 Hello everyone, I'm Jim Garrison. I wanna welcome you to this session of Humanity Rising as we complete a five day program on China not being our enemy. This program over the last five days has elicited a number of comments. Most people don't really think much about China and just kind of accept the prevailing official narrative. So to have five days of deeper analysis and discussion has been very, very, not only informative but transformational to our global humanity rising community. We covered a lot of ground over these days. I think one of the principal themes that has emerged from our deliberations is the relationship between the rhetoric of war and demonization. And that how that affects people's not only attitudes but behavior. We heard yesterday from some Asian Americans who have been suffering in their day to day lives and many of Chinese Americans and just generally Asian Americans. And that is important to note because propaganda has effect. People are killed in their minds before they're killed on the battlefield. And we need to understand that as the United States simultaneously engages in a very active live hot war in Ukraine against Russia, but also an escalating conflict toward a war with China. The propaganda that is now saturating the airways needs to be understood as that. And all of us of goodwill need to be able to discern the deeper truths that are there for us to know but it requires effort and intention. And that is what humanity rising seeks to do day by day as we take on various code red issues and always seek to fathom the opportunities that are inherent in the crises that we face. Excuse me, excuse me. And so we are very honored to have our partnership with Code Pink. It's been a very, very dynamic partnership. Code Pink as you all know is one of the most extraordinary organizations working for peace, I think anywhere in the world. They're indefatigable. They're extraordinarily courageous and they speak truth to power consistently in a way that mobilizes action around the United States and the world at a moment where rather than cooperating with each other to solve critical issues like climate change, we're going to war with each other in a almost absurd, insane way. And so Code Pink is very, very important to humanity rising. So I wanna acknowledge them and welcome Jodi Evans, one of the co-founders of Code Pink who was just recently in China and has been co-moderating these various summits that we've been having on Ukraine. And China, we wanna thank Free Speech TV also for airing the program this week. We hope to continue the partnership into the future. But Jodi, thank you so much and welcome to our final session. Thank you, Jim. It has been quite a powerful week. Thank you to humanity rising for raising up these voices. It's, you know, what you have to understand is no one wants to hear the truth and it gets more and more squeezed out. I was talking to a journalist yesterday who just lost their position because they told the truth. And as I was talking to them, I was telling them how many others like them there are. So that journalism fires the truth tellers is very troubling about the world we live in right now. So thanks for raising up these voices that at the core are really about peace. It's not about China, it's about peace. This week has been about peace. So your comment killed in their minds before killed them on the battlefield, that's powerful. And that's what propaganda is. And so I wanna just start today by raising up a piece of propaganda. The Department of Defense yesterday reported that the spy balloon was not a spy balloon. It was a weather balloon, but that was obvious to all but the liars in the White House, the State Department and the military. What crazy person would believe a spy ship was that obvious when they can see much more with the satellites that they have. When it had been all over the United States for almost a year, it had been over military bases in Hawaii and the military had said it was nothing to worry about. Yet they used this thing they knew all about to avoid Blinken going to China. Why was China avoiding US calls? Think about if this happened to you. How insulting, how very stupid and childish. It's embarrassing, it's embarrassing. But that happened, we all witnessed it. It was a fury of fear that was embedded in us. And so I just, Jim, it's like killed in their minds before killed in the battlefields. We are at the front lines of this war. We in the Western world are the ones that are being affected and what you're learning this week is a way to bring people back to life because they are being already killed on the battle field of truth, which is where wars start. So I'm going to put in the chat that article from the military times, so you all can take a look. Now I'm really excited that we have a beautiful guest, someone I've known for I think almost 20 years. Michael Wong is one of the co-founders of Pivot to Peace and he's the Vice President of the Board of Veterans for Peace. He's also the founder of the China Committee at Veterans for Peace. Mike refused the US Army orders and deserted to Canada during the Vietnam War. He's been featured in the movie Sir No Sir about GI resistance in the Vietnam War and he's in an anthology Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace edited by Maxine Honkingston. He's a social worker with a master's degree in social work and he is the heart of peace. And I'm so happy to have you with us today, Mike. Thank you. Thank you, Jodi, I appreciate that. Let me talk about my experience. Both as a veteran, member of Veterans for Peace and as a Chinese American during this last decade or so since the new Cold War in China was started by the United States. Back in 2014, retired Colonel Ann Wright came around making a national speaking tour and talking to us about the Asian Tibet which had just been recently announced by President Obama. People think of President Obama as progressive peace-activated president but actually he was in many ways quite the opposite. He started the Asian Tibet at a time when China's relationship with the United States was very friendly. The Chinese had the idea that the United States was their friend. They were learning from the United States. A lot of Chinese were coming over here, studying here. Xi Jinping's daughter actually studied in the United States. So at that time, the United States was seen by China as a friend and yet because of their peaceful economic rise and the fear that the American elite had that if China were to rise economically that would then give them the economic strength to develop a strong military and the fear that they would then behave like the United States as a great power and try to dominate the United States and the world in the same way that the United States was dominating the world. That was something that I don't think the Chinese really understood because the Chinese have never tried to dominate the world. China has a history going back almost 5,000 years and in those 5,000 years, China never tried to dominate the world. About 1,000 years ago, China had invented gunpowder before anybody else and they had a monopoly on gunpowder actually for a period of about 400 years. And during those 400 years, not only did they have a monopoly on gunpowder, they had a large country with a large population, good natural resources, and an advanced civilization. So in other words, they had all the ingredients necessary to go out and start conquering other nations, but they didn't do that. They didn't go on a global earth conquering campaign. When you think about it, when the Europeans finally developed gunpowder, they were the ones that went out and tried to conquer the world during the colonial period. You think of Great Britain, for example, which is this tiny island that once literally had an empire upon which the sun never set. China never did that and they had much more potential to do that than certainly Great Britain or any of the smaller European countries. Why did the Chinese never do that? Because from their viewpoint, the best way to meet China's economic needs was through the Silk Road, through trade. If you were to go out and try to conquer other countries, what you end up doing is fighting endless wars, which is in fact where the United States is right now. United States, the elite, see this as the zero sum game, either you are the conqueror or you are the victim. And that comes from European history where all the different European countries for thousands of years have been fighting each other, each trying to get dominance, one being dominant for a while, another being dominant later on and it just going back and forth. China doesn't have that same kind of history. China has always seen itself as the center of its world and it simply took care of itself. The Great Wall, for example, was designed to keep barbarians out, not to go invade other people. So the difference in both historical experience and Chinese philosophy politically and spiritually and morally is very different from the West and the West doesn't understand that. Hillary Clinton famously said, quote, I don't want my grandchildren to live in a world dominated by the Chinese. That's an elite expression of the zero sum game mentality. Obama plays 60% of our naval forces around China and built up our series of bases around China. Can we show the map right now? Can we share a screen and show the map of the bases around China? We want one. Okay, so anyway, the other thing about Obama's period is he tried to build up places like South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Australia, against China. This is called divide and conquer. You pit different nations against each other to weaken and destroy all of them. When you're seeing the map? Yeah, the map is up. Great, thank you. I'll let you know when I want it down. When Trump came to power, he continued the Cold War on China. He ramped up a trade war during the whole COVID epidemic. He started talking about Kung Fu, the China flu, basically demonizing China. This is the kind of propaganda, kind of rhetoric that America always uses when it wants to target any particular country. Doesn't matter whether it's Iraq. Doesn't matter whether it's Vietnam. Doesn't matter whether it's Nicaragua. Doesn't matter whether it's Venezuela. Whether it's a big country or a small country, they always try to demonize them and try to accuse them of all kinds of evil deeds, so to speak. During 2019, there were riots in Hong Kong. There were protesters calling for the independence of Hong Kong from China, and some of them were even out there waving American and British flags, calling for a return of Hong Kong to Great Britain. The United States mainstream media and the United States government portrayed these rioters as peaceful protesters, but video shows the physical facts of what actually happened and firsthand reports that I've been hearing from Chinese community. I know people across the political spectrum in the Chinese community, from people who love the Chinese government, to people who hate the Chinese government and everything in between. All of them were telling me about the behavior of the rioters. They were going around burning down stores, of store owners that they thought disagreed with them. They were thrashing stores. They were setting fires in subway stations. They were attacking the police with rocks, with sticks, with bows and arrows, and with fire bombs, what we used to call Molotov cocktails. They were throwing thousands of these rocks and these fire bombs at the police in subway stations and elsewhere. This was not peaceful protest. And the leaders of these rioters, people like Nathan Law, for example, or Jimmy Lai, they were meeting with American officials, including people like Mike Pompeo, people like the ambassador to Hong Kong, the consul general. So they were very tied to the American government. They were being funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, NED. If you simply go on the NED website and look it up, you can see the millions of dollars that the United States government gives to organize protests, color revolutions, et cetera, around the world. And if you look up China and you look up Hong Kong, you can see the millions of dollars that U.S. government spent there. What was interesting to me was that when the riots first started, two people came and talked to me from Veterans for Peace. One was Kamiya Mahia, who was an Iraq veteran who refused to go back to Iraq and became an anti-war activist and actually was a member, it actually still is a member of Veterans for Peace as well as about-faced veterans against war. He's a Nicaraguan. His family is very well connected in Nicaragua. He told me that what happened a year before in 2018 was exactly the same as what was happening in Hong Kong. Same process, color revolution, organized by the United States, funded by the United States. He told me that entire sequence of events that happened in Nicaragua a year before predicted that the same sequence of events would happen in Hong Kong. And actually what happened was exactly what he predicted. The other person was Colonel Ann Wright, who was very knowledgeable about events in Nicaragua as well as around the world. And she basically said the same thing. Like, look, here's what happened in Nicaragua. They're following the same playbook in Hong Kong. Here's a sequence of events. They started out in Hong Kong and it was similar in Nicaragua with thrashing the Hong Kong legislative building, just tearing it apart. The police were not even there because the police were trying to take a very hands-off attitude and not do anything to provoke the demonstrators. In spite of the police being physically not there, the mainstream US media and the government accused the Hong Kong police of police brutality. And that was used to escalate the violence. And the violence just continued escalating for a whole year. And what happened was when the violence first started, when the protests first started, they had thousands of people joined them because a lot of the youth had been educated in the public schools, which were still run by British teachers and principals and et cetera. So they got all this brainwashing about how wonderful it was under the British and how terrible the communists are. There was a big generation split between those students and their parents' generation. A lot of the parents' generations were for the US, were for the return of Hong Kong from the British to China because they had lived under British rule. They knew there was no democracy under British rule until the very last moment when Britain turned it over to China. They set up an election system, et cetera. But prior to that, the British assigned a governor who ruled Hong Kong as a dictator and as basically a moneymaker. So that got me involved in a new way with the Chinese community. Retired Judge Julie Tang, who was a close friend of mine that I had worked on in another campaign about the comfort women. She came to me and was the first person to tell me what was going on firsthand in Hong Kong. She's from Hong Kong. She was born and raised there. Came over as a young woman to the United States and eventually became a lawyer and then a judge in San Francisco. Together at Herbie Hess, we organized a seminar in San Francisco at the Veterans Building in San Francisco. And it was a sellout crowd. It was standing room only. And it was the first time the Chinese community and the white peace community came together and held an event about what was going on. That started a whole series of follow-up actions by both the Chinese and the peace community and led to the formation of Pivot to Peace, which is a coalition of the two communities. For the first time, the Chinese community was reaching out to the larger community, realizing that this is a situation in which the United States is making war on China and there's going to be collateral damage fallout on the Chinese community. This turned out to be a very pivotal moment, both in my life and in the peace movement, the war on China, the war on the world, the war of the United States trying to dominate the world and control the world and dictate to other countries at the point of a gun, how they can live, what government they can have, et cetera. I had been very active in the anti-war movement during the Vietnam period. I was very active in the anti-war movement during the Iraq war and the follow-up to that. And I spent my whole life fighting against American imperialism to protect other countries. This was the first time in my life that now was coming to my race, my ethnicity, and China, the country that my ancestors are from. So this all of a sudden, all my life, I had been defending other people. Now I found myself in the position of defending myself in my community and my ethnic group. This was a new experience for me actually. So anyway, since 2019, things have only escalated. You can take down the map now if you wanna take down the map of the bases. The 2022 National Defense Strategy, the National Defense Strategy of the United States names China as the primary target, the primary enemy of the United States. People are talking about China as an existential threat. There's a right-wing government in Taiwan that really is a pawn of the United States, the DPP, but the old ruling party in Taiwan, the KMT, the Kuomintang, or the Chinese Nationalists, the Chinese Nationalists want improve relations with China. There's been an understanding of the one China policy that Taiwan's status is to be determined by the Chinese themselves. China itself has said that they want peaceful relations with Taiwan and they want peaceful reunification eventually. In the meantime, the status quo is fine with China and it's also what a majority of people on Taiwan, according to polls, also want is just to maintain the status quo. There's billions of dollars of trade that goes back and forth between China, the mainland China and Taiwan every year. There's thousands of tourists and business people that go back and forth. So the status quo is actually working for both sides. It's not working for the United States because the United States wants war to bring down China. So next year there's going to be an election and it'll be very critical to see which party wins the election. There were local elections throughout Taiwan earlier this year. The DPP tried to make it about more independence for Taiwan and ratcheting up tensions with China. And they lost dramatically. So we'll see what happens next year. If the DPP, the right-wing party loses next year, Taiwan might actually take a turn towards better relations with China, if not, tensions might continue to ratchet up. Pelosi visited Taiwan, that's a violation of the one China policy because the United States agreed 50 years ago when Nixon went to China not to have official relations with China. The United States is trying to intentionally ratchet up the pressure and force China into a war over Taiwan. So that's a flashpoint. North Korea is a flashpoint. I think I'm running out of time so I should probably stop here but we can have more discussion later on. Thank you. Thank you, Mike. Thank you so much. And thank you for taking us through that how personal this is for you because that's what we saw yesterday. And I think one of the things that happens with propaganda is people forget it's about people and that affects people's lives and that it's pulled you back into this engagement. So next I wanna bring back Wei who we heard from at the beginning and she's pulling us in and taking us out. Wei Yu was Code Pink's China's Not Our Enemy coordinator for the last almost year and she was born in Taijin, China and has lived in the US since her high school years. While she was in university she pursued a degree in sociology and international studies and conducted an independent research project on neocolonial bias in the global North academia. So Wei's worked with several nonprofit organizations serving women, racial minorities and other progressive causes. She's passionate about anti-imperialism and peacebuilding and loves vegan cooking. So Wei, turning it over to you. Thank you so much, Jodi. Obviously I have way less experience than Mike. That's why my bio had to be longer. Yeah, I want to talk about... So what's the next step? Like we realized that there is a problem. There is so much ongoing propaganda preparing for a war with China. So what can we do? Like Jodi mentioned before I was working on Code Pink's China's Not Our Enemy campaign which I think is just a brilliant, brilliant way to plug in into the movement. But yeah, before finding out about Code Pink actually even though I was doing some like nonprofit or activism work I actually never imagined that there would be an opportunity to call for peace with China because just witnessing the pivot to war like Mike mentioned with pivot to Asia during the Obama administration and then later on in the Trump administration with everything I just didn't know that it was possible. I didn't know there was a voice in the US that's calling for peace with China. So it was just absolutely like brilliant experience working with Jodi on the China's Not Our Enemy campaign at Code Pink. I think it does basically like everything I think we should be doing to prevent a war to make peace. One of the most important things I think is to educate ourselves. Educate ourselves through all the propaganda that's going on and all the censorship that's preventing us from learning truth from China. And also something Mike talked about in his part was that the history of China as well. Not just like the propaganda that's going on recently but also we can look back to China's history because it has thousands of years of it to see that this country has like a pattern of peace-loving and peacemaking and trying to educate ourselves on the philosophy from the East about being relational and not being competitive. I think that's also kind of like part of like the education piece and also get plug in into an organization or with the movement. Again, going back to Code Pink there are a lot of great amazing opportunities out there that are petitions. There are opportunities to organize locally or you can join us in DC for whatever actions. There was one time I remember we were flyer-ing for the campaign on like a sidewalk and then there were just people walking by and usually if you've done flyer-ings before it's kind of like awkward because you're just there were just like people walking by minding their own business and then we were just there handing out flyers interrupting them as they're walking by and maybe trying to talk to them and start a conversation. And I was a little scared because it was my first time which was like flyer-ing in public but then what was really surprising to me was that because we had these signs from Code Pink saying China has done our enemy saying stop Asian hate right by our side people were actually coming towards us asking for more information about the signs and asking to grab a flyers before they have to move on and they were taking pictures of the sign. I remember seeing this one Chinese family Chinese American family and the mother actually made her child and also her husband they were like, go pick up the sign I wanted to take a picture of the signs with you and it was just like very, very adorable because she said, yeah, that's correct China is another enemy and I can just like understand the surprise that she felt at the moment because that was the surprise I felt when I found out about the campaign and kind of on the inverse of that experience there was another incident on the same day that we were flyering. There was another Chinese American family I could tell because they were speaking Chinese between them. It was this family with a mother and also a child and then as they were walking by the child was like pointing at our signs but then the mother just looked very scared and very disturbed and trying to like hold on to the child's hand and then just try to walk away as quickly as they could and then I heard this child say but it says China is not our enemy and I at that moment I just like understood completely where like why the mother looks so distressed because she must have thought that if there's any like political presence or demonstration about China, it has to be negative. That's just her experience living in this country and I just like totally understood where she's coming from and why she was so stressed and then I was like really happy that we were there to bring the message of peace with China there. So with all of these propaganda we've learned during this past week there is a growth we are also like inspired that there is a growing movement for China for peace with China. So it's difficult work but really when we do show up in the streets, when we do do actions and do demonstrations, it does make a difference. Now just trying to make a change but also we are inspiring more people who are just so happy to see our message and feel so supported. So yeah, we're showing up really for peace and also for other people that we care about. Yay, thank you Wei. That's such an important message that even now as you spent this week learning to go out and share it, it serves others. That it really what we've been able to give you is this way to serve those in the streets in whatever way we can. Thank you Wei for sharing those stories. So beautiful and thank you for all you do for peace. Jim, did you wanna ask any questions of Wei and Mike before I went forward? Yes, I'd be delighted to. Thank you so much, Mike and Wei. Mike, the question that I'd like to begin with and you can also comment Wei is around the current situation as you understand it around what's going on with Ukraine. There's obviously an extraordinary amount about Russia and Ukraine but also about the growing alliance between Russia and China around the Chinese peace initiative for Ukraine and also the Chinese peace initiative that has brought a stability to the Iranian-Saudi relationship and other areas where Xi Jinping has really been moving forward in various troubled regions around the world to bring about peaceful settlements. And I wonder if you could just comment on China and Ukraine and the Chinese initiatives for peace in various regions because this marks, as I understand it, the first time that China has emerged on the world stage as a peacemaker. Yes, that's a very interesting question. Actually, China from the beginning took a neutral position. For example, at the United Nations when Wei didn't came to a vote, they abstained and they've since declared. Oh, dear, we lost Mike. Should we just lose Mike? No, we just... Uh-oh. There he is. Somehow I got disconnected momentarily but... Okay, you're back. Here we go. I'm back. Okay, so China declared from the beginning that it was neutral. They maintained the same relations with both countries that they had before the war which was good relations. They had good trading partners with both countries, good diplomatic relations with both countries. They continued to maintain that. Nothing changed in terms of their relations with both countries. They even sent humanitarian aid to Ukraine at one point. So they've basically taken the position that, look, this is between Ukraine and Russia and NATO and the United States. This is not a Chinese war. The United States accuses China of taking Russia's side based on China's statements previously as well as during the war that it has an unlimited partnership with Russia. In terms of trade relations and the Belt and Road which is the new Silk Road being developed by China, that's true, but when it comes to war, China has said it will not send weapons or any war material to either Ukraine or Russia. And in fact, it stuck to its word. The United States keeps accusing China of having some intentions to send arms to Russia, but China denies it and in fact, no arms have been sent. So that put China in a position to actually talk to both sides, which is why Xi Jinping then made his peace initiative. And it was interesting to me because I wanted to see how Ukraine would respond. Zelensky said that he was interested in it. He was willing to talk to the Chinese about it. And then that's the last we heard. So whether it will actually go anywhere, I don't know. The United States is very hell bent on maintaining the war and trying to bring Russia down. That's not going very well. The sanctions have actually backfired, but the United States is not giving up. At the same time, the United States is also trying to ratchet up tensions in Asia, both in Korea and in Taiwan. They are ally, Japan, the previous prime minister kind of manipulated the peace constitution by saying, well, peace constitution says we can defend ourselves, but that also means that we can defend our allies such as the United States. And of course, the United States would launch an aggressive war. It wouldn't be a defensive war since China's not threatening the United States. So that raises the question of, is the United States really wanna fight a two-front war in Europe and Asia at the same time? That's another very interesting question we could have probably a long discussion about that. But at this point, China's position is pretty clear, but what will actually happen is hard to predict. I don't think I could predict it. Let me mention one other thing that I forgot to mention about the fallout, the Cold War on China to the Chinese community. There's been a real escalation in anti-China hate. And I just wanna mention that there's between 1,400 and 4,000 scientists in the United States, Chinese American scientists that have gone back to China according to different reports that we've heard in the Chinese community. And that's because of the crackdown on Chinese scientists first during the China Initiative, which has now been discontinued in name, but actually continued in practice, in which Chinese American scientists who have any connection to China, such as doing joint studies with some Chinese university are getting any funding for some joint project with a Chinese university or something like that. A bunch of them have been arrested by the FBI and accused of being an agent of China. And most of those cases don't pan out, they get dropped, but it's created a great fear with the Chinese community, especially among scientists, which is why so many left. So, and also there was between 1920 and 1921, there were over 10,000 anti-Asian hate incidents reported against Asians because of the fallout from the U.S. covalry in China, I just wanted to mention that. Yeah, just to correct, and you said 1920 and 21, you meant 2020. I meant 20, 19, I meant 2020 and 2021, sorry. Yeah. Thanks for correcting me. Yeah, yeah, just to make a comment on your point, and the United States conduct a two-front war, the neocons believe that yes, the United States can, that the United States did it in the Second World War. It was the first time actually in history, where a single country was able to conduct a two-front war across two vast oceans and forced the enemy into unconditional surrender. And I think that is what's inspiring the neocons today to believe that sure, the United States has absolutely the resource capacity and the will to take on Russia and Europe and China and Asia. And I think that's why they're so emboldened and so deluded in terms of their confidence that war can actually be won. And I think that leads me to something I'd love to have you comment on and that is, it's clear in Ukraine that the United States has a long-term goal of not only weakening and defeating Russia, but breaking Russia up. And that's the code word that's used for that is regime change. And now Putin is being charged as a war criminal and by the International Court in the Hague. And the Chinese know that that's really the policy of the United States for China. And so I think the alliance that's beginning to grow between Russia and China is a mutual recognition that the US is not kidding, that the neocons are absolutely dead serious. And for 30 years, they've waged essentially perpetual war around the world. And now they're coming to a point as John Mersheimer, the great international relations specialist has said in a recent lecture, which he entitled America's forever war. He says, what makes the situation now dangerous is that the unipolar moment that kind of broke out with the collapse of the Soviet Union is coming to a close as Russia gets stronger, but more fundamentally as China gets stronger. And so the United States having had really a free ride for 30 years is now being seriously challenged by the emerging two superpowers, principally China. And it is going back to its default, which is war and military confrontation and so that the situation is actually getting more and more dangerous as the US makes it absolutely clear with Russia and increasingly clear with China that war is where this thing is gonna end up. And so it's really, as I view it, it's narrowing the scope, the margin of error now between the US and China and between China and Russia. And so I'd love to have your comment and Wei, if you wanna make any comments on, that's just my view based on my observations but it may not correspond to yours, but how would you view this escalating geostrategic reality with a policy formation in the United States that yes, absolutely we can fight a two front war? Yes, I would absolutely agree with your assessment. Everything you said I think is right on. And that's what really frankly scares me because I think we're at a very pivotal moment. I think that this year is going to be a critical year. When I say this year, we're actually in the middle of the year now. So I'm talking about the rest of this year plus, at least the next half of next year, possibly all of next year. I think we're in a very critical moment. I think Hillary Clinton's statement, I don't want my grandchildren to live in a world dominated by the Chinese really sums up the fear that the elite have in this country. I think it's an unrealistic fear. You know, we live an ocean away on both sides from Russia and China and no country really is, the reality is no country is really able to dominate the world. The world is just too big. China recognize that thousands of years, though even when they had a monopoly on gunpowder for 400 years, they didn't try to conquer the world because they knew, philosophically, morally, politically, functionally, that it's a fool's errand. You spend, it's much more costly to fight foreign wars than it is just to conduct normal trade. United States, the elite do not understand that. They are stuck in the zero sum game mentality where they believe that either you are the perpetrator or you are the victim and those are the only two options. That is simply not reality. It may be that that was European history, but it's not the world's history. We have this, you know, when we study, quote, world history, unquote, in the United States in high school and college, it's mostly Western history, which means mostly European history and so there's this whole history of nations surviving by fighting wars and conquering each other. What happens is these empires, whether we're talking about the Romans, the Byzantines, the various colonial empires, et cetera, they rise, they're big and powerful for a few hundred years and then they disappear into history. China's been around 5,000 years. Why? Simply because they did not overextend themselves and play the zero sum game. The United States is in a very safe geological position. We have oceans on two sides. We have a friendly country to the north. We have a small country to the south, which is not a threat, Mexico. And we don't need to play the zero sum game. We're a large country with good natural resources, well-trained workforce, advanced technology. We could do perfectly well in a world in which, as the Chinese visualize it, a multipolar world in which there are many centers of power and no single country dominates the world, that's the way the ancient world was for most of the thousands of years of China's existence. That's kind of the normal state of the world. No single country can dominate the world, not even China, not even India, not even Russia, not the United States. If the United States could just accept that that's the natural state of the world, we could have a very prosperous, thriving, successful place in it. And we could be a major, respected country. We would be just fine, but the American elite can't see that, and that's what makes this situation and this time in history so dangerous. But I think it's important to note that that's a very, that's I think the crux of it. And that is what we learned from Fred yesterday, was that the United States elite make money on war no matter what. We've watched the U.S. lose every war it's entered since 70 years. But who loses are the taxpayers, the fabric of society, our own psyches. Like we live in a country where hate is the core. And so all of that propaganda where maybe we're educated but not very well, but we don't know how to discern around a spy balloon that we're used by propaganda in question what that education means. To me education is being able to critically think. And critical thinking is not taking place. Other countries know they live inside, citizens of other countries know their governments produce propaganda. In the United States people think it's fact. They think that the United, you know, the New York Times it's run by the Pentagon in the White House is giving them facts when they're lied to all the time and made dumb, made literally dumb. And the China knows that because we don't see from the philosophy of China because it seems sees from that place of we are all, we are everything. We are the planet. We are the community. We are the world. We are our family. It's not, it's not so individualized as the West that they know there's, we all lose from war. And right now we know that that's the greatest contributor to climate change. So we all lose from war for that's, you know, facts. But in the US they, the elite that you're referring to they make money on war. It's how they make money. And I just want to say that this, we just got a report that already this year a trillion dollars of weapons have been sold globally. What do you think happens when a trillion dollars of weapons is sold globally? Nothing no different than what happens in the streets of our cities in the United States. That it's going to start looking like schools, you know, that's going to start growing around the world. We are, we are fueling a future that is dismal, dismal. And, and, you know, yes, at the end of that, we already, you know, as Jim said earlier in the week, you don't take a nuclear power to a decision point of surrendering or using a nuclear war. You don't do that. But those people in Washington are delusional. And, you know, I want to say that when I went to Congress and told people there wasn't a spy balloon, I was told, I didn't know what I was talking about. It's plain and simple to understand that that's not a spy balloon. That's just, it just takes critical thinking. They have, they have satellites overhead that can see way more than a spy balloon. And that's something three times the size of a football field and say it's a spy balloon. That, that means somebody is just crazy. And wants to make you crazy. I mean, that's the sad part. And I think, I hope that's what everybody's been able to get this week, that this is on purpose. This is funded. And like Mike said, it's the NED. It's like your tax dollars have gone to all this destruction and deaths. And we, we look at the, our cities, we look at the fabric of our society. It is a reflection of what these wars cause. And, you know, Mike, I always just love you for knowing that it's wrong to go to war. That your core of your being, you know that that's wrong. And where we are right now is in a, in a country that's been manipulated into the wars is the answer. We live in the, you know, it's the, the water we, we swim in and the air we breathe. And that's why I could think we're launching a summer of peace. I went to the 30 members of Congress who serve on that China hate committee. And what they're doing is criminal. And really reflective of the McCarthy committee in the 50s. Yeah. Every member of Congress said, we only hear about war. They, they have, they are embedded. The elite are trapped in their minds, but they're not trapped in reality. No. Which is scary. It's a, it's a, it's an insane asylum. You just described it as an insane asylum. And that's what it is. And so when that's what's happening. And this summer they're going to spend all this arguing about an NDAA that continues to grow. We're at $1 trillion in the, you know, being spent out of the lesson, the AA that was already grown because we have to understand all these members of Congress take money from weapons manufacturers. And they're embedded with the military in their office. That, you know, that's why China's not our enemy is about peace. It's about when we make a country or enemy. First of all, what does that say about us? It's childish. It's, it's in the incapacity to relate. And know that the complexities of the world or curiosity, it takes us out of our curiosity. Just the fact that we would agree to that. Makes us party to stupidity. And then it's about peace. It's, it's what China understands. For its history, as Mike has so beautifully said, peace is how we all live. And so for the summer, we feel like we had this beautiful summer of love that was part of the ending of the war in Vietnam. Why don't we have a summer of peace because Congress said, it does not hear from peace. It does not hear messages of peace. And so let's start from the just very beginning of. You know, if a member of Congress says they have to get under their desk to get, or get buzzed on when they bring up the word peace, then let's make it cool and let's make it big. And let's just get it out there without like the what to have to do's, but peace marches through farmers markets, wearing, you know, wearing your peace. I wear my peace earrings everywhere. I wear my peace t-shirt everywhere. It starts a conversation as Wei said, let's start the conversations. They matter to every single person out there who's getting the propaganda. It matters. And it could just say we're tuning forks for peace. It's like when that's not in the conversation, it's up to each one of us to be that. Because they're not changing. And we have to change the culture. Because they're lost. We have to really get that every single one of them. When, you know, Wei was describing the fear of the woman. It's like to, you know, we talked about it with being an immigrant, you know, when it's your mate did not feel safe by who you are. And when you've seen, as Mike said, the attacks on scientists and you just leave. I mean, even though some of the people that have been attacked that aren't Chinese, they've left. I just did an interview with a contra pianist that got attacked in the New York subway. And they were Chinaman, Chinaman, Chinaman. And he picked up and left the New York fill. Because it's like it's not safe to live in that country. I think where do we say it's, yes, it was described that we're safe around no, no enemies on our borders, you know, we're far away from the, you know, who could be our enemies. But we've created the enemy within. We have created the enemy within. And when we get into next year, an election year that's built on hate and lies and propaganda and separation. When the US came to Iraq, they asked one of the Iraqis that was taking me around. What is your greatest fear? And she said that we'll be separated. That, you know, in my family were Sunni, Shiite, Christian, Jewish, I'm afraid they're going to separate us. And that's exactly what they did on day one. So in our practice for peace, don't separate ourselves from others. Don't make anyone an enemy. Don't separate us from communities. Don't make anyone a enemy. Don't make anyone a enemy. And don't make anyone a heart to curiosity. That's what humanity is writing is about. That's what this community is about. How do we connect? How do we be in relationship? And get out there and be boldly and proudly for peace and all the fun ways you can. Write us and let us know what that looks like for you. about all week that, you know, you can write to your member of Congress, we get up every day and we phone Congress, and we write Congress, that is our, that's our brushing our teeth. And you just make it part of your habit. It takes less than five minutes. If you brush your teeth, you should clean your poly, you know, it's like clean your politic, at least make sure it's getting peace in its message box. And the last link I added was the summer of peace. Join us. It's, it's really to make a commitment, I'll be visible for peace, and I'll bring five friends with me. Because if we could by the end of summer, which is September 21 is the last day before it moves into fall. It's the International Day of Peace. It's when the UN is gathering in New York. If we could build all this to keep making a splash for peace for the UN visitors. For the world is they're looking to New York as the countries come together. You know, it's like it's really up to us. They are in an insane asylum. And we've got to bring heart and love and peace to four. Thank you so much, Jody. That was powerful. I hope everybody within our network takes you up on that even if you're not in the United States, it's it's important to be willing to embody peace in this time of critical situations as we're exploring with China and Ukraine. And I'm just wondering, Wade, do you want to come in and make any comments about the summer of peace? And then maybe Michael, and then we can wrap up the program. Wade. Oh, I just felt everyone already said everything brilliantly. I'm sure Jody has more information on summer of peace. But I want to go back just quickly about something like Jimmy mentioned about these like political elites, I guess that that are in this country that are calling for war, they're delusional because they are looking to the history that the last time us one or two front war, which was like over two. But then really, if you look at the death toll from that war, China and also Greater East Asia suffered so many losses. And then also in Europe, people suffered losses. It's these is the people who were dying. The United States was just like sending weapons and trying to kill. The United States only pushed Japan to defeat by dropping not just one but two atomic bombs into this country. And then that they're and then like you said, they're referring they're they're still using that logic to today's situation because like they're willing to risk a nuclear war, if that means the war profiteers making more money, if that means staying in power, keeping whatever power that's left. And then and then yeah, it's it's just like this insanity, this absurdity. But then because all of these delusions, because of these beliefs that because they're so absurd and so insane, when we do speak the truth, we have that much power to take them down. We have the people on our side to build this movement and all together. Once like we see through their lies and then we speak up about their lives, they're very easy to take down. And we talked about a lot of sad things over this week. And then I just hope that everyone that can leave with this like hopeful message. Thank you, Wade. Thank you so much. Michael, what would be your comment on all this? Well, you know, since Jody mentioned the summer of peace, it reminds me of the summer of love in 1967. I was a very young, very naive young man at City College of San Francisco at the time, you know, I was I'm a San Francisco native. I was born and raised here. And I remember the summer of love when the hippie thing broke out. And it changed the world. The hippie movement spread throughout the country was in Europe. Hang on. It influenced the world. It's this small movement that came out of the neighborhood of San Francisco. I remember a friend of mine was a young black poet that I knew at City College. He was telling me, Mike, I just moved into this new neighborhood and there's all these artists and musicians and poets and writers and so on there. It's a great neighborhood. And, you know, it sounded very interesting. Neither of us had any clue that in a matter of months after he said that to me, the whole hippie thing was going to break out. The whole summer of love was going to break out. The whole world was changed. Even the people who are at the very heart of that movement, a month prior to it breaking out, had no idea what was going to happen. So, you know, a small movement of love, a small movement of peace, a small movement of the imagination. You never know where it's going to go. You know, the whole thing about, you know, the flopping of a butterfly's wings can have ramifications throughout the world. You never know what's going to change the world next. Even people at the very heart of these change frequently cannot predict what's going to happen in the future. So, we should be inspired by that. We should remember that no matter how dark the darkness seems, there's always the possibility of light breaking out in the most unexpected ways. Yeah, thank you, Michael. Before you wrap it, Jody, I just want to comment that I was there too, Mike. Oh, wow. I was 17 years old in 1967. And there was something I was in high school down in San Jose, California, but there was something in the ether that kept drawing me to hate Ashbury. And I had just gotten my driver's license the year before. And I kept borrowing my father's car, but not telling him that I was going up to San Francisco. He hated the hippies. And I found them the most inspiring thing I'd ever experienced in my whole life. And so as you were telling that story, I was feeling just flooded with nostalgic memories of not only being young, but with a heart full of possibility and full of excitement and creativity that there was a spirit that was a foot in the land. And I could be part of it in some mysterious way that as a young man, I had no idea about. I just knew I needed to be there. And so I just wanted to thank you for raising that. And I wanted also to offer an example in a more serious way for the imperative that Jody's calling us to for this summer of peace. And I want to recall the beginning of the Second World War, when the Nazis had swept over Europe, taken France, taken the Benelux countries, and seem to be impregnable, and seem to be completely invincible. And one of the things that they did, as we all know, is demand of the conquered nations that they produce quotas of Jews. All the countries did it. Except one. And that was Denmark. And it was an extraordinary demonstration of what Jody is calling us to do today. There was no real organization. But the Danish people just knew reflexively, instinctively what was going to happen to those Jews. And not only did they not produce any of the Jews on demand, they started to wear the star, the yellow star of David that was mandated for all the Jews. And the Nazis were there. And all of a sudden, they saw stars of David all over Copenhagen. And then as the ground swell began to develop momentum, finally, the king of Denmark came out with a star of David. And in one of the most extraordinary moments of history, the Nazis backed down. And they backed down because they understood that they were being confronted by a popular movement that was not going to be denied and was going to escalate. And it turns out historically, that 90% of the Jews in Denmark were saved. Because of the willingness of the Danish people to do very simple acts of peace. So as we care in our way toward a potential nuclear exchange in Ukraine, as we care in our way toward an escalation in China that almost certainly is going to lead to some kind of military conflict if we don't stop. We the people, whether it's in 1967, in San Francisco, or in 1941, in Copenhagen, have to make choices based on what we know to be true. And what we know to be true in the end, as Jodi said, is this not about China? It's not about Russia. It's not about Ukraine. It's about whether we're going to have peaceful relations between the nations. And at a moment when the crucible is upon us, and wrong choices could have global cataclysmic consequences, it's only we, the people that are left, that can make the difference that we seek. So while having a summer of peace may seem almost frivolous, and in a way it is, it's really the most important thing we can do, because it's almost literally the only thing that we have left. So it's within that context, I just want to thank you, Mike and you way and all the panelists for this week for bringing us to a very clear and compassionate illumination of some of the different, the very distinct realities that we need to cling to at this moment, out of which, seeing the light that Mike, you just referred to, enables us to embody the peace that we need in a lighthearted summer of love way, because that's often how the spirit actually moves to bring down the rich, and the powerful, and the militarists. So I want to thank everyone and Jodi, with deep love and respect and appreciation, turn it back over to you for a final word. I think I can't do any better than you, Jim, that was beautiful. I would love to end there, because you took my call and let it fly. So I'll see you all in the streets this summer for some celebration of peace and love. Thank you, Jodi. Peace, everyone. Bye for now.