 Next, we're going to hear a video that was sent to us by someone who I'm sure most of you are familiar with, Professor Vijay Prashad, who's an historian, journalist, commentator, and intellectual. He is Executive Director of the Tri-Continental Institute for Social Research and the Chief Editor of Left Word Books. Emily, if you'd be so kind as to share your screen, here we go. I'm very grateful to join Code Pink on this day, 20th anniversary of the attacks on September 11th on the United States, several targets in the United States. I'm pleased to join Code Pink because after the attacks took place, which killed over 50,000 people, terrible tragedy for many people, working class people in New York City, people who are cleaning the buildings, and so on. In the aftermath of that, the United States government began to prosecute at least two wars, a war on Afghanistan and then a few years later a war on Iraq. And Code Pink, of course, stood firmly against both of those catastrophic wars. Two wars, incidentally, which the United States, by all measures, lost. The United States was ejected from Iraq in 2011 when the Iraqi parliament refused to allow US troops extra-legal permission to operate in Iraq. Of course, the United States remains in northern Iraq under the jurisdiction of the Kurdish autonomous authorities, but by and large the United States was kicked out of Iraq and then in August of 2021, the United States had to precipitously withdraw as Taliban forces gathered and then returned into Kabul. Two wars, which few in the early years, days, were willing to take a stand against. Code Pink emerged as a force to take a stand against them. Thinking about this day, September 11 or 9-11 in the lexicon of the United States, 20 years later, a difficult attack by 19 men, mostly Saudi men, trained by Al Qaeda, that hijacked four planes, two of them went into buildings in the World Trade Center, one hit the Pentagon, third by the courage of people on board the flight, was brought down in Pennsylvania and so on. We commemorate that day when there was this attack on the United States, an attack which provoked some soul-searching in the immediate aftermath. People wrote cover stories of two kinds, the immediate cover story that emerged was, we're all American, you know, new some American as the French papers put it and so on, solidarity with the United States and so on. The second introspection, deeper perhaps, came from even mainstream outlets like Time Magazine asking a fundamental question and the question was phrased in this blunt way, by the way, it's a very blunt framing. They asked, why do they hate us? Why do they hate us was the question asked. Why do they hate us? Well, today we might say, well, you know, if you're going to be doing drone attacks and kill entire families and so on, there's a lot of resentment and anger. We can say of course, yes, you're going to push economic policies of austerity where families can't get access to vaccines, intellectual property right policies, they can't get access to the COVID vaccine, the mRNA vaccine, which by all accounts is a very good vaccine. That's perhaps why people resent the United States and so on. But fundamentally, friends, the answer that didn't come in any of these stories, why do they hate us, was the truth. The truth, for instance, is that the United States did not, after 9-11, enter Afghanistan for 20 years. And therefore, this is a 20 year war that's ended. The United States has been at war with the Afghan people since the 1950s, when the US government has collaborated with far right sections in Afghanistan to undermine the process of humanization of Afghan society and statecraft, modernization of the state institutions. Something that was driven by liberals within the monarchy, including Muhammad Dawood. Afghanistan had several constitutions, the first important one under King Amanullah and Queen Soraya in 1920s. Going up to the constitution of 1964, very farsighted constitution. The United States undermining the influence of the Soviet Union right from the 1950s. In 1953, the Soviets paved the roads in Kabul, that kind of influence. The US government has tried to undermine it. And strikingly in the 1960s, the US government made an alliance into the 70s with really horrible people. Burhanuddin Rabani, for instance, the founder of the Jama'at-e-Islami group inside the University of Kabul, recruited students like Gulbuddin Haqmatyaar, Ahmad Shah Masood and so on. People of real virulence and violence against the population. The US weaponized them, made them powerful, imposed them on Afghan society. It's a very long period of disparagement of the Afghan people's right to create a dignified society into the future. The Taliban is merely a product of the alliance with Burhanuddin Rabani in the 1960s. September 11th, it's not just 9-11 in 2001. Of course, it refers as well to September 11th, 1973, when the United States imposed a coup colluded with General Augusto Pinochet to overthrow the legitimate government, popular unity government led by Salvador Yende. The United States imposed great suffering, imposed terrorism on the people of Chile, the killing of Victor Jara, the killing of thousands of students. That was also September 11th. September 11th, a terrorist attack where the United States colluded with the Chilean military against the people of Chile. It's a terrorist attack we should also talk about on this day. September 11th, 1906, the other important September 11th. In Johannesburg, South Africa, in front of a hall filled with about 3,000 people of Indian descent, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, before he became Mahatma Gandhi, opened a struggle against the racist policies of South African government at the time. 1906, September 11th. He coined the term in public Satyagraha, action on the basis of truth. 3 September 11th. Two of them, terror imposed upon people, the people of the United States in 9-11, which then the US takes to the people of Afghanistan, imposes terror on them. September 11th, 1973, terror imposed on the people of Chile by the United States government. And then September 11th, 1906, when decent people fight back in order to create decency. Can we commemorate September 11th, 2021, make the pledge of action on the basis of truth to prevent these kind of terrible wars, these terrible coup d'etats that bring suffering upon people? Thanks a lot. I want to send my thanks to Professor Prashad for those fantastic words. I do think that they hate us for our freedoms, maybe the most pernicious lie of the 21st century. So we thank Professor Prashad for his fantastic remarks there.