Madi and I are here, and you're all here, so that's great. Madi, do you want to give us an update on the situation with Iran? Yes, first, for those who don't know from the last time, we were pushing for Robert Malley to be the envoy on Iran. And Biden was getting a lot of pushback by the APAC groups and other pro-Israel groups, as well as conservative Iranian-Americans and some of our more conservative senators, like Tom Cotton, that he was anti-Israel, that he was to pro-Iran, et cetera, et cetera. We worked very hard and other groups did as well to push for him. And we're very excited that he has become the envoy. And we thought that was a very important test that Biden didn't give into the war hawks on this one. But it's still a very delicate situation. And just yesterday, there was, I think, a very good proposal by the Iranian Foreign Minister calling on the Europeans to be the mediators in this, or choreograph the return of both Iran and the US into compliance with the deal. So that's something that is out on the table. And so far, the Biden team hasn't responded to that. But it's something that we think is a good idea. And then I also, were you going to give more of an update? I was going to do Burma separate. I'm going to talk about Burma, and I'll talk about Kathleen Hicks. OK, so on the Burma front, since we met last week, there has been a coup. And it's a complicated situation. Anson Suu Kyi, who is the de facto leader, is somebody who many of us fought for for years. And when she was out of being under arrest and became the leader, she unfortunately looked the other way. And while the military carried out its genocide on the Rohingya. And this is a terrible mark on her career. But in any case, she is well loved. And her party won the last election in November. And they were just about to take power in the assembly yesterday, two days ago, when the military decided they would rather not and instead staged a coup. And our friends at the international campaign for the Rohingya have come out with a call to reinstate what's called the Jade Act. And these are sanctions on the military. And they say, unlike the sanctions that we fight so hard against on Iran and Venezuela, these are specific sanctions on the military. And they are being called for from the civil society inside of what we call it Burma or Myanmar. So I'm going to put in the chat the link to that petition. And you can follow up on that through the international campaign for the Rohingya. Thank you. I just want to follow up on the hearing today. I don't know how many of you had a chance to watch the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. It's kind of frightening, actually. These Republicans are so married to war. And the Democrats are largely talking about equity issues with women in the military. And very little, I didn't hear any when I was listening, any challenge to the principle or hegemonic thinking that we have to modernize our nuclear weapons. So Kathleen Hicks has been nominated for Deputy Secretary of Defense. Our suspicion is, or what we've read, is that she was brought in because the Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, is not hawkish enough on China. So she was asked to verify that China is basically our enemy. And she said, well, yes, she was very concerned about China. And then she said that in order to avoid war with China, we have to prepare for war, basically. We have to modernize our weapons systems. We have to increase our defense military spending. And at one point, I think it was Tom Cotton who asked her, well, you said that war with China is not inevitable. Would you say that it is conceivable? What kind of question is this? And she said, it's not inconceivable. So they were really on the warpath, this committee. And I imagine she said what she needed to say to get confirmed, though, she did seem to be religious about the importance of modernizing our nuclear arsenal and our nuclear triad. So that was very disturbing. And we'll have to just really push back hard on this whole theme that we have to ignore the rest of the world that is signing on to the prohibition against nuclear weapons and go forward. She was asked explicitly, are you going to update the nuclear posture review, which a lot of presidents do, I think, when they move into the White House? And she said, well, she couldn't really answer that question because she wasn't the president, basically. So that was Kathleen Hicks. Now, I just want to give one little update because I see Ellis later put in how Elizabeth Warren was good. She was really the only good one. She said that the US, the Pentagon budget, given the real threats that we face today, the Pentagon budget is unconscionable. And she said that the US is spending $484.5 billion this year alone on nuclear weapons. And that was more than we're spending on the entire State Department budget. So she was very good. Thank you. And later on in this call, we're going to be sending emails into the White House, basically with three talking points. One, that we do not want to modernize our nuclear weapons. We have enough to destroy the earth 10 times over that we want to take our nuclear weapons off-hair trigger alert to avoid a catastrophe, an accidental catastrophe, and that we want to sign on to this treaty. Might as well push back hard. I also want to update everybody on H.J. Rez. 15 and 16 bills that were introduced by Representative Meeks to block certain weapons sales to Saudi Arabia when we last checked in. I think they have six co-sponsors. And now he's up to 27. Glad to say that my Congressperson just recently signed on with a little nudge. So if you haven't asked your person, your representative to do that, H.J. Rez. 15 and 16, please do. Mary, maybe you can post in the chat the co-sponsors. And everybody can see if your representative is one of the co-sponsors. If not, please get on the phone tonight, tomorrow, and demand that they co-sponsor this. Because I think it's an important message to send to Biden. He has paused the weapons billions of dollars, I think with the billions, I think so, yeah, to Saudi Arabia. But it's a pause. It's not a halt. And so we need to send that message. Another message I would like to send, and that is into the members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Ron Wyden, Martin Heinrich, others. Avril Haynes, we were opposed to her nomination as Director of National Intelligence. She was easily confirmed. But during the confirmation hearings, she said a few interesting things. And one of them was that she promised she was going to release the CIA report on the Khashoggi murder. And people are anticipating that the conclusion of that report is that it was ordered by the Crown Prince. So I'm asking the Senate Intelligence Committee members to obtain that report it was promised and to read it on the floor of the Senate. And we'll have more on that later. OK, one last announcement, and that is we are looking for, we have 123 people on the call, we're looking for people to step up and volunteer to be liaisons representatives from your congressional district, your state, to members of the House and the Senate. Mary is going to, I believe she can post the link to a Google sign-up sheet. And if you're interested in doing that, we would really appreciate it, so you can sign up. Now, anything else, Medina, that you want to announce? Are you sure? Well, that's great. OK, all right, so moving on. Hania is very sorry she can't be with us tonight. Just a little bit under the weather. She sends everybody her best. And we will hopefully see her next week. Well, we are very honored to have with us tonight. John Pfeffer, he is the director of the Foreign Policy Institute at the, excuse me, the director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. Many of us are familiar with this terrific policy group. He is also the author of Aftershock, A Journey in Eastern Europe's Broken Dreams, Into Eastern Europe's Broken Dreams. John Pfeffer is the former associate editor of World Policy Journal. He worked as an international affairs representative in Eastern Europe and East Asia for the Friends Service Committee. And he studied in England and Russia and lived in Poland and Japan and is needless to say, worldly. John, we look forward to hearing what you have to say about US-Russia relations and the Biden administration. It's been so tumultuous lately in Russia, so we look forward to getting your thoughts about what's going on there and what we can expect and what we need to do to ensure that we have world peace. So take it away, John. Thank you. It's very kind of you to invite me. And I'm going to share screen with you all. I'm going to try to make this quick because I basically wanted us to only speak a few minutes and also focus a little bit on arms control. So I'm going to look at basically the Biden administration's policy of selective engagement with Russia, with the prospects of that are going to be. And then, as I said, focus largely on arms control. Although I'm going to go through a lot of issues very quickly, and you can ask me any questions about them afterwards. Obviously, things don't start off on a very good foot when we have the future president of the United States already asserting that Russia is going to be the biggest threat to America. Putin, of course, recognizes that.  Is it my voice that's cutting out? Yeah, it's better now. OK, maybe it's whenever I hit the advance key on the computer, it cuts out. So I'll stop when I hit the advance key. So here we have, of course, Putin's comment on Biden. So we're starting off with not a lot of good blood between the two of them. I'm going to go through several points of conflict in US-Russian relations that complicate even this bad blood between the two leaders as we start off this relationship. Obviously, the major issue that Russia is concerned about or has been concerned about is NATO expansion. You can see that the NATO countries are blue, and you have the Baltics right here on the doorstep of Russia. Green, of course, is Ukraine, a prospective member in the future, possibly, that Russia has worried about. So that has been a major consideration for Russia. For the United States, of course, Russia's relationship with Ukraine, the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, civil war in Eastern Ukraine, in Donetsk and Luhansk. And the general shift, in some sense, in Putin's foreign policy toward a more nationalistic orientation. And when I say nationalistic, I'm being very specific here, there was a shift in rhetoric that Putin made around 2014 away from Rassiski, which is the Russian term for civic Russian, a citizen of Russia, regardless of ethnicity, to Ruski, which is ethnic Russian. And so that was a real shift in discourse that took place around the war with Ukraine. Other points of conflict, regional hotspots, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Turkey, petropolitics, the Nord Stream 2, which is, of course, a pipeline that runs from Russia to Germany. It hasn't been completed yet, largely as a result of US sanctions. Germany would like to get natural gas from Russia. And of course, the United States would like to sell its own natural gas to Germany. And so it's both a geopolitical and, frankly, an economic conflict. Human rights, obviously, the demonstrations that have taken place over the last couple of weeks, which have been a continuation, in some sense, of human rights demonstrations, largely against the Putin government that have taken place over the years. Certainly, the latest outbreak has made it into the news, but it's not unique. I can talk about those in greater detail if there is interest. Assassinations of Russian oppositionists. This is Litvinenko, who was assassinated in the UK in 2006, as well as attempted assassinations. But of course, Boratsnyemsyev killed in Moscow. And other attempted poisonings, Navalny, the most recent. Election interference, obviously a great deal of detail about Russian activity in 2016. Less activity in 2020. Two pieces of legislation in Congress that are directed toward Russia as a result of interference in 2016. For Russia has its own beefs about US supportive color revolutions, namely the revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine, et cetera, and really support of protests within Russia itself. OK, so that's the background of points of conflict. So let's move to a somewhat more optimistic and proactive side of the discussion. And that is the selective engagement where the United States and Russia can actually engage with one another. And these are five different areas of potential engagement. I'm going to focus on arms control. I'm just going to go through the others very quickly. Obviously, Medea was talking about the Iran nuclear deal earlier on. That is something that both the United States and Russia have agreed on the importance of and have coordinated with. And so the US reentry into that deal, I think, could serve as an important kind of stepping stone for greater coordination between the United States and Russia. Pandemic, obviously, is a worldwide concern. Russia has come up with its own vaccines, but NIC-5, which it has also marketed and given to other countries in the world, something the United States really hasn't done. Climate change, another major issue. Russia, of course, is a major oil and gas exporter. The Russian government is very much wedded to fossil fuels, both the production and the sale of them. But Russia is also a victim, if you will, of climate change. As you see, it's warming two and a half times faster than the rest of the globe. Partly, obviously, a question of geography in the northern reaches of the country. And here you have a picture of the taiga and it's melting out in the Far East. But there are other possibilities for environmental coordination or cooperation just today. In fact, there was the news of a new joint contingency plan that was signed as a continuation of an earlier agreement around combating pollution in the northern reaches. OK, arms control, and this is what I'm really supposed to focus on in this presentation. As you know, New START has been extended. This is the lowest-hanging fruit in the arms control universe. As you can see from this line here, this was not really a disarmament treaty. This was establishing a ceiling on warheads, up to which both the United States and Russia could build up to. And you see that in both cases, Russia and the United States didn't even hit the limit of 1,500. But if New START hadn't been extended, we would have seen what's called upload capacity of warheads, both on the US side and the Russian side, go well above this particular ceiling of 1,500. We talked about, or one possibility for an action item is to get the United States to declare no first use of nuclear weapons. Many other countries have done that. The United States has not. Joe Biden has indicated support for this. This was something that there was some disagreement within the Obama administration. I think Biden was more favorable to it than Obama was. So there's a real possibility we could push him on this to get the United States to declare no first use. And that would be useful. It's not the most, perhaps, important arms control or disarmament measure, but it is an important first step. Hair trigger alert, otherwise known as de-alerting. And this is kind of a critical step for our ICBMs, otherwise known as our silo-based missiles. And we have a precedent. The United States and Russia actually de-alerted strategic bombers back in 1991. That was something that Reagan did actually unilaterally, and that Gorbachev then followed suit. So this is a really important precedent that you can use Democrats and Republicans, too. Republicans love hearing the word Reagan in a sentence. So being able to say that Reagan administration did this, I think is a really important talking point. Modernization, as you've heard, the United States committed to major modernization. In fact, it was part of the deal to get New START pushed through the Obama administration, basically through several carrots that the Republicans to get them to sign on to New START, to get it through the Senate. And one of that was a major modernization of nuclear weapons. Of course, it didn't make much logical sense to modernize the very weapons that Obama promised to get rid of, but nonetheless, this was part of horse-straining in Congress. And then the Republicans, they didn't even vote for it anyway. So it was, unfortunately, it was a terrible choice that the Obama administration made. That modernization has been continued under Trump, $500 billion, as you see, over a 10-year period. And that would have been, or might continue to be a $100 billion increase over what the Obama administration was estimating in over 30 years, we're talking about $1.2 trillion. So this is a lot of money that is involved in the modernization here. And strangely, you can read articles that say that other countries are modernizing their nuclear arsenals, China, Russia, and that the United States is not, which is a strange thing to read. It was in a recent piece of looking over foreign affairs, but the US is very much involved in modernization. Here are some of the kind of possibilities for, I would say modest rollback of modernization of the nuclear arsenal, deferring the deployment of the B-21, canceling the long-range standoff weapon, which would be good, canceling the B-61-12 life extension program. And then if we were to retain the nuclear triad, reducing it, and here are two different options here. Now, of course, there was discussion of removing one of the legs of the triad, maybe the ICBMs, maybe the bombers. So that would actually be a far more kind of effective proposal in terms of reducing nuclear arsenal. As I said, the new start is not really, it's not disarmament. It's not really even arms control in the sense of reducing, in a modest sense, nuclear weapons. It was only establishing a ceiling. So what could be the next kind of step for arms control negotiations between the United States and Russia? Well, one proposal is to actually push for a limit of all nuclear weapons. Start only deals with strategic, in other words, long range nuclear weapons. We had an agreement that was on all nuclear weapons, limiting it, for instance, to 2,500 warheads, that would apply not only to battlefield nuclear weapons or tactical nuclear weapons, or what are known as more usable nuclear weapons, but non-deployed strategic warheads as well, which start really didn't cover. And if we had a limit of this nature, we would cut approximately 50% from the US nuclear weapons and even more from Russian nuclear arsenal, which would be pretty significant. And this is, frankly, well within the boundaries of acceptable arms control discourse. So this is not a radical proposal here. Also on the books would be, say, looking at conventional weapons, conventional missiles, or missile defense reductions. Long-term goal. Well, of course, comprehensive test ban treaty, that's been on the wish list for a long time, as well as the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. Of course, both of those would require a Senate approval and that would be two thirds for a treaty. And that's a pretty high mark to meet, but something to keep as a long-term goal. More, perhaps likely in the short term would be the arms trade treaty, getting Senate ratification of that. That would be slightly easier. I think we could get maybe some Republican support for that. When we're talking about the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons, one intermediate goal is actually to get Germany to sign it. Germany has kind of resisted signing this treaty. And it's, of course, not a nuclear state, but it does have nuclear weapons on its territory. So pushing Germany and working with the German peace movement to get Germany to sign on, I think would be a really important intermediate goal. And then just finally, there's a lot of discussion about whether we can talk about arms control and human rights at the same time. Often arms control folks say that they don't support linkage. That you're pushing through an arms control treaty. You don't wanna complicate it with discussions of other questions, whether it's human rights or it's environmental issues. If you look at the Iran nuclear agreement, it focuses specifically on Iran's nuclear program. It doesn't address any other questions like Iran's missile program or human rights in Iran. There's been discussions of additional negotiations, but the agreement itself is very much unlinked to other questions. But I do think it is possible to talk about arms control and human rights in a delinked manner. In other words, to have parallel discussions of this. And I think that's something to really pursue in a selective engagement mode. I think our challenge here is, in terms of phrasing it, and I'll end it here, in terms of how we would create a narrative. When we're talking about intergovernmental, our negotiators with their negotiators at a governmental level, I think the point is how do we work together to make the world safer? And that should be the overarching story we are telling for US-Russian cooperation. It's how to make the world safer. And then from below, when we're talking about peace activists here and in Russia and in Europe, working together. Of course, we are working to make the world safer, but we're also working to make our countries more responsible global actors. And I think that also brings in other questions that we talk about in the overall US-Russian relationship. And I'll end it there and I'm happy to answer questions on any of the points that I raised very quickly in this presentation. Well, thank you, John, if you don't mind, if you could stay for another 15 minutes or so and then we'll have questions to both you and Erin at the same time, if that's okay. Thank you so much for that extremely informative presentation. And if you can email me a link, if you have that up on Google somewhere, then I can send it out to everybody in our Google group. I'm sure they would love to take another look at it. I really appreciate it. So just to reiterate, you said we could cooperate with Russia on arms control on the Iran deal and on climate, correct? Yeah, okay, great. All right, Medea, please introduce our next guest. Yes, thank you so much, John. And all of you who are making your comments in the chat, it's a complicated and you broke it down in simple ways for us, John. But we know when it comes to Russia, there's all kinds of disagreements on how the US should interact with Russia, certainly within the Democratic Party there is. And there's all kinds of disagreements on how we should move forward in terms of strategy. In fact, tonight, there were those who said we should focus on first use and others who said no, go all the way and call for the Nuclear Ban Treaty. So we encourage the dialogue and as soon as our next speaker is done, we'll move into that portion of this evening. But we're delighted to welcome Aaron Mate. He's a New York City-based journalist and producer. He hosts the new show Push Back for the Grey Zone and writes regularly for the nation. In 2019, he was awarded the Izzy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Independent Media. And previously, he was a longtime producer at our favorite show, Democracy Now, as well as a producer for Al Jazeera English. So Aaron, thank you so much for being with us tonight. Thanks, Medea, and thanks for having me. I'm a big fan of Code Pink, so it's an honor to be here. I should start by acknowledging some limitations on my outlook. I'm not an expert on Russia's internal politics. It's not something that I follow very closely. And to be honest, for most of my Russia analysis for the last few years, I've just been deferring to Stephen Cohen, the late professor emeritus at NYU in Princeton. He passed on in September. And so in the absence of his wisdom, I've been searching for to develop my own more, my own sort of analysis of Russia because I just relied on his expertise. And he was such a consistent speaker of truth in speaking out against the new Cold War and speaking out against Russophobia that was becoming increasingly popular. Every time I discuss this topic, I feel his absence and his influence. But I won't speak too long. Where I wanna start is we're something positive, which is that to me, it was very encouraging that for Joe Biden's first major foreign policy move, he immediately renewed the New START Treaty with Russia. And I think what John said about it being low-hanging fruit is really important to keep in mind that it's not this spectacular achievement. But the fact that we were just days away from it having expired because of the recklessness of the Trump administration and the fact that Biden moved so quickly to renew it without trying to bring China in or attach new conditions, which was the Trump policy, I think it's very encouraging. And to me, it also signified how dangerous the last four years of Russiagate was. And it leaves me worried about what the long-term impact might be because the very thing that Biden did was undermining Trump's policy of killing this vital nuclear weapons accord and to the point of almost starting a new nuclear arms race. But yet rhetorically from the media and from Democrats for the last four years, we were not hearing that Trump was escalating tensions with Russia and almost setting off a new Cold War. We were hearing that Trump is actually doing Putin's bidding because Trump is really Putin's puppet. But that was a narrative that was fashionable for explaining Trump's 2016 victory and responding to it.  And as John pointed out, tried to also kill off the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany. We didn't hear about that really for the most part because we were too busy focused on this effort to prove that Donald Trump is really a puppet of Vladimir Putin. Now that whole collusion thing I think has been put to bed because that's over now. But I am worried about the lingering effects. One of the impact I think of all of this and I think one of the goals was to actually inculcate inside liberal left culture this notion that to resist Trump style authoritarianism that we need to encourage a more hawkish posture towards Russia. And we need to worship the intelligence officials who are saying that Russia is responsible for all of our problems and are presenting themselves as the answer to Donald Trump. That I think was one impact of the last four years. And now that Trump is gone, which is something to celebrate I'm worried about what the impact will be and whether the impact of that will be to make diplomacy with Russia, which I think is very vital for the planet's survival will make that diplomacy even harder. I'm already seeing that because when Biden announced that he was rejoining Newstart, it was accompanied with this announcement that he also was gonna conduct an intelligence review of all these various allegations against Russia. This claim that Russia paid bounties to the Taliban in Afghanistan, which despite like weeks of media hype at the end of it, the Pentagon quietly admitted that they had found no evidence for it. And then it kind of went away until Biden revived it a couple of times during the debates and during the campaign. But now he's putting that back on the table and also that Biden was gonna look at whether Russia poisoned Alexa Navalny and also gonna review allegations of Russian interference in the 2020 election, which I was confused by because I thought this was a pristine election with no fraud at all, which is what I think is true. And if there was interference by Russia, then wouldn't that possibly take Joe Biden's victory? So I was surprised to see that allegation being revived. And what has me worried there is I don't think these allegations are being revived because there's any basis to them. I think they're being revived because they serve a political end. And the political end has been since 2016 especially, but before then with the conflicts in Ukraine and in Syria to increasingly demonize Russia to stigmatize diplomacy with Russia and to blame Russia for our own problems and to find ways to basically justify a hawkish posture towards Russia, which is very profitable for weapons manufacturers. For example, in the late 90s when the Senate debated the expansion of NATO, it was like there was a record amount spent then from the arms industry on lobbying like something like over $50 million within a couple of years just as the Senate was debating NATO expansion, which it ultimately approved. So it's profitable for weapons manufacturers to have tensions between the US and Russia, but it's dangerous for everybody else. And one of my biggest problems with the Russiagate fixation of the last four years is that I felt is that instead of encouraging liberals and leftists to oppose these tendencies, it was actually enlisting them in them. And there are powerful elements inside the government that are behind this, that believe in it and that are continue to put out stories that advance that goal. I do think thankfully there is a split inside the democratic establishment, not everybody is on board. Whereas under Trump, it was, despite Trump making nice with Putin, thinking Putin's a great guy, everybody else was totally devoted to world destruction tearing up nuclear treaties, massively increasing weapons spending. So I think the fact that there's somewhat of a split inside the Biden camp is encouraging. It opens up opportunities for the peace movement. I also think we should look at other areas that don't get as much attention, but I think do drive US Russia tensions, especially Syria, which is a difficult issue on the left. There's been some division around that. To me, it's very clear. And I think it's worth reckoning with and because I think it's to ignore it actually increases the dangers of confrontation between the US and Russia there. Where basically whatever you think about Assad and I'm no fan of his, I'm grateful. I don't have to live under a dictator like him. The fact is that the US was on the side of pouring in billions of dollars in weapons that went to Jihadists and that Russia's intervention stopped that. And I feel like now Syria is being punished for the fact that the US lost that dirty war with the US under Trump imposing these Caesar sanctions that are according to all experts on the level of the sanctions that we imposed on Iraq in the 1990s. I interviewed recently the UN rapporteur on sanctions who said that the sanctions regime that the US has imposed on Syria are pretty much like those in Iraq. And that they're getting to the point now where doctors are smuggling in medical equipment and people can't even import toothpaste because toothpaste has been classified as dual use. So having civilian and military purposes. And because Syria is on the side of Russia, I think that that has helped sort of make it harder for people to talk about the issue and to speak about the real consequences of what US sanctions are currently doing after a 10 year war that we were a major pardon. And I think that's something that also should be addressed and I think should be opposed.  So that's an area that I hope will be taken up under Biden. They're unlike Trump who oversaw these sanctions. I do think there's also a split inside the Biden camp as well. There are some people like Rob Mowley who helped bring that war to an end. And I think those voices and said the Biden administration should be encouraged should be emboldened by showing that not everyone wants to support the Trump policy of strangling Syria with sanctions and continuing to occupy it where we're only there as Trump said to take its oil. And another official who's now coming into the Biden administration also said something similar that we're there as leverage because the region that where the US is currently occupying Syria has its major oil reserves and also its bread basket where it produces the bulk of Syria's wheat which now the rest of Syria can't receive and now we're seeing long bread lines in Syria. So why would we want to continue that criminal Trump policy is beyond me. And I think it's a good opening now with Biden and to really encourage something that's in the interest of everybody, especially the people of Syria. So I'll stop there and I guess we can open up to other comments. Thank you, Aaron. We appreciate hearing your thoughts about Russiagate and points of agreement with John. And now we're gonna open up the chat to questions. Please post your questions in the chat and Medi and I will take turns posing these questions and presenting them. And while we're waiting for people to post questions, I'm gonna ask Aaron and John, who do you think within?  John, Aaron, who do you see within the Biden administration as the people most sympathetic to improving relations with Russia as opposed to being hawkish? Well, I mean, anybody who's going to be in the State Department focused on arms control is going to be, you know, their job is going to be working with Russia to a certain extent. John Kerry, his job is going to be working with Russia on environmental issues. In fact, you know, it's going to be all the people whose job it is to focus on those issues rather than perhaps on Russia per se that may be our best allies. And I wanted to just add one thing because David Hart pointed out that a number of Republicans did vote for the start treaty and he's right. What I meant was that the Republicans that Obama reached out to like John Kyle in Arizona were the ones that he pitched the modernization. Kyle in particular wanted the modernization program and they're the ones who didn't vote for it in the end. So there were Republicans who supported it and they probably would have supported it without the modernization add-ins. That's why I said it was a lousy. But thank you, David. That's a really important point. Okay. Oh, go ahead, Erin. Yeah, I'll say it was not in favor of improving relations, I think. Well, there's Victoria Nuland who Biden has brought back in and she was instrumental in the coup in Ukraine that really helped set off so much of the current tensions between the U.S. You know, she was the person on that famous phone call that was leaked by Russian intelligence where she says, F-U-C-K, the EU that we don't need them that we're gonna pick the Ukraine president that we want. And she went over with John McCain and handed out cookies to the protesters in Medan. So that's someone who I think is not probably in favor of improving relations. But yeah, again, anything is an improvement over the Trump game, where there was just despite what was said about Trump and despite Trump saying nice things about Putin policy-wise, it was nothing but confrontation. I'm really happy that that era is over and it creates a new opening. I think it's hard to talk about Russia today without talking about Navalny. So maybe you could each give us your views on what he is like, what he stands for, how destabilizing is this for Putin? Where is it all going? And perhaps we can start with you, John. Sure. So, you know, Alexei Navalny is an interesting fellow. He started out as a kind of classic liberal. He joined the Yabloko Block, which was this kind of liberal party back in the early, late 90s, early 2000s. And, but liberals, whether they're classic liberals in the European sense or liberals in the American sense, they're not too popular in Russia. I don't, the liberal parties basically have not garnered very many votes.  And Navalny, I think, realized that. He shifted pretty clearly and pretty hard to a nationalist position. And not just a kind of overall nationalist, I distinguish between Ruski and Rusiski, Ruski being ethnic Russian, Rusiski being civic Russian. Navalny was clearly on the Ruski side, ethnic Russians, very xenophobic positions on kind of foreigners and even non-Russians within the Russian Federation. But that too, he evolved from, in part because he really, that position too, not necessarily a useful political campaign either. And what he seized on ultimately is corruption. And I think that is an issue that even folks who are conservative and even very conservative in Russia feel very strongly about. And mind you, you know, there are three big parties in Russia today. It's United Russia, which is Putin's party. Then there's the Communist Party, which is Gennady Zhuganov. And Zhuganov is even more nationalist and even more xenophobic than Putin. And then there's Zhiranovsky, who's even more further to the right. These are the three big parties. That gives you a sense of where the kind of political temperature is in Russia today. But even among supporters of the Communist Party and of the quote unquote liberal democratic party of Zhiranovsky, there's a disgust for corruption.  In 2019, when asked about Stalin, 70% of Russians had a favorable view of Stalin as a leader. The following year, last year, when asked about the best period of time in Russian history, three out of four Russians said the Soviet time was the best time in Russian history. So we're talking about a pretty conservative group of folks, but even for those folks, corruption is disgusting for them, especially at a time when the economy is not doing so well. The Russian economy contracted by 4% last year. So corruption becomes a key issue and Navalny has capitalized on that. And when we're coming up to elections this year, later by September at least, that may be the only issue that an opposition can coalesce around. And Navalny, even though he's now going to be in prison for two years at least, a figure that they can coalesce around. Thank you. And Aaron, did you wanna say anything about Navalny? Yeah, the Russian leftists who I speak to don't see a huge difference between Navalny and Putin in terms of what their relationship is to the system. That essentially, if Navalny were to come in, he would basically serving, he would basically still be serving the same oligarchs or maybe a different class of oligarchs, but he wouldn't fundamentally change the oligarch system. And that, by the way, we the US helped impose on Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. And where I think some of the fondness for the Soviet times come from in these polls of Russians that John mentioned is that they were better than the Yeltsin years, which the US was instrumental in bringing about with the radical shock therapy. And that's a facet that I don't think, US politicians and people in the media really appreciate how devastated Russia was in the 1990s based on the shock reforms that we helped impose, and which then gave rise to the oligarch class. And we also don't appreciate then that there is, despite Putin being an autocrat, that there is, he is popular, he does have popular support basically because he stabilized Russia from those embarrassing and awful Yeltsin years when life expectancy plummeted, all the indicators of life went down. It was a terrible time. And I don't think, although Navalny has been great at exposing corruption, including in Putin's circle, it doesn't strike me that there's enough popular support for him there, for that to really pose a major threat to Putin. And it's interesting to see him propped up in the West as his opposition leader when even inside Russia, he's not the most popular opposition leader. He's certainly been very effective at exposing corruption, but I just think the way he's discussed here has been distorted to serve a certain Western agenda because he's deemed to be in the Western interest. What happened today was unjust, obviously. I mean, they're imprisoning him for missing parole while he was recovered from being poisoned out of the country. It's pretty unjust and indefensible. And the fact that he came back to Russia, he must have known that this would happen. So he's clearly determined to see this cause through. I have a hard time joining in the, or I've heard them accepting the Western condemnations of Navalny's imprisonment when we're currently imprisoning Julian Assange for under brutal conditions. And something like his hearing was a lot less transparent than Navalny's hearing today where at least some foreign diplomats and journalists were allowed to attend. But if you talk to journalists who were trying to attend Assange's hearing, it was a nightmare and they made it very difficult. So it will be interesting to see what happens next. I mean, certainly he has galvanized some support and there were protests today and there will continue to be. I just think that my sense of the Western coverage here of it is that it overestimates how much support he really has and how much of a threat to Putin he really is. Thank you, Aaron. Thank you, John. This question is from Tad Daly. He wants to address Russiagate the optics of Trump meeting with Putin and then telling his translator to destroy the notes. So he thinks that that needs to be addressed. He's still concerned that Trump was in cahoots with Putin or what was going on? What do you think? Well, look, I don't know the exact story of what Trump said in terms of destroying notes. What I do know is that from Trump's point of view, he was faced with constant leaks from inside his own administration, from people who I think wanted to undermine any kind of diplomacy with Russia because they were far right hawks. That's who he appointed around him. And on top of the fact that his entire presidency was engulfed with a series of intelligence community leaks falsely planting this story in the public that him and his campaign were Russian agents. I mean, I don't have to go through the story, but just think it back, try to remember how many countless times we heard about bombshells, collusion bombshells, and how many of them turned out to be total duds. And in fact, frauds. I mean, I covered this very closely and there were many times when stories were planted that were just completely fake. Like early on in Trump's presidency, actually four years ago this month, you can look it up. There's a New York Times story that said Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials. And the source for that story in the times was a bunch of US intelligence sources. And later on, Jim Comey even came on and said that the story was not true. And we've never heard anything about it since. So there's no factual basis for it, at least to come out. So it was obvious from the start that there were certain people inside the national security state who had an interest in leaking false stories about Trump and Russia. Now, on the surface it did sort of undermine Trump, but I don't think the people in the national security state did this because they don't like Trump's racism or xenophobia or because he's such a monster as a person. I think they wanted to criminalize diplomacy with Russia. And I think they also wanted to basically stigmatize and anything to do with Russia and actually encourage hawkish relations with Russia. I think that was their goal. So all these leaks about Trump and Russia, I would try to view from a skeptical lens and think about what was there possibly an interest behind it. And look, in the case of presidents meeting alone, there was a time when two US and Soviet leaders met alone that was Reagan and Gorbachev and that led to the INF Treaty. So sometimes these private meetings can lead to diplomacy, which is good for the world. And ironically, it was of course, Donald Trump who tore up the INF Treaty, which was a major arms control agreement. So I'm worried of anything that is used to advance the Russia-Gate narrative of a conspiracy and has the consequences, has the consequence of undermining diplomacy. Thank you, Aaron. John, did you wanna weigh in on this question? Sure. I mean, there's no question that Trump had a relationship with Putin, had relationship with Russian business interests and was cooperating with a variety of different, Russian contacts for a variety of different reasons, both during the campaign and as president. If you wanna read about the business dealings, you can read Craig Unger's book on the Russian laundromat. If you wanna go some more speculative direction about whether Trump was cultivated or not, you can read his book, Compromat. I don't know if I'd go so far to say that he was cultivated as a person of interest, so to speak. I think that Trump actually, he liked Putin. He liked him as a person. He loved the power that Putin had and there was an ideological affiliation as well. I mean, Putin is a right-wing nationalist and Trump is a right-wing nationalist. It's no surprise that they got along. Whether Russia had anything over Trump, you know, the dossier, pictures, who knows? I doubt it. They probably would have come to light if they existed by now, but there's no question that there was an economic interest involved, especially at a time when Trump was having difficulty getting money from traditional sources. He could get money from the Russians, whether it was private sources or not-so-private sources.  I'd rather just focus on specific relationships and specific facts. And we obviously don't have time to go into those, but those are worth looking into, not in order to have a weapon to beat Russia over the head with. I'm more interested in the pattern of right-wing, especially far-right-wing connections between the far-right here in the United States and the far-right in Russia. And that's extraordinarily disturbing because the far-right here in the United States looks to Russia as one of the last white places on Earth where they have a real potential to grow their popularity. And that is something we should definitely be paying attention to. Thank you. Medea wanted to introduce a third voice at this point. And then I think around 6.00, 6.05, we'll probably wrap it up and move into our action-oriented section. Medea? Yeah, I'm enjoying the conversation and also the chats. And I think there's a nice, healthy disagreement here on a number of issues about Putin. Jackie Kabasso, I wondered if you could unmute yourself because you've been writing a number of things in the chat and you're such an expert on these nuclear issues. So if you wanted to make a comment or pose an issue about strategy, first use, whatever. Sure, thank you. I appreciate that very much. Talking about no first use is gaining popularity now, but I think we need to think about what it means a lot more critically if it's gonna mean anything. Biden is on record saying what is in the Obama nuclear posture review, which is that he favors the creation at working to create the conditions that would make it possible to have a sole use policy in which nuclear weapons use would only be restricted to a response to a nuclear attack on the United States. In terms of the legislation that's been introduced, it's not clear in the Warren and Smith legislation that no first use would really mean the option of a second use only after a confirmed nuclear detonation on US soil. Now, is that what we really want? I mean, that's a whole other set of issues to think about. But if no first use is simply a declaratory policy, it will not mean anything. It will not be credible or believable to our potential adversaries and it would require some kind of force restructuring that would be verifiable. That would also be true of taking nuclear weapons off here, trigger alert. And I found just today it's extremely relevant quotes from the head of the US strategic command, Admiral Charles Richard in an article in the Naval Journal. He says, acting in a responsible manner is incumbent upon any great power, fine. For China, we must pay attention to the People's Republic of China's actions more than its stated policies. While the People's Republic of China has maintained a no first use policy since the 1960s, contending it will never have a nuclear weapon first, its buildup of advanced capabilities should give us pause. This policy could change in the blink of an eye. Beijing is pursuing capabilities and operating in a manner inconsistent with a minimum deterrent strategy, giving it a full range of options, including limited use and a first strike capability. So if that's what the head of strategic command is gonna say about China with its much, much smaller and more limited capability, what's China gonna say if the US declares a no first use policy? So I think we need to be aware that what we're asking for are really huge changes to the force structure, the deployed force structure and the actual guts of US nuclear weapons policy. And I just wanna point that out because too many times in the past we've been taken in by things, you know? And we've gotta learn from our experience. And finally, the third point I made was that modernization did not begin under Obama, it began under Clinton in the first of one of these failed deals trying to get the Senate to ratify the comprehensive test ban treaty, which they did not. He put in place this massive nuclear weapons modernization program. Obama repeated that exact dynamic with the new START treaty, give it adding even more money to it. So there we are. Thank you. I think all of this has been instructive and I urge you, those of you who spoke to put your contact information, John and Erin, Jackie in the chat, as I'm sure people still have questions they may wanna ask you. And at this point, I'd like to really thank our guests. Appreciate the time you took to be with us and your insights. It's so relevant and so important in terms of world peace and climate, addressing the climate crisis, the Iran deal, as you mentioned, arms control. At this point, I'd like to move into the action-oriented section of our Zoom meeting. And Mary, if you wouldn't mind, Mary, thank you, Mary Miller. She's with Code Pink. She's navigating the tech for us. If you wouldn't mind- Marcy? Yes. I'd unmute ourselves and thank the guests so they can go on while we do the action part, but I think it would be wonderful if we took a minute to unmute and say thank you for your time, your wisdom, and how great it was to have you on with us. So- Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Very helpful. Yeah. All right, so now Mary's gonna post in the chat our action alert. And as Medea mentioned, there was some discussion about this with Alice Slater, who's deeply involved in the issue of denuclearization. And that was what should our ask be? And we all agreed our ask should be that we reject the modernization. We don't need more nuclear weapons to destroy the earth. We wanna take these weapons off hair trigger alert because that's way to be longer than 10 minutes. And we saw what happened in Hawaii with a false alarm. And it's just so frightening to think about. And then Alice, I don't know if you wanna give us any background on this nuclear treaty asking that we sign onto the prohibition of nuclear weapons. Well, I think you all know that we passed this treaty entered into force last week, I think, with the 122 nations voted for it. 80 something signed, 51 ratified. And it says nuclear weapons are prohibited, they're banned, you can't use them, you can't make them, you can't threaten to use them, you can't share them. And we've never had that before. So of course the nuclear weapons states didn't sign it, but it's gonna make it there stigmatizing the weapons. And even in the countries where the US keeps nuclear weapons like in the NATO 5, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Turkey and Italy, there's tremendous grassroots activity to get them out of the NATO countries. So we think we should put it up there and ask President Biden to sign this because the treaty itself allows nuclear weapons states to sign and then put out a plan for how they will disarm. So we think that we should put it out in America. There's parliamentary pledges asking for its city's resolution, state resolutions. And so we asked that Biden sign it and then call on the other nuclear weapons states to negotiate with us to verify time ban nuclear disarmament. Thank you so much, Alice, for your wisdom and your insights on this. All right, so we have the email or the site where you can go to and send an email to Biden and we have some texts, feel free to use this text. We're writing in your own voice, corporate what Alice said. And let's all do this right now. We have 122 people. I think it'd be great if they got 122 emails from us asking for these three things. All right. Marcy, if we put it again in the chat, they can cut and paste it more easily. Okay, let's do that. Let's put it in the chat. Is that okay, Mary? Yes, I am putting it in the chat. I'll still leave it up because I feel like it's helpful to have if you want to read off the script, but I will also put it in the chat and I will send you all a link so that you can access it later. Okay, yeah. We won't be calling anyone. I don't think the comment line is working. So basically we just want to send an email. Okay. So how does this? All right. We need the link again for sending the email. You go, it's this www.whitehouse.gov backslash contact. Yeah, and Mary, if you can post the entire... Post the link. The link and the entire action alert, that would be helpful. I know. What about the concept of Senate approval? Well... The Senate has to ratify its treaty, but that's first the president has to sign it, then that's the next thing that goes to the Senate. Well, I mean, taking weapons off hair trigger alert, the Senate does not have to approve that and reject nuclear modernization. I don't believe the Senate has to prove that either, right? The proof of the funding. The funding, I don't know if they can vote the budget that the president doesn't want to spend. If the president says, I don't want it. I don't know that my, that's a good question to think about. But, no, but I mean, the president has to set the tone and say that money on modernization, you know. Yeah. They're doing a new nuclear posture review. I mean, let's put it in their new review, you know, we're gonna have a moratorium on new weapons development. Let's bring back moratoriums. Some of you asked the subject line of the email, are we going consistent? It's better not to be consistent to, yeah, switch it up just like Mary said. So you could just put nuclear weapons, you could put, you know. I don't even see a subject line on mine. Where are we looking in the chat? If you go to, if you Google White House, contact the White House or, yeah, it'll take you to whitehouse.gov slash contact slash, and I don't see a subject line. It says, so yes, the message, Al Middy saying you tried to call, it's not working right now. Yeah, don't just send an email. We'll have to send the email. And it would be good to contact your own senators. Iran nuclear deal, you can also put that in that you want the administration to go back immediately into the Iran nuclear deal. I mean, the more you personalize it, the better. How much do we say nuclear modernization would cost? A trillion dollars over 30 years, I think. One point too, although there's been new calculations from William Hartung that says two trillion, but we also have from today's hearing that 45 billion was spent in this year alone. Okay. Well, last year, 2020. And thank you, as those who finish writing are saying thank you and leaving, thank you for being with us. Yes. And Jackie Cabasso is putting some of her own suggestions in there, which somebody might want to take and use as your text. I think it's important to know that the Biden administration has been opposed to the UN treaty ban. So what's it called? The UN prohibition. The treaty. The treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. Okay. Thank you. And they use the four capital letters T, P and W as. And those of you while you're in the chat and if you've done the action, if you want to put in the chat any recommendations for issues you'd like us to take up on future Tuesdays, please feel free to do that. And since we're not making calls, if anybody wants to talk, you should go ahead and do that. Can you put up the message on the main screen again? It's, I'm having difficulty trying to copy and paste out of the chat. Okay, yeah. And Alice, what are the three things you want us to say about, because I can't see the message right now about the treaty? Just that he should sign it. Yeah. And then exercise the power of US leadership to invite other nuclear weapons states to join with us and begin negotiations for a town-bound framework with verified inspections for the total abolition of nuclear weapons. And then the other thing is take a more patriotic alert and stop the modernization. We don't need any more than. Just one more matter. So Jackie is clarifying, I don't know if the Biden administration has expressed opposition to the treaty, but the Obama administration strongly did so as did the Trump administration. So I think, unless anybody has specific information, we want to ask them to speak out on it. The United States has opposed it in the past. I don't know where Biden- They oppose it all along, all the nuclear weapons states, nuclear umbrella states oppose it. So we know we have- The enforced day for the TPNW was last Friday. All the signatories. The US is not a signatory. No, but anybody can sign now and ratify, but when we got the 50 countries last week, it entered into force. It became a rule. Correct, I think it's like, there's 86 countries that are signatories now. But more can keep signing, you know. That's how countries have ratified. And so it became international law on the 22nd. Right, yep. Yeah, it was Friday the 22nd, yeah. We just don't have a statement from the Biden administration about it. So that would be good to push them to say something about it. Yeah, but I think we don't, I don't want a statement. I want to urge them to sign it, because that's what we're doing tonight. Veterans for Peace has sent something. Veterans for Peace has sent something. The bill's our tongue number of two trillion is, you know, a hundred billion less than what the president wants for the COVID relief bill right now. Right, right. So all he has to do is stop modernizing nuclear weapons and he can fund all he wants with the COVID relief. That's great, Alan. I love that. Yep. And 45 billion this year on the nuclear civilization? Yes. Yep. In 2020. Yeah. Take the screen down so we can finish out writing. Yes, if my letter disappeared when you put your screen up. John has a question in there if Alice or somebody knows the answer. Let's see. Any idea? Oh, that was a Trump plan. I don't know whether, but they said they're going to review the nuclear posture review this. There are possibilities for really changing the shape of the arsenal. Some people are talking about not having the land based part of it. So I don't know what Biden's going to come up with. And that's the same thing with the tactical nukes. That was a Trump idea. So it's open. It's an open question. And of course there's no such thing as a small nuke. I mean, these small nukes have half the power of the Hiroshima bomb, which killed 180,000 people. So when they're talking about smaller, more usable nukes, they're catastrophic. There is no such thing. That's like, you know, mind speak. Alice, I think you were watching the hearing today. Did you hear when one of the senators said that we're the only nuclear country that doesn't have the ability to build a new nuclear weapon? Yeah, what was that about? Hi, hey, Medea, you are allowing people to, or inviting people to say hello. This is Rachel Brunke. I'd like to say something about the Cold War Truth Commission. Yeah, so hi, Marcy. So yeah, I put it in the chat. We're calling it the Cold War Truth Commission. It's going to be our second. Actually, three years ago, Marcy wrote some words for it that we read out. And the main idea, I mean, being on this call, thank you all so much for doing all the work around this. But you know, the kind of basis for me of this is why are we at war in any way against Russia? And it's been at least, you know, it's been 100 years. And so what we're doing is we're putting the actual, the whole Cold War and calling it the US Cold War on trial and really calling out that we feel that it's been a Trojan horse to allow the religion, the right wing and religious zealots in this country take us, bring us to where we are today. So it's an event that's in the chat. It's a Facebook group for now, Cold War Truth Commission. You can look up on the hashtagging or whatever. And we're gonna have an event on March 21st, a Zoom event. So if you join that group or look for it, you'll find out more information. And we're looking for anyone to come on and provide testimony how your life was affected by the crushing of the left, by being red-baited and lied about and the left being crushed for all these decades, bringing us to where we are today. So thanks. Thank you, Rachel, for all that you do for world peace. That's fabulous, you know, I've been asking about how do we set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for the US-Russian relationship? And I've been writing about it. Even Putin said in the, there was a 75th anniversary of the end of World War II in May, where they lost 27 million Russians to the Nazi onslaught.  And the Eastern Europeans, NATO now are keeping them out of the memorial, the 75th memorial, they didn't invite Russia. And he wrote this speech to his nation saying, his feelings were hurt, that we need a Truth Commission, that we have to look at the real record of what went on in Europe during the war and after the war. I mean, I think we should all be calling for that. Then please join our humble group with this and give that testimony, it's unconscionable. And I work with young people, I'm a high school teacher and, you know, I can only say so much to them, but if they only knew, they'd riot in the streets because it's huge. Right, I think that's great. I think it's great, I love that you're doing that. Thank you. Yeah, I would like to, oh, excuse me. Yeah. No, just to say one thing about that is that Oliver Stone heard about it a few years ago and he said it was ideologically right on. So something I wanted to bring up on this call today is if people don't know about the Putin interviews, that was such a great book and film, his interviews with Putin, it was very interesting. And I think he's quoting, I think he's quoting. I wanna give Desmond an opportunity to talk. He's from Delaware, I think he grew up in the same town as Joe Biden, so Desmond. Oh, thanks. Well, I was just gonna suggest, well, I did mention in the chat earlier that I heard that Biden is now gonna double down the sanctions on Venezuela and he's supporting the same guy, Trump supporter, his president, I forget his name, but that's just his secretary of state, just announced this, this was pretty disconcerting. But on the Cold War, I would like to suggest one of Nome Chomsky's recent books was, I think it's Who Rules the World? He talks about the Cold War and there was some book just released recently that discusses all the people that were killed and torture murdered in Latin America by the U.S. as part of the Cold War and he discusses it in that book. So I would, I wanted just to recommend that to people if you hadn't seen that. It's really, and also the recent book that I read was The Plot to Escape the Russia and he talks about how we killed apparently like a million people in North Korea, firebombing the cities and then we went into Vietnam and killed one to two million people and Russia has never done anything approaching this. So I think those are some possible references that you might consider looking into, but I think it's great what you're doing with the Cold War, thanks. Thank you. Thank you, Diz. Okay. Oh, this is Robert from Spokane, another references Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick's book, The Untold History of the United States. They cover that beginning pretty good where they slipped Harry Truman in as vice president in the Chicago Democratic primary in 44 because Wallace should have been president, but and he just kept, he just kept on, they kept on going like the GM, one of the CEOs of the cabinet was from GM, and as the country go, what was good for GM was good for the country and they just kept the Cold War going. They had Barney Baruch get on the soapbox, they moved the UN from San Francisco to New York City and Barney Baruch got on the soapbox and mentioned the word Cold War for the first time and off they went. Well, we were looking to show that clip at the truth commission, definitely, but we again, welcome your testimony. Yeah, and actually on Netflix, there's a series of documentaries by Stone about that, something like The Little Known History of the US. It goes into all that stuff, the start of the Cold War, it was fascinating. So that's a good, you haven't seen that. Thank you. Cool. All right, so next week, we are going to be hosting Dr. Malia Abdullah. She was one of the founding members of Black Lives Matter. We're gonna talk about militarization at home. After that, we expect to host representatives, Mark Pokan and Barbara Lee on their house, defense spending reduction caucus, and we have some great Tuesday evenings coming up on Cuba, on Chile, excuse me, Cuba and Venezuela and on Israel, Palestine. So thank you all so much for being with us throughout the evening tonight and for writing to Biden. I just think our voices matter tremendously because we have already seen some progress. We've already seen results and we just have to keep pushing, right? Madia, anything else you wanna say? Thank you, Marcy, for bringing us together. Thank you, Mary, for all the help and thank you all for staying with us. The action part is so important. And as Marcy said, we feel like we are having some influence, so it's exciting. And we look forward to seeing you next Tuesday and the Tuesday after that and the one after that. Thank you so much. Thank you. Oh, thank you. I wanna say goodbye to each other. Thank you, thank you. Bye. You can save the chat. Bye. Thank you. Bye bye. Thank you. Bye bye. When we organize, we win. Well, bye bye. Bye bye. Bye, thank you. Take care.


Lucid Stage will be presenting three original full-length plays about Lala, an African-American girl in 1890s Kansas. This one woman show follows Lala on her journey toward enlightenment. Brian Knoblock talked with writer, performer, Rivera Sun Cook about this tour de force performance. Rivera, you're doing a one woman show coming up at Lucid Stage at the end of the month. Tell me a little bit about it. It's a lot of characters and they're all you. It's true. I shape shift between 30 different characters of all ages, genders and ethnicities going from old women to the old black women to little girls to 14-year-old boys. They're kind of my favorite. What's the story? The story is about an African-American girl called Lala who is growing up in 1890s Kansas in an all-black town. And there's actually three separate stories because it's a trilogy. The first story, Lala is 10 years old and a Chinese man blows in on the wind. And the town has to deal with the fact that they've never seen a Chinese man before. In the second play, The Education of Lala Girls, she is 14 and fallen in love the first time. That's a real heartwarming play. In the third play, The Emancipation of Lala, she's 18 and she's embarking on a huge epic spiritual quest across 1890s America with train robbers and parades that she jumps into and all sorts of crazy adventures. So you are none of those kind of people and in none of those locations, where does that story come from? The story comes from a listening for the stories that need to be told right now in our country. Stories that bring people together, that bring cultures and communities together, that unite them and setting it in 1890s gives us a way of looking at ourselves and the issues that we are dealing with now through a lens that lets us take it in a little bit. You've got, you have 30 characters here. Did you, did you start out to write 30 characters and did you start out saying that you were going to perform with them all yourself? I sort of did. I wanted to make a show to perform in my living room because I was a little tired of, you know, doing interviews and getting all the stage production stuff ready to go. But when I did the show in my living room as all the characters, because I also didn't want to coordinate performer schedules, I found that everyone was actually begging me to get them on the road, which was a beautiful experience to start small and have it grow organically by popular demand and now we're touring all over the nation with these shows. Again, because people ask us to go places. Is it important for everybody to see all three plays that you're playing them in several series at the end of the month? Can they watch one individually or I know they should watch all three, but can you watch one? They can watch just one. They can also catch them in other places of the state like L.A. Arts and Auburn Lewiston and over at Skudik Arts in Winter Harbor. They can also see them out of order. Each play stands alone as a totally satisfying experience. And sometimes when I'm talking with the audiences after the show, they argue with each other about what is the best way to see them. And there's a lot of different opinions. When you're performing it, are these 30 distinct characters for you in your head and in your mind or is it one sort of continuum or are they 30 distinct people? They are 30 very distinct people like each and every one of us. We can be put into statistics. We can be people that make generalizations about us, but every one of us is an individual. And for me, every one of my characters, it's like if I got to step into you and be you for a moment.  Is it all left to the imagination of the audience? It's all a picture that's completely painted in the imagination of the audience. I use two boxes, my body and my voice to do the switching. It's pretty phenomenal. Is it a bit scary going out there the first time to do it? No, I was so excited and ready to go. I was just like, come on, people, get in the theater. You're not going to believe what you're going to see. We call what we do in our work transformational theater because we're seeing people come into the theater one way and go out different and keep on changing. These are stories that stay with you over time. And you can mole on them, reflect on them, ruminate on them. So end of the month, what are the dates? We're going to start with the imagination of Lala Child on May 30th. And then we do the education on May 31st. And then we do the education again on the 1st of June, the emancipation of Lala on the 2nd of June, and then a matinee of the imagination just to bookend the series on the 3rd of June. All at Lucid Stage here in Portland. All at Lucid Stage. Great, well, thanks for joining us. Thank you so much, Brian. This is wonderful.


As the Deputy Convener, and having served on the Public Petitions Committee for the whole period that this petition has been live, I've been struck by the cross-party support that's been shown. The committee members are pleased to publish this report, particularly given the recent announcement in England of a temporary ban and the subsequent announcement in Northern Ireland. The committee expects a positive response from the Scottish Government, particularly given we're awaiting the review of the review from Professor Alison Britton, which will hopefully shed some more light on this extremely upsetting saga.


Okay. Ready. We need your help. 26 countries are married in conflict and dozens more are recovering from violence and upheaval. But there's no shortage of incredible women who are building peace. Help us showcase a woman working in a country affected by conflict or crisis. A woman who is committed to a more peaceful future by peaceful means. A woman who is leading by example.  Visit usip.org slash womenbuildingpeace to nominate an extraordinary woman.


What's going on guys? It's your boy DPJ here today with another destiny video and today I'm going to be opening eight Eight crucible packages, which I'll say for the past three weeks But before we get into the video if you guys do enjoy it dropping a like is much much appreciated Let's aim for 4,000 likes that'd be absolutely epic. Okay, so Um, I basically need my homestead of 400 my titan and warlock can both get to a 3 99 but I need armor I need helmet and legs So hopefully if I don't get a decent weapon from these I will get exotic armors Which will which can be infused to my second and third characters. Let's go with this one taking control I have saved these for the past three weeks. Oh, I've got a cryptic dragon Now this can be good, but it can be pretty damn bad Oh, okay. So we've got Let's look at scopes. Oh, okay. So we've got my favorite scope for the scouts. We've got the red dot OIS We've got zen moments. We've got armor piercing runs injection mode and rifle bow with Reactive reload that could be actually quite a damn beast I'm gonna keep all of that. Uh, try it out Uh, because you never know. You just never know Um, let's get on to the other package Okay, so Oh my life Steal packing our cool z11 We've got tracking on it. I saw that Um Army of one perfect balance single point sling and javelin and we also have tracking That's going to be used for infusion straight up Straight up going to be used for infusion. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to quickly switch to my titan Um getting prepared to open these packages. I've got three of my titan and three of my warlock So I'll catch you guys back in a second. Okay, so I'm on my titan and as you can see it's the legs that let me down I just don't have a spare set of 400 legs on any character Um, and that's the only thing I need on my titan. I've got three chances With three packages. Let's get straight us. Let's open the first one back to basics Now this is the clash one that came three weeks back um 20 strange coins.  Okay next up Oh, you are kidding me game.    Yes, it is indeed. So what I'm going to do is now I'm going to switch over to my warlock And look at my beast of a lethal novice.   Um, let me just quickly infuse that helmet. I wouldn't infuse it into this thing. Why not? Um Now all I need now on My warlock is boots as well same as what I need on my titan, which is gonna be pretty hard I've got three to open Do you guys think I'll get two pieces of leg armor? I don't think I will Uh 77 wizard Now these can be pretty decent even though I'm useless with them or my life Oh my I just got terrible rng Enhanced battery hand-laid stock Accelerated cruise is okay, but good idea and spray and play. That's just shocking Really shocking. That's gonna be useful in fusion.   Oh, you are kidding a 399 really We have got in select strength on that one though Um, so yeah, I might just keep that get rid of the old one Instead of pure strength actually know what I don't know yet I'll revise my class setups and see what I need for certain classes.  At least I've got the knife. What's to do on all three characters. Hopefully hopefully hopefully that will give me And leg armor is actually there is here as well So I can buy some three coins and go on some exotic and hopefully get some legs Uh, because that's all I was getting before This dlc came out so yes But guys that is it for a package or bounty opening video. Hope you guys enjoyed it If you did smash that like button. I do appreciate that support as always. Thanks for stopping by and I'll catch you on that next one


Hi, I'm Jeffrey de Smit. I'm going to show you how to optimize vaccination appointment scheduling with our open source AI software. This will include dealing with challenges such as injecting the second dose in time, dealing with age restrictions, respecting vaccination center capacity and of course minimizing the travel distance for the people who need to get vaccinated. This is what we need to create a vaccinations schedule. In this case we're signing Zara to get a vaccination on Monday the 8th of February at 9 o'clock. Otto gets one at 9.30, Noah gets one at 10 o'clock and so forth. As you can see we're scheduling not just Mondays but also Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. In this case the planning window is only five days. We can inject in three different vaccination centers and we have five lines in there in total. The first vaccination center alpha has three lines, line 0, 1 and 2. The beta vaccination center just has one line and the gamma center also just has one line. That means we can actually inject five people in parallel as we are doing here. You can see that Ray is getting his vaccination at the same time as Zara do and these three other people. We have three vaccination types up to now and of course more are coming. Right now we have the Pfizer, the Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines being injected. We want to make sure that people live close by their vaccination center. Here the circles are where the people live and you can see the three big vaccination centers here. The top right one is a big one and the other two are smaller. The top right one has three lines while the other two just have one line. You can see that also means that the top right one gets far more people assigned to it. This has a side effect that people who live over here are actually technically closer to the top bottom vaccination center. We actually want to get them injected into the big one because that's more efficient for everybody. There might also be far more people to inject than we have doses of these vaccines. We might actually have some people who are not assigned to an appointment. Of course we want to make sure these are the young people because we want to prioritize the elderly first. What are our goals? Our main goal is of course to end this pandemic as quickly as possible and to reopen the pubs. How do we do that? We do that by maximizing the vaccination throughput. That means we don't want to waste vaccines. If we open a Pfizer bottle that contains six doses, we have four hours to inject those six doses into people. We want to cluster, especially for the Pfizer case, the vaccinations together such that we don't waste vaccines. We want to keep in mind the vaccination center capacity, how many people we can vaccinate at the same time, how many dosages of each vaccine they have available at a particular date based on their dosages which are coming in and so forth. We want to take into account the fact that for most vaccines people need a second shot. That second shot needs to be the same vaccine. If we injected somebody with Pfizer the first time, the second shot needs to be Pfizer again. We cannot switch vaccine types there. We want to do that particular days later. For example, in the Pfizer vaccine that's 21 days later, in the Moderna vaccine that's 28 days later, that's the ideal time to actually deliver that second shot. We want to prioritize the elderly and priority groups. This might differ from country to country or from region to region. Whatever the case, whatever the government decides to do there, we want to make sure we respect those rules. We want to minimize the driving distance for all of the people to get to those vaccination centers. There's basically two techniques to do this. One is the ticketmaster approach and the other is the central allocation approach. In the ticketmaster approach, the user goes to an application and picks her favorite or his favorite appointment. In the central allocation approach, we give them an appointment with our scheduler. The ticketmaster approach, even though it seems quite user-friendly, has a few major challenges. One is there's a high concurrency on a few spots. Literally thousands of people who want maybe a handful of spots on that Monday morning shot to get that shot as quickly as possible. While they're looking at the spot, you need to log the spot. Because you don't want to get them to go through a wizard and in the end they don't actually get their spot because it's already booked by somebody else. So it's far more difficult than selling concert tickets because every spot is unique and the ratio of people who want the spot versus the number of spots available is far more detrimental. The second problem there is it's fair to use the first out approach because people might not have access to the website at the time that the website goes open, you can start reserving spots. In general, it's far from optimal too based on traveling distance as potentially also the second shots injections as well as the not-to-waste vaccines. So in this video I'm actually going to focus more on the central allocation approach. We have some challenges there of course too. It might be an inconvenient time, but we can actually solve that by dealing with rejections and calculations. If an appointment is rejected or canceled, we open it up again and we just reschedule it the next day before. And this is of course before a couple of days or a couple of weeks before we actually send out the schedule. And furthermore there's constraint optimization intelligence there. Let's take a look at the implementation. So for this implementation I've of course used our opto planner which is an open source AI constraint solver used across the globe for all kinds of planning problems such as the vehicle routing problem, employee rostering, maintenance scheduling, task assignment, school timetabling, timetabling and many more. I'm using this in combination with the Quarkus stack which is an open source Java stack or Kotlin stack to open for example rest interfaces and connect databases or all kinds of reactive streams and so forth. And with that I've built this application, the Quarkus opto planner vaccination schedule quick start. And let's take a look what it does. So here I have all of the injections on the sign still you can see. So we're going to assign these to these people which are not assigned to any of the injections yet. And when I click the solve button these will get assigned. Now before I do that I want you to notice that some of the constraints are already automatically implemented. So for example I'm making sure that we schedule nothing but Pfizer injections in this second line here. So that means that by pulling these by clustering these together we don't waste any Pfizer injections there. Similarly I'm taking into account the fact based upon how many dosage of each vaccine they have available at these vaccination centers. So for example on Tuesday I'm not scheduling any AstraZeneca injections because you don't have enough dosages but I am scheduling two lines of Moderna because they have enough dosages for that. That's pretty straightforward. You simply look at what's available in Stockholm or it's going to be available in Stockholm that particular day and that's what you create injection spots for. As you see we don't have any people assigned to these yet. Now for now I've just enabled one constraint and that's to make sure that each person gets assigned to exactly one injection. This is a five-day planning schedule so there's no need to inject one person twice in this planning window. It's too short for that. When I click the solve button which I do right now I see that Optiplanar starts scheduling and starts assigning these people into these shots. Now like I've said I've just enabled only one of the constraints. You can see a couple of issues here already. The first one being that for example here Sue gets her second shot but her first shot was Moderna. Now the second shot is actually Pfizer as you can see so that's a really bad idea. Let's take a look at how we can actually fix that. What we're going to do is we're going to go through the constraints which I've written here in Java. Again you can also write them in Kotlin or in other languages that run into the GVM. I'm going to here enable the second shot invalid vaccine constraint which is just making sure that the second shot is the same as the first shot. We actually have a filter in case. It's not the case. Let's take a look here. Let's refresh this. Here we go. We can see all of them are on the signs. We solve this and this time we actually get a schedule where let's take a look here. We don't have anybody who's like Sue who actually gets the shot of the same one as she was the first time. Here I think this was Sue, her second shot. She had her first shot was Moderna, her second shot is also Moderna. There's no errors popping up here. One thing we do notice is that in many cases it might be too soon. Like in here in her case it's three days too soon. Here it's two days too early. Sometimes it might be a few days too late like this one, one day too late and so forth. What are we going to do is we're going to go back to our constraints and we're going to first of all make sure that the second shots are... Well, let's first put them on the ideal date. Make sure they're on the ideal date. We do this. At the same time let's also make sure that the second shots are assigned. As I've said earlier, if you actually look at the signed here, we might actually have second shots which are not assigned. These get a priority. It's even more a higher priority than actually age in most cases because we need to close down those people who have had their first shot. If in this planning window they need to get their second shot, let's make sure that happens. So I'm going to enable this constraint too. So the second shots must be assigned and we want to aim them at the ideal date. So when we do a refresh and we start solving this, what we'll see now is that, again, each person is just assigned to one injection as before, but also on top of that we have... Let me look at the end assigned. We don't see anybody with a second shot anymore. So all the second shutters are actually assigned to an injection. We get prioritized over the first shutters, basically. And we also get far more of them being on the ideal date. So most of these second shots, as you can see, are on the ideal. We still have a couple of cases where we can't actually do that. And you see if we give opt-in a bit more time, it's finding better and better schedules until we stop solving to not do that. In this case we still have 72 days where it's actually not the case that we deviate from the ideal date, but in most of the cases we can actually do that. Why is that? Well, because if the ideal date for, let's say in AstraZeneca, what would be on Tuesday, there is no way we can get that second shot happening on Tuesday because we simply don't have any inject... We don't plan to do any injections of AstraZeneca on this date, right? So there might be circumstances why you cannot do this. Okay, let's go back to our constraints and let's add one more. Yeah, if you look at the assigned people, we can see some elderly people still here, the 78 years old, 60 years old. While at the same time we have in our schedule, we have people of much younger ages here, 23 being assigned. It's not a good thing. Or that's not something we want. So let's enable this constraint. Make sure that all the older people are assigned. Okay, and of course keep this one in there. So when we do refresh, everything is assigned. We start solving again. We start from scratch again. And this time, OPTIPAN will take care that he assigns the elderly people first. You can see it's still working through it. This is the medium constraint. But if we look through the unassigned now, what you will see is these are typically younger people. We don't see anybody anymore here above the age of 40 or something like that. And that's simply because he's making sure that these people are still assigned. You can still see some exceptions. If you give him more time to solve, he will fix this too. So we might actually still have a moment ago, I saw a 23 year old in there. But you'll see that those will actually go away as he solves longer. Why do we still have them? Well, here, this, let's solve, stop it. Actually, this is normal. The 23 year old should be in here because it's his second shot. You won't see any young people with their first shot in here. Like go again 23, but this is his second shot. So he needs to be in there. Okay, what else do you want to do? Well, if we look at the map, we see that we're basically telling people to go from the other side of the city all the way to the center. People coming from this location going all the way to that center. That's not ideal. So we won't actually minimize the travel distance. So if we actually go to this over here and we minimize the distance cost and we add that too. We can go again. We can start solving again. And we'll see that our plan starts to get into account too. So we're taking into account that the second shots are the ideal date, are the correct vaccine and the second shots are definitely assigned. The elderly people are assigned before the younger people. And now, of course, let's take a look at the map. So if you look at the map now, we can see it's already much better. We still have a couple of exceptions. Like, oh, look, and if we give up the plan on more time, you're actually working away these. Now, this is an interesting challenge because if you say that older people need to be assigned before younger people, regardless of the distance of the vaccination centers, you might get some weird effects. Think about it. If this area is full of elderly people and you might actually start pushing them towards this vaccination center while all of the maybe just 10 years younger people over here do not get scheduled at all. So sometimes you want to do trade-offs. And with Optopheny, you can do that. You can weight this. You can say, for example, I want to treat the elderly people first, let's say one or two years, but I want to also weight that against the distance. So if the distance is more than, say, 10 kilometers, 10 miles, more than 100 kilometers, 100 miles, then I don't want, at that age difference, I want to ignore that, right? It's not a bad thing anymore. So we can add constraints like that if need be. OK. And yes, as stated before, you can clearly see that based upon the capacity of the vaccination centers, we will be sending people to not necessarily their closest location, but to the one that's best for the entire population. Like these people over here, they're being sent to that center. But in general, this will actually reduce the overall traffic time for everybody. Because if these people actually scheduled their appointments first and they all pick this lower left vaccination center, then people who actually live closer and then these people come into the system in the first-in-first-out system and they start scheduling, they'll have to go to the other vaccination center because this one is full. So we create a lot more traffic and a lot more, a lot less, not so good of a schedule as it is right now. OK. So thank you for listening. And if you want more information on OptiPlaner, please go to www.optiplanner.org.


Well it's been a long journey since I started football and prior to the Wanderers I was a black trans city and I had a decent season with them playing a lot of first road games and I got identified by Trevor Morgan to come to have a trial and it was a big deal for me to finally get recognised as a fine early club. My game changed dramatically from the first season I played in the youth league with under Trevor and I learned a lot of things quickly in that one year playing against pro's in the youth league as well when they dropped down and it definitely sprung me a lot into becoming a professional football. I think all our youth team boys and also the young first graders from this last past season I think we've all gone along quite well and I think our training we all push each other because we all want to be first team players and I think it helped us all that we had each other to compete with, had each other to work together when things weren't going well so without them I don't think I would be here today. For me the first team contract was definitely a dream come true for me and I'm sure it is for all young players that's crying to be a professional. For me personally the goals are to get as many games as I can to get on the pitch and to show why I've got the first team contract. It's definitely a big opportunity for me and I'm definitely entitled to take it. Blacktown City product Shane Dukunya one of the few players to play professionally with an Indian heritage. I was born in Mumbai, India and I came to Australia when I was four years old in 2000. The heritage has definitely played a big part in who I am growing up as an Indian and Australian in Australia so it's something I'm very proud of and something I'll always keep close to my heart. Being part of Western Sydney is something that reinforces for me the pride of playing for a club that is such a multicultural club. As a player in a professional game hearing that buzz from the crowd it really gets you pumped to be honest it's a big difference in playing just your local park game or even a youth league game versus a professional game with the wonders especially the fans of this club are unbelievable their support no matter where we are on the table no matter how well we're playing they're always there but when I found out that I was on starting that game it was almost a surprise but I was at the same time I was ready. Starting debut in the Hyundai A-League I'm sure he's got plenty of family and friends in the grandstands here. That game was also an interesting one because it got delayed for about two hours because of the hail so that didn't build the tension even more and hearing going out on the pitch, sharing the roar of the crowd the Anzac Day made it all the more special hearing the bugle call and when we stepped on the field it was I was really excited.