him to the US without a legal proceeding as they had done with other people before and he just wanted guarantees from them and the Swedish didn't want to give those guarantees which is really something that I can tell from international experience that's a warning if if the country doesn't want to give you those guarantees you better not go there so he was he was right not to go and and they really abused those legal institutions to keep him in limbo you know suspected of rape but unable to defend himself and so his reputation suffered because of that and and then he continued obviously with with you know the economic pressures on Ecuador once they had a new president Moreno the US puts Ecuador under pressure and we have written evidence of congress writing to the president of Ecuador saying look we would be happy to support you economically and to you know to help you bring up you know country that the country situation economic situation to financially you know to support you but there is one not several there's one problem and that's the situation of Assange and we need him to be handed over so we can start helping you so that we have a lecture of of October 2018 of US Congress to president Moreno and from then on it was clear and Moreno was working together with the British and the and the US to to expel him from the embassy so that was and that was done without any rule of law proceeding you know he had official asylum and it was just taken from him along with his nationality he had no right to access a court to have a lawyer defending him it was just from one hour to the other he was expelled and the UK behaved just the same way when you think the UK is the quintessential rule of law country which I can you know this was my conviction as a professor in the UK University and then you see that we have a judge who is insulting him publicly in a court hearing where Assange had said nothing except I plead not guilty and then we have another judge who's in charge for the first couple of months for the extradition procedure and her husband had been exposed by WikiLeaks I mean it's a there's a conflict of interest it's just you know even it's a perception of bias that you cannot afford in in a democracy and then we have you know him being put in a high security prison although he's not serving a sentence for two years he's been in Belmarsh he's not serving a sentence he's just being held there in extradition detention and normally people should be allowed to work and to be with their family and maybe they have an ankle brace that or they think Assange's case because he has you know salt asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy before maybe they put him in house arrest like they did with Pinochet but you will never there's no legal basis to put someone in a high security prison they do this with him because they want to silence him because they want to intimidate you journalists that's the reason and you know when you see this happening may I stop you and ask you something very very serious like the the CIA attempt to kidnap or poison him which is I mean which receives so little consideration if we I mean I was really upset about realizing how little it was considered in the legal process in the absolutely we've had we've had indicators before we've had that the security company that was working for the Ecuadorian embassy to guard the Ecuadorian embassy UC global was actually behind the back of the Ecuadorian government cooperating with the CIA and and you know streaming video feeds from from surveillance cameras from the embassy to to the CIA 24 7 but not only that we also had indicators before a former employees of that company's you know testifying in court that that you know there were assassination plans for for you know against asand by the CIA and this was then confirmed also by this yahoo you know disclosure in september this year where more than 13 agents or former agents of the CIA allegedly confirmed that that there were plans to kidnap or asand to you know disappear him in a black site or even to assassinate him was considered at least but then found to be too dangerous but the plan was to poison him now I mean I'll just take another case Navalny right that everybody knows you know and says that that allegedly the the Russian government tried to poison him well that's what we're talking about but in you know it's the same thing it's just that in our own case and rightly so you know everybody is is is protesting and you know of the western governments are very courageously you know imposing sanctions and so on but when the same thing is being planned by the CIA against asand nobody speaks out and that's that's what I think you know this kind of hypocrisy that we have in in western governments is just so disappointing it's scandalous because it it threatens the foundations of what our societies are and if someone is committed a crime yes arrest him try him you know bring the evidence or acquit him but that's that's the end of the story but they don't know what to accuse him of because he hasn't committed any crime so they invent these stupid stories you know he's not feeding his cat and he's playing football in the embassy and all these stupid headlines that you see I mean the bbc you know I mean they're reporting on these types of things but they're they're not you know considered enough about their own profession as journalists to report on what's actually happening here that this is about criminalizing investigative journalists this should be a really at the heart of of the mission of you know a bbc or a new york times to to to be very very outspoken about this and I'm convinced that if the mainstream media the main outlets in the anglo-saxon world let's say the new york times the washington post the guardian and the bbc if they together deliberately launched an you know an effort to condemn this persecution on their front pages and the main use our you know for one week straight this would be finished because the government has nothing in their hands in terms of proof all they can do is is orchestrate a secret trial in alexandria the espionage court where they tape the doors and lock the windows and nobody is allowed to witness what's going on and then they condemn him for something and sentence him to 175 years in prison and nobody even the defense council doesn't have access to the evidence i mean that's that's a show try that's not a rule of law proceeding and i think the societies in the west and around the world but they're talking about western democracies now they deserve you know governments and and judiciaries that that respect those those principles and respect the law and it's really very worrying that's why i put my whole professional weight and personal credibility into this case because i think this is about our rights it's about you know it's about the rights of our children to know what what their governments are doing with the money and the power that they give to the governments and if if if we allow it to become a crime to tell the truth we will be living in a territory that's not exaggerated absolutely i mean we we really it is about something we really care about we we realize that this this case crucial and we cannot lose it we absolutely don't want to lose it needs let me ask you one last question then we will ask for the public asking question to us this case is about Julian Assange of course and it is all about the wikileaks journalists because they had a three species he is for now he is in prison but they will be the next let's mention Sarah Harrison for example the former wikileaks journalist who flew to Hong Kong to help Edward Snowden or many many others Christy Raphson Joseph Farrell I had a freedom of information case in the UK and it is about these three wikileaks journalists former and current wikileaks journalists and Scott Legarde is doing whatever he can to deny me access to these documents using anti-terror laws again for denying me access to these documents they we have I have been litigating this case about the wikileaks journalist and Julian Assange for over six years so what do you think is going to happen in this case now what's next well I think the first one I want to finish this case set the precedent you know with this man that most of the public still somehow despises because they have been deceived and poisoned by this narrative that has been created about him but once this is done clearly they will they will continue this is not the end of it this is the beginning of a new era where journalists will be prosecuted for telling the truth about government misconduct because then the precedent has been set and you know it's very important as we speak and as we observe this case already countries are adapting their laws to this new future we see that in Australia we see that in the UK where the the official secrets act is being you know tightened basically we see we see that well the interpretation of the espionage act in the US Sweden has just passed a law on foreign espionage where it becomes a crime when Sweden used to be the safe haven of press freedom which is why Julian Assange was in Sweden in the first place in 2010 he wanted to establish wikileaks there because it was the safe haven for press freedom Sweden has passed a law just two months ago by which from January 2023 it will be a crime in Sweden to disclose classified information that does not even threaten national security that's only prejudicial to the relations of Sweden with a different country or international organization i mean that's ridiculous i mean that's the standard is so low it's basically you know the diplomatic cables something that's just embarrassing before the relations of Sweden with Austria for example uh you know i'm just taking by random example uh it's just embarrassing that's sufficient it becomes a crime so what we have to what we have to realize is this is no states are building a system not only in the US the UK the Anglo-Saxon world throughout but also also even now the allied countries are building a system where it becomes a crime to tell the truth it's really you know high time for us to to ring the alarm bell and to stop this to insist that we have a right to know absolutely what do you expect from the legal process in the UK what do you expect the next well unfortunately i i cannot expect justice i i i was hopeful i mean i'm pessimistically hopeful if i can allow to say that that the High Court would would refuse extradition but i i sensed that exactly what happened was going to happen i said it before publicly uh and and it happened exactly as i as i presumed it would i think that uh that the UK judiciary unfortunately is unable to uh ensure respect for the law here and that they will basically waive this extradition through and they will try perhaps to extend this proceeding another year or two uh because for the US it's no there's not urgent for for Assange to be extradited if he dies in prison in the UK all the better for the US so they don't have to deal with it what they want is to set the precedent that everybody knows including yourself Stefania that this is what's going to happen to you if you ever mess with our secrets our dirty secrets and so i don't know exactly what's going to play out and how it's going to play out but in the big picture these states have not persecuted Assange for 10 years for tens of millions of dollars to let him off the hook anytime soon so the only chance he has and that's but a very real chance if public opinion changes and if the main media organizations changed our view as i said before this is going to be over this it's just like waking up from a nightmare it's going to be over but if they don't we're in for a long nightmare thank you nils let's open the question from the public yeah there are more and more questions coming and coming up here and let me start by one that's more like the beginning of the whole story too what exactly did you expect who do you exactly expect to respond in first instance when torture in uk is concerned like before you send letters you would expect kind of maybe a police showing up or something like that what would you normally expect well i if i receive allegations of torture i i i transmit them i mean the first thing that happens i look whether they're credible you know if they're if if they're not credible obviously i will i will i will try to consolidate maybe i will my team will call the person or the organization that submitted the information and try to consolidate it to make sure that it is that it is credible it doesn't have to be proven but it has to be credible if that's the case i will transmit it to the government and if it's an urgent case you know if it's about preventing torture if it's a historical case that happened 15 years ago and we're just investigating it it's it's not very urgent then we can take time i mean you know reasonable timeframe but if it's very urgent someone is about to be executed or or or or transferred or extradited then within 24 hours i can write the letter transmitted to the foreign minister of and that's your question who will act for well my my interlocutor as the un reporter is always the foreign minister of the country of the un member state through the diplomatic mission in geneva and so they will then have to distribute it to the proper authorities in their country if it's an allegation about a police station that will have to you know transmitted to the police and so on but depending on the country and and the precise allegation it will be a different authorities it could be a migration center or something like this but it's for me it's very it's a diplomatic protocol i always have to go through the foreign ministry and they will then have to initiate those investigations inside the country okay thank you very much next question would be will essentially be able to appeal to the european court of justice or how long do you estimate julian will stay in prison until the highest applicable court would publish a decision and are there any moves that can still be made by from from a lawyer's point of perspective well i'm i'm clearly i'm not his lawyer but you know and and his legal team would have to speak to the strategy so i can't not i'm not representing him obviously but clearly yes at some point he will be able as soon as the last instance decision has been you know validated by the the last instance of court in the uk then this decision can be appealed to the european court of human rights not the european court of justice that's a eu court but the european court of of human rights would be that instance they can also already now appeal to that court for preliminary protection for example to release him from prison and to house arrest or something like this but that's a bit technical but yes at the end there is a opportunity to appeal to the european court of human rights and the question of how long it will last really depends on so many factors what's the strategy of the lawyers what's the strategy of the court you know how long does the court take to decide after a hearing do they take two weeks or do they take four months it's up to them and so it's i can't you know i can't but it could last anywhere from at least one year to you know another three years or something like this i just want to add one important info about this european court of human rights because according to the documents i was able to get from the my freedom of information litigation the uk authorities were discussing with the swedish authorities an attempt to extradite juliana sanj without allowing him to uh to apply to the european court of human rights and obtaining the protective measure so it was an attempt to extradite him before he could get protective measure do you think needs that they could play the same game for the extradition to the u.s it's conceivable yes the problem is that normally a judgment of of the uh or a appeal to the european court of human rights is not does not suspend the validity of the national decision so if the supreme court of the uk allows the extradition for example and a sanj appeals that then he can still be extradited unless the european court of human rights uh uh um orders preliminary measures you know that that that suspends that the validity of that of that ruling so but they still have to decide that and obviously between the decision of the supreme court and the issuing of that preliminary protective measure there will be a few days and so in this time uh you know they can try to to send him out so it's very important that that that his lawyers react in time and perhaps even you know provisionally ask for measures like this but again you know his legal team would be better placed to to answer those questions yeah okay um thank you very much uh i hope you might answer the the next question what is the government's justification for keeping a solange in belmarsh and what happens to other high or high risk persons or persons who have a flight risk that are on remand in the uk well the government doesn't just i mean they just say here's a flight risk okay well yes there is a precedent that he's basically his look you know he's asked for asylum in the equatorial embassy so now clearly you know in my view even the whole extradition proceeding is illegitimate and illegal you know for various reasons because it concerns espionage which is a political offence and because you know it's protected by press freedom what he's done and all of these things but even if for the sake of the argument if we if we accept that this is legitimate extradition proceeding then uh then if he's a flight risk then yes you can you can secure his presence but you have to use the least harmful means to do that so you cannot take measures that are more restrictive than necessary and so if you put him in house arrest a guarded house arrest where he cannot leave because there's a guard in front of the door that's sufficient and it's even cheaper than high security prison and that's what they done with with with august of pinotchet who was i remind you not accused of journalism he was accused of having you know being responsible for murder and torture and disappearance of thousands of people as the dictator of or ex-dictator of Chile and and the british but he was an ally of of the united kingdom so but he was in the legal legally excuse me except that he was accused of serious crimes and julian assange is not he was in the same extradition kind of situation and he was allowed to spend one and a half years in a in a luxurious villa where he was visited by you know ex prime minister thatcher but but julian assange is being put in a high security prison that's he's not a violent person he's put in the toughest high security prison where you know violent criminals are being held and so that's actually that's absolutely not justifiable he could be kept in anywhere else you know where he can be supervised and he has a human right to live his family life to live his profession there is he's not serving a sentence he's not convicted of anything and and and his health is in the dire state of we have examined him two years ago and and warned that he would you know enter a downward spiral very soon and it actually happened you know he was not even able to to uh to attend his to observe his own appeals hearing in the end of october he actually had a stroke during that hearing and it's absolutely grotesque that the judges in that hearing you know decided that his health was stable enough to be extradited to the u.s based on some flimsy assurances that don't guarantee anything you know that that don't protect him from anything the next question fits right perfectly to that because it is are you confident that the u.s government won't harm assange as they promised to the contrary i'm confident they will because because there's no way he's going to get a fair trial the public narrative against assange is so overwhelming and the prejudice is so overwhelming against him he's going to be tried in alexandria the infamous espionage court where i i indicated before it's a secret trial very often the defense does not even have access to the evidence against the suspect and there is no press allowed there is no trial observation allowed uh you know there is the the the jury uh takes information from the prosecution that the defense doesn't have access to um no one has ever been acquitted in that court it's a national security court no one has ever been acquitted um and and people are being threatened with enormous prison sentences there unless they accept some kind of a plea bargain in his case it would certainly mean that he would have to spend decades in in prison um so so uh and and for this type of of suspect it's always solitary confinement which means near complete isolation no contact to the outside world no contact to other inmates no talking even to the guards uh you know very often uh the u.s authorities then say oh we have to put him on suicide watch you know for his own benefit which means they wake him up every 15 minutes at night uh he cannot sit down you know or lie down during the day and it's it's really a form of torture and i say this as an expert and i'm not the only one saying this it's my predecessors it's you know amnesty international human rights watch everybody agrees these types of conditions are a violation of the convention against torture and all treatment yeah thank you for the answer um i have one last question and that's um probably the big one um what can society do or what needs to happen to stop the extradition from happening now and what would need to happen to undo the effects of the u.s government's approach in this case like the intimidation of journalists well i guess as stefania you will have something to say about this as well i mean from my perspective the u.s has to drop this case they have to or they have to be pressured by their own media and their own society to drop this case because you know the u.s society is really is they have the political influence on their political leadership and and it's in their own interest that they stopped this from happening because otherwise they will lose as i said before the right to to know what the government is doing the fact already lost that right actually they have to regain it and and i think so so civil society is very important uh but the media especially the mainstream media that they start picking this up is very very important um uh to public opinion has to turn around and not only in the u.s in the uk in australia in sweden you know anywhere anywhere people have to ask their governments why are you why are you accepting that a country that you're allied with you know is persecuting journalists that expose their war crimes we have to ask the people that are elected to parliament why they're accepting this why they're keeping silent you know because it will cost it will cost us very dearly i don't know what you think stefania yes absolutely i agree neils we absolutely have to win this case which means we absolutely have to put pressure take to the streets of massive press coverage and investigation it's a scandal that it took an italian journalist to litigate a freedom of information case in the uk in the us australian sweden because no one else did it it's a scandal that we took an italian journalist to try to discover the pressure from the crown prosecution service on the swedish authorities and the the attempt to bypass the european court of human rights can you believe that the guardian was not able to do this or can you believe that the new york times could not expose the cia attempts to kill him i mean it took yahoo i mean can you believe yahoo had more sources inside the cia than the washington post or the new york times they are inside this angel agency how can you believe that they were not able to expose before yahoo news so we absolutely have to call them out and to make to have them on board they don't want to be on board we have seen they don't cover the case properly they say they want to be factual when in fact they they have not looked for the facts and it took an italian journalist and a u n special rapporteur to investigate the case so which is unbelievable you know so we have to have them on board and we absolutely have to win this case having the case dropped the investigation dropped because because it is a scandal i mean in 20 years of journalism my experience of 20 years as a journalist 15 in investigative journalism i have never heard of a media organization put under investigation for 11 years i never heard this i i don't know i don't believe it it exists not even in i mean just in a seriously authoritarian dictatorship i never heard of a media organization under investigation for 11 years as wikileaks the wikileaks journalists have been so we absolutely have to win the case this case and we have not to rely on the legal process the legal process completely corrupt it's completely corrupt so we it's up to us it's up to us to take to the street and to have press coverage whatever press coverage we can we can the independent media the citizen journalists the whatever we can to mobilize people to have people taking to the street and realize these monstrous injustice in the preface to my book the Ken Loach the great film director Ken Loach calls it these monstrous injustice he's absolutely right and and if you allow me to just say one sentence here also to conclude my own statement here i just just to say don't think that this is just your sound case that this is this is the tip of the iceberg and i wrote the book about this not because this is the only case but this case that makes it most visible what's really going on it's actually a keyhole through which you can see into a parallel world that already exists where democracy and the rule of law is being systematically undermined so you know don't believe those public narratives in this case or in others you know ask questions ask for evidence and always ask you know who has what kind of interests here and are we still able to to know what the powerful are doing with the power and the money they have and that's really at the core of it so i hope i hope this this was useful and clearly i invite people you know read read stefania's book read my book read read about the case and make make up your own mind you know because it's about your rights and your life absolutely let me close this conversation with reminding people that we will keep this conversation in the whistleblow village in rc3 world at 10 p.m. we will wait for you we'll appreciate more question about this important crucial case thank you yeah thank you both very much for being here and it was a very interesting talk and maybe we see each other later in the rc3 village and yeah have a good day evening


We chat with Sean Sloane from Pursa about Windara Reef. Now tell us about this Windara Reef that you've just constructed here. We started off with the idea to enhance recreational fishing opportunities in the state. What we wanted to do was not just build something that would attract fish and make them easier to catch and potentially put our fish stocks under more pressure but to actually enhance the habitat that could help actually build our fish stocks over time. So we partnered up with an international environmental NGO, the Nature Conservancy, as well as RecfishSA, the local council here in the Adelaide Uni, and built a partnership to essentially do what the Nature Conservancy had done in the US to restore native oyster reefs. And we've built the basic infrastructure now. There's about 800 tonnes of limestone that's been laid in rows. There's also about 60 purpose-built concrete structures that are actually designed to build the basis of the infrastructure for these native oyster reefs. So once the native oysters are seated on the reef, that's when the ecosystem starts to get built. And we would expect that they take about 18 months to two years to mature and that's when all the marine life will get attracted and the ecosystem will start functioning. So how long would it take to get back to perhaps what it was 100 or so years ago? This is really going to be a blueprint for what we would like to see replicated in other parts of the state. So this will be a 20 hectare site when it's finished. There was about 1500 kilometres of coastline that was characterised by this native oyster shellfish reef. By improving the habitat, we will over time improve fish stocks. This site here will be a recreational fishing reef. So we've probably got a long way to go, but certainly a good start. But of course, everybody benefits. Commercial fishers benefit as well because as our fish stocks are improved, everybody will actually reap the benefits of having more fish in the system.  What sort of fish do you think will come to this reef? Well, when you create the habitat that provides food for fish, shelter, we would expect it to be a nursery ground for some of the smaller fish. So all of those species that you mentioned, even probably Snapper, blue crabs, all those species would find a home here and also potentially become, you know, an attractive spawning ground for some species as well. My final question in the name Windara, where did that come from? Windara Reef was chosen by the local school kids over this way, and it's basically the Aboriginal name for the eastern side of the York Peninsula. I didn't know that. And what a wonderful ownership those kids will have of that as they grow and become adults and use the area to think they had something to do with it. Yeah, it's a great thing. It's a terrific initiative overall and we've been overwhelmed by the support we've had from them.


Occupation. Occupation means to take over something. During the war, the Nazi army was occupying the territories. People were afraid there were new rules and laws to be followed.


Hello, I'm Robert Penner, and I'm here to explain my work from the past several years that identifies promising sites of interest for antiviral therapeutics and vaccines. With the recent apparent successes of mRNA vaccine technology for COVID, it appears that we've entered a new era of vaccine technology in general. And it seems clear that in this era, it is not so much the delivery or toxicity of potential vaccines that dominates development, but rather the identification of appropriate target epitopes so that the delivery of messenger RNA can elicit immune response. And it is to this purpose that my methods are specialized. For COVID, it seems that the RBD or receptor binding domain is a viable such target. For instance, in the BioNTech Pfizer vaccine, while it is a stabilized mutant of the entire spike molecule that is targeted by Moderna. For other viruses, various targets such as the FP or fusion peptide could provide corresponding vital target epitopes. Or perhaps still other peptides critical for viral binding and penetration could be targeted. And this brings us to the importance of discovering RBDs, FPs, and other critical peptides in viral glycoproteins in the case of viruses where such peptides may not be known a priori or there are not stabilized versions of the entire molecule available. Again, it is to this end that the methods I describe are focused, though I shall concentrate at the end on COVID as a case in point. My method is based on analyzing protein backbone geometry in order to target regions prime for large conformational change. Depends upon a database compiled from the protein data bank or PDB and the method arises from first mathematical principles. The underlying mathematics is easy to explain and it is here that I shall begin. The protein is the contamination of its peptide groups along its backbone as illustrated here. Somewhat simplistically, since we do not fully represent amino acid residues. The backbone is the zig-zagging repeating sequence C-alpha, C-n, C-alpha, C-n, C-alpha, and so on where C stands for carbon and N for nitrogen and these participate in a so-called peptide bond. Only the alpha-eth carbon atoms C-alpha of the constituent amino acid residues lie in the backbone, which runs on for dozens if not typically hundreds or even thousands of such units. A peptide group is the collection of six atoms C-alpha, C-n, C-alpha in the backbone together with the oxygen O bonded to C and the hydrogen H bonded to N as pictured. The important geometric characteristic of a peptide group for us is that these six atoms lie in a plane as is indicated. The standard conformational angles phi m psi, which are also depicted, describe the rotations between planes of consecutive peptide groups. Furthermore, the angles between bonds in a peptide group are very nearly 120 degrees as is indicated. The plane of the peptide group contains the red unit displacement vector from C to N as well as the blue unit displacement vector at 90 degrees counterclockwise rotation in the plane of the peptide group from the red vector. Each peptide group thus determines a pair of red-blue vectors. This is the first main mathematical point that a peptide group determines a pair of red-blue vectors. The NH and CO in one peptide group can participate with the CO and NH of another peptide group through hydrogen bonding with donor N and acceptor O as depicted here. Still with our color scheme of red-blue vectors, but now labeled X, Y, as well as their usual cross product labeled Z and the planes of the peptide groups indicated in gray. The two peptide groups in the figure are labeled I for donor and J for acceptor and the intermediary region between these peptide groups along the backbone is not pictured here. The hydrogen bond might either occur in the direction of the backbone with I less than J or in the other direction with I greater than J and maybe either short range along the backbone with the absolute value of I minus J small or long range along the backbone with this absolute value large. Though the distance between the donor NI plus one and acceptor OJ is always but a couple of angstrom. The acceptor may even participate in a so-called bifurcated hydrogen bond with more than one donor, but this is not pictured here. Suppose that the two peptide groups participate in a hydrogen bond called a backbone hydrogen bond or BHB for short. There is then a pair of red blue vectors, one from the donor and one from the acceptor peptide groups as illustrated. For any pair of pairs of such red blue vectors, there is a unique rotation of space carrying the first one to the second one. As I indicate here with my primitive visual aid, you simply first rotate the first red vector to agree with the second one and then rotate the first blue vector around the line that now contains both red vectors until the blue vectors also agree. So for any BHB with its pair of pairs of red blue vectors, there's a corresponding rotation of space. And this brings us to our second main mathematical point that a backbone hydrogen bond determines a rotation of space carrying the red blue pair of the donor to the red blue pair of the acceptor. For our final mathematical point, we must explain how to draw pictures of rotations. And it is easy. A rotation is determined by a line, its axis of rotation, together with the amount in radians of rotation about it, call it theta. So theta lies between minus pi and pi. We can assign the vector theta times u with direction the same as u, but of length theta in order to uniquely determine the specified rotation. So u times theta is a vector in space of length at most pi. Or in other words, as a displacement vector from the origin, a point in the three-dimensional ball of radius pi. This is the third and final main mathematical point. The rotation associated to a backbone hydrogen bond can be drawn as a vector in space of length at most pi and hence a point in the ball of radius pi. And this leads to our fundamental question about the structural biology of proteins. What is the nature of the collection of all the rotations of all the backbone hydrogen bonds in the protein data bank, or more precisely, in a suitably unbiased representative subset of the PDB? And here is the answer to the basic question. It is the fundamental discovery and the heart of what we shall employ here to study viruses. We investigate the collection of all rotations of BHBs coming from a fixed suitably unbiased representative subset of good experimental quality PDB files called HQ60, where HQ sends for high quality with at most three angstrom resolution and a suitable bound on B factors, if you know of these PDB details. And the 60 indicates at most 60% homology identity of representatives as determined by Dunbrack Lab's Pisces software. HQ60 contains PDB files comprising 1,166,165 BHBs, and surprisingly constitutes only about a third of the volume of the ball of radius pi. Depicted here is the distribution in the ball of all rotations from BHBs in HQ60, together with representative BHB rotations indicated for several points within this ball. Furthermore, within this one third of the volume, the BHB rotations in HQ60 cluster into 30 regions. And this gives a new classification for the geometry of BHBs that reproduces and refines what was known for BHBs that are short range along the backbone and provides the first such classification for long range BHBs. But the classification plays no role in our further considerations, just the full distribution on the ball itself. And so we shall see nothing further about the clustering. If you know about the classical two-dimensional Ramachandran plots that give distributions for conformational angles, pictured here for the four residues nearby an ideal alpha helix, then the ball is the three-dimensional analog for the distribution of rotations of BHBs. This new kind of plot should have the same impact on all aspects of protein theory as the Ramachandran plots. Here is another representation of the distribution in slices of the ball from north to south pole, illustrating the fine detail of the distribution of BHB geometry that we have computed. It is this distribution that will play the crucial role in our sequel. It's colored by density where the RyGB color is linear in the density within an 81 by 81 by 81 grid where the peak density is 19,000, corresponding to the reddest spot in the fourth box down and the fourth box over from the top left corner, which turns out to correspond to the BHB of an interior turn of an ideal alpha helix as one would expect. It is worth emphasizing that these findings and the basic properties of this distribution are robust over all subsets of the PDB probe with various homology identity and quality cutoffs. It is also worth pointing out that a density functional theory solution of the Schrodinger equation for the 12 atoms comprising two peptide groups also reproduces these basic properties of the distribution but without the fine detail of the specific clusters within the one third of volume achieved. Furthermore, the constraints leading to this distribution are not simply steric since an excess of 95% of the volume of the ball is achievable by pairs of peptide groups at a distance scale consistent with backbone hydrogen bonds. Thus, is this empirically discovered distribution born out also by theoretical calculation? However, without compelling explanation, other than that the DFT results suggest it is somehow a constraint of the quantum chemistry rather than a steric constraint. I shall next briefly explain how we can employ this distribution of BHB rotations using a basic tool of protein theory called the Paul-Finklestein-Quasi-Boltzmann Anzatz which is the following law. Occurrence of any protein detail is proportional to the exponential of the negative free energy F divided by KTC where K is the usual Boltzmann constant and Tc is the so-called conformational temperature, essentially the protein melting temperature. This was first observed by Paul in the 1970s and finally proved by Finkelstein and collaborators in the 1990s. The upshot for us is that we can use the distribution of rotations of BHBs from HQ60 to predict free energies where the sparse regions of the distribution correspond to large free energy. Let us emphasize the input to the method is any PDB file and the output is an estimate of the free energy of the protein feature associated with its BHBs based upon the a priori distribution derived from the database HQ60. Specifically, we define pi of P to be the logarithm of D of M over D of P where D of M is the maximum density 19,000 over the entire HQ60 distribution and D P is the density at the subject rotation P. Notice that the natural units for pi are in terms of 1K Tc but for simplicity we shall suppress this in the sequel and refer simply to pi values. Usually it is only differences of free energies that can be computed in this manner but we shall argue in a moment that these pi values can be taken as absolute approximations across different peptides in different proteins. The upshot is that the so-called exotic rotations in the 90th percentile for which the distribution from HQ60 is relatively sparse are distinguished by the fact that they correspond to protein details of large free energy. Here on the top is a plot of the histogram of pi values across HQ60 and its correlation in the plot immediately below with alpha helices and beta strands and on the bottom plot with the other various secondary structure types. Notice the different scales on the two lower plots the prevalence of alpha helices for low free energy and the mixture of secondary structure types for high free energy. As was mentioned usually only differences of free energies make sense but here the free energy of the ideal alpha helix which has pi value zero as was also mentioned before has been computed theoretically at minus two kilocalories per mole and so all pi values may be simply compared across different peptides and different proteins. We admit there is a small swindle here since the conformational temperature varies from one protein to another but not really so much as to disturb the utility of this approximation. I include here parenthetically a most surprising finding from the histogram of amino acid residues flanking of BHB across the tail of exotic free energies. One observes that families of flanking amino acids vary together in lock step in various regions. This strongly suggests that there are specific primary structure motifs that correspond to particular regimes of high free energy and this suggests the likely utility of machine learning to liberate these methods from acquiring the structure of a PDB file in order to predict peptides of high free energy from the sequence of amino acids alone. This is work for the future. So what has all this to do with viral diseases and COVID in particular? Well most features of a protein in general must have low free energy in order to stabilize the structure there are also energy defects as reflected by exotic protein details. Such exotic features occur somewhat infrequently and presumably arise for functional reasons. Preserved by evolution and compensated by other low free energy regions because it is required for protein function especially in cases where the function consists of conformational change. An unstable feature will be more likely to change conformation in a biologically reasonable time while a stable feature without defects would take too long to reorganize. Receptor binding and fusion peptides are just such cases as their function is connected with conformational change. More generally exotic peptides provide sites of interest in viral glycoproteins because their obstruction should interrupt function since their energetic cost should imply some conformationally functional dependence of the protein. Viral glycoproteins because of their typical tectonic reconformation from pre to post fusion thus provide a natural laboratory to test and then exploit the hypothesis that exotic protein features have functional consequence. More precisely, first of all recall that a protein feature is exotic if the BHB stabilizing it lies in the 90th percentile of PI values. And furthermore, say that a residue itself is exotic if at least one of its adjacent backbone oxygen or nitrogen atoms participates in an exotic feature. And finally say that a residue is conformationally active if at least one of its conformational angles changes by at least 180 degrees. Then the precise hypothesis to be tested for viral glycoproteins is that an exotic residue lies within one residue along the backbone of a conformationally active one in the transition from pre to post fusion conformations. We do not however assert the converse the conformational activity implies exoticness it's not valid. We test our hypothesis in four explicit examples where the mechanics of pre to post fusion reconformation are relatively well understood. Namely, we consider the fusion glycoproteins of influenza type A, paramedics of virus, tick board encephalitis and vesicular stomatitis virus. In each case the PDB contains both pre and post fusion structures so we can compare PDB files for their viral glycoproteins in the two conformations. These are illustrated here in the respective rows where the color scheme is that blue is non-exotic, yellow is 90 to 95th percentile, orange 95th to 99th percentile and red is the top percentile. Where 90th, 95th, 99th and 100th percentile cutoffs correspond to respective pi values 7.5, 8.5, 9.5 and 9.85. Across each row the one or two figures on the left are pre fusion and on the right post fusion in the order full polymer, monomer, monomer, full polymer. First of all there's a narrative comparison one residue at a time of free energy relative to known reconformation mechanisms in these four examples. And it is fair to say that the predictions of conformational activity based upon pi values compared to known function are remarkable for influenza and quite compelling for the others. But we shall not elaborate further about this narrative which is given in the paper. For a more analytical hypothesis test this first table lists the total number of residues common to pre and post fusion structures where comparison can be made. And among these the number of exotic and active residues as well as the number of residues at distance one and distance greater than one from active ones. This second table presents a histogram of distances from exotic residues to the nearest conformationally active one. Where the data is presented as a fraction with the denominator the number of data points where the free energy is conserved within one residue along the backbone between pre and post fusion conformations and the numerator the number of dissipated examples where it is not. The first P value test our hypothesis from before that an exotic residue lies within one residue along the backbone of a conformationally active one with respect to the natural trinomial distributions and probability tails in the four examples and are quite satisfactory. In fact, VSV is special because it can oscillate between pre and post fusion conformations. So if the exotic free energy is conserved between these states then it is ignored for the hypothesis test in the computation of second P values. Also worth mentioning the pre and post fusion PDB files for paramexovirus are for different strains giving plausible explanations for its less compelling P values. Further evidence supporting the hypothesis is given by computing exotic residues for a comprehensive collection of relevant viral glycoprotein PDB files pre or post fusion as of about a year ago. This omnibus table enumerates exotic BHBs in pairs donor over acceptor with the same percentile cutoffs from before. In the cases that FPs as indicated in boldface or RBDs are known, the method accurately identifies them except in a few cases. When these peptides are not known these methods therefore provide novel predictions for them assuming they have high free energy. This is an extensive table for enveloped viruses. There is a similar table for a number of naked or non-enveloped viruses where little is known about FPs and RBDs are understood in just a few cases. This database should provide useful targets for mRNA vaccines across the entire universe of viruses whose structures are known from a PDB file. Let us emphasize, choose a virus from this table. We may take the several most exotic sites in the table for this virus in order to determine sites of interest. Then reverse translate these exotic regions in order to derive their coding messenger RNAs. Package them together in the one size fits all lipid nanoparticles for mRNA delivery. And voila, you've designed a prospective multivalent vaccine for the specified virus. This illustrates the power of mRNA vaccine technology in general and indeed the potential utility also of these tables and methods. There are more refined embodiments of the methods as well as we next describe for SARS-CoV-2. I did something a little more involved for COVID as follows. There are eight known coronaviruses which infect humans, seven of which are represented in the PDB in multiple pre-fusion confirmations in roughly 50 structures. It is worth mentioning that though the post-fusion confirmation is known for several of these, including the SARS-CoV-2 virus which causes COVID, the pre to post-fusion mechanism is not well understood in contrast to influenza, for example. There are several experimental techniques employed in these PDB files in order to freeze the spike like a protein in its pre-fusion confirmation. The most prevalent of which appears to be effective for all seven human coronaviruses, namely the so-called 2P mutation where two residues at the top of the central helix in the S2 subunit are replaced by pro-lead. In order to align these 50 PDB files across the seven represented human coronaviruses, I started with bifurcated BHBs in each case, at least one component BHB of which had pi value in excess of 9.0, which is roughly the 97.5th percentile cutoff. Then all seven genomes were aligned as usual using Clostal Omega in order to determine for each exotic bifurcated bond if there is a nearby very exotic BHB, bifurcated or not, though often so, in each of the other six viruses, where nearby means within seven residues of the bifurcated acceptor and very exotic means pi greater than 9.5 or in the 99th percentile. The idea is that homology alignment is not exactly functional alignment, but nearly so in the sense that any functional alignment should at least be nearby along the backbone. So the scheme here is to find functional sites that are conserved across all seven human coronaviruses in the sense just made precise. The idea of taking only these conserved sites is that when desires epitopes that will be preserved across strains so that the vaccine developed at this moment for SARS-CoV-2 will still be effective for later deployment across different mutant strains. And functional sites conserved across different coronaviruses should be of universal function and therefore also be conserved across different strains of the same coronavirus. Five such conserved sites of interest were discovered as indicated in this table, where the entries are typically triples, namely the three residues involved in a bifurcated BHB specified as a triple of residue numbers below which are given the corresponding triple of one letter amino acid codes followed by the accessible surface areas in square angstrom. Entries listed in boldface are especially accessible in the so-called all heads down confirmation of the spike. The RBD, which is an apparently useful target for SARS-CoV-2 according to the success of the BioNTech Pfizer messenger RNA vaccine was successfully identified on the sole basis of free energy as our site number three. Note that the table provides analogous targets for all the human coronaviruses at once, even though different peptides, so different potential mRNA vaccine targets are indicated in each case. It is the equivalence of presumed function through combined homology and free energy that link the various sites for different viruses. Here is a figure illustrating the five sites of interest for the SARS-CoV-2 spike like a protein, each of which is comprised of a triple of residues with the same color. More than one target epitope is desirable in a vaccine, so-called multivalency, in order to protect against evolutionary vaccine evasion by the virus. So a natural conclusion from my analysis might be to extend the BioNTech Pfizer vaccine to target all five conserved sites in SARS-CoV-2. The Moderna vaccine skirts the issue of targeting specific peptides by delivering the mRNA for the entire spike, relying however on the spike being stabilized in its pre-fusion confirmation by the 2P mutation. AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine relies on another approach entirely, delivering the native spike without any stabilizing mutation in a replication incompetent adenovirus. Our methods thus arise from first mathematical principles, leading to sites of interest as potential antiviral targets. mRNA vaccines can directly be engineered to such sites, so our methods go hand in hand with these breakthroughs in vaccine technology. Not only in cases where knowledge of promising epitopes is not otherwise available, but also for example, for robustness against mutation. As in our approach to SARS-CoV-2, we hope these methods may provide a useful tool going forward. I think you can say we've been lucky with the Moderna and BioNTech Pfizer mRNA vaccines. First of all, delivery and cellular uptake are successful using lipid nanoparticles. For the former vaccine, there is this 2P pre-fusion stabilized mutation, patented in 2016, without which the whole spike approach might not have worked. And for the latter, the RBD for SARS-CoV-2 was known in analogy to its cousin SARS-CoV-1, but for the next viral outbreak, where such stabilization or a priori data may be lacking, my methods already provide multivalent targeting as evidenced by the extensive tables. More generally, my method predicts function from structure, the tertiary structure of a PDB file in its current embodiment, and potentially from the primary structure alone using machine learning, as was mentioned before. It is thus a tool of greater utility and structural biology than only vaccine development. In particular, the technique employed for human coronaviruses of supplementing homology alignment with free energy alignment in order to infer functional alignment is also of potential greater utility. With that, let me close by giving references for the work we have discussed. First is the text on proteins by Finkelstein and Petitzen, an absolutely marvelous book starting from first principles. Next, a preliminary math paper from 2010 that discusses the topology of protein. And then the nature paper from 2014, which introduced and computed the distribution on the ball of all rotations, which we have discussed, and furthermore, studied the clustering of the BHBs. Then a survey paper from 2016 from mathematicians, also starting from first principles, on the techniques we have discussed for proteins, as well as related tools and results for complexes of RNA molecules. And finally, the two JCB papers from this year about which I have spoken in detail today.