almost 100 actually right now. We'll be taking a close look at the military budget. We also expect to hear from Barber Lee at some point during the hour. I did receive a message from her legislative director saying that she's on the floor and they're voting and so they hope and anticipate they will join us by phone at some point. So we'll just remain fluid and flexible. In the meantime, we're very excited to hear from Elizabeth Beavers. She's with Public Citizen advising Public Citizen with their People Over Pentagon project and our own Carly Town, a national co-director of Code Pink, on our Cut the Pentagon project, which is a relatively new project. So let's start with some updates. Hania, you want to update us on one of the campaigns you're working on? Yeah, absolutely. So as a part of Roots section, which I'm very pleased to announce that I've joined their team for quite some time now. We've launched a campaign. This was in May in opposition to Rom Emmanual's nomination to be the ambassador to Japan. And unfortunately, we found out that he was nominated, in fact, in August. And so in mid-May, Roots section circulated a statement to our partner coalitions, which were very happy that so many signed on to. But we have been standing in opposition to this nomination. We think that his behavior as a mayor of Chicago cannot be erased or should be erased or ignored. And we feel that at a time when the Democratic Party leadership has joined with the most Americans in asserting that Black Lives Matter, this nomination would be very tone deaf. So just to kind of give you all a quick background, while Emmanuel was a mayor of Chicago on top of closing so many public schools and mental health facilities, his administration, when he was up for re-election for 13 months, suppressed a horrific dash camp video showing the death of Laquan McDonald, who was an African-American teenager that had been shot 16 times by the Chicago police officer as he was walking away from the police officer. So this campaign has been ongoing for the past few months. It's gained some media attention, but we are also hosting an event in Washington, D.C., which will be joined by our partners at Code Pink. And I will share some of our initiatives with you here. But what's really important and what is really necessary and critical is that we all call our Congress members to pressure the Biden administration to revisit this choice of Emmanuel being highlighted in this prestigious position. So yeah, I encourage everyone to take action. I'll share some links with you in the chat and I'll pass it back to Marcy or Medea. Sure. Medea, I know you've been very busy lately. Tell us what you're up to. Well, today is International Peace Day, so it's nice to be with peacemakers. We had a walk through, a walk of shame in New York City from BlackRock, visiting other places, ending up at the UN to be calling for peace. And I don't know how many of you got a chance to listen to Biden. He was singing our song talking about the need for relentless diplomacy. He focused a lot on that issues like bombs and bullets cannot fight COVID-19. He talked about the climate quite a lot and said the US would be a leader on climate. He also talked about the citizen discontent around the world as if this were happening all over the world and not here in the United States. And a number of things that were good words, but can we really equate them to the deeds at home and in our foreign policies? So if anybody else listened and wants to chat a little bit about that, that would be great. Remember, you can introduce yourselves in the chat. I also wanted to give an update on an idea for a campaign around Afghanistan that I haven't even had a chance to talk to my colleagues at Code Pink about. And that's because I'm here at the United Nations and had a meeting today with some people who are working on issues that are now moving from trying to get people out of Afghanistan to how are we going to help the people who remain? And one of the big issues, as you know, is pushing the Taliban to be opening up schools. They've already opened up the elementary schools and the colleges to women and girls. And the high school, it seems like is going to happen soon as well. But then the issue becomes how are they going to pay the teachers because their money is frozen in the United States and in other European capitals, as well as the pressure that the US has put on the IMF and the World Bank not to release money. So there is not money to pay these teachers. So we are talking about a campaign called Pay the Afghan Teachers. And I'm going to need Marcy's help and any other teachers. We'd like to get teachers from the US talking to teachers in Afghanistan and pushing that message and need some people to do some research too. So if anybody's interested in helping on this, what I think is a fantastic campaign, I see Marcy's hand up. Yay. You can contact me Medea at codepink.org. And let's work on this together and free up some of those funds to pay the Afghan teachers. I think you're on mute. There we go. I said, I think that's a terrific idea, great campaign. We should get the National Education Association behind it and have teacher leaders speaking out from every city pay the teachers in Afghanistan. I mean, this is insane, right? To announce that we're withdrawing, it's over, the war is over. But we're not going to give you your money. Oh, and announcing that the Taliban, you have to show us that you're going to be different this time by allowing girls to go to school. And then when they do, we're not going to pay the teachers. Because we haven't changed, right? Yeah. Exactly. Okay, well, we look forward to hearing more about that campaign. And if you're interested, by all means, what should they email you Medea or what? Yes, Carly just put it in the chat Medea at codepink.org. I think it'd be a very exciting campaign. So let's get a group of volunteers working on this. Thank you. Terrific. Thank you. So I just received a call from Barbara Lee's legislative director. He said she's trying to find a place to give us a call because it's very noisy on the house floor. So I anticipate she will be with us at some point. In the meantime, I thank you for your patience. And we have an exciting lineup with both Elizabeth and Carly. Right now, the Congress is debating the National Defense Authorization Act, the amendments. I think there were hundreds of amendments. Some of them will be attached. Some of them won't be. And Elizabeth can certainly give us more insight on that to that process and what people will actually be voting on. So, Medea, why don't you go ahead and introduce Elizabeth Bevers. If Barbara Lee joins us, we'll cut away and then come back. Wonderful. Well, we're delighted to have Elizabeth. She advises public citizen on its people over the Pentagon Project, which has been brilliant on this issue of how do we cut the Pentagon budget? Before that, she was an associate policy director for the Indivisible Project and was the senior campaigner on national security and human rights for the U.S. section of Amnesty International. She's also a member of the North Carolina State Bar and managed the militarism and civil liberties program at the Friends Committee on National Legislation and is a senior fellow with Data for Progress and vice president of the National Religious Campaign Against Tortures Board of Directors. So, Elizabeth, you have quite a lot of things going on. We're really so honored that you could take some time to be with us tonight. Thanks so much, Medea. Give me a thumbs up. Can you all hear me? Good. Excellent. Marcy, I'm just going to keep my eye on you and give me a wave if Barbara Lee comes in and I need to shut up for a minute. So, thank you again, Code Pink, for having me. It's so nice to be back. I echo what Medea said. It's really nice to be among peacemakers on this international day of peace. And you all could not have scheduled this better because it looks like tomorrow that Congress is going to start voting on the National Defense Authorization Act.  So, I'm happy to share what I know. As Medea mentioned, I am an independent strategist. One of my projects, I advise public citizen on the People Over Pentagon campaign, which basically is just trying to get those who consider themselves to be on the political left a lot more comfortable with the idea of not just cutting but slashing the Pentagon budget and not being afraid to ask for what it is that we want with our tax dollars, which is not more war and weapons, but it's more support for human needs and tackling the challenges that we're actually facing that the military could never solve. So, definitely some bad news along the way as this bill has proceeded for just a quick review. You all are, you know, all about this, but so the National Defense Authorization Act is not exactly a spending bill. It's really an authorization policy bill, but it does authorize funds to be appropriated for various military purposes. And so, you all know Congress is very dysfunctional. They don't like to pass many bills anymore. And so, one thing that happens around the NDAA is everyone tries to hang their policy priorities on it because it's one of the few actually moving legislative vehicles. And we've certainly seen that again this year. There were almost 900 amendments that were filed by various members of Congress. And the way it works is the Rules Committee decides which ones of those get a vote. And they have decided that almost 500 of them will get a vote, which is wild and totally bananas. And they just came out that decision late this afternoon. So, we're all reacting together to it. Now, I will say every single one is not going to get an individual vote. Usually, they'll package some of them up into these big on-block amendments they call them. And they'll just knock them out in big groups. But some of them will get individualized, particularly the more controversial ones. They will get individualized ones. So, two amendments that I'm really excited about. Well, I should back up one thing that happened that I think we were all really upset about was the fact that we already were very upset that President Biden requested about $753 billion in military spending in his first presidential request. That is, it came out to about $11 to $13 billion in nominal dollars above the last Trump budget, which is totally inconsistent with the President, who, as Madea was just noting, talks a lot about pivoting to diplomacy and moving away from endless war. That's certainly not consistent with pouring even more money into the Pentagon. So, that was already really high. But then we saw that both the Senate Armed Services Committee and then now the House Armed Services Committee have voted to tack on on top of that another approximately $25 billion that the Pentagon didn't even ask for. The President didn't even ask for. And this is our Democratic-run Congress that we're working with. And so I say all that not to put everybody in a bad mood, but just to be realistic about what we're facing. But this is why it's so important what we're doing. And I, to me, I would say our goal and what I think the message is and what I think is going to happen when they actually vote on these things is, oh, is somebody waving at me? No. So, I think, thank you so much, Elizabeth. We want to come back. Yeah, we'll talk more later. I'll make it beautiful. I think Barbara or Gregory Adams might be with us right now. Gregory, are you there? Barbara, are you there? I saw them. Hi. How are you guys? Good. Good. I apologize. We are working to get the Congresswoman connected in with you guys. We're in the middle of a couple votes here right now on the floor. So, it's a little bit of a hairy situation, but we're working on the technical details and those statistical details right now. But you guys have already heard from Elizabeth Beavers, who is- Well, we're going to hear more from her. But when Barbara comes, we can cut away. No problem. That sounds great. Yeah.  So, she's the expert on all this. Terrific. Thank you, Gregory. Gregory Adams is the legislative director for Congresswoman Barbara Lee. And as I mentioned earlier, she's on the house floor. They're voting and so she has to cut away and find a quiet place. But continue, Elizabeth. Thank you. Sure thing. Very nice of my friend, Greg Adams, to say it's always a treasure getting to work so closely with the Congresswoman and with her awesome staff. So, what I was going to say is I think the message and I think what we're going to see happen is we are going to see members like our wonderful champions, Barbara Lee, Congresswoman Poke and so many others show that the days of this happening unchallenged are over. We may have not yet gotten to the point where we have built the power that is needed to completely overhaul this system and reverse course, but we're on our way and we're building momentum. And these things aren't just going to sail through without a fight anymore. And so that's why we're really excited about it. If we have a time before the Congresswoman hops on, I'll just highlight two amendments I'm especially excited about and I'm happy to talk about others a little bit later if needed. One is that absolutely egregious increase that the Armed Services Committee added on top of what the administration even asked for. Congresswoman Lee has introduced an amendment that would overturn that and overrule it and get rid of that increase. And then Congresswoman Pocan is leading an amendment and Barbara Lee is on that one as well as a few others to cut 10% across the board of military spending of that authorized high level. So obviously, you know, all of us see this as we'd like to go even further than that. I know for public citizen, we've certainly signed on to cuts of hundreds of billions of dollars. And I think we all know we could do a lot with a lot less and certainly be made much safer for it. But these are two really great starting places and it's a really good way to get members of Congress on the record. And they will go on the record as soon as tomorrow, they're going to have to vote yes or no on both those things. So I'm going to pause there. Before we leave you, I just want to put pink very much supports and signed on to a letter in support of the 10% cut. And that's a 10% cut of the current military budget, the Trump military budget. That will be voted on as an amendment. Maybe you could highlight a few more amendments. We do have time. Yes. And thank you. Yes. And then the chat somebody pointed out these are amendments number 40 and number 41. As you're talking to members of Congress, they do all have numbers. And so those are thankfully right next to each other and easy to remember. And just to clarify, so the 10% cut is above the not the current budget, but the authorized top level of the overall NDAA. So that would be that like 780. Oh, really? Okay. I'm sorry. No worries. So a couple of other really interesting ones. Congressman Kana has introduced an amendment that continues to work to prohibit US military support for the Saudi led war in Yemen. There's Congressman Johnson has introduced an amendment that helps put some blocks on the military transferring military property to law enforcement known as the 1033 program that I know you all are well aware of. There's already required a commission to investigate the basically Afghanistan and what happened in Afghanistan. And there's a really great amendment from Congresswoman Omar and several others that would mandate that that commission is not just studying the withdrawal, which everyone's very upset about, but actually the civilian harm of the US occupation over the last 20 years and what sort of human rights abuses have come about because of our presence there. And so I think that's a really important addition. There's there's also Congressman Bowman has introduced an amendment that would withdraw US forces in Syria if Congress doesn't actually authorize their presence. There are like hundreds and hundreds more. I'm looking at my little wish list here. There's Kana has another one that's about payments to civilians who are harmed by US military operations. So I'm going to maybe just pause there. There are several I know several different peace organizations are compiling lists of the ones they're especially excited to see. But just timing wise, they probably are going to start they already have started the dating tonight. They won't start voting on it tonight, but probably as soon as tomorrow. Thank you, Elizabeth. And before we cut away, I wanted to read this is from the Biden White House, their their positions on the National Defense Authorization Act, the NDAA. I'm looking at this one paragraph, nuclear weapons provision. So I thought maybe I'd read it and we could try to take it apart together. I noticed Jackie Basso is with us and she does a lot of work on nuclear issues. So Jackie, feel free to jump in. Okay, here's what it says. This is the Biden White House. The the administration opposes several provisions in the NDAA that would prejudge the outcome of the nuclear posture review now underway. So my interpretation of that is that there are there are some weapons systems that may be funded that they don't want funded. I'm being optimistic. These include the prohibition on funding for extending the service life of the B 83-1. Is that the current ICBM? I don't know. The restrictions on changing intercontinental ballistic missile alert levels. So right now they're on hair trigger alert, right? The highest alert. So what the what this says to me is that the Biden administration might want to take them off hair trigger alert because in the current NDAA there is a restriction that they can't change that. They also oppose the prohibition on a number of deployed ICBMs and the prohibition on reconverting or retiring W76-2 warheads. So not being entirely familiar with these different warheads. My sense is that they want to have more freedom in writing a nuclear posture review that doesn't necessarily embrace every level of a nuclear rearmament that has been on the table. I'm being optimistic. Anyone else has any thoughts on that? Put them in the chat or let me know or you want to talk about it. So let's move now to Carly and then perhaps Barbara Lee will be joining us later on. We'll just be flexible. All right. Hania, please introduce Carly. Yes, this is Carly. This is so special because I know we met once across from, I believe it was, if I'm not mistaken, Diane Feinstein's office when we held a rally. And so it's an honor to introduce you today. Carly Town is the co-director and lead of CodePink in divest from war and defund the Pentagon programs as well as a team manager and a community outreach personnel. Carly graduated from University of California, San Diego with a degree in critical gender studies and political science. She is now happy to organize in Los Angeles. Carly, do you have any updates for us on the latest cut, the Pentagon budget campaign that is led by CodePink? Please take us through that. Yeah, sure. And please just let me know if Barbara Lee does join us and I need to stop talking. But thank you so much, everyone. It's really great to be here. And thanks to Elizabeth for being on as well. She's definitely an expert. But things we've been talking about today is that we've heard that Congress is debating the National Defense Authorization Act. We know that there's a bipartisan push, like it was said, to increase the Pentagon budget, right? Even after we've officially ended the war in Afghanistan that was not only deadly for innocent civilians, it cost us at least $2 trillion. Politicians still want to draw more money at the U.S. war machine, right? And this is despite the fact that actually our friends at the National Priorities Project found that over the past two decades of the so-called war on terror, the United States has spent $21 trillion on militarization, $21 trillion over the past two decades. And $16 trillion of that went directly into our military. And of that, they found that over $7 trillion went directly to private military contractors, $7 trillion. It's hard to imagine, kind of. And then on top of that, according to the intercept, since the beginning of the war on terror, the top five weapons manufacturers in the United States have just seen their profits soar, right? And they found that if you invested $10,000 in one of these companies in 2001, you'd now be sitting on $100,000, right? So just a huge return on that investment, right? So the war on terror was really great for the CEOs of weapons manufacturers and the military industrial complex. But for the rest of us, everyone else in this room and across the globe, two decades after the beginning of the war on terror, we're really at a crossroads, right? I myself am sitting and coming and calling into you from Los Angeles, California, where we're already facing the deadly effects of climate change. You know, we've seen accelerated, larger and more deadly fires. We also are in the middle of a global pandemic. Is it far really on the line? Oh, sorry, I thought I saw somebody waiting at me. We're good. Okay, cool. We're in the middle of a pandemic. People around the world don't even have access to the vaccine, right? But, you know, despite all that, we have to recognize that this was not an inevitable outcome, right? It was the outcome of a country that puts the profit of these weapons manufacturers over people, refusing to fund universal health care or Green New Deal that would really cost a tiny fraction of the price that we spent over the last two decades and certainly wouldn't kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people, right? So this is a moment that we find ourselves in. And this is the moment where we really have to seize on what peace makers have been calling on for the past 20 years, right? We need to cut the Pentagon for people, peace, planet and our future. And this is something that we've been working on since the beginning of Code Pink. We've been in the the streets and halls of Congress using creativity to disrupt war for profit. And that's why we're building a big tent of climate justice organizations, immigrant justice organizations, racial justice organizations to mobilize vigils, marches, sit-ins, teachings, demonstrations, whatever we can imagine we want to enact it, right? And any other kind of direct actions in Washington D.C. and all over the country just to expose war profiteers and war hawks, right? And these would all be aimed at exposing, like I said, the cost of war and militarization, to our society and to all of us. And in this moment, instead of losing hope that our politicians are trying to increase the Pentagon budget, what we have to do, right, is start organizing. And we've already started. So our official campaign launch was on September 12th in front of the White House, where we cut the Pentagon cake and served Ben and Jerry's. Medea was there with our coalition partners at the Institute for Policy Studies, World Beyond War, the People's Forum, Food Not Bombs, many others. This past Sunday, we joined a coalition partner and veteran, Mike Preisner, to disrupt the war criminal George W. Bush in Los Angeles, where people paid $600 to see him speak. But this, you know, these are the kind of events that we're putting on, but we need more people and more events to build this movement. So I'm just here today to talk about that and encourage everyone to go to www.cutthepennegon.com to sign up and join us. You can join as an individual, as an organization, or as both interested in volunteering. Or if you're interested in just contributing your skills to the campaign, we absolutely need you. So go ahead and sign up at the link in the top box. And otherwise, I think we can pause maybe for some questions or hopefully Barbara Lee is here. Sure. I just received another message that she'll be here in a few minutes. So we'll be patient, of course. Meanwhile, let's do our Q&A with Carly Town, one of our national co-directors at Code Pink, and Elizabeth Bieber is advising public citizen on the People Over Pentagon project. So, Elizabeth, what do we have any kind of headcount on how many might support cutting at least 10% of the Pentagon budget? Maybe. There are 85 members still in Congress who voted yes last year. So that's a good place to start. We ended up having 93 in support last year. So that's a good baseline to measure against public citizen put together. And I think Carly has it. She's welcome to share around, or I couldn't share it. Otherwise, we tried to put together the list of like, there's something like 150, 120 members who have voted in support of this, who have signed on to a letter urging a decrease in the Pentagon budget, who have in some way expressed some support. They have never done this all at the same time on the same vehicle. If we could get them to all vote for this, that would be great. So that's a really good place to start. That's the high end. I think I will say my sort of just hack political analysis is it's a little different dynamic this year, right? Because last year was Trump and it was a little easier to, I think for some members to justify opposition in that way, whereas now the White House and Congress are controlled by the same party and that makes the political dynamic a little different. There's also like a lot going on this year. I know that that's such an obvious thing to say, but even just this week, Congress is trying to pass a lot and trying to do a lot. And we're in the middle of trying to do a relief bill and a continuing resolution to fund the government and the infrastructure package. And so it is just a little different dynamic this year in terms of being able to focus really intensely. But I'm still very hopeful we can get close to last year's levels. Thank you. I know that at Code Pink, at least we've had this ongoing discussion, debate over whether or not we want to support amendments or just focus on saying vote no on the military budget. Any thoughts about that, Carly Elizabeth? Sure. I mean, I can hop in just quickly. You know, what Elizabeth said about the numbers of Congress, do we need to push to make sure not only they vote yes again, but also to expand the number of representatives who vote to cut the Pentagon budget by 10% is really important. We're going to be on social media and we have been in front of the White House asking people to call specific Congress members who are potentially moveable on this subject, including members of Congress who signed on to support the legislation from the Poor People's Campaign that they're reconstruction, which actually calls for a 10% cut to the Pentagon budget, right? So they've signed on.  But in terms of voting on NDA amendments, you know, some of the debate that we've had in Code Pink, and I think others have is we have these excellent policy amendments that are added to the NDA every year. And then at the end of the day, though, they're tacked on to a bill that will authorize enormous Pentagon spending, right? And then this in this year, $780 billion for the Pentagon budget. And I guess the question for the peace movement and others is, should we be supporting at the end of the day a bill that provides that much money or authorizes that much money from the National Reference Opposition Act? The only thing I'll just add on top, oh, I'm sorry. No, I was just going to say, I think we can safely say we support this amendment without having to commit to saying vote for any of this. Totally. Yeah. That's pretty much what I was going to say, which is several of the organizations I work with, that's their standard position every year is that they engage in a lot of support for various amendments, but they always oppose the underlying bill. And it's a common thing that members of Congress do too. There is a question in the chat. Is there a way to hold anyone accountable for the military budget to make an example of them? I mean, electorally, though there's much sympathy for our position to cut the military budget, I feel that we have the most impact. We would have the most impact if we could make an example of one of these politicians, perhaps a whip for both majority and minority, mansion, Schumer. I know there are a number of primary challenges underway around the country. I don't know of any primary challenges to either one of those or to Jack Reed, the Democratic chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, where they voted everyone except Elizabeth Warren to raise the military budget over Biden's proposed budget. So Rhode Island, we're working with Rhode Island and doing our best here. I've got kind of an interesting stat, but that's, I should just say really quickly, Public Citizen does not engage in electoral work and we're a non-political organization. So just on behalf of myself, Elizabeth, just an observation of the 93 members who voted and supported this 10% cut last year, none of them lost reelection. Some of them left Congress by other means like they went to the Senate or they just didn't run, but they all won reelection. So that's kind of an interesting political stat that we looked into. Yeah, you know, I say like elections are where you say that you're disappointed with someone. And so I think for constituents of the district or the state where a member is in who consistently champions an increase to the Pentagon budget, that's a really interesting way to put on pressure and make clear that that's why you're doing it. Because I think that sometimes an issue like this can get lost in broader reasons why someone is getting political pushback and highlighting that like this is why, this is where the anger is coming from is a really key part of that. Can I ask a question? Sure, sure. So when it comes to things like the reconciliation bill, the progressives have a lot of clout because the Republicans are going to vote against it. But in this case, you have almost all the Republicans that will vote for this, right? And I know there have been a sprinkling of Republicans in the past who have voted against the NDAA. What do you suspect it will be this time around? And what are the Republican reasons for opposing? I don't know, Carly, do you want to take a stab at that or do you want me to? I think you probably have more knowledge on that. Yeah, well, the political dynamics are very strange and for like a lot of opposite reasons, right? Like I think that a congressional leadership is walking this tightrope where they could sort of bleed support out both ends of the ideological spectrum. They could bleed out progressive support for a lot of the reasons we're talking about, they could also bleed out moderate and conservative support because the bill doesn't go far enough or doesn't have enough military spending or good amendments that we think are good, get supported and it changes the calculus. So they're actually doing a really kind of fine balancing act. And I think the amendment of fight is going to determine a lot about where that math falls. And it's not, I don't think it's too likely that we see a lot of Republicans defect. Right now they're signaling that if spending levels stay where they are, then they might stay on. But I don't know, there's some wildcards out there. So we'll see all that to say that like it's very delicate and sort of one different factor can lean things in a different direction. One wildcard might be my understanding is there's an amendment to expand the selective service to include women to require young women to sign up with selective service by the when they're 18. And there are some Republicans who oppose this. I was just reading the Biden administration's position on the NDA. And from what I read, it sounds like they support the expansion of selective service to include women, but there are some Republicans who oppose that. So that could be a wildcard. There's a question from Henry Norr. Why push to cut merely 10% what would we actually lose by cutting 90% leaving 10% Well, I was going to say, I mean, you know, of course we support that, right? I mean, we want to cut as much as the Pentagon budget as possible. And actually Representative Robert Lee has has introduced a House resolution 476 to cut the Pentagon budget by $350 billion. Unfortunately, only five members of Congress have co-sponsored that, right? So at this point, I think it's really important that we push our members to vote for a concrete amendment to the NDA to cut the Pentagon by 10%, grow the number of representatives that voted for it last year, really build our movement like Elizabeth talked about. And like I said, when we were talking about our cut the Pentagon campaign, right? This is why we need to build a movement to actually organize against such a large Pentagon budget. And there's another interesting question that came up in the chat. Speaking of movements, Carly, is there a solidarity movement with the environmental advocates and peace activists to combat military industrial complex? If any of you could address that? Well, so I can say as part of our People Over Pentagon campaign, that's part of what we're trying to do is build solidarity among different sectors to lean in together and asking for different budget priorities. We had a number of environmental justice groups sign our letter in support of cutting the Pentagon budget as part of this NDA fight.  So we really are trying to build that cross-sectoral movement to show how the way we spend our money is everyone's issue. It doesn't matter what issue you focus on, it's all of ours. And I wanted to also add that I'm involved with the Veterans for Peace, Climate, and Militarism group, terrific group. And they have taken their proposed resolution to track the greenhouse gas emissions of all military projects to Congresswoman Barber Lee, and she's interested in introducing this resolution. And I believe that the organization will be building a coalition to support such a resolution. So that's I was going to say the exact same thing, Marcy, because yeah, I had a lovely chat with them last week and they caught me up on some of the really cool work that you all are doing. It's awesome. And so I did want to note that there is one NDA amendment on lowering DOD's greenhouse gas emissions. And I believe it's Mondair Jones who introduced that one, and it is getting a vote. So I mean, as we know, another group I work with a lot is the Cost of War Project at Brown University, and they have produced incredible research showing. I mean, the Department of Defense is the greatest industrial producer of greenhouse gases on the entire planet. So being anti-war is a climate justice issue. And I love seeing everybody make those connections. So I just want to point out to everybody on the call the enormous, enormous gap between what the public wants and what Congress and the White House are giving us. And the fact that only five Congress people have signed on to that bill to cut the Pentagon budget by 350 billion, it shows that even the squad, I think Ilhan Omar is the only one in the squad that has signed on to that, that we have so much work to do to translate this support among the public for cutting the Pentagon budget to the Congress. And just like many of us say, you can't be progressive on everything, but let's say Palestine and call yourself a progressive Congressperson, you can't be progressive on everything but cutting the Pentagon. And that has to be something that, you know, at least with this 10%, once we look at the final numbers, we have to go after every member, let's start with the progressive caucus and really go after those who call themselves progressive and wouldn't even support the 10% cut. Excellent points. Is there a bill number or I think you said 40 or 41, Elizabeth, for the 10% cut, you know the number of that amendment? The 40, is the 10% cut and 41 overturns the $25 billion increase that was added in committee. So the amendment, and then correct me if I'm wrong, the NDEA is a blueprint or it's an authorization, but is there still room to veer from that? For example, if it funds all these new nuclear weapons, can those be scrapped? Yeah, so the budget process is very complicated, but at the end of the day it is appropriations and not authorization that sets the money. So for policy amendments, typically the NDEA will kind of roll the day on that depending on what it is, but on actual spending levels it is appropriations that determines that. And so what we're trying to do here is, the appropriations process is a total mess this year. It's really unlikely defense appropriations will get its own solo voter will probably be packaged in with some other bills. And so a lot of it's going to come down to negotiations and leadership decisions. And so what we don't want is for them all to be working with this exact same high number in every possible military bill that's put forward. So that's why it is important and very significant this year, because sometimes when we fight these things on the NDEA, it's more symbolic because the number is already done and it's decided, but it's not decided for this year. And so that's why a really strong showing on these cut amendments is really important as they go into those negotiations. Yes, thank you. Somebody wrote, where is Pocans Bill to move 1% to COVID relief? What's happening with that? Do we know? I can answer that. Yeah, we've been talking to his staff and they're actually going to introduce that formally sometime after the NDEA votes. So you can look out for it soon. We do have on our website, you can go and actually ask your representative to co-sponsor the bill. There's already quite a few signatories. I'm not, I don't have the number off the top of my head, but I can post in the chat for people. Other questions? Anyone have another question? Well, somebody asked, how did we get to this point where there is such this huge disconnect? And they wrote, you know, is it money? And of course, money is a big part of it in several different ways, one meaning the amount of money that the lobbyists spend on the campaigns of these people. And Carly, you might want to talk about that because you've done some great webinars on that. Yeah, sure.  I mean, number one would be campaign contributions from these military contractors to our representatives. Our friends at the Security Policy Reform Institute, Stephen Summler, actually did a really excellent study about the correlation between members of Congress who take these high numbers of campaign contributions from these companies, and their votes on the NDEA every year. And of course, we all know what happened, but he showed very clearly that there is a positive correlation, a very strong positive correlation between members who take those campaign contributions and voting for these enormous military budgets every year. But, you know, another element that's really important as well is we just did a webinar with David Moore from Sludge, which is an investigative magazine. And he looked at the personal stocks that our representatives hold in these companies. So, as these companies valuations increase, so to do our representatives own, you know, personal wealth, right? So, there are a multitude of ways in which our representatives are enmeshed in the military industrial complex. We've started to address it in one way. We do actually have a pledge codethink.org slash divest. Congress where you can ask your representative to stop taking campaign contributions from weapons manufacturers. It's a really good way to start a conversation with your representative and bring this research to them, right? We don't want them bought and sold by the same companies that they vote to give funding to every year. Thank you, Carly. Gregory Adams is Congresswoman Barbara Lee's legislative director. And while we're waiting for Barbara Lee, Gregory has offered to come on and talk to us about what they're working on, their strategy, and so forth. So, Gregory, the mic is yours. Thanks so much, Marcy. And I can mention a couple things that we're working on over here. I think you guys know well that my boss has been working for years to try to end our endless wars and get us back to a situation where we are always leading with military force in our relations around the world and really trying to emphasize diplomacy and development as the key elements of U.S. foreign policy. So, you guys are all aware of her famous vote in 2001. She's, of course, been working on repealing both the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs. We reached a milestone in June when we were able to get 2002 passed through the House by a substantial margin, including 49 Republican votes, which was even more than I had expected. And we're working with Senator Cain over in the Senate to see if we can get it done on that side of the building. It's already moved through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And so we're continuing to try to find opportunities to get that to President Biden's desk. The big prize, of course, is repealing the 2001 AUMF. And so we are working to build a coalition that can make sure we get that done. I think the first task is to try to bring together the Democratic caucus to make sure that both progressives and moderates are comfortable with the path forward and also engaging with Republicans, because ultimately, if this is going to be a durable solution, we've got to build the broadest coalition possible. As you know, Barbara Lee throughout her career has always been driven by principle. She has been willing to say unpopular things and do unpopular things. But she's also been willing to find allies wherever they exist. One of the things she nags me about all the time, she's constantly sharing with me press releases from, say, National Taxpayers Union or the Concerned Veterans of America or R Street, you know, groups that are more affiliated with Republicans, but they support ending wars and cutting Pentagon spending because she knows that to get this done, you know, we can't build in litmus tests. We can't wait for only pure allies to come along. We've got to be willing to work with anyone that we can find to build the broadest coalition possible. So she's been working to do that. She's got an ally in Chairman Meeks of the Foreign Affairs Committee, an ally in Chairman McGovern of the Rules Committee, and even an ally in Chairman Schiff of the Intel Committee. And we've been working together to try to establish some base principles that any new AUMF needs to follow, that it needs to be time bound, needs to be geographically bound, it needs to have a clear mission and achievable goals, and it has to respond to congressional oversight. Congress has been asleep at the switch for 20 years on our current AUMFs. A lot of members have just been afraid to take these votes. And so we need to make sure that we never again give a blank check for war the way we did in 2001. That anything we do going forward has much more oversight. As the Constitution intends and as the American people have said time and time again, they want. So that's where we spend a lot of our time. Obviously cutting the Pentagon budget and Carly and Elizabeth have already mentioned some of the things we're working on in terms of trying to draw a contrast between the threats that Americans face in their everyday lives, like COVID, climate change, economic inequality, systemic racism, domestic terrorism, and where we actually spend our money. Aircraft carriers aren't protecting us from climate change or COVID. And so being able to draw those contrasts and really make people grapple with what the Pentagon budget looks like is an important task. Elizabeth mentioned the Veterans for Peace resolution. Marcy, you mentioned it too, the Veterans for Peace resolution about the greenhouse gas emissions from the military. That's one where we're hoping to really be able to work with Veterans for Peace to build a intersectional coalition with a lot of the climate groups to try to broaden our tent. It always has to be about broadening our tent because on defense spending on the floor, as you guys have seen, when we take just straight votes on this stuff, we just haven't been able to muster the numbers so far to get there because even though the American public broadly opposes runaway Pentagon spending, they have a lot of kitchen table issues that they confront and it's really hard to mobilize a mass coalition on this. So being able to talk to people about the issues that they care about and be able to link that to runaway Pentagon spending and why constant investment in the defense budget actually makes it harder to address these other issues. That's really key to building the kind of coalition we need to actually win on these issues and really make big cuts in the budget. So that's what we're trying to do with this $25 billion amendment that we're offering tomorrow. I know you guys are all aware of it. We've discussed it, but it's really an effort to try to go out and build the broadest coalition possible, get a really powerful vote so we can start to get people to take notice of us and realize that they need to grapple with the fact that members of Congress won't continue voting ad nauseam for these runaway increases in the budget. So I run on enough. I'm actually an opponent of the filibuster, so I'll stop talking. Well, thank you, Gregory, and we are going to have an action in a minute in which we call and write our representatives asking them to support the 10% cut. I don't know if there's a similar corollary in the Senate. I know Bernie Sanders did last time introduce something like that. So maybe you can clarify on that. Also, it sounds like these efforts to repeal both AUMFs are a separate legislation, not amendments attached to the NDA. I was hoping that we would ask Barbara Lee about this, and maybe we will. I don't know if she's on the floor. We're waiting for her, but since you work so closely Yeah, I can answer that really quick, Marcy. So we had a great vote in June on repealing the 2002 AUMF, and after the fall of Kabul and everything, we've already had the vote. It's passed the house by voting on it again on NDA. You always run the risk that you get a weaker vote than you did last time. And then the headlines start being, oh, opponents of the war are losing steam. So we have a super strong vote. We had like 263 members vote to repeal the 2002 AUMF. It's moving over on the Senate side. There's no reason really at this point to risk another vote on it, especially when it's already over on the Senate. And we can already try to work with Senator Cain to get something done. Gregory, I wanted to ask you about her role as the chair of the subcommittee on foreign operations, which oversees a lot of aid. Can you tell us anything about getting aid, unfreezing the assets, the 9.5 billion in assets of Afghan money and U.S. banks or money for Venezuela, Cuba, Palestine? Go for it. Hey, apologies, Marcy. The boss was just calling me on the other line trying to figure out how to get on the Zoom because she's now out of votes. Here he is. I think she just, I think she's here. B. Lee's got to be Barbara Lee, right? Barbara, can you hear us? Barbara? Yeah, hi. This is Barbara. I'm sitting in the car. How are you? Can you hear me? Yes, you're very clear. Thank you for joining us. Gosh, this has been quite a day. Just so many changes on my schedule. And you see, we've just just finished voting. So I'm sitting in the car, but I wanted to call and check in and just say hello and thank you so much for everything that you all are doing for peace and security throughout, not only America, but throughout the world. Thank you, Barbara. And, you know, one of the areas of concern, of great concern at CodePink and with other organizations is this trajectory that we seem to be on, moving toward war preparedness against China, sending missiles to Taiwan, declaring Taiwan the defense of Taiwan a national priority. Just further militarization of the South China Sea. I know that President Biden said he signed an agreement with Putin saying he doesn't want a first strike, that nuclear weapons should never be used first and so forth. But what can we do in the face of this huge push from the military industrial complex to turn the tide on China? Yeah, well, that's a biggie, but I think we have to, one is have our position and alternative and what we believe in place and organize around and in members districts. I mean, what are we talking about? The military budget, the 10% reduction. I mean, you see what's going on now. We can't even get, well, we got 90 some votes last time because you all to reduce defense spending by 10%. So it's the policies that are taking place. So we have to know what we think is a policy that leads to peace and security, but also what what we think that we need to do in terms of the funding priorities of the of the National Defense Authorization Act. And that involves what you all do and that's mobilize in members districts. That's it's a political struggle, quite frankly. And Biden administration, while I listened very closely to his speech today at the United Nations, and I thought it was a good speech. He talked about rebalancing our, you know, defense development, you know, humanitarian and diplomatic strategies using the military option only when necessary as the last option. But then on the other end, the funding, when you look at the budget that I have is 62 billion and the defense budget is 700 close to 740 billion. So I don't know, we have to figure that out. But I do agree that we're going in the wrong direction. But yet the White House, I believe has put us has set a framework for reverse court, reverse in course. And so I'm not sure how you all see that, because they're saying the right things, but doing kind of additional militarization of our foreign policy in many ways, foreign and trade policy. Yeah, I, you know, I have to wonder if there are dissident voices in the Biden administration on this. If there are people who disagree with this within the budget. Yeah. No, I'm not sure. I really don't know. Yeah. But all I know is we're working very hard to try to reprogram a lot of this money and up the budgets for what we know makes sense in terms of peace, in terms of demilitarization, in terms of de-nuclearization, and in terms of domestic spending here at home. So Barbara, you mentioned, I think that your committee or your budget is about $60 billion. Is that right? Yeah, $62 billion. That's for foreign aid. Basically foreign aid, embassy security, development assistance, global help is for humanitarian assistance for the non-defense related international accounts. Right. So we've had a number of people ask us about what you can do, what your committee can do to, for example, unfreeze the $9.5 billion that's frozen, that's Afghan assets frozen in U.S. banks, pressure the IMF, the World Bank to make loans to Afghanistan. Supposedly this war is over and kids can't even go to school because they're getting paid. You know, what's happening with that? What about Latin America, Palestine? Yeah. And that's mostly a treasury. And so I'm not sure how you weigh in right now. I can talk to Maxine. That's her committee. But it's the Treasury Department that has to do all of this. And we can certainly try to support efforts. Who here in Congress has taken the lead on that? Do you know? That's a question to Gregory. Yeah, we need to find out who, because it's strictly a treasury for the most part. Yeah, that's a question really, I think, for financial services and the Treasury subcommittee. But we'll definitely find out. We'll find out. Yeah, and I'll also make a call. We should all make a call to Maxine Waters often. Yeah, so that's not under my committee. You know, what's under my committee for Afghanistan, of course, is the humanitarian assistance, the money for women and children, for a lot of what we're trying to figure out now, how do you get the money into the NGOs in Afghanistan for development and humanitarian assistance, and of course security, especially for women and children. So the funding for all of those education, healthcare, whatever we're going to do in Afghanistan, that comes through my committee and how we're going to do it and with whom in terms of the NGOs, in terms of because we're not going to deal strictly with the Taliban and the government. So it's very, very complicated right now, but we're working on it. And for me, out of my subcommittee, it's a priority. Terrific. So Medea, do you want to share with Barbara the campaign you mentioned earlier and see if that's something that her committee could tackle? Well, yeah, you just said it's not your committee Congresswoman. I think she said that Afghanistan humanitarian aid was her committee. But humanitarian aid is and we just in the continuing resolution bumped it up and we're going to try to I don't know if we're going to do a supplemental, but we're putting additional resources into it where it's going to go. We have to I don't know at this point. Yeah, we were talking to people in Afghanistan who said that while the Taliban is being pressured to let women and girls back in school and they seem to be doing that, there's not money to pay the teachers. And so we talked about a campaign to get money to in some some way however it can be done and we talked to someone in the State Department today and of course they said where there's a will there's a way we need to feel the pressure to do it to pay the Afghan teachers. Yeah, but how do you pay them? Do they have a how does that money flow? Do they have a suggestion on that? Well, they said there's money. There's IMF money. There's World Bank money. There's the frozen assets in the New York banks. And then of course there's UNICEF that works with the schools and that could be more humanitarian aid. But of course, you know, when you have a whole school system of entire country, it's hard to do that through the UN or the NGOs. We would love to follow up with you on that as we learn more all of us, you know about please do. Yep. Yeah, we're trying to figure that out also. So I think, you know, well, we've been working together for many years. So we'll work together on this also. Thank you.  Is there a way to leverage that power? Well, I think we are. We're not getting everything we want, but we certainly are leveraging and getting more than what we have in the past because of the numbers and because of how we're organized. And I think you've heard us speak Pelosi say over and over and over again in terms of the two bills that build back better and the infrastructure bill that we're going to do them together, even though there's some descent and you know, members who don't believe that should happen. But I think when you look at a lot of the funding, many of the proposals on Medicare, we've got to we're using our power and our leverage. We made a lot of progress, but a lot more we must make. And again, it boils down to politics, a lot of our moderate Democrats. Can you can you hold on one second, please? Hold on one second. Sure. Marcy, if she has time, could we ask why only four other members of Congress have supported the bill to cut $350 billion? I think we probably know the answer. Well, I don't know if it's just something they're not pushing because they're pushing the more possible, the 10% Elizabeth. Okay, I'm sorry. Can you hear me? Oh, yes. Yes, we can hear you now. Yes, you're there. We hear you. I'm sorry. I'm okay. I'm sorry. Can you hear me? Yes. Congresswoman, I wanted to know on the 350 billion cut, we know it's symbolic, but it's important to be drawing a line there. Why only four other members of Congress have signed that? And is that something we should be pushing them on? Or is it more important just to focus on the 10%? Well, I think both, if they won't sign the 350, ask them for the 10% I mean, I think the 350 is where we got to get to. But that's like, we're talking about eliminating poverty, will reduce it by the child tax credit, but we've got to move to eliminate it. So I think it's not one or the other. It's like, let's go for the 350. If you can't do that, let's go for the 10%. We'll get there eventually. Congresswoman, Robert Lee, it's great to have you with us. If people have thoughts on something that they want to see happen that could be under the purview of your committee, what's the best way to communicate them? Sure. You know my staff, Gregory's on the line, my alleged director, Gregory Adams, he's available to take your ideas and have discussions with you and get them to me. And I'm always around. As you know, Medea, I'm here there in Yonder all the time. And we're so glad you are. Okay, really nice being with you. Sorry. I was sorry. I was like, okay. Oh, we understand. Okay, okay. All right. Okay. Bye-bye. And next, we're going to go to our capital calling party or emailing parties. So please, we have 171 people with us on the call. Please stay for the action. It's 6.05. We've been on for an hour, but we do want to make sure that we tell our representatives to vote for this 10% cut. I want to thank you, Elizabeth, and thank you. If you want to unmute and thank our guests, please do. Woo-hoo. Thank you! Thank you! Super information.


Hi, I'm Sandi Olnok, artist and instructor at art-classes.com. This video is a preview of the mini-copic course called Autumn Scenes. Each of the five lessons is jam-packed with techniques to color a variety of fall tree scenes, a single tree, lakeside reflections, a country road, a spooky forest and misty mountains. All of this in almost an hour and a half's worth of video content in a mini-class that's affordably priced. It's strongly recommended that students take the Copic Jumpstart class prior to this one to better understand the color theory underpinning these lessons. Theory is only lightly discussed in these intermediate Copic classes and no marker coloring basics are included. Please see the free pre-class lesson on the course curriculum page for a list of marker colors needed to complete this course. Aside from pens, all that you need is paper and time. Click on the image here at the end of the video or in the link in the description to read more and I will see you in class!


Hi everyone Sean with jaspyscasebrakes.com here doing 2020 Panini flawless baseball one box briefcase Random hit break number one from jaspyscasebrakes.com so the way that this works is Ten spots everyone gets a random hit in the briefcase We will take all ten customer name ten hits and randomize them after opening whatever hit you match up Is what you will get shipped if any extra hits the lowest value card perceived by the breaker will be comboed with another hit And some details about the break itself. So like it says if there's any extra cards We will combo the spots so the two lowest end together to make it a little bit better off but Hopefully everything is great. So here is our I didn't even get the customer listening I was not prepared Here's our customer list Boom Matt Arnold down to Joe Krull With last spot mojo, and then here's where we will enter in the hits as we pull them or afterwards and then we'll do a randomizer and Match them all up on here. So Let's do the break itself Here is our case. You can see up on the Nick cam sealed to briefcase case here Let's open this up and get them out Random hit number two is in the store now so the second half of this case is available and Spots are moving. So there's one All good Brendan. Thanks for trying to help the and Number two So now we got to figure out which briefcase is the lucky briefcase for break number one And which one will be the lucky briefcase for number two so One two three for the left four five six for the right. Good luck. So it's gonna be the box on the left this one here mark for RH to Random hit To cool So that like I said is in the store now And spots are available We can run this back tonight Love these breaks because you get you're guaranteed to get something. Let's see if we've got a third Briefcase hit let me grab three covers just in case Gotta cut the seal Sean No third in case to it not guaranteed one per case, but In case tits are covered Feels a little bit thicker. I mean they're Look like there was a blockchain right on top So is there extra hits or is it just thicker hits? So there was two cards inside And what we have we have the Blockchain one two three four five six seven eight So we do actually have a we have 11 hits in here plus the blockchain. So that's 12 So there we go. We'll do some comboing in this first up blockchain Jesus Lizardo blockchain patch autographs Four out of five Kenny Lofton. I feel like here. Let me top up this first very cool relic on this Like I this is from the script saying the word Indians on it This might be too small might be a little bit in the middle Yeah So we're gonna go with a bigger top glitter and then we're just gonna tape the top so that doesn't move around at all But I feel like if we turn this over Is that the a Indian and then that's the end I Feel like that's the a from Indians. It's cool. I like that Next up. We got a triple relic Wow, Joe DiMaggio Jackie Robinson and Ted Williams Got the bat from Joe D a Jersey from Jackie Robinson and Jersey from Ted Williams seven out of 20 on that that would be a brutal randomizer, but Random hit break so Not one happy person one sad person one really happy person three really good names to have on one card Right, that's pretty cool Ted I think was number nine what number was Joe DiMaggio Jackie obviously 42 was Joe DiMaggio seven Ruth was three Trying to figure out what I think Joe DiMaggio might have been number seven Dual relic and auto one two three four colors in this two out of 15 Josh Hader From the Milwaukee Brewers He was five. I'm thinking Garrick. I think Robert was it was Garrick seven Mantle, thanks Joe. There's a lot of Yankees grades. I couldn't remember which one was seven Evan white Nice four color patch and auto eight out of 20 from the Seattle Mariners Ari Stettis Aquino rookie Jersey patch and auto For the Cincinnati Reds Nice patch there Tony Perez four out of 25 From the Cincinnati Reds as well on card auto. I don't remember that sign filled up is a Mike Musina three color patch and auto three out of three the moose He does not sign a lot at all Hall of Fame inducted 2019 and Quad relic auto Roger Clemens eight out of ten Lots of nice color in those patches there So now the encased hits So this is the gem Sandy Kofax ten out of 20 that is a Diamond diamond Guaranteed in the America and We got a gold out of ten all rise Aaron judge Gold auto two out of ten. We'll smudge on the Cover there, but In case card very nice so Nice judge to start it off remember second half of this case is in the store now in the next random hit break Random hit to so we're gonna pause the video. I'm going to insert the Hits into the randomizer figure out what we're comboing and go from there. So I'll see you guys in a minute Okay, we are back Here are our hits we combo the Jesus Lizardo blockchain Redemption with the Kenny Lofton relic out of five everything other than that everything stands on its own Placed in order of how they were pulled so from the Jesus Lizardo Blockchain plus Kenny Lofton relic in one through the demodio Robson Williams relics out of 20 Josh Hader dual patch auto out of 15 Evan White dual patch auto out of 20 The Aristides Aquino rookie patch auto out of 25 the Tony Perez auto out of 25 Mike Messina Patch auto out of three Roger Clemens quad patch auto out of ten The sandy cofax encased diamond out of 20 and the Aaron judge encased auto out of 10 So remember this is the list of our customer list as well from Matt down to Joe And dice roller to randomize both lists and pair them up five and a six eleven times. So good luck 11th and final time from Aaron Pettit down to Robert my hill on the customers and 11 times on the hits 11th and final time From our aesthetic keynote down to the demodio Robinson and Williams relic cool. So let's see how it turned out Okay, Aaron Pettit with our aesthetic keynote rookie patch auto out of 25 Congrats Aaron Paul Townsend with the Tony Perez auto out of 25 and the Roger Clemens quad patch auto out of 10 Daniel Graham with the sandy cofax encased diamond out of 20 Joe Crowell with the Evan White Dual patch auto out of 20 J goings with the Aaron judge encased auto out of 10 Paul Townsend with the Josh Hader dual patch auto out of 15 Joe Crowell with the Mike Messina patch auto out of three With these are only trained head or no, not only train Paul Townsend train Big express, but there you go for you Joe with the Mike Messina Patch auto out of big hit express for you in honor of all aboard the big hit express And Matt Arnold with the Haysus Lazardo blockchain plus the Kenny Lofton relic In out of five which is another big express so for Matt Arnold and that Kenny Lofton relic All aboard the big hit express And Last but not least Robert Myhill with the DiMaggio Jackie Robinson Ted Williams relic out of 20 So some very nice stuff there guys Aaron Pettit on top ended up with the R aesthetic keynote rookie patch auto out of 25 There you go, Aaron Paul Townsend with the Tony Perez Auto out of 25 on card there Also with the Roger Clemens quad patch auto out of 10 Daniel Graham with the Sandy co-fax encased diamond out of 20 and Joe Crowell with the Evan White dual patch auto out of 20 Jay Gowens with the Aaron judge encased auto out of 10 Paul Townsend with the Josh Hader dual patch auto out of 15 Joe Crowell train whistle Mike Messina patch auto out of three Matt Arnold with the Jesus Lazardo blockchain redemption plus a very nice patch for Kenny Lofton out of five and Robert Myhill with the Joe DiMaggio Jackie Robinson and Ted Williams Triple relic seven out of 20. There you go guys And that was 2020 Panini flawless baseball one box briefcase break random hit number one the second half of this case Random hit number two is in store now. Jasper's case breaks calm. I'm Sean. Thanks for hanging out. We'll see you next time


Great, so welcome to the only talk of this time span. I'm glad I'm on the only one talking. I hope I will be somewhat interesting That's a great honor to be the only one talking So I wanted to just do a status report of the Debian printing team because it's been now quite a long time I've been working in this part of Debian and I've Tried to attract people into helping me for printing in the last years and it hasn't really worked. So I'll just do another attempt and see what that gives and Probably and hopefully give you some insight on how the whole thing work So a little introduction about me I'm a Swiss guy and working. I was basically grown up with computers if you follow my talk from last year I showed you some of the Swiss computers back then in some Motorola 68000 Swiss specific stuff that was basically born with and I'm currently working at LeapCH It's a Swiss company that has websites and I'm working there is as a learning specialists Web apps by Kenner and sysadmin whatever that means Towards Debian I've been translating things that you've been to sites since 2005 Maintaining packages since 2009 Been a developer since 2011 and maintaining some packages since then That's not the most interesting part of that talk. So let's go forward This session's intent is to present the state of the Debian printing stack It's the evaluation evolution until today the leftover work and also how I got trapped into maintaining that part of Debian I mean, I don't have particular interests in printers, but Yeah, and how you can help So the let's dive into the past if you have questions just raise your hand and interrupt me. Don't feel shy So it started in June 2010. I adopted fumatic filters because it was severely outdated then There was no upload for a year missing five years upstream releases We were lagging lagging severely behind Ubuntu and the maintainer was quasi-MIA Typical case for adopting a package some months before the freeze I was kind of looking for things to help the freeze out and this was broken on my machine and That's where the trap was working on me first It's just made it into sweet squeeze because I did the upload like three hours after the freeze was surprised announced That's the depth confidence. So I managed to get it through Somehow, but that was the only package I was maintaining there for squeeze and then in July. I sent this Requests for commands for forming a printing task force to the virus mailing lists The cups the cubs maintainers list, etc to see if it was possible to gather some people around Maintaining the whole printing stack under team umbrella because before that it was just sets of packages Maintained by individuals on their own side of Debian The thing was kind of working But as soon as people went MIA or just had other interests than the pit the packages were rotting and And then I started integrating the Ubuntu Delta into Debian because Ubuntu had apparently more the needs than Debian to have a working printing infrastructure then and They had been fixing this stuff on there on their side So it's interesting to take a look at the Ubuntu Delta in the first place where there was one One one argument for that is that the updates were not proposed back to Debian at all So no patches sent to the bug to the bug tracker No other way than just looking at the packages in Ubuntu and see well there was there were updates there So I should maybe take the patches back, but there was no upward communication And on the other hand the packages were not getting any or much attention in Debian either So no one that was actually taking a look at this diff and making sure that things were working I mean it was working for some parts, but many bugs still But it's still free software. So patches were sitting there You had a nice link from the pts to actually gets one big patch You could apply to you to Debian package and you could just integrate that so the patches were available Was not not that bad so the work started at the beginning of the wheezy cycle around to 2010 to tell 2011 by making basically adopting new packages and Polishing the Ubuntu changes like taking one change at the time making one clean commit out of that and Uploading releases one after the other integrating your upstream releases and All good. No well Not exactly because the the dependency stack at that time was a little complicated so to say Because every package was linking against its dependencies and some of the drivers had been promoted to the principle Server task so the print server task was pulling like HP lip and good and print but not other drivers for some reason and it was pulling cups and her cups was pulling popular and then Yeah, that basically you can go on the wiki if you want to revise history But basically that's why that's what was there when I started cleaning up the stuff so I started discussing the thing on the list and It was like we were like two or three and maybe many people agreeing to the thing, but I was I Was not many for doing the thing So I started cleaning up the dust Renaming the drivers now all printer driver are namespaced somehow. They all start with the same binary name Reworking the dependencies tree making sure you have a printer driver all that just Recommends all driver available drivers that the print print task can depend on so you get you get by default You get all available free software drivers just in case you might want to install a printer There was this PY PPD that is Compressor that would take the PPD files and turn them into an XZ compressed Python script that will uncompress itself into PPD's that basically allows A disk space reduction of 80 percent that was written by during a google summer of code and I just wrote the DH wrapper around that to automate that for the printing packages so that if you Put the PPD files in the right place and run that tool It will just do the compression and replacement and removing in the correct place We have moved all the packages to git because some of them were in no VCS some of them were in SVN I don't think we had any in CVS But anyway moving to git was a good thing in collab maintenance by then because I didn't have the interest in making a proper Team namespace and I wanted probably easier to just put everything there And the worst that might happen is that someone would be interested in putting patches that didn't happen And we hijacked the Dragon printing list Because no one was using that and it was totally logical to use that as a maintainer list to put to have everything in the same place and Cleaning up the dependencies apparently that's twice in the slide So During that time we managed to package all known free software drivers There were some laying around that were not packaged some that were a little complicated to package But anyway, we I tried to search through open printing and whatever and find some others that were not Packaged that were maybe supporting one or two printers, but I wonder it's probably good to have them in devian anyway Could be useful for one or two users who know Consolidated the fumatic packaging and caught caught back on up some versions and I think in we see we had most of that but There's still cups Cups is like the thing you don't really want to touch when you do printing because that's actually the complicated part The rest is just drivers filters small programs. It's easy when you start packaging because it's small things in different languages It's funny, but cups is a little frightening so I Wondered yeah, I mean cups is it's one big thing and it has an apple upstream. I mean Yeah, it's not really the thing you want to touch and cups is is not really known for being super whatever free software friendly so yeah But the the whiz your freeze was upcoming and cups hadn't seen uploads for a year So I started fixing one thing after the other and I starting uploading enemies and I ended up doing 16 enemies in a row and Not every enemy you got freeze exception request, but almost all of them So for each of the enemies was then discussing with the release team all the changes to make sure they would enter into whizzy Yeah that and then 2013 cups was Especially made complicated by the fact that where there was no public VCS there used to be an SVN, but it was down for some reason There also used to be a public buck tracker, but it was down for some reason and the few contacts I had with Apple was just over private males because they had no mailing lists or it was closed or it was down or yeah So it's not exactly the upstream you're very fine working with I mean, it's just a black hole You just get a new turbo no changes. I mean you get a change lock, but I mean you don't get the individual changes So and of course the package back then had no test suit working had no auto package test. So Yeah that But finally after doing sex 16 enemies, I think I thought myself. Yeah What what does that mean any the real maintainer would not get back to uploading that for the stable release So I might as well just adopt it and we'll see what happens So apparently the trap worked. I ended up with one more big package. That's cups so Where do we stand now? If you're on Sid you probably have most packages that are in their most recent upstream version And the last year we moved from color mains to printing because it's now easier because I'm a DD So I could easily create a new Alice group and we thought it's also easier just to see who was actually actually in the team So we send a send out a mail to the various persons that had somehow contributed and asked them to request The membership on alias so that the ones that are just MIA just don't request and they're not members So that the list on alias is somewhat relevant We kind of managed to maintain the bug flow as the other reasonable level I started there was like 400 bucks and now we're around 300 But that means also that the new bugs are addressed in Within a reasonable delay Somehow so now that I told already twice the floss drivers are indebted there was a new one I think three months ago some some guy did some Driver for two or three brother printers that just works currently so the package that is it's in Debian Also, the Ubuntu diff is kept minimal We've integrated some of the Ubuntu specific changes in the Debian packaging Just to avoid having them create a new diff just or maintaining a diff over time You can do that easily with a DPKG vendor for example So you have every the package the package is the same and just that build time will do different things So you can for example the default PDF page is different and the two default pages are in the Debian package But when you build it on Ubuntu you get the Ubuntu default page It has the advantage that the Ubuntu employee don't have to kind of equal employee don't have to maintain that patch over time We managed to get the diff to zero sometimes it's sometimes you just see a peak in Ubuntu because they want to be faster than in the music and They do their stuff. So that's the Bugs, it's for all printing packages. It's not that bad Apparently I had to do actual work for my work in July and August so it was a little but yeah So cups As you might have noticed if you're googling it now We've gone from one five three that was in squeeze to one seven five now in Jesse So it's two minor upstream releases with quite a lot of changes and I think we packaged all intermediate versions and It's not bold to say that will see we will release with a minor version of one seven. I mean Jesse. Yes Thank you. I'm getting old We've enabled the full test suite so lots of patches within the test suite but not for disabling things mostly for ignoring Things in the air logs because cops test test suite will count the number of errors in Its air log. So you have to take things out so that the count always matches Auto package test it's basically printing to DevNol, but We had we test that this continues to work when other parts of the of the archive change So printing to DevNol works. That's good news And we've patched in the system D socket activation and activity timeout so the socket activation was originally from Leonard and then changed by Gen2 to have that Not mandatory because Gen2 also has CSV in it where Red Hat just has system D So they don't have an option at runtime to either activate or deside deactivated socket activation So it's a mix of the Red Hat patch plus the Gen2 patch plus cleaning of course The activity timeout was from Ubuntu. So basically now in SID if you run system D Or upstart After 30 seconds of not doing anything the CUP server will shut shut down itself and doesn't do anything and when you Print something or access the web interface over the 6631 port just launches itself in quite of a second and Printers prints and then after 30 seconds shuts down again as for upstream We have regular good and constructive contact with upstream. I mean they have again public VCS Sorry a public VCS Boxer repository so we can actually communicate on the public place and have the various changes also as individual units So it's quite easier than now as for the constructive contacts. I also had good private emails with Mike Michael sweet from Apple about this new TLS versus open SSL discussion. We had in Debian devils some months ago Because new TLS introduced some incompatibilities. So I thought yeah, I could just build against open SSL No problem Cups has the GPL to exception and it was rightly pointed out that Every package that uses leapcups to also needs the GPL to exception for open SSL So it wasn't really possible So we had the discussion and actually upstream was interested in finding finding a solution eventually patching in another SSL library if that would help the Linux distributors. So it was kind of surprising for me that Apple would be interested in doing that But they were I must say so that's good And now we dropped the open SSL and it just builds against the latest new TLS version But yeah, the Linux foundation still needs to maintain several things that got dropped from cups That's one drawback of having cups owned by Apple is that they basically dropped everything that was not interesting for them So they just want to make sure you can print on Apple certified printers and the rest is left up to the community so the Linux foundation took over the cups filters and the cups Broadcasting management you can have the announcement between cup servers to get the queues in your Local queue etc etc. So that's taken over by the NUX foundation I'm thankful they do that job. I'm happy. I don't have to do it myself because I it probably wouldn't work and Till competitor is working for them making that happen. So I'm glad he thought thank you And We also have some people helping I would like to thank Brian potkin in particular for being precise tar less and helpful I don't know if he's at that conflict, but he's being participating on the list quite a lot for Tackling down some bugs reporting some useful bugs preparing patches also that's been useful and You might have seen from the list of packages We also have other packages that I don't maintain myself, but that are also in the Devin printing team So we have a Jonas for a ghost script and IGS C20 50 by Marco cups BGNP by Joe mean 12 xxw by Stefan and T4 cups by Mike that It's not packages doesn't that move very often, but when they do there we have updates. So it's good. Thank you In other parts of the stack, we still have HP lip that is maintained independently by Mark Purcell and Also gets updates regularly. So it's fine and cups PDF by Martin Rick and apparently is working too. So thanks Now for the future scoping the problem non-free plug and some incoming challenges The problem of printing is that it's it's still a must-be of our world when you discuss with people some people say Yeah, cups is really shit and we should find we could just drop that from the default installation Yeah, you know people still print. I mean The non-paper world is probably in Advertisement, but it's not there at all Printing when it works. It's boring. It just has to work and But when it doesn't it's really annoying. So it's it's that type of technical challenges that You will only get complaints when it doesn't and when it does everyone is happy, but no bugs. No nothing. It just works and it's fine But on the other hand printing is damn complex printer manufacturers come up with new protocols every three months basically like they can even change Printing protocols within the same product suit for some reason you get different IPP versions PCI supports different memory requirements Now you can directly feed PDFs to printers But the printers will sometime fail because the internal PDF rendering will fail for some reason So you have to circumvent that in the printer drivers You also have different sending protocols air prints the Google Cloud print is coming We have now IPP over USB for some printers. So it's like an ever-changing landscape for printing I mean it's a thing we've been doing for years and it's still changing for some reason It's complex also because it takes any format as input basically you can print images word documents PDFs Postscript and you have to make sure transform to whatever the printer is ready to get sometimes it's post script Sometimes PDF sometimes it's some raw whatever sometimes. It's a bit stream so we have complex chains and One of the biggest problem is that when a user has a problem the probability is one that you don't have the printer I mean I have one printer at home I test it when I do new uploads and I just printed the test page and that works But when it when a guy has a problem on a printer, I don't have it. So it's quite hard to reproduce And there is still IP in the drivers and I mean We have full manufacturer suits that have no acceptable floss support and I will do something a pointing now I hope this is not videotaped. Oh shit Um We've had this project from Devin France for the They were basically offering books for people that would be happy to contribute to something and I mentored two guys to take a look at What brother is that is doing with the drivers? So I invite you to go there there the documentation is quite extensive and They tried to see how we could package that even in non-free just to consolidate the thing and have a somewhat clean Dump of files even in non-free that you we could install that instead of downloading 2002 deb that has no depth sums But the web pages layout changed in the middle of the project they just we went the website So we had a crawler that would get the virus drivers and it just changed completely in the middle of the project You have is for some printers you have two different versions either for si or imperial units Because I don't know printers have physique different physical size or I don't know You have seashell all over the place. I don't think we have any valid in seashell interpreter yet in the end of it For many drivers is there is no co-installation possible because they use the same name files with different contents In the same place So you need the different file, but it was the same name the same place for two different printers So basically you can either print to one or the other but not the two at the same time It still uses print cap that's been deprecated at least since edge. I didn't check with something very old and Yeah, there's a lot of bugs all over the place It's a loads and loads of shell codes that would unpack parts of PPD files to generate things to put in other places Download things from the internet. Yeah a whole lot of crap Frankly But yeah, I mean we should not only figure point at the brother in Samsung apps on they're doing exactly the same or worse Or I just didn't take a look precisely at that, but the brother project Was quite frightening and I don't think we will ever do something useful there. I don't know if that's I don't know Yes I'm not surprised So, yeah, that's that's the dark the dark corner We don't want to to see I mean we have the three drivers that work quite well and there's a whole lot of things in the dark corner that You don't want to buy these printers because there's no way to make them work reasonably unless you download some very very very old Debian package Fixed the depth sums inside and stuff like that for Jesse New things ghost crypts move to a GPL That makes some people very happy So what we'll do is we'll probably upload the non the latest non a GPL version and have that in Jesse And we'll probably see what happens then Because yeah, the freezes soon and it's quite a complex problem, and we won't have time to fix that before so We'll probably move some versions up, but not to the latest option option version Apparently we're the only ones to care all other distributions have just uploaded the a GPL version and It's there so, yeah Cuffs to zero is around the corner We hope it will get there by the end of the year it introduces up stream side assistant is reports TLS certificate validation Maybe it's time for for us to do that They removed open SSL support, and we have many OS X and has enhancements Whatever that is useful for us. Anyway, that's So expect two zero better one in experimental in the next months. We'll see So what you can do Frankly, I'm getting bored by all that. It's been years not of I've been maintaining the printing stack Not exactly alone, but for some parts quite alone It's true to say that I've got quite a lot of collaboration with you put into to make that work And there are many things that is that I just have to patch back into Debian and it just works but it's it's sometimes a little Boring to do that all alone and Yeah, I'm glad others are helping in the team, but for the most parts and partly glee cups It's not that easy, but it's not too complicated. Believe me. Trust me and One point is I'm very bad at motivating people or documenting processes. For example the teams page I probably edited it twice once in 2010 and once last year for the printing both and It's still sitting there with no many not many updates. So Someone motivated by processes documentation should Jump jump on the ship and do some stuff there But this talk was an attempt at motivating people at least so we'll see that works and On a long term What we need is more drivers writers basically because there are tons of printers that come out that that don't get full support And that people use basically and the problem is not Making sure everyone can buy the printer. They want people will have printers They have there and they want that to work and it doesn't so we need people to actually write driver printers We need more bug treasures that then become one of the maintainers Hopefully and less bugs pretty please We can achieve less bugs two ways by fixing more bugs or by introducing less bugs. So maybe we should do the two So that's all for my little Devin printing stack Status if you have questions, I'm happy to try to answer them and otherwise. I think we can all move to dinner Yeah Where's the mics? So I'm a bit interested in printing because we have lots of corporate printing which doesn't work because it's all run For Windows people and so the poor Linux people are thoroughly ignored And in fact if we print the printers they tend to crash, which is a bit sad And you know people complain that the printers are very unreliable. You actually it's us So also 50% chance of things exploding but what I what I haven't been able to find is Where do people who have to worry about corporate installations hang out? I couldn't find anywhere to ask questions because our IT people go We don't know how it's supposed to work in the next world. We have no fucking idea Please tell us what to do and we'll do that and I don't know anything about printing or who to ask or where to go Is there a place I think there must be lots of people who have big installations probably and there must be some people who understand how this works So the Devin printing list is not that much used it gets the automated mails from the maintainers Mails so we could drop that if people start to use that but that would be one option I think you should look into open printing lists and if No list exists there. They should probably create one. I think they have one They have summits and they have meetings for whatever printing related somewhere on the open printing site Yeah, be a good place to yeah, I think ask advice. Yeah, okay. I was just wondering if you would comment on What's your what's your perspective on back ports and things like that? So once we go stable How do you see supporting the printing stack for two years five years? However long stable is going to be out there Well, there are two answers for that one is There's quite a lot of security work to do for stable already and we had I think privilege Yeah, you could access basically you could yeah privilege escalation in stable So we had to reramp the whole configuration system in stable for cups during the wheezy cycle. So That kind of takes the time that would be allocated to backports. The other answer is patch is welcome So I didn't do backports for wheezy yet just because they had enough of mine plates for Sid But I would happily help anyone wanting to Prepare backports. I think it shouldn't be too hard Cups is probably buildable right away So, yeah, okay, that's so that's cups. How about the how about drivers so same I mean if anyone interested I could just help making sure it happens, but Unlikely I would do it myself Let's do it. So, thank you. So if you Do not do new drivers typically depend on a new version of cups usually not because they Build against lip cups to but lip cups to is kind of ABI stable since years so it shouldn't be too much so that so then you So the missing hardware support is a is as I understand it always considered an important bug and worthy of a stable update So that means that if you wanted to you could you could update drivers Add new drivers in a state ball for hardware enablement That's interesting. Yeah The other I also had a question about Drivers which is typically when I plug into a new printer. I Get a list of possible drivers Possibly limited to the exact model or or not But there always seem to be more than one option per model is that I assume that's because there are multiple collections of drivers Package, how was a user am I supposed to decide which is which of those to use? Trial and an attempt I Mean they for some driver for some printers you get a recommended version from Fumatic that has this parentheses recommended thing So you should just pick that one I think we mostly also have multiple drivers per printer because Sometimes for a single printer depending on where in the world it was it would work better or worse with different printer drivers so but the the one database that we use used for that is Fumatic DB that is maintained on the open printing website and I The where exactly you should report bugs isn't exactly clear also for me So I should clarify that well, I should I've never I've never selected a driver and found that it didn't work So as far as I'm concerned you're doing fine there. It simply is this having been presented with a choice Well, I haven't I don't know what would the door difference would be was that on the cups web interface? Yes, yeah, I think that's there the selection isn't very smart But I think when you use Python cups or one of the GNOME or Katie front ends you get a little less Options I think but that's more front-end work than whatever cups related But yeah, I don't have a better answer now Any other questions? Kind of following on from what Ben said Yeah, I've been under the impression that those were different ways of talking to the printer You know because there's always you say there's always 17 ways of talking to any given printer So I kind of thought that they were all different flavors But again, it's extremely unclear you go I don't know whether I want fumatic thingy or or HP lip thingy or something else thing I should say you try one and usually it works So and you go I could sit here in trial 17 But I don't know whether that's and then sometimes there's the interface to the printer you can specify So our fancy print in the office is 81 different ways of talking to it and you go I don't want to try all those you know Before I've tried or make it crash, but you know sometimes One that works. Yeah, exactly Yeah But there seem to be a very small number of people actually understand this stuff. Yes. That's there's till. Yeah, exactly And I may be three other people somewhere. Yeah, right. So But he's yeah, we should talk more to till I suspect and Yeah, he's making most of that work and you wouldn't decide I think as a canonical employee What's this I vaguely gathered that the cups browsing thing as you say is disappeared upstream So we're keeping it in a debbie and a bun to while we can yes, that right? Yes, basically using zero conf ever he Thing well, that's how that's how Apple wanted to work But that doesn't know that in especially in a big office that doesn't work at all because you're on different network segments One thing that was dropped and that hasn't been reintroduced on open printing was the LDAP support Was or that used to be in cups and that's now removed I was used in big corporations that had like an LDAP list of printers Instead of like listening to the noise of all printers announcing themselves on a network and we regularly get users saying how could I pick The latest one was something like the browsing demon has 10% CPU. Is that because I have 100 printers of my office. Well, yes So Yeah, I mean I can't really I don't have a capacity of recording that anyway So if the corporation wants to get a lot support they should Make a lot fix it. Yeah But I'm open to integrating that as a Devin patch if that helps but Can't really fix that myself So, yeah, if I had any time I'd like to help you with printing, but I have too many hats already So I'm not missing anything Yeah, thank you Mostly so I can actually print stuff without having to run a Windows VM, which in practice is how I printed my stuff to get here Yeah That's bad. Well, actually one one thing that Geeks like us should know is how to pick the correct printer when you when you buy one and I think yeah, so my home print is all work Fine, it's beautiful the cups browsing works stuff prints. It's all lovely It's when you go to work that the whole thing's a disaster. Yeah So which manufacturer should we prefer I'm not paid by any of these but I think HP printers mostly work fine either through HP LP HP LYP or other things Yeah, that's baseline I would say but Yeah, others work too Well, if anyone has contacts at bother tell me to contact me and will manage something and recommend some good practices for modern printing If you know because that's not an acceptable way of providing Linux support. I think anyway other questions Everyone's hungry. Good. Thank you very much