 Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Please let us know where you're calling from in the chat. Thank you all for joining us for another China is not our enemy webinar co-hosted by mass peace action. Awesome. Please keep introducing yourselves so we can have some engagement on the chat, which is always one of the best parts of webinars. So we're really excited for this webinar on Hong Kong and Western interference co-hosted by code pink and mass peace action. And this is part of a series of China is not our enemy webinars that we're doing this time featuring retired judge Julie Tang and Michael Wong. So we'll be putting links in the chat. We're going to put some links in where you can find code pink, our website for China is not our enemy and our Twitter. And I'm Madison Tang. I'm the coordinator for code pink China is not our enemy campaign. Thanks everyone for joining. And you can also view this webinar on YouTube. So our teammate, teammate RJ has put into the chat, the YouTube link, as well as our code pink campaign links. So if you'd like to view it on YouTube and said you can do that now, or you can also view it later on our YouTube, this will be recorded. So you'll be able to view it and share it. And I'm going to go ahead and introduce some of our co-sponsors as well. So this is co-hosted by Massachusetts peace action. Thank you to Col Harrison and Amar Ahmad for all their support with this and the code pink China is not our enemy campaign. And I really would like to thank our co-sponsors who we can't do this work without pivot to peace of which Julie Tang and Michael Long are co-founders, child collective, veterans for peace, the China working group, coalition peace initiative in the People's Forum New York City. And we'll be putting in some links to these great peace organizations in the chat so you can check them out as well. And we'll also be putting in links to some upcoming events. One is co-organized by child collective in the People's Forum September 18. It's a hybrid event in New York City as well as online. And I will be speaking there for the code pink China is not an enemy campaign. As well, we also have coalition peace initiative is organizing a series of educational webinars on China and the US history and current day relations. So I really encourage you check that out because there's lots of opportunities because it's a series to get a really great grounding in history and context. And we'll be posting those links again, probably at the end. I'm just going to stop Shang for a moment to introduce a little bit more. So this webinar is going to be on Hong Kong and Western interference. And what's really important today in the aftermath of the US is catastrophic intervention and war in Afghanistan, which we know left conditions and living conditions, human rights conditions, infrastructure conditions in the nation far more unlivable than previously. So what we know today is it has never been clear to US citizens and people across the globe that the US is aggressive militaristic, infer intervention and hybrid warfare in other nations internal affairs only causes more death, more destruction, more human rights crises, more climate devastation and more blowback. After 42 years of interventionism, funding extremism and 20 years of war that the US wreaked havoc on the people and infrastructure of Afghanistan. It's really crucial that we do not let collective amnesia allow history to repeat itself. Yet today, just this last week, Code Pink delivered 3000 plus signatures to Congress's emails and to rep Sherman's office in LA, asking them to block the $750 million of weapons, weapons systems and services that they're selling to Taiwan. So just as we're leaving Afghanistan, we are ramping up the pivot to Asia and the war on China in the South China Sea and Western Pacific. What's important as US citizens here in the belly of the empire is that we pay attention and don't let don't allow the Pentagon and the US military and the Biden administration to let this happen covertly because these are our tax dollars. These are our resources that could be going to services in the US like healthcare, pandemic containment. We know there's many, many, many social resources and services in the US that this war profiteering, essentially, and all of the resources being used to fund this omnicidal war on China could be reallocated and divested. So Join Code Pink for the cut the Pentagon campaign, which we'll be talking about a little bit later, we're really looking to redirect these funds, like I said, and make Americans understand that the forever wars that the Pentagon instigates are not going to end if we don't vocally challenge them. And let's just get right into it because these amazing guests have so much prepared for you today from their heart and soul. They've done lots of work to prepare context firsthand, testimonial, analysis, media, etc. And we're going to have some brief presentations on context from both of the guests. And then we'll go into a little bit of a discussion. Some of the content that we'll be showing just for a content warning, some of the videos might have violence, so you're always welcome to step out. And I'm going to introduce our first guest, Michael Wong. Michael Wong is the Vice President of Veterans for Peace, Chapter 69 in San Francisco, a retired social worker with a master of social work degree. He's published in the anthologies, Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace, edited by Maxine Hong Kingston, and Waging Peace in Vietnam, edited by Ron Craver, David Corbett, and Barbara Doherty. He also appeared in the documentary Sir No Sir, about the GI resistance to the Vietnam War. Michael and Julie are also co-founders of Chinese Americans for Peace. So we'll be linking the Veterans for Peace China Working Group, which I welcome folks to check out. They're doing some really great work on opposing militarism, impacts on climate change, and racism. Because we know all these things intersect. And then I'm going to pull up a timeline that Michael prepared. And he's going to discuss it a little bit. Thank you, Michael. Okay, thank you. I want to do a little bit of a timeline just so people have a historical context for all the other things that we're going to be discussing. Starting with the 1800s, which was the colonial period when the European and the United States when the European powers in the United States were going around the world and carving colonies out of countries all around the world, from Africa to Asia, to anywhere that they could get their hands on. During the colonial period, the various colonial powers, Britain, France, and even Japan, as well as the United States, were carving out pieces of China and making them into colonies. In January of 1841, Britain seized Hong Kong. It was part of the opium war where Britain was sending opium into China and selling it to make profits. And when the Chinese resisted a war ensued, it was called the first opium war. At that point, Britain won the war. And they took Hong Kong as a prize of war, a prize of war. This was done by force. It was done at the point of a gun. And then there was later on a second opium war, which of course, the Western powers also won. And that's when they got Kuala Lumpur and the new territories which are on the coast just next to Hong Kong. The United States was also involved in this. General Smidley Butler, a US Marine General, who was part of a lot of expeditions by the US against various foreign countries, said in part, quote, in China, in 1927, I helped to see to it that standard oil went on its way unmolested, unquote. So China was very much, I mean, United States was very much a part of the colonial period in China. As a result of those wars, Britain continued to rule Hong Kong. There was no democracy. Britain sent a governor to rule Hong Kong. And the governor had absolute authority. There was no elections, no nothing. The governor, the British governor ruled Hong Kong. In 1967, protests against the British rule arose. And Julie's going to be talking about that a lot more because she was there then. Those protests were put down by Atlanta, including the use of deadly force. In January 1st of 1997, Hong Kong was returned to China. China had become strong. And at that point, it was able to pressure Britain into returning Hong Kong. That was the first time that any form of democracy existed in Hong Kong. What the British did just prior to the handover was they instituted their own system of democracy. And they insisted that the Chinese respect that and continue that for 50 years after the takeover. This democracy never existed before. But when they handed it over to China with this system, they also told the world, oh, we've given them democracy. Then in 2014, there was the Hong Kong Occupied Movement, which was a series of street protests. It was called the umbrella movement, and it was vastly supported by the United States and the Western powers. 2019 to 2020, a color revolution was launched in Hong Kong. It was launched in response to a murder. A young man and his girlfriend went to Taiwan. They got in an argument. He murdered her. He escaped back to Hong Kong. And then when this was found out and the police arrested him, they did not have an extradition treaty to Taiwan in order to return him to Taiwan. So they attempted to pass a law, which would allow them to return criminals to Taiwan. However, the problem with that is that any because of the one China policy, any law that allowed an extradition of a criminal to Taiwan would also allow the extradition of a criminal to mainland China as well. So this color revolution arose. They started having more and more demands. And their demands eventually went to the point where they were calling for essentially liberation from China, quote unquote. And that's where things escalated dramatically. Julie is going to be talking about that a little bit more. And we'll be and we'll be talking about that a little bit more as well. But for now, this is the basic timeline that I want people to understand in terms of the historical context in which all of this occurred. Thank you for that helpful overview of this time period, Mike. Stop sharing for a moment. And for those just tuning in this webinar will be recorded and it will be on YouTube on Codepinx YouTube after this. So next, we are going to hear a little bit more from our other panelists, retired judge Julie Tang grew up in Hong Kong and is a former judge of the San Francisco Superior Court, previously an assistant district attorney in San Francisco. Upon retirement in 2015, Judge Tang works as a part time mediator and a full time peace activist. In 2017, she helped co found the Comfort Woman Justice Coalition that built a Comfort Woman Memorial in San Francisco. Previously, she had co founded the Rape of Nanjing Redress Coalition in 1998. And in 2020, she and a group of peace activists co founded Pivot to Peace, the organization dedicated to advocating for world peace and in particular peace between the US and China. So we're going to have some more media that Judge Julie prepared in a moment here. And to start that off. Thank you for being here, Judge Julie. And one of the first questions I had for you was if you could explain, and you can use the media, what your experience was like growing up and living through British colonial Hong Kong, living under British rule. Thank you. Thank you, medicine. And I wanted to thank Coping and yourself and Jodi Evans for your effort to educate the public that China is not our enemy. I sincerely believe in that. And I thank you for the opportunity for me to share what I know about Hong Kong. And to let the audience know that a lot of the stuff that they read, and they hear about Hong Kong from the mainstream media is really not true. And I hope to dispel some of those misinformation so that we can get to the facts and the real history. Now I was born and raised in Hong Kong and I came to the United States in 1967 at the height of the anti British riot. As you see in this picture, this is a circa 1800 picture of Hong Kong. Hong Kong was a small fishing village just off the southern coast of China. My late father, like most of the Chinese who escaped to Hong Kong from China, loved China. But he left China with the family to escape the domestic political upheavals and extreme poverty that besieged China in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China. Let's go to the second slide. Second slide. Yeah, this is another beautiful picture of what Hong Kong looked like then. And if you look at all those mountains, right now, they'll be all packed with housing and tall high rises, creating basically a concrete jungle in Hong Kong. But that being the way to prosperity and that was what Hong Kong did. But let's go back to what happened in the 60s. That was when the period that I was growing up in Hong Kong. So let's go to the next slide. My father brought the family to Hong Kong. It was to escape the failed domestic policies, such as the Great Leap Forward, as you see here in this picture depicted, that people were so poor, and they were just sun beaten, and and they but they were driving into the steel and iron, and they forego the the forego the agricultural part of China, creating a huge famine that killed 36 million people. Destitution, starvation, political strife were what my father and many of the refugees trying to escape from. All right, we can take down the slide. The relationship between the Chinese settlers in Hong Kong with the British colonizes was not an easy or comfortable. My father often complained of the injustices experienced by the Chinese at the hands of the British rulers. At the same time, he recognized that Hong Kong provided relief from the burdens of China's social and political upheavals, and an opportunity to make a better home for the family. Some of these pictures show the devastation that China was experiencing. And that was what a lot of the refugees were trying to escape from. All right, thank you. We can take that slide down. Now I had a pretty good childhood. As my father was able to secure a good job in Hong Kong. But I could never forget what I witnessed as a child driving that drove home that my what my parents felt as a strong negative sentiments about being colonized in your own country. As you see in these pictures, these are the Chinese food hawkers. And I witnessed an incident of police brutality that I told to Michael. And Michael said you should share it nice. Oh, maybe it's not that interesting. You know, it's just something I saw as a child said, no, but that also shows what China was what Hong Kong was like at that time under the British colony. So I want to share it with you. As a child along with my sisters, and I mentioned to my sister the other day, and she remembered it too, with better memories than I did, that we saw a British inspector smashed and broke all the Chinese food peddlers carts in the little bowls and plates and spoons that they laid out for the cooking. What are their crimes selling food without a license? These food peddlers so many of them were the poorest people in Hong Kong trying to earn a living. They formed a small economic system supporting themselves. They refused to be beggars. They had no recourse under the British government. They accepted the daily struggles against poverty. They ran from the police and the famous words they use are used when the police came to round them up was Joe Guai, which means run from the ghost. And as you know, in China, for a long time, they call foreigners, all foreigners ghost because they look different. Now we have a much more different way of looking at the word ghost, because ghosts mean spirituality. And so it's okay to embrace spirituality. And so but that's what they use at that time, calling the British inspectors ghost as get away from them Joe Guai. And I remember those words very well. All the people from Hong Kong during those days know those words, because those words were what the oppressors used to force out these food hawkers for making a living for themselves when they were not provided with any kind of social justice or equality of economics to fight out or go out a living. Now elsewhere in civil and government jobs, the British always took the top jobs no matter whether or not they were qualified. The Chinese were conditioned to see the British as superior, more cultured, sophisticated and powerful than them. There was a book written by Leo Goodstart, head of the British Hong Kong government think tank for nine years before the British departure in 1997. He wrote in his book, uneasy partners conflict between public interest and private profit in Hong Kong, that the British government ruled Hong Kong with a secret elitist autocracy that it was anti democratic and corrupt. And we saw that ourselves how corrupt it was. After ruling Hong Kong for more than 150 years, it was only in the last two decades that it started to put anti corruption measures in place and implemented a small scale electoral system that was a setup for China. As colonized people, we were a people without a country, just masters. Our British passports is only a travel document. It gives us no right to work or live in England. As a child, I dreamed of moving away from Hong Kong and finding a country I could call home. And I came to America. So in these pictures, you see the delightful food that these hawkers cook for people. And a lot of times this is their dining hall. This is the only food that they can afford to eat. School children, eat them before they go to school, work, working class people, eat from them. And these are the same people that were driven out of the business by the British inspectors. What I saw was their bowls and dishes. Everything was smashed broken as a show of power over them. And you know what? The next day, they came right back and put up the, set up the tables. And until the word jiao guai was caught up, they were still there. Okay, I'm going to talk about the 1967 riots at this time. In 1967, Hong Kong was besieged by very violent uprising that lasted for eight months, resulting in more than 60 people killed, scores injured, and more than 2000 people jailed. It started as a labor dispute that evolved into political rebellions, students, factory workers and transportation workers eventually joined in on the demonstration paralyzing Hong Kong. Let's go to the next slide. The social conditions in Hong Kong in the 60s was very bad. The population was growing by the thousands every day. In spite of the huge floods of refugees coming into Hong Kong from China, the British government offered no assistance or relief to them. They were on their own. There was, let's stay with that picture for a little while, the picture of the, yeah, the squatter huts. There was no planning, planned housing to accommodate the large population entering into Hong Kong. Many resorted to live in squatter housing that they build themselves, made up of wood planks and a tin roof nailed together. During typhoons, they would lose their houses and became homeless. They would become beggars that lined up the Hong Kong city streets. There was such a great disparity between the rich and poor. The average salary for a Hong Kong factory worker was 10 to 12 dollars Hong Kong a day, equivalent to a dollar 50 cents US a day. Government corruption and justice were rampant. In 1966, an incident happened that precipitated the 1967 riots and drove home the anger and rage that the Hong Kong people felt towards the British government. Let's turn to the next slide now. It was the Star Fairy protest, one that I and my family participated in personally. This beautiful little fairy sailed across the Victoria Harbor. And let's look at the next slide. It shows where Hong Kong and Kowloon Peninsula are separated by a channel of waters. This is the Victoria Harbor that provide transportation that where the ferry ride will provide transportation between the Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon Peninsula. The ferry services run daily from early morning 6 30 a.m. until 11 30 p.m. With a frequency every 6 to 20 minutes, the journey takes about 8 to 10 minutes. And in the late 1966, the British Hong Kong government decided to raise the ferry ride by a nickel. Now this increase only applied. Can we go back to the earlier picture of the ferry? It only applied to the upper deck. And it may be it may say something because it was painted white. But it shows that only the richer people can ride in the upper deck because it costs a little bit more than the lower deck. The upper deck is where you can have benches where you can sit in comfortably. The lower deck first remain is like very cheap. And it was at that time was a nickel. And there was because of the increase and it was only standing room only, by the way, you have no benches for the lower deck. So because of the increase in the fare of a nickel, just a nickel, a huge demonstration ensued. People protested by taking the ferry from the lower deck, which cost at that time a nickel before it became 10 cents. And boy called it the upper deck. My family led by my father, a conservative banker, also joining on the boycott, as did the majority of Chinese in Hong Kong by taking the lower deck, which had no benches and as I said, standing room only. We refused to pay the 5 cent increase. It was more an act of defiance in solidarity with the rest of Hong Kong against the British government. And it was a very powerful experience, I recalled. However, in 1967, the worker strike started and there was when things started to go down. And when we go to the next picture, the worker strike started and hundreds of people were arrested. Hong Kong was beginning to feel the revolutionary effects of the Chinese cultural revolution just across the border. By May, the union workers, students in the left-leaning schools, became vocal about taking down the British government. And anti-British government and pro-China slogans appeared everywhere. Anti-Right police were responding with extreme cruelty to the Chinese uprising. China urged the British government to end the brutality and fascism against the Chinese subjects. Next slide. When a union leader was beaten up and killed in jail, huge workers strikes ensued paralyzing Hong Kong. The British government was hoping to end the labor initiated demonstration as soon as possible. But the riots became even more violent. Next slide. The next slide. The British government adopted an emergency order resulting effectively in spreading white terror. British police would search, arrest and beat up suspects without cause. The left people felt strikes were ineffective and many workers were killed by police when they throw stones and bottles at the police and only be met by British rivals. The whole city was under siege and the left made some serious mistakes. Next page. They planted real and fake bombs accepting revenge for the comrades who were murdered by the British police force. The British police force started to lose control. They brought out the Welsh military, some of whom had even used a weapon and the police force became more violent and brutal towards suspects. Next slide. In one instance, they cornered off hundreds of striking students in a narrow staircase and beat them up mercilessly. A great number died from this incident of police beating. Next slide. Manufacturing owners left for Taiwan, Japan or England to escape the riots. Even the governor of Hong Kong fled to England and did not return until after the riots. The workers strike started to lose support from the populace when they deployed bombs accidentally killing innocent people. The next page. Next slide. The riots, okay, the riots eventually ended when the Chinese central government consolidated its power and caught in the top leaders of the movement to halt any further violence. After the riots, the British government did build some tenement housing for the refugees but still there was not enough planning and too much greed for the land which was hogged up by few developers. I lived through the riots in Hong Kong in 1967 and in 2019 when the riots started up again in Hong Kong, I was reminded of the tumultuous times of 1967 but the current upheavals are more violent and more dangerous. I think some of the differences lie in the treatment of the rioters. In 1967 the British, British run royal Hong Kong police force was brutal without mercy. They killed. The current local Hong Kong police force was restrained. They did not kill any persons. The 1967 riots ended in 63 dead and the 2019 riot not when person was killed by the police and the support for the 2019 riots came from foreign governments to destabilize China in the name of freedom and democracy. Unlike the 1967 riots which was an economic outcry against the British government but turned political and deadly. But in both instances it was China that helped end the riots and lifted Hong Kong back to a peaceful place where it should be. Back to you, Madison. Thank you so much Judge Julie for sharing your lived experience and your perspective on British occupation and these labor movements and protests and the violent response from British occupation forces within such a short amount of time so many people that they either killed or maimed or harmed irreparably. I wanted to show a video now with a little more context on these protests that Judge Julie was witness to and then we'll go into a little bit more media and questions. You can see the British government controlled the whole of Hong Kong in 1967. I was a middle schooler and a middle class student and then there was a bomb and a person appeared. I compared the actions that took place in Hong Kong and we were young and then we went to such a comparison. My name is Zeng Yu Hong. I was in Hong Kong in 1967 an experienced person. In 1967 Hong Kong was controlled by the British government. Before 1967, there was nothing to say. So the citizens of Hong Kong had a very close scene. In May 1967 that incident I was a middle class student and a middle class student This is not a city which expresses its feelings or anything with Brady, but on this particular issue it really has been astonishing. In 1960-1967 when we were young Hong Kong residents were very poor. Now there are still some rooms and houses. When we were having dinner we used to cook for two people. We were under the control of pressure and harm. The citizens of Hong Kong felt that they should not be under such a huge pressure. So they committed a lot of crime here. We think Hong Kong residents are very well-off. They are very well-off. They have violent events such as示威 and protests. Due to the strong pressure of the government this has increased the pressure and the arrest. People were injured. Later on there were many left-wing institutions in Hong Kong including銀行 including companies including students who were against the Hong Kong government. The whole Hong Kong community increased because of the pressure of the government and the crime and the arrest. When the crime took place on the street, it was very white and violent. Later on, many people were arrested and killed. They went to the parliament and the government to investigate. They were arrested. It was a very violent white and violent crime. They were not allowed to go out of the street because of the violence. In Hong Kong, there was a lot of gunfire on the street. Many people were killed when they were killed. Many people were killed when they were killed when they were killed when they were killed. Most of the victims were ordinary citizens. As far as I know it is very simple. It requires a more reasonable arrangement. For example, a more reasonable arrangement in the public and in the parliament. This increased the violence. Later on, there were some gunfire on the street. It was a very violent crime. Of course, some people were killed and some people didn't want to see it. But it was not necessary. At that time, China was the leader and as a Chinese, I was the leader. In 1967, I was a 5th grade student. The school was in Hong Kong. It was a traditional left-wing school which was a patriotic school. I saw students standing in front of the police asking why the police would do that. We said we were not satisfied and we didn't cooperate. We said we had to go home but we didn't give it. We were holding hands with no reason and no reason to defend. We didn't resist. We went to school and it was a big police car. We went to the court to report the crime. We went back to school. We were sentenced for a year. So the day I was 16 years old, I was in jail and I was 17 years old. The two boys were together. I want to ask a little bit more. Thank you RJ for sharing that video. I wanted to ask about these questions either of you can answer and then we're going to show a little bit more media as we discuss more. I'll be showing that. For either of you, Mike or Julie and thank you so much for what you shared. Can you talk a little about the Democratic rating today of Hong Kong? There's a lot of discussion about the 2019 and 2020 riots and the lack of democracy in Hong Kong under the one China policy. Can you talk about how it really is now in terms of ratings compared to other nations versus the complete lack of democracy under British rule? What is the material difference between the two time periods? Prior to the riots in 2019, actually the Tato Institute which is a conservative think tank in the United States rated Hong Kong number three in terms of the most democratic places in the world and rated the United States number 17. So at least prior to the riots by an American conservative assessment, Hong Kong was actually more free than the United States is. And that gets measured by things like for example, there was a lot less regulations on businesses. Hong Kong under the British was set up as a basically a capitalist society and it was pretty much a society in which the rich and the 99% went along with it or else. So that system was maintained when China took over because that was the agreement that the British system would more or less remain intact, which it did. And that was also part of the social problems in that it was like for example, housing is extremely expensive because the real estate came basically ruled the rose. And it was like capitalism in the United States where the 1% ruled over the 99% and exploit the 99%. It was even worse in Hong Kong, which is why the inequity in Hong Kong was worse. Julie might want to take it from there. Yeah, I think it's really difficult to square the claims of the lack of freedom in human rights against the independent assessment of some of these conservative institutions. I know that growing up in Hong Kong, we had freedom as long as we did it within the confines of the British government. But after I left Hong Kong in 67, keeping in touch with what was happening at the ground level, I realized that people were gaining more and more freedom especially after the return because the thing is, the thing what they say is that Hong Kong people will rule Hong Kong. That gave a lot of the people a lot of pride that they can finally rule themselves under one system, under two systems and yet still receive the protection of the Chinese government. But there's so much brainwashing that had been going on. I think a lot of Hong Kong people still assume that western powers and domination in the past centuries will continue and will bring economic opportunities and social advancement to them. They fail to see the opportunities for a safe, fair and equitable society, which also which actually would give them better social and economic benefits that are waiting for them in China. And the net, which is the same as CIA, has been at work in Hong Kong in the grassroots level for a long time. I understand that the net funding has been flushed to Hong Kong since 19, almost right before the takeover by China and continuously funded throughout the 2020 riots. And there was such highly organized and concentrated efforts to radicalize the Hong Kong people against China that many of the leadership became personally enriched with the money that was coming through and then the money then go to the bottom feeders, those who do the street work. The money just never stopped coming. And if anyone is more interested to learn more about how NED the net works to cultivate the youth of Hong Kong, check out Laura Rogeri, R-O-G-G-E-R-I she's a professor and writer who lives and teaches in Hong Kong. She has written and given interviews on how net funded groups such as Amnesty International that had been actively recruiting Hong Kong university students with grants, free travels and learning opportunities to help them foment color revolution in Hong Kong. And how the NED funded research projects that recruited the Hong Kong university students to be experimental subjects in demonstrations that would encourage them to participate in demonstrations. These experimental studies were decried by academics as highly unethical experimental studies and it's still being done of medicine. You talked about the ego spill, which coping has been circulating a petition to call a stop to those provisions that would provide millions of dollars per year to spread propaganda in Hong Kong and China. We should keep that money domestically, like you said to take care of climate change settle Afghan refugees now that we have this situation in our hands and provide relief to the poor people in our country. But Hong Kong was the recipient of a lot of brainwashing, a lot of radicalization by NED, the CIA which make them feel that they don't have the power they don't have the rights. But what they're looking for is very empty and perhaps later on when we talk about the five demands that the protesters were making, I can elaborate more why I think that their demands or requests were really out of the water. It was just not relevant or even conforming to what the real experiences are. Thank you so much to both of you. I'm going to put a link to the NED grant database in the chat. Someone was asking about it. This particular link is already pre the fields are prefilled in. So it says Hong Kong and this is public information that we can access which is pretty important. As you saw that I put up that's all from the NED's grant search database and you can also search it for other regions including Taiwan Xinjiang, other areas and just to see what the US Pentagon and government considers promoting or quote spreading democracy and really a lot of times that means fomenting unrest to maintain US domination of geopolitical areas of interest and so this is all at our fingertips we can search for this ourselves to see and I'll just put this one up once more. So the estimates range because we have official NED grants it's at least 29 million cents the 2014 umbrella protest that the US has been funneling into mainland China or Hong Kong and these are going to the protesters so we do know that there is US interference to that extent I also wanted to ask so a lot of people will have seen the western coverage of the 2019 and 20 riots there are a lot of comparisons to other working class uprisings like ones in Chile and they're kind of just lumped together without a lot of nuance but could you explain a little more what were the actual demands of the rioters in the more recent 2019 protests what were they really asking for what aspects of their demands were not necessarily meetable or not specific enough who are these rioters and what kind of society were they aspiring to live in what do they understand democracy to be is it the US in the west's version of democracy can you talk about that a little I think the five demands were almost like a laughing stock but I will honor it by saying it's simply a smoke screen for what they're trying to do or what the people behind them are trying to do which was of course to destabilize China but the demands were first to withdraw the extradition bill by that time the extradition bill was already withdrawn but they still put it in there number two to stop labeling them as rioters I'm sorry a pig with lipstick is still a pig they were rioting they were throwing petrol bombs they burned people alive they threw bricks and killed an older man they tied up a Chinese reporter Mandarin at the airport they tied him up for hours and beat him senseless and I don't know what they were doing to him until he was rescued they were horrible the things they were doing they were rioters and thirdly they wanted to have all charges dropped against protesters basically they don't want accountability and fourthly they want to conduct an independent inquiry into police behavior well you know Hong Kong already has an independent police complaints council I don't know how effective that is but there is mechanism to independently inquire into individual police behavior and from past judicial decisions when a police officer was found to have committed brutality they were treated very harshly much much more so than an ordinary person given the same circumstances maybe that's their sense of justice that if you wear a badge and you carry a baton and a gun then you need to respect the law better so they were treated very severely so in this 2019 riots we saw what the police officers were doing they didn't kill one person they acted with high restraint and the police officers unit in Hong Kong had one of the highest honor and prestigious before the riot but overnight they become the deadly enemies of the people because of all the brandings and the propaganda and the media hypes they became the worst people now Hong Kong people Hong Kong police were required to pass very strict qualifications in order to become police they first they all have to have a high school degree and in addition to that they have to pass a test called the Hong Kong school certificate examination a lot of people said there's even a more difficult exam than a college entrance exam and they in order to be inspected they have to have a college degree and they all have to be bilingual so they come with good credentials to police officers and when you see how restrained they were during the riot you can understand that they really lived up to their reputation lastly they want universal suffrage and again I think this is unrealistic and a smokescreen for Hong Kong independence don't get me wrong I'm not saying that universal suffrage is a bad thing there are more than 100 countries in the world that have universal suffrage electoral systems and they all have different systems in different countries pursuant to their own culture and relevant to their customs and their country and needs in the United States we have our own electoral system the Hong Kong people wanted an American system of electoral system not knowing that we don't even have a direct vote to electing our president only three states in a country can elect a president so Hong Kong right now have an election system have their own electoral system for the governor and for elected officials legislative office and district elections but their system is based on an agreement that was made between the British, the departing British and China and was written into the basic law so it was up to and the basic law is the Chinese constitution and the Chinese constitution is one determined by China where it should be amended and how it should be amended and based on the poly bureaus acquiescence and the vote of the people's congress so they're working through it and they don't need a riot that created insufferable damage to Hong Kong to come up with a universal suffrage so when I look at these five demands led by a leaderless movement of leaders it has no credibility in the world view and it should be seen as simply nothing more than a smokescreen to combat China to limit to destabilize China and as a tool to promote and maintain the United States hegemony Thank you I'm going to show a little bit of more context on that because really a lot of what you're talking about is this right wing influence on these protesters it was really a right wing movement that was not presented that way in western media one moment I just want to make sure I shared with audio yes so these videos are actually you have to watch them on YouTube because it's censored because there's content warning for violence which I think already says a lot about what we're talking about here but I'll just show a little bit I'm going to show a little bit more so these are the protests that Nancy Pelosi said were a beautiful site to behold and then here is one this is going to be pretty graphic so you're welcome to step away if needed how do we medicine these are videos mainstream media will not show to the audience in America they never get to see it they see doctor pictures and videos that have been treated they showed only police arrest the protesters but not what happened before in one instance where there were three people ganging up on the police office trying to pull his gun away he finally wrestled away from them and he put his gun in a shot one man in the lake and that was the only one that they showed I recall in the western media and claiming that there was serious police brutality committed by the Hong Kong police without seeing the restraint that he had he had conducted himself and the violence that he was confronting before he pulled the gun to defend himself thank you for that added context so this is one of the most notorious at least among non-western mainstream media this Hong Kong local and laborer was set on fire for arguing with the rioters and just asking them to stop destroying public property like infrastructure like train stops asking them to stop attacking locals and that's the response is they literally set him on fire we saw a bit of the global times reporter getting tied up in that first video and I'm just going to show a very brief part of this one a local Hong Kong woman again I have to bypass the content warning I'm going to skip ahead and we're going to be able to see the aftermath of this scenario so you can see the impact of the attacks on this bypasser so this man is facing eight years of sentence I believe and I wanted to give like a general acknowledgement that of course policing we did not support police brutality police violence as we know in the US context our police here are very violent more similar to the British occupation for us is that killed over 60 people in 1967 but what we're seeing here is remarkable and worth pointing out because of the restraint that judge Julie discussed with the Hong Kong police regardless of one stance on policing we cannot ignore the fact that there was incredible restraint in the face of violence things being thrown at officers the motorcycle being driven into them etc and they showed restraint because they knew that that's what they were supposed to do and that's what if they did not it would just foment more unrest and so I also want to show oops sorry about that there's a lot of parallels between right wing fascist movements including the riots on the US Capitol on January 6th and the riots in Hong Kong which a lot of people are not aware of so here we have Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai meeting Mike Pence July 8th 2019 here we have Jimmy Lai some other leadership of the Hong Kong protests meeting Senator Ted Cruz who we know is very far on the right here we have Joshua Wong meeting US senator Marco Rubio also on the right and here we have protesters holding a real like Trump banner Keep America Great and I just want to show that this is a really important for me as part of their riots so there's a heavy right wing influence here's one more video show brief and I don't know the video is not coming up on our screens and the pictures that you were talking about did not come up on our screens oh I'm sorry about that let me fix that thank you was it just the most recent pictures that weren't visible? All of the pictures that you were talking about none of them came up on the screen. Okay, but the prior videos were visible. Yes. Great. So here is Jimmy Lai with Mike Pence. Sorry about that. Here's Jimmy Lai with Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz actually tweeted this. Marco Rubio and one of the leaders of the protest, Joshua Wong. Here is the re-elect Trump banner. We'll start this over. So comparing that to the 67 protests, you can see there's a big difference and there is a lot of Western influence similar to what we've seen in Cuba recently. I wanted to ask also, why would the U.S. government be interested in interfering in Hong Kong? And what similarities does this U.S.-led color revolution in Hong Kong have to other U.S. instigated color revolutions and attempts at regime change? Well, what was really interesting was at the very beginning of the uprising in Hong Kong, Camille Mejia, who was a member of Veterans for Peace, as well as Iraq veterans against the war, which is now renamed about face veterans against the war. He was the first U.S. Army soldier, combat veteran from Iraq to refuse to go back to Iraq. And he's also from an important family in Nicaragua that was very close to the Sandinistas and had a lot of connections and inside contacts with the Sandinistas. And at the very beginning of the uprising in Hong Kong in 2019, he and Colonel Anne Wright both came to me at the VFP National Convention and warned me that what was going on in Hong Kong was the beginning of a color revolution. And they based that on what happened in Nicaragua, as well as the attempts to form a color revolution in Venezuela. What they said was in Nicaragua, it started off with activists who were funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, NED, starting an uprising. And when they first started the uprising in Nicaragua, in order to avoid a confrontation that might become violent, the Nicaraguan police stayed in their barracks. They physically did not come out on the street and confront the protesters. In spite of the fact that the police were physically not present, the protesters accused the police of police brutality and used that as an excuse to start violence and to go around tracking things, burning things, beating people up. And the U.S. and Western media picked that up and continued to accuse the police Nicaragua of brutality and suppression of democracy, even though they were physically not present. The police continued to not confront the protesters. It violence escalated, and pretty soon the protesters had taken over the streets. They were ruling the city. They were dictating to just ordinary citizens who tried to argue with them, beating up innocent civilians who were arguing with them or who did not obey their orders or who they suspected of somehow being sympathetic to the government. And what that did was that made it very clear to the population that these people were not on their side because they saw that the police were restrained. They saw the police were not the ones who were instigating the violence. And that turned a corner over time where the population turned against the protesters and then eventually the police came out and with the support of the population eventually ended the protests. And of course, Nicaragua already had normal national security laws, so they were able to arrest the protesters when they were committing felonies. And that's how the Nicaraguan government eventually won. And they predicted that this color revolution was a standard formula used by the United States to format color revolutions and overthrow governments in different parts of the world. And what they saw was the same pattern arising in Hong Kong. The very beginning of the protest, one of the things they did was they went into the consul chambers of the Hong Kong government and thrashed the place, tore down the flags, graffitied the wall, you know, marked up the symbol of the Hong Kong government, and basically did a lot of physical damage to the place. The Hong Kong police were not present at that in spite of the fact that they were the Hong Kong police were physically not present, and in spite of the fact that if you look at the news videos of western media of that incident, you'll see that there's no police there. In spite of that, the Hong Kong police were accused of police brutality and the violence escalated, and American and other western media supported the claim that the police were brutal, and that this was a reaction to police brutality. And they started talking about human rights violations and blah, blah, blah, you know, groups like Human Rights Watch and Amstein International and so on and so forth supported the protesters and started talking about, oh, it's about human rights and freedom and democracy. The situation continued to escalate. Just as both Colonel Anne Wright and Camille Mahia had predicted, the demonstrators were running around beating up innocent civilians as you saw some of the video of. They were going around burning stores, thrashing stores that they thought were sympathetic to the government or that did not come out and support them. They were setting fires in subway stations, smashing all the equipment and glass and everything in the subway stations. They were going into shopping malls and smashing stores and fixtures within the shopping malls. They were going around throwing bricks at the police. And when the police came out, they were met with bricks, spears, baseball bats, iron rods, at one point bolts and arrows, and fire bombs, Molotov cocktails. And these were the peaceful protesters that Nancy Pelosi said were a beautiful sight to behold. This went on for a year. During that year, the police did not kill anyone. They burned it, some people. They did not kill anybody in an entire year. In one day on January 6 in Washington, D.C., the police already killed one person. So that's the comparison. And in the end, the population turned against the protesters. I have a friend whose father is in Hong Kong and his father is very anti-communist and very anti- Hong Kong government and communist government. And he supported the protesters at the beginning. But as the protest became more violent, he became more and more afraid to the point where halfway through the year, he was just hiding out in his apartment. He would not come out of his condo, actually, in a high-rise. He would not come out. He would not come out at night. He would just go downstairs to his building where there were stores where he could buy food and restaurants and restaurants in his own high-rise building. He was actually, even though he was on the side of the protesters, he was living in fear. And he would, he would just basically hold, isolated, hold up in his condo. And I heard this from person after person who's from Hong Kong and had friends and family back there. And they were saying everybody's living in fear, regardless of whether they originally were for or against the protesters. Destruction verged into like public transit and things that everyone needs to the point where there was just destruction of the whole city. I did a, there's another China's Not Our Enemy webinar with Dr. Jun Xu, where he corroborates the same thing that his friends there were so relieved after the national security law because they could at least go shopping outdoors for groceries. They couldn't actually leave their apartment without being afraid of getting attacked. So a lot of people corroborate that. You're right. On both sides of the spectrum, they still could not leave their house or move freely within their own city. I think we have time for probably one more question. And thank you so much to both of you because this information is so hard to find without bias. And it's really important, especially for Westerners and US citizens to understand what our government, what our military, what the NED, all of those things, what they're doing and how they're promoting US imperialism under the guise of promoting democracy and how it's harming Chinese Americans, folks in Hong Kong, and Chinese citizens. So we had a couple of people asking about this and it was something, was planning to discuss either way. Someone asked PL, user asked, can judge truly talk about the role of internalized racism or internalized colonialism in the 2019 Hong Kong riots and in Hong Kong post-colonial society in general? Do you think there is for the rioters a sense of superiority over on Chinese mainlanders and have you noticed this over the years or in these riots recently? Oh, that kind of sentiment was very strongly manifested during the riots when Chinese speaking or Mandarin speaking mainlanders were attacked just because they were speaking Mandarin and they were not allowed to, they did not know how to speak Cantonese well. There were actually groups of, that were formed, very nationalistic groups that are similar to the nationalist group that we have in the United States that only, that looked down on other people that are different from them and think that they are superior to them. What this group had been doing actually for several years now, even before the 2019 riots had been going to the border in China and when mainlanders come out, they would kick their suitcases or physically attack them, they hold up banners and go back to China, you know, stay out of Hong Kong and they would just make life miserable for these people coming in from China. So they were very active in this movement, especially in going around inspecting people where they speak Mandarin or Cantonese. A lot of people from Guangzhou who came to China were okay because they spoke the same language, you cannot tell whether they were from Hong Kong or from China, but the Northerners who don't speak Cantonese were in for a lot of trouble. They were the ones that were sought after, sought out by the people in Hong Kong who felt they were superior to mainlanders and I think this is such a shame because honestly the people in the mainland are so much more superior than the people in Hong Kong. They have better technology, they're better safety, they have a better society, they're proud of their own country, they have a passport that says they are Chinese citizens and they have grew and progressed with China whereas the Hong Kong people have been put in the same place, dreaming of the fantasy of what it was like when they were colonized and not really understanding what really happened, they never really lived through it, they were too young to remember. So yeah, unfortunately there's a lot of racism that permeated throughout the 2019 riots. Now somebody asked a question about the National Security Law. The National Security Law was to fill a gap to bring accountable to foreign influence and domination of the social and political situations of Hong Kong. They directly target people who commit terrorist acts, seditionist acts and also into successions, one is to secede from China. So those are the general things that most countries would prohibit the citizens from conducting and all countries including America and England and all the established countries have a national security law. Unfortunately Hong Kong didn't have that even though in the basic law Article 23 specifies that they should have something like that to protect themselves because the people did not support that law, they wanted to continue to have foreign interaction and they feel that this would prevent them from getting funding to do whatever they want so they resisted that law and that law was never allowed to pass. Finally China stepped in and passed that law, the National Security Law that will protect Hong Kong. This law is actually written to mirror some of the laws that have already passed in Western society. Someone also mentioned about exposed factor law and as explained as exposed factor law is a law that prohibits somebody being criminally charged for conducts that would otherwise not be criminal before the law was passed. So let's say that in California we passed a, let's say in California we now passed a prostitution law legalizing prostitution but before there was no, the prostitution was not allowed except in Nevada. So people who you know violated the prostitution law in the past could not now be charged because that conduct was committed before the law was passed and I believe and I'm not 100% sure but I believe that National Security Law does not have exposed factor law and I believe because they follow the UK example, UK does not have an exposed factor law too and they allow crimes to be charged that have been committed even before laws were committed and I am glad that they don't because right now with even the threat of that the idea that they could be charged for things that happened before now a lot of these groups are disbanding these groups that have been very much in cahoots with net taking money from us American citizens to do bad things in Hong Kong they are now disbanding on their own. We talk about teacher's association have been taking millions of dollars from net and then also there another group called something like Democratic Council or something like that and a whole whole like maybe 10 of them right now they are disbanding one after another because they don't want to be found out that they were in cahoots with foreign governments to promote riots and they also don't want to cough up the money that they still have it is reputed I don't know reputed that they still a lot of money in those accounts that they that they don't want to be you know giving up to the government so this is what I understand essentially they're destroying and all the evidence in the aftermath so that it cannot be proven after the fact that there was so much US interference and funding and actually after the national security law had been passed they were continuing to receive funding so they were not a violation of exposed factual law exposed factual law is really a truly an American Jewish credential creation and not every country in the world has adopted that UK I understand has not adopted that law thank you um looks like we have a little bit more time we're ending at 5 30 um another thing that kind of falls through with the present day conditions I was just curious of your thoughts on sanctions and how is the US using sanctions as a form of hybrid warfare against China I think may come maybe a better person to address that issue Michael you want to talk about the sanctions oh sure then well the United States uses sanctions all around the world to sanction countries that it doesn't like from you know China to Iran to Russia to Nicaragua to Venezuela you know everywhere everywhere and a lot of the times this the sanctions are unilateral meaning that the United States imposes sanctions on its own without going through the United Nations without getting anything approved through the United Nations or through any international body which basically does not have the force of international law but the United States is so rich and so powerful and is backed up by the most powerful military in the world that's often able to enforce these sanctions and impoverished countries like I think most people in peace movement are familiar with what happened to Iraq so they're doing that around Hong Kong they're sanctioning particular individuals you know officials in the Hong Kong government and or the Chinese government and the reaction is that the Chinese are just taking it and and surviving and finding ways to continue doing their work regardless of the sanctions but you know it is an impediment I don't know Julie if you wanted to say anything more specific about that yeah I think sanctions is really a punishment against the citizens instead of the government governments do stay where they are they still do what they do but it's the citizens that really suffer and I just hope that we will encourage our government to stop doing that and and and it is one of the very very bad things that our countries do to other countries thank you both so much because yeah it's really important that here at the China is not our enemy campaign at Code Pink we are opposing all western but particularly U.S. aggression on China and the People's Republic of China and this includes hybrid warfare as we've been discussing so it's not just the military although we are surrounding China right now with 400 bases ramping up military exercises by the day and you can try to oppose that right now by signing our letter to Congress asking them to vote no on the Eagle Act which provides for almost 700 million and military training for the Asia Pacific and over $7 billion for the Department of Defense to ramp up this war on China Congress is trying to push this through without many people noticing and just as we're leaving Afghanistan this is where our our hearts and our minds should be turned so that we can stop these endless U.S. forever wars that wreak havoc on people and the planet and so this hybrid war includes military legal sanctions academic warfare including the trials and detainments of Chinese American professors and researchers ongoing right now it includes diplomatic warfare information warfare which is one of the most important ones and we're here to oppose all of this aggression and to promote cooperation not conflict with another global power like China the U.S. should be cooperating with other nations especially one of the biggest economies in the world China with billions of people so that we can solve the crises facing our planet and our people right now including the global pandemic which is still unending with new strains like the Delta strain including nuclear proliferation where this war with China could potentially turn nuclear and cause a nuclear winter for our whole planet and we just want to thank you today and you can check out the links in the chat thank you to RJ for providing those and thank you so much to Michael Long, Judge Julie Tang, Massachusetts Peace Action, Pivot to Peace, People's Forum, Child Collective, FETS for Peace, China Working Group and Coalition Peace Initiative you can follow us on code pink.org slash china or on our twitter at china not enemy and i'm going to save the chat right now so i'll send that out with a link of the recording as well thank you all for being here and hope you have a great Wednesday evening thank you thank you