Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news roundup. It's Give the People What They Want. Brought to you from People's Dispatch. Today it's Prashant. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. Last week I was in Nepal, almost underwater. It's monsoon in Nepal and I was stuck in a traffic jam, couldn't join. I'm back now in Santiago, Chile. Zoe is also here, but not able to join us. So once again, it's two of three for two weeks. Show 141, edging up to the 150th show Prashant. That's a big deal in cricket. It's a big deal when you score a century. It's almost as big a deal when you're at 150. And good God, we're edging on to 200. Numbers, you know, in France, in the Elysée Palace, they must be worried. It's like bowling pins falling. They lose Guinea. They lose control in Burkina Faso. They lose control in Mali. When they come back to Niger in a second, they lose control in Niger. And then suddenly leaving the Sahel, going south to Western Central Africa and Gabon, a coup, unsuspected. Although Prashant, to be fair, we've been saying this is a contagion of coups. We don't know where it's going to end. Maybe next Chad, but none of us said Gabon. Absolutely. And in some senses, it seems almost, you know, it seems a very likely candidate now that you look back and that's one of the interesting things about these coups. Once these coups happen, it seems like, you know, it was definitely bound to happen or why it didn't even happen earlier. In this case, we are the Bongo family, which has been in power for 57 or 56 or 57 years, father and son, ruling with a considerable amount of support from the French, you know, France really backing this family for decades now. And you have an election which is held in what has been described universally as, you know, not really the best conditions at all for elections to be held in because the organization was apparently pretty bad. You know, at some point, there were a lot of restrictions. Elections laws themselves had been changed, which made it highly irregular. We have a report on it by a writer, Tara Priyas Singh was also spoken to sources over there. And what one of our sources told us was that even if this coup had not happened by the military, what would have definitely happened was would likely have been mass protests because the nature of the election itself was so suspect. The credibility of the electoral process was so suspect that it is very unlikely that, you know, they would have been actually acceptance of the results. And in many ways, you know, while of course, Yabon is in Central Africa, the issues of that region are maybe a bit different from that of Sahil. We will be talking about Niger soon, slightly different set of issues, but there are also some commonalities. I mean, in many countries in this region, you have rulers who have ruled for extremely long periods of time, all of them very close, many of them very close to France. And despite many of these countries being extremely rich in terms of resources, only a very small elite has benefited from the kind of, you know, from the wealth of these countries, while most of the people have not benefited at all. So it is actually, you know, many of these countries, the situation is very right for these kind of popular mobilizations overthrows. And like you talked about in many parts of Africa itself, often what happens is that it is a military or a section of the military that becomes a sort of conduit or that manages to channel what the general sentiment of the people is in that there is definitely what seems to be happening in Yabon as well. Now, what direction this group of military forces will take is a different question. It's still too early to say, you know, they may, they may hew back to the what do you call old line with some kind of changes or they may recognize what is definitely in a process across the region and take a much more different stance, especially with respect to how resources for instance are being mobilized. Yabon is one of the few countries which uses the CFA, France, that currency which is an enduring legacy of the kind of impact and control that France continues to have on its former colonies and, you know, it's very rich in terms of resources including, for instance, I believe manganese if I'm not mistaken. And one of the French companies, it's the world's largest producer of manganese ore. It has a very substantial mining presence in Yabon as well. I think about, there are, there are even now French soldiers in Yabon. It's a small number, 350 to 400, but French troops continue to be there. French firms have benefited from the oil licensing, when it comes to oil licensing especially. So all these processes that we've been seeing, all these structures we've been seeing in various other parts of the region, very much replicated, very much present in Yabon. And so you see yet another instance of pushback. There have been, I believe, quite a few celebrations inside Yabon itself in terms of after the coup took place, which means that the coup does seem to have answered what was clearly a demand, what was clearly felt by the people.  And it's not just governments that are changing. It's also a vast wave of popular mobilization, popular anger, which is getting channelized to this. Very important that you mentioned popular anger. Also, of course, there are institutional problems. For instance, it is incumbent on the African Union based on the charter of the African Union to condemn these coups. African Union has once again condemned the coup in Yabon. This should not be read too deeply because it is, as a consequence, a reflex of the African Union's charter. Originally, the organization of African states based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, which on 1st January will be a member of the BRICS block. It's a reflex of the charter that the AU has to condemn the coup as it condemned the coup in Yabon and previously condemned the coup in Niger. But pay attention to the fact that when ECO was the economic community of West African states and its peacekeeping function. This is again a curiosity Prashant because one has to wonder about an economic community having a peacekeeping force. That was not in the original charter of ECOVAS, but now it's become very much part of their work. When ECOVAS started making noises about a military intervention into Niger, the African Union said no military intervention. I want to emphasize this to show that even within the states of the African continent represented in the African Union there is a very complicated situation at play. Again, because of the charter they have to condemn the coup but that doesn't mean that they are not sympathetic with the situation on the ground. The mass struggles, in other words, creating a certain context for the AU to say no military intervention. A lot of loss of life. That hasn't stopped Niger's problems in many ways. Firstly, the borders have been closed by neighboring states. This has created a serious problem for supplies in Niger. Niger is having a hard time resupplying shops, resupplying petrol pumps and so on. There is a kind of economic war already on against the government and people of Niger. Point number one. Point number two, and I think this bears some reflection. ECOVAS hasn't stopped talking about intervention. There was a story that ECOVAS says is now fake, reported by Ajahn's France Press, which said that ECOVAS had the commission of ECOVAS had produced a report written in French in which they had said that there's going to be a nine-month transition program for Niger. What that would mean is that effectively, ECOVAS had come to terms with the coup and said that okay, there's a coup and now nine-month transition plan. I read the report in Ajahn's France Press and thought that's interesting. Very quick turnaround from ECOVAS. And then ECOVAS released a statement saying, wait a minute, that's fake. That's fake news. There's no such report. I found that fascinating. Here's a French wire service, Ajahn's France Press, releasing a report saying, well, we'll come to terms with this coup regime in Niger, which now has a civilian leader. And then ECOVAS says, no, no, no, that's fake news. Meanwhile, and here's the interesting way in which these stories are quite complicated. Meanwhile, Algeria. Algeria is playing a very interesting role in the question of Niger's coup d'etat in particular, but also of course because of the border with Mali and the relations with Burkina Faso, this has an impact. Algeria's president was in Moscow talking about, effectively, didn't use the phrase, but US imperialism talking about the role of the US dollar and de-dollarization and so on. And I say his government was very annoyed and they called in the Algerian foreign minister to a meeting with Blinken where he was scolded and told, look, this is outrageous. You can't be talking like that. All right, fair enough. That's fine. And then there was a telephone call, US Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Mali Fee on the last day of August had a phone call with Algerian Foreign Minister Attaf where she basically said the behavior of Algeria. Algeria saying that they wouldn't allow their land to be used or their airspace to be used for an intervention against Niger. Mr. Attaf had made this quite clear in some remarks earlier. All of this happening while there is a sense that confusion maybe. Let me put it this way. And even my report sounds a little confusing. Prashant, that's because the realities are confusing. Here's Ekoba saying we're going to have a transition and then saying, no, that was a fake report. Then the Algerians say you can't use the airspace. The Americans calling them in. Blinken and Mali Makhfi quite upset with the Algerians for their behavior here. The Algerian leadership is meanwhile saying, we are thinking about the change in the world scenario as the change in the bricks takes place. We're not going to take instructions from Washington, DC. Ekobas, military chiefs meet and say, well, maybe we should intervene. And then comes Abdul Fattah Musa, the commissioner for political affairs, peace and security of the Ekobas block who says, Ekobas forces are ready to go at any time into Niger. Very confusing situation. No clarity on the ground. It looks to me and if I can summarize this report, it looks to me. And again, this comes with, as it were, stories that are moving at such a rapid pace. It's hard to digest what's going on. But if I could summarize, it looks like the West is continuing to be upset by the coup in Niger. That's true. The West wants to find a way to reverse this coup in Niger, but without inflaming popular opinion too much. And therefore, instead of trying to do some kind of quick overthrow in Niger, trying to build a continental support for the Western position, this is not happening. And it's not happening because governments like Algeria, governments like, you know, in fact, not only Algeria, but I must say even Nigeria where there is doubt inside large sections of the elected body that are not keen on an intervention, they are also responding to mass pressure. Very important. Therefore, what you said about Gabon, that there are popular protests. There is mass support for this.  It seems a little bit like the Haiti story, which I know you're going to come back to, you know, where Papa Doc and Baby Doc governed in Haiti from 1957 for decades. Very much similar with the Bongo family in Gabon. You're listening to give the people what they want brought to you from people's dispatch. That's Prashant and I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. We did a rather long section just now on the African continent and area, not covered with the kind of sincerity it requires, but so be it. Meanwhile, we're going to switch now to South Asia. Imran Khan, the great cricketer, one of my childhood heroes, the way he could move the ball in both directions. Entered politics, became Prime Minister, was overthrown. And now, God, what's going on in Pakistan? Right. It's interesting in the sense that a lot of what we're talking about with reference to Gabon and to some at some extent Niger, some of the structural issues very much applicable in Pakistan as well. What you're seeing right now is definitely the Pakistani establishment of the country's political establishment facing a massive crisis. There's no other way of describing it. So on the one hand, you have Imran Khan who was overthrown last year. And of course, that's a very interesting aspect. What was the role of the United States in that overthrow is actually now very open question because of a Cypher, a document that was released which talked about a US official giving an implying basically that they would like that to happen. But more importantly ever since Imran Khan was overthrown and a government was formed comprising the traditional parties of Pakistan and very clearly backed by the military establishment as well, which plays a huge role in Pakistan's politics. There's been this continuous attempt to foist cases on him. I believe he's accused in 150 cases right now. So, you know, as I'm ranging from all kinds of issues. So one of the major ones was something to do with corruption regarding the sale of gifts from the state treasury, what is called the Toshak Hana case. I believe it's around $500,000. It's a corruption case of around that amount of money. And Imran Khan was recently sentenced in that case and he was taken into a rest. But then a higher court basically suspended that sentence. But then again, Imran Khan was, but nonetheless he was forced to remain in jail because of this case regarding the Cypher we talked about this document. And now there is a case against him that this was a secret document which he played a role in leaking. So what is happening right now is a very clear legal battle between Imran Khan on one hand and basically the entire establishment on the other. And this is of course not the beginning of it. We saw that in May he was arrested. There was a massive nationwide uprising which took place. He was released after that. But after that what has happened is that the Pakistan establishment has gone after Imran Khan's party with the vengeance. Many leaders are declaring that the office park, declaring that they will either quit politics, many of them, you know, even leaving the party. So an immense amount of pressure that is being applied. And it is important to note that all this is happening because on August 9th the National Assembly of Pakistan was dissolved which means that elections are supposed to take place within three months. Now what has also happened is that the election authority has said that they are going to redraw the, you know, electoral constituencies and hence where we postpone. So now we're looking at maybe elections being held in January or February. But this basically gives the establishment more time to sort of try to disqualify Imran Khan in whatever way possible and make sure that he does not come back because what does seem to have happened is that whatever his record during governance was and of course Imran Khan did compromise with the IMF, etc. But especially after he was overthrown he has in some sense really been able to channelise the anger of a large number of people who are extremely upset at the economic situation and the security situation in the country. And the new government that came into power after that the coalition of these two establishment parties has really not been able to do anything to resolve the massive inflation, the kind of freefall that Pakistan's economy is going through right now. And so Imran Khan's popularity is actually surged since then also because of the perception that he was unfairly overthrown as part of a conspiracy. So all this put together this is given a lot of backing for him and it seems that the establishment forces are now desperate to sort of make sure that he and his party are not able to contest legitimately and properly in election because they fear that he might come back with a powerful majority and then their chances are they are in deep danger. Also important to know that it does seem like the military establishment also backing this attempt to persecute Khan's judiciary interestingly is quite divided it seems like because you have there's been a lot of to and fro between various courts, some courts declaring him guilty, others saying that the verdict was not right, some giving him bail, some instructing that he remain inside prison. So a very divided judiciary, a very divided establishment in every sense and so definitely we are going to see some very very rough months in Pakistan you know Iman Khan being in jail out of it, the full-fledged attack on the party. So very very important country to watch out in the coming months. Yeah I mean it's so important to look at Pakistan because it's not a small country it's a major country in the world one of the countries with the large population and so on. I just want to say that in October Tricontinental will be publishing a dossier written by Taimur Rahman the leader of the Pakistan Kisan Mazdoor party which is on the deindustrialization of Pakistan I mean underneath these political developments is a serious economic problem which seems intractable Prashant and I mean you know whoever comes to power is going to have to confront the same reality and putting the most popular politician in the country in jail is hardly going to be a solution. Now everybody pays attention to the question of the climate and the environment I mean the kind of reports that come don't even seem to explain the catastrophes before our eyes. We've already talked on this show about the wildfires in Canada wildfires in Hawaii the high temperatures in Japan over 50 degrees centigrade for a week on end and so on the question of the climate is really right there young people played a major role one way or the other in saying to older politicians it's our planet you're destroying you'll be dead and gone what about our lives and so youth have played a big role in various climate movements not only in the West extinction, rebellion and so on but also in Asia and Africa Latin America young people may be inspired by things they are seeing but they are also playing a big role from the Philippines out to South America young people and therefore it's sort of fitting that the UN committee on the rights of the child you know the United Nations committee on the rights of the child is based on a convention that was created in 1989 it's a pretty young convention they had not until now weighed in on the climate debate you know this was something that was happening in the intergovernmental panel on climate change it was happening at the General Assembly it was happening in the United Nations Environmental Fund UNEF you know it was happening in other places well now I think it's about time given so many young people paying attention to the issue of the climate and so on that the UN convention on the rights of the child is sort of weighed in on this issue well they release something and Prashant you know when you look at the UN documents they're so bureaucratic well it's called general comment number 26 on children's rights in the environment with a special focus on climate change that's the name of the text what the text basically points out is that children worldwide been fighting against climate change calling on governments to protect the planet now what the comment says is that children effectively have a right to a safe planet I think this is an important statement you know that children have a right to a healthy and sustainable planet with sustainable food available to them and so on in my opinion this is one of those interesting UN documents which I hope you know having been inspired by children's activism is now going to inspire more young people to get involved to demand for instance that you know they have a role to play I mean the fact is that the children are least responsible for the climate crisis you know calculations by that the UN has summarized show that every year 1.7 million children under the age of 5 lose their lives due to environmental damage that's a pretty large number Prashant 1.7 million a year of children under 5 losing lives because of environmental degradation environmental damage and so on you know that's a pretty important fact that they've lifted up the last point about this document that I found very interesting you know we talk a lot about trying to listen to the views of children and so on you know it's something that one says you know we must involve more voices of the affected parties children well what the UN did for this report is that it created a global advisory board of experts and a team of 12 child advisors age between 11 and 17 so a team of 12 children between the age of 11 and 17 work to support the work of this committee I mean I find this very interesting there's a young woman her name is Aniva 17 year old climate activist from the pacific islands okay when this document was being released Aniva made a comment and I want to read out this comment to me the general comment means worldwide change that is necessary as we move forward in fighting environmental issues and taking global action in protecting our planet for our generation and the generations to come it gives children a stronger basis in international law to enforce our rights to a healthy environment globally we are seeing more action for people to protect the environment through this general comment this will form an important part I thought that was a really impressive statement made by a 17 year old let's not underestimate young people 1.7 children under the age of 5 killed because of environmental damage last year their rights are now established and enshrined through general comment number 26 I hope more young people read general comment number 26 I hope that is circulated and inspires more young people to get involved I mean talking about environmental damage or degradation Prashant travelling to Haiti has been one of those things where you go in and you see the levels of deforestation and the impact this has had on the agricultural sector and so on it plays a cascading role with all of Haiti's other problems I think it's important we close out this section with your report on Haiti I mean quite a few developments actually the most recent one a very shocking one I believe 20 people were killed by gang members people marching people who are part of a congregation who are marching towards the headquarters of a gang in protest again saw the region dominated by a gang in protest against the violence that this gang was taking place this gang which calls itself the Taliban of Kanan of Kanan or how do we pronounce it is quite a strange name but in fact one of those many gangs which basically have largely taken over large parts of the capital port of Prinsen and even many other parts of the country and we have been hearing a lot about gang violence in Haiti for many many many many years right now and you know two years ago in fact I believe they had taken over large parts of the port fuel supplies were affected for instance and what is the the response often from many countries in the world especially the United States and its allies has been that we need to send some kind of a multinational force to Haiti to somehow suppress their violence from the gangs and restore security and it was part of this initiative that actually a delegation from Kenya recently visited Haiti and we have a very good report from our correspondent Tanya Wadwa and that who talks about it so delegation from Kenya visits Haiti to consider the possibility of Kenya leading a thousand member strong police force which will be deployed in Haiti to establish security according to them. Now it is very important to note that the idea of foreign intervention is something that the people in mass organizations of Haiti have been resisting very very very strongly now because their point has been that you know the reason we are facing the kind of issues that we face today which is you know mass poverty you know say unemployment gang violence all of this stem from decades of intervention you talked about the you talked about the dual leaders who were in power for the longest time but we also for instance have Jean-Paul Arrested against two coups to place one of the you know leaders with that very strange record of having been couped twice and then you know and this has happened again and again there was a UN force which is accused of all kinds of crimes including for instance introducing cholera so right now organizations and people in Haiti are extremely against the idea of any foreign force being brought in but this is the this is what they keep the international community keeps pushing in again and again there is no idea of for instance accountability for people such as Auryo Laundrie the de facto president who's been in power since 2021 after the assassination of his predecessor who was also a de facto president there was no question of holding proper elections in fact Haitian organizations are worried that this force might be brought in to sort of create the conditions to do so-called an election for the sake of it which will bring again the very same people back to power which will bring all the same issues back there will be no change at all so what they are saying is that you know let you know offer a solidarity yes but let us take control of our destiny and allow us an opportunity to do so so that has been the push from Haitian organizations so a lot of anger and even in Africa too in Kenya for instance organizations in the left have condemned the Kenyan governments attempt to sort of experiment with this idea of foreign intervention so at a very, Haiti at a very delicate time especially if this move to send a thousand members strong force gets ratified there are moves to sort of create a resolution for instance so I think that is definitely going to face a lot of opposition especially considering its previous record. Can you imagine Prashant here we are it's half an hour show give the people what they want which brought to you by People's Dispatch Globler half an hour show and we keep talking about military interventions military intervention into Niger by Ecovaas military intervention into Haiti by Kenya think about this world you know we've put on the table the UN convention on the rights of the child there's the United Nations there's an ability for people to talk to each other and yet here we are short program hundred and forty first episode of this program military intervention military intervention nine weeks to go till the one fiftieth program please send us those selfies give the people what they want brought to you People's Dispatch Globler to see you next week


Hello. I'm John Ruhr. I'd like to thank Town Meeting TV for giving us this opportunity to present perspectives of peace in the conflict in the Ukraine. We hear so much talk of war is very important to know that there are alternatives. I am with the World Beyond War, which is a global movement to end all war as an instrument of politics among people. I'm also with Physicians for Social Responsibility, which has been working since 1961 to educate the world's population about the dangers of nuclear weapons. Hello. My name is Trey Cook. I'm a member of the Young Democratic Socialists of America and the Reform and Revolution Caucus. I'm a freshman at the University of Vermont. Hi there. My name is Charlotte Dennett. I'm the author of the newly released paper book, Paperback, Follow the Pipelines, which is uncovering the mystery of a lost spy and the deadly politics of the great game for oil. I'm also a member of Wilf, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. And I'm Ashley Smith. I work for Specter Journal and I'm a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, as well as the Tempest Collective. Great. Ashley, would you like to begin stating your positions on what can we do about this god-awful mess that the world finds itself in now? Sure. I think the beginning point is we have to understand the nature of the war that's just been launched. Vladimir Putin has launched a war of imperial aggression in Ukraine. And the aim of this war is to overthrow the current democratically elected government and install a puppet regime. And this is part of his project to reclaim Russia's sphere of influence that he sees as having been lost at the end of the Cold War. And part of the aim is to secure the country's pipeline routes, its agricultural industry and natural resources for Russian domination. And this war has caused an absolute catastrophe in the lives of Ukrainian people. War crimes are being committed by the Russian invading and occupying forces. Over a million refugees have fled Ukraine just in the last week. So the left in the anti-war movement must absolutely oppose Putin's war of imperial aggression and stand with Ukraine and its fight for national self-determination and frankly national liberation from an occupying army. At the same time I think we have to oppose the U.S. and NATO and any intervention that would turn this war of imperial aggression into an inter-imperial war between nuclear-armed powers. That would threaten the world with World War III. The U.S. actually has no grounds to be morally criticizing the regime in Russia. Just look at what the U.S. did in Iraq and Afghanistan. The results of the interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan have laid waste to countries, killed well over a million people. And really did the U.S. did the same thing in Iraq that the Russian regime is doing in Ukraine today. So we have to oppose any intervention on behalf of the U.S. and NATO into Ukraine. And really if you understand what's going on in Eastern Europe, part of the trigger of Putin's war was the west was the eastward expansion of the NATO military alliance. And I think a lot of people need to be disabused of illusions in NATO as some kind of defensive or pacifist institution. It's not. It's actually an imperialist institution and was designed that way from the very beginning. The secretary, the first secretary general of NATO, a man named Lord Ismay, famously said the role of NATO is to keep Russia out, keep Germany down, and keep the United States in. That is, it's a means for the U.S. to secure economic and political domination over Europe. And the eastward expansion is one of the things that triggered Vladimir Putin to launch his own war to reclaim that loss fear of influence that Russia once had in Eastern Europe. So the U.S. and NATO are no solution to this crisis. In fact, the U.S. is one of Ukraine's actual oppressors through the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. The United States has trapped the Ukrainian economy in massive debt, over $6 billion in debt. And the repayment of interest on those loans accounts for about 12 percent of the Ukrainian budget. So money that could go to programs for workers, for poor people, for health insurance, etc., is siphoned off from their economy to pay back the bankers, mainly that reside in the United States. So I don't think the U.S. NATO powers are any solution. I think the actual solution lies in people from below resisting this drive to war and the actual invasion and occupation of Ukraine. That is, the Ukrainian resistance, which is a heroic resistance against an occupying army. The Russian anti-war movement is another part of that international resistance. And the final element is the global peace movement, which we've seen erupt around the world. I think the key thing is the Ukrainian resistance, though, just like the Palestinian resistance, just like the Iraqi resistance to the U.S. invasion. This is a resistance and a fight for national liberation. And we should support it full stop, including its ability to militarily defend itself. I think also the second component of this international movement is the absolutely heroic struggle of Russian people against Vladimir Putin's regime. We've seen thousands upon thousands of people pour out into the streets of the big cities in Russia against this war, and people doing so at great personal risk. People are very concerned that martial law is about to be declared in Russia. Already 9,000 people have been arrested and detained by out of those anti-war demonstrations. And then the third component is the international anti-war movement. And this is of massive size. In Berlin, they had a demonstration of over 100,000 people against Putin's war. So the combination of all those things, I think, is the solution. The heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people, the Russian anti-war movement and the global peace movement. So in that, what should we demand? I think I'll just end on that. Number one, we should demand the immediate withdrawal of all occupying troops that Russia has in Ukraine. That includes the removal of the occupying troops in Crimea and their agents in the separatist republics in eastern Ukraine. We should support the Ukrainian fight for self-determination and self-defense, including securing wherever they do arms for their self-defense. We should oppose U.S. and NATO intervention, especially in the form of a no-fly zone, which some people are calling for, which would trigger a military confrontation between the air forces of the Western powers and the Russian air force as well. And we should oppose the remilitarization of Europe, which is going on with a vengeance right now, and the increase of military budgets in the United States, which is also on the table if you listened to Biden's State of the Union speech. Importantly, we should argue for the immediate opening of the borders of Europe to all refugees fleeing Ukraine, but not just Ukrainian refugees to all refugees and migrants, including those from the Arab countries as well as the African countries, who are right now suffering racist discrimination against their right of freedom of movement into Europe. Last couple of things we should demand. We should call for the immediate cancellation of all of Ukraine's debt so that they can determine their own destinies when they free themselves and not be trapped in a debtor's prison controlled by the United States. And finally, we have to build international solidarity from below across all borders against this drive to war in Ukraine and demand the immediate end to the war and the withdrawal of all foreign troops. My turn. Hello there. I am looking at this war through a certain lens. I see it. I hope to see it as the last energy war of the century. And that means from World War I up through the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And now we have Ukraine. And I'm going to explain more about it because I've written a book about pipelines and their influence on some of the major conflicts over the past century. The book has lots of maps. And one of the maps I just want to show you briefly, if it's behind me, you're going to throw that. Yeah. Anyway, this, the book, there's pipelines here that run from Saudi Arabia to Lebanon. And the reason I started researching that is because my father was a spy, the first master spy in the Middle East. And his last mission, because he died mysteriously, was to Saudi Arabia to try to determine the route of the trans-Arabian pipeline. This was the largest energy project, even industrial project in the world at that time. And America's exclusive control over the trans-Arabian pipeline boosted into becoming a great world power, much to the dismay of our former allies or our allies. That would be Russia, France, and England. This was during World War II. So in investigating what happened, why his plane crashed after this top secret mission to Saudi Arabia, I began to understand that oil and pipelines had a lot to do with war. And so that's one thing I'll talk about briefly also, though. I think it's on everyone's mind today that there are nuclear plants in Ukraine. And this is a horror. Everyone was horrified last night to see that the largest nuclear plant in Europe, I believe in the world, was attacked. And there's terrific concern about the release of radiation. Apparently, the core reactor was not hit, thank God, but it just drives home the danger of a war in Ukraine. And if we can see the first map that comes up here, this was done showing possible ground forces entering Ukraine. So it was even before this map was done before the Russians invaded. But it pretty accurately describes what happens. And here is that huge nuclear plant there. And then Chernobyl is up to the north. So the insanity of this is palpable to everybody, which is why we should not have ongoing war in Ukraine for that reason alone. But then there's another very big factor in this war. And it's called the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. This pipeline has recently been completed. And if we can see the, if you can show the next one map, you can see how it runs from, well, Russia to Germany. And it's Russian built. It's also financed by some European companies. And throughout its construction, the United States has tried to prevent this pipeline from being completed. Why? Because it's going to ship even more natural gas to Europe. Europe already receives 40% of its natural gas from Russia. And the pipeline would supply even more. And this is very threatening to the United States. And it has clearly been stated as such and to the West. They didn't want this to go through. And so what you have is a big power standoff between the United States, NATO on the one side and Russia and its allies on the other side. The next map that you're going to see shows all these networks of pipelines that are running through Ukraine and also through Poland. Now Poland and Ukraine were also against the pipeline. Why? Because they are worried that they would lose the very lucrative transit fees that they would get from having actually Russian owned pipelines going through the country. They were afraid the market would be flooded and they would lose up to a billion dollars annually in transit fees. Now there's also been a warning from Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada. I'm going to read this to you to put it into perspective. He says that he characterized the West's efforts to circumvent Russia's role as a quote significant source of natural gas and oil for European partners. And one of the things that we've been doing over the past number of weeks in is ensuring that there are alternatives to Russia. Not just to make sure that our friends and our allies in Europe continue to be able to function their economies and support their people, but to make sure that Putin no longer draws sustenance from his own economy. So I see it not in terms of an ideological war so much as a war between two gigantic petropowers, both imperial. And we all stand the gas. What can we do to stop it? Now the nukes, Ukraine relies on 40% of its energy from nuclear power plants. So just to end up, I keep thinking about World War I, the beginnings of World War I and entangling alliances. Barbara Tuckman wrote about it in her great book on World War I, The Guns of August. And it was all about how international diplomacy failed in a war that no one wanted. Now I'm going to challenge that a bit because in my research, and I'm almost ending in my research, what really had Britain concerned was the Berlin to Baghdad railroad that was being built by the Germans and was heading straight towards Britain's oil bonanza in Iran and also towards Iraq, which Britain considered a first class war aim. We have to remember that the modern militaries run on oil. That is the big factor of why the great game continues, even as we're trying to find alternative sources of energy. So the faster we move away from oil and gas as a fuel for our industrial and militarized societies, the closer we'll be coming to peace. Yeah, I mean, both the other speakers on this panel made great points. I'm just jarred by the hypocrisy from the American political elite, to be honest. I'm seeing a lot of foils with American foreign policy with what Russia's doing. They went into Ukraine under the auspice of a peacekeeping mission, and that's the same excuse that America has used to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. The total about face from America in support of Ukraine, the consolidation in support, I'm not against it. I'm totally for supporting the people of Ukraine and their struggle, but the hypocrisy is a little bit jarring. And the war hawking that's coming from people in charge. In the last eight years, we've spent, I'd say, I think $450 billion in humanitarian aid to Ukraine. In the last couple days, we've sent $380 billion. In the last year, $1 trillion. Wait, let me just make sure I got that number right. Yeah. And I think what that shows is that we don't have a consistent and principled stance in the U.S. because we have consolidated power in the hands of a few. Again, total hypocrisy. We're blaming the Russian oligarchs now. We didn't blame them earlier. They have trillions of dollars in offshore bank accounts, as reported by the Pandora Papers. If we really want to have lasting permanent change, then we should distribute some of that wealth to other people. We need to have international corporate taxes, capital gains taxes, income taxes on some of these billionaires, and use that money to create lasting sustainable energy projects. The reason that they're able to spin around like this is those oligarchs have control over petrochemicals. Russia, 8% of the world's petrochemicals come from Russia alone. If we have sustainable energy that's owned locally by people and publicly owned, then we don't have to worry about as much these energy wars. And we have a sufficient way to protect people. Not just with like the private sector, but going back to like the public sector politicians again. What the American political leach to do right now is support mass movements in the U.S. and in Russia internationally. We need to have masses of people come together, not relying on what we think are good elites, or wagging your finger at bad elites.  There's someone like that in Ukraine. 5000 Russians have been arrested so far in anti war movements. We're not hearing enough about that in the U.S. That is pressuring the Russian elite to do a total turnaround. You've already got a few of them that are ready to pull out of the war. And we should be hearing the same stuff from American progressives. I'm disappointed that I'm not hearing more of it from DSA candidates like AOC or other so called progressives that are no longer associated with us like Jamal Bowman, they need to be using their platform to support masses of people to affect actual change, permanent change, redistributing wealth, sustainable energy, those sort of things. We also need permanent change in how the U.S. handles its foreign policy. We need to disband NATO. We need to divest from the nuclear weapons transportation systems nationally. We have legislation in Vermont right now that you can go out and call your Congress people about to divest from that. We need to get rid of the F 35 program, but we can't just have spontaneous actions when stuff is really, really bad. We need to have permanent organization and a sense of solidarity with one another so that we can really bring about systemic change. I think that's the point that I'm going to lead with. Thank you, Trey. So eight days into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, what have we learned so far?     Look at the stock market currently look at the stock market collapse in Russia. Look at all the needs that aren't being met every day for Ukrainians now.  If you are a man in the Ukraine, you're not allowed to leave if you're between the ages of 18 and 60. There's no freedom of press in Russia in Ukraine and very little now in the United States in terms of understanding the Russian point of view. Individual liberties are always the sacrifice at the altar of war.  It multiplies the hate and the desire for the revenge. And whether the Ukrainians or the Russians win this if it's a bloody war, it will simply sow the seeds of the next war. The second thing we learned is that possessing thousands of nuclear weapons does not prevent war yet risks ending life for all of us. Russia in the United States possess over 90% of the world's nuclear weapons and neither side will renounce the privilege of using them first if they so feel like it. Putin in fact has put his weapons on high alert, which doesn't mean a whole lot because Russian weapons and the United States are both dedicated to a policy of always having certain amounts of nuclear weapons on high alert. So what can be done now? How can Ukrainians and their supporters act in a way and how they act will have much to do with how much bloodshed, environmental, economic and moral damage there will be in the coming years. If the Ukrainians choose primarily violence to win their freedom, they will end up fighting probably a long protracted war, which will increase the death destruction and create countless refugees. Think of the current states where this has happened in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen, untold human misery. Sending more arms outside fighters will make this more likely. And if Ukraine somehow manages to push the Russians back using arms, it runs the risk that Putin will either use nuclear weapons or B damage the nuclear power plants in Ukraine in his retreat, similar to the way Saddam Hussein devastated his country by igniting all the oil wells in his defeat and leaving those smoke plumes over much of the Middle East. Nonviolent actions, on the other hand, can be very effective. They include certainly sanctions. And I agree sanctions leveled at ordinary people to make their lives miserable have not been proven to be effective, but a cause of almost as much misery as war itself. But sanctions against oligarchs and others who support Putin can be very valuable. Bending Russia from the swift banking system so that they can't profit and pay for their wars makes a lot of sense and stop in buying their gas. I'm flabbergasted to find out that US is still paying for Russian oil even as we speak. How serious are we about really helping the Ukrainians? Then there's universal civil resistance. We see many pictures of citizens blocking the streets, even tanks, changing signs to confuse the invaders, changing maps, putting up signs that you're not welcome. There's countless ways of letting the Russians know they are not welcome. Consider the grandmother who engaged the Russian soldier who was kind of flustered about what he was doing there in the first place, telling him to put sunflower seeds in his pocket so that when he is killed, at least flowers will grow from where he died. Noncooperation means that all Ukrainians can fight for their country. Arm struggle means that only the physically strongest minority can fight. Civil actions that do not threaten individual Russian troops are more likely to create the defections that we're seeing already some and could see a lot more of among Russian troops, as well as win support back in Russia and prevent many deaths. But total noncooperation, not giving one inch to any of the demands of the Russians while they're in your country, at the same time not threatening them with the very thing they're threatening you with, is exceedingly effective. Research shows that such an approach actually historically has been proven to be more effective than armed resistance to an invading power. Thirdly, we can find a way to give Putin an opportunity to save face. So Sun Tzu in his ancient book, The Art of War, said that when your enemy is contained, to a certain extent, in an impasse like Putin is now, that you should build him a golden bridge to allow his retreat. Call for a ceasefire and withdrawal of all Russian troops in return for something he asked for earlier, that is a moratorium on the expansion of NATO, something that is easy for us to do and discussion of removal of U.S. nuclear weapons from Europe, just as a prelude to eliminating all nuclear weapons. And this could be just the incentive Putin needs to withdraw his troops saying, we got what we wanted. No more danger from Ukraine to us. So what can we do in Vermont? We certainly support war victims and refugees. We can call the White House and lobby our congresspeople for saying no to war, no to preparations for war, and no further weapons sales to anyone. We can call for that return to the negotiating table with the NATO status of nuclear weapons in Europe up for negotiation. We've got to give Putin that reason to retreat while saving face before he destroys the entire country. We need to reinvigorate, as my friends have said, both the anti-nuclear and the anti-war movements everywhere. The best time to stop wars is before they start. What can Vermonters specifically do in addition to these things? There is, right now in the House of Representatives in the Vermont legislature, Joint Resolution H7, which says Vermonters strongly oppose any preparations for nuclear war. If this had been done a long time ago by enough places around the country and around the world, there might not be nuclear weapons that Putin can threaten us with now. This is one step toward preserving our future. Thanks. Comments. Well, I forgot to say something, so if you don't mind. Go ahead, Charlotte. Just to make it a little clearer. One thing about the Berlin to Baghdad railroad was that it was being built by the Germans for the Turks and in return the Turks were granting oil concessions to either side of the railroad. That was another reason. A second thing I forgot to say is that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline has been sanctioned. It was the first item that was sanctioned since the war began and that shows you how important that pipeline is. And actually since then all the about 150 workers have been laid off because of the sanctions. And well there's no telling whether it'll go go back online ever again. It was supposed to be certified by Germany by this summer. And who knows what's going to happen between now and this summer. Another thing I forgot to mention is that the US is flooding supplies of natural gas into Europe. You see this is all a struggle for markets. And the biggest backers of Trump were the fracking gas owners in the west and southwest. They were his principal source of income. And right now they are pushing to have more of their fracked gas coming into Europe. And that's that's a considerable concern. And they're also and not not only the conservatives. I mean you have like the former economic adviser to the IMF has recently said that canceling the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline may have been based on sound environmental logic. But now the timing seems awkward. It seems that we must bring in we must return to developing domestic oil and gas. And so this is of concern to all climate activists. This this war is just turning everything on its head. All the all the advances that we've made with all alternative energy to protect the climate are now being stymied. And that in itself should be a big cause for demonstrations. And let's see. I think that is all I want to say. I just wanted to come in on a couple of things. I wanted to underscore something that I've been shocked by in the media which is the racism of the coverage of what is happening in Europe because you've got reporters saying this is happening in a civilized society as opposed to wars that happen in uncivilized society. And I think there's a systemic race racist portrayal of wars in the global south as opposed to wars now in the heart of Europe. And that's important to say because that is impact impacting the rights of migrants and refugees globally because there are some acceptable refugees and migrants that is white Ukrainians and they're unacceptable migrants and refugees. And that's North Africans Arabs people from all over Africa who right now are being barred at the European Union's borders. They're not being allowed admission into Poland and other countries in Europe. And frankly Britain is not even letting Ukrainians in. So it gives you a sense of the hypocrisy that's deep in in in the this war. The second thing I wanted to come in on is I don't agree in the framing this conflict as fundamentally between great powers. This conflict fundamentally is about Russian conquest of Ukraine. That is the war. They're underlying interimperial dynamics but if we don't begin with the actual war that's being waged which is the Russian conquest colonization and occupation of of Ukraine we're going to start wrong because we have to begin with opposing the actual war that's being fought and stop it from becoming an interimperial rivalry a war between great powers which as I said would threaten World War three between nuclear armed powers. But right now the war is a is an occupation by Russian Russian forces. And then I think there's something about that that is I want to elaborate a little bit more about about how we can end this war. And it reminds me of how the Vietnam War was ended. And I think that we have to go back to that precedent and learn from it because it was a national liberation struggle as well. The Vietnamese people rising up against the U.S. as an occupying military imperialist force in their country. And they rose up and fought a military resistance that was supported by an international anti-war resistance that then grew into the U.S. troops themselves so that the soldiers revolted and refused to carry out the fight. I think that's the hope from below in this circumstance. So I support the entire Ukrainian resistance civil and military plus the Russian anti-war movement. And most importantly the attempt to fraternize with Russian soldiers and win them to an anti-war position. I think these people are being used as cannon fodder for Putin's war. And I don't think they really believe in it.  And the final thing I hope this ends in is a revolution that overthrows over throws Vladimir Putin because I don't think he will stop his expansionist aims through diplomacy or anything else into Eastern Europe. He has a very clear aim to reclaim lost spheres of influence in Eastern Europe. So I think we're in for a protracted battle that can only be one and stopped from mass struggle from below in Ukraine, in Russia and globally. Yeah, I agree with most of what Ashley said. I think that we need to look at Vietnam War and see that there were young people that didn't want to participate. They didn't want to be drafted. They didn't want to go out and fight. A lot of these people are conscripts that were tricked into going out and going into combat. It's a wildly unpopular war as it touched on earlier. A lot of their legislators are already dealing about face and, you know, didn't take sanctions on the U.S. to get the American student movement to oppose the war. It took students recognizing that they had a very real material interest in opposing the war. Their lives were being gambled by capitalists being gambled by the wealthy. And I do think that is the hope. Mass movement, not a reliance on good liberals or bad conservatives or bad oligarchs, what have you. The answer isn't going to be sanctions that crippled their economy. It never has been. It didn't work with Sudan. It doesn't work with Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia. No American economic sanctions are going to resolve this. And I think what they're trying to do right now is get more people cozyed up to the idea of Western control over finance by just this one time opposing the bad guy.  I don't remember the Iraq War, but there are a lot of people that remember Freedom Fries, a lot of people that remember weird American propaganda. They got people real hot in the idea of intervention. There are a lot of problems going on in the world right now, and none of them are solved by American involvement. And all of them are made worse by American military involvement. That's where we're at. Yeah, I agree. The Ukrainian people have a right to resist any way they choose violently or non-violently. I would just hope that they do make that decision with enough awareness of what evidence we have of which works better. Yes, the Vietnamese beat the Americans in a long protracted war. The Afghans beat both the Russians and the Americans in a protracted war. But look at the price they paid. We killed four million Vietnamese. That's a really high price to pay. We know from historical, empirical, political science studies that over the 100 years from 1900 to 2006, that in cases of 320 people's trying to overthrow an occupying power or overthrow their own dictator, that if they used primarily nonviolent rather than violent resistance, they were twice as likely to succeed. People just have to understand that. I grew up with a threat of the Soviet Union and being told that they were going to dominate the world unless we had lots of nuclear weapons and a stronger military. And to my shock and everybody else's in the space of less than a year in 1989 and 1990, the people of Russia and the Warsaw Pact who hook up and said, we're not playing this game anymore. We're simply not going to support the Soviet Union. And they fell not with a massive war with tens of millions of deaths or a nuclear war with billions of deaths, but with a few thousand deaths and the Soviet Union fell. If the Ukrainians choose a violent resistance, then I think they should expect possibly if they're unfortunate to see the same outcome for their country that looks like Iraq and Afghanistan. If on the other hand, they use civil resistance, they may get closer to what Czechoslovakia did against the Soviet invasion in 1968, not total independence from the Soviet Union, but they got to keep their own government that the troops came in to replace. And they did it with almost no loss of life. So it's totally their choice. I would just hope that we give them enough information to say that the choice always is never between violent resistance and doing nothing. This third way of civil resistance is very sophisticated, very well outlined and can be taught and learned and it's used. Ukrainians in fact used it to a large extent in their Revolution of 2004 when they had deposed a Russian leaning dictator. I don't know how many Ukrainians remember that well or what it was about, but it was extremely successful. The Serbs did it. NATO bombing of of Belgrade and Serbia for for many days, five billion dollars worth of bombs killed thousands of people didn't dislodge Milosevic, but civil resistance did young students in the outpour movement in just a few months were able to to depose this brutal guy Milosevic. We just got to know that there's another way because even if the Ukrainians win with violence, it's not going to solve their economic problems. And worst of all, it's going to keep the world locked in the belief that violence is the final arbiter of conflict. And sooner or later, that belief is going to do us all in with weapons of mass destruction. I used to think until very recently until the war that we would come out of this COVID nightmare with a much better understanding of the huge inequalities that exist in the world and that we would try to bring a new paradigm into play. And the reason I say that I actually used to I got my master's degree in art history in Florence, Italy of all places. And why are you laughing? No, I think I didn't know that. That's awesome. That's great place to get it. I mean, I'm jealous. I wish I had done that. Yeah, right. Yeah. One of my past lives. And anyway, but I'll always remember a fresco and it showed the black plague. And one of the results from the black plague was the Italian Renaissance. In other words, there was this new birth of thinking science came to the fore against religion. There's a great birth and culture. And that's what I want. I want a new Renaissance in the world. Now this has happened. So it behooves us to get out in force and say, we're not going to take it anymore. These endless wars have got to stop. I do agree with you, Ashley, that Russia invaded wrongly and that the territorial integrity of Ukraine should be protected by the same token. I don't go along with saying that this was a unprovoked war. You may disagree with me, but from what I've read, Putin tried to get the United States to say in writing that it would no longer push against Russia's territorial borders and its security. And as a matter of fact, it's been largely argued that that with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, there was a pledge made that the NATO expansion would not occur. And what happened? It occurred. So you have the humiliation of the Russian people and their leaders. What happens when a leader gets humiliated? Look at what happened with Germany. I mean, it's just insane. So there's problems to be spread around on all sides. Now with regard to the refugees, this is very interesting development. And actually, the news media has sort of gingerly touched upon it that students of color, for instance, can't even get on the trains. I mean, this is outrageous. And this begins to lend credence to the idea that has been argued that there is a strong right wing, if not fascist or neo-Nazi element in Ukraine. We need to look at that. We need to see just how strong it is. But the fact that even the media has touched on it suggests to me that the reason is because of the power of the Black Lives Matter movement that got us to think about the racism in our own country to the point where there are more, for instance, Black reporters that have major positions in our television programs.  I'm all for the people. And I have heard recently that Zelensky has been resting protesters and imprisoning them. So the other aspect is that the refugees are making Europe nervous. Why? Because when the influx of refugees from the Middle East was going on, mostly from the Middle East, it gave a rise to the new right in Europe. So you're going to have this incredible flood of refugees into Poland, for instance. What's that going to do? And I just heard it on the radio this morning coming over that there is great concern. It's going to revitalize the new right neo-Nazi movement. So we got to watch that very carefully. I'll just come in a little bit more about the refugee and migrant question, because I think this is pivotal. And it's something where the U.S. not only right, but political establishment, including the heart of the Democratic Party, has no ground to stand on. If you watched Biden's State of the Union speech, one of the things he ranted on about was border securitization. That is, he's enforcing Trump's anti-migrant border policy as we speak. The very same things that the EU is doing against black and Arab migrants, the United States is doing against not only Mexicans and Latin Americans, but people from all over the world who are right now held outside of the United States, pursued by ICE, thrown into detention facilities and deported. So I don't think it's just the political right that is anti-migrant. This is true all over Europe. The political establishment is anti-migrant. And the right will use it for their own benefit to advance their reactionary nationalist program. But we should be no one under no illusion that it's across the political spectrum of the ruling classes that control the European states. And the other thing is I think we should contrast that with the enormous sympathy that regular people have showed to refugees and migrants. And I think there's a real discrepancy between what the right says, what the political establishment and the wellspring of generosity we've seen towards all migrants from among regular people. And that should give us tremendous hope. I did want to come in on the question of sanctions a little bit more because I'm not sure if I support sanctions. And I'm not sure if I oppose them. And I want to explain that a little bit. Why don't support them? It is impossible to have smart sanctions. The sanctions that have been posed on Russia by Europe and the United States are having systemic effects on the entire Russian economy. And the main victims of that are working class people in Russia and the people who are leading the anti-war movement in Russia. And my concern is that this sanctions regime will drive Russian people into the arms of Putin, which is what happened immediately after the US went into Serbia. It temporarily boosted the fortunes of Milosevic and only after the war was concluded was he overthrown by a popular revolution. So I think the sanctions are a dangerous game and they're actually a form of financial warfare, frankly, that we should be cautious about. But at the same time, I don't think we should lead on the question of opposing sanctions because for the Ukrainian people, it seems as some means of self-defense against an occupying army. So I think it's a debate we have to have out in the movement as it develops and most importantly, listen to Ukrainian voices and Russian voices about what they're saying so that we don't take a position that's against the facilitation of a development of a mass popular movement in both countries from below, which I think is the hope in the situation. And then more on the question of sanctions. I find it hard to take seriously when the U.S. celebrates boycott, divestment and sanctions from Russian companies when they do they not only don't support it, but they declare it as anti-Semitic to support the same thing against the state of Israel. Or trying to make it illegal. Right. Or trying to make it illegal when Israel is an occupying military garrison state on stolen land who should be subject to genuine boycott, divestment and sanctions, which is actually being called for by the Palestinian people. So it's a bit rich to hear all of this stuff going on in New Hampshire where they're criminalizing BDS towards Israel and now they're enacting it against Russia. And I think we need to expand our consciousness because I think there are two big national liberation struggles that are fighting immediately. There are several around the world. But the one in the headlines are Palestine and Ukraine. And rather than have a different policy towards each, we should have a consistent policy of we're on the side of the liberation struggle. Final point I wanted to make in this little comment is about climate change because I think we have to see what is going on because all the climate change discussion is out the window. With the increase in the price of oil and natural gas, all the frackers are coming back. All the pipelines are being rebuilt. And the pro-green technology that is going to be funded is tied up with US imperialism. It's not politically innocent. In other words, we're seeing an attempt to rebuild the infrastructure that's at the heart of the problem of climate change. And the US is trying to now open the market of Europe to exported liquid national gas from the United States that's mostly fracked gas. So you've got a really scary thing in which now the US, which is one of the big oil producers and natural gas producers in the world is trying to push Russia out of Europe and replace the pipelines with their own shipped natural gas over into Europe. So I then think we're every crisis in the world system which was already bad. Climate change, economic crisis, the pandemic, on and on and on and on. That's all being dramatically exacerbated by Putin's invasion and occupation of Ukraine and the response of the great powers to that, which is to worsen every single problem in the world. The benefit of that is, and I'll give you an example, 70% of Egypt's grain comes from Ukraine. There are no ships coming from Ukraine to Egypt now to transport that grain. We could see that trigger breadrides. And if people remember back to the beginning of the Egyptian Revolution, it began with breadrides against the price of food. So this is going to provoke mass struggle from below. And I think we have to keep our eyes on that struggle from below across borders and build solidarity in it. It's going to make every single contract that comes up next year in the United States more intense. They're about to raise interest rates, which is going to cut into corporate profits and corporations are going to try and take that out on workers. So you could see the contract negotiations go bad in the United States and a wave of strikes in the United States. We need to be building solidarity between that mass populist struggle from Ukraine to Russia to Egypt to the United States because that's the hope out of this horror that the world's powers have thrust us into. Actually, I agree that the worst outcome of this is to a total setback for the climate movement and the environmental movement and a total setback for workers' rights and so forth. But the third is, is it a setback for the peace movement? When I hear you say, I support military resistance as Ukrainians, do you mean to the extent that you're happy with the hundreds of millions of dollars that you mentioned, Tray, or being poured into the country and we should continue to do that? My position is this. I don't support NATO at all. I don't support the US government at all. But I support the right of people to defend themselves and to secure munitions however they need to to preserve their national independence. There's a long history to this. The Vietnamese liberation struggle probably would not have won if it didn't secure arms and munitions from China and the Soviet Union. I think both China and the Soviet Union were reactionary states, oppressive, horrible dictatorships. In the case of the Soviet Union, an imperial power of its own. But the Vietnamese liberation struggle was armed by those powers. And I supported their liberation struggle. The problem is the subjection of those liberation struggles to the demands of the power that supplies the arms. And that's the biggest danger. That's why I pair the demand about secure defensive weapons so that you can protect your country's independence with a demand against the United States and NATO to cancel the debt because that's the vehicle to trap Ukraine in a position of subjection to Western powers. So this is going to be an ongoing, ongoing battle. And we have to debate it out. But, you know, the IRA took weapons from all over the world. In their national liberation struggle to free Ireland, which if you listen to Irish politicians, they're quite fiery about Ukraine and Palestine. You should listen to them. Richard Boyd Barrett gave an incredible speech on the floor of the Irish parliament in support of the Ukrainian-Palestinian liberation struggles. And there are many other examples. The Spanish Revolution got guns from the Soviet Union. Not enough guns. And that would have made a big difference if Franco was overthrown in the Civil War by the Republican forces. So I'm not a pacifist. I'm for, by any means, necessary.  So I think we have a point of agreement that where we disagree is whether the military resistance should be supported. I am in agreement with you about the civilian resistance. I think that's incredibly powerful and most powerful because if you can flip the troops, which is about fraternization, you know, that can really change the situation on the ground. I think the most powerful force is, say, Russian workers' strike. That is where Putin can't function, then. If all the industries of Russia are shut down, if gas and oil workers' strike, Putin's done for. So I hope the anti-war movement and the popular struggle of all its character, you know, topples these regimes. We need a little bit of revolution here in the United States, as well as in Russia, Ukraine, the rest of the world. Yeah, I agree with Ashley that the power that people have right now isn't at ballot boxes or necessarily with guns. What it really is about is your relationship to production.  But if we want to see, like, lasting change and a permanent solution to imperialist warfare, then we do need that kind of working-class organization where people are willing to have, like, tremendous acts of solidarity. And we don't have that in the U.S. yet. There's a lot of people in their workplaces that feel atomized. They're not talking to their coworkers. They're not active in their unions. Little things like that, if you're watching this and you're trying to think of some way that we can organize in the U.S., that's it. Talk to your coworkers. See what their grievances are. Organize in your workplace to see how you can improve it. And that will expand exponentially. If you're in Starbucks, talk to your coworkers about a union. Then that goes to union activity in your state. Vermont has a very active AFL-CIO. If Vermont has an active AFL-CIO, that goes to New England, then the country, and then the world. It's a lot of very slow grinding to make the world that we want, but there are no shortcuts to permanent liberation like this. On the point of sanctions, I just want to circle back to that. I do support the call for boycott, divestment, and sanctions. Against Israel, but I think it has a different relationship to the U.S. than the Ukraine. It will be way more effective because in a lot of ways, Israel is the 51st state. It really is just an American puppet state where we get to have a military outpost in the Middle East to wage war on other places. I do think it's different with Ukraine. I mean different with Russia because they aren't as relying on us. And if we go back to our previous analysis that this war was caused by consolidation of power in the Russian oligarchy, then we shouldn't be calling for blanket sanctions because that only sharpens inequality and consolidates more wealth domestically and people that already own productive forces. That's going to go out of the agrarian sections of Russia that money's going to go right back into energy. It's going to go right back into petrochemicals. The food exports, that's going to China right now, it's not going to other places because China's the only place that's willing to engage in trade with Russia and they are going to have a stronger alliance, not anything near like a second camp. It's silly to view the world as like only bipolar. Now there's multiple poles of attraction but we shouldn't be supporting sanctions in Russia. We should be supporting a consistent position on holding oligarchs everywhere, U.S., Russia, every country accountable to taxation. There is a large amount of that money that is not being distributed to people and it's not even like crazy redistributive tax measures that people are calling for. It's just the basic like participation, like liberal, what is it? The liberal tax is where you're supposed to pay to just like do your part to keep society together. They're not giving into that part. We need to all just be consistent with our position everywhere. If you want to support national liberation struggles in Ukraine, you should support them in Palestine. Like I said, it's jarring to go onto my Instagram and see all these celebrities that are calling for fundraisers to the Ukrainian military or see apps to change it to the Ukrainian flag or all these other things. Of course I support it. I'm just upset that you're not consistent about it when it's Palestinians. I saw footage on Twitter of a power plant. It was blown up. You could see the comments like, oh my God, all these people are dead. This is so terrible, all the carnage and someone's like, oh, that's just Palestine. Everyone's like, thank God. It's not white people that are getting killed. And I saw another post, no, not a post. It was like a regular news coverage where they were talking about thermobaric bombs where the guy said, these were used in Afghanistan but it's stomach churning to think that it's happening in Europe now. Why is that? Why are you cool about it in other places? Why are these people that you care about now? I think Ukrainians are gonna have a, a long road ahead for their migration but it's not gonna be as difficult as the Syrian refugees did. I saw footage this morning of Berlin accepting with warm arms, food and stuff for a bunch of Ukrainians coming in on trains. I saw footage of how they treated Syrian refugees too. It's not consistent. I think that you need to recognize that no matter what someone looks like, no matter what they talk like, what you do to sustain yourself, how you make your living, that's what really separates us. That's my contribution. I'd like to give a little bit of a historical background to the whole Palestine issue, which involves, guess what, oil. Now, this is very not known and one of the reasons I harp on it so much is because it has been hidden from view. Why? It's because it's considered a national security issue. Why? Because oil is the fuel of military. If you aspire to be a great power, you have to have control over enough oil so your military machines can keep fighting because the Germans learned that lesson. They ran out of gas in both World Wars. But the origin of the state of Palestine, very interesting, we look to the 1917 Balfour Declaration in which the British government approved the idea of a national homeland for the Jews. Well, I started looking into, there are two sides of that declaration. It was actually just a letter and the letter was from Foreign Secretary British, British Foreign Secretary Balfour to a Rothschild, Walter de Rothschild, who is from one of the biggest oil families in the world at the time. What we have learned, and there are some Israelis that are now getting documents declassified, is that they were very concerned about, again, the getting that oil of Iraq shipped safely to a terminal point on the Mediterranean. And that point was Palestine. So they needed that oil to be in protected and protecting pipelines brings in the whole military connection to these energy wars. They needed it to be offloaded in a place that they could rely on, namely a place that was occupied by European Jews who had set up colonies in Palestine. This is an angle that is not well known. Now I wanna take it to, oh, we're out of time. Well, I hope you... No, we got time. Well, all right, wait, just real quickly. Then we bring it... John wants to get in, that's all.  I could talk about how the Jews were sold out during World War II because of the U.S. wanted Saudi oil, all right, and they didn't wanna upset King Ibn Sa'ab. But then we take up to Iraq, the Iraq war. Benjamin Netanyahu was cheering for it all along, and the reason was he wanted to reconnect an old pipeline that was built from Iraq to Haifa. And it was closed during the war, 1948 war, of independence for Israel. And he wanted it reopened and he even bragged that the oil will soon be flowing to Haifa. And the only reason that didn't happen, one of the only reasons is because the guy that was gonna replace Saddam Hussein, his name was Ahmed Shalabi, he was an Iraqi in exile, he came up with a fiction of weapons of mass destruction. So once that got out of the bag, they couldn't put him in power, and then the whole thing fell apart. But I wouldn't be surprised if they're still angling for that pipeline to go through. Well, I wanna thank everybody for being here and sharing your views, and we hope we gave our listeners some ideas to think about and how to approach this mess in Ukraine. Just as importantly, what the post-Ukrainian war world is gonna look like if we survive it, if we survive it at all. And hopefully we'll be more environmentally conscious, less war-prone, less dependent on military, and not more. And it's a choice that we're gonna have to make through and after this conflict. Thank you for organizing this, John. Yeah, thank you. No more war. Thanks to Channel 17 for putting this on, too. Echoing the call earlier for a permanent and standing organization, you can follow Vermonters for Peace on Instagram. That is V-E-R-M-O-N-T-E-R-S, underscore F-O-R, underscore P-E-A-C-E, Vermonters for Peace. We will be announcing some teachings at the University of Vermont and other actions statewide to oppose the war as it escalates. And you can check out followthepipelines.com website that I've set up, and we're putting a lot of our information on that website. And check out Spectre Journal where we've got tons of statements and analysis of how and why we should oppose the Russian war in Ukraine. And I just want to thank everybody. It's very brilliant comments. And the world is at stake right now, and we've got to get ourselves organized. And most importantly, build a domestic peace movement in solidarity with the Russian peace movement and the Ukrainian national liberation struggle and all our struggle against world imperialism in this wretched system we live under. We're fighting for a world that puts people before profit and power.


I'm going to start with a little story. Four years ago, Jasmine Chen, an MIT student, witnessed the harrowing effects of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. She was compelled to get involved. And as she did, she saw firsthand how difficult it was to supply relief to the communities trying to rebuild their future. And what she noticed most was a glaring gap of information. NGOs and community leaders didn't have the information they needed to support their communities. They didn't know who needed help or what they needed. And what could result is millions of bottles of water showing up, but no baby food or diapers. So Jasmine, relying on her skills in building environmental data tools, set out to build a solution. She recruited her classmate Azuri, a product designer. And what emerged was RePlus Connect and the opportunity for impact and financial return. But when they set out to raise funding to build a pilot, they were met with barriers and closed doors at every turn. Their experience is the experience of most underrepresented founders. But imagine if we can tap into that potential and accelerate the problems that we're facing, the world's most pressing problems, build wealth for communities, and value for all of us. We can. We need to invest more, do it differently, and do it smartly. So let's talk about all three of those. Invest more. Last year, CrunchBase reported 1% of VC funding went to black-owned businesses. 1.9% to women-owned startups. 2%. How can that be if you're generous and add them together? 3%. How can that be? Especially when you compare it to graduation rates across all areas of STEM. Black students represent 7.5% of graduates, women 35%. Even with those woeful statistics, what if we could get closer to those demographics for VC funding? Imagine the potential. Without funding, founders can't access capital to launch pilots, expand to new markets, lease office space, or attend conferences to market their solutions. And in an environment where 9 out of 10 startups fail, underrepresented founders are often having to roll the dice with the money that they need to pay their bills and support their family. So can we agree we need to invest more? Yes, we can agree. We have to invest more. But it's not that simple. You see, let's go back to Jasmine and Azuri example. On the paper, there is sure bet to very qualified founders going after a huge market size. What's the hiccup? To exemplify, let's talk another example. My friend, let's call him John, finished a prestige service in an intelligence unit and wanted to start a cyber company. He then talked to his roommate from the same unit who partnered him up with a VC you guessed it, from the same unit. John is the VC set down for coffee, and the VC said, you know, I like it.  Let me just help you refine the problem, and I'll put the first check. A few weeks later, John closed his $4.5 million round pre-seed and pre-product. Now, this is not a bad story. It's actually a really good story. The investor did what he should do. He invested in a founder. He really believe in an opportunity he understand in a very streamlined process. If the same investor would have tried to invest in a Zori and Jasmine, it would have cost him more time and effort. It did not make economic sense. You see, and that's the problem with many VCs. They truly don't have the economic incentives to invest in underrepresented founders, especially when they're solving what we called underrepresented problems. So that's a systemic issue. And if we want to change the systemic outcomes, we need to change the input. So we need to invest differently, not just more, but different. We need to use different form of capital, different partnership to incentivize different types of behavior. But, and this is a big but, different must still be smart. Our system is not perfect, but there are elements that we don't want to lose. VC investment is not just cash. It's feedback. It's validation. It's signal to bigger investor that founders will need. So we need to make sure that whatever form of investment mechanism fulfill these roles. This is where partnership comes together. This is where we as an ecosystem need to think how to pull different source of capital with different types of objectives and different types of risk appetite. And this is where we as Deloitte have ambitions to help. Deloitte's made a $1.5 billion commitment to equity to those facing the greatest barriers. And a strategy around financial inclusion, we believe is a key way to do that. We believe supporting underrepresented founders has a multiplier effect. It builds family-sustaining wages, supports communities in need, and helps us make progress on our most pressing issues. But as Barr said, we also know we can't do it alone. So we're committed to partnership, building and supporting ecosystems of lots of different players to make this change happen. We at Polylab, we have the mission to accelerate the speed and quality of solution to global challenges. We do this by leveraging existing technology. We also recognize that we wanna unleash the power of technology to fight the fight of our time. We must partner with founders that have lived experience in the problem areas where we wanna tackle. This is why we're so happy and excited to partner with organizations like Deloitte to think creatively and collectively about this problem. Now let's close the loop on Jasmine and Azori. I'm happy to announce that earlier this summer, they finally were able to secure the funding they needed to run their pilot. It took them four years. Now this is a good story and it's gonna have great ending I can promise you, but let's just run the scenario.  Let me just refine the problem with you and I'll put the first check. My bat that today we had much better tools to handle the devastating disasters that are increasing in severity and in frequency. Let me be more clear. I can personally say that their product could have saved lives and reduced economic losses, particularly this month. Investing in underrepresented founders will pay dividends, financial, economics, environmental, societal. They will, we urge all ecosystem players, whatever form of capital you're owning, invest more, invest smartly, invest differently. And if you want a partner on this journey, please reach out. Let's circle back here next year and view better stats. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.


TLO, what's poppin? We are on twitch. We are not live, but you can leave a like comment and subscribe Turn on your post notification bells, man. Let's continue to grow the family from Chicago to the UK if We do go live and you happen to miss it The lit one live is where you can catch all the Highlights and things of that nature It's right here. Don't forget. We do got the patreon. We just watched We just watched a movie on there. If you want to know what movie go check it out Don't forget we got this court as well, man. That's always bussing I do have my daughter next week. I feel like low-key when I got my daughter though I'll be more locked in I'll be having way too much free time when I don't have my daughter And I just be doing dumb shit You know I'm not focusing, but I'm gonna start a job soon Hmm So my mom is redoing my resume man, Florida been kicking my Damn, Florida been getting the best of me, especially what happened with my channel in the beginning of the year So I had to go get a job for a little bit as a man, you know, you got to do what you got to do Maybe getting 30 day notices on the on the on the goddamn Can't be having that no no Anyway, man, don't forget we do got the link tree as well, man If you want to donate to the cause they got the we got the go fund me set up to get me to the UK And they buy any do you know little foods that we need to buy things of that nature You know No, I'm still out here struggle. I'm thugging it out though.  I have fun. I had a good time Anyway, let's get into this Where was his harness Why would you it's raining it's overcast the look the look of the real roof looks slippery You're not I'm not gonna lie. That was hilarious. What needs to take a frickin show. Yeah, that show pill. Yeah calm down How did dog do all that the dog still on the leash? How you manage to let your dog? Go jump over this wouldn't even trust my homies to be doing that with me But also I wouldn't be the one reaching down there. I'd be the one holding somebody up And I think where was the rest of his clothes at a bit emotional because Basically, this is what she is that trifle up there Is that homemade trifle? Oh gone darling give us a bit. I love a bit of homemade trifle. Do you know what I mean? What's trifle Tell me what membrane to the table the table This is me rat pencil case. I make them out of real rats To the table. This is me rat pencil case. I make them out of real rats Weird Things are you stretch See I don't know what that really is though like what's the joke behind it like what is it? I don't know How do you mean a problem? It's a problem How are we going to make this happen?  What is he a little bit freaky in there? There's a parrot in the show. Do you think you can grab it? Did you hear Bosman? Can you grab it? At this point I just feel like David Dassenbrough himself. I may as well run back to van grab an explorer's hat in the net Definitely in Liverpool. I don't even appear. What is coming and wrangle this tropical pest like an adolescent Steve Aowen? Just wanted a pack of skins and some desperado's not a standoff with a parrot What is coming on bro? Oh She is so in an entertain Yeah, it can happen at you on video look yeah, it's called I know it's the 21st century Luke. I'm gonna be honest with you now I I honestly honestly honestly honestly don't know I hate kids I let you do not like it. What is it like a? What is this esteem? You just take this video here for me mate. Yeah, is it gone? Yeah, I think it's on auto It's all that the answer you don't need to be this is little riddle with Liverpoolians today. Okay. I may bother Thanks for me. Thank you very much Do you ever just let me in did we just take our first ill that I'm known of like Yeah, that's that's a ill Just look like a scouts power ranger. What was he doing? Do you ever just let the intro sit fast when? I've just made a coffee and I'm just away Let's talk about it real quick real quick real quick.  Who's out here Buying whole carrots washing them off and eating them like this who she thought she was What's the rabbit name from Space Jam like you thought she was him? Hey So yeah, I just got to the gym and I listen I'm not even joking. His keys is just All right, so yeah, I just got to the gym and I listen. He got plastic surgery Bro jawline is immaculant like what's going on here? Pause Then I'm not even joking. His keys is just pulled in it. Look.  Watch this? Yo at this point, you know I'm saying just throw the whole car away.  I just want my life back.  All to win a bit of smoke. Salmon, who's bothered about that? Bought myself a track suit and realised I look like an 80s ecstasy dealer. Improvising a conversation as gossip mums using this filter. You are not going to believe what I've just heard down Book Club. Nigel. It's Mum. Queer. I didn't even know she was into books. I thought she was more a lesbian. Oh, she is. Yeah, that's what I just said, babe. Don't ever listen to me.  Why does it feel like the UK still moves like we're in a lockdown? Like, y'all know y'all can go outside and have fun. What y'all just do? Y'all just be in the crib. Like, oh, man, we can't go nowhere. I'm just going to make some...  It's funny, though. This is hilarious. She likes getting fingerblasted by Janine. Well, good honour. Getting with the times. It is... September. You forget she's been married for 50 years to bloody... Watcher. I forgot he's got a really bad problem with his arse, and he blesses little... Gooch. Why would I bless that? But the thing is I've heard that Watcher has been having an affair. With... Ingrid. Iris from... To be fair, it is a great zoo. They've got loads of whales. That's just Iris! Right, guys. You are not ready for this.  From the outside, standard, north London. You're not really going to get much here. Until this. Exhibit A. It's only a sodden cannabis farm. Now, I'm just as confused as you are, but surely you'd remove this before advertising the property, no? Not only that, the fact that it's quarter of a million quid. Does the cannabis come with it? I'm joking. We're going all angles here.  I don't know. Maybe I'm getting it wrong, but the cannabis leaves on the floor is telling me otherwise. Pretty nice kitchen, though. No real complaints here. They're played. Bob's your uncle, Fanny's your aunt, and here's a two-bed flat selling quid. Wait, what? I feel like that's over way overpriced, like taking away anything else that we used to see in there. Quarter of a million for that was crazy. Is that? I've got present fear. What is this? Pink flower. Pink water. Who made this?  This guy's not stopping for anyone. This bus driver just passes everyone at the bus station. He's not stopping. Not again. Not again. Not again. Not again. Hand out. Not again. Hand out. Hand out. Hand out. Hand it out. Hand it out. Hand it out. Hand it out. Hand it out. Hand it out. Hand out. Hand it out. And I got to take the bus to take my daughter to school. It's an express bus and it's a regular bus. And one of my favorite past Duck Times is watching people get past when I'm on the express and they think it's a regular one and then they throw a hissy fit. Maybe, like, I'll be like, no bro, you got it. This the express. This not that. This not that. We're not stopping here, that'll be my thoughts to mine. I'm sorry, I've never worn it. I've got your hair up. Get out of my punch.  Hello, loveys. Hello, loveys. Oh my God. He's got your hair up. That's not quite nice. No milkshakes? No, no milkshakes, darling. We saw how the McDonald's milkshake shortage was affecting others. Despite it, what are you going to do now? Probably go to the ice cream shop around the corner. Probably go get a milkshake in the ice cream shop. Just got to try and figure it out all by yourself now, that's a shame. So I actually tried to order a milkshake because I always give milkshakes and I come to McDonald's and there's a shortage. How do you feel? Distraught. Distraught? Yeah.  That's safe for eating that.  Yeah man, I've just had me a cup. Yep, I've just had me a cup. Nacho Nacho here. This looked like one of the dudes Danny Dyer on Deadly, Deadly, Deadly, Deadly, Deadly, Danny Dyer's Deadliest Men. Ooh, traditional English breakfast. I'm about to nick up with this haircut. Yeah, I've just had me a cup. Yeah. So I've just had me a cup. I've just had me a cup. Got you. Yeah, but I've just had me a cup. Got it. So get in there. Just had me a cup. We heard you. Evil. TLL, leave a like, comment, subscribe, turn on your post notification bell. I have not had my haircut.