 Hello everyone. I'm Jim Garrison. I want to welcome you to this session of Humanity Rising as we convene day three of a five-day program on the conflict of Ukraine. As we've said many times the conflict in Ukraine has brought the world to the most dangerous moment in our lifetime. Possibly certainly since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 as two of the world's superpowers, the United States and Russia, square off each heavily armed with nuclear weapons and each now engaged in Ukraine in a military confrontation that could escalate uncontrollably with either a mistake or a unintended consequence of a planned escalation. At the heart of the Ukrainian conflict is what I've said in the various teachings that I've done is the irresistible force of US NATO expansion is meeting the immovable object of Russian nationalism. And therein lies of the contradiction and therein lies the possibility of an uncontrolled escalation. There's been a lot of focus on the Russians and the Russian invasions and the motivations. Today we want to examine the nature and scope of US imperialism, because at the heart of the conflict in Ukraine is the reality that beginning with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of the neoconservatives in the United States, the United States has conducted a military operations around the world and began the process under President Clinton of aggressively expanding NATO to the east in violation of the agreement with President Gorbachev on the basis of which the Soviet Union withdrew from Eastern Europe and was thereby left vulnerable given the fact that the United States filled that vacuum with the NATO Alliance. And in Ukraine, Russia has finally responded. And to help us understand this more deeply, we're going to be listening to one of, I would say, one of the great public intellectuals of our time, Chris Hedges, who will introduce in a moment. But for now, let us just pause as we always do as we begin our sessions on humanity rising and simply breathe together in a conscious and coherent way. In a world of escalating chaos and escalating turbulence. The most important thing that we can do is cultivate coherence internally and cultivate coherence in our social relationships in our communities, because those are the bulk work that we need to rely on in order to maintain our inner and communal equilibrium so that we can navigate through an increasingly chaotic world. So in a moment, you're going to hear the sound of a bell. When you hear that bell, just breathe in slowly. You'll hear then the sound of another bell and breathe out. We're going to take 10 breaths together and then we'll begin our program. Thank you, everyone. Welcome to humanity rising. Thank you, everyone. It's always so good to breathe as one as we contemplate these very deep issues affecting the future of human civilization itself. Now it's my pleasure to invite back in Jody Evans, who is the co-moderator for our summits on Ukraine. She's the co-founder of Code Pink, which I would say is probably the most dynamic and important peace organizations out there who has been working tirelessly over many decades. So Jody Evans is one of the exemplars par excellence of what it means to be an activist in our world. So Jody, thank you so much for everything you've done to build this second summit for humanity rising. And I turn the program over to you to introduce Chris Edges. Thank you so much, Jim. And good morning, everyone. And thank you again for your concern for peace and for joining us. And this is really a treat, which I'm excited to have Chris with us. First, I want to read a tweet that just came out from the meeting that President Xi had with Zelensky. And as a peace activist, I'm always trying to figure out how to articulate around accountability that so much is happening. And there's no accountability. I'm hoping to talk to Chris about that later, but how a sentence can capture what the media and the light were not really shining on U.S. engagement. In Ukraine. And Xi said to Zelensky, as a U.N. Security Council permanent member and a responsible power, we will neither watch the fire from the shore, nor add fuel to the fire, let alone take advantage of the opportunity to make profits. So that's what you can do. You know, instead of dropping a bomb. So Chris, I invite you to turn on your camera and unmute while I introduce you. Chris has had a huge life as a journalist who covered war in the Middle East and the Balkans reported from Central America. Studied Arabic, won a Pulitzer Prize, was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction, received the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. Hosted a television show for six years, wrote a weekly column for 16 years, spent a decade teaching writing classes in prison in New Jersey, is a Presbyterian minister, and speaks across the country. He is the preeminent public intellectual who I turn to each week for wisdom and guidance and really to nourish my heart and soul. You can read him now on sub-stack at the Chris Hedges Report or watch his show on the Real News or read him at the Sharepost. Or sign up to sub-stack and you'll get it all. So besides being a brilliant writer, he has looked through the darkness and is not frightened by it. He knows the dark side of this country and doesn't avoid it. If you are willing to hear the truth, he is sharing it. I love him most for his passion for peace and the deep understanding of the cost of war. Chris, thank you so much for joining us today. On day three of the summit, we began this week talking about citizen, talking with citizen diplomats, maths, and yesterday, we heard from Adiah Benjamin. And one of the issues that keeps coming up is the intensity of the propaganda that we're drowning in. This is your world, the world of journalism. I thought maybe if we could start there with helping the audience understand the deafening propaganda and the effects it has on our capacity to understand what is really happening. Thanks, and thanks for having me, Jodi. Yes, it's very hard to break through that propaganda. These are essentially what Noam Chomsky called the repetition of thought terminating cliches. I think that's a Chomsky quote. And they pound it into you across the spectrum of the media, whether left or right. And that is of course, it's nothing new. I've covered proxy wars all over the globe, starting in Central America and then early 1980s with El Salvador, Guatemala. And then of course, the Reagan administration at the time was supporting the Contras described as freedom fighters. We forget the Taliban or the Mujahideen morphed into the Taliban were embraced by the Reagan administration as freedom fighters. So what we're watching in Ukraine is a classic kind of proxy war. Most people know very little about Ukraine and they're not going to find out much about Ukraine from the media. It's this kind of mantra. And I'm not in any way excusing the invasion of Ukraine under, you know, Nuremberg laws, post-Nuremberg laws. It's a criminal act of aggression. But even to discuss the fact that Russia was baited and provoked into that war, which is a fact. And I covered the revolutions in Eastern Europe. I was in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and remaining at the time was acutely aware of the promises, as you mentioned, that have been made to Gorbachev, not to expand NATO beyond the borders of a unified Germany. And then there were constant calls by Russia not to continue this advance up to Russian borders. In Clinton administration, there was a promise made not to station NATO troops in Eastern and Central Europe. That's now violated. I think there's 100,000 troops now. And it was ignored for two reasons, because one, the Russian Federation was written off as so weak that the U.S. could do whatever it wanted. We had all that rhetoric of a unipolar world. And then also there were billions and billions of dollars to be made by refitting these countries with NATO compatible equipment. Well, that backstory is never discussed. And then, of course, the coup in 2014, the civil war that ensued. I mean, all of this is, nothing is put into context. And any attempt to put it into context, then immediately the bifurcation, which is perpetuated by the media and the political establishment, you immediately become an agent or an apologist for Russia and Putin, which I am not. I don't think anyone here is. So there's no nuance. There's nothing contextualized. I covered the Middle East for seven years. The Israel-Palestine conflict, again, nothing was ever contextualized. You may talk about refugees in Gaza or refugees in camps in Lebanon or Jordan, but I think very few readers or listeners understood the root of the conflict. Going back to 1948 and the massive ethnic cleansing and massacres that were carried out by what would become the IDF, the Haganah, primarily, against the Palestinians. So that's the first problem in that there's no context. And secondly, we have to acknowledge that the commercial media is bought and paid for by large corporations, including the arms industry. So that's why all of the pundits, excuse me, and experts that you see on cable news are drawn from the military and intelligence establishment. And then, of course, most of these people sit on boards. Lloyd Austin was sitting on the board of Raytheon pulling down hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more. So it's, and in some cases, General Electric used to own MSNBC. I mean, I think Comcast owns it now. But there are behind the scenes these people are very ruthless about determining who can speak and who can't and what message we'll get across and what can't. So the American public is very ill-served by the trivialization of the media and by the fact that the commercial media is virtually captive to these large commercial interests, which of course give them money in terms of ad revenue. So it's extremely difficult to speak intelligently about what is happening. Of course, having spent many years covering proxy conflicts, I'm acutely aware of how Ukraine fits perfectly into this pattern. The conflict in Ukraine, of course, has nothing to do with the press will tell us about defending democracy and freedom. Ukraine was long considered the most corrupt country in Europe. But it's about, of course, furthering US interests by weakening Putin, potentially, excuse me, they have terrible pollen here, potentially driving Putin from power and of course isolating Putin from Europe and degrading the Russian army. Those are the three primary goals of Washington. I watched them carry out and it's a very cynical policy because, of course, it's going to destroy most of Ukraine and its Ukrainian blood that's going to be spilled. This was true in the war in El Salvador, it was true in the Nicaraguan war, it was true in the war in Guatemala. I covered the Kurds, I mean, there is a kind of classic example of betrayal, that's ultimately what happens. Those supported in proxy wars have usually very little chance of victory, the Contras certainly had no chance of victory in Nicaragua against the Sandinistas. And in many cases, you don't want them to have victory. So that was exactly the case that took place with the Kurds in Northern Iraq. The Nixon administration in 1972 were providing millions of dollars of weapons and ammunition to the Kurdish rebels in Northern Iraq to weaken the Iraqi government, which at the time was seen as too close to the Soviet Union. But again, and these weapons came in through Iran, the Shah and Washington didn't want to see the Kurds create a state of their own, which was their intention. And then sold them out in 1975 with the Algiers Agreement where he saw Iran and Iraq settle their border disputes and that immediately severed military support for the Kurds. The Kurds saw the Iraqis launch a very ruthless campaign of ethnic cleansing in Northern Iraq. Thousands of Kurds, including women and children, were disappeared or killed, Kurdish villages were dynamited into rubble, and then Henry Kissinger when asked about it made that famous quote that covert action should not be confused with missionary work. Once the 1979 revolution happened in Iran, the Kurds were useful again. And so you saw military aid resumed to the Kurds by Iran during the war between Iran and Iraq, 1980-1988. And then the war ended in 1988 and our supposed allies, we had now become allied with Iraq during the war with Iran. That's when Saddam Hussein dropped mustard gas and nerve agents on Halapsha. 5,000 people were killed within minutes, 10,000 were injured. And the Reagan administration essentially covered up, minimized the war crimes that have been committed against its former allies. I mean that's a classic kind of example, Nixon's rapprochement with China in another example included terminating covert assistance to the Tibetan rebels. So betrayal is always the closing act of proxy wars, and the Ukrainians will be betrayed. There's a clear understanding that the Ukrainians, number one, can't win a war of attrition and that the eastern provinces, Donbass, are not going to go back into Ukrainian hands. There's an understanding of that. I think there's actually even a kind of panic because the longer the war goes on, the more the position of Ukraine deteriorates. They just can't afford to bleed the way they are bleeding over a long period of time. And that's why you see every red line by the Biden administration about not sending missiles or now M1 Abrams, now of course they're talking about fighter jets crossed. I was in the last tank battle in the war in Iraq with the US Marine Corps in the First Gulf War. Abrams are extremely difficult tanks to operate. In fact, if you make a mistake on an Abrams, it can usually be lethal. You need in order to have successful tank action, you need air cover, which the Ukrainians don't have, and you also need huge support vehicles. They're very temperamental weapons and I think we're only sending what 33 or something, but it's almost symbolic in a way. It's a kind of Hail Mary, but none of this is going to come up in the press and to attempt to speak about these kinds of details or this kind of history or this kind of context immediately gets you blanked out. And so that the press does, it serves as it did with the war in Iraq as a kind of cheerleader for the war. It does its part. It keeps its ad revenues. It makes the deep state, if you want to call it that, the intelligence and military entities happy. And in the end, this proxy war will close like every other proxy war that I covered. But that kind of discussion you're just not going to hear on the commercial media because you have a lot of vested interests in perpetuating this proxy war. And they are going to shut out those of us who critique this dominant narrative. Turn on your microphone, Judy. Oh, so sorry. You were muted. Thank you. So thank you, Chris. And I'm wondering, you know, are you shut out of mainstream media? Do you get invited on MSNBC or CNN or is the New York Times calling you to ask you because I'm sure folks here have not heard what you're saying. And just curious where you're allowed, where you're invited to speak. No, I mean, the most egregious example for me was the build up to the war in Iraq. So I had been the Middle East Bureau Chief of the New York Times. As you mentioned, I speak Arabic. I had spent seven years in the Middle East months of my life in Iraq. I understood the military fiasco that this would become. And I could speak with a kind of authority based on many years of experience. But I was completely blanked out. I was not given a perch. On any major news organization, because it wasn't a critique or I would call it more than a critique and understanding that was palatable to the people who were beating the drums for war. What was so gallant of people such as myself was that the people they trotted out as experts on Iraq had never been there. They didn't speak Arabic. They had not spent significant time or any time in the Middle East. You know, Tom Freeman being an exception. He did spend some time in the Middle East. But if you didn't parrot that call for war and the lies that were used to sustain it, then it didn't matter how much experience you had in the region. You were not given a voice. So that it started early. And of course, I clashed with the New York Times, which asked me, well, demanded I was a reprimand, formal written reprimand to stop speaking about the war in Iraq, which I wasn't going to accept and left the paper. So, no, that, you know, and that's the kind of again gets into the decline or the decay of the US media, especially public broadcasting. NPR, PBS, these were designed at the air inception to give a voice to people that weren't representing corporate interests or representing the powerful are coming out of the powerally. I mean, you go back to the beginning of PBS, you could actually see figures like Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, being given a voice, people who weren't acting as shills for corporations or for one of the two ruling parties. But that's gone. And NPR is awful. I used to work for NPR original when I first started. I covered the Falkland war for them and I covered a year and a half of the war in El Salvador for them. So there's just been such an impoverishment within the media, a kind of, you know, it's what Dorothy Parker said about Catherine Hepburn's emotional range as an actress that went from A to B. And that's kind of like where we are, you know, it's do we go into, do we just bomb Syria or do we put boots on the ground? Like those are the two options for dealing with Syria. I mean, it's just nutty. But that's where we've ended up. So, you know, for those of us who have not sold out, we've been completely marginalized and that's quite distressing because it's very unhealthy for what's left of our very anemic Democratic Republic. So one of the other things we talked about yesterday was the dealt with the media was the Nord Stream pipeline story. And, you know, maybe you could talk about how that's playing out when you say, I mean, it seems to have disappeared. But as Medea pointed out yesterday, the New York Times in their rebuttal did the same thing that, you know, they're using anonymous sources. So, well, I know how that works. Having spent years of the New York Times or the NSA and they gave them anonymous sources and told them it wasn't true. And they ran it. They didn't actually do any reporting. Look, I mean, as Syher says correctly, this was a story hiding in plain sight. We know that Victoria Newland and others made very public statements about wanting to destroy it. They celebrated the destruction. The New York Times reported that the Russians were seeking bids to repair the pipeline. If they blew it up, why would they, you know, it was a completely, and why would they blow it up anyway? I've never made any sense for them to blow it up. But it's death by silence. And Sy, who I admire and know and his friend and is really one of the greatest investigative journalists in the country, when Sy exposed the whole lie around the killing of Osama bin Laden, the actual story about how he was killed again, he couldn't get it published in the United States, pushed out of the New Yorker. Remnick in the New York have always been, you know, full partners in the war industry, going back to Iraq. And again, it was ignored. So they ignore it. They pretend it doesn't exist. And then they write a short article based on anonymous sources coming out of the security establishment or the military establishment that discredits the story and then they're done. Yeah, that that that's a classic. And that is the kind of quid pro quo that papers like the New York Times have with the centers of power, because I used to say the real motto of the New York Times is do not significantly access to do not significantly damage those upon those who we depend on for access and power access and power. I mean, you were rewarded. It didn't matter how good a reporter you were. You were rewarded at the paper for getting interviews with, you know, major world leaders and they never said anything was the worst part of my job, but they never said anything worth publishing. But it gave the it was about prestige. So that access, it gets it's it's absurd on many levels. I mean, I after 911 was based in Paris for the New York Times and I covered Al Qaeda. I didn't cover. So I speak Arabic Spanish and French. So I covered Al Qaeda in the Middle East and Europe with the exception of Germany because I don't speak German. And French intelligence was apoplectic that they were going to invade Iraq so that the highest levels of the French government I had was given carte blanche I mean complete security clearance I literally would go into the See the counterterrorism office and the foreign ministry run by this crazy Sicilian and not Sicilian Corsican and I just asked for files. I mean, I I covered Richard Reid shoe bomber. I they've brought the files out within a half hour. I mean all the photos of him going to everything. And the reason was that they they understood that the problem was Al Qaeda. The problem was not the Taliban. The problem was not Saddam Hussein. And I would fly back to New York and they would remember there was all this race racist talk about the French and people renaming French fries and they're not even called French fries in France but renaming French freedom fries. So and the New York Times just dismissed it because they were French. I had hard evidence. And so that's a kind of classic example of how internally the press I mean they would say well, you know, that's not what Louis Scooter Libby told us. That's not what Dick Cheney told us. That's not what Richard Pearl shows. Well, these guys were all lying through their teeth. I mean people cake went after Judy Miller who I can't stand on. And but she was a scapegoat the whole institution was culpable I know because I was on the inside so. Yeah, it's they they want that access and they're willing to act as essentially shills, even when, even when you know they're lying, because that access is really important to them that's also even more true perhaps on the cable new shows. So they, there's a very there's a very cynical game, very cynical. That's what they've done to sigh I mean sigh. Remember sigh used to work for the New York Times he his last story for the Times was on Gulf and Western, which was this big mobbed up corporation. And, but the head of the corporation Charlie Bluthorn was a friend of the publisher I mean used to invite the publisher over for private screenings because they own Paramount pictures. And they killed they ruined the story they destroyed it and sigh quit. And I remember sigh he wrote a good memoir called reporter he said, I realized then that we could never take on corporate power we could still take on government power. But it was over corporate power would never be in that. Now we can't take on government power either. Julian Assange is a good example of what happens when you try that. Whoa. So, you know, the story about the lies was pretty public after, you know, many years. What happens to the people that they're willing to swallow the lies again this is a playbook it's not didn't start with a rock it you know it's you know it's Vietnam it's Korea it's it's everything it's Salvador is so it's over and over and over the public has told a story and light into war. And, you know, earlier you said that will be betrayed the Ukrainians but haven't we already betrayed them just by saying you know we were going to support them I thought she's commented the linsky was important in that it's it's like, you know, there's, there's no support it's always the betrayal. And what everybody's eating up the story again. What happens in a mind and a mass here in the United because the rest of the world isn't believing this. What happens. Do we get so lost. Does mainstream media control minds that fully. Sure, because you speak in cliches. So you speak in easily palatable cliches. We love freedom we are a good people. We defend democracy. Putin is the new Hitler. Now it's all ridiculous cliches and you can't counter those cliches because when you begin to speak as I just spoke in something that is outside of the dominant narrative and doesn't embrace the cliches. It takes a lot of time, and you're never given time. So you might it might be given four minutes or six minutes if you can even get on. But you might as well be speaking Greek. They don't get it. And that's the problem. And I also want to go back to the press. So all of the people who sold us the war in Iraq are now George Packer, you know, are all selling us the war in Ukraine. Well, they were all wrong about Iraq, all of them. And those of us who were right are still in the wilderness. Why? Because they were they serve the centers of power and they were rewarded for it. I mean, there it's careerism. I there was no daylight in terms of my analysis of what was going to happen if we invaded Iraq and every other reporter I knew who covered the Middle East zero. But they were just smart enough to keep their mouth shut. Because it was it was career suicide. I mean, for me, it was personal. I had friends. I knew they would die. I mean, without being melodramatic, some of them did die. And I thought, how can I sit here and be quiet? I was very conscious of what I was doing. I mean, I knew I was destroying my career. But it was a life and death issue for people I cared about. Whatever cost I paid was nothing compared to what Iraqis have paid. Syrians have paid. Afghans have paid. And of course, why I'm so passionate is and you've done great work on this on the Palestine issue because I spent so much of my life in Gaza. And anything I do is nothing compared to what Palestinians in Gaza are suffering. So, yeah, and they're all the same idiots. And they're all out there doing it all over again and and and and they're the presses their echo chamber. So yeah, I think it's I think it's because of the nature of the press, because it is so superficial. I mean, the press by, you know, I also come out of a long kind of academic training, eight years in the university. I spent four years and four years in graduate school. So there's, you know, an understanding that the press by its nature is superficial. It is, that is true. And if you never break beyond that superficiality and most people are passive consumers of news, they don't go and search. They don't. And of course, no one reads books anymore. You can't understand what's happening in in the Middle East if you don't know what the Sykes Pico agreement is. If you if you don't know the full history of the of the British mandate in Palestine and and the IDF and or Hagan on all that you don't have to know all that. But you're not going to get it from the media. And and unless you're proactive, which most people aren't, then you're easily led. I mean, for instance, the the war on terror. Now, there was a phrase I never used because it's a tautology when you break it down. That's why Trump's he's so brilliant. I mean, on so many levels, but partly because he's a linguist, he immediately understands you can't have a war on terror making any sense. So but but even if you're opposed to the quote unquote war on terror and use that phrase, you're already in some sense captive. That's why I don't have a TV and I'm not on social media. And I read I try and read every night I'm reading. James Joel's The Second International. That's what I'm reading right now all the debates between the Germans and the French from 1889 and 1914. You have to read that stuff. You have to. So, but severing ourselves from a print based culture and very, very devastating. You know, I say my very good friend Cornell I just had lunch with him in New York. So Cornel West. So I mean, you know, who always makes me feel illiterate. But when every time Cornell sit down it's like four or five hours solely about books. Also, by the way, true with momia abou Jamal. And it's six hours. The guy is brilliant. And all he does is read his whole cell is a giant library. And all we do is for six hours talk about books. That's it. And you know, the old radicals read Emma Goldman and so they're working 12 hours a day in a sweatshop and then they're going off to Yiddish anarchist study groups. We need that we need to recover that component of education because the mass culture is not only not giving it to us but doing everything it can to destroy it. And we're never going to break free from that domination. And Gramsci of course writes about this this cultural hegemony we're never going to break free from it, unless we do the hard work ourselves. And I think that that seduction of these electronic hallucinations that I had. I did an event with noam couple years ago, and I pulled out my phone and gnomes comment was, I can't believe you have one of those things. You know, in a recent piece you wrote the Lords of Chaos. One of the things you talk about is the lack of responsibility I mean you've talked about the lying, but there's no responsibility for the lying for their crimes, and we're, we're living inside of that devastation, but nobody talks about it. And nobody is really understanding the cost, the cost to themselves which is extreme. It's kind of in, you know, and it's it's in the same way people who live in the United States have been betrayed. I have but you know of course as you well know Jody the cost to the betrayed abroad is far graver than our betrayal. Yes, we have been betrayed, but we have extinguished the lives of millions. And I mean, people talk about NATO. I mean that's another cliche NATO is a defensive organization. I said try running that line in Iraq. I mean, or Bosnia. Right, I mean, so that and I think you know having spent 20 years on the outer reaches of empire and watching the horror that empire is, and having seen the lives of people I care about extinguished. But but again this is not registered within the American public and the media is is is of course culpable. I guess the whole constant call for the escalation of the war in Ukraine for those of us who spent a lot of time in war. It's just nauseating and sickening because we understand the human cost. I don't see the human cost. So I covered I was in Sarajevo. During the war in Bosnia city was being hit with hundreds three 400 shells a day constant sniper fire four to five six people a day were dying. Dozens of people were wounded a day. When I got there 45 foreign reporters already been killed. But the Serbs were lobbying in heavy stuff these were not small mortars these were 90 millimeter tank rounds Katusha rockets. You know the equivalent of Soviet equivalent of 155 hours there's really big stuff and and they there was no running water throughout the city. So you had to go to collection points and the Serbs knew where they were and they would target them so these shells would come in and people's bodies were just blown in half I mean legs blown off it was awful. And the images if you actually saw those images I mean there was certainly the capacity to transmit those images they were never transmitted. You would transmit however disturbing those images are was all around the edges. So nobody ever sees the war except for the people who were there that's number one. And then in the case of our own conflicts like Iraq. Especially if you're embedded well most of them are embedded. You can't you don't report you're you're in the military unit that is perpetrating the fire you don't the victims are are never seen you don't see them. And then if you are embedded I never embedded but but the friends who did and if for instance an Iraqi family if you're embedded with a unit Iraqi family ran a roadblock and either because it was dark or they drove too fast or they didn't understand the command to stop and everybody in the cars killed including the children. You don't report it because if you report it you're instantly unembedded. So it's the lie of omission. What we do we don't we don't see it we don't know and that's why I love the stuff you and Medea and others do because you go there. Because you got to see it you know whether it's in Gaza or anywhere else so yeah that we live you're right most of the world gets it. And because a huge percentage of the world are victims. Everybody in the Middle East gets it. We don't get it and it gives us a very warped perception of who we are and how we are viewed. Makes a swallow that we're told we're told we're good by you know supporting war. Look, I mean I listened to Bobby Kennedy's announcement. Well first of all he said he wouldn't lie to us but you know we are a good people and this kind of deification of the framers of the Constitution. I mean it's just again this a willful historical amnesia. I know it plays to voters I guess that's why I did it. Look the framers of the Constitution were awful people. They were white male slaveholders who hated and did everything they could to build in mechanism mechanisms to prevent direct democracy and the radicals of the Revolution like Thomas Paine. They immediately disowned and Paine died. There were six people at his funeral four of whom were black. He was an abolitionist and he was a socialist in essence he was came out of the kind of it was the kind of chartist tradition but he was yeah he and that had tremendous appeal I mean he was. I think his. You know appeal to reason writes a man this stuff was the most heavily read tracks or books of the era. And of course that's what people wanted. So yeah even even the liberal elite is kind of. Stoking this myth. I'm not saying we're bad people but we're no different from any other people. It's a mixture of good and bad we're capable of doing horrible things. Because we can in the name of empire I mean. I covered many many conflicts and and you know power is a dangerous thing. I mean for the war in Kosovo would be a good example I I spent all my time covering atrocities carried out by the Serbs against the ethnic Albanians. Well the moments the Serbs withdrew I mean literally within 24 hours while I was writing about where the atrocities committed against ethnic Serbs by the Albanians. That's the job of a journalist to give a voice to those who are being crushed by the centers of power whoever wheels those centers of power. So yeah it's very hard to puncture that that lie almost impossible because of course it's also you know perpetuated in the entertainment industry. You know through with maybe the exception of Oliver Stone through just about anybody who makes a film. And you know saving private Ryan and all this kind of stuff. It's really impossible and veterans who come back and attempt to speak the truth who already kind of traumatized and alienated anyway usually give up because nobody wants to hear it. And the reason they don't want to hear it is because it challenges their own conception of themselves. It would forces them to ask very difficult questions that they don't want to ask. And so it's easier to shut the truth out and that's been true. You know in every war. That was true after World War two. I mean you had the guys who put up the flag at Iwo Jima. They couldn't cope because nobody wanted to hear it. I mean Hayes drank himself to death and other guy committed suicide. So, you know that's a well the famous story of wounded Marines in a hospital I think in Hawaii and John Wayne comes in and they even though many of them can't get out of their bed they throw their bedpans at him and drive him out. So, Jim I wanted to invite you in to ask a question I know I've been monopolizing but I'm quite all right. Hello Chris. Thank you so much for your your deep analysis. And what I would like to do is broaden this conversation because I think the line of questioning that Jody's been pursuing is is is really a portal. To a deeper malaise in US and I would say Western society that you spoke so poignantly about in your book, America, a farewell tour, which I just found a profoundly illuminating and also moving. And I noted a blog that you did just a couple of days ago called the United States of paralysis. And I would love to have you talk about the themes that you address in in your book, you know the farewell tour and also this notion of the United States of paralysis. Because what's going on in the in the media as you have laid out is part and parcel of a deeper malaise as social bonds are being cut as corporate power increases, and therefore, in some ways, there's an emerging death wish that gets played out in Ukraine, but it also gets played out in the mass shootings and in a variety of other areas, because US, the US Imperium is at a point of dramatic decline and therefore there's a certain rot in the entire system that we also need to understand that you've been pointing out for some time. Right well this comes out of a meal Durkheim the French sociologist, and that was the kind of impetus for me to write the book that you just mentioned America the farewell tour so Durkheim. I think was 1898 decides to look at suicide throughout France and try and see if he can determine the common factors that lead people to lead people or groups to commit acts of self annihilation. And what he came up with was as we get the term enemy or the social bonds those bonds that knit you to a society work is extremely important of course. And I'm no fan of john Paul the second who really made war on Catholics with a social conscience I was in line America the time. But he did write a very good encyclical about work. And he was right that that that that that without that sense of place that sense of meritocracy, the dignity, the ability sustain yourself and your family to have recognizable place within community, you strip that away. And then people fall into what's popularly called diseases of despair, which are inflicting the country, whether that's the opioid crisis morbid obesity sexual sadism I'm written quite strongly against porn. And Durkheim says that those who seek the annihilation of others have are driven by longings for self annihilation you see that in the mass shootings, which almost always end in either suicide or suicide by cop. So, this book that I wrote, really took off from that point and examined those communities that were convulsed by these diseases of despair heroin addicts and I was with the 3%ers and the proud boys. Suicide. I went to kink.com, which was at the time housed in the former San Francisco armory was apparently the world's largest BDSM online you call in and Olympic you can get people women water boarded if you paid enough money to watch I mean this is sick. So, all that's what happens when societies break down. And I wrote a book on the Christian right about a decade ago called, maybe more than a decade ago called American fascist the Christian right in the war in America. And I went I come out of the liberal church as, as you said or Jody said I'm a Presbyterian minister my father was a minister my mother was a seminary graduate. So, I went in there with the prejudices that I think those of us, the educated elites carry, but you couldn't listen to the stories that these people told without having your heartbreak just horrific stories I'm talking about the followers in these mega churches, people, the kind of people you would have seen on January 6, you know, evictions, domestic abuse, sexual abuse, struggles with alcoholism, drugs, domestic violence, I mean, just horrible. You know, and that constant economic instability. And, and by the end of that book, I came to a kind of conclusion that the only way to break the back of this neo fascist movement, this Christian fascism is to re-energize the people into society. And of course, this is antithetical to everything that corporate culture promotes you and I wrote a book called Empire of Illusion the end of literacy in the drive of spectacle. Where I actually begin the book with professional wrestling as a kind of template for America. I mean, it was pre Donald Trump. And, and if you look at the way Trump handles his publicity it's straight out of professional. Wrestling, but capitalism is antithetical to all of this. It's core attributes, you know, about relationships that are transactional and usually temporary prioritizing self advancement. Through manipulation and exploitation, the insatiable lust for fame, power, wealth, all of these, you know, dark virtues, if you want to call them that or dark ethic is the staple of any of these television shows, what we're taught. I mean, Trump is kind of the personification of the disease. He's what we're all told we're supposed to strive to become. You know, he's kind of a walking advertisement for the call to fame, power, wealth, all of these, you know, dark virtues, if you want to call them that or dark ethic is the staple of any reality television shows. You know, he's kind of a walking advertisement for the call to himself so that the disease of society and Durkheim said, you know, no society is can be diseased without those who are involved in the life of that society. Inevitably adopting that sickness as their own. And that's right. And we're not going to stop the rise. I mean, we're now watching, you know, it's about 18 months away, so things can change, but it appears we're going to watch, you know, the last election, where it's Trump and Biden. And we're not going to stop the rise of Trump or a Trump like figure by censoring him or censoring this country. But it appears we're going to watch replay of the last election, where it's Trump and Biden. And we're not going to stop the rise of Trump or a Trump like figure by censoring him or censoring this group or locking up all the people who participated in the January 6 incursion of the Capitol and going to work until we address the root causes of our, you know, of our deformed society, which is of course the rupture of these social bonds, until those are renit were doomed. And you read, I don't, you know, it's always kind of tricky to draw up historical parallels, but if you look at Weimar, it's much the same and all the writer good writers on totalitarianism, Hannah Aaron and others, and they all make that point. It gives us a true in Yugoslavia. People forget the war in Yugoslavia was caused, not by ancient ethnic hatreds, but by the economic collapse of Yugoslavia hyperinflation. Well, it's largely because Tito, they gave West Tito was a buffer state. He was hostile to Moscow. And they gave him all sorts of loans they knew Yugoslavia could never repay, because they wanted to keep the Yugoslavs happy and on their side. And, and then after the Cold War, and after Tito died, they, they, they wanted those loans paid, and they couldn't get any more. So the huge state enterprises collapse massive unemployment. And, and suddenly people retreated into these mythic identities. I was in Montgomery a couple years ago with the great civil rights attorney, Brian Stevenson, we were walking through the streets of Montgomery half of Montgomery's black. And he was pointing out all the Confederate memorials that had been put throughout the city, including when you drive into Montgomery, there's this gigantic Confederate was a couple years ago, giant Confederate flag flying. I mean, and outside the city and I said to Brian, well, that's exactly what happened in Yugoslavia. And that's what we're seeing that when you strip away any sense of place or meaning, you will retreat inevitably into these mythic identities, buttressed by disenfranchised, or it's kind of buttressed by white supremacy among a disenfranchised white working class. That's the problem. And that's not the problem we're addressing. The liberals want to, you know, censor Trump or censor this group or that group. I mean, everybody's culpable. You know, they have their bizarre conspiracy theories like Q and on. And it's frightening because nobody is tackling the reality that's around us, a reality that is probably unless it's dealt with, very swiftly going to snuff out what's left of our very anemic democracy because if Trump or any of these doppelganger is Marjorie Taylor Green or the Santas, it doesn't really matter. When they come back in, they're going to come in with a kind of vengeance. It's going to be really, really frightening. And Biden and the Democrats are culpable because they, and that's the whole of this column you mentioned, the United States of paralysis, they've stood by and done nothing virtually. I mean, even the very tepid promises that were made by the Democrats in the last election raising them in the room wage to $15 an hour. Remember, they were going to hand everybody $2,000 stimulus checks is America's jobs plan that would create millions of good paying jobs. He would strengthen collective bargaining, which immediately when the railroad freight workers tried to bargain, he took away their right. He could do it legally under the railroad act, but he was going to start universal pre kindergarten and universal paid family leave and medical leave and pre community college and would promote a publicly funded option for health care and he wouldn't drill on federal lands. It's all a lie. So yeah, they're their their lies. I mean, no less than the lies that Trump, these kind of fantasy driven lies of Trump is still lies. And that that is, I think for those of us, especially who covered situations like Yugoslavia very, very frightening. And, you know, I'm often accused of kind of being bleak. I said, I don't make it up. You know, I, it's not like I like it. I want to stop it. But we live in a society that doesn't even recognize it. Well, let's just probe that a little bit more deeply because I think what you're saying, particularly with analogies to the Weimar Republic is very sobering for particularly progressive Americans to take in because I think what we saw with the last election where the Democrats rallied and prevented the Republicans from taking the Senate. And there was this feeling that there was at least at a minimal level of revitalization and a possibility of of moving forward. And now seeing how extensively and pervasively the the malaise that you're talking about has spread from Trump to the entire Republican Party, and the Christian right. So, knowing that there's an election coming up in 2024, which many people are calling absolutely crucial, because if the Republicans do take the Senate, and do take the White House, that would mean that democracies are actually over in the United States. So I'd love to have your sense and analysis of the currents that are coming into play in November of 2024. And given the fact that you're saying that the solution is to solve the underlying problems. There's nobody that I know of anywhere in Washington. Even talking about that, let alone with a comprehensive plan, everyone seems to be subsumed into, you know, the war machine focused on Ukraine and escalating tensions with China and so forth. So, within this kind of fulcrum, what where is the room for real movement, or are we so advanced in the decay that there's actually not much anyone can do. Well, I would first say we don't live in a democracy, not a functioning democracy. You know, this is part of the research that Gillens and Page did on the political system where, from their data they said that the economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have primary impact on determining U.S. government policy, mass-based interest groups, and average citizens, and these are their words, have little or no independent influence. So, we live in a system with the political philosopher Sheldon Willing called inverted totalitarianism, and you can get a good explanation of that in his book Democracy Incorporated. But in essence, it's a corporate coup d'état. It's over the Democrats are as subservient to corporate power and the war industry, as you mentioned, as the Republicans. In fact, you get now more opposition to the permanent war economy and Ukraine from the fringe elements of the Republican Party than you do from the Democrats. So, I was a very early supporter of Ralph Nader, in fact, and ended up becoming a speechwriter, because I bought Ralph's argument that power is a game of fear, a game of pressure, and that if he could pull 10, 15 million people out of the Democratic Party to support a third party movement, and the history of third party movements in the United States, then was never take power, but they forced, like the Progressive Party, Eugene V. Debs, they pressure the centers of power to respond. It was also true under Bismarck, by the way, Bismarck was terrified of the socialists. And so, you've got eight-hour workday and pensions, and it was all given by Bismarck, who's a pretty retrograde figure, but he was terrified that the socialists were going to take control. And you have to pit power against power. Now, it didn't work, and for a variety of reasons. And largely, it was the Democratic Party that destroyed Nader's candidacies. And so, every election cycle, things have gotten worse and worse. I mean, Biden's record is just appalling and kind of indefensible. And as Jody said, I teach in prison. Most of my students wouldn't be there but for Biden. This is a guy who pushed through the 94 omnibus crime bill, militarized police, 100, I can't remember the price tag, but built all sorts of new prisons, virtually double the prison population. 2.2 to 3 million, it's the largest prison population in the world. Sentences two, three, four times longer. 40% of the people in our prison population have never been convicted of physically harming another person. I mean, this is nuts. We interview on the phone this morning to one of my students who's out is going to graduate. I'm going to his graduation next week from Rutgers graduating summa cum laude was imprisoned at 17. I've taught students that were imprisoned as adults at 14. So, he gave us NAFTA. He gave us the Patriot Act. He supported the Glass-Steagall, the destruction of Glass-Steagall. I mean, he did a lot of damage, not to mention the fact that he was anti-abortion. The reason Obama picked him is because his voting record was Republican. And of course, again, it's all going to be driven by fear, fear of Trump. I don't think it's going to work. I'm not a good prognosticator. I mean, I found that out when Carter ran against Reagan. I was sure Carter would win because how could anybody vote for Ronald Reagan, which shows you how much I know. Okay, I was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts at the time. But so, yeah, it's, we're doomed either way. And, you know, unless we, and I think Shama Sawant, the socialist city councilwoman who from Seattle is not running again, has got it. We have to rebuild those militant union movements, you know, the old Wobblies and the CIO. Because the only weapon the working class has at this point is the strike. And that's what got Netanyahu to back off, at least temporarily, destroying the judicial system. It's not, you know, Macron has kind of ignored it. I love the French and I've lived in Paris. I lived in France, you know, I was in Paris once when there was some dispute with the farmers and they all drove their tractors in the centers of Paris and shut the city down. I mean, that's kind of what you have to do. But again, that gets into the whole assault on organized labor, only about 10%, 11% US workforce is organized. I think Shama's got onto something. I think we have to rebuild a militant labor movement that has the capacity to carry out strikes because that is the weapon we have to cripple the ruling elite. It's why I also support extinction rebellion because closing motorways all around London. And that's why the UK has gone so hard after organized with like Roger Holland. Roger Holland was put in, he was one of the co-founders of extinction rebellion. He just came out of jail four months in jail for going on a zoom meeting, calling for the peaceful nonviolent blocking of highways. That's what they put him in jail for. So they know, I mean, the elites know, and that's what scares them. So I would say, I don't, I never give up hope. You know, it's, you know, pessimism of the intellect optimism of the will, I never give up hope. I always fight back, but we can't fight back by embracing a kind of Polly Anish view of what the world to make a very sober assessment of the world around us and how, and we have to understand how power works. And it doesn't work, you know, and I take it away from Bill McKibben who's done great work, but you know, he gets protesters on a weekend to surround the White House when Obama's president chanting, where are your supporters? Well, Obama served the interests of Chevron and BP and Exxon Mobil, you know, as assiduously as every other president. You can't vote against these corporate interests, no matter who's in power. You cannot vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs, no matter whether it's Trump or Obama or Bush in a manner. So we have to stop relying on the political system and we have to start disrupting the political system. And the only weapon that we have is organized mass labor, militant organized mass labor that is willing to carry out strikes that will paralyze the centers of power. Then they'll respond till that moment happens. They are going to continue to do what they do, which is essentially transform the United States into a very naked authoritarian police state. I mean, wholesale surveillance, all the tools, Biden again was an architect of this, we have given whoever takes power the tools to with almost a flick of a switch create an authoritarian state and the Democrats are guilty of this. But you know, this whole remember that campaign a few years ago to write your congressman to get money out of politics, it was laughable. I mean, these people wouldn't be there but for corporate money who's going to put Schumer and Pelosi in power. Nobody and they know that. I mean the power of Schumer or used to be Pelosi I don't know what kind of power she wheels now was that they were the funnel they were the spigot and it's how they domesticated AOC and everyone else. And they weren't about to get money out of politics they wouldn't be in politics. So, again, that was for me a misreading of power and how power works. But yeah, I'm hopeful that we will refine fine regain that militancy which was very much a part of the American DNA on the eve of World War One and resurrected with the breakdown of capitalism in the 1930s I mean there's a famous letter that Roosevelt wrote to his brother. We said we have to give them something now because otherwise we will have revolution that those are Roosevelt's words. Roosevelt again, an oligarch, you know, and maybe a more enlightened oligarch but he responded to pressure. And that's always been true throughout human history. And we have to regain the mechanism we have to put pressure on the corporate state, and the primary mechanism that we have is the strike through militant labor. Well and one thinks of what just happened in Israel, where you know 20% of the entire population came out on the streets and they started to strike, and it was at that moment that Netanyahu backed off at least temporarily. Well you know it was actually when Hester Ruth, the labor group threatened a national strike. That's when Netanyahu backed off. I'm often attacked for because I'm a supporter of BDS and all that, but actually in all my years overseas the closest friends that I made were Israeli because they were completely competitive, completely blunt. They told you right to your face what they thought. Now they were left wing Israelis, you know, Amir Ahas and these great, I mean just talk about courage. I mean Gideon Levy, I mean these are remarkable people, but they have, I liked it. I mean I thought it was, I had very, very close Israeli friends. I mean the other irony is that, you know, that critique is actually far more palatable in Israel and Netanyahu has moved the country, you know, to its own kind of quasi-fascism. But there was far more room for critique in Israeli society than there is in American society. I mean that's the other thing I found living in Israel is kind of amazing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was there for a year at the University of Tel Aviv and I would agree with you. I studied Arabic at the Hebrew University. Yeah, I was at the University of Tel Aviv. Interesting. Chris, let me open up just the final domain for our conversation and that is the growing escalation with China and confrontations as the United States takes on both Russia in Ukraine and China in Asia. It was pointed out yesterday, you know, we got 250 bases in Asia encircling China, but also simultaneously China, Russia, India, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Brazil are forming the beginnings of a coalition that may be not the right word that is really assaulting the primacy of the U.S. And beginning a shift of the center of gravity and geostrategic global affairs away from U.S. primacy to a multipolar world, because I think that's the larger context within which the demise of the United States is being experienced globally. And simultaneously, and I think Ukraine has really been a triggering mechanism mechanism for the rise of a multi polarity that is both challenging the United States, but also hastening the demise of American primacy. So I would love to have your comments on the global nature of the transition is, I would say, using a Chinese term, the mandate of heaven is leaving the U.S. for China, and a whole different way of looking at human affairs and I raised this because Jody I think that tweet. From Xi Jinping really encapsulates at the essence of a completely different way of understanding how world affairs can be transacted in a world in which given climate change and myriad of other challenges. We have to be cooperating, not fighting each other and escalating toward nuclear war. So Chris, what would you, what would be your comment on this. Well, I think Alfred McCoy has done probably the best work on this. That's his book. I have it up there somewhere. But yes, the, the, the creation of a multipolar world and more importantly, the, the ability of that multipolar world to severance themselves from the charity of the US dollar. As the world's reserve currency. As McCoy points out, we'll be devastating to the empire because number one, one of our debt and number two, the value of the dollar will plummet and we know exactly what is going to look like because it's what happened to Britain in the 1950s. When the pound sterling was dropped. As the world's reserve currency so. That that is McCoy actually courageously I would never do that gives a date 2030, but that it's coming and that they're working hard to ensure that it's coming is clear. And, and that will have tremendous social and economic effects within the United States will thrust us into a very deep and prolonged depression. And in the sustenance because it's done through debt of the 750 military bases we have abroad will become impossible. The empire will not be, we won't be able to fund the empire. So, and it will create civil unrest I mean there will be an uptick of, if you can believe it the kind of nihilistic violence that plagues the country. You know unfortunately the radical left in the United States has been so decimated. I mean we could have gone fascist in the 1930s lots of countries did, but we had powerful everybody writes the communists out of our history but we had powerful militant movements that saved us. And that's very worrying. And, and that always empowers fascist or fascistic elements and the ruling elite in the United States. Henry Ford and all these people they were huge admirers particularly Mussolini because he broke the Union so that's there. And China well, I mean China is the real prize I mean in the eyes of the warmongers. And again that is a characteristic of late empire so empires at their inception are very judicious about the use of force actually very careful about it. And, and then in decline there, historians call it micro militarism they're constantly carrying out military fiascos and a kind of desperate effort to regain that loss to Germany. If you go back to Vietnam. I mean do we really count Grenada or, you know, pushing Iraq out of Kuwait is huge military victories I mean you can if you want but pretty much since Vietnam it's just been one military debacle after another including 20 years of military debacles in the Middle East. And, and that accelerates the decline, partly because of course your fueling or taking resources from the state for a war machine, while our roads bridges schools electrical grids crumble and 600,000 people are homeless and there's a nine, I can't remember any families nine million children go to bed hungry etc. So, and then instead of responding because you're only investing in systems of control you're not actually investing in people. The way you respond is to take the very harsh forms of control on the outer reaches of empire and bring them back to the homeland militarized drones militarized police. It's corpus vast prison systems, etc. His whole cell surveillance of the public were the most spied upon watched monitored photographed population in human history. I mean we have outdone even the Stasi state, which I covered so that antagonism with China it does two things it is, again, kind of quixotic and self defeating attempt to regain lost a Gemini China will quickly overtake us economically I think already as in terms of industrial output. So you're trying to regain that lost to Gemini and then also you need to justify the diversion of huge amounts of state resources into the war machine so you have to. I think the reason that people forget that again, you know, having been in Eastern Europe in 89 that Gorbachev, Yeltsin and in the beginning Putin, all wanted to build both economic and security alliances with the West and the. Exactly. Well, you can't justify the expansion of NATO unless Russia's made an enemy if they don't want to become an enemy that will make them the enemy that's really what happened. And that's why Putin has such deep and legitimate anger and betrayal, because that was not the intention. They really wanted to be integrated. But the war machine wasn't about to integrate them because you couldn't justify expanding NATO to 14 countries in Eastern and Central Europe. Exactly. Exactly. Now China. Now they've decided China. So what are we doing with China? I mean, sending building nuclear submarine bases in Australia. I think Australia is China's one of the largest trading part of it. It's just crazy. But the war machine has its own self defeating logic. And it won't be stopped. And I mean, we can't even audit these people. It doesn't matter how many disasters they orchestrate. And that's part of the problem with the press, because all the cheerleaders for every disaster, military fiasco that we've undergone, pop up again, and all the kind of shills for the war industry that Kagan's and Elliott Abrams and crystal. I've dealt with these people since Central America. Robert Kagan worked for Elliott Abrams in the State Department overseeing Central America. And his job, their job was in essence to attempt to discredit everything we as reporters and photographers were documenting everything. And they've never changed. And their think tanks, Brookings and American Enterprise, they're all funded. Look, they're all funded by the war industry. And they're all given prominent purchase, even though they've been wrong on everything. It doesn't matter. So it's, you know, in essence, having once been part of the mainstream. And so I understand how it works. And then, you know, kind of now standing on the sidelines. It's truly terrifying and having dealt, you know, with these people for decades. I know some of them. I know who they are. And they're cynical, shallow, not very bright. You know, they're creatures of Washington. They don't understand the world. They don't understand other culture. They're linguistically, culturally, historically, religiously, illiterate. You know, for them, it's all in the paradigm of Munich and World War Two and the new Hitler, which is just infantile. But they run, they're running the show. And, and it doesn't matter whether it's Republican or Democrat. I mean, Victoria Nuland began as Cheney's, when he was vice president, his chief foreign policy advisor. She's working for Biden. I mean, Biden's no different. Biden's awful on all this stuff. Biden was calling for the invasion of Iraq five years before we invaded Iraq. He's totally a creature of, of this, which is why he was anointed and appointed. But, but, you know, we could be, we could pay a very, we may very soon pay a very steep price for this idiocy. Yeah. Well, let's bring this to a close. I'm sorry, Jody. I just was, thank you so much, Chris, because I know you're not reading the chat, but there's the first celebration of your clarity. You know, I talk about how we all need to become tuning forks for peace and you are a tuning fork for sanity, peace, humanity, and deepest gratitude that you could join. Well, everybody, as you said, can get everything, including the Real News weekly interview on chris edges.substack.com. So that's where you can find it now and thank God for Substack because they shut down RT at a show. I never did a show in Russia, nothing, zero. I did shows with, you know, Medea Benjamin and Noam Jomsky and Gornel West and they don't want that, you know, YouTube disappeared the entire archive. And I don't know, wonder what rules they disappeared because I didn't violate any show was frankly kind of wonky and boring. I think mostly writers, McCoy was on there, all sorts of people, the kind of stuff that should be on PBS at about one in the morning with some old writer interviewing other writers. But again, it's kind of the tragedy of what's happened culturally and what's happened within the press. But look, I love Code Pink, I think you guys are great. Yeah, I admire so much of what you do and you give us all hope and, you know, people like me feel we're not alone. So thanks. Thank you, Chris. And yes, it's Substack. And Chris is also on the Real News. He has a show once a week. Please, the nourishment that you have just received is there for you every week I turn to him every week to be nourished heart spirit and soul. So thank you Chris so much for this ring of truth and ring of humanity and ring of sanity. And Jim thanks for this opportunity this week to teach. We'll see you all tomorrow. Okay, thanks. Thank you Chris. Thank you Jody we hope we can get you back Chris, because it's the truth that sets a person free in the end and just knowing the truth is an empowerment that initiates the kinds of courage and changes that you're calling for in that Jody and Code Pink are exemplifying day by day so I want to really personally and collectively on behalf of our global audience thank you for your courage and speaking truth to power so consistently over so many years. It's really a beacon for many of us who track your work so thank you for being who you are. Thanks, Joe. Sweet. Thank you very much. All right everyone that'll bring us to a close for today. You're all welcome to the after session chat you'll see the link. The stand is put in the chat box and we'll see you then tomorrow for our fourth of five sessions on the situation in Ukraine and we'll be talking about the possibilities for negotiation and diplomacy. Thank you Chris. Thank you Jody. Thank you everyone. See you tomorrow.