You know we're going to be looking at 1 Peter chapter 5. We're going to look at verses 8 through 14 and as mentioned a moment ago I Wanted to divide this into two studies, which I'm unable to do For the reasons already mentioned so we're going to be taking verse 8 to the conclusion And I obviously will be spending more time in the introduction and at the part of verses 8 and 9 Though I will touch on and attempt to bring some clarity to the last verses of the chapter But I will be spending some time looking at the God of all grace as is Demonstrated to us through the verses that we're about to look at so let's let's read verse 8 and 9 here in 1 Peter chapter 5 And we'll get into our study 1 Peter chapter 5 verses 8 and 9 The Apostle Peter writes be sober Be vigilant Because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour Resist him steadfast in the faith Knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world So as we begin I want you to notice how he he gives an exhortation For the believer to be sober and to be vigilant and then he gives the reason why because The adversary our adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour If there's anyone in scripture Who could share on being vigilant concerning the devil it would have to be the Apostle Peter We know that by studying through the gospel accounts of his life The Apostle Peter at one time considered himself to be the most faithful of the Apostles On the night that Jesus was betrayed Jesus had made it clear that his disciples would all abandon him Matthew 26 31 says Jesus said to them all of you will be made to stumble because of me this night For it is written. I will strike the shepherd and the sheep of the flock will be scattered Well when Jesus said that that comment caused Peter to respond with passion Matthew tells us in chapter 26 verses 33 through 35 that Peter answered and said to him Even if all are made to stumble because of you I will never be made to stumble Jesus said to him shut up Peter. No, he didn't Jesus said to him assuredly I say to you that this night before the rooster crows you will deny me three times Peter said to him even if I have to die with you I will not deny you and so said all the disciples Peter was absolutely convinced that he of all the Apostles would remain faithful to Jesus Christ to the very very end And yet later that same night he not only denied the Lord Jesus Christ But he did so even as Jesus said three times Peter and the rest of the men had to learn something. They needed to learn that they're not as strong in their faith as they think Though they desired to be faithful to the end The true weakness was about to be exposed We remember the events of that night how that Jesus went to a garden called Gethsemane and he agonized there in prayer He left aid of his disciples in one portion of the garden He took Peter James and John and when a stone's throw away and began to agonize in prayer and While Jesus was praying Peter James and John all fell asleep And when Jesus came and found them sleeping he gave them a stern rebuke and he gave them an exhortation Matthew 26 40 through 41 says he came to the disciples found them asleep and said to Peter What could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray lest you enter into temptation the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak And Jesus when he was taken While his words were actually demonstrated to be true because they did exactly as he said they would do Mark tells us in chapter 14 verse 50. They all forsook him and fled It is from this vantage point that Peter begins to write an exhortation The exhortation is very basic Be sober and be vigilant It's been said that experience is the best teacher and though that's probably not completely true There is some truth to it and the Apostle Peter did experience something that would cause him To encourage the the followers of Christ to be sober to be vigilant Because he had personal experience with the enemy who came after him Peter had just been stating to them and we saw it in verse 7 that God cares for us and That would include the fact that he carefully watches over us and though God may be carefully watching over us It doesn't mean that the devil doesn't attempt to destroy us. It doesn't mean that he doesn't come to attack us in fact, it seems to be More of the case that when somebody is following the Lord that the enemy is is much more after him than that person who only Professes faith in Christ, but really doesn't follow him Remember that on that night in Luke chapter 22 verses 31 and 32 it records that that the Lord had said to Simon Peter he had said Simon Simon indeed Satan has asked for you that he may sift you as wheat But I've prayed for you that your faith should not fail But and when you have returned to me strengthen your brethren Simon I want you to know that The enemy has approached the throne of God and requested that he might sift you that he might do everything He can to destroy you Sifting is when you went out there and you harvest the grain and you put it in the sieve And you began to shake it and then you throw it up in the air So the chaff would blow away and the seed would remain and fall through the grid through the grating there He's saying Satan has requested and it's and has obtained permission to sift you and sifting is violent And what the enemy is going to do is he's going to violently do something to you But what he's going to do in his sifting is actually going to cause your faith to be refined Because I prayed for you and and when you have been converted when you have turned back to me Then you're going to have the ability to strengthen your brethren, which is what he's doing here You see his failure gave him empathy. It gave him humility It gave him compassion and it made him a source of encouragement He understood the weakness of man because he himself suffers with that weakness So his desire as we look at this passage is for believers to be sober-minded and to be vigilant Now when he speaks here in verse 8 and says be sober that word obviously has a connotation of being free from Intoxication don't be drunk and so we use that word sober in that in that context, of course be sober But there's another context and that would be speaking about your mindset your attitude of life be sober-minded Be serious-minded be serious-minded in your affection for the Lord and be serious-minded in your aim for life When you go through your sifting and you go through your suffering and you go through your persecution It's that that which God can use to refine your faith strengthen you and make you an encourager to somebody else So in order to survive these things there are going to be certain things that you need to have and one is sobriety of mind sober-mindedness You need to make sure that your mind is set on the things that matter like like we reading Colossians 3 to where it says Think about the things of heaven not the things of the earth Set your mind your affections on things above and not on things below in other words Or like what Paul said in Philippians 4-8 where he said finally brothers and sisters whatever is true whatever is noble Whatever is right whatever is pure Whatever is lovely whatever is admirable if anything is excellent or praiseworthy Think about such things be sober-minded set your affection on things above thinking the things here on the earth that actually Develop and edify and build you up be sober-minded Be aware of the times that you're living in and be aware of your enemy Not only be sober-minded, but also be vigilant what simply means be awake stay awake be on the alert be watchful You see the devices Satan uses are very often just subtle and he can take you by surprise You see Peter did not deny the Lord when the officers came to take him the Apostle Peter actually fought to protect the Lord And we know in scripture that he he took out a sword in and he took a Swing it at somebody hit Malchus on the side of the head and cut off his ear It wasn't in the frontal attack that he showed himself to be one who could deny Because what he did actually had a ring of courage to it it was When he was seated by a campfire Blending in with the others who had no relationship with Christ It was when he was there warming himself at the fire That he denied him He had a deep confidence that he wouldn't deny the Lord, but he overestimated his own strength Paul says in 1st Corinthians 10 12 let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall It's this overconfidence this pride that gets you in the position of being taken being overcome Proverbs 29 23 says a man's pride brings him low, but a man of lowly spirit gains honor So he's saying be humble and be watchful never be off your guard because your enemy is on the prowl Notice what he says here. He says Your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour He walks about he's on the prowl He's your adversary and he's called the devil the word devil there in the Greek language means that he is a slanderer and Being referred to as an adversary gives us some insight into what how he works now Peter says that he's walking about in other words. He's on the prowl It gives us the insight that he never sleeps and he's a relentless predator You see this not just here in 1st Peter, but if you look at the book of Job in chapter 1 It shows the same kind of thing We're all familiar with Job and in Job chapter 1 verses 7 and 8 It tells us how that that the angels of God assembled before God and Satan was amongst them and So as Satan was there God begins to speak to Satan and it says the Lord said to Satan Where have you come from in other words given account of yourself? Satan answered the Lord from roaming through the earth going back and forth in it The Lord said to Satan have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him He's blameless and upright a man who fears God and shuns evil God speaks to Satan and this is what God does He says given account of yourself Tell me what you've been up to and he does he says I've been on the prowl. I'm never ceasing. I'm never resting I'm seeking someone to destroy So as you've been on the prowl seeking to destroy and do harm have you considered have you looked at at Job? Carefully have you set your heart on him because he's a genuinely righteous man? There's no one like him. You are looking for defects. Have you found any in him? And that's what the Lord God is saying to Satan and and Satan acknowledges Job's goodness But he says of course I've noticed him, but you've put a hedge about him and and you won't allow me to touch him What that gives me insight into is the fact that that the enemy is on the prowl and the enemy is observing and the enemy is Looking for weaknesses that he can exploit in your life That's what he does. He looks for weaknesses He studies you in order to discover the weaknesses that you may have in order to take advantage of those things To bring you to ruin. That's his desire. He wants to devour you Bible refers to him and this is what the apostle peters speaking of here as an adversary an adversary Is an opponent in a lawsuit Revelation 12 10 speaking of the enemy calls him the accuser of our brothers who accuses them before our god day and night He's an adversary. He makes accusation against you He slanders you and wants to destroy you and he actually accuses you before the throne of god And it doesn't take him much time to find something in us as he's observing or one of his little imps is observing our life It doesn't take long for him to discover some weakness in us that he can exploit or at least accuse god about Because he comes before the throne of god according to revelation 12 and he accuses the brethren He he makes statements against those who follow the lord and he says oh that one there claims to be your servant But look how upset they just got in traffic or look what they just did they looked at that person In a lustful way and and he brings accusation. How can you Say that this one belongs to you when this one is so obviously still so evil and he brings accusation You may not realize it, but he does against you If you're a believer in the lord jesus christ and you get up in the morning and you say lord, i'm going to follow you today It's going to be one of those days where the enemy is going to work overtime to try and destroy you undermine you He wants to make accusation against you. He's our adversary And he's relentless and he accuses us But we also have not just a prosecuting attorney our adversary, but we have an advocate We have a defense attorney First john two one says my dear children i write this to you so that you will not sin But if anybody does sin we have one who speaks to the father in our defense Jesus christ the righteous one Jesus is our advocate So you have an adversary in the court of law and you have an advocate the adversary stands up and says Thus and so about you And the defense attorney stands up and says this one belongs to me My blood has been poured out and covered their sin They have confessed and forsaken and have turned to me And they are completely washed clean by my blood and then mighty gavel of god hits that docket and says Not guilty not guilty He's not guilty That's how it works, but you have an adversary Who is after you He will condemn you But not only does the enemy condemn you Your own heart can condemn you in first john three twentieth says if our heart condemns us And indeed my heart can condemn me my own conscience can accuse me or excuse me But if my heart condemns me god is greater than my heart and god knows all things Only god knows more about you and can do more for you So you must take cast your cares on him is what he's saying Because he is actively seeking whom he may devour that word devour means to ruin or swallow up As a roaring lion he desires to destroy us by violent opposition by persecution and yes even by death Be sober be vigilant because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour It's not that people believe too much in the devil. That's the problem today. It's that people don't believe in him at all And they don't think he's after them I guess the medieval art that came out with him with a pitchfork and tail and Red long johns and all of that The vicious teeth and all Has done more to make a comical figure out of satan And make him an imaginary figure Problem is is that's not biblical because the bible says that he is He comes as an angel of light And there is a beauty to evil. There's a beautiful side of it If it were ugly you wouldn't go after it It's beautiful. There's a beautiful side to evil that draws you There's always a false promise That's given that if you give in to this everything will be fine The united states and every every country like us that has advertising actually uses Means to convince us of our Lack of satisfaction for the things that we possess and our need for things that we don't have at the moment That's what advertising is so everybody in this room has already been bombarded with messages through commercials and ads of every sort That would cause us to think that my life is not going to be complete until I drive that car Or I eat some of that al pollo local Or drink that beer you see these commercials with all these very handsome wealth Built people drinking beer at bars all the time, don't you? But you ever see somebody who's really been drinking beer for a long time The t-shirt right here in their belly below there.  You're gonna be like me. I don't think very many people would buy their beer And now it's gotten less calories and more taste So we we want the things and and the enemy knows how to exploit those things in our life And and the fact of the matter is is when you look at scripture is it relates to him He was a covering chair of he was a worship leader in heaven He there was a beauty about him and his glory is even described as being unbelievably beautiful And that's how he approaches you and very often he uses the subtlety of a temptation to cause you dissatisfaction and desire something You ought not to have and you you fall prey to that and in doing so you end up Reaping the consequences. There are a lot of young women Who thought that love was ending up in bed with their boyfriend who ended up with a child and no boyfriend There are a lot of young men who think that they're cool because they smoke those cigarettes and how cool and how Obviously sophisticated they really are because they know how to blow smoke rings out of the side of their mouth I mean, they're just really so cool who end up with throat cancer You know, I remember the enemy lying to me as a young man saying to me that the way to To experience life to the fullest is to enjoy drugs and things and I ended up Wasting much of my life doing that and discovering that That it wasn't as pleasant as all he had promised. That's what he does He tries to destroy us that way How are we going to resist him? How can you resist him? Well, he gives us he gives us an idea here. He tells us how to do it. Resist him steadfast in the faith When he says steadfast in the faith, he's not saying resist him by just standing there and clenching your fists and saying I believe I believe I believe When he says resist him steadfast that word steadfast means to be solid and firm And he said you to be solid and firm in what he calls the faith The faith speaks of the gospel. It speaks of the word of grace Which builds us up and gives us confidence in god It's like what paul said in philippians 127 when he refers to the faith of the gospel It's what jude is referring to in verse 3 of his book when he says beloved while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to content earnestly for the faith Which was once for all delivered to the saints When he's speaking of the the faith he's speaking of the word of god And what the word of god contains that gives to us the ability to resist the enemy steadfast by holding fast to the word of god Scripture is god's revelation of truth and that's what we remain solidly in It is the foundation of biblical truth that we war against the enemy by we use god's word as a weapon Here on my on my pulpit I have a shield and I have a sword and and those are symbols for us as a church The shield of faith and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of god Jesus used the sword when the enemy came against him in that great temptation And after jesus had been fasting for 40 days and was famished The enemy came to tempt him the scripture says and the first thing he says is make these stones into bread You're hungry you can feed yourself use the miracle power that you have the ability to perform to take care of yourself But the lord jesus said man does not live by bread alone, but every word that proceeds from the mouth of god He takes him to the pinnacle of the temple and says cast yourself down for his written He shall give his angels charge concerning thee and they shall lift the up lest you dash thy foot against a stone And the lord jesus christ speaking back says thou shall not tempt the lord thy god answering with scripture Then he shows them all the kingdoms of the world in a moment And he says all of these have been delivered unto me and I give them to whomsoever I want All you need to do is worship me and I will give them to you You've come to win the world.  That's why I'm encouraging you so often Read your word Get into bible studies. We are living in the last days. The enemy is pursuing us He's trying to destroy. We need to be armed and dangerous In spiritual warfare the enemy attempts to undermine your trust in the word of god He tries to disarm you by calling into question the truth of god's word the bible He did it to eve He went there into the garden with eve and he said has god said and what he was doing is casting doubt on her mind concerning God's word Has god said this? And he's still saying that to us to this day. Has god said this? You need to know the word well enough to be able to say indeed he has And I trust him put on the whole armor of god Whole fast of the word of truth And like james said in chapter four verse seven submit yourself to god Resist the devil. He will flee from you And to me that's a great word. Isn't it to you? He flees from you He'll flee from you because you say thus sayeth the lord. No, I'm gonna hold fast. Is it easy? No It's a lot easier to give in to your flesh and it is to die to it But it is worth the effort and the faith and the discipline And that's why he says resist him. That's why we're to be steadfast whole fast Because again, he's whispered in your ear that if you only do what he's saying he can give you the world When in reality all he brings is death Hold fast to the lord Now you're not alone. I want you to notice something in verse nine He says knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brother brotherhood in the world. You're not alone See, one of the things the enemy does is the enemy isolates you if you ever watch any of these nature shows You know, I used to watch him with my dad when I was a little boy And you hear the commentator and the old film and he's kind of whispering as if he's right there in the midst of all of the action And he says and the and the lioness is there and she's in the the tall grass and She moves in such a way so that the wind will pick up her scent And the scent is now drifting into the herd of of wildebeest and Notice how the wildebeest Picking up her scent and you do see the you'll see the sentry as he he smells the lion And you'll see him looking around because he knows something's there But he doesn't know exactly where it is But he smells the scent because she has strategically placed herself in a position to cause panic And there she is in the in the tall grass, but the wind is wafting her scent towards the sentry and he smells He begins look and then she begins to creep a little closer a little closer and as he begins to become agitated The herd becomes agitated And she comes a little closer and then she lets out a low growl and when she lets out that low growl They they can hear that causes panic And as she causes panic then the herd begins to to move and now now it's running And what is the lioness doing and those with her they cut off the weakest of the pack And they take them down and they destroy him and that's the image that he's giving here You need to remember you're not alone One of the ways that the enemy is most effective in undermining you is isolating you When you don't have fellowship and you don't have relationship with other brothers and sisters When you don't have anybody to call on the phone and say you need to pray for me And I'm going through something right now. I don't want to give you all the details But I have to tell you I need prayer right now When you don't have somebody like that in your life you're left basically to yourself and many times what happens is in that isolation We disregard what god's word has said and so these sufferings are not just yours They're things that we have all gone through and that's why the apostle peter can say listen. I understand I was the one who said to jesus. I will never forsake you. I will never betray you.  I could never ever deny the lord. I denied the lord. You need to remember we're all weak and we need one another develop relationships Men take the opportunity to go to retreats Take the opportunity to be in bible studies Take the opportunity to be in couple studies or different studies There's so many opportunities to develop relationships in so you'll be strong in That's what's going to keep you strong. I can tell you That in my walk with the lord when I've been isolated when I thought I'm on my own is when I have failed most miserably But when I've had friends who I can speak to and say listen keep me in prayer I'm going through something don't want to share all the details, but it's pretty serious. I need your prayer Then I can be made strong And why did I mention to you that I have to go through surgeries so that you'd worry about me? No I did so so you'd send me gifts. No, that's not why either I did it because we're family Because we're the church the body of christ. We pray for one another I don't have to stand up and say this is going on. I don't have to share my heart with you I do because you're my family So that you can pray for me Because I need your prayer Because I'm a member of the same church you are And so we need each other And remember that you're not going through things by yourself These are things others have gone through when my father went home to be with the lord I had a meeting nobody knew my dad had died my dad died on the thursday I had a meeting on saturday nobody in the church knew I didn't broadcast it I had a meeting on saturday with a few hundred of our of our servants here And I asked the question how many of you have ever had someone you lose in your life? Somebody you love in your life, how many of you have lost them?  And so all these hands went up and I said I just joined your fraternity because my father died on thursday I came to church I came to church the night my dad died and introduced the guest speaker that was there that night I came on saturday I did my sunday morning service my sunday night service my wednesday I continued ministry because I need you We need each other That's what keeps me strong Isolation will destroy you And these sufferings are going on With brothers and sisters throughout this room you may be thinking right now I'm the only one who is a victim of this I'm the only one who's ever been hurt in this way And if I were to call out your pain and say how many here have had that experience You will be surprised at the amount of hands that will go up saying I understand what you're talking about Be aware of that Don't be isolated Stay tight with your brothers and sisters And finally You can see why I wanted to do two weeks Finally verse 10 But may the god of all grace who called us to his eternal glory by christ jesus after you have suffered a while Perfect establish strengthen and settle you May god's grace working in you in spite of the the enemy's attempts to destroy may god's grace ensure that good occurs in your life May you receive Perfection that means maturity May you be established That speaks of being strengthened and made firm May you have strength That speaks of an internal spiritual strength And may you be settled May you be sat on a firm foundation through all of this and to him verse 11 Be the glory and the dominion forever and ever amen And finally by sylvanus also known as sylas our faithful brother as I consider him I've written to you briefly exhorting and testifying that this is the true grace of god in which you stand She who is in Babylon when he speaks of Babylon. That's another name for the church in rome She who is in Babylon elect together with you greets you and so does mark my son Greet one another with a kiss of love peace to you All who are in christ jesus amen Couple of things and we'll close Notice how he mentions names here sylas and mark And notice how he says in verse 14 greet one another with a kiss of love Now when I was a new believer I liked that Greet one another with a kiss of love Because there are some beautiful little christian girls there that I wanted to greet Over and over again I obviously was wrong in that what they're speaking about is Having relationships knowing one another being courteous encouraging It just speaking about the kiss that we have received in in my family You know and many families like mine when you come to see an aunt an uncle parent or whatever You walk into the house and what is the first thing they'll do in my family? Is they'll give you a kiss if you ever see my family around somewhere and we haven't seen each other Or we're just encountering each other It doesn't matter if I saw you a couple hours ago in my family If I see it we'll walk up and the first thing we do is we kiss each other on the face. What is that? It's just a greeting. It's just an act of love. It's a family. We just love one another That's how we are the minute I see if I haven't seen you for a day or two Whatever you're in my family first thing I'll do is I'll hug you and I'll give you a kiss That's what I do on the side of the face.   That's what he's speaking about But it gives me some insight and let me close with this He speaks of Silas or Sylvainus. He speaks of Mark Traveling companions and Mark was his son in the Lord who wrote the gospel of Mark But these people obviously knew who Sylvainus and knew who Mark was So that tells me that the church is not to be a group of strangers But the group is supposed to really be a family And there are people on my left side over here who don't know the people on the right side over here When in reality what the body of Christ is to be is to be a group of people that understand that this person over here Is related to that person over there and everything in between And the only way that that's going to take place is when we make the effort to get to know each other Avoid the temptation if I may say it this way of isolation Avoid the temptation of hiding in a crowd so that you are not known for who you are Because if you have that tendency When you are hurting you will be alone You will be alone It's not because people want to leave you alone. It's because you have chosen to be alone For me, I need people to hold my hands up I need prayer I need encouragement because I'm weak in the flesh and I need help and I need you I need that as a pastor as a man as a husband as a father as a grandfather as a brother I need that So do you Take the opportunities when given To develop close relationships as close as you can become Because a day is going to come when the enemy is trying to devour you And you will have someone you can call and you can say keep me in prayer. I'm going through it Do that and watch your life get better Don't do that and continue being buffeted. It's up to you But for me, I have chosen to be open so that I might have support Because I know my enemy is after me to devour me. I know that so I need support And I need the love of christ and the love that's in the body of christ That's what keeps me strong with his word and by his spirit That's what we all know and that's what we all need


So the U.S. tried to get North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons, mainly through pressure and sanctions. But that approach has backfired. It has actually hardened Pyongyang's resolve to hone its nuclear missile technology. North Korea has said the only way that it will give up its nuclear weapons is if the U.S. quote, abandons its hostile policy. In other words, take reciprocal steps towards arms reduction. But that is presumably the lasting that Washington wants to do. So now here comes Joe Biden, and how will his team resolve this dilemma? So what is that saying, you know, the definition of insanity? If you repeat the same failed approach and expect different results? I think that Biden's advisors are at least in consensus that the all-or-nothing approach, meaning demanding that North Korea give up all its weapons all at once, that was the approach of John Bolton, and that has failed. So at least there is that recognition. So instead, the catchword now is arms control approach. What this means is first, let's freeze North Korea's plutonium and uranium nuclear operations, and then after that, we'll see what happens. Let's take incremental steps toward the ultimate goal of complete unilateral denuclearization. So this is the preferred approach of Secretary of State nominee Tony Blinken. He advocates an interim deal, cap North Korea's nuclear weapons by time to work out a long-term agreement down the road, and then he says we should get allies and also China on board to pressure North Korea, quote, unquote, squeeze North Korea to get it to the negotiating table, quote, we need to cut off its various avenues and access to resources. He advocates telling countries with North Korean guest workers, send them home. And then he says if China won't cooperate, then threaten China with more forward-deployed missile defense and military exercises. I think that this is no different from the failed approach of the past in the full pressure, isolation, and the goal still is unilaterally disbanding North Korea. Excuse me, I think somebody has, needs to mute. Thank you. It's Victor here. Okay. The only difference is that the Biden administration is willing to take more time to get to the ultimate goal, but it's still the same approach, still the same goal. In this case, North Korea will probably continue to press forward on its nuclear weapons and missile capability, so unless the U.S. drastically shifts position, I think renewed tension between the U.S. and North Korea is, will eventually happen. It's a question of if, not when. The other way around, it's a question of when, not if. So instead of focusing on how to get North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons, asking how to get to permanent peace in Korea would lead us to a different, more fundamental set of answers. Because then we will realize that actually all parties, not just North Korea, have a responsibility to take steps towards mutual arms reduction. As we know, the U.S. still has 28,000 troops in South Korea. Until recently, they regularly conducted massive war exercises that included plans for preemptive strikes on North Korea. They have included flying B-2 bombers, which are the bombers that drop nuclear bombs. And do you know how much it costs to fly a B-2 bomber? $130,000 an hour to fly a B-2 bomber. Just for one hour. So the U.S. and South Korea had scaled back these exercises since the summit in 2018. However, recently, the commander of U.S. forces in Korea has called for the resumption of these large-scale joint war drills. And if the Biden administration decides to move ahead with these war drills, which is scheduled for March, it would actually renew very dangerous military tension on the Korean Peninsula. It would harm any chance for diplomatic engagement with North Korea in the near future. So just to close out, to reduce the threat of nuclear war with North Korea and also to preserve the option of resuming talks in the future, the Biden administration should actually do two things in the first 100 days. One, continue the suspension of the large-scale U.S.-South Korean joint war drills. And during the Q&A, I can talk more about a specific campaign to do that. And then the second thing is they need to start a strategic review of North Korea policy that begins with the question, how do we get to permanent peace on the Korean Peninsula? And I would say a very important part of that is ending the Korean War that has been unresolved for seven years, replacing the armistice with a permanent peace agreement. Thank you. Thank you so much, Yan. Those are excellent actions that we can take. And I know that Congressman Ro Khanna said he would be reintroducing his resolution to declare a formal end of the Korean War, so we'll be awaiting that and supporting that as well. Please feel free to post anything you want in the chat that you want people to follow up on. Thank you again. Medea, would you like to introduce Jodi? I think you know her. Yes. Thank you, Hanli. That was beautiful, and I hope we get a chance to have questions, because I think what you bring up is just so important to figure out how we can do best to push the Biden administration to be better on this issue and allow the North and South to establish their own pathways to peace, which, unfortunately, the U.S. has been an obstacle to. And Jodi, well, Jodi is my dearest sister for several decades now. I don't think there's a day that goes by when I don't talk to her about 20 or 25 times, and is constantly amazing me with her new ideas and brilliance, and on top of all the other things that she is doing, she started this China Is Not Our Enemy campaign at Code Pink.  And so it's quite astounding and beautiful how you're growing this list of people who want to be involved in this campaign, China Is Not Our Enemy. So thank you, Jodi, and take it away. We have to unmute her. Unmute her? I think she should be able to. Thank you. Thanks, Medea. I'm so excited that you're my partner, I'm blessed. And Hunley, thank you. I avoid talking about North Korea in my presentation, because it is key for a long time to China, North Korea. And I think people don't know that 300,000 Chinese lost their lives in the Korean War, which was the U.S. War on Korea. China did not want to be at war, so it too has a deep history. Anyway, in April of 2018, my husband moved to China, which meant that I was in China every month until January of this year. On January 30th, I flew from New York City to LA instead of New York City to Shanghai. And it is through this lens that I've been watching the heat and lies escalate towards China. Of course, I had my eye on Hong Kong, I knew it was complex, but I also knew from my time in China that most of those 1.4 billion people who are Chinese believed that Hong Kong was stolen from them by the British. And they suffered the opium war, which besieged their country and they feel it painfully, shamefully and painfully. And they're not going to let U.S. get control of Hong Kong, which is what it wants. It's Korea, Hong Kong, Afghanistan, which it's been trying to constantly get type 1, where can its bases be directed towards China? So they could see in Hong Kong that U.S. funding was going to amplify what was happening and people were out there with Trump signs and American flags. So you can imagine that it was unsettling to the Chinese and China and in Hong Kong. And from their point of view, it was a mess being made a lot by the United States engagement. And then I was watching the heat and lies grow with COVID and it wasn't just Trump, but it was the U.S. papers of record, the Washington Post and the New York Times. And it began to feel like the Iraq war. I called up Medina and I was like, this is the Iraq war all over again. What I was reading and hearing had nothing to do with the facts. And the facts weren't even hidden. Soon into the year, V.J. Prashat at the tri-continental did a three-part dossier, breaking it all down. But what you were reading in the media was just stories. Okay, what did Chinese do wrong about COVID, which is what keeps them messed up? There was no cover-up to the world. It was revealed to the World Health Organization in December by the first doctor who saw it and to grandparents of their grandchild. On January 1st, according to the U.S. head of CDC, he got a call from the Chinese CDC, telling him there was a strange and communicative disease that attacks the lungs. We know this from the New York Times because the U.S. CDC guy said the China guy called crying. So, yes, there was a cover-up, but it was in China. It was a three-day cover-up as they worked to put a plan in place to protect the people. Just announcing it would have caused pandemonium. When they announced it, it had a plan. I think the Chinese pandemonium would have looked not as silly as people stocking up on toilet paper, though. But anyway, so why were lies being fished out of the story and spread by the U.S. papers? Why attack China when it did everything right? When the WHO is praising it for locating and segmenting the disease faster than any pandemic? If you want to point a finger at China, it should be how to do it right. Governments from surrounding countries were immediately offered what was needed to create plans for their countries. The losses around China are low, and 5,000 is the number of lives lost in China, a country of 1.4 billion. All the new cases are brought in from the outside. And recently, as we read in The Guardian, I think it was yesterday, more and more is being revealed that it existed in Italy and France all the way back to September. So it didn't even maybe originate in China. So it was January 30th when I didn't get on my flight because I didn't want to be quarantined into China. I was talking to my husband every night about the experience. He lives in two communities, one in Shanghai and one in Sanya. He's Jamaican, and there's an island in China, so he goes there when he needs his Jamaica hit. And each one was different, and they were each created out of the neighborhoods. So I think few people in the United States know that politics in China is local. I would consider it to say that it's more democratic than US because democracy is not about voting. It's about the community coming together, voicing its needs, working together, finding solutions. So now my husband, he goes to dinner with 18, works in an office with 40, goes to parties while I remain in the quarantine. I was avoiding. So those were a few points that Marcy wanted me to address. But given the nine months that I've been working on this China's Not Our Enemy campaign, we've been building and working within coalitions on the issue, one globally. It's called No Cold War. One is in the grassroots movement, it includes Pivot for Peace and the Chow Collective, two organizations that have grown out of the need to stop the war on China and our China Advocacy Collective in DC. And at the core of the problem is the narratives we get caught up in and make decisions from. And I even noticed in Marcy's questions that even our questions are inside the state narratives. I'm watching the learning curve with the crew in DC and it's like they're starting to catch themselves, but we forget that we're inside of this bubble of a narrative that's created for us. And what's cool about it is that once you figure it out, it's easy to debunk their stories by pulling up facts. Cold War, this is the U.S. war on China. It is not a Cold War with China, it wasn't a Cold War on Russia, with Russia it was a Cold War on Russia. But this is U.S. aggression and already a hybrid war on China. It was a U.S. war on Korea, it was a U.S. war on Vietnam, it was a U.S. war on Iraq, China once peace with the U.S., it is not imperialist, it knows the cost of wars, they have been very recent, it almost destroyed a 5,000-year-old country. War is something that's very real to the Chinese people. I just want to remind everybody that China was one of the four poorest countries in the world in the 60s and 70s. But also I want to let you know that in the 1800s, Beijing was the biggest city in the world and China had the highest GDP. It was then that England wanted to colonize China, it had fully plundered India and was waking its way to China and that's when it first attacked Afghanistan. So this story goes way back and it pulls in a lot of stories that we're engaged with that I don't think many of us have unraveled. We have to see the big picture as they're going to try to bring us to fight on their narratives of little stories. We have to keep pulling the narrative back and it is complex and it's a big picture, it's about a history of imperialism and as we pull back the curtain much can be revealed. For Asian Americans, the racism that is centuries deep will be painful but not news. The narrative is ours to change and to rewrite the story, we have to be on the offensive, not on the defensive. Others, Marcy's requests were about the trade war. China made a decision to invest a huge in technology and raising productivity but they want to share it with the workers so they knew if they needed to increase wages, they've increased social protections and insurance and all kinds of things for workers and they say they did it because they were listening to Henry Ford who said that you can't start making cars if you're not paying the workers enough to buy them, which is kind of how the U.S. worked for 70 years until Reagan and the 80s and 90s and the U.S. went global. But trades are my issue. If you want to hear more about trade, I did a webinar with John Kavanaugh from Institute for Policy Studies. My favorite quote from that was John said, Chinese workers didn't steal your jobs, GM did. So if you want to learn more about trade in China, check that webinar out. Another thing Marcy asked was about accusations of curacy manipulation, expulsion of journalists and consulate closures. All those things are in their narrative. Those are reactions to U.S. aggression. China has met every push by the U.S. with a pushback, except in things like the arresting of Meng Wangqiao, the chief financial offer at Huawei. They arrested her in Canada. That was an outlandish illegal act and no one in the world is holding the U.S. accountable.  It's kind of like Obama's red line with Syria, but the attacks like in Iran and Venezuela are all in the world of finance, the new war zone. It is like what happens in the streets of the U.S. and Palestine. Power does what it wants with no repercussions. Hell, Biden got to be cheerleader for the Iraq War, cost the U.S. hundreds of thousands of casualties and billions of dollars, and no accountability, just rewards. Now he's president. Oh, and just a reminder, it is the U.S. that has China surrounded by hundreds of U.S. bases, 50 of which are large bases, plus the U.S. seven fleet, and the U.S. has installed anti-missile systems in Taiwan and South Korea. I could go on about how the U.S. is the aggressor, but I want to come back to the narrative. We have to change the narrative. We can't get stuck in the he said she said that we'll just go back and forth. Our narrative, war with China is bad, unnecessary, and imperialism. The end is nuclear war and a nuclear winter, which means nothing grows and we are toast. The U.S. needs to learn how to compete and cooperate, not drive war. We know, like with Iraq, this will engage the entire region. How do you think Taiwan feels? They will be used by the U.S. to get to China, just like Hong Kong, so it will be an entire region affected. Right now, we need money flowing to the needs of people, not new high-tech weapons and plans to destroy the Chinese fleet in 72 hours. Certainly, we don't need to be brought to the brink of nuclear war, but I leave that to Molly to talk about more. In response to Uyghurs and Hong Kong, I don't think people realize that when the U.S. creates military buildup, it can only force China as it has other administrations and other countries to move into protection. That protection is going to be worse for Uyghurs and Hong Kong. They will be in protective mode. Both those places are where the U.S. wants to weaken China. This will cause both countries to spend a lot of money, but not just China and the U.S., because the U.S. will pull in more and China will pull in more. What we have is another rape of resources away from the needs of people lining the pockets of the military industrial complexes with no good end. Our narrative, this is racist. This is driving xenophobia.   We need to help pull back the narrative and talk about what is happening to human beings. That includes Biden, who bullied China just two weeks ago, all the way China failed on COVID, all the way the U.S. has failed on COVID. Still with the lies and cheap talking points, the New York Times continues with them, but we delivered over 5,000 signatures to Kamala Harris telling her to back down Biden just two Mondays ago. It was that Wednesday, and the New York Times noted that she was silent. We have to keep on her so that she can go after the Biden administration and pull them back. Kamala has a Chinese name. She's the first Asian American vice president. We must keep the pressure on. I'll post links in the comments after I'm done of ways you can engage with Kamala and also the racist tweet by Senator Marsha Blackburn that we've been taking down this week. Already 2,000 people have sent emails to Marsha Blackburn telling her to take down her tweet and apologize to Asian Americans. Okay, our narrative, caring state or callous state, China just eradicated extreme poverty taking 900 million out of poverty. I live in a city of 15,000 homeless. We, as a global people, need to be in cooperation, learning from each other and connecting, not driving war. This is imperialism greed and it's at the expense of all the people on the planet. There is healthcare to address, climate chaos, and the migrant nations it will be producing soon. World resources need to be directed to caring for the people on the planet. So get to know China. Don't be used by their narrative. It's the State Department narrative. Which side are you on? Is it about capitalism or communism or is it about care and callousness? Don't get stuck, stuck, quieted by the red scare that they'll definitely be using. This is about peace and love against lies and hate. You can feel it when you're in it. Find which side you're on and you'll have a ground to stand on. We have a website full of webinars and articles and stories. There's a collective in China supplying us with weekly insights into the news of China called the Dongfen Collective. And in the next month, they're going to start giving us insight into the political discourse and what that looks like in China and what they're having arguments about. We'll learn their form of engaged democracy as they take on big issues, issues that are so familiar to ours. So from the Chinese point of view, this is blaming the victim. China's not the protagonist in this. Learn the history, theirs and ours. And please engage. If you engage in any of the actions I post, then you'll be invited to engage in the ones I post every week. It is going to be up to us to change this narrative. And thanks for all you do for peace. Thank you, Joni. When we look forward to what everyone I post in the chats, so people can follow up with you, really appreciate what you had to say. Next, I would like to introduce David Swanson. David, I've known David for, I don't know, over a decade. He's phenomenal, wonderful thinker, a brilliant thinker. He's an author, activist, journalist and radio host. He's the executive director of World Beyond War. We'll also be hearing from Leah Bolcher, president of World Beyond War in a moment. David is the campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. I'm sure you've seen their petitions. He's written a number of books, including War is a Lie, and When the World Outlawed War. David blogs at davidswanson.org. You can follow him there. Also at warsacrime.org. David Swanson hosts Talk Nation Radio. He recently interviewed Radea and myself on Michelle Florin or any other foreign policy issues. And David is a Nobel Peace Prize nominee. He was awarded the 2018 Peace Prize by the US Peace Memorial Foundation. David, take it away. Thank you, Marcy. Terrific job you're doing with these calls. Thank you, Medea. Wonderful remarks by Hugh and Lee and by Jodi. I think I would learn more by skipping my turn here, but I'll try to talk briefly. Leah Bolcher, who's going to be speaking soon, I think, is the president of the board of the group that I'm the director of World Beyond War, which we started several years ago now, to try to create something global to go after the whole institution of militarism with educational work and with activist work. And that's what we've been trying to do. So we have chapters in Canada, for example, that have been working on trying to free Meng Wanzhou and getting a lot of heat in Canada for pushing that there. But we are forming chapters and there are chapters that you can join in increasingly in all parts of the world. We also are doing endless webinars now. And I think we all need to be taking more advantage of doing this globally. There's no reason we can't have people from China, from Korea, from any part of the world on these online events with us. And it's just wonderful when we do have people from all over the world talking together as a community of peace activists. It's very encouraging. Some of the local campaigns that chapters are working on in addition to closing bases, which is Leah's topic, are divestment and demilitarizing police forces. So we're working on those and other particular campaigns that you can find on worldbeyondwar.org. On this topic of China and a Cold War, and I think there is this problem of Cold War with Russia as well, I think the first thing we have to do is cure exceptionalism. And I wrote a book a year or so ago called Curing Exceptionalism. The idea that anyone would fault China for failing at something, speaking from the United States, that you would fault anyone on earth for failing at anything from the United States is the great absurdity that we have to question. And we have to cure competitiveness. This notion that you can talk about some country as a corporate competitor, an economic competitor slash a military enemy is just madness. We have to stop letting someone designate for us these enemies and these competitors. We also have to stop imagining that bombing people can somehow provide them with greater rights. We don't have to prove that China is not doing anything wrong. We have to reject the absurd idea that anybody is helped by threats and attacks. We have to stop imagining that other nations arming themselves somehow threatens our rights, that China is going to take away our freedoms. I think we have to recognize that we're being played for suckers, that we're being lied to, that China and Russia simply make much more profitable enemies for weapons dealers than does terrorism. And so this is the need for the Asia pivot. And it would be so easy to get a reverse arms race going. There is no question that if the United States scaled back the teeniest bit, rather than continually upping the military spending and the bases and the ships, that China would follow suit. But it has to be given that chance. So I wrote a couple days ago and I put the link in the chat earlier and I sent to Marcy proposing what I might talk about an article called 27 Things You Can Do. And I've mentioned a few of them in passing already and I'll try to mention a few more, but not nearly the whole list. You can go to the link in the chat. But one thing we can do is to raise awareness of the nuclear danger, shifting the threats and provocations and basing and weapons building to a nuclear enemy is a whole different danger from making terrorism the focus. And there is going to be a wonderful day for education and activism and agitation and celebration on January 22nd, when nuclear weapons become illegal in 50 plus nations. And we push other nations to do the same. So you can go to worldbeyondwar.org slash one two two, meaning January 22nd and find a large and growing toolkit of things to use on that date. You can also find, as one of the 27 things, a form to email your Congress members, your senators and misrepresentatives in Washington on getting out of the way and letting Korea make peace. The things that happened in Washington, this past era, this past regime that's on the way out, that really struck me in terms of power arrangements, were number one, that Congress finally used the war power's resolution and ended a war, but it was vetoed. And that Congress now has adopted this habit of forbidding presidents to end wars. So you can't take troops out of Korea, which hadn't even been proposed as far as I know. You can't take troops out of Afghanistan. You can't take troops out of Germany. That would be, you know, merely 75 years. It's too reckless and rushed. But this is insane to have Congress forbidding the ending of wars. So we really need to focus on repeating that ending of the war on Yemen and saying what's next, Afghanistan, Syria, which ones can we proceed to end one by one and undoing this notion that Congress can forbid ending a war. One of the items that I had in this list that I think Marcy put in the agenda as what I was talking about was the Green New Deal. And the reason I mentioned the Green New Deal is that it's the best opportunity we've got to get any money out of militarism. And getting any money out of militarism is the best chance that a Green New Deal has of doing anything significant, because that's where the money is. And, you know, we couldn't get 10% out of militarism during a deadly pandemic to move it to opposing the deadly pandemic. This is how entrenched that spending is. But if something's going to pass, that's going to be called a Green New Deal or something like it, and we can get not just Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez, but the whole Congress to understand that they need the military money, and we can move some of that money as part of that deal to some sane foreign policy, as well as domestic policy initiatives, we just might get a few dollars out of the military budget. Another thing I think we need to do is get Congresswoman Lee and Congressman Pokan to tell us who's in the military budget reduction caucus and what it stands for, and start getting every member of Congress into it. And I think the biggest enemy in the Pentagon is not China, is not Russia, is not North Korea, is not Iran. It's having college like normal countries do. It's making college part of public education. It's giving young people the choice of getting an education instead of joining the killing machine. So we have to advance that. But I think the early opportunity is going to be on ending the war on Yemen, and I think we have to expand that not just to the practice of ending more wars, but to ending the weapons sales, and not just to Yemen, but as in Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's bill, ending the weapons sales to all the human rights abusing nations, and then ending the insane notion that you can use war weapons without abusing human rights, and ending foreign weapons sales entirely. This is what we need to be moving toward, and Congresswoman is going to introduce her package of seven piece related bills again, but this time separately as seven separate occasions. And I think we should be promoting each and every one of those. I think also on our list should be going after Biden to end the sanctions on the National Criminal Court. You don't get more lawless than sanctioning the courts. And of course, having pushed back on Flournoy and been part of a successful change there is terrific. We need a few more of those in the coming weeks. There aren't any good ones.  So this list goes on and on. I'll stop and save the rest for conversation and get to another speaker. Thanks, Marcy. Thank you, David. Wonderful to have all of you participating. I'm learning a lot. I appreciate it. All right. I believe, Hania. Oh, no, excuse me. Mindy, you're going to introduce Leah. No, that's Hania. Oh, I'm sorry. Hania. It's going to introduce Leah. I thought Molly. I'm Molly. Okay. I will introduce myself. It's probably the easiest. Leah, I would love to introduce you, but I'll pass it on to Maria. All right. Well, I'll start out just by saying that it's been wonderful working with Leah in many capacities, both the world beyond war and before that, the United for Peace and Justice, and now with the fabulous work that you've been doing, Leah, about the U.S. bases. And I think that's such an important component. And you, as a veteran, know very well these issues and speak from a position of authority that many other people don't. And so maybe if you give us a little bit of your background and then tell us about the campaign to close U.S. bases. Great. I'm happy to do that. Thank you very much. Before I get to start my presentation, I wanted to shout out to Code Pink because I was part of a delegation that went to Pakistan in 2012 when I was the President of Veterans for Peace. And it really changed my life. It changed my focus on when you meet with people who are the real victims, firsthand victims of American war. It's really a sobering thing and very enlightening. So whenever the travel eases up and we can travel again, if Code Pink, I'm sure we're putting together more delegations. I highly recommend them. Marcy, can you share, give me a power to share my screen? Oh, sure. Sure. Yes. Okay. Here we go. All right. Over now. All right. I think. Can you see, are you guys seeing my slide? I am not.  So you should be able to share your screen. Yeah. Well, I'm, I'm so sorry. This is so complicated. You know, share. Oh, there we go. Oh, there you go. Yay. Okay. All right. All right. Okay. So the first thing I want to tell you, for Christ's sake, let's go in here. Okay. The first thing I want to tell you is, here's a quote from the Pentagon strategic plane document. And they put it in black and right, right there, they say right from the very beginning, first sentences that we are going to be competing with China and that they are an adversary that is reemerging. And we've got to focus our attention them. The second little quote there is, is basically a military pablum to talk about anything a military does. I pretty much fall into one of those categories. But the US military needs their bases in order to carry out their policies. And this, this chart map you may have seen before, sometimes it's startling for people to see this because they didn't realize that the American military has divided the whole world up to sections. And by geography, so we can better control them and command them. And so the, the sectors are North America, South America, Europe, Central Asia, Africa, and Pacific Command. And actually there's a little bit old chart because now they call it Indo Pacific calm, Indo peck calm to include the Indian ocean. But it basically we treat the world like a battlefield. And what's even worse is now we treat the spaces about if it's the latest unified command is space calm. So, you know, so here's a chart that kind of shows you where most of the bases are the circles indicate how many and the size of them. And this chart was put together by a fellow named David Vine. He's a professor of anthropology at American University. He's written two books about American military bases. The one's called base nation. It kind of goes history of the basis and where they are. And then the United States of it makes a point that not only is are the bases imperative to launching wars and make in facilitating wars and making them happen logistically by prepositioning troops and fuel and that kind of thing. But there are actually a cause of war. And he makes that point very clearly in his second book. I think it's I think absolutely that's true. And that is why we believe it will be on war that if we can close these military bases, it will be a huge step towards peace and a huge easing of tensions. And just it couldn't it couldn't possibly do anything bad. I think towards peace if we get rid of these bases, it would be enormous help. So Indo-Pac-Com is the area we're talking about tonight in regards to China. And it consists of these 36 countries that are in green. But I also want to bring people's attention to the point that it's not just the bases in the Pacific, but probably more importantly to the military is the naval operations, the naval, the carrier strike groups. The carrier strike group is an aircraft carrier with several support ships that defend the aircraft carrier. And those ships have cruise missiles and the carrier has probably 40 or more aircraft that have missiles on them. And there's also at least one submarine hanging out with the carrier strike groups. And so we keep them all the time roaming around outside of China and Iran. And that's whenever the military wants to put their foot down or make a point, they move a carrier into place and that fits everybody in fear. Because these carriers and the ships and the aircraft all carry hundreds of missiles that are able to attack anywhere. So Japan has the most American military people stationed on it than any other country in the world. Japan is not a very big country. Northern Island Hokkaido. And then you have Honshu, Tokyo's about here. This is Shikoku and Kyushu. And we're down here in the red. That's Okinawa. Now there are about 90 bases on mainland. And bases is kind of an unclear word. Base is we're talking about facilities where American military people are. They're not all big bases with commissaries and housing and all that. Some of them are quite small, but we're using that word basis to talk about that. But Okinawa, which is very small as you saw, and this is a chart of the main island of Okinawa. It has its own culture. They have their own language. It's not really, it's not equivalent to another island in Japan. It's not been treated that way by the Japanese or by other countries. So they're their own unique culture. But they're also treated as subordinate to Japan's government. And that's why they get stuck, I think, with housing and hosting the US military to such an extent that they do. Because the Japanese people don't want these bases there. And so they put them someplace that they can't fight back very well. 60%. So you see how big Japan is. You see how tiny Okinawa is. 60% of the bases in Japan are here in Okinawa. Even though Okinawa is only 6% of the whole landmass of Japan, and about 20% of Okinawa is taken up with American military. Now the biggest big thing that's happening now with a lot of problems and a lot of pushback, a lot of resistance is Hanoko. A few years ago, or so, maybe six or eight years ago, there was a Marine incident where a United States Marine raped, or three of them, I think, a 12-year-old girl. And it was huge, huge incident. These Marines were based at Futenma Air Station in a very crowded part of Okinawa. And so the public was very, very outrageous, as they should be. And so the solution they came up with was moving those Marines to another part of Okinawa, which is obviously absurd. But that other place is Hanoko. And they are working on a project to dig and deepen the seabed so that it can support a runway, an air facility. The problem is that the seabed itself is described as soft as mayonnaise. It's very, very soft. It's impossible, almost impossible, to build something on it. And so it's the cost overruns. It's done what they thought it would take to spend, it's almost like $12 billion, 12 years. And so not only do you have usual problems with another military base, and you have the crime, and you have all the pollution and toxic waste that all of that, but this mayonnaise seabed may not ever allow them to build a thing. And once it's built, it may crumbled through an earthquake, because it sits on two fault lines. So it's completely, the population there very much against it protesting all the time, and it's still going ahead, but they're still protesting, and we can still stop it. We just have to keep working on that. South Korea has the second most number of American military personnel stationed on it, and most of them are at the DMC line you'll see there. About 25,000 troops. There has been recent talk that the United States was to return 12 bases in the northern part of South Korea, but the sticking point is the cost of cleaning up all the environmental damage that the U.S. has caused, and U.S. saying that they're not going to pay for it, and that's why, that's a negotiation, and it's, don't get me started. Australia. Australia is a very good relationship with the United States. They partner frequently. Australia's involved, to a good extent, with a rim pack, which is the big multinational wargame exercise in the Pacific Rim. They have several facilities around Australia, but the good news is that there are people pushing back. There's an international peaceful Australian network, or IPAN, that's been formed, that has groups from all over the area. In fact, a member of our board of directors, Liz Womerswa, who lives in New Zealand, actually was a focus speaker at the IPAN conference in Australia, so we do have good connections with the activist groups that are on the ground and in their own countries. The Philippines is no longer a big place for the United States military to work from, but in 1904, Subic Bay was created, which is right in here, and had been used heavily by the U.S. 7th Fleet for ship repairs and refueling, all that kind of thing, and then Clark Air Force Base here in 1945, also massive base, and had lots and lots of activity there. But in 1991, the Philippine Senate rejected the continuation of basing rights and wanted to kick the U.S. out, and so it looked like that was going to happen, and then Mount Mintatubo erupted, which severely damaged both of the facilities, and that kind of facilitated the return of American troops back to the United States, but it kind of collapsed that military infrastructure that we had in the Philippines. Now, right now, they're operating under something called a visiting forces agreement, and that is something between a country's naval forces and the host country, agreements about what kinds of actions that the Navy can do in the waters surrounding Philippines, and for the United States to do their own unilateral exercises, whatever. So the VFA, as long as it's in place, the United States doesn't have to go back to the Philippine government and ask permission to do these things. So it's important to the American government to have it, but in this February, in 2020, the President of Philippines, I know he's called the President, but whatever, Rodrigo Duarte said, he wants them gone. He wants to demolish the VFA too and end it. He doesn't want to cater to the Americans in any way, but a lot of people in the Philippine government disagreed with that, and especially worried about China's influence in the small islands over in this area, the other side of Philippines. And so they put a lot of pressure on him, I think, and so in June of 2020 this year, just a few months after that, they have now imposed a freeze on making that decision to dismantle the VFA. So right now, the Americans have said, thank you, we're really happy that you're not going to dissolve that, and we want to work with you. And anyway, right now the VFA is still in effect, but we don't know what will happen with it. Guam in the Mariana Islands, just to mention here that the United States, all those marines that Futemina, I can't pronounce the name, Aris, the marine mirror base, they wanted to put them somewhere immediately, and Tanopo is going to be a few more years. So they moved a bunch of marines to Guam, and there's resistance there to more troops there, but Guam is considered a territory of the United States that there's not a lot of pushback on that. And a really reprehensible thing that the United States has done in the past and still doing is creating live fire ranges on small islands that hardly anybody live on.  That's happened more than once. So resistance, how can we get these bases closed? I describe what I think of as an inside and an outside strategy. And the inside is working with the Pentagon and Congress to try to find, identify bases, maybe costing a lot, or maybe strategically redundant, or no longer strategic, or important, or whatever, and kind of going to this inside the Beltway idea. There are people, they're a member of this overseas base realignment and closure coalition, or OBRAC. It was formed by David's Vine, I mentioned earlier, and it's a group of people. I represent World Beyond War on it. There are other veterans and professors and think tank people, former representative of Congressmen, and they have contacts with the inner sanctum of how things happen in Washington. It was a big, big eye-opener for me, but these people, they know how to give something before a committee, they know how to lobby. So that's the inside strategy. There's another group, the Black Alliance for Peace has a campaign to shut down AFRICOM. AFRICOM was one of the six areas, and they are also kind of taking this inside strategy, working with the Congressional Black Caucus to work on this issue with that kind of an inside tactic as well. Now the outside strategy is working with groups that are in country that already have their own activist groups and pressure points identified, and trying to support them as much as we can. And then World Beyond War is a charter member of the Coalition Against U.S. Foreign Military Basis and Code Pink and a whole bunch of other organizations are charter members of that as well. And we have had conferences, we have had support actions for resistance in Okinawa, especially, we've never heard of that. And so what is World Beyond War doing? What can we do and what are we doing? We have members in 188 countries around the world, and we are able to talk to all those people in all those places and facilitate networking. And we can tell all the people who live in South Korea who are members about other organizations or groups or people and hook them together in, you know, build, multiply the power that we have by networking. So we have that capability. Education is a big thing. We just recently hosted a webinar in conjunction with Black Lives for Peace and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom on AFRICOM and it was wonderful. It was a really great educational tool. We have data sheets, info sheets. Right now we're getting ready to start a major research project of all the military bases. We have a guy that is going to take this on a professional research giant project that I don't know how to do. And we're going to be able to use that research in the future to lobby and to make points with Congress about what we found out. We can promote and support in-country resistance by letting people know about their activities. We put it on our website by writing articles about it. We can do petitions. We can create actions, all kinds of things. And then I am hoping, it is my dream, my vision, that World Beyond World will become central hub of anything that is against the foreign bases, that we will become the go-to place, that we have all the information, we have all the contacts, we have all the history and the facts. We'll be known as the authority on closing US for a military basis. So we're going to need all the help we can get. If you're interested in helping with anything associated with the campaign, please let us know and I will hook you right up. Thank you so much. Thank you, Leah. That was very educational and I hope that you'll send me the PowerPoint and I can share it in a summary email that I'll send out to attendees. That was wonderful. Okay, I think Hania is going to introduce Molly now. Last but not least, I want to introduce Molly Hurley, who is a former fellow with Beyond the Bomb, a grassroots organization working to prevent nuclear war and now works for them as a fellowship associate. She helps guide the next generation of anti-nuclear activists. In addition, she is conducting her own independent research on nuclear weapons issues, as well as the role that art could play in building the movement for disarmament. She currently serves as a nuclear program fellow for the Prospect Hill Foundation and will even travel to Japan next year to continue her work. Please take it away, Molly. Great, thank you. Let's hear really quickly would it be possible to share our presentation? Sure, let me just make you a co-host. Perhaps while I'm finding your name here, you can just explain some of the work that you've been doing. Sure, yeah, so with Beyond the Bomb at least, we're really focused on getting a diverse set of young people involved in the anti-nuclear movement and educating them on what's happening and giving them a sense of agency over this issue and the Prospect Hill Foundation. I'm kind of focused on continuing my own personal education on current nuclear issues and its history and everything. Let's hear, in addition to that, okay, so let's just jump right into a little a slight just a very brief history of China and its nuclear program to do that look at what it looks like today. So this was from August 2020 by Arms Control Association Federation of American Scientists just put out a new report on China and they now say that China has about 350 nuclear weapons with 270 of those being operational. If you look at reports from the Defense Department, it is going to be a little bit lower. That's because FAS also and it looks like ACA also includes non-operational warheads. What's really significant here is to notice that China has about 300-350 nuclear warheads while the US and Russia have about 6,000 or more. So China's arsenals about 120th the size of Russia and the US. Russia and the US own about over 90% of the world's total warheads and then you can see the other seven countries and the approximate size of their arsenal. Just a really brief overview of China's nuclear program. So they first decided to start developing nuclear weapons in 1955. In 1956, Mal gave a speech on nuclear weapons in which he referred to them as a paper tiger which for a lot of western listeners was very confusing. Just the idea of ever describing nuclear weapons as being sort of an empty threat of made of paper and they're just like a scary tiger but they're made of paper essentially. I guess I'll try to give a really brief contextualization but the idea is that especially under Mao but still today too I would say China looks more essentially what Mao was trying to convey is the idea that it's people and their dedication to politics or ideology or like the cause essentially. Their dedication to the revolution and the cause is what is going to win a war not some not a nuclear weapon or not any amount of technology but like the people's will is what is going to win a war and at the same time they view nuclear weapons as just being a form of political coercion and that perhaps and especially now other countries would hopefully dare not actually use a nuclear weapon due to all the different types of repercussions that there would be should a nuclear weapon ever get used again and now it's essentially just a tool for political coercion. China referred to it as nuclear blackmail back in the day when they were getting pressure from both the Soviets and the US under their nuclear arsenal but anyway so then in 1964 their development was successful they tested a nuclear weapon and on the day that Mao announced they successfully tested a nuclear weapon he immediately announced the policy of no first use in which China pledged to never use a nuclear weapon first in any sort of aggression or war or anything. Their nuclear weapons would be purely for retaliation and another side to that is that they would also never use a nuclear weapon against a non-nuclear state. Let's see here in the beginning they had an idea of socialist proliferation which was a belief in successful development of nuclear weapons or they had a belief that the successful development of nuclear weapons could inspire other post-colonial nations that successful development is possible. The philosophy was abandoned later on and changed to a belief in and a commitment to eventual complete disarmament worldwide but kind of originally what China's plan was to try to replace the sense of terror surrounding nuclear weapons with a scientific understanding. Let's see here pretty much since the get-go China's policy has been one of minimum deterrence and uncertain retaliation so China the details on China's arsenal and philosophies and stuff like that are a little murky one of is because China does is a semi-secretive country but that's also semi-armed purpose too and that they want because of that uncertain retaliation such that if China were to be attacked they are running a huge risk because they don't actually know where China's nukes are a lot of their nuclear weapons their ground-based strategic their ground-based missiles and everything are mobile they kind of just drive around the country and stuff like that so they're harder to target and they and exact numbers and details and everything are a little bit murky as well so that we can't pinpoint exactly China's nuclear capabilities and so there's even more sweat of the uncertain retaliation that they might have. In 1980 they joined the conference on disarmament so what's important to note is that the kind of the hallmark nonproliferation treaty the NPT was open for signature in 1968 and entered into force in 1970 China did not join that and India and Pakistan still haven't joined that in North Korea withdrew from that the reason that India and Pakistan and even Israel never really signed on to it was the belief that the NPT created a type of nuclear apartheid such that there are the nuclear has and then there are the nuclear have not so that's kind of how China felt at first two they didn't really like the superpower model that was that we were trending towards at that time they wanted a more multilateral world so in 1980 they did join the conference on disarmament which was created with the explicit purpose of being a more multilateral environment for negotiations however then in 1992 they did eventually sign on to the NPT part of this was from public pressure to join this and part of this was for a show to their deep commitment to nonproliferation and eventual disarmament just kind of a show of good faith whether or not any of the nuclear armsates who are signed on to the NPT have actually been upholding their end of the bargain is like a whole other conversation but then in let's see I think I think they're signing the NPT though is an example of China's ability to give in to social and community pressure for certain actions which runs counter to the belief that China is immune to these types of pressures as a quote unquote non-democratic state which is one argument against the treaty on the prohibition or of nuclear weapons right now that it's not going to do anything to China because China never listens to its people and I think that is I think that's misleading kind of the same along the same vein in 1996 they joined the comprehensive test ban treaty which was an even bigger show of commitment to the cause because China's nuclear weapons came about 20 years after the US's and then Russia was much before them too they were kind of out of the P5 they were one of the last ones to actually successfully get their nuclear weapons and so then just like 30 years later sign a treaty that they would not commit that they would not do any more nuclear testing is a big show of commitment because it means that by not doing nuclear tests it would really limit the future development of their nuclear program and so I think that if they're signing onto the NPT and CTBT are really significant points in history and then in 1995 they put out their first white paper which is a formal document outlining new their nuclear strategy and the most recent one that came out was in 2019 it's an open it's the quote-unquote open strategic challenge to the US but one that does not have to lead to conflict basically it characterizes their modernization and expansion as purely defensive the US and other major nuclear powers both recognized and unrecognized were also currently pursuing modernization and China's characterizes their being purely defensive especially against the rising aggression from the US and most importantly it reiterates China's desire for a win-win cooperation regarding disarmament and also just like in general diplomacy as well as a recommitment to their no first use policy so a quick look at understanding the problem today first we can look a little bit at New START which is a new strategic arms reduction treaty which is set to expire February 5th it's the last remaining arms treaty or nuclear arms control agreement between the US and Russia that Trump was not going to extend biting houses he will extend it one big sticking point for Trump and why he didn't really want to extend it at first was because he wanted to turn it into a trilateral deal between US Russia and China however if we go back to the beginning of my power point this would have been a completely asymmetrical agreement because China's arsenal is 120th the size of the US and Russia's so China was like no way we're not joining that and then they and then the State Department did use this as a tactic to further villainize and blame China for being uncooperative and everything um let's see here uh Trump has since dropped that it doesn't look like New START's going to get renewed before Trump leaves office uh biting houses that he will renew it that's a whole like US Russia thing hopefully it does get renewed but also moving on I think what's significant is that from the beginning China has always had a no first use policy and a commitment to this and this is something this is the central thing that beyond the bomb is currently working on it's getting a no first use policy from the US as well and there is a House and Senate bill um in Congress that we're trying to build get co-sponsors on so that we can uh put it on the floor for vote and everything um China for years has been trying to encourage the other powers to adopt a policy of no first use um it is a really good important first step to more same nuclear policy um so that all of our fingers are finally off the nuclear trigger um let's see here uh one last thing and then um just looking at US hegemony um the US belief in requirement of nuclear weapons for sake of national security against external threats um and I think um couldn't leave touched on this a little bit too but it's the idea that like the US gets to keep its nuclear weapons to protect itself and its national security and like protect itself from external threats and yet China and North Korea don't um that like they they are too irresponsible for that kind of thing possibly or just a complete lack of acknowledgement of the hypocrisy or lack of understanding of like why China or North Korea might feel compelled to maintain their arsenals against um US aggression and everything um and of course this orientalist belief if they feel that like Pakistan, India, China, and North Korea are too because they are too irresponsible or emotional or willing to sell it or ideological zealots whatever kind of mischaracterization to play to make these people seem that they are less human than and less responsible or rational than US um uh leaders um it's just ridiculous um and I and that's uh something that is really plaguing um our current understanding of these Eastern regimes as well including China I think um let's see here um I think also something that's important to point out is that uh US nuclear weapons are on hair to grow alert meaning that these could be uh um sent off and detonated at literally any moment within minutes um as opposed to China they actually keep their warheads separate from their delivery systems um there are a few that they um keep nearby in case they need to be installed quickly but for the most part um I think that's a really interesting point about China's nuclear arsenal um that also reduces the risk of mistakes being made because they're trying to make decisions too quickly uh which the US is at risk of um if word comes in that there's an incoming nuclear attack on the US the president has approximately seven minutes to decide whether or not to launch a nuclear attack in response and that's definitely not enough time uh because a lot of times that these um that these have come in they've been false alarms we have had uh numerous occasions throughout history since 1945 of false alarms coming in and just like through sheer luck uh we did not start a nuclear war on accident um let's hear but that oh and then also sorry if uh any of you want to contact me or something um this is my twitter as well as my email if you're interested in uh be on the bomb definitely check out our website um if you want to join our fight to get a policy of no first use we also do uh we also we don't just focus on no first use but uh basic anti nuclear anti war things such as defunding the pentagon um and getting new start push through and everything and the prospectile foundation you can uh see brief updates every now and then on my independent work and everything um but anyways that is all i have for now so thank you thank you so much molly hurley with the on the bomb so much information to digest and uh such powerful speakers i want to thank our participants panley david swanson lia bolger molly hurley jody evans it's phenomenal the work that you're doing and i appreciate all the posts in the chat and i want to remind people to save the chat and also ask you we have 67 still with us um if you will join us for an action item now um medea is going to tell us about that well i think maybe we should allow the people who have to go to leave um we're going to do this collective phone calling and see how it goes and this is going to uh senators leaving messages of their machines but we do want to uh say to those of you who came and i know it's late it's been almost an hour and a half pack full of fantastic information i feel like i want to go and listen to everything all over again um so to uh echo marcy and saying thank you so much for those great presentations and we will be uh meeting every week so we will be letting you know about the next one and um marcy anything we for those people have to leave anything you want to add or honey no i just that i i have recorded this on my computer hopefully it's work working out and um i can send it to code pink to have code pink upload it to their site or to youtube and i'll let you know about that um where you can see it uh i do urge you to save the chat there's a lot of excellent information links if you want to get further involved and uh can you tell people how to save the chat in case they don't know sure yeah where it says at the bottom of the chat it says two and then it says file and then there are three dots if you click on the three dots it'll say save chat so save chat there