 some conference in a police state Egypt. So it's certainly an example of greenwashing. And we will be exploring that in this program as well as what's on the agenda for COP 27, what isn't on the agenda. We have fantastic guests. We're going to hear first from Jim Ryan and I believe Janet will hopefully she'll be joining us soon from veterans for peace, the climate crisis and militarism project. We'll also be hearing from Teddy Ogborn. Teddy, a New York activist is our coordinator for our wing campaign. That's the war is not green campaign. We'll hear more about that. I will also be hearing from Sharif Abdul-Kadus, who's a famous journalist, was on Democracy Now for Years, has written for lots of publications. He is Egyptian. He'll be talking about the politics of Egypt. And we also expect to hear from Mohamed Ismail, another Egyptian on what's going on in Egypt. So let's take a moment for a few updates. Medea, you're first. Ah, updates. Yeah, you can tell us about Latin America. You can tell us. So on the Cuba front, there's going to be a very important vote happening this week at the United Nations when basically the entire world, except maybe the U.S. and Israel come out and say that the U.S. embargo against Cuba is terrible and should be lifted. And we're trying to make a bigger deal about that vote this year, because it's the 30th year in a row that they've done it. And Biden said he wants it to live in a rules-based international order. And so here the international community is setting the rules and saying lift this embargo. We also had a meeting at the State Department this week on the Cuba issue to urge them to take Cuba off the state sponsor of terrorism list after the elections. And Code Pink will be going with Puentes de Amor, Bridges of Love, chartering a plane this weekend to take a 17,000 pounds of food and medicine to Cuba. So that's the update there on the Ukraine side. I've been continuing on the speaking tour, 50 city speaking tour, and it's been going great, although the war is going terribly. And you might, I hope people did hear about the 30 members of Congress who signed on a letter saying that we should add diplomacy to the mix of everything else the U.S. is quote doing for Ukraine. And they got smashed by the Democratic Party and rescinded the letter after it was already signed, sealed and delivered, which means that we're starting out after the election pretty much from the ground up building this groundswell of support to talk some sense into our elected officials. Thank you, Medea. Yeah, I couldn't believe that. I mean, I was driving. I got a call from a reporter. Do you have a comment about the progressive caucus members rescinding this letter? I said, what can't be, but it was true. It was true. All right. Cole Harrison is with us. He's the executive director of Massachusetts Peace Action. He's going to tell us more about what's going on with Ukraine. Yeah. Hi, Marcy. Hi, Medea. I think Medea hit a lot of it, but the Ukraine war is really in an escalation spiral now. Situations getting more and more serious. And so we really need a political opening to look at diplomacy. Unfortunately, the Democrats have seized the mantle as the party of war. They've decided that the progressives are going to be stomped on when they try to talk about diplomacy. So it's grim. We have to find a way to break through. But we have, we're going to start again after the election. Yes. And I think that after the midterms, it'll be a perfect time to really step on the gas, apply some pressure because the word is that Congress is part of a larger omnibus bill. Bill will be looking at passing another $50 billion for Ukraine, much of that for weapons and military training. All right. We are now going to start our program. We're going to go to Jim Rine, a Veterans for Peace, who I've gotten to know over the last year or so, a great organizer. He says he doesn't say he's an activist, but I think he is. He's a strategic thinker. Jim Rine is the co-founder of the Veterans for Peace Climate Crisis and Militarism Project. Prior to that, he spent 35 years as a research geologist. He also served in the US Army in West Germany from 1970 to 1973. Jim is currently an adjunct professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Geology at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, and working to organize protests to address the problems with COP 27. So Jim, you're on. Thank you, Marci. And thank you to Code Pink for allowing me to say a few words. So the Climate Crisis and Militarism Project has been working for over a year trying to educate folks, both environmentalists and Veterans for Peace members, about the links between military and climate change. Just recently, we've gotten another component to stop the war, save the climate sort of wing. Jim Driscoll has sort of headed this up. It's actually a project that's getting veterans out there risking a rest to stress the links between militarism and climate change. It's getting some of its funds from the Climate Emergency Fund, which has been sort of in the news recently, or at least some of the projects that they're funding have been in the news. They're helping out the art demonstrators or protesters like over in the UK with the Van Gogh paintings and the protests there. We're going to be involved in a protest in Washington, D.C. on Armistice Day, the 11th. We're going to be also doing an action on the 14th in New York City, and we're going to be hopefully doing an action on the 16th in Boston. You can go to our Climate Crisis and Militarism Project website, which is at Veterans for Peace, you can see a listing of those projects and the contact people. Again, what we're trying to do, these actions are going on during COP 27, is to try and stress to everyone that the military missions need to be reported to the IPCC, to the UN. That's going to be one of the themes, especially in New York. We hope to protest outside of the UN headquarters. That's essentially a few words about what we're doing. Thank you so much. Jim Rine, one of the co-founders of the Climate Crisis and Militarism Project of Veterans for Peace, and they're online. They have a terrific website that Janet Weill has worked a lot on. He's going to give us another update on COP 27 and what the environmental movement is doing about that. Janet is a military family member. She's a retired adult educator. She serves, as I mentioned, on that project. She also edits the newsletter and blog for Extinction Rebellion in Portland. Welcome, Janet. Oh, Janet, I think you're muted. We see you with your hat. There we go. Hello. Sorry, everybody. I am going to get on to sharing screen here in just a second. Just super quickly, I'll be showing you a few slides from a longer presentation than I'm doing this Thursday to the Maine and Massachusetts peace action groups. So this is a reminder of what the US and NATO are providing to the Ukrainian government and military now. It does meet the dictionary definition of proxy war. I was somewhat alarmed to see yesterday that the 101st Airborne of the US Army, otherwise known as the Screaming Eagles and very famous or notorious for what they did in Vietnam, is on standby three miles from the Ukrainian border. So, Marcy, you wanted me to talk, though, about COP 27. Yes. Okay. So probably a lot of people on this call have read the very powerful article by Naomi Klein stating her principled opposition to the way the Egyptian government and the authoritarian leader Cici in particular are using COP 27 for nationalistic greenwashing and grandstanding, as indeed the US and other nations will do as well. However, and also Greta Thunberg is another famous no-show, as is King Charles III who's been told by his government not to go, despite his decades of concern about these issues. However, Veterans for Peace Climate Crisis will have a representative from our project there. And in fact, I just got a long email from Cindy Piester, our rep at COP 27 in Egypt. So the reasons to make the effort to get all the way to the Sinai Peninsula, where COP 27 will be held in a very expensive tourist resort, is obviously to have a presence at the annual international gathering that includes all nations negotiating on climate issues and goals. And primarily for Veterans for Peace, this is an international opportunity for us to push our call for counting and reducing military missions in national emissions reporting to the United Nations. This is something that the US government and in fact, precisely the State Department worked hard to prevent during the Kyoto Protocol negotiations in 1997. And we must be able to count all emissions in order to be able to see where they're coming from and reduce them. This is a great opportunity for Cindy to network on our behalf with other organizations such as the Climate and Environmental Observatory or COPs in Britain. They'll also have representatives there. Support calls for human rights and justice and build awareness of the relationship between these existential crises of global militarism, including the increased threat of the use of nuclear weapons now, and of course, the climate crisis. So in the lower right, I have put the logo for the COP 27 coalition, which is a people's coalition of many, many groups, primarily led by African climate organizers and groups, demanding, among other things, peace negotiations, and climate justice and loss and damage payments from the global north to the countries of the global south. And global south debt relief are also key demands. So if you haven't yet, I really recommend you checking out the COP 27 coalition. Here in Portland, Oregon, where I live, we are going to have a rally during the COP on the Global Day of Action, which is November 12th. And you don't have to remember all of this. I'm kind of motormounting through it. I will be sending Marcy a resources list, which she can share with people on this call. Great. And the other thing that I want to point out is that at COP 27, there will be the putting forth of a proposal on the national level. I believe Costa Rica is going to be the country to put this forth, that the UN stop excluding military pollution and specifically greenhouse gas emissions from climate agreements. And World Beyond War has been pushing this petition. Probably a lot of people attending this call have signed it. And we're very grateful to World Beyond War for their support. And I'll stop there. Thank you so much, Janet Wheel, with Veterans for Peace. Great information there to learn about the coalition. Code Pink also has a petition and we'll be sharing that later on in the program. And this is a petition also to stop excluding military emissions. My next, our next guest. Marcy, before you go, can I just say one thing? If people want to introduce themselves in the chat, put any questions or comment in there. It is open for your participation. Thank you. Thank you, Medea. Teddy Ogborn is Code Pink's coordinator for our War Is Not Green campaign, also called Wing. They are a climate activists and coordinator based in New York City. Originally from Lilton, Colorado, Teddy earned a BA in comparative literature from Haverford College. Before working at the intersection of climate and anti militarism, Teddy has worked as a film festival director, a fencing coach, a film producer, and a high school English teacher in France. Teddy, so glad you could join us tonight. Thank you so much, Marcy. Yeah, great to meet you all. Teddy, they, he pronouns. I've recently, very recently started working with Code Pink, so I'm very excited to be here at my first Code Pink Congress. I am the coordinator for War Is Not Green campaign with Code Pink. So I wanted to quickly touch on why we have this campaign and what it does. So the dominant rhetoric around climate change and climate change action really focuses on industry and industrialization. And while there is so much organic overlap with the military, as many of us here know, that rhetoric oftentimes doesn't seep into our calls to action within the climate movement. So part of my job is to, as a climate activist here in New York City, ensure that that conversation is had and that that connection is made in all of our demands, because the groundwork is already there. And these arenas are hardly distinct. So anti militarism and climate action are such natural allies as to be almost a perfect circle of Venn diagram, right? So our goal and my job in this campaign is to be incredibly loud about that and to make sure that's clear. Part of that as a little update from New York that I've seen in this last week and helped organize was our Occupy Park Avenue campaign, working coalition with New York Community for Change, Extinction Billion and Sunrise Movement. We held an entire week. Many people on this call, I'm sure, saw some snippets of that news reporting on that. On Monday, activists disrupted Ted Cruz on the view. SNL even did a little sketch on that. We held arrestable actions, blockading locations on Park Avenue at BlackRock, which is the world's largest asset manager, a ginormous funder of both fossil fuels and private military contractors, as well as Blackstone, very similar as a private equity company. And so this last week was incredibly encouraging for me as a wing coordinator and that we had so much success tying these issues together and for people to see, you know, the vast expanse of the consequences of these, the both the billionaires that we were highlighting, spotlighting, if you will, as well as the corporations that we focused on like BlackRock and Blackstone and JPMorgan Chase. Looking forward to the future, as Jim mentioned, we are collaborating. We just had a call earlier collaborating on this, options for peace action in New York that will be on November 14th. Details for that will be honored on CodePink's events page, but I'm very excited to do that as well at the UN and for this partnership to move forward as well with climate organizations here in the city. So just to touch more about the issue at hand when we're talking about the wing campaign and, you know, wars not green, emissions in the military, both in the US and globally, we all know that we need to be dedicating so, so like far, far more funds to combating climate change, whether through green infrastructure and also for defending the most vulnerable communities who are on the front lines of climate change. And we know that right now, that money is not enough. Right now, our biggest, one of our biggest obstacles is the ginormous opportunity costs we're facing here in this country, where annually we dedicate $800 billion to funding and fueling the planet's largest single emitter of fossil fuels. It's actually a double opportunity cost in that way, right? It's committing us to further carbon emissions, methane emissions, and all of that money, $800 billion should be going towards safeguarding our communities and our planet against climate change. So this is a huge and daunting task and is the goal of this campaign. Some more facts on that subject in 2022 alone. The US will spend two times per day the amount of money on military than it does in an entire year on climate change. That obviously needs to stop. As I said, the Pentagon is the largest emitter, largest single institutional emitter in the US, the largest emitter as a military in the world, an institutional military in the world, emitting over 100 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year. It emits more than most countries on the planet. Our Pentagon does, which is a staggering fact that when I tell people oftentimes in the climate movement, they are surprised by even though they are so well educated on many other facets of the climate movement. Globally, militaries are responsible for 6% of all greenhouse gases, which is an enormous portion. And as I said, the Pentagon, our own US military, holds a huge amount of responsibility to that. And as such, it's been estimated by climate scientists that no real meaningful progress can be made on climate change if we do not curb military missions immediately. Dr. Nettisi Crawford, who is a preeminent scholar on the subject, having written the book, The Pentagon Climate Change and War, has written that we are locked in a cycle of acquisition of fossil fuels and the protection of that acquisition. We all know that to be true in our environment in the Iraq war and in the Persian Gulf. And it's a deadly cycle that we are currently locked into that needs to be broken immediately. So also, even if we do choose to argue, if someone chooses to argue for US militarism outside of the context of climate change, and as though we need the US to secure, to be a secure nation, that's also a ridiculous claim. There's a whole suite of arguments to be made against that in that climate change makes our nation so much less secure. And we are seeing that all of the time. 10 years ago was Hurricane Sandy. That's where Occupy Park Avenue was meant to commemorate. We had 43 deaths here in the city that wouldn't have happened had the storm not been exacerbated by climate change. And it's estimated that $8 billion more damage was caused by the storm than it would have had we had not had there not been anthropogenic climate change influencing it. Unfortunately, the US military has actually long been aware of the impact of climate change, but only within this context of securing national interests. In the 1950s, Pentagon scientists were well aware that the Arctic Ocean was warming as a result of fossil fuels. But this was only framed as a threat because it would allow the Soviet Union to then navigate the waters north of us. So we were in this paradox where this hugely funded institution or country in what gives American politicians this idea that we have the right and the might to police the world is actually making us so much less safe. And so part of our goal here is to break that part paradox to speak logic to this chaos and to end military emissions. But obvious solution would of course be to count military emissions among those that we are trying to curb and cease via the conference of the parties, the cops. But as has been alluded to earlier, and we'll talk about more, that is not the case right now. Military emissions are currently exempted completely from discussions and agreements at cop, which given everything that I've just shared is absolutely absurd. It locks us into a climate changed future and disaster for a species and the exacerbation of tensions globally. Some context for past cops. So as was mentioned before, in 1997, during the formation of the Kyoto Protocol, the inclusion of military emissions was proposed. But in a last minute decision, it was yanked out of the agreements. And since then that tradition has stuck even after the erstwhile aggressive agreements made during the Paris Accords. So that continues to be the standards for cop. And cop oftentimes fails us in this way. And that is why people are so jaded about it, right? I believe it was Janet earlier mentioned that Greta Thunberg this year is choosing not to come to cop because she has witnessed time and time again how world leaders there greenwash themselves and greenwash this conference while making no meaningful progress on climate change. So Greta Thunberg is making a really powerful and brave statement as a climate leader by not showing up to cop. And that makes sense. Cop oftentimes features corporate interests in business leaders who are funding and fueling and enriching themselves off of climate change and fossil fuels. Larry Fink of Blackrock was a recent speaker at cop. And he's platformed so much more than, for example, indigenous communities. And this year it's sponsored by Coca-Cola, right? So there's so many reasons to be jaded by cop and for all the people that are making their voices heard and calling this out, it is our responsibility to make cop matter, right? This is still the single greatest avenue that we have between nations to come together and find real solutions to climate change and anti militarism at the same time. And so it is incumbent upon us to seize on that opportunity. Code Pink has done, Nancy Mencius with Code Pink has done some really wonderful work these past years pushing for talks on military missions to actually enter into the agreements at cop. And those efforts have been rewarded hugely last year, after last year, with this year military emissions being a part of three featured side events at cop. So now these aren't the main events that will result in agreements around emissions, but it's a big step. And the many voices globally, including Code Pink that have been calling for this has seen great success in securing these side events. And obviously we need to continue pushing, right? So that military emissions are a part of those main agreements. And that is what our petition for, which I believe Medea will be presenting later, that is what our petition is for, to demand that military emissions are counted in these agreements so we can actually de-incentivize militarism globally, and we can meaningfully address climate change. So I'll stop there. Again, thank you so much for having me, and I'll pass it along. Thank you. Thank you, Teddy. Welcome to Code Pink. You know, I'm inspired to know that Code Pink and these other the coalition members are organizing these side events to focus on this because we know that sometimes social justice movements operate in silos, you know, and people in the climate movement certainly need to be brought into the anti-militarism movement and vice versa. All right, so Medea, you're going to introduce our next guest. Yes, after those great presentations, now we're going to move into the police state part of COP 27. I was so shocked when I heard that Egypt was going to be the location of COP 27, given how incredibly repressive that society is. And we all know that the COP meetings have been characterized by very vibrant demonstrations outside and inside the meetings. And that's not exactly what one can do in Egypt. So we're really delighted and honored to have as one of our guests tonight, an old friend, Sharif Abdul Qaduz, who, as Marcy said, is known to some of us from his time at Democracy Now, but he has been an independent journalist based between New York and Cairo, and is reported from across the Arab world for a number of print and broadcast outlets. He's a part-time editor and reporter at Mada Masr, Egypt's leading independent media outlet. Sharif, we're really glad you could join us tonight. Thanks, Medea. And it's good to see you. And thanks to Code Pink for inviting me to speak today. I think what would be useful is to just first paint kind of a very quick overall picture of what the repressive state looks like in Egypt, and then maybe focus on the COP itself. So as many of you know, the 2011 revolution, which was very inspiring and led to and reverberated around the world with the Occupy movement in Dijenados in Spain, in the UK, really across the globe. That revolution was followed by a very harsh and brutal counter-revolutionary wave, which kind of the revolution was crushed in 2013 by the military and by then-General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi with a reinvigorated police and security apparatus taking over. So right now, Egypt's controlled by a very tight and closed ruling circle of military and intelligence officers that is completely opaque in its decision-making process, does not allow for any political participation, does not brook any kind of dissenter opposition. It seems that the government's answer to any problem with the citizen is prison. There are quite literally tens of thousands of political prisoners in Egypt right now. We actually don't know the number of detainees because there's no official statistics. And this forces lawyers and the very harassed human rights groups to painstakingly try and tabulate the thousands of people who are trapped behind bars. Over the past several years, we've seen Egypt build several dozen new prisons. Just last year, Sisi announced the establishment of the Wedi Natroun prison complex. Well, it's not called a prison complex. It's called the Rehabilitation Center. And this is one of seven or eight new prisons which Sisi himself dubbed as American-style prisons. These prison complexes include within them courts and judicial buildings. So it kind of makes a conveyor belt from the courthouse to the prison cell more efficient. You know, the majority of political prisoners in Egypt are held in what's called pretrial detention and under Egypt's penal code. You can spend over, you can spend two years behind bars without ever being convicted of a crime. Nearly everyone who's held in pretrial detention faces these kind of two identical charges, one of which is spreading false news and the other's belonging to a terrorist organization or an outlawed organization. Prison conditions are very dire. If you get sick, you're in trouble. There's been a lot of deaths because of medical negligence with prisoners dying in custody. Torture and other forms of abuse by the security forces is widespread. We've also seen the number of death sentences and executions skyrockets in Egypt. So under Mubarak, the former president in his final maybe decade in office, there was the de facto moratorium on executions known as really being, there was death sentences, some of which were being handed down, but people weren't really being put to death. Now Egypt ranks third in the world in the number of executions. And we've also seen a massive crackdown on press freedoms, a near complete takeover of the media landscape. So under Mubarak, there was at least some opposition press in newspapers and some TV stations. But now the regime very tightly controls the press through censorship and also through acquisition. The General Intelligence Services, which is the intelligence apparatus of the military, has become the largest media owner in the country. So they own newspapers and TV channels. And independent journalists like the place that I work from at the Moss, we operate on the margins in a very, very hostile environment. Egypt's the third largest jailer of journalists in the world and then prisons more journalists on charges of false news than any other country in the world. So basically, you know, yeah, the regime sees any citizen really as a nuisance or a threat. And any forms of protest or public assembly are banned. They carry very stiff prison sentences. We've seen mass arrest sweeps happen whenever there's any kind of public demonstration. And we've also seen an unprecedented crackdown on civil society with human rights organizations and economic justice organizations being forced to scale back their operations or operate really kind of underground. The people who work for them are subject to intimidation and harassment and travel bans and acid freezes and arrest and prison. And finally, Egypt's become a massive purchaser of weapons. It's the third largest, I think the last count, it was the third largest importer of weapons in the world. So we import more, we're the number one importer of weapons from France, number one from Germany, we're the second largest recipient of military aid from the United States. And all of this is happening while the country is kind of on the brink of economic collapse and defaulting on its foreign debt. So after that kind of rosy picture, I think we, you know, it's very important, it was very disheartening for a lot of people in Egypt who work for human rights and justice and forms of democracy when Egypt was granted the right to host the Conference of Parties, the UN Climate Summit. Egypt's trying to position itself as the voice of the global cells and one of the lead negotiators to unlock billions of dollars a year in climate financing from the global north. Of course, this issue of reparations is very important and should, needs to be discussed and needs to be taken seriously. But, you know, how can we have reparations to a country like Egypt where we don't know where the money is being spent, and it's mostly going to be spent on kind of bolstering this repressive state. And one that's essentially a polluting state. You know, as Naomi Klein put it in that great article that was mentioned before, the summit's going beyond greenwashing a polluting state, it's greenwashing a police state. So I think what we can expect at the summit in Charmeschich is very carefully managed theater. So, you know, as, as, as was mentioned before, we all know the problems with the UN Climate Summit, rarely amounting to anything getting concrete actually happening with kind of a lot of climate negotiations happening and climate diplomacy, but they are also very important convergence points of descent. And convergence points for different groups to come together in the climate justice movement. And you have protests always inside and outside the conference. This will not be the case in Charmeschich. Okay, so Charmes is a resort in Sinai that literally has a wall around it, can be very tightly controlled and it will be. There's actually the space that's been designated for protesters is built from what we understand. It's a purpose built area out near a highway that's away from the conference center or any other signs of life. So, you know, holding a protest there. I don't know if it'll actually be effective. And actually, you know, this is from what I understand why Greta Thunberg is not coming. She has problems with the structure of the cop itself. But even this ability to, to use it as a convergence space for descent, that's effectively shut down. But more importantly, the members of Egyptian civil society, the allies and environmental groups that are critical of the government will not be in attendance. Those that manage to be will have been vetted by the government and will have to be very careful in how they operate. The others are either these are the people that are in prison or subject to various forms of legal repression and harassment. And, you know, in the departure of normal UN rules, all the local partners that have been allowed to attend the cop have been vetted and approved by the government. The conference itself is going to be very highly surveilled. So the government created this app that, you know, you can download to use as a guide during the conference. But to do that, to use the app, you have to put your full name, your email address, your mobile number, your nationality and your passport number. And you have to enable location tracking. I don't know why anyone would do this, but I think you'd be surprised the number of people who would. And Amnesty International Technology Specialists have reviewed the app and flagged all these concerns about surveillance and its ability to use the camera and microphone and location data and Bluetooth and so forth. But I think what people need to also understand what's been happening in the past week alone, we've seen an intensified crackdown and a massive arrest sweep in the run-up to the climate summit. Hundreds of people have been arrested by some counts, five or 600. They've been arrested off the streets from their homes, from their workplaces. Scores of them are being held in pretrial detention on those terrorism charges and being added to what's been dubbed the climate revolution case. They're being questioned about a supposed protest. There's been calls for protests. It's unclear where they started, but I think from people outside of Egypt for November 11th. So it's the 11-11 protests. And everyone in Egypt, all these people are being arrested and asked about 11-11. Are you going to take part who is organizing it and so forth? There's a massive security presence in Cairo and other cities across Egypt. Police are stopping just random passers-by. And this has happened before in times when they panicked a little bit, forcing people to bring out their phones, unlock their phone, open Facebook, open WhatsApp, and they look through it. And if they find political contact that they find problematic, they arrest you. So this is happening right now as people are preparing to come to the COP. Just the other day actually, and you know, it's not restricted just to Egyptians. There was an Indian climate activist who was detained in Cairo just the other day. He set off on this, like, solo climate justice protest march, and he aimed to walk several hundred kilometers to Sharma Sheikh. He was held overnight and detained and questioned for several hours. He called an Egyptian lawyer friend. An Egyptian lawyer friend came to the police station. They detained him and held him overnight as well. So this is kind of the environment that we're coming in. And I mean, I can speak more about, maybe later, about Egypt's kind of the military's role and, you know, pollution and all of these things. But I just want to end in this segment to talk about, you know, all these government officials and delegates and members of international civil society groups are coming to Sharma Sheikh. Egyptian civil society has not called for a boycott, but they have called for human rights for and specifically for political prisoners to be at the heart of the negotiations. For these things to be linked, we can't ignore them. And there's thousands of political prisoners, like Abdul Minam Abul Fatouh, who's a former presidential candidate, a blogger called Mohamed Oxygen, Mohamed Bakr, who's a lawyer, Maru Arafa, who's an activist from Alexandria. But I just want to end also in the case of Ali Abdul Fatouh. Ali is probably Egypt's most famous prominent political prisoner. He's been behind bars for much of the past decade. He is imprisoned for his ideas and for the versatility of his mind. And because he's come to represent change, he's come to represent, he's an icon and a symbol of the 2011 revolution. And I think imprisoning him for the regime is seen as setting an example for everyone else. And that's why there's been a lot of campaigning around him, because to get him out would also represent some kind of real change. Ali has been on a hunger strike. He, so last year, Ali, I can talk about his prison conditions maybe later, but he had very, very difficult prison conditions, you know, two years without a book or any reading materials of any kind, wasn't allowed out of his cell, didn't even have a mattress to sleep on, just completely deprived of anything. And he's, for the first time, expressed suicidal thoughts. But on April 2nd, he decided to go on hunger strike as an act of resilience to protest his imprisonment and to call for certain things. So he's been on hunger strike for seven months now. He started with a part with a hunger strike, just water and salt, which is a style of hunger strike Egyptians learned from Palestinians. And then in May, he was transferred to a different prison to this wedding, Nautun prison, the rehabilitation center. And there his conditions improved a little bit, he got access to books and so forth. And the campaign for his release, he decided to go on a Gandhi style strike and ingest 100 calories a day. For an average adult, you need 2000. So it's very meager. He takes like a spoonful of honey in his tea. He's been doing that since May. But he just, in a letter to his family the other day, said today was his last day of doing that. So he's gone back to a full hunger strike. And on November 6th, on the eve of the conference of parties on the eve of the UN climate summit, he's going to stop drinking water. And so the body cannot last without water for more than a few days. So he is basically organizing us. He's making us everyone outside act because he will die in prison. If he's either they release him or do something or he will die. So this is something I think everyone needs to really keep in mind that I think it's a very brave act what he's doing, that when everyone's gathered in Egypt, this is going to be happening. He's using his body, the only thing he has agency over to organize. And he's organizing us on the outside who can do something, whatever that something is. So I'll just leave it there and we can discuss more later. Thank you, Sharif. I was getting chills listening to you. What a horrific situation and I'm seeing in the chat, we give Egypt 1.3 billion in military aid a year. All right, Medea, we're going to come back to Sharif with a Q&A. But first, Medea is going to introduce our next guest. So Mohammed, are you with us? Yes, I just came in. So Mohammed Ismail is a dear friend for many years. We've been working together on the issue of the Egyptian government's tremendous repression that Sharif just outlined for us. And thank you, Sharif, for that incredible presentation that's chilling, shocking, disgusting, especially knowing how the U.S. is supporting this. And Mohammed has been instrumental in creating a group called Egyptians Abroad for Democracy and is working with the Egyptians around the world trying to change the Sisi regime. Mohammed, I don't think you had a time to hear Sharif, but he did give us a great overview. And I would like, if you could tell us what you think people should be doing in the U.S. to try to change U.S. policy towards Egypt. All right. Thank you very much, Medea, Marcy, for having me. I actually heard a very good part of Sharif in the beginning and the end and he very much covered all. I just want to start with one thing, but Allah also said I'm holding account for the international community in general and holding account for Sisi and Great Britain for letting him die in the prison. Go back to your question again. I think that we, the American citizen and in particular Code Pink members, we need to use the letter that Code Pink signed on it and ask since Biden is giving a credit anyway by visiting Sisi, his Trump favorite dictator, at least to make the visit conditional. We have a lot of leverage in the United States to free the 60,000 plus prisoners if we all work together. Unfortunately, before I come here to talk to you guys, I asked my friends in Egypt on the ground. I said, what do you want to say to the people there? I'm going to be in a big meeting with a lot of well-known people in the United States and the influential as well. They said, Muhammad, some of them they took it as a sarcastic thing. They said, you know, American government, the American who are the one killing us, without the United States, without the aid, without the support from the government, we won't have a military coup. We'll have a better life. I just said, and then thank you to Code Pink and Medea being a partner on operations early and other things. We were able to show them the other picture of the Americans. I said, you know, the American administration, the White House, the military, American military is not the American people. So I showed them Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch. Medea spoke a lot in Jazeera, spoke a lot in Arabic 21st. So they saw the other image of America. So my concern or my suggestion to you today, what we can do is, before we concentrate on the climate change, let's focus on the people of Egypt. And we can be a role model to free those people. I just, I don't know if you should talk about right now, because the Egyptian regime know that people are starting getting ready to move and to trade for peaceful demonstration. They are resting thousands of Egyptians right now. We have a lot of Egyptians right now behind bars, because they're thinking to go at 11, 11, November 11, the day that Biden visiting Egypt to, so they're going out to the streets. So preparing to that, CCC is starting to arrest the people. So what I'm trying to say today, what we can do, each one in that call have a lot of member living in different states can talk to the congress members and their own congress member pass that letter, because you guys could be a sign on it, and they can pass it and make it press to put pressure on the White House to make the visit conditional. Trust me, he can, he can CC recognition to him. He's afraid of two things, international community and especially United States and the Egyptian military. He doesn't afraid of the Egyptian people since he has a military and he has a power in his hand. But if the Egyptian people moved in the street with the support of the international community, and I'm talking in particular United States, we'll be able to move and have actions. So again, what I'm thinking is we having a protest in front of the White House, I think starting on the seven, eight, nine, and 10th. So I'm asking everybody who can join the protest in Washington DC would be great. Anybody can take that letter and change it to petition and pass it on to the congress member to the state department to the White House. We're really appreciated. I'm going to take any message from here today and I'll pass it on to the people of Egypt. I talk a lot in the Egyptian and the Arab media and I have an interview tomorrow with the Arabic 21st. And also Alan has Alan from PDA had an interview yesterday. He talked very well about support the people of Egypt. So that's that's very much it. I wanted to just give very much short messages because I saw a lot of people here and I don't want to take a lot of your time. And thank you very much Medea and Marcy and Jody and Dorsey, everybody I know from Coating because you guys, the first NGO or first organization that have the courage to stand against the White House administration when they support that brutal regime. Thank you very much for having me. Thank you. Thank you so much Mohamed. Thank you Mohamed and I just want to thank anybody who is interested in joining us in DC for the protest. Please contact me and I put my email Medea at CodePink.org so that we can go together. And Mohamed works unbelievably hard on trying to change the conditions in Egypt and I just thank you so much for all of the work that you do. Thank you Medea very much. Thank you very much for having me. Yes, both you and Sherry, if you're very brave and we admire your courage. All right, we have in the chat an action. We're going to ask everybody on this call on the Zoom to take please. If you just scroll up and maybe, Mohamed, you can just keep posting it in the chat. That way it will be easy to find. It says, sign the petition to say COP 27, stop excluding military missions from climate agreements. And we're going to be delivering this petition to the US government, which is instrumental, of course, in ensuring that those military missions are not included in the count of greenhouse gas emissions. So this is just a one click to sign the petition. And then we also have some events that our war is not green campaign is involved in. And Maha will be posting those in the chat too. The Egyptian Embassy address, okay. Gregor posted in the chat in Los Angeles is on Wilshire Boulevard 4929. If you live in a big city, no New York, Los Angeles, there may be an Egyptian Embassy. It doesn't hurt to stop by, pay a visit, bring a letter, tell them you're not happy. They got to release these journalists and all the people have been tortured and held in prison. It's horrific. And this greenwashing, it's just beyond belief to be posturing as the negotiator for the global south to ease the pain of the global south. What irony. All right, at this point, we're going to again urge all of you to click on that one link, sign the petition so we can deliver that. We're going to bring back Sharif and Mohammed and have a Q&A and Teddy as well. So if you have questions about the war is not green campaign, you can address those to Teddy. If you have questions about Egypt, you can ask Sharif and Mohammed. So I'm going to bring Cole into this conversation. Cole, you're with us, I think, and you can help lead the Q&A. There we go. Questions. All right, Medea, want to start? Yeah, I'll start. Sharif, you said that you could talk more about the military's role in environmental destruction. If you could talk about that, that would be great. Well, aside from, you know, the obvious problems with having such a massive weapons arsenal because Egypt essentially, you know, solidifies international ties through these massive weapons purchases of weapons that no one else wants. And, you know, we take on these massive loans to purchase them. But, you know, aside from that, you know, at the COP, there'll be things, environmental activities that will be allowed to be spoken about. Okay, so there'll be trash collection, recycling, renewable energy, and obviously climate finance, which, you know, is a big issue for Egypt and the global south. But environmental issues that implicate the government and the military will not be tolerated. Okay, so industrial pollution from, well, let me just back up for a second. People have to understand the military in Egypt is entrenched in every part of the Egyptian state and is very heavily entrenched in its economy. So, you know, military-owned enterprises produce everything from baby formula to fertilizer to cement, they're the largest landowner, they operate hotels. So any kind of industrial pollution or environmental harm from real estate, tourism development or agribusiness, all things, the military is very heavily invested in and profits from will not be tolerated. Issues like coal, I mean, everyone can agree that coal is something that is very easy to be critical of, but that will be off limits too, because Egyptian coal imports, much of it purchased actually from the United States, have risen over the past several years, driven by very strong demand from the cement sector, so to power cement factories. And actually, Egypt's largest importer of coal is also its largest cement producer, and that's the Ilarish cement company, and that was built in 2016 by none other than the Egyptian military. So, and then, you know, we've seen massive amounts of cement being poured into Egypt's natural environment. Over the past several years, the government has built nearly a thousand new bridges and tunnels, destroying acres and acres and acres of green space and cutting down thousands of trees. They've gone on this crazy construction spree, building a slew of new cities, including a new administrative capital in the desert east of Cairo. Egypt's also Africa's second largest gas producer, and it's actively scaling up its oil and gas production and exports. Again, which military and military intelligence is heavily involved in. So these are just some ways that the military is very invested in various forms of power and energy that are harmful to the environment, and so those things will be off the agenda, and any kind of climate financing won't, any kind of reparations won't be channeled towards, I think, tackling those issues. Thank you. Sheree, you've really given us a very detailed picture of how deeply entrenched the military is in every aspect of Egyptian society. Cole, your question. Well, my question, I'm not sure who I should direct it to, I guess, Teddy or anyone, is the impact of the Ukraine-Russia conflict on the climate. We're hearing in Europe that they are postponing their climate goals, they are returning to coal burning, and so on. So is this a qualitative hit to climate change efforts, or is this a small hit? What do we know? Well, to respond briefly to that from what I've read in the recent few days on the subject is that on the global scale in Europe, dependence on Russian gas and oil has dropped, and also thus dependence on oil and gas generally. Renewables are making a showing in Europe as a result of that dependence being lowered and being curbed. However, Russia's exports and how it funds its war chest, as recently reported by the New York Times, has actually increased since the war. So they've simply moved where their exports go, a very good portion of that now going to China. So that's how we'd briefly respond is, well, it may have accelerated in some ways transition to renewable energy in Europe. I think part of the worry was that that would simply be replaced by other oil and gas exporters, but Russia itself is finding other homes and other importers for its oil and gas. And then, of course, you can't discount the untold amount of direct environmental damage caused by bombings as a result of the war and uses of military jets and drones. But if others do have perspective on that, I would be excited to hear as well. Well, I would say it's been a tremendous setback, actually, because of all the increased costs of energy, increased the war being used as a justification for increased oil production, fracking, increased use of coal, the stopping of the decommissioning of nuclear plants, and also the large amount of money that's now being poured into getting the energy from new sources. At the COP 27, there's not only a call for the wealthy countries to finally make good on their 2010 pledge to have a fund with $100 billion a year for a global climate fund for mitigation adaptation, but now they're saying that with their tremendous losses and damages from the climate, like in Pakistan with a third of its country underwater during the last flood, that there needs to be another fund for those climate damages, especially since those countries are not the ones responsible for the damage itself. So I think it's going to be hard to get the wealthy countries to agree to their pledges, much less to fulfill their climate pledges that they have agreed to before because of this war. And in many ways, the war being used as an excuse as well. Yes, and as I posted in the chat, Biden promised almost $11.5 billion for the global south to address the disproportionate impact of burning with fossil fuels in the west, but Congress has only approved $1 billion. Compare that, contrast that with at least $20 billion for weapons and military training for Ukraine. Okay, next question. So there's a question about what will actually happen at the COP 27 in terms of protest. Sharif, you said that there's like a protest pen, as we would call it here, that's far away from the meeting itself. But do you expect that there will be protests? Both you and Mohamed alluded to the call for protests. And is that in all of Egypt for 11-11? What do you think those protests will actually happen? What will be the military's response with the eyes of the world on Egypt during this time? So if Sharif, you could start and maybe Mohamed want to add to that? I a long time ago gave up on trying to predict anything. But I think that I would be very surprised if there are protests on the 11th. It's unclear where the call started for from these protests. I think a lot of it's being driven from outside of Egypt. And there's a real, real effect of something like that, if it's not properly organized on people inside Egypt. And as we're seeing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people are being arrested. And there's a massive crackdown right now. The security apparatus was very surprised in September of 2019 when a former military contractor turned whistleblower who exposed kind of army corruption in these videos that went viral. He called for protests and no one expected them. And he was outside of Egypt in self-imposed exile in Spain. And there was significant, they weren't massive, but there were significant protests. But what followed that was the biggest arrest sweep of CC's time and power. 4,000 people were arrested, including A'la and all they just kind of went and rested everyone who had been arrested before. And a lot of other people. So the efficacy of protests, I don't know that it's the best way to kind of mobilize for change right now in Egypt. And also they seem to be so paranoid right now. Because they also just liberalized, they floated the currency, the Egyptian currency has lost 30% of its value since the beginning of the year precipitated by the war in Ukraine and other factors. So the economy is really on the brink, inflation has gone out of control, people are getting poorer and poorer. So that combined with these calls for the protests have prompted this pre-emptive crackdown. So I don't know if people will defy that and go out on the streets, but from what I'm hearing is that there's a very, very heavy security presence and there's is a lot of arrests happening at the moment. Mohamed, did you want to add to that? Yes, I mean, I'm like, Shreve, I cannot predict, but what I can tell you different this time is the people in Egypt this time, they have the courage to talk and they talk getting their face out in the cameras and say in groups and say, we're going out in 11, 11, this has never happened before. And then the difference to the deep state, you can tell a lot of people from the deep state that Mubarak state, they're tired of Sisi's regime and they even start talking as well. So we have a lot of factors are different this time, but can I predict that these things will happen? As Shreve said, we all are afraid to predict. Yes, the call is from outside. The only way you can have the call to the people of Egypt, you have to be outside of the country, otherwise you won't be able, if the first day you're going to speak up to the people of Egypt, the second moment will be arrested. I feel different this time, but I'm just going to tell you, if a group of people able to move, I would say at least 100 people start taking the first shot and get in the street, thousands of thousands is going to go in the street and this will be the beginning of the end of Sisi's regime. I'm done speaking. Thank you. Marcy, we can't hear you. There we go. Yeah, it's very grim to hear the description of the torture and the jail, the mass arrests inside Egypt. So as Mohammed said, it's really incumbent on us who do not live in Egypt to raise these issues right now as COP 27 gets underway, November 6th through the 18th. All right. And Teddy, you had a couple of events that you wanted to share with everyone. Yeah, these have been posted a few times throughout the chat. Thank you, Moha. Yeah, I wanted to highlight, let me real quick get my notes so I can copy and paste some additional links. Some upcoming actions. So down in DC, as was mentioned before, veterans for peace on Armistice Day, November 11th, will be leading an action to make this demand that a petition makes to stop excluding military missions at COP 27 and all cops going forward. So here's that link once more. And then we will have links for the veterans for peace action happening on November 14th, just three days later here in New York City. And those details will be on our Code Pink events page tomorrow as well. The Choose Action Now Youth Climate March and Response to COP happening in San Francisco on November 10th in Embarcadero Plaza, 10 a.m. And then I will post once more or Moha, if you have that link handy, for Fire Drill Fridays in DC with Jane Fonda. Those are coming back. That'll be on December 2nd. So if people go to CodePink.org, they'll find all of this. Yes, yeah. And also I have a whole list of other veterans for peace actions happening nationally. That will be up on our events page tomorrow. Wonderful. Thank you so much, Teddy. Thank you all for what you've brought to us tonight, all this information. I think we each have to act within our own sphere of influence, but also in terms of what we can do where our reach is. After I finish this, I'm going to go on Twitter and I'm going to tweet to the U.S. Ambassador to Egypt that I want, whoever this person is, Mohamed probably knows, I want this person to speak up and speak out and demand that these political prisoners be released. Some of you may go to the Egyptian Embassy, others hopefully are all signing on to that petition that will be delivered. We're all going to do what we can do, right? So let's unmute and thank our guests. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yes. All right. So we're going to close. If you want to save the chat, it's the three dots at the bottom. We'll be back always the first and third Tuesday of the month. So next, it's November 15th. We'll be looking at the impact of the midterms on foreign policy. Okay. Take care. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. God bless everyone.