 Hello. Hello, good morning. Good morning all to our 18th episode of Eat NATO for Breakfast, our weekly anti-nato show. 18. Today our program has come of age. It could vote if it was a person. It could vote, for example, in the Norwegian parliament, which yesterday decided 85 to 14, to vote for four army bases on their territory, which by the way is unconstitutional, but, you know, talk about a knee-jerk reaction to the entire situation in Ukraine. All but the Rot Party did vote against, so shout out to our comrades. We could also have voted for a 100 billion Euro package for the German Bundeswehr, which was also passed, I believe yesterday, with very little, two-thirds of the parliament voted for it, so I think that's a very scary moment. Anyways, that's just on the side. When you're 18, you get to vote. You get to vote people and parties into parliament or into government that will then take those type of decisions. We talked about many things in our program in the last 18 shows. We talked about the context of the war in Ukraine, the role of Europe and NATO at a geopolitical level. We talked about the ecological impact of war, a feminist approach to peace, the global NATO process, et cetera, et cetera. We have a pretty general map to understand the importance of mobilizing together against NATO, and we know about the summit that will happen in Madrid, where hopefully we will see many of our comrades in action to speak out against NATO. Today, we want to focus on one really important component that runs through the entire conversations, and that's the United States, country of freedom, opportunities, and democracy. And we have an awesome, awesome guest here today for this. We have Eugene Pervais, who is an American journalist from Breakthrough News. And if you don't know Breakthrough News, they have a YouTube channel full of really interesting programs about international politics, but also about the struggles that are going on in the United States. Eugene, how are you? We kind of know that you're not having breakfast because it's so incredibly early, and we feel really bad, but not really bad, to rate you up. It will probably be a very productive day for you if you begin this early in the morning. How are you doing? How are you seeing the sunrise in the United States? Are you hopeful? Are you worried? What's going on with you? Well, first and foremost, thank you so much for having me. I'm honored to be here. We can have NATO for breakfast, so it's fine. I'm not worried, but I'm doing well. From our perspective, obviously, in the United States, especially on issues of NATO, there's a huge amount of confusion, but I am hopeful. I think that the elements of the 100 days or just over 100 days of the Ukraine war, I think is finally starting to perhaps create some cracks in the dam of people wondering, why are we giving all this money over there? What exactly is going on, and what are the dangers of it? And I think there's a lot of fears about the prolongation of the war. So I think that means that there's a lot of opportunities to really help people wake up to the fact that this is the obvious, the opposite, rather, of a peace and security policy. So I'm doing well and doing hopeful. And yes, it's an early start, but you got to get up early to catch the worm, as they say over here. Laura, how about you? How are you doing today? Well, I am also feeling hopeful when always, when we are together discussing and organizing against those that don't suffer the consequences of their wars. And I can't wait to see you all in Madrid. Thank you, Eugene, for joining us. Let's start. We want to begin with a general framework of the role of the US today. We live in a time of great and accelerated political changes, but as you do so well in breakthrough news, we must understand the historical processes that led us to the current situation in order not to get lost. And whether we talk about NATO, Africa, or Iran, we always end up talking about your country, the United States, to begin to unravel the USA international strategy, and also the relationship with NATO. We would like to you to talk about when and how the USA shifted from talking about an international order based on the UN to these rules based order. I think that's how they call it. Those rules, whose rules are those and what are they and what also the role of NATO plays in all of this international order on the expense of the UN framework. Well, you know, thanks for the question. You know, we always say that the rules based international order, quote unquote, is where the US makes the rules and everyone else has to follow. But it's really not even just the United States. It's a handful of individuals who have complete and total control over the US government because of their access to essentially a huge amount of money. I mean, the US government is deeply democratic in many ways. And one is that, as the saying goes, see who has the gold makes the rules. And I think that what we've seen is those rules basically boil down to, you know, really one rule, if you will, perhaps the imperialist golden rule, which is you do whatever we say. And I think that there are, you know, many other kind of flowery phrases around it. And certainly the sort of principal goal of it is to, you know, protect the flow of commerce, if you will, to promote free market policies. I mean, when you look at, say, the US national defense strategy, you know, they talk about these things in terms of American values and so on and so forth. But when they really discuss, you know, what their issue is with Russia, what their issue is with China, it really is that they are obstacles to the complete and total capability for the United States and US companies, really more importantly, to have a total ability to ride roughshod over the world, go wherever they want to go, get into whatever market they want to go into, and also not face competition from competitors on a global scale, at least in a way that's counter hegemonic. So, you know, when did they shift to this? It's an interesting question because in a way you could argue historically they shifted to it, you know, before they even started the United Nations. I mean, the original proposal of the UN in 1944 and 1945 before the UN conference in San Francisco was for a much more sort of cooperative world plan. And long story short, before the conference even opens in San Francisco, the Truman administration abandons that and starts to plan for the Cold War and starts to push for a policy where the US coming out of World War II would be able to dominate the globe in place of the former European empires. And the Soviet Union, of course, was an obstacle to that. So, they switched at that moment to a Cold War philosophy, but it was the same basic reality. But the phrase rules based international order is really a post-Soviet phrase in terms of when it was taken up and the process starting in 1991 of, you know, pushing NATO to the east and establishing this sort of, as it's become known, unipolar world order. So, there's a long history to it. And I think it's worth noting for people that, you know, really since World War II to today, even though a lot of different things have changed, no doubt about that, one thing has been pretty consistent about US policy and that its main goal has been to assure over and above anything else the freedom of US corporations to go around the world and exploit everyone. As Thomas Friedman, the writer of the New York Times says, McDonald doesn't work without McDonald Douglas, the company that makes the F-16. So, you know, we can see at the end of the day that's the real sort of soul driving purpose for, you know, the US in the latter half of the 20th century entering the 21st century. And that's why they're willing to do so many destructive things now to protect this rules-based international order, because it really is about their most basic need to insatiably accumulate profit. Thank you, Eugene. That was a really good and kind of frightening, actually, kind of frightening overview. You already mentioned China. I mean, that has also been that has sort of the second, that has been the second threat that we've all been exposed to hearing about, you know, either China's aggressiveness or the other way around how we need to defend ourselves against China. There seems to be very little political intention to stop the war in Ukraine, and there is the intention to defeat Russia. But this other enemy, China, is on the list. Biden has said that the US would actually go to war with China over Taiwan, which in some sense is, again, another breach of all, I don't know, common sense or also since even the US formally recognizes it as part of China makes no sense at all at this point. This is, of course, not entirely new. China has been like encircled with military bases, and also there has been this very aggressive way of sort of laying the groundwork that China is viewed as an enemy by the people, which I think plays a really, really big role, like this battle of ideas concept of actually letting all of us know. So it's not just the military confrontation, it's one of culture and ideology as well. So, and then, of course, there is like proper alliances being built, such as AUKUS with Australia and the UK. But what we see here is that the agenda of what Biden is doing and what NATO is doing is incredibly similar. It also seems that the US just has been commented on, and I think even now, by now, more mainstream media catches on to this, that the US is quite happy with proxy wars far from their borders when other people have to actually pay the price. And it seems that this is the moment that gives them the opportunity to make a Ukraine-Taiwan comparison that would serve them, that would serve well to like start or justify another war of like global dimensions. So understanding that the US and NATO agendas are sort of similar or congruent, this would mean that, for example, another 30 countries would agree then this June to point to China as like a main enemy and what are the implications of a war against China. Let's talk about this agenda a little bit and what will be implemented after the NATO summit in Madrid, like what can we expect to see? For example, proposal five of the NATO 2030 fact sheet with the title, uphold the rules-based international order, there it is again, cites the following, NATO also needs to enhance its ability to contribute, to preserve and shape the rules-based international order in areas that are key to allied security. The rules-based international order which underpins the security, freedom and prosperity of allies is under pressure from authoritarian countries like Russia and China that do not share our values. This has implications for our security values and democratic way of life. What does that even mean? If we think about it, like shaping the international order is preserving democracy, like all of this is very vague and seemingly very vague on purpose. So what are the values and why are these arguments so abstract? What are they actually, you know, what are they hiding from us? What is being actually said here? What are the values and the security and this democratic way of life that we are always being told that this is what we are upholding? And we can see that in any, like when war in Iraq happened, we were apparently saving and securing those same very very abstract values. And then of course the question is so really is China a threat to our values? Please just give us a little bit. What do you make of this very vague statement which is actually gearing us up for another potential war somewhere else? Yeah, you know, I would say the thing that I really make of it is it's scary. I mean it's very concerning to see these sorts of realities because I think as you point out very well, you know, these sorts of vague statements are always what are used in the advance of wars. And it seems like such a logic of war and the constant sort of othering of different countries, these are enemies, they're against our values and things that are sort of vague but sound sinister. And you know, it's interesting because you wonder what those values are because, you know, they certainly aren't practiced very heavily in the United States, that's for sure. I mean, you know, you look at freedom of speech and, you know, the case of Julian Assange, they're trying to put journalists in prison. And that's in addition to the fact that, you know, only a handful of big monopolies control all the media anyway. So what is free speech in that context? You know, they say that it's democracy. But I mean, we're talking about a country like the United States, where you've got 20 or so odd states, nearly 30 states that are passing laws right now or already have passed laws to restrict people's right to vote. You know, this is in 2022. And that's again, in addition to the unbelievable racism, the mass incarceration, the poverty that continues to exist here. So it's like you have the right to vote quote unquote in America, although that's at risk, but you don't have the right to a home, you know, so you have hundreds of thousands of people at any given time, living on the street, but you have millions of empty homes. So it's sort of, it really just shows like these values really are not the values of average everyday folks of working class people, they're the values of capital. And really, that's what they mean. And that's why they wanted to be vague and they want to hide it, because the only real reason they can say, well, we got to go after China, China's countering us. And when they try to lay this out, is this idea that China's rise, whatever that's, you know, really means is somehow threatening to the United States, how that's threatening to the United States can really only make sense when you say, well, it's a threat to U.S. companies in a way, because it means that Chinese companies, because China wants to, you know, be a prosperous country, you know, might be some of the biggest companies in some industries. And they'll be trading with some countries, which means they might not listen to the United States as much. And we might not be able to control everything at every time the U.S. government in the way they do now. And all these things I think most people in America wouldn't really care that much about to be honest with you. But so ultimately, you have to make it about quote unquote values, you have to create these sort of sinister images of people who are against the West. There's certainly a sort of racist yellow peril element to it when it comes to China, even Russia to some degree, you know, where it's all the sort of our values is to some degree deeply rooted in these other, you know, ridiculous phrases, Judeo-Christian culture, Western values, all these different sort of things that also imply a certain moral correctness of, you know, the whiteness really in terms of the governments that have been constructed over the past 500 or so years in the Western countries. And, you know, all that really comes together in what we're going to see with this NATO summit. I mean, I think NATO, you know, really since the Obama administration, there have been a lot of questions of people saying, well, why do we even have NATO? What's the purpose of NATO? Why, you know, this Cold War is over and so on and so forth. They tried to do something around terrorism, which was equally as ridiculous. And now it seems NATO is now becoming a forum for really U.S. power projection around the world. And it's also becoming a chain, I think, to link the European nations to the American agenda for the world in the 21st century and to really erode the sovereignty of Europe and to turn Europe into a military base for the United States against Russia and for a store of weapons, money, material and soldiers to carry out what is, I think, almost certainly going to have to be a very bloody set of conflicts around the world to maintain an imperialist order that I think many people are sick of and not just radical people. I think, you know, even people who are just want to chart their own path for their own country and do want to work with countries like China and Russia. So they have to be subdued. And that means ultimately they'll have to be subdued militarily if they want to pursue this course. And so strengthening NATO and expanding NATO into other parts of the world that are very far away from the North Atlantic, I think, is all about tying those governments in a very real way through the interoperability of the militaries to U.S. foreign policy and making it much more difficult for the people of those countries to propose changes because it becomes such an intertwined war making reality. Thank you, June. I think this is very important to understand this world order and also the connections with NATO. You mentioned something about the logics of war. And I think we have to talk about that because I don't think those logics of war, maybe they are not so logic. Right now, I don't know, a lot of it's been said about nuclear weapons. And I would like to bring up this sentence from 1955 of the so-called Russell Insane Manifesto. Those were scientists and pacifists that knew a lot of atomic power. They said, we have to learn to think in a new way. We have to learn to ask ourselves not what measures should be taken to ensure that the group we prefer obtains military victory because such measures no longer exist, but what measures should be taken to prevent military conflagration to outcome of which would be disastrous for either side. I think this phrase is overwhelming current. And it seems that we have not learned anything. We read articles advocating for using nuclear weapons like if the ultimate freedom is ending life on the planet. There are more and more voices talking about a nuclear war or a third world war. And we would like to talk about it in a realistic and calm way, because either one or the other or both would unchain extremely reckless and dangerous situation. And it's normal that people are quite afraid or should be quite afraid. And therefore in the face of this huge risk, leaders should focus on resolving conflicts through dialogue and diplomacy instead of following the path of mad, this mutual assured destruction, this military strategy doctrine of the 60s. Faced with this madness, we need rationality and political will to resolve conflicts. We see how we have gone from a special military intervention as putting goals to a work with global implications led by the U.S. As you were saying, like using it to strengthen NATO and also to remove all sovereignty to Europe, we know that we have nuclear warheads in Europe, more than 150 in five countries. And this situation, I don't know, it's also combined with sanctions, massive arms shipments, censorship, economic crisis. But we also see no work being done for peace. So, Eugene, to what extent do you think that this conflict can get out of hand? The people frame it as if there were two options, either that the situation in Ukraine will become chronic, like a war of a fixed positions on constant confrontation, like the Donbas, but, you know, in the whole country, or the conflict could be blow out of control if a nuclear power, such as Russia, continues to be cornered and pushed, you know? So, in the face of this, we also see that the international positions are not contained and are not careful at all by the leaders that they are continue pushing for more confrontation and tension, even in the use of language. So, what are we playing at? Why does the U.S. not stop the war? You know, I think this is critically important. And I think, you know, it feels almost amazing to say, but I think part of the reality is that one of the things that is built into U.S. military doctrine is that you have to be prepared for a nuclear war. Now, of course, thankfully, over the years since, you know, the atomic bomb has come into being, this has been avoided. But the basic military strategy of the United States has not changed since they dropped the atomic weapons on Japan in 1945, which is that at the end of the day, we are prepared to use nuclear weapons and we're prepared to do a nuclear first strike. I mean, this actually came up in 2020 in the Democratic presidential primary. And it was, you know, would you do a nuclear first strike? And a number of candidates said, yes, they would. Some said no, including Joe Biden, by the way. And you can see that he's actually already walked that back. And when he was asked a similar question, you know, recently, I mean, he didn't say we would do it, but he essentially tried to use some ambiguous phrase to imply the U.S. would use a nuclear weapon in the first strike. So I mean, this is an important and a key part of U.S. military strategy is not just the willingness to use nuclear weapons in self defense, but to use them offensively if there is a threat perceived to be, you know, as great as potentially using nuclear weapons. So I think that in and of itself makes it a very dangerous conversation because ultimately, when you're confronting other nuclear powers and your plan for, you know, military action includes using nuclear weapons, they themselves have become psychologically desensitized to that fact to a high degree. And I think what we're seeing now in the United States, especially is an attempt to desensitize the population. I mean, certainly the Wall Street Journal, several senators, Mitt Romney from Utah and others, you know, these former generals that are all over TV, like Wesley Clark, who, you know, played a major role as one of the U.S. commanders in the war in Yugoslavia in the 90s, you know, they're all out making these statements that are, well, you know, listen, it's not that we want a nuclear war, but we have to be ready for it. We have to be willing to call Putin's bluff. We can't have nuclear blackmail and so on and so forth. And essentially just laying it out like, okay, well, this may be something we have to do. And I think one thing that's important for people to understand is it doesn't even really have to be deliberate. And that's why all of these, these saber rattling nuclear brinkmanship type policies are so dangerous. There's a concept in nuclear war. It's called the escalation ladder. And they always say about the escalation ladder, it's easier to go up than it is to go down. And the basic reality of the escalation ladder is this, if we're confronting each other, and I want to get you to back down, I want to try to show that I can use more force than you. But since the on the other side, you're thinking, well, I don't want to back down. And I certainly don't want to be perceived as backing down. So if one side uses a set of force, then I got to escalate my set of force. And so you keep sort of going up and getting closer to closer to conflict, which means that smaller things that at a lower level, like for instance, let's just say a, you know, a Russian plane, and a US plane or any NATO country, you know, comes close together, they almost hit each other, one shoots another one down or something like that. You know, there's actually protocols already, by the way, for when those kinds of things do happen. And so when there's not a massive nuclear brinkmanship, okay, maybe something is a mistake, who knows, you can fix it, get it together. But when you've been going for months and months and getting closer and closer and more and more warlike and saying Putin or Xi or whoever is the number one enemy, they're evil, they're trying to destroy us, they're destroying our way of life, our values. And then a American plane shoots down a Russian plane or vice versa, really, let's just say that a Russian plane shoots down an American plane or whatever, whoever it may be, Germany, Poland, someone, then people might say, Oh, well, this is an act of war. And since you've already gone right to the brink, an act of war means that it's likely to break out into a real conflict, which between nuclear powers ultimately will escalate into the logic of nuclear conflict, just because the logic of war is to win, right, at all costs. And so once you get to that stage, it's very difficult to walk back. So it's not even as if either side has to be saying, Yeah, we're going to go start a nuclear war, they just have to be willing to rattle the saber and bring you to the edge of nuclear war to create a very, very dangerous situation where small things can become big things very quickly, because the atmosphere that's surrounding the entire conversation. And I think that's very much where we are right now. You can certainly see it in the press in the United States, the attempt to prepare people for this point and this reality, and you can see it in the policies themselves. So it's, it's, you don't want to say, Oh, we're possibly, you know, looking at World War three, because it sounds so alarmist. But I think whether by deliberate reality, or just recklessness, we are headed in a direction that makes it more likely than not that that sort of conflict between nuclear powers can break out. You already mentioned it, that the, the press, the media is preparing the ground for this week touched upon this throughout the conversation today, and also with just about everyone we've spoken to in the last 18 episodes. We like almost everyone commented on, on the difficulty of actually having reasonable debates of how the mainstream media is telling us one story and one story only. And the way you just mentioned, there's sort of this warm, mongering desire, the stable rattling and yeah, preparing the ground for even whatever happens inadvertently. But somehow, somehow there, there we are, and the, and the general population will to some extent follow, even if of course we also have seen that there's lots of, there's lots of resistance to it. We had on a couple weeks ago, we had on, and I want to promote one of their events, the Galway Alliance against war, which are doing something together with, with the free Assange Ireland, which is very telling because again, you know, Assange being imprisoned and being potentially extradited to the United States for exposing, for exposing war crimes. Currently, the press being really, I don't know the English word in German, it's Gleischgescheite, which basically just means that it is the same everywhere. Like there's a common threat or a common story that is very difficult to break through and to have these dissenting voices and also voices that actually expose the dangers of where we are headed, the way that you just did when you explained what the escalation ladder is. So the Galway Alliance Against Peace has an event today talking about Julian Assange and about if wars can be started by lies, peace can be started by truth. So I invite you to join that. We will put the link in the chat. And of course we want to ask you Eugene, break through news. I mean, you are a journalist, you are working with your, you know, with your colleagues, basically in the belly of the beast, you are doing awesome and amazing work. But we would like to know, or I think you should tell us what is, what are the kind of pressures and difficulties that are you, that you are facing, you know, and what are kind of the, what are the kind of key elements that we need to keep in our conversations to keep people on board, to keep people with us, to what is the kind of driving force behind the journalism that you and Breakthrough News are actually doing? And how do you reach people and not, you know, for example, stay in some echo chamber or just be censored or just be shut up in the current, in the current environment? So tell us a little bit about, about how all of that feels for, feels on the journalist side at this moment in the States and probably elsewhere as well. Well, it's certainly difficult. I mean, you know, we're in such a, I'm glad you mentioned censorship because, you know, we're really dancing around the, the reality of a growth in censorship here in the United States, especially, you know, outlets like Breakthrough News, you know, we're broadcasting over the internet, which obviously is also controlled by just a small handful, you know, there's sort of a separate, well, not separate related, but most people don't see it as related conversation in the US about this very issue of the monopolization of the internet, the Googles, the Facebooks, the internet service providers and so on and so forth. And one of the things that we're seeing from these internet companies in order to stave off any real serious push for regulation with the politicians in Washington DC is they are becoming more and more willing to just embrace censorship around whatever politicians may be upset that is on the internet that day. And there are many different things, but one of the main ones we've seen are whatever the priorities are of the state department. So, you know, Facebook will say, oh, well, you're concerned about, you know, quote, unquote, Russian meddling. So we'll just ban anything that is even perceived to be, even say perceived to be is even wrong, anything that could even potentially be in the orbit of the possibility of being related to Russia somehow, which really just means taking an alternative view of world conflicts that may or may not comport with, you know, what we're seeing from, you know, the Russian media or what we see from the Russian government. Same thing with China, same thing with Iran, same thing with mini progressive things. So that's one of our biggest challenges is there's these, these, you know, very vague, hard to understand and really opaque and not explained censorship rules that seem directly designed to reinforce the narrative of the US government and a number of these issues. So, you know, that's why we started Breakthrough News, though to some degree, because we recognize the mainstream media already had that kind of stranglehold. And even if we have a limited window, we need to try to crack that window open even more, because I think there's a lot of confusion in the United States on these issues. And that's not to absolve people in the United States of responsibility for the things that are done in our name, which is another thing we try to sort of point out to people is that, Hey, these things are being done, not just by some abstract government that you don't think about, they're being done on your behalf, at least allegedly, which creates a lot of responsibility for, you know, people in the US to act against these policies. But I think part of the reason that is so much the case is there is a mass, there's such mass confusion, propaganda, disinformation, if you will, that's put forward by these, these, you know, warmongering pro-imperialist sources that it really needs to be broken down and sorted through for people in a way the mainstream media is not going to do. That's a challenge, of course, because when you can't assume all of the basic realities, like when the assumptions, the basic assumptions people are making are all wrong. You have to often start from the very beginning and we'll have to have these long shows, hour long shows, you know, walking through history, doing all these different pieces, just to create the foundation and the groundwork for people to be able to understand the world around them. But what I will say is it's been very heartening to see that we've been able to get a lot of support in just the two and a half years that we have been around for breakthrough news. And, you know, we're doing, we're chipping away and I think that ultimately, you know, we are, we grow with the anger and the outrage of people in the U.S. towards these different policies. So as that continues, you know, we'll be able to make more and more headway as people see through their own experiences that, you know, sending billions of dollars to war and preparation for war is not, not something that is benefiting them. Thank you, Eugene. I want to connect what you were saying about, you know, the difficulties for journalists to talk and also to link it to the Juliana Sange. Before we change the subject, I want to people, maybe they don't know. In fact, they are, you'll notice that they are in prison. I want to mention Pablo González, that is a Spanish reporter that has been in prison in Poland since February 28th. And now we know that he is going, he's in preventive custody for more than three months. And also, you know, it's funny because he's been accused to be part of the Putin-Spionage strategy and stuff. And in fact, what we know is that he's been from 2016 in George Sordo's list. So this explains very well how censorship works. And it's not only about ideas, but also about people. So from here, from this program, we want to say that Pablo González should be put in freedom and also that, you know, Spain should be doing something about it. So now, changing subject, you know, we know that you are on your way to LA and you are going to some event that we want to talk about, the People Summit. And we want to ask you the relations also of the People Summit with the NATO Summit, like the relation of this democracy idea from Biden, that is, you know, the same month. So Biden has a really busy month. Yeah. I mean, it's a very busy month and it's starting off pretty poorly with the Summit of the Americas where they seem to have really fumbled the ball. But I think there's a really strong connection between the People Summit and, you know, not just the NATO Summit, but the, you know, the counter summits that are also going on there. And that is the need to present a counter vision. And so the whole purpose of Biden having the so-called Summit of the Americas and why it's falling apart is this desire to kind of reaffirm this Monroe doctrine, Latin America is the backyard of the United States. Or as Biden said, it's also our front yard. So I mean, that's really amazing that, you know, the U.S. just totally controls everything about Latin America. But, you know, I think they wanted to try to push back against what has obviously been happening in Latin America since 1998, which is more and more people taking control of their governments and building more powerful movements and saying, you know, that, you know, our America, as it's often said, is something different than this vision of the United States of big corporations and monopolies dominating the whole region and, you know, exploiting the people and the natural resources for the profit of just a tiny handful. And I think, ultimately, that's, you know, what NATO exists for, quite frankly. I mean, that's what Columbia is, you know, a NATO, whatever the NATO adjacent, whatever it may be, is it sort of like anywhere NATO is, is a sign that there is no democracy and that the United States is trying to, as Blinken said, shape the environment to create the opposite perception that somehow there is. And I think that, you know, these activities like the People Summit and any opportunity really where peoples and movements from around regions and around the world have the opportunity to get together and say there's a different way of doing things, I think is critically important because we are going to see a real, I think, super charging. And I think we've already seen that with NATO. I mean, the fact that Scandinavian countries are now joining the fact that they've gotten Germany to be militarized, which of course was a controversial issue for obvious reasons there. The fact that all opposition really from any government in Europe is being just sort of bulldozed over to pursue this is, I think that this is another point in that chain. You've got the so-called Summit of the Americas, which is designed to, you know, reassert American power in Latin America. Then you're going to have a big NATO summit, which is designed to reassert American power and American visions, at least imperialist visions, for what sort of security or, you know, really preparations for war should look like inside of Europe. You already had the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework Forum in Japan in Asia, same thing. So I think what we're seeing over these two months, May and June, is really an ideological attempt and an organizing attempt by the US government to bring together, you know, its various allies under various umbrellas to really sort of reset and recharge and supercharge these agendas for the second half of the 21st century for how they're going to continue to dominate and ultimately, again, how they're going to be willing to subdue all of those who refuse to agree. So, you know, the People's Summit, we're going to be talking about NATO. I think at, you know, many of the panels that are going to be going on there, certainly I expect to hear, you know, quite a bit about the interlocking realities of the, you know, New Cold War with China, the ongoing war with Ukraine, and really the New Cold War towards Russia as well, and the preparations for what they want. And I think counterposing that with what people's movements want, what popular movements want, what people really need, which is a people-centered world, not a profit-centered world. So it's going to be a great sort of, you know, a few days long next week in LA and at Breakthrough News, we're going to be covering as much of it as we can, streaming a lot of the panels. And we're really looking forward to it. Thank you, Eugene. I think it's important what you are saying of doing things together. I just, I was just reading the comments and I see Selie Watt helping Franziska with the weird German word, you know, like things are better when we do it together for sure. And I think that's why it's so important to have you here, because also from, I don't know, from outside the U.S., the vision that we have also from the U.S. is like, there is no people fighting there. And I think it's very important to talk to people that fights that vision, and that also speak up to the things that the U.S. are doing. So thank you so much, Eugene, for connecting the dots for us, because we can see the world only by pieces, but seeing how everything is connected and in motion, as well as, you know, also amazing things are happening, like the People's Summit in LA and also the Peace Summit in Madrid. We don't have to end without giving some info also on the Peace Summit in Madrid. Please check out your agendas, because after the People's Summit, we will be seeing each other in Madrid with the Spanish comrades of all the Antinito platforms on the weekend of the 24 to 26 of June. There will be workshops, panels, and discussions throughout Friday and Saturday, and on Sunday, on the Sunday morning, we will be mobilizing on the streets at 12 in the morning. It's going to be hot, so you have to bring water, because in Madrid at 12 in the morning in June it's going to be hot, but more info soon. So yeah, thank you very much for being here with us, and we hope that to see all those panels of the People's Summit and keep working together, Eugene. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for having me. It was a great breakfast. Thank you. Thank you, Eugene. Ciao.