 Cole Harrison. Hania is with Roots Action and Aggressive Democrats of America, Middle East alliances. Cole Harrison is the executive director of Massachusetts Peace Action. Maha Khan is navigating the tech for us. Thank you, Maha. And we have a packed agenda tonight. We're gonna be looking at some updates on Ukraine, on Cuba possibly, if Medea can join us from our book tour. Cole I believe is gonna talk to us about the Middle East and Hania will talk to us about Iran and Wei Yu, who is our coordinator of China is not our enemy campaign with Code Pink is going to deliver some upbeat news. We need all of that tonight as well. And then we'll hear from our featured guests, Phyllis Benes of the Institute for Policy Studies, Scott Horton of antiwar.com, the editor and Eric Sperling of Just Foreign Policy. So we're gonna be looking at the midterms, what opportunities are in front of us that we might take advantage of and what's going on in the world right now. We also have an action, a couple of actions that we ask that you stay with us to take. And one is to say to our Congress members, please do not approve another $22 billion for weapons to escalate the war in Ukraine. We'll be calling them and we'll also be emailing them, but we'll make it easy. Okay, so with that, let's go to Hania for an update. What's going on, Hania? Yeah, before we begin though, I do want to urge everyone to please introduce yourselves in the chat so we know where you're logging in from. Again, it's always a delight to have you. But yeah, I am more than happy, Marcy, to talk briefly about what's happening in Iran with regards to the uprising. Unfortunately, as a result of Iran's crackdown on protesters since the uprising and the sale of drones to Russia, the United States' focus has shifted significantly away from reviving the nuclear deal, otherwise known as the JCPOA, which Tehran has so far rejected also. In speaking to reporters in Paris, Iran's special envoy, Robert Malley, insisted that the United States would leave the doors open to resume diplomacy when and if the time came. But for now, Washington would continue a policy of sanctions and pressures. Malley mentioned that if the negotiations are not happening at the current moment, it's really because of Iran's current position and what has been happening since the month of September with the crackdowns. He says, and I quote, our focus is not an accord that isn't moving forward, but what is happening in Iran, this popular movement and the brutal crackdown of the regime against protesters, and it is the sale of armed drones by Iran to Russia and the liberation of our hostages. And when he's talking about the hostages, he's referring to the three American nationals who happen to be held in Iran, businessman Siamak Namazi, Ahmad Shari, as well as the environmentalist Murad Tahrbaz. Since Iran pulled out of the deal, Iran has continued its nuclear program, installing hundreds of more advanced centrifuges, machines that enrich uranium, increasing the country's ability to enrich well beyond the limits that was set in 2015 under the nuclear deal. Iran began breaching those terms in 2019 in response to the U.S. withdrawing of the JCPOA by President Donald Trump. So we have to see what happens, yeah. Thank you for that update, Hania. All right, Cole, you have an update for us as well. Well, I'm not gonna say much about the Middle East when we have Phyllis on deck as a speaker. So I'll just say that the Yemen war powers resolution still is out there. We have some false moves to deal with, there's the administration anger at Saudi Arabia for reducing its oil production, and but we really need to focus on ending the Yemen war. That's really our issue with Saudi Arabia that has to be in the foreground. And of course in Israel, Palestine, with the new right wing government coming in in Israel, the settler violence unchecked and U.S. impunity, the administration, the Congress, the country has some major decisions to make about whether it's gonna do anything at all about the inclusion of open fascists in the Israeli government. I'll just leave it there. Yes, thank you, Cole, for that update. And now I wanna turn to Wei Yu, who's the coordinator of our CodePink China is not our enemy campaign. What is the promising news tonight? Yeah, so on Monday, President Biden and Xi Jinping met during the G20 summit in Indonesia. They've met previously when Biden was vice president to Obama and this is the first time that they met as heads of state. This is a huge victory for diplomacy and this is a huge victory for peacemakers everywhere. Important dialogues between Beijing and Washington had stopped since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August. This was a huge provocation for China because it altered the diplomatic status of Taiwan and also challenged the one China policy which is the red line for China. And after this slapped in the face, Beijing halted important dialogues such as climate change and poverty and even leading up to the meeting on Monday, political ran a story a couple of weeks ago about how Chinese officials were showing reluctance to move forward with the meeting. Their attitude was you keep shutting us down and refuse to show good faith. So why should we bother talking to you at an negotiation table? And that's really a big start contract for how the mainstream media depicts China. They often paints China as they're just looking to cause trouble or show aggression but really they just want their voice to be heard and want their red lines to be respected. And isn't that just the most human thing? And now the mainstream media were caught by surprise that the meeting went so successful. We've all seen the headline President Biden saying there need not be a new Cold War. And he does not think there is any imminent attempt on the part of China to invade Taiwan. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is also said to visit China soon and communications between Beijing and Washington is back. So during the meeting Xi Jinping said this quote, humanity are confronted with unprecedented challenges. The world has come to a crossroad. Where to go from here? This is a question that is not only on our mind but also on the mind of all countries. And I think that's really just a message of our campaign. China is not our enemy. Our enemy is climate change. Our enemy is poverty. And when diplomacy fails, the world suffers. But when diplomacy succeeds, we can cooperate and tackle all of these great challenges that we face as humanity. So if you would like to stay updated with our campaign, I'm going to drop some information in the chat really quickly. But yeah, some good news for tonight. Thank you, and we need that good news. Thank you so much, Wei Yu, the coordinator of our China is not our enemy campaign. Medea had hoped to join us tonight, but she, as many of you know, is on a busy national book tour, international as well. She's in Canada tonight, promoting the book that she wrote with Nicholas J. S. Davies war in Ukraine, making sense of a senseless conflict. She wanted to talk to us about opportunities, post midterm opportunities to press the Biden administration to take Cuba off the state sponsor of Terror List. She thinks that, well, she's been in meetings with people in the State Department, and now that Democrats can give up on Florida ever becoming blue, or at least in the next four years, looks like, you know, the Republicans swept Florida. So she's hoping that President Biden will no longer be listening to a small, a relatively small group of people who want to continue the embargo and this state sponsor of Terror List. She might have also addressed what happened in Brazil. Good news there with the election of Lula. Defeating Bolsonaro, who really wanted to savage the rainforest, a carbon sink we all need. And President Biden the next day after Lula's election, he congratulated him. And I was just reading today how officials within the Biden administration had basically told Bolsonaro, you better not pull a Trump on us and claim that the election was rigged. You will never get help from us. But you know, I think with Biden's framing the world as a struggle between democracy and autocracy, he very much saw Bolsonaro as representing a Trumpian action. So that's I think what Medea was going to address with us. I think it's time to get into our program. I'm looking forward to our speakers. And while we're listening, Maha's going to post a couple of things in the chat. On her book tour, Medea plays a terrific video. It's 18 minutes that she produced with Michelle Elner at Code Pink and then people debrief it. You can also have a living room discussion watching this video. It's on YouTube and I'm going to ask you tonight, please everyone on the call, just to like the video so we can boost its visibility. All right, thank you very much. Okay, our first guest will be introduced by Cole Harrison. Sorry, you caught me off guard with that one. All right, so Phyllis Benes. Okay, Phyllis Benes is the director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, focusing on the Middle East, US wars and issues at the United Nations. Phyllis will update us on the effects of the US elections on Israel, including an update on the Israeli elections, the possible impact of a Republican-controlled house on the war in Ukraine, a lot to update us there with missiles flying in Ukraine and the impact of European protests to demand diplomacy, not sanctions, also calls from the chair of the Joint Chief of Staff. So Phyllis, the floor is yours. Thanks Marcy, thanks Cole. Thanks to Code Pink and Mass Peace Action and all of you for being with us tonight. There are, as Marcy just said, some fascinating developments today in Ukraine, good, bad and weird. The good news, not just today, but the last several days, is that we've been hearing some significant shifts in the discourse coming out of the Pentagon and the White House and everywhere in Washington about the need for a diplomatic track. We're not hearing the possibility of cutting back on the military track in Ukraine in terms of the billions of dollars that have been sent already. And now there's talk of a $37 billion new request coming from the White House to Congress. But there are hints and a little bit of uncertainty but not dismissing out of hand the idea that we do need a diplomatic track here if there's any hope of finding an end game to this horrific war in Ukraine. We're not hearing much of that in Congress, which I'll get to in a few minutes, but we are hearing it from other powerful voices from the Pentagon, from the White House. And that I think is very good. It means that, among other things, the kind of dismissive attitude and really attacks on the letter sent by the Congressional Progressive Caucus a couple of weeks ago that, as you all know, was ultimately withdrawn within the first 24 hours after it was dropped. That's a good sign that it's no longer being considered political suicide to talk about the need for a diplomatic track. The bad part is today there was a massive escalation of Russian rockets across Ukraine in a number of cities. Again, not seeming to involve Russian troops but long range missiles that are wreaking incredible havoc on a number of cities, particularly aiming at and hitting power grids of various sorts. So the prospects of a very cold winter seems to be looming. And then by the end of today, we saw that there were explosions, what looked to be two missiles, maybe, that may have been Russian missiles that landed in Poland. None of that has been confirmed yet. And it's significant, I think, that neither the Ukrainian nor the US nor NATO officials are rushing to claim that, yes, we know this was Russian missiles and we know that it was deliberate. They're being very careful to say, we don't know that it was Russian missiles. If it turns out to have been Russian missiles, we have no evidence yet that it was deliberate as opposed to a misfiring of some other missiles. So that part, I think, is all very important. The discussions of the NATO obligations, there are some rather bellicose calls coming from some of the Eastern European countries. The Baltics and Lithuania were more active in calling for immediate NATO with engagement. But even there, they're calling for discussions based on Article IV of the NATO Charter, which calls for consultations. They did not call for a meeting based on Article V, which allows, although it doesn't only allow military support, military protection, but that's included within Article V. They were not calling for that. So that's significant. So that's sort of the bad news of the day is that escalation, both in Russian missiles across Ukraine and this now questionable issue of the explosions in Poland. And then the weird thing that happened, which is kind of good, but quite strange. Some of you will know that yesterday, Friday, that wasn't yesterday, that was last Friday, there was a vote in the United Nations calling for support for a request from the General Assembly of the UN to the International Court of Justice, asking for an advisory opinion on the legality or illegality of what they are identifying as the prolonged occupation of Palestinian land, meaning the occupied Palestinian territories, including occupied East Jerusalem. And the yes votes, there were 98 countries who voted yes. Most of NATO voted no with the US and the Brits. But of the countries who voted yes included Ukraine, which was an interesting notion of recognition perhaps on the Ukrainian side of realizing what occupation really looks like and what needs to be done to end it. But given the dependence of Ukraine for US and NATO military support, as well as economic support, it was an interesting expression of independence for them to vote, to support the resolution when the US was leading the opposition against it. So good, bad and ugly to sort of introduce this. The question of the broader issue on Ukraine, we do need an immediate ceasefire that is not based on the balance of forces on any particular day. A ceasefire is not the same thing as the long-term negotiations that will be required. Today, there was a release by Zelinsky, President Zelinsky of a 10-point proposal for peace. It's quite vague, it's quite broad. It was released at the G20 meeting in Bali, but it's significant for a number of reasons. One that it's referenced to the withdrawal of Russian troops and cessation of hostilities, meaning a ceasefire, did not specify from where. So whether they're talking about a complete withdrawal from all of the areas controlled by Russia, or only the territory that has been seized by Russia since the war began in February of this year, very unclear. A lot of other things that are quite vague, but the fact that he released a set of requirements, none of which seemed to challenge any of Russia's red lines. That was, I think, a significant move forward. So there are some opportunities here. I think we're looking at an opportunity to press Congress much harder right now around the need for a diplomatic track. The Biden position expressed in the last couple of days, as well as that coming from the Pentagon, from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and from the Defense Secretary, all pretty much paralleled that letter that was issued by the Congressional Progressive Caucus that was seen as so outside the pale, right? And suddenly that's kind of the legitimate position that's under discussion in all of these Washington arenas. There are both military and political reasons why they may be shifting their position. The economic reasons, the 65 billion that we've spent already on Ukraine, Biden just asking for an additional 37 billion. The military reasons clearly that the notion that Ukraine is going to be able to win some all-sided victory in this war has been pretty much debunked. And I think that this is the moment when we can really be very effective in winning some congressional support for a stronger call, not the kind of tentative reaching out and touching that we're seeing now, but a stronger call saying that we must have a call for an immediate ceasefire and a commitment to whatever diplomacy it takes to bring this war to a halt. Now I know I'm going a bit long. I wanted to just touch briefly on Israel-Palestine. I'm glad that Cole covered some of the quick issues around Saudi Arabia and Yemen. In Palestine, I think most of you will know that we're in the midst of seeing a major escalation of Israeli violence and assaults on Palestinian lives, Palestinian lands. There have been more Palestinians killed this year than any year since 2005. 28 of them have been children. 800 children have been injured this year. The UN has already accused Israel just a couple of days ago of using excessive force specifically against children. So the conditions on the ground are much worse. The new government that was just elected is the furthest right-wing government Israel has ever seen. And it's important to recognize that it's not an outlier government. It's very much reflective of where public opinion is in the country. And unlike here, where you have young people being the most progressive, the least racist, the most open-minded, it's the opposite in Israel. So among Israeli Jews, the most racist, the most anti-Arab, the most Islamophobic, and the most violent are the young people. It's really tragic in terms of what it says about the future. But it does mean that this far-right government that includes the right, the far-right, the extreme right, and the fascist right is very much representative of where public opinion is. There are now some real potential openings here in the US, again, in response to this. There are a number of forces within the State Department and some in Congress who are already talking about how if Itamar Ben Gavir, the farthest right of this collection of right-wingers, is given one of the top ministries, which is quite likely he may well get the police ministry of all things, the public security ministry, that they will not talk to him, they will not engage with him. That it may turn out that it will be somewhat easier to get members of Congress and others to be willing to critique the unchallenged aid to Israel that continues despite all of this when there's this embarrassingly overt fascist presence within the Israeli government. There's some optimism that I think we need to have. One quick thing is that the FBI today just announced that they are opening an investigation of the killing of Shireen Abu-Aqla, which is something that has been demanded by the Palestinian community and by the Palestinian rights movement since the day that Shireen was killed, the US has refused and refused and refused. Today they finally acknowledge that, yes, they are going to investigate rather narrowly only on the question of whether US arms may have been used in the attack that killed Shireen, but that's a major step forward. The Justice for Shireen Act, which now has 19 signatures, should be much easier to get more signatures on. So that's another thing where I think we have some real openings. At the international level at the UN, there's some real motion forward on the question of not just recognizing Israeli apartheid as the appropriate framework, but looking at what do we do about that? And specifically, the question of reopening the committee against apartheid, there's not only the leadership of South Africa and Namibia, but a number of countries, particularly the newly progressive governments in Latin America, in Chile, Brazil and Colombia, there's interest from all of those governments in joining in that effort. So I think again, public pressure there is going to be very important and it's a new moment where despite the really horrific conditions on the ground, there is some reason for optimism that may go forward on the international diplomatic side. And I'll stop there. We can get into more in questions. Thank you. So here we go. Thank you so much. Phyllis Benes of the Institute for Policy Studies. It's always a great pleasure to have you provide all this information and analysis on Codepin Congress. And we're going to be asking questions of you later on in the hour. And now I wanna turn our attention to our next guest. To challenge endless war, we need a strong coalition. We need a diverse coalition. Scott Horton is the director of the Libertarian Institute at LibertarianInstitute.org. He's the editorial director of antiwar.com, host of antiwar radio for Pacifica, KPFK in Los Angeles. He's the host of the Scott Horton show podcast on scothorton.org. He's also the author of Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism and More. Scott will be discussing the role libertarians can play in elevating the antiwar message and the Georgia Senate runoff as well as the next presidential race and anything else he wants to talk about. Welcome, Scott. Thank you very much for having me. It's great to be here. I hope everybody can hear me okay. And hi to my old friend Phyllis. It's been a little while since we've spoken. I'd like to yield the balance of my time to her to go ahead and keep talking about whatever she's saying. I miss interviewing you. We gotta do this again sometime. But listen, I'm very happy to be here. And yeah, so antiwar.com is almost, we're 27 years old now, next month. And I came in a little bit late about 2004, but essentially the core of our mission is we're extremely anti-government free market libertarians. And at the core of the state is the warfare state. As Mr. X explained to Jim Garrison in the movie JFK, what's all this about, man? It's the war power and who has control over the war power. So we want as little war power as possible to go along with the rest of the power that we want us to be as little as possible. So another part, another aspect of being libertarians, of course, is that we're about 1% of the population. And I don't mean the rich. I just mean the very few who agree with each other here about this. And so on one hand, we'd like to make the whole society libertarian, but on the other hand, at least from my point of view and from antiwar.com's point of view, first things first. And I know that I can't convince people to change their entire political perspective or even their personal identity about who they are and what they are to what I want them to be instead. That would be way too much to ask. And frankly, it's not necessary. What I need from people is to just share my priorities, which really are great and smart no matter who you are. So at antiwar.com and at the Libertarian Institute and in my faction of the movement, our priority is always trying to oppose the very worst things the most and first. So yes, we are against the welfare state, but mostly that means we wanna kick bankers off welfare. It means we wanna abolish militarism and the military industrial complex. We wanna separate business and state and destroy cronyism and corruption on behalf of the rich because that is what is the worst aspect of government intervention in the economy is doing favors for the connected at the expense of regular people. And then, of course, the warfare state is the biggest and worst and most important part of that. It never closed it down ever since World War II. And as you guys well know, the doctrine has been since the end of the Cold War, global hegemony, even Russia and China may not be independent from the American Empire in the post Cold War era. And so that's how we got ourselves into a new Cold War right now. And one that as you guys I'm sure recognize is at least ratcheting up the tension. I don't know it's making nuclear war likely, but it's raising the likelihood of nuclear war to higher than it's been since before I was born, since 1962, higher than even 1983 in the height of Reagan's springsmanship in his first term, I think it's clear. And so what I wanna do as a libertarian and as the leader of my own Institute and at antiwar.com is I wanna try to forge coalitions around the most important issues. And so for example, for 20 years, we've been running Phillips, Venice and Pat Buchanan right next to each other as long as they're making a solid point, right? And we featured Nicholas Davies and Medea Benjamin, tens and tens of times, if not hundreds, we've been featuring Davies for years. And so we're extremely, the fact that we're libertarian almost has nothing to do with. You read antiwar.com, you don't really know who we are. We just try to feature the best antiwar stuff from all over the place that we can find. And we have very high standards to find kooky stuff. It's all very good stuff. And, but we're trying to build essentially and set an example of building a coalition that is only ideological in the barest sense that you favor human decency. And you understand that this is not the natural course of events that does not have to be this way at all. We've allowed certain people to make these choices to make it this way and it can be undone. So now this brings us to the problem of our current partisan politics, right? As you have typically what happens is whoever's in power, the group of people, the citizens who represent the other party, the party that lost, get mad at the government, right? So like in the 1990s, the right wing was anti-government because Bill Clinton was in there. And then when George W. Bush was in there, it's not that progressives completely gave up on the idea of the welfare state and the regulatory state, but they certainly were totally against the regime and the torture state and the unitary executive and all the lies and all the torture and all the war and everything that the Bush regime represented at that time. And then of course the right wing loved it, but then they switched when Obama came, they became all very anti-government again. But then we had this funny wrinkle in time where Donald Trump came and the government hated him even more than progressives hated him. And the CIA and the FBI counterintelligence division framed him for treason with Russia, which no matter where you stand on the political spectrum, that just was not true. But they were acting essentially as antibodies trying to protect the state itself from its new elected leader and liberals and progressives by and large sided with the CIA and the FBI and the national security state because anyone to protect us from that goon Donald Trump. And I'm not defending Donald Trump from anyone's perception of him here. I'm completely against the guy wrote a whole book condemning him for genocide in Yemen and the rest. So he's just as guilty as the rest of them. Don't anyone get me misunderstood there. I'm just talking about the effect that he had on the left because he made the left and progressives identify so closely even with the worst parts of the state as long as they were standing against him as we've seen with the rehabilitation of George W. Bush for example, by mainstream liberals. That guy from the media matters the other day, I praised him in like honest good faith for condemning W. Bush and saying, oh, this looks terrible that Bush and Obama are condemning misinformation together because of course he would never condemn Obama but he said, George Bush just lies so much. And I said, hey, good for you for not backpedaling on Bush just because Bush is anti-Trump as so many people are on the left or do in these days. So we've seen then like where we should have a robust anti-war left at least in the House of Representatives there should be, I don't know, 15 or 20 people who give a damn and instead we got four and then they all roll over and back down on a moment's notice as soon as the Twitter swarm comes for them for saying that we should negotiate when we have a hot proxy war right on Russia's border and the fate of all of humanity hangs in the balance but peer pressure and social psychology says that in fact, I forgot the quote was from a Congresswoman a Democratic Party Congresswoman recently was overheard saying, oh, but how would it look if we proposed negotiations? Well, it would make it look like a hero, right? But in their social circles that will mean that their radicals maybe their leftists that they're anti-American that they love Russia and hate Ukraine or whatever they're terrified of the perception if they fight for peace. So that means a couple of things. It means first of all, that the anti-war left and real principle progressives who care a lot more about the issues than they care about the Democratic Party you guys have a huge roto in terms of mercilessly pressuring liberal Democrats from the left and explaining to them how it is that you just absolutely will not stand for them taking the George W. Bush, John McCain line on Eastern Europe or on Yemen or whatever it is where the Democrats is the only thing people like about us is we're less worse on war. That should be y'alls narrative on pressuring the left. And then that means that me and the libertarians and the few paleo conservatives and other non-interventionist right-wingers and we have this huge challenge to try to really educate and inculcate and corral the America first MAGA conservatives or to the right of the conservatives if you want to call them that to the poorer than the conservatives a lower social class than the conservative if the conservatives it's all the country club guys these are the guys that work for them and they should be completely anti-war and MAGA and America first should not mean we wanna leave Russia alone so we can pick on China instead or we wanna leave Yemen alone so we can pick on Iran instead or something like that. But of course as you guys I'm sure I'll recognize the Republican party as it exists today is still George W. Bush's party. It is Mitch McConnell and John McCain and Lindsay Graham's Republican party. And they are to the right of Joe Biden in the worst way on Ukraine for example right now. Here's your appropriation Bill you better sign it and it's more than you asked for and all of that kind of thing is Mitch McConnell's take. So there needs to be and I'm open to ideas because this is I think the most important project in America right now frankly is forcing a civil war on the right between the people who say that they're America first and actually mean it and there are a few people like Thomas Massey you know he's probably the very best of them but even that Margaret Taylor Green no matter what else you think of her on any other issue her attitude on Ukraine is why are we wasting this money? Why are we being reckless and intervening in a fight where we don't belong and all these things which is of course exactly right. And you know you guys might remember in Syria in 2013 after the first big fake Sarin attack well it was real Sarin but it wasn't a sod that did it and Obama almost got us into a war and one of the things that stopped them at that time was Breitbart.com and it was at that time still under the control of Bannon and Bannon put out on Breitbart that we don't wanna do this war and frankly the narrative was that the gas attack is real I guess but we don't care enough about the people of Syria to go and save them, screw them and it was a pretty cynical take it was a pretty ugly take but what it amounted to was marching orders to every talk radio AM host in America and was marching orders to every Republican member of the house in America that we absolutely do not wanna do this and they were unanimous against it the Republicans were completely against it and there were you know the House of Commons gave Obama out and James Clapper gave him an out and he backed out thank God but the anti-war sentiment on the right the idea that we're not gonna follow Barack Obama in the battle we're not gonna take the side of a bunch of al-Qaeda terrorists against a tyrant in a three-piece suit forget it which was essentially the right take that take prevailed and it's not perfect, it's not progressive and it's not bleeding heart and heartfelt and it's not exactly what you guys want but the thing is about it is we can't just like I can't make everybody a libertarian you guys can't make the 99% into leftists they're not you know and so I mean you can't even make the liberals into leftists, right? So that means that we gotta get we got a whole other right half of America that we gotta get good on this and what it all comes down to is social psychology, right? This is what Ron Paul did Ron Paul said I'm a humble old Texas conservative Republican Republican congressman and I say you don't have to believe in this crap it's a bunch of crap and people were like what really? By the millions and millions and millions it wasn't enough to make him president but it set millions of people free tens of millions of people free from feeling like they absolutely had to believe in whatever George Bush was doing or else that meant they were a leftist and they weren't willing to be that, right? And then Donald Trump did it even more he had to because he had to smash Jeb Bush and so in typical Trumpian fashion Trump said going to the Middle East was the worst decision any American president ever made on any issue ever, how do you like that? And then he said to the American right in that right and they said if you say so Donald and followed him and they forsook Bush and remember McCain and Romney wouldn't dare and they lost Donald Trump got up there went full jihad against George Bush and his legacy broke from it and won and so that made a major change in the minds of people on the right and so it's something that all of us have to figure out how to exploit in the best ways that we can and they're even when you're dealing with your liberal representatives that you can say look we can't be to the right of Rand Paul on this we can't be to the right of Mike Lee on this we got a handful of American first years who want to back down and we're going to be worse hawks than them, right? So we're providing some talking points for y'all and for your own and some perception points for you guys in order to fight your best fight that look we can't let these Republicans make a mockery out of us when we got and look let's be real look at the Yemen resolutions it's almost entirely Democrats who signed on to that thing there's what five Republicans who signed on to the House version so far none in the Senate so I'm not don't get me wrong what I'm saying here that like the Republicans are better now or whatever I'm just saying that this is what we have to work with and we desperately need 51 votes right? We desperately need caucuses of different factions of people up there who will refuse to appropriate money for these things and so look for your allies where you can get them Pap you can and yeah I'm sure that you guys really don't like his take on a lot of things but you know what I bet you really like his take on a lot of things too and be surprised how good he is on China and be surprised how much mileage you could get with your right wing brother-in-law by showing him a good Pat Buchanan article you print it out from antiwar.com that look you know Pat was Nixon and Reagan's guy and he's still for the old Cold War he doesn't even take back support in Vietnam but he's saying right now in every mind Russia he's saying we don't need to pick a fight with red China big red flag with its yellow star and everything and Pat Buchanan says come on Nixon made peace with them 50 years ago we can get along with them if Nixon can make peace with Mao then we can get along with Xi says Pat Buchanan right so now I know that that's what Phyllis Bennis thinks too and I'll cite Phyllis Bennis all day but I'm just saying sometimes you gotta cite Pat because it depends on who you're talking to you know so I'll be quiet now but I guess that's the challenge for us right is keeping in mind these partisan politics and what we can do to manipulate these people and I guess I'll say one last thing is me and my faction took over the libertarian party last May and it was always run by a bunch of blue pill dunderheads who want a flat tax or some crap that nobody cares about right but now it's me and my guys that run the thing and so the first thing we did was sign on to this Yemen campaign and do everything we can to corral our people and we've had a few fits and starts it's been a bit of a regime change but it's not over yet right and now the election's over and I actually know a guy who knows Mike Lee's son and I've met Mike Lee before so I'm gonna try to get on the phone with the senator and see if I can get him to take the lead on this and I already know from talking with Hassan al-Tayyab that if Mike Lee will lead in the Senate on the right then there's about four or five more who will come with him but he's gotta go first because they're a bunch of cowards so even Rand Paul can you believe you got Ron Paul's son but anyway Oh Ron, thank you Scott Well Scott we're gonna get back to you when we do our campaign you've given us a lot to think about in terms of building coalitions and pressuring those who purport to be progressive to say stop, stop all the war funding and you're very entertaining, thank you. Next we have Eric Sperling and Hania Jodat of Roots Action and Middle East Alliances with Progressive Democrats of America we'll do the introduction. Thank you Marcy and thank you Scott my goodness host of Anti-War Radio for Pacifica 90.7 FM Honor and a privilege to introduce our next guest Eric Sperling who is the Executive Director of Just Foreign Policy earlier in his career Eric worked as a senior advisor and counsel to the offices of Congressman Ro Khanna and Congressman John Conyers he has a Juris Doctor from Georgetown University Law Center and Eric will talk about the impact of midterms the geopolitics in the Middle East foreign policy with a laser focus on Yemen and Saudi Arabia so take it away please Eric. Yeah thank you so much and good evening everybody. This is an incredibly, too incredibly difficult speakers to follow so I'm gonna have to take the issue with the booking on this but you know do my best. You know a lot of what Scott is going over is kind of overlaps with some of the same work you know Scott's been one of our really fantastic kind of right-leaning voices on Yemen and I thought we would maybe start talk a little bit about Yemen and Saudi policy. I think we're still waiting to see how this election is gonna fully play out. Part of it is because of the very thin majority the thin majorities on both sides. I think there wasn't exactly the in some ways the pro-Trump wave that was expected the kind of Trumpian wave was something that some folks thought would work to peace activists advantage on certain issues like Ukraine that wasn't necessarily the case with Saudi Arabia. And so I think we're kind of getting a sense for how this is gonna play out and where some of these Republican members are gonna land on some of our key issues. From our perspective and as Scott mentioned the number one issue one of the most important issues in the world would be the Yemen is the conflict in Yemen that's been going on for over seven and a half years. I've been, we've been working on that as a staffer starting back in April, 2015 and made a lot of progress. Many of, I know I see lots of activists on this list who've made huge contributions to that over the years and recently, little by little we've been able to limit US support for that Saudi led coalition. Unfortunately, it was Tony Blinken who was in Tony Blinken was actually in he was actually in Riyadh to announce back in April, 2015 full US support in terms of weapons transfers and intelligence but little by little we've been able to chip away at that using different congressional maneuvers. And the US Biden actually became in announced that there was be very limited that they would limit US support to only defensive support, not offensive support. But unfortunately that court has not been clearly defined and the support that the US is giving is enough to allow the Saudis to remain in Yemen continue their bombing campaign and continue a blockade that essentially prevents Yemen from conducting normal economic activity and is probably the main factor in why Yemenis have up to about 20 million people who are dependent on aid and who are facing hunger. So some of you may have heard there's been an effort that Scott mentioned as well called the War Powers Resolution. We passed a version of it through the house and Senate under Trump who vetoed it. And we have a new version that would end all US support for that Saudi coalition. And we're hoping that we have over just we have over 120 co-sponsors in the house and Senate on that already including about a dozen Republicans so far. And given that Russia that Saudi Arabia made this decision that was perceived as being helpful to Russia by raising cutting up the OPEC production and which was perceived as being an intent to help Republicans win and Democrats lose there is a lot of sentiment. There's been a lot of statements from even more pro-Saudi or hawkish members against Saudi. So the big task now coming out of this election is to force that vote in the Senate and then pass it in the Senate and pass it in the house and send it to President Biden's desk for signature. So you could actually, Code Pink will have the resources but we have such a great group of activists on this call. You can look and make sure see if your member of Congress or Senator is on. And that would be an incredibly, yeah, that would be an incredibly useful thing to do because by ending the Saudi ability to bomb Yemen and to blockade Yemen, Yemen's economy could actually recover and they could actually work out their political issues among the many people without Saudi influence in US influence. So I just wanted to say that that's our main priority in terms of Yemen and kind of the role of the Saudis. But then more broadly I thought we don't have Medea, right? So I could do a quick pre-Flat and America review could be helpful. And I think in general, it's also a really interesting time. I think one thing I would say is a congressional staffer, former congressional staffer and someone who likes Scott, works on, we work with the left and the right whenever it's possible is it's a really contradictory time in many ways. And I think it's a very unpredictable time that is both obviously horrifying when it comes to the fact that we have an active proxy war on the border of a nuclear power. But then we also see now basically the administration coming out supporting the progressive caucus, pro diplomacy perspective. We've seen the Biden administration kind of pursue a pretty basically adhered to many of Trump's sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela on one hand and on the other hand, they're recognizing Lula and trying to undermine the right in Brazil. And I think then you have a whole, on one hand we have the progressive caucus with a bunch of new young members. We have a 26 year old Cuban American left wing progressive joining the squad. We have the squad growing, the progressive caucus growing on one hand, on the other hand, we have Republicans taking the majority in the house. And so I think, but of course that Republican majority is not, we don't know how they shake out. So all that to say is, I think it's a time where we are gonna see obviously committee chairs go to the Republicans. Many of them are gonna be more conservative or even more, they're not even gonna pay lip service to our issues. But on the other hand, there may be opportunities to connect with your members, your representatives in ways that were not previously possible. Maybe they're Republicans or non-interventionists or maybe they're Democrats who are hawkish. And if you can just win them on a little, win them over, it could make a really significant progress. Or maybe your member is a super progressive squad member and they just need a local person to pressure them and kind of get them engaged on foreign policy issues like Co-Pink does so well. But I think there are some real opportunities because we also see it not just to touch on Cuba and Venezuela sanctions policy. We're seeing a dynamic now that the Trump sanctions policy that he largely put in after Obama had done somewhat of an opening and the economic picture was better in Cuba has led to basically a mass migration spike from both Cuba and Venezuela that we saw most recently with DeSantis, weaponizing that for political purposes. And so there's even an opening in Cuba and Venezuela policy now where the administration is actually having to look at these hard line Trump sanctions and say, if we don't end these, we're gonna have to deal with this migrant crisis that are even democratic cities are struggling to deal with. So there was just a very interesting time where I think it's a great time for all these great activists to really connect with your member of Congress and their foreign policy staff, get to know them, whether they're on the right or left. Exactly as Scott said, and try to identify, what is their interest? Because even if maybe on 90%, whether they're a hawkish Democrat or whether they're a dovish or any interventions for Republican, maybe 90%, you don't agree with them on, but maybe there's that 10% issue. And I think there's gonna be some space for making arguments that we haven't made in the past and potentially building coalitions we haven't built yet. So that's kind of my general take. Thank you so much, Eric Sperling of Just Foreign Policy and we're going to be asking Eric and the others questions in just a minute. But first, we're gonna take an action. We have an email that we are sending to our members of Congress. As Phyllis mentioned, Biden has asked Congress for another, I think 37 billion for Ukraine, 22, about 22 billion for weapons and military training. And we are going to urge our members of Congress not to approve more of these allotments because they only escalate the war. They serve as a disincentive to actually an actual ceasefire and peace talks. So if Mahai, if you could be so kind as to post in the chat, that one click, there we are. Take action, tell Congress to vote no to escalating the war in Ukraine. So please, if you could all do me a big favor, you could pick a big favor, do the world a big favor and click on that and say enough, stop. We're spending about what, six billion a month or so on Ukraine, much of it for weapons and what do we have? What is the result? People say, oh, we got to keep funding these weapons because the Ukrainians are winning on the battlefield. It just took back Kursan, kicked the Russians out. Well, what did we see today? We saw Russian retaliation. So it's just a game of not a game. It's a matter of escalating. And it's very frightening, as we all know. So if you could do us a big favor, please click on that link, undertake action and fill it out. We're gonna go to the Q&A and then we'll come back for another action where we actually do get on the phone and participate in what we call a capital calling party. So Mahai, if you could please spotlight Phyllis and Eric and Scott. And we're also gonna bring on Alan Minsky who is one of our participants who is the chair of Progressive Democrats of America. So Alan is going to say a few words about his thoughts on the election and opportunities for a progressive foreign policy. And I know we're putting you on the spot, Alan, but you always managed to show up. I have a National Football League Players Association, Colin Kaepernick, short gone. And I just actually wanna point to that in saying in terms of foreign policy solidarity with the workers of Qatar and this large spectacle is gonna be taking place in the Middle East. And it's all these stadiums that are gonna be hosting soccer matches where the product of what really amounts to almost near slave labor. So lifting up international labor rights has to be central to US foreign policy going forward. Then one of the things I do wanna say is in the coming weeks and I've been talking to Dennis Gucinich, of course, an old friend of PDA. Folks don't know PDA was founded coming out of the Gucinich campaign. And Dennis and I have been talking about trying to convene a forum. Of course, we'd invite Code Pink along and we'd love to have Phyllis Benes participate, of course. And maybe Scott even, but maybe Scott won't like the framing, which is that we wanna talk about what a progressive foreign policy really would look like and try to get that with some clarity because we all in PDA were very happy as the organization that drafted Bernie to run for president with the two Sanders campaigns. But even if he did strengthen his foreign policy voice more in the second campaign, it still really wasn't a central aspect of his campaign. And I think to a great extent, the Sanders campaigns, the left generally is a bend in the United States in recent decades a rather amorphous thing. And I do think in many respects at domestic policy, the Sanders campaigns really defined well what a progressive electoral platform would look like going forward, but not so much on foreign policy. And so we really wanna, especially because there's been a lot of contestation among progressives around Ukraine and Russia, we think it's important that we try to really convene people, have dialogue going and really set a template and try to set a template. I mean, we don't know if we'll achieve that for what a progressive foreign policy could be going forward. And so we look forward to everybody's participation as for the midterm results. I have to confess that I was on, as I think I wrote to Marcy in the chat and a few other people, I was on a call for much of this with people in Georgia. And I am not the most salient person on the results. I think, I was hoping, given how insane the Republican party was, especially coming out of the summer when the inflation reduction act had passed that the Democrats would maintain that message with that momentum with some very strong messaging around democracy on row on calling out the Republicans on not having a policy on inflation, putting forward a positive progressive policy on domestic inflation issues. And thereby holding out to the house, getting to 52 senators codifying row in the John Lewis Voting Rights Act when I'm disappointed that they didn't do that. But I know it wasn't as bad as it could have been. I think in all of this, in terms of foreign policy, and again, I did miss the dialogue. It's, you know, again, was reduced to being a very minor component of the national election and national dialogue. And we have just this incredibly hot crisis going on that is incredibly terrifying. And again, I think we need, you know, wiser minds like those who are collected here to have a stronger voice in the national dialogue and PDA exists to help elevate them. So thank you, everybody. I don't really have a question for anybody, but Scott, it's great to see you. Thank you, Alan. It's great to see you. I'm so glad to have you. Scott and I were at KPFK together for years. So I'm so glad that you could join us for this Q&A. So I'm gonna start with the first question that honey will ask a question. Cole will ask a question. We'll see how much time we have left. We do have more action and we want everybody to stick around. So here's my question to you, Scott Horton, since you are with the Libertarian Party and your slate or your group took it over from what you said. That's what I got. The question is about Georgia. Okay, so the last time I checked, the Libertarian candidate is a Chase Oliver or Oliver Chase? I always get them. Chase Oliver. Chase Oliver, okay. So he garnered about 81,000 votes, something like that. And Warnock beat, or he was up about 35,000 votes. So is there an opportunity in Georgia to inject Ukraine, foreign policy, China into an election that as Alan said, has been almost devoid of discussion about foreign policy? Is there an opportunity here? And is the Libertarian Party interested in seizing this opportunity? Yeah, well, okay, so that's a couple of things. First of all, I guess he's out now. Now it's just the runoff between the top two and so whatever opportunity there was. I just want to clarify, but he could carry some weight. Oh, sure. No, look, so this is my whole extortion strategy for the Libertarian Party. And I think, you know, the Libertarians, we are separate and different from the left and the right, but what happens is you end up having Libertarians without, you know, with maybe some good economic understanding, but not too much vision who just want to run against the Democrat and the Republican equally in every election. And I say that's just spitting in the wind. That what we ought to be doing is especially targeting Republican incumbents and ruining their lives and being clearly the ones who ran essentially to the right of them and make fun of them as fake constitutionalists and rhino big spenders and, you know, thinking about like Ted Cruz, he's not a real conservative, right? He's a George W. Bush kind of centrist who pretends to be a right winger. So we would attack him as a centrist pretending to be a right winger, ruin his race and then essentially tell the Republicans as long as you keep nominating candidates that we hate, we will keep helping the Democrats beat you. And we can say honestly, at least most of the time that we really don't like, we really, you know, maybe hate the Democrat even more than you guys, but we're willing, I mean, they want to take our guns away and stuff, but we're willing to screw you guys over for them unless you do what we say, like for example, on one major state issue where we can really wield our margin effectively that directly impacts foreign policy is the defend the guard legislation. And this is legislation that's been essentially, you know, promoted by Ron Pauli and Republicans on the state house level and state Senate level over the past few years. And it's legislation that says it would be illegal. The governor is forbidden from giving the national guard soldiers over to the president to use in any foreign conflict unless they have an official declaration of war from the Congress, like in article one, section eight clause 11, which as we all know, they'll never do the last time they declared war was against Romania in 1945. And I mean, pardon me, in 1942. So this is something where we're using Madison and Jefferson's nullification and interposition against the warfare state. And we can use, so it's a two-pronged thing. First of all, we can extort Republican candidates. Yes, we can split the vote against you and make sure you lose unless you do what we say. And then our ransom demands are very reasonable. Past defend the guard, you know, legalized pot, whatever, a couple of things, legalized constitutional carry, two or three things on our most important agenda. And then we can pull a punch and we can stay out of their way. And if we want, we could even run to the left of the Democrat next time if that's the way it comes down. And so then that way, we are, look, it's a marginal party. It only ever is gonna be, what are we gonna, we're about to replace the Republican party as the right-side coalition party in America? No. So instead, we gotta take our margin and figure out a way to wield it in a way to make Republicans hate and fear us. And they do already. Like in Texas, they just spent millions of dollars to try to keep us off the ballot. And if you guys saw on Twitter after the election, there's all of this hatred for libertarians from the right. And libertarians were saying, no, it's not our fault. And I'm saying, yes, it is our fault. That's exactly what it is. We did this to you and we'll do it to you again. And I think that this is exactly what the Green Party should be doing to the Democrats too. That when you have a particularly egregious, you know, so-called liberal center left, Warhawk, Hillary Clintonites, that you run hard against just them, leave the Republican alone. I mean, what the hell? Is this the system we're stuck in anyway? And show them that you have the power to ruin their day. And show them also that you have the wisdom to pull a punch against them if they do what you say. Well, I absolutely agree with you. I ran against Jane Harman a few times. Yeah, there you go. The left of Jane Harman. Jane Harman. So absolutely, we need primary challenges. All right, Hania, next question. Thank you, Scott. Sure. Thank you, Scott. This question is for Phyllis. And I do want to invite for all of our guests to participate in answering this question. But with the formation of the fascist right wing Israeli government now, do you think that the Biden administration is less likely to align with Israel in policy or is it going to remain the same? And you mentioned something about the younger generation of Israelis now supporting this right wing political formation even more. What do you think is the cause of this? Well, the second part of the question first, this isn't something new. This has been true for probably 25 years now that the youngest cohort in Israel is the most supportive of anti-Palestinian, not just rhetoric, but actual violence and policies by the Israeli state and by the settlers. The settler youth are by far the most dangerous, most aggressive in attacking Palestinians, destroying olive trees, shooting up houses, all of those things. It's primarily the young people that are leading that. Older people are certainly following along. The reasons for it are a bit complicated. I learned something the other day that I hadn't ever known before. There's a tradition in Israel, unlike in this country and some other countries that I know of, of young people, teenagers, rebelling against their parents, which often takes the form of rebelling against the politics of the parents, joining a different political party, becoming a radical if your parents are right wing, conservative Christians, for instance, all those things. In Israel, that's not a tradition among Israeli Jews. And so one effect is that the farthest right wing parties, their children tend to grow up and embrace those same far right ideas and actions. And because those parties which generally are the religious nationalist right, they're the most extreme ones, they also have far more children. The average per woman in the most extreme parties is 6.2 children per women, babies. Of the secular women, it's something like 2.3, something like that, it's three times as much. So those populations inside Israel are growing far faster than the secular populations that are much more likely to be on the liberal-ish side, liberal only in the context of Israel, because anywhere else it would be right wing, whatever. But in the Israeli context, those are the liberals. The actual left in Israel, and there is a left in Israel and they are brave and smart and incredible. And I know most of them and they could fit in my living room. That's the real problem. It's not that they're not good, hardworking, incredibly dedicated people. It's just there's not very many of them left. They have a very hard time. And I don't believe that they are in a position to be able to have the influence that is going to transform that society from the inside. I was on a panel a day or two ago with Gideon Levi, who's a wonderful Israeli writer for Haaretz. And he said this, he said, for any of you who are waiting for the Israeli leftists to convince the population to change, it ain't gonna happen. He was like very powerful about that notion. And I tend to agree that it's really going to be a question of power from outside, which means everything from the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement that will have an impact on the lives and economy and cultural access and all those things for Israelis, for Israeli Jews and pressure from the United States government, meaning for example, if we stopped paying what we are now paying, which is 20% of the entire military budget of Israel, it might begin to be felt a different way by Israelis. There's all those factors that come into play. The first part of your question, wait, it was not about the young people, what was that part? I forgot it. But Biden administration. Yeah, I think this comes back to us. Left to his own devices, I think Biden would maintain exactly the position that he has taken since the day he took office, which was, although he said as a candidate, I don't agree with what Trump has done. And he implied, and in some cases made clear, he didn't agree with anything Trump had done, moving the embassy, recognizing the annexation of the Golan Heights saying that settlements are legal, all of those things, he disagreed with all of them. But he has not changed them. And so they are no longer Trump's policies that he agrees with or doesn't agree with, they are now Biden's policies. After almost two years, it's too much already to say it's just left over. So these are his policies. The only one he has changed, and because this one only required him to say something was I don't think that annexation is acceptable. But formal de jure annexation doesn't yet exist. So it's kind of easy to not be, to be against that because it doesn't exist. The things that do exist, like the new embassy that's being built in Jerusalem on land stolen from private property, you'll like this one, Scott, private property owned by a Palestinian family is the land that the new embassy is gonna be built on. Biden seems fine with that. He's fine with what the statements, the really anti-Semitic statements that Trump made regarding his support for Israel. When among other things, he told a room full of wealthy American Jewish donors to the Republican party, he said, I was standing with your prime minister when I announced our recognition of the annexation of the Golan Heights. And not one of them in the room said, Mr. President, excuse me, we are Americans. We're not Israelis. He's not our prime minister. You're our president. God knows they would wanna say that. But yeah, he's their president. They don't have a prime minister because they're not Israelis. And no one called him out for that kind of anti-Semitism. In the same meeting, he looked out in the audience and identified the two biggest donors to settlement causes inside Israel and to the Trump wing of the Democratic party, which was Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam. And he talked about the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital, the undivided capital of Israel only. And he looked out and he said, Sheldon and Miriam, I did it for you. Now, if anybody wonders if he is pandering to his funders, the ultimate kind of Jewish money accusation, nobody called him on it. Jewish Voice for Peace called him on it. The Left called him on it. But nobody in his circle of the Republican party, of the Republican Jewish coalition, I think they're called, nobody called him on it. So his combining of anti-Semitism with support for Israel remained. I don't think that Biden is going to change Left to his own devices. That's why we can't leave him to his own devices. We need to significantly escalate the pressure on Biden and on Congress. This is the moment to say, we can't any longer accept this notion of providing all these weapons to Israel when they are assaulting children in Gaza by saying, well, yeah, we don't like that part. But on the other hand, Israel's a democracy. Israel's the only democracy in the Middle East. Israel is our friend. Israel is our ally. We can't say that anymore. Okay. Do you think Netanyahu will be harder for Biden to get along with compared to Bennett or easier? Because they know each other. Let's hear from some of our other guests. I think Eric has a thought about that. Biden and the new Israeli government. And I mean, I don't have anything in particular on that. I mean, I had to fill this as a true expert on this, but I haven't thought about anything else. All right, Cole, you have a question? Well, my question is, I think there, in terms of tactics, we heard from several of the speakers a bunch of things that may present opportunities in Congress. And yet to me, we've really experienced a sea change in foreign policy with the open proxy war with Russia and with the escalating tensions against China. So I'm struggling to find a reflection of that in our politics. This is like a big, big change in what's been going on. We do see a bunch of Republicans that are running against the Ukraine funding, but they're probably even more hawkish on China than anybody else. I might not be completely right about all that. And then the progressive Democrats have kind of collapsed and aren't putting up any opposition. They turn tail. I mean, I don't know they're making it come back again because Bernie and that whole wing are like, yeah, it's democracy versus authoritarianism. We're fighting for holy Christian soldiers. I don't Christian soldiers. So I just don't know where this is gonna go politically because sure, we might have some tactical openings, but fundamentally we have a consolidation of both parties on a really aggressive foreign policy that's gonna lead us lead the world to oblivion. And so the question is, where are the openings to challenge endless proxy wars? If I can just jump back in on this one, I think that you're absolutely right, Cole, about the urgency of this and the intensity of it. I don't think it's easy, but I think in the last week, it got easier when we saw the reversal of positions coming from the Pentagon and the White House that essentially embraced the terms of the letter that had been drafted and distributed early by the Progressive Caucus. So that letter was, it was a great move and it was completely insufficient relative to what's required, but it was a crucial first step. I mean, these are members of Congress. These are not our movements. So given that, the letter was a great step forward. It was really unfortunate that they felt compelled to, I mean, the attacks were incredibly vicious and intense and I understand why they withdrew it, but it was a terrible thing to do. I think that we now can take up that same position, point out whether we talk about that letter or not, and it's probably not worth much at this point to be talking about it as the political pressure point, but recognizing that that is now the officially acceptable position for discourse across the line in Washington, in Congress, in the White House, in the Pentagon, in the State Department, in all of these arenas. And that means in the pages of the mainstream media, in the radio talk shows, in all of the places where we can reach people. Yes. And I think this gives us a new opportunity to do that. Absolutely, and I wanna follow up with a question to Eric and Alan, if you have any thoughts on this, we wanna bring all of you into this conversation. Lately, we hear from Mark Milley, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, there's a big New York Times article focused on his call for urgent serious diplomatic efforts to resolve this war before it widens. And then people are sending the emails, is he the next to go? Is he gonna be fired or replaced, or is he, is this part of some sort of good, good, what do you say, goodbye? Good guy, bad guy, kind of game? What do you think, Eric? Yeah, no, I think it's a great question. I totally kind of share Cole's concern. I mean, it just feels really dark with the nuclear conflicts, and then you see the progressive caucus being pressured out of the letter. I will say on the upside, of course, there is this odd part of the conservative movement that I mean, some of it is odd, some of it is what I could say, Marjorie Taylor Green, there's some sentiment there, but there's also, of course, our principled libertarians like Scott. There's a lot of hope there. And then I will say you've seen people like Ro Khanna and AOC was recently quoted, she's defended the letter, and she was quoted in New York Times defending the letter. And so I think that that sentiment, in most of the writing on what's been done, people still believe that that sentiment is there, that the letter retraction hasn't dimmed that sentiment, I think. And I think, when you look at the polling, there are tens, if not over, maybe even depending on the polling question, hundreds of millions of Americans who are taking positions that are pro diplomacy or pro de-escalation on Ukraine. So there's some hope there. The other thing I would say is this war effort does rely on this kind of sanctions approach that the US has done, I mean, they started obviously with Korea or Cuba, and then they keep doing bigger and bigger countries. And now they've tried to sanction the world's biggest energy exporter. And that has been really tough and been really hard on Europe. So on one hand, while it feels like there's a total unanimity, kind of everyone behind the war effort, the reality is that it's shown that it has extreme costs for the US and Europe as well. And I think there's gonna be increasingly a case to make that. And I think the White House knows this as well, that there's gonna be economic blowback in the US and Europe if they don't wind up with the economic impacts on the part. And so I think there's a lot of hope there and that'll be there sometime as well. If I could jump in here for a second, I wanted to say that I think, you know, I saw a question, I hope I can do a twofer here, kind of I saw a question in the chat earlier about, well, what opportunities do we have to work together with these different groups? Or in fact, the question was, how in the world can leftists work with right-wingers when we disagree on so many things? And I think the answer there is just call me. And you know, all me and the libertarians will serve as kind of the middlemen between the left-wingers and the right-wingers. And we can do this, we're doing it right now on the Yemen resolution. So there's this left-wing group called Demand Progress, which they may be here tonight. I don't know, thank you if you are. They're a nonpartisan progressive group and they host this website. It's just 833 STOP WAR. And me and Hassan Tayeb did some work and kind of rewrote it and got it. Essentially where you go there, it's a very simple website. It has four or five bullet points on the Yemen war and it has talking points on the war, including if your congressman is a Republican or a Democrat, talk to him this way, tell him this or tell him that. And if they're good on it, then tell him this, this kind of thing. It's 833 STOP WAR if people want to look at that. And then so what we're doing is, there's, and already the Quakers and all these different left-wing groups, there's like a hundred groups working together on this thing already, right? And then, but I'm friends with some of them. So they kind of brought me in on this thing, Aisha Juman and Hassan Tayeb and some others. And so then I got the Libertarian Party and Young Americans for Liberty, which is a great kind of young Republican group, but they're Ron Pauli and Republicans, which means they're anti-war. And I got them and they're like on 500 college campuses and this and that. So I'm trying to get everybody and I'm pressuring them to kind of get this restarted in the email group there to get this thing going. So then the answer to the question is like, how do left-wingers and right-wingers work together when you don't like each other? The answer is just do the same thing at the same time if it's something that you agree on, right? Like we all were against bailing out Goldman Sachs. The only people wanted to bail out Goldman Sachs are people who are billionaires and higher and literally the 99% were against that. We can all oppose that at the same time without necessarily all hanging out together and pretending we don't disagree on other things. And so that's what we're doing with this Yemen thing is we've got all these left-wing groups and then we've got these conservative and libertarian groups, taxpayer groups and these other groups all doing the same thing on Yemen. And then I know that this audience probably understands probably better than anybody that this is the worst war in the world, worse than Ukraine. Ukraine just has the potential to be the worst thing that ever happened to humanity. But the actual worst war in the world right now is the war in Yemen that's not quite over and that's cost hundreds of thousands of civilian lives over the last seven years, eight years almost and which America is entirely responsible for. And even though it doesn't get a whole lot of press, it's when we're here we have active, no-fool and real war powers resolutions in both houses right now. And when in the last 20 years have the people of the country had a chance to work together to essentially, you know, demand to beat Congress over the head and demand that they pass a resolution that would make a war illegal. And it's true that Trump vetoed it last time. I think Biden would have a much harder time vetoing it. And then imagine that if we can end the year, guys, we're actually getting this thing through or at least we got it through the house. And in January, we got to work on the Senate. I don't know. And then we have this huge, that's to me would be the hugest victory of almost the whole terror war era right there. And then we have that to build on and we get that resolution pass. And then we spend, and you know, I know we got to kind of do both things at the same time too, but then we can make a real effort and see that we just set the precedent of what we can do about Ukraine and what we can do about China too. We'll do another version of 833 stop war, click here to go to our China page, click here to go to our Russia page, click here to go to our Yemen page. And then we all do this stuff at the same time. And we can coordinate that and left-wingers and right-wingers can coordinate it by way of calling me. Do the same thing at the same time. Thank you, Scott. We're gonna end with Alan. He's got his hand up. It shouldn't end with me because everybody else on the panel has thought through this a lot more than I have been crunching numbers and running elections over the past two weeks. And a lot has happened on foreign policy. But I do think that Scott is pointing to something that I do understand from the makeup of Congress. Is Scott right? We should be able with the Republicans who will pull in on the Yemen and the war powers resolutions. This is a very real possibility for passage in this upcoming- We got more co-sponsors now. Last time we had 96. Now we got 116. And so we passed it with 10 fewer at least co-sponsoring it last time around. So yes, absolutely we could do it. That's a great promise for the upcoming Congress. Thank you. Yeah. All right. So it is now a 620 Pacific time and we have one other action. So I'm gonna ask everybody to please stay with us. You've been with us for the last hour and a half almost. So please stay with us for our capital calling party. We're gonna be actually calling members of Congress and saying no more money for escalating this war in Ukraine. We don't want you to vote for this 37 billion. They need to hear from us. But first I'm gonna ask you to unmute and everybody thank our guests. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you guys. Great to see you. Thanks. Bye Derek. Okay. All right. We have about 117 people on the call. So let's take the action right away. Let's take the action, yeah. So Maha here she got here. She has posted it in the chat. We've got the phone number 202-224-3121. My name is and I'm your constituent in zip code whatever. And the key ask, please vote no on President Biden's latest request for an additional 37 billion for Ukraine. Most of that money will be spent on weapons, military training to escalate a war that threatens to engulf all of Europe and provoke a nuclear confrontation. We urgently need diplomacy. We need a ceasefire, not more weapons for Ukraine. So let's get on the phone and Maha if you're able to put that on the screen that would might be helpful too. But we can start our calls and at some point maybe we'll hear a little music as well. I'm gonna call. I'll put myself on mute. What's the number again? I ain't got it yet. The number it's right in the chat. It's 202-224-3121. And basically you're calling to speak to your member of Congress in the house. You're calling to speak to your senators and to say we don't want to- My name is Elaine El-Bissary and I am your constituent in zip code 94303. Please vote no on President Biden's latest request. Yes? Yes? Marcie, if you were saying something, you wouldn't need it. I always forget. I was just saying let's all mute ourselves while we make these phone calls. Tuesday, can you get Chrissy to select the dinners? Tuesday, I've been up. Yeah, she's coming over at 715 times served. I saw-