 it's being recorded. Okay, welcome everyone. We're going to get underway in just a moment. We're letting people have a minute to find their correct zoom links and people are still rolling in but very pleased to see a big audience today on this important day for all of us. So if you can bear with us for just another a minute or so and we'll get right underway. Thank you. And Doreen, to answer your question, this will be on YouTube. It's going to be streamed both on YouTube and on Facebook as well as posted later. And don't worry because everyone who registered for this program will be sent a link to that recording. And one thing that I really want to say at the top of this program is that we encourage you to share this with your network of friends and family and colleagues that couldn't join us live. We're going to be offering perspectives that one doesn't often find on the mainstream media today, especially on this subject. So getting the word out is incredibly important. And that is one thing that you can help us with. I'd like to say that if you can share a recording with four or five of your friends with doing a great service to the cause of peace and justice. So thank you very much. Great. Thanks. Okay. And just a quick reminder for those to please unmute yourself or mute yourself rather when you're not speaking so we can cut down on any background noise with such a large audience. That's really going to be helpful. But I want to welcome everyone who joined us today for a Massachusetts peace action and think webinar. Never forget 9 11 and the 20 year war on terror. First, I would like to thank our cosponsors who have made this possible. The coalition for civil freedoms historians for peace and democracy united for peace and justice world beyond war project censored veterans for peace covert action magazine military families speak out on earth peace and the national network opposing the militarization of youth. So as we all know the world changed on September 11 2001 tragic deaths of almost 3000 people and the destruction of the world trade centers twin towers in New York City had a deep effect and impact on the American people. It fundamentally altered the culture of the United States and its relationship with the rest of the world. Unfortunately, the violence of that day was not confined. It spread throughout the world as America lashed out both at home and abroad. The almost 3000 deaths of September 11 became hundreds of thousands if not millions of deaths from the wars that the United States launched in retaliation and revenge. Tens of millions of people lost their homes in and we created the worst migration and refugee crisis since the Second World War. Now with the lives of weapons of mass destruction, a majority of the country was convinced to invade and occupy Iraq and Afghanistan for it. Some of the worst foreign policy decisions of the modern era. The branch was also given sweeping authority to make war cross borders and without limits and the conflict in the Middle East spread under both Republican and Democratic presidents leading to wars in Libya, Syria, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia. Please mute yourself if you're not speaking just to cut down on the background. Now 9-11 was also used as an excuse to change the relationship of the U.S. government to its citizens in the name of safety and national security. The federal government was given vast expansive surveillance powers that threatened privacy and civil liberties. The Department of Homeland Security was created and with it ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. Words like enhanced interrogation, euphemism for torture, entered the American lexicon and the Bill of Rights was tossed aside. After the events of September 11, 2001, never forget became a common expression in the United States. Unfortunately, it was not only used to remember and honor the dead but like phrases like remember the main and remember the Alamo, never forget was also used as a rallying cry to war. 20 years after 9-11, we're still living in the age of the war on terror. So today what we're going to do is we brought together experts, activists, academics, veterans to reflect on what the last 20 years means to this country and to the world at large because we know that if we don't remember our history, we're doomed to repeat the mistakes that we have already made. So I want to thank you all for joining us for this important program. And with that, I want to pass the floor over to Rachel Brunke of the Cold War Truth Commission. Rachel, the floor is yours. Thank you, Brian. Welcome all. My name is Rachel Brunke. And along with Frank Dorrell, we coordinated back in March, the Cold War Truth Commission. I like to see a lot of names on this webinar also from that one. I am a high school teacher. And I'm gonna, a lot of you might not know, but we have reached out specifically to thank you for the shout out about the flag. You know, this is a big day. I'm 53. A lot of, we all, you know, who are of whatever age remember where we were this day. So I want to pause and just kind of give a little reverence, a little homage to what a lot of us are going through remembering those days, not just the tragedy of it, but the knowledge of what we knew could have been and should have been done. And here we are 20 years later and it wasn't done. We can't go back in time, but we can definitely go forward and have a redo and maybe America is ready this time. So I'm a high school teacher. I teach environmental resource engineering. And I'm here to say as we know that war is completely unsustainable. Neither the planet nor the people can withstand the endless murder of each other. I'm talking to you from Los Angeles. We are in drought. We are in what seems like incessant heat. We live in increasing income inequality, people without homes, children without food, a population who is uneducated and frighteningly seems unprepared to deal with what's coming planetarily and socially in this country. And yet it is my feeling because we are on the streets doing peace activism and I'm in my classroom with the kids that the people are ready. They need a change and they're ready to be told the truth perhaps by our government. So we are at a pivotal moment right now. I feel just like we were 20 years ago. We were at a pivotal moment to do the right thing and we are once again at that moment. There are some different things. We don't have the natural resource base to continue the lie maybe that we started 20 years ago and didn't address our problems. So we'll see if the planet is going to kick us into truth finally. The question has to be asked, will the American government again betray the will of the American people? It was not the will of the American people 20 years ago to go to war. We were bamboozled as we have been for decades into war. And so I'm just so happy to be a part of this meeting today. And I want to let you know for all of the we're running this like a sort of like a webinar, but it is a meeting at three o'clock when we end when our last speaker ends. We're staying on and like we did the truth commission if people want to to we'll have kind of an open mic and if people want to share and they want to have action items, whatever, we'll we'll see how it how it goes, but I want to let people know they can use the chat, but also that we'll be having that at the end. And lastly two links and then I'll mute here, but two links that we're going to be putting into the chat right now is this meeting is for a privileged group. And that privilege group in my mind is the youth. And so we have made a special effort to reach out to especially high school youth who are being told only partial story if at all truth. And so we have come up with some literature on Afghanistan. And we've also come up with a worksheet that we have reached out to teachers to assign to young people. So I want everyone to know that there are a lot of young people we hope on this call today. And so I will put the worksheet again in the chat to fill out for for credit perhaps for your classes. And lastly wonderfully, Barbara Trent, who is an Academy Award winning filmmaker many of you know, she made the film cover up the around Contra affair and also Panama deception, I will be putting a couple of very important links into the chat about movies that she has short clips longer clips specifically about 9 11. She was there for an entire week in New York, talking to the people after 9 11. And the fact is they were anti war, and they knew exactly what was going on. So we need everyone to understand that her films are very important. So look for those items in the chat. And we look forward to a great meeting today. Thank you. Hi, everyone. My name is Emily Doral and I'm with Code Pink wanted to give a big shout out to mass peace action. And for all their incredible help, we love working with you. So I'm actually filling in today for Danica Cato bit. She is unable to make it. She was supposed to be our co host, but unable to so I'm going to try and do my best to fill her shoes. So welcome. And reflecting on the last 20 years and what we hope to get out of today is to remember that war is never the answer. When faced with death and tragedy and collective grief, causing more suffering for others will never heal us and will never give us more peace. It's no secret now that we relied to we relied to about weapons of mass destruction and terrorism drone strikes all in order to manufacture our consent for war. 20 years ago may feel like a long time, but the liars and the war profiteers are still here. And some of them still make policy. So if we are to recognize that people in power are willing to lie to us and to international bodies in order to go to war, we must continue to think critically about how the United States discusses its so called enemies so that history does not repeat itself. We hope this list of amazing speakers today will help us remember what happened in the wake of 9 11 and what has occurred over the last 20 years and what we can learn from all of it. Each speaker will speak about five to seven minutes and we will be linking actions as Brian and Rachel both already said in the chat. So be sure to check that out and stay engaged, check action with us and share on social media if you would like to. Really quickly, I would like to give a quick shout out to Fernando Suarez del Solar who is watching his son Jesus was one of the first Marines killed in Iraq. So wanted to give him a shout out and thanks for being with us today, Fernando. So our first speaker today is John Kiriakou. John is an author and a brave whistleblower who confirmed that the CIA was torturing people accused of being terrorists following the 9 11 attacks. John, take it away. Hi, everybody. Thanks so much for inviting me. I want to talk just a little bit for a minute about the actual date of September 11, 2001. I was at CIA headquarters like, you know, so many thousands of other people were and the one thing that sticks in my head from that day was thinking about al Qaeda. My God, do you have any idea what you've done? Do you have any idea how many innocent people are going to be killed now because of this? I mean, certainly I knew what my government was capable of doing. I just assumed that others knew what the American government was capable of doing too. You know, it's no accident that the Washington DC area now has the highest concentration of anywhere in America. And it's because those military contractors and intelligence community contractors saw their opportunity and they got rich. They got rich because they knew that we would enter into what turned out to be a permanent wartime economy. I think that something even worse than that that came out of September 11 was the number of precedents that we sent that made it okay to kill innocent people. It was okay to develop a drone program. It was okay for the military to cross borders and indiscriminately drop bombs or fire rockets. And then when we kill entire families at weddings or funerals, just say, well, there was a terrorist there. We knew what we were doing. Take our word for it. If you could see the intelligence that we have, you would know that we did the right thing. Well, I saw the intelligence that they had and it was all a lie. It was all made up. The problem with that, besides the obvious, is that many Americans believe those lies and now 20 years later, continue to believe those lies. We've gone from the hunt for al-Qaeda, the hunt for bin Laden, to the hunt for Saddam Hussein, to the hunt for ISIS. And now there's this group ISIS-K in Afghanistan. And when we send drones to blow up the leadership of ISIS-K and then kill an entire family, including seven children, five of whom were under the age of five, we're again told, take our word for it. We know what we're doing. There were terrorists there. We can't. If the rest of the country didn't learn its lesson after 9-11, at least we've learned our lesson. And it's up to us. It's especially up to the generation. John, you're breaking up. Take the mantle of the begin the change of public opinion. Is that any better? Yes. You might shot a few videos to make sure it doesn't happen again. Okay, I'm going to do that. I'm going to try that right now. So it's up to the young people of our country to make sure that it doesn't happen again. It is the young people who can take these leadership positions and can fight for peace and justice. One of the things that's been so important to me in my post-TA career has been, we must be relentless about, well, archeology of secret prisons, that we're not rendering prisoners to third countries to face torture that they might not face here in the United States. But we can't take their word for it. Because everything that they tell us is a lie. They tell us that they're weapons of mass destruction. That was a lie. They tell us that there are no secret prisons. That was a lie. They tell us that there was no torture program. That was a lie. So why should we believe anything they say? We have to question everything. It doesn't matter who's in the White House. It doesn't matter if it's a Democrat or Republican. They're all guilty of the same thing. So it's up to us to keep up the fight. We can't let these last 20 years go for naught. We have to make sure that people understand that there are Americans like us who stand for peace and justice, that we will fight against these unnecessary illegal wars. We will stand up for human rights and civil rights and civil liberties and we will not give up. I apologize for my audio and my video. Thanks to everybody and enjoy the rest of the event. Bravo. Thank you very much, John. And thanks for the shout out to the youth. And I put some information in the chat to corroborate your feelings on it. Thank you very much. Next, we are going to have, I'm going to introduce two of our guests at once, that we are having Pat Alviso and she is the national coordinator of MFSO, Military Families Speak Out. And Mary Latke, she has served as on the administration committee for United for Peace and Justice since 2012. Both Pat and Mary have been longtime leaders in MFSO and have sons who were deployed in Afghanistan. Pat and then Mary. Thank you. Thank you, Rachel, Massachusetts Peace Action and Code Pink and everybody that's joining us today. We are very thankful to all of you for planning this event on this important day and for inviting us to join you. For those of you that don't know us, Military Families Speak Out has been around since 2002. We are a national organization of families that have had loved ones in the military since 9-11 or still have. There are about 4,000 of us across the US and Mexico. And most importantly, we support our troops. We want them home now. We work hard every day to make sure that they are taken and care of when they get home. If you'd like more information about us, we'll put it in the chat. You can find us at MFSO.org. Today we're here to talk about the human Kostavor and specifically because who we are, military families and those troops. Military families in the US, Afghanistan and Iraq have all been devastated by these wars. And I just can't adequately explain or describe how isolated and anxious the families of those of our troops that were exiting Afghanistan are feeling right now. Because, of course, their loved ones aren't really coming home, but are still in harm's way and most likely will not be coming home. But we deployed somewhere else in the Middle East until their time is up. But after 20 years of broken promises and after a pretty harrowing, intense final days during the withdrawal, we can finally say we are out of Afghanistan at least. Now at last, the process of healing can begin for those that served in Afghanistan. But for military families like us, our work is just beginning. So while the blame game and in this chatter about how the war was conducted still goes on, these past two weeks for our troops, what they've been going through has been a special kind of hell. It has triggered them, even those who've been speaking out against the war for quite some time, they're still asking themselves, themselves, what was it all for? So we ask everyone to take this moment and think about the troops. They've been coming home for a while now, but the finality of all of them out of Afghanistan is hitting them pretty hard, especially today on 9-11. Right now, my son can't even talk about it. He's been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan six times and he struggles every day with the signature wounds of these wars, the traumatic brain injury, PTSD of course, and a hearing loss that he will take with him the rest of, carry with him the rest of his life. The worst of it for our family and so many others is seeing this once fresh-faced teenager straight out of high school turn into the passive shell of the person he was never meant to be. Before his first deployment, he packed soccer balls and candy hoping he'd be able to play soccer with the kids there and instead he returned like so many others completely demoralized because he ended up knocking down the doors to the homes of terrorized families, mostly women and children, and getting flipped off by those very same children he once thought he could be friends and help. Over 30,100 activity troops and veterans died by suicide while or after serving in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other fronts since 2001. That's more than four times the number who've died in combat. So our families of course are scared every day that our sons and daughters will be in that statistic. It's for that reason that MFSO is starting a yellow ribbon campaign to find ways to build public awareness even amongst the peace community that we need to lift the spirits of our returning troops. After all, it wasn't the troops decision or responsibility to decide on how the war was conducted or to stay there for 20 years and they need to hear that. It was the politicians and the Pentagon who decided that. Really, we have no idea what our troops are going through right now. They lived it and it was a nightmare. We need to publicly reach out, listen and validate their truth without judgment and be that warm place that we want them home safe and for good. In the difficult months again, we ask you to reach out to our returning troops yourselves and help put an end to the national disgrace of 17 suicides a day. Of course, we have so much more to do to make sure and this war never happens again as Mary is about to point out next. So we invite you to also help as the military families speak out, join our campaign to help put an end to the authorization for the use of military force, the AUMF and now Mary. Thanks, Pat. I'm Mary Ladke and I'm comforted in being around so many good people on this 9-11 anniversary. Even though my talk will focus on our military in Afghanistan, I can't forget the devastating loss and suffering of 9-11 families, first responders, their families and all the victims of war. My son Ryan was an army infantry officer who served 13 months at the height of President Obama's Afghanistan surge in Zari district, Kandahar province, considered the spiritual home of the Taliban. When my son would ask his men, why are you here? The typical response was, I needed a job. Not I'm fighting for democracy and freedom. They were doing a job, but soon found out that job was less than honorable. There are no illusions after boots hit the ground in a place like Afghanistan, so much death and destruction which can't be justified. My son fought in a war that could never be won based on governmental and military lies. His unit was under attack daily. Ryan is just one of hundreds of thousands of Americans who have had their lives forever changed by this pointless and tragic war. On Ryan's mid-deployment leave, there was a major network reporting from his base talking about great progress. My son simply said, that's a lie. The Taliban fully control the area and the people and walked out of the room. You can't fool the troops with media spin because they have lifted. Upon returning home, I saw that my son had a large tattoo on his forearm which reads, so here I stand with dead eyes and a fake smile, searching. A searing commentary about his time in Afghanistan, one that speaks of mental anguish, suffering and pain. Ryan also wears a metal braces, one that he never moves. Remembering Jesse, a soldier in his unit killed an action August 25th, 2011. Jesse was 20. His father was informed of his death while serving in Iraq. Our troops gave their lives, limbs and emotional well-being for this futile 20-year war. The Afghan people have suffered even more. Their country has been destroyed. Life in Afghanistan has been and will be for a long time a living hell. One of the ever-changing missions we waged in Afghanistan intended to win over the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. While the words that we spoke may have promised a hopeful, cooperative future, our bombs, drones and night raids drowned out those words. Our commitment to violence buried Afghan hearts and minds beneath paralyzing fear and the crushing emotions of human pain. In reality, it is Americans' hearts and minds that need to change. And until we get that, until we reflect upon our mistakes, until we seek to understand and value the humanity of others, until we reassess our foreign policy and choose to solve conflicts through diplomacy and negotiations, instead of domination and violence, nothing will change. Our duty now is to tell the true story of this war, finding a way to hold those in charge accountable. We cannot allow the story of the Afghanistan war to be whitewashed, to be told as anything less than a lesson, a devastating loss, an international tragedy that could have been avoided. We must never again send troops to fight illegal and immoral wars. Thank you for your service. We'll never erase or be enough for what has been lost. We must ensure those who served receive appropriate medical care. Military families are just some of the many unheard voices of war. Thank you for the opportunity to be heard. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mary and Pat. It was great to hear you speak. So, up next, we are going to have Norman Solomon, American journalist, media critic, activist. Solomon is a longtime associate of the Media Watch Group, Fairness and Accuracy and Reporting. In 1997, he founded the Institute for Public Accuracy. Since 2011, he has been the National Director of RootsAction.org. Norman, taken away. Thanks so much. And thanks to everybody who's made our gathering here today possible. When we hear all the media coverage and retrospectors about 9-11, we rarely hear and certainly almost never in the mass media hear that when people are killed, whether it's intentional or predictable, those are atrocities that are being financed by U.S. taxpayers. And so we hear about the evils of Al Qaeda and 9-11, and certainly those were evils. But we're not hearing about the predictable as well as the intentional killings. The tens of thousands of civilians documented to have been killed by the U.S. military in the last 20 years. And then the injuries and then the terrorizing of people with drones and other U.S. weapons. We're hearing very little about that. And part of the role of activists is to make those realities heard, make them heard loud and clear as forcefully and as emphatically and as politically powerfully as possible. Our role as activists, I think, sometimes can get blurred in terms of getting them conflated with the roles of some of the best members of Congress. And when our progressive peace heroes in Congress push for peace and disarmament and social justice, they deserve our praise and our support. When they succumb to the foreign policy blob, when they start to be more a representative of the establishment to the movements, rather than a representative of the movements to the establishment, we've got a problem. I think it's the role of peace activists, certainly one of our roles as individuals and as organizations to be clear about what our goals are and be willing to challenge even our friends on Capitol Hill. And I'll give you a very recent example. Two of our leaders of anti-war forces in the House of Representatives a couple of weeks ago circulated a dear colleague letter encouraging members of the House to tell the chair of the House Armed Services Committee Adam Smith to stand firm behind President Biden's 1.6 percent increase in the military budget over the budget that Trump had given us the year before. And the point of the letter was, Chairman Smith, we want you to defend this increase in the Biden budget that's 1.6 percent against the budget increase that has been passed by the Senate Armed Services Committee of 3.3 percent increase. That kind of a letter moves the goalposts further and further to the liking of the military industrial complex, to the liking of the war profiteers, to the liking of the warfare state. And so when people we admire and support, in this case Mark Polkan and Barbara Lee, circulate that dear colleague letter, there's a tendency for organizations to say, yeah, we're going to get behind you. We will respond affirmatively to the call to urge our members to urge their representatives in Congress to sign this dear colleague letter. And what that creates is a jumping off point that moves the frame of reference farther and farther into the militarism that we're all trying to push back against. And for that reason, me and my colleagues at rootsaction.org decided to decline the invitation to sign that letter. I bring it up not because that is a make or break moment, but because it's indicative of the pathways and the crossroads that we face to build a stronger and more effective peace and social justice disarmament movement. And it's replicated in many respects. When we're told that it's not practical on Capitol Hill to urge a cutoff of funding to all countries, including military funding and assistance to all countries that violate human rights. And when we're told that Israel is off the table, it's not our job to internalize those limits that have been internalized by even almost all of our heroes on Capitol Hill except for the squad and a precious few others. It's our job to speak not only truth to power but about power and to speak clearly and candidly including to those who are often our allies. It's not easy to put it mildly to go against the powerful stream of media, of politics, of big money, of the way that every day issues are framed to us in terms of what's practical. But whether as in the last few weeks and perhaps especially today, the mass media are paying attention to issues of war and peace or whether we are often disregarded as outside of the frame of breaking news, it's peace activists, it's social justice activists like the several hundred on this call in real time right now were the ones who can change history. And organizing is what does that. And I'm very happy to be involved with at Roots Action. We have launched something called Progressive Hub.net. And it's for all groups, not just Roots Action as a tool for organizing. And so I want to invite you to consider making it part of your daily visit online. If you go to Progressive Hub.net, not only can you see what is happening around the country and beyond in terms of organizing, but you also can provide information and analysis so that we all become stronger in building the social movements that we so desperately need. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Norman for joining us today and speaking. So up next, I would like to introduce Mustafa Bayoumi. Dr. Mustafa is a professor at Brooklyn College. He is the author of How Does It Feel to Be a Problem, Being Young in Arab in America, which traces the experiences of seven young Arab Americans navigating life in post-September 11th environment, where complicated public perceptions of the attacks gave birth to new brands of stereotypes fueling widespread discrimination. He's also the author of This American Muslim Life, which discusses surveillance and profiling during the war on terror. Take it away. Thank you, Emily. And really a big thanks to everybody who is involved in organizing this today and for inviting me. It's really an honor to be here on such a day. For me, this is a really difficult day for me. I live in New York City. I was in New York City 20 years ago. I remember it like it was yesterday. In fact, the last 20 years in this terrible way feel like they have been just one long day, a day full of grieving, a day full of misery, a day full of endless warfare, as we've been hearing about, and also a day, I think, of hope and lost hope. And I think I want to talk a little bit about that today. One of the things that struck me, having lived through the experience of being in New York City at the time, I mean, millions of people were like that too. But I think it's kind of been forgotten what New York City felt like during the attack. For one thing, there were the sensory emotions for sure. There was a smell in the air. There was the visual markers. You could see the plumes of smoke from the attacks. It was very, very powerful. And it was very, very sad. The whole city was enveloped in a kind of collective sadness that meant that it was a movement towards working for a better world. There was, in fact, in my recollection, in the very early days following the attacks of 9-11, unlike the rest of the nation, in New York City, there was no appetite, generally speaking, for war. And there was something really powerful about those first few days. Unfortunately, they didn't last very long. And what happened is something that we've been hearing about powerfully this afternoon as well. That's everywhere from the run-up to the war in Afghanistan. I recall very clearly when George W. Bush came and spoke like a sheriff at the World Trade Center site and promised vengeance. Just as I remember the run-up to the war in Iraq. And from all of those events, whether it's the attacks from 9-11, the run-up to the war in Afghanistan, the run-up to the war in Iraq, following the war in Iraq, until today, what we've seen is elevated hostility and a lot of hate that has been directed towards Arab Americans, towards Muslim Americans, and towards all kinds of people who are presumed to be Arab or Muslim. And in a lot of ways, what we've, I think, one way of thinking about it is that we've encountered two kinds of hatred, two kinds of hostility our communities have. One, I would say, are hate crimes from the general public. The other, I would say, are state crimes from the government itself. And right after 9-11, we actually had a slew of both, nationally speaking, there was some in New York City as well, but certainly that was also the case nationwide. Hate crimes soared about 1,800% in the first six months following 9-11. But also less attention has been paid, generally speaking, I think, to the state crimes, especially from that same period. There were these massive sweep arrests that immediately followed 9-11. I don't know if anybody recalls, but then Attorney General John Ashcroft used to get up in front of the TV and say, today we arrested 762 possible terrorists and the assumption between being an immigrant, especially a brown immigrant, especially a brown immigrant from a Muslim country, and being a terrorist was cemented in the public's imagination by these kinds of state crimes. And then, of course, we had things like the special registration program. We had all kinds of ways in which spies and informants from different levels of law enforcement agencies infiltrated into the Muslim American communities around the country. All of these things reflected in back in TV programs. And then the public consciousness is formed by both elements of the TV programs and by what the government is doing, illustrates this feedback loop of this dangerous sense of hatred and othering that a lot of Arabs and Muslims have had to live through since then. And, of course, it got even worse when we hit the 2015-2016 period when Donald Trump entered the national stage. And with Donald Trump, what happened, I think one way of thinking about what happened with Donald Trump is the previous administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama basically wanted to maintain the state's monopoly on violence. And so there was still a lot of state programs there. And the state would say things to the effect of, hey, we're still taking care of you. You don't have to worry about it, namely taking care of you by this extra prosecution of Arab and Muslim communities. Well, Donald Trump tried to, in fact, I think bring the public hatred into his politics, instrumentalizing it through the bodies of Arabs and Muslims in this country. And then, as we saw later on, not only it was, in fact, of so many different communities, and that kind of corrosive politics is a legacy of our 9-11 era. I do want to say one thing, though, because I don't want to just end on these moments. I'd rather relate to you a story that I was lucky enough to hear. So earlier this year, I had a small project of going and writing five very brief accounts of people's lives, what they were like in that 9-11 period and after. And I was very fortunate to hear from one man in particular. His name is Reis Buyan. And you may have heard of his story already, but if you'll indulge me just for two or three minutes, I'm going to read you a very short summary of what happened to him in the post immediately following 9-11. It starts in 1999. In 1999, 24-year-old Reis Buyan left a career in Bangladesh as an Air Force pilot and moved to America. From New York, he made his way to Dallas, Texas, jumping out of business opportunity while finishing his studies. He had a friend who was reopening an old gas station there and they began the venture together. I was really excited, Reis told me. His new life in America was beginning. The station opened in June 2001 and Reis found he liked the work and his customers. Then came the 9-11 attacks. Anti-Muslim slurs were common. Four days later, a Pakistani man was murdered less than a kilometer from his work. And then on September 21, a man walked into Reis's gas station store, asked him his origin, and shot him with a shotgun. I felt at first, he said to me, like a million bees stinging my face. And then I heard the explosion. I looked down and I saw blood pouring like an open faucet from the right side of my head. His military training helped save his life, but he also lost so much. Vision in one eye, his job, his apartment, his fiancee back home ended things. With no health insurance, no medical medical bills piled up. What he never lost was his faith in God. On October 4th, a man working in a nearby gas station was killed by the same shooter. Police arrested him on October 5th. At trial, the shooter was found guilty and sentenced to death. His motive, he said, was to kill Arabs in revenge for 9-11. Incidentally, no one he shot was Arab. Reis slowly rebuilt his life, relying on the kindness of others. Performing the hajj in 2009, he thought about his shooter sitting on death row waiting to die. Reis saw how revenge won't bring peace to any situation and began a global campaign to save the life of the man who shot him. In the end, the execution could not be prevented, but the two men spoke before his death. Later, the man's last words were, quote, hate is going on in this world and it has to stop. One second of hate will cause a lifetime of pain. Reis now runs his own NGO, his own non-governmental organization called A World Without Hate, centered on building empathy. Like him, it's a light illuminating our darkness. And I think Reis' story is so powerful, so important, and it's still something that I want to hang onto. I think that there are ways that we can work collectively as a human race. Think of each other, for each other. And to that end, I want to think of this day as a day of opportunity, not just as a day for mourning and sadness. Thank you. Thank you so much for that incredible story and sharing your thoughts and perspective. That was great. Next up, I want to quickly announce Fernando Suarez del Solat is actually going to be speaking. He's one of the most important and moving anti-war speakers and activists in this country. Fernando, go ahead. Thank you. Hi, everybody. I am very happy to see a lot of friends. Medea, Norman, Fran, Pat, Raquel, et cetera, et cetera. It's a lot of names. September 11, 2001, changed my life for a month. September 11, putting my meat in the morning when I see the TV destroyer of my life. My son is in the bull camp. When I see the TV, I say, oh, my God, the war is coming. And my son is possibly involved. But I think so. No, it's 2001. My son is three, four months in the bull camp. It's impossible to send him to Afghanistan. And it's true. The war began again in Afghanistan, 2001, 2002. I am happy my son is here. But the criminal bush say, weapon is in Iraq. We need attack Iraq and send my son. And my son died. This is stupid war because the one president looking for revenge, looking for power and changed my life. And thank you, Medea. Thank you, Pat, Norman and Fran. I begin involved in the peace movement. And I begin to go and visit the highest cooling around the world, not only the United States. And I try to explain the young people what's happening in September 11. It's not the reason for destroyer of the other life. It's not the reason for go to the army and kill innocent people in the other countries. I'm sorry. It's 80 years my son died by this slide the same day. It's 20 years ago, the September 11, but it's the same fucking day when my life changed and a lot of people life changed, like military families, veterans, students. Today I visit the two weeks, one week ago, one school, high school. It's very few students. The young people is about the 13, 14 years old only. He no more when the September 11 happened. And I ask, you know what's happened in September 11? You have the idea why the war in Afghanistan and war in Iraq, nobody have the answer. Some boys say yes because the terrorists attack United States. We need finish with the terrorist people. And I begin to explain. I try the people understand the terrorist is no finish. The enemy's mother USA is ready for attack again any moment, not only in United States, any place on the world. But I try to explain the young boys. The weapon is not the answer. The book education and tolerance is the answer against the any problem in the world. Thank you for opportunity. I mean, Frank, I'm sorry. I know you is very busy. More than 400 people here. But I send my love and my gratitude for everybody helping these 15 years in my life. Love you. Thank you so much, Fernando, for sharing your heartbreaking story. Emily, can I say something right now? Well, thank you very much for sharing your story with us. It gives me a lot of pain, a lot of pain in my heart to know what you have suffered. And we are going to get involved in this movement. I want to let people know, and excuse me, just so beautiful, that George Bush, who should be challenged everywhere he goes as a war criminal, will be in Los Angeles Monday, September 20th, in just a couple of weeks. There's an action plan. He's going to be speaking horrifically as an honorary speaker, distinguished speaker series right in Long Beach at the Convention Center. And so please look up soon in the Code Pink LA website, but also right now AnswerLA has an action. We will be there. Senor Suarez, we will be there in your son's name and in the name of so many people who need to challenge this man. So please join us. If you're anywhere in the LA area, please join us. Thank you. Thank you, Rachel. Yeah, Code Pink will also be there in the name of Jesus and all the people who lost their lives to this horrific war. So next up, I want to introduce Medea Benjamin. She is the co-founder of the Women-led Peace Group, Code Pink, and the co-founder of the Human Rights Group Global Exchange. She's been an advocate for social justice for more than 40 years. And she's been described as one of America's most committed and most effective fighters for human rights by New York Newsday and one of the high profile leaders of peace movement by the LA Times, which I think we all know. Medea, thanks for being with us. Thank you so much for putting this on. I know a lot of work went into this and it seems like a kind of macabre reunion of many of us who've been together for these last 20 years. And Fernando, I want to say my heart goes out to you. We were together in Iraq and went to the place where his son died to pay homage to his son. To be with Pat and Mary and military families speak out so much pain, so much suffering. Norman, it's always great to be with you, Mustafa. Thank you so much for sharing your stories about the effects here at home. And Rachel, I want to thank you for getting so many young people on this call and involved through your work as a teacher. And I want to say thank you for your service. I want to put my remarks in a very simple framework for understanding these wars. And it's so simple that it literally goes on a banner that we often held during these years as code pink. And it said, who lies? Who dies? Who pays? Who profits? And to me, that is the framework. Who lies? Well, we know it's the politicians, the generals, the lobby groups, the think tanks, the neocons, the corporate media. They distort the facts. They manipulate people's fears. Sometimes it's easy to do that, as in the case of Afghanistan, when people were ready for exacting revenge. And sometimes it's difficult, like in the case of Iraq, where they had to invent weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaeda connections. They had to manipulate people into believing it was in our interest to overthrow Saddam Hussein. I went there with Jody Evans and Wright, a whole group of us who went before the U.S. invasion and had the women holding on to us and saying, don't allow your country to invade. We don't want to be liberated by bombs. We can't be liberated by bombs. The U.S. wanted to roll out its campaign to convince people about the need to get rid of Saddam Hussein in the summer of 2021. But the Bush's chief of staff, Andrew Card, told the New York Times, they decided not to do that because, quote, from a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August. So they waited and they found the perfect time to introduce this new product. And that was exactly one year after the 9-11 attacks, September 11, 2002, to introduce the, quote, need to invade Iraq. And people now know, in the case of Afghanistan, the lies we were fed for the last 20 years. Who died? Well, we already heard some of that from Fernando today, from military families speak out, people who joined our military because they wanted to do the right thing for this country or because they simply wanted to get an education, which they couldn't afford. But the same is true in places like Afghanistan, where we were told by women there when we traveled that their sons joined the Taliban to put food on their table. Most of the young men who have died in these wars, no matter what side they're on, are from poor families. But we know that most of the people that died have been civilians. And while we are rightfully mourning those civilians who died in the U.S. on 9-11, there is barely any mention from those in power about the millions of people who were killed, maimed, displaced by wars in Afghanistan and throughout the Middle East. Who pays? Well, we know it's us, the taxpayer. I was actually flabbergasted to hear Biden acknowledge the cost of the Afghan war in his speech the other day when he said twice, $300 million a day we had been spending for the last 20 years. I was so glad that millions of Americans got to hear that figure. But it's not just what we've been spending every day and to think, well, that's over now that the troops have left Afghanistan. In fact, Brown University says that the cost will be paid by decades to come and estimates that in 2050 the interest alone on the Afghan war debt will amount to $20,000 for every single American in this country. And then the last question is who profits? And we know there that it's the merchants of death, the weapons companies, the military contractors. We've seen how the share prices of those weapons companies have soared since 9-11. We've seen how some of them, as in the case of Lockheed Martin, has gone up over a thousand percent. Lockheed Martin, the producer of the quote precision bombs that in Afghanistan hit weddings and funerals and hospitals, the precision bombs that in Yemen hit a school bus killing over 40 children. One of those profiteers is General Dynamics, who's CEO made over $20 million last year peddling these weapons. And I had a chance to get inside their shareholder meeting and confront her and the board. And I said, if you have a business model where you need war to make money, there's something fundamentally wrong with your business model. She replied saying, you're wrong. We pray for peace. We work for peace. But just a week before, she said that the potential of the world becoming even more dangerous was producing a quote, nice cadence for their orders. These weapons companies are really important not only because of their moral bankruptcy and their profiteering, but because they help determine our policies. They bribe our politicians with campaign contributions. They put generals on their board who influence the Pentagon. They make their death machines in districts all over the country, giving communities and politicians a stake in keeping the war machine humming. So if we are to break this machine, if we are to stop the money flow, if we are to stop the wars, especially a new one that they are gearing up to with China, it means cutting the Pentagon budget. It means confronting, like Norman said, the politicians who want to continue to shovel obscene amounts of our tax dollars into the death machine. And that's why I'm so excited about CodePink's new campaign to cut the Pentagon budget. Now is the time. I have seen just in the last few weeks going to different rallies, an eviction, anti-eviction rally and an affordable housing rally, a Medicare for all rally, a rally for climate justice. In every single one of them, the question was asked, if there is trillions of dollars for war, why isn't there money for these life-affirming activities? So that is our job right now. And I look forward to working with all of you on the CodePink and the broad alliance we're putting together for this campaign to move the money precisely from war to life-affirming activities. Thank you. Thank you, Medea. That new campaign is incredibly, incredibly important. I encourage everyone to visit the link that was just put in the chat to learn how you can get involved. Next, we're going to hear a video that was sent to us by someone who I'm sure most of you are familiar with, Professor Vijay Prashad, who's an historian, journalist, commentator and intellectual. He is executive director of the Tri-Continental Institute for Social Research and the chief editor of Left Word Books. Emily, if you'd be so kind as to share your screen, here we go. I'm very grateful to join CodePink on this day, 20th anniversary of the attacks on September 11th on the United States, several targets in the United States. I'm pleased to join CodePink because after the attacks took place, which killed over 3,000 people, terrible tragedy for many people, working class people in New York City, people who are cleaning the buildings and so on. In the aftermath of that, the United States government began to prosecute at least two wars, a war on Afghanistan and then a few years later, a war on Iraq. CodePink, of course, stood firmly against both of those catastrophic wars, two wars incidentally, which the United States, by all measures, lost. The United States was ejected from Iraq in 2011 when the Iraqi parliament refused to allow US troops extra-legal permission to operate in Iraq. Of course, the United States remains in northern Iraq under the jurisdiction of the Kurdish autonomous authorities, but by and large, the United States was kicked out of Iraq. And then in August of 2021, the United States had to precipitously withdraw as Taliban forces gathered and then returned into Kabul. Two wars, which few in the early years, days, were willing to take a stand against. CodePink emerged as a force to take a stand against them. Thinking about this day, September 11, or 9-11, in the lexicon of the United States, 20 years later, a difficult attack by 19 men, mostly Saudi men, trained by al-Qaeda, that hijacked four planes, two of them went into buildings in the World Trade Center, one hit the Pentagon, third by the courage of people on board the flight was brought down Pennsylvania and so on. We commemorate that day when there was this attack on the United States, an attack which provoked some soul searching in the immediate aftermath. People wrote cover stories of two kinds. The immediate cover story that emerged was, we're all American, Nusam American as the French papers put it and so on, solidarity with the United States and so on. The second introspection, deeper perhaps, came from even mainstream outlets like Time magazine asking a fundamental question. And the question was phrased in this blunt way, by the way, it's a very blunt framing. They asked, why do they hate us? Why do they hate us? Was the question asked? Why do they hate us? Well, today we might say, well, you know, if you're going to be doing drone attacks and kill entire families and so on, there's a lot of resentment and anger. You can say, of course, yes, you're going to push economic policies of austerity families can't get access to vaccines, intellectual property right policies, they can't get access to the COVID vaccine, the mRNA vaccine, which by all accounts is a very good vaccine. That's perhaps why people resent the United States and so on. But fundamentally, friends, the answer that didn't come in any of these stories, why do they hate us was the truth. The truth, for instance, is that the United States did not after 9-11 enter Afghanistan for 20 years. And therefore, this is a 20-year war that's ended. The United States has been at war with the Afghan people since the 1950s, when the US government has collaborated with far-right sections in Afghanistan to undermine the process of humanization of Afghan society and statecraft, modernization of the state institutions, something that was driven by liberals within the monarchy, including Muhammad Dawood. Afghanistan had several constitutions, the first important one under King Amanullah and Queen Soraya in 1920s, going up to the constitution of 1964, very farsighted constitution. United States undermining the influence of the Soviet Union right from the 1950s. In 1953, the Soviets paved the roads in Kabul, that kind of influence. The US government has tried to undermine it. And strikingly in the 1960s, the US government made an alliance into the 70s with really horrible people, Burhanuddin Rabani, for instance, the founder of the Jama'at-e-Islami group inside the University of Kabul, recruited students like Gulbuddin Haqmatyaar, Ahmad Shah Masood, and so on. People of real virulence and violence against the population, the US weaponized them, made them powerful, imposed them on Afghan society. It's a very long period of disparagement of the Afghan people's right to create a dignified society into the future. The Taliban is merely a product of the alliance with Burhanuddin Rabani in the 1960s. September 11th, it's not just 9-11 in 2001. Of course, it refers as well to September 11th, 1973, when the United States imposed a coup colluded with General Augusto Pinochet to overthrow the legitimate government, popular unity government led by Salvador Yende. The United States imposed great suffering, imposed terrorism on the people of Chile, the killing of Victor Jara, the killing of thousands of students. That was also September 11th. September 11th, a terrorist attack where the United States colluded with the Chilean military against the people of Chile. It's a terrorist attack we should also talk about on this day. September 11th, 1906, the other important September 11th, in Johannesburg, South Africa, in front of a hall filled with about 3,000 people of Indian descent, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, before he became Mahatma Gandhi, opened a struggle against the racist policies of South African government at the time, 1906, September 11th. He coined the term in public Satyagraha, action on the basis of truth, 3 September 11th. Two of them terror imposed upon people, the people of the United States in 9-11, which then the U.S. takes to the people of Afghanistan imposes terror on them. September 11th, 1973, terror imposed on the people of Chile by the United States government. And then September 11th, 1906, when decent people fight back in order to create decency. Can we commemorate September 11th, 2021, make the pledge of action on the basis of truth to prevent these kind of terrible wars, these terrible coup d'etats that bring suffering upon people? Thanks a lot. I want to send my thanks to Professor Prashad for those fantastic words. I do think that they hate us for our freedoms, maybe the most pernicious lie of the 21st century. So we thank Professor Prashad for his fantastic remarks there. Next, we're going to hear from Matthew Ho, who has nearly 12 years of experience in America's post 9-11 wars. First with the United States Marine Corps, and then with the Department of Defense and the State Department. He resigned in protest from the State Department in 2010 and went public with his criticism of the war. Matthew, thank you for joining us. Thank you, Brian. It's good to be here. I really appreciate everyone who has gathered today, as well as the organizations who have made this possible. I've had this question before about my biography, and you say you had 12 years of experience in the post 9-11 wars, but you resigned in 2009. The math doesn't add up. Well, that's because I was taken part in when I was stationed in Okinawa. I was taken part in counterinsurgency campaigns with the Philippines, the Thais, the Indonesians, etc. as I was a Marine Corps officer. This war predates 9-11. I think there will be many people who will speak to that about how this start date for history is not September 11, 2001, but rather something much earlier. That said, I take very earnestly what Rachel said about the privilege on this call being those young people among us. And I also am not failing to note that I am one of the perpetrators of these wars. There are a couple others who will be on this call, but I think I'm the first perpetrator to speak. And so I think in the spirit of testimony and witnessing, maybe I should try and explain for the young people how I ended up taking part in these wars, the lies I told myself and why it took me so long to do the right thing, if you will. I was a senior in high school in 1990, 1991, during the First Iraq War. At that point, I was committed. I was applying to West Point, applying for Army ROTC, also applied for Annapolis. I got into West Point. I got an Army ROTC scholarship for college. And I turned those down because I was so sick and aghast and disgusted by what I saw take place in that Iraq War, that First Iraq War, that I could not go into the military. That was not something I wanted to do with my life. It was anathema to who I actually was. I went to college. I studied philosophy and literature and religion and was quite happy doing so. But then after college, as I worked in finance, I was bored. I wanted to be part of something bigger than myself. Every day I had a subscription to the New York Times where the New York Times are united when I got home. On the bus to work, whether it be in Boston or New York, I'd read The Economist or The Atlantic or The New Yorker. And I wanted to be a part of the world. I wanted to do something serious. I wanted to be I wanted to be a part of those big moment hands of history, if you will. And a variety of different decision points and some forest gump-like circumstances, I guess, and I ended up in the Marine Corps. There's always been a duality in me, as I think there's always been a duality in people. The notion of duality goes back as early as we have recorded human history. The notion of duality is permanent in all our religions, in all our different spiritual understandings, in our philosophies of who we are. It was something that divided me constantly. I went from being someone who had been sickened by the Iraq War, turned down West Point, and then, however many years later, ended up joining the Marine Corps anyway. I was a part of the Marine Corps starting from January of 1998. And as I said briefly, when I started, I took part in these wars as they were in Asia, as they were again in the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, et cetera. I will try and keep this as brief as possible, but the excuse is, why did I go twice to the war in Iraq? Why did I go once to the war in Afghanistan? I wanted to belong. I wanted to be part of something. I wanted to be part of what I saw in the New York Times, in the Atlantic, in the New Yorker, in the Economist. I wanted to be a serious person. And the nature of our media, the nature of our politics, the nature of our society, fed me in that direction. This was the only way to do that. And so, as I realized the Iraq War was criminal, was illegal, was morally reprehensible, I still took part. And what I would do to justify myself continuing to take part in those things was to make rationales or excuses. So, when I go to Iraq my first time, it's, well, maybe I can make a difference. As an individual, maybe I can do something, help those around me. And what comes from that, of course, is that no matter how moral you are in a moral catastrophe like a war, there's nothing you can do. The immorality will always win out. After that, it becomes, well, if I stay in long enough, well, maybe I'm a senior official, when maybe I'm someone at the top of the government, I can then do things differently. And that, of course, is just a fiction. The next one, of course, is, well, if I go, I'm better, I'm a better Marine officer than others. And I can make sure that my Marines and sailors get home. So, it becomes a very selfish argument. It becomes, you start really looking, you're desperate now, you're trying to find reasons to take part that extinguish all the doubts, all the qualms, all the things that you know are wrong about these wars, because you've taken part in it. I've had the blood in my hands, I've had the brains in my hands, I've had the bone bits on my hands. I've had the bathing and blood, the reality of this, the baptism of this was very real for me. And that's why I'm a perpetrator. I took part. And eventually, you get to the point where you can no longer, for me at least, I could no longer go along with it because I was morally and intellectually broken. So, by the time I'm on my third time of war in Afghanistan in 09, seeing that the Afghan war is no fundamentally different than the Iraq war, because that's what I was holding out for. I was holding out that maybe the Iraq war would be different than the, sorry, the Afghan war would be different than the Iraq war. And that wasn't the case. There was no fundamental difference, nothing that mattered. So, taking part in those things, being a perpetrator in war. And I come back now to that duality that existed in me. What had happened to that young man who in 1990-1991 was so horrified, so disgusted by what he saw take place in the Persian Gulf, killings, atrocities that occurred, the barbarity of what occurred in Kuwait and Iraq. How did I end up becoming an officer of the empire? And because there's a duality in me. And I think for the young people out there, I think you can realize this, you can appreciate this, you can see this. And what I will tell you is that stick to the part of you that it actually used. Stick to what belongs within you. Whatever we call it, your gut, your mind, your soul, stick to those things. Don't be influenced by the power of the be, right? Don't be influenced by those that have the most material success or political success, economic success, who have the most audience, who have the greatest reach. Don't be influenced by that. Influently, remain true to what you have inside you. It took me way too long to do that. And, you know, for those who are part of this call, whose community and society I helped destroy, I apologize. But for those young people who are watching, you still, you will always have a chance to stay with that, the moral side of you, with the philosophical side of you, the side that belongs and is rooted in love, not the side that is rooted in ambition or career. And so that's why I urge anyone listening, but especially those young folks listening today, to keep that, to keep that with you, to always choose the morality, choose the philosophy, choose the literature, choose the poetry, choose the love. Because I'm sitting here now 20 years later, I can't do anything other than explain to you my sadness, my anger, and the regret that has driven me to want to kill myself. So please take that away. And again, I want to thank everyone for doing this today, for those of you who organized it, Emily and Rachel and Brian, for hosting this. And, and yeah, we can do better. And I believe we will do better. Thank you so much, Matthew, for your vulnerability and being so open and honest, you don't usually hear that perspective a lot. So next I'm going to introduce Kathy Kelly. Kathy Kelly has worked for nearly half a century to end militarism and economic wars. At times her activism has led her to war zones and prisons, sometimes with Code Pink. And she has traveled to Iraq and Afghanistan several times and been arrested over 60 times for her activism. So, so happy to have you, Kathy. Well, thank you, Frank and Emily, it's good to see the dynamic duo of the two of you together. Thank you very much to the dynamic duo of Code Pink teamed up with Massachusetts Peace Action. You know, my young Afghan friends have a saying, blood doesn't wash away blood. And when I think of that, and think of the United States history and the foreign policy, the foreign policy based on threat and force and bloodletting which is said again and again, if you do not subordinate yourselves to fulfill our national interests, we will eliminate you. And then tag down to that now after the horrible economic sanctions, economic war waged against Iraq, the United States can say and if you don't believe us, look at the graves of the children of Iraq, hundreds of thousands of them, our country practicing child sacrifice. And all the while trying to pretend that somehow we are always those who are victimized. The hypocrisy is enormous. And so here we are today with 800 bases with a military budget that gets increased with the heads of military contracting firms. I can do they laugh on their way to the bank with their portfolios stuffed and United States people still to some extent, a bit of sleep at the wheel. And so what we have before us is so, so necessary to change. And I believe that sometimes stories are what enable us to make sense out of our reality. So I would just like to share briefly with you the story of a mother whose child had been killed by a bomb following drone surveillance. And she knew that the drone up above must have known that her child was only going to that building for shelter. And so I happened to stumble into the funeral for the child and sat in silence and realized that who the mother was because other women were coming and embracing her. And she wore a medical hood and a neck brace. And she asked her son to bring pictures of the disastrous day when the bomb had hit the place where her child was sleeping overnight for shelter. And then she asked her son to bring a picture of her child. And there was a girl with round big eyes and very serious face, but you could imagine her smiling a little six year old girl. And the mother tapped the plastic over the picture. And she fixed me with a very definite look. And she asked, who are the terrorists? Is she the terrorist? And then her eyes welled up. And she was spread the name of the president of the United States at the time, George Bush. Abraham Heschel Arabi has said, some are guilty, but all are accountable. And so we do carry this accountability to that mother who asked, who are the terrorists? And then I also am reminded of a young mother in an Iraqi hospital. And they didn't have any electricity in the hospitals. There weren't any lights. There wasn't really enough oxygen. And her little child was suffering both from starvation and gastrointestinal disease. And our hearts started to give out. So people started screaming up the hallway to get a doctor. And he happened to be a doctor. I was trying to interview Dr. Kaseel Rakhim. And the doctor went running and we went after him. And he tried to give mouth to mouth resuscitation to this little infant. And then he stood up and he said, I am sorry. Your child cannot live. We have not the plastic. We have not the tube. And the child's nostril was so small that they didn't have a small piece of plastic to inject into her nose. And so for lack of a piece of plastic, while hundreds and thousands of Iraqi children died because of United States economic warfare, that child died. My shoulder was damp from the mother's tears. And then the mother said to me, believe me, I pray. I pray that this never happens to a mother from your country. Was she a terrorist? And so we see again and again and again, innocent lives stolen, wasted. We hear Daniel Hale telling us that he would really almost rather go to jail for the crime of having wasted, stolen innocent lives. And we must repair the wrong that's been done. We must pay reparations and also commit reparations by dismantling the terrible military systems that have caused so much havoc, so much despair. And I think two words to begin that entire endeavor must be on the lips of all of us. We're sorry. We're so very sorry. Thank you so much, Kathy, for your marks and for a lifetime of work. We really appreciate you. You're such an inspiration to so many of us. Next up, I want to introduce Dr. Sami Al-Aryan, who is a political activist, a community leader, and a former political prisoner. He was prosecuted by the Bush administration under the Patriot Act, and despite his innocence, Dr. Al-Aryan was in prison for years before being deported to Turkey in 2015. Professor, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Brian. Thank you for the invitation and for the speakers and the audience. In 9-11 happened, the American political establishment had to explain to the American people what had actually taken place. They had two possible answers, one that we were attacked before because of our policies, the policies such as the occupation of the birthplace of Islam in Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf War, or the sanctions on the Iraqi during the 90s, in which half a million people died in the words of the former Secretary of State, Madeleine Halfbright, in which he said it was worth it, or because of the policies in supporting Israel, the military hardware and economic subsidy to the tune of $200 billion over the past half-century, or the occupation of Palestinian land and subjugation over the Palestinian people, or the propping up of dictators and totalitarian regimes in the Arab world undermining democracy every step of the way. These are regimes which have been supported by successive American administrations throughout the years. All these policies, if they were the root problem that caused the tragic attacks, that would have been an answer, but of course we were given a different answer. The other answer was that America was attacked because of our freedom, our democracy, of who we are. And because we can't change who we are, we have to change who they are. And therefore, we had to see evasions, occupations, setting up corrupt and incompetent regimes, the tensions of thousands and thousands of people, Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, torture, black sites, drones, bombings, assassinations, the surveillance state, CVE programs in order to recruit thousands and thousands of informants, the securitization of the American Muslim community, the demonization of Islamic Muslims, the whole thing. What happened after 9-11 in the words of a former FBI agent who had a change of heart after 17 years of trying to serve this security state, his story was told to us by the New York Times last week, Terry Elbury, he said that this was very important revelation is that what happened after 9-11, within the political establishment, within the security apparatus, is that it was decided that Islam is the enemy and therefore we had to go and fight throughout the world as well as domestically. Doing so, silencing Muslim leaders, undermining Muslim institutions inside the United States, infiltrating Muslim communities. Targeting the most vulnerable among them, using entrapment and other underhanded tactics, just to name a few became standard of government policies. I was among the first Muslim leaders that is to be targeted by the US administration at the time because of powerful interest groups who thought that I was dangerous because of my stance on Palestine, my activism against the government and secret evidence and other civil rights abuses because of my criticism of American foreign policy and domestic policy. And the attempts actually to silence me were long before 9-11 but 9-11 became the perfect pretext to fulfill that goal of eliminating my voice and ability to challenge the false narrative of imperialism and settler colonialism in Palestine. Now 20 years later, it's clear that this policy has failed and the explanation given to the American people has been exposed as false and a lie. The last military act of the United States this week, this past week, is very revealing. You can read it today in Washington Post and New York Times. The government said that they prosecuted a drone attack in which an ISIS person was targeted and he was eliminated and that because of secondary explosions, other civilians were killed. But what the actual revelation of the investigation by New York Times and Washington Post is that this person was working for an American aid charity. He was pro-American, he actually applied to be resettled. He was targeted because he went to a house that the intelligence services thought was a safe house for ISIS, which wasn't. It was the house of his boss. He was trying to pick up a laptop and they went after him for eight hours and because he went to four different places, he basically was dropping off and picking up his colleagues and because he put something in his trunk and they thought they were explosives and that's what caused the secondary actions. They were not, they were simply jugs of water because there wasn't water in his neighborhood and they said that he was targeted alone. It wasn't true. Ten people were killed, including seven children. This is emblematic of the actual so-called war terror in which, by the way, the figure of two trillion dollars that was spent on these wars, much of it actually never left the United States. Most of it was profiteering from these wars, whether it was defense companies, whether it was contractors, whatever have you. Today, Afghanistan is poorer, poorer than it was in 2001. In 2001, the average daily income of the Afghani person was two dollars per day. Today, it's less than two dollars per day. So none of that money actually went to Afghanistan and none of it actually went to the American people, just went to certain people who became extremely rich. Now, when I was arrested back in 2003, I was among the first to be arrested and prosecuted by the so-called war terror. I was facing three life sentences plus 220 years. The government wasn't even ready for the trial, so I had to wait 27 months in solitary confinement until they get ready. All in all, I had to spend 43 straight months in solitary confinement. They had 471,000 phone calls that they had on me over a 10-year period, 21,000 hours, to be exact. They had over 400,000 documents, 2,000 audio tapes, 600 videotapes, 65,000 Hebrew documents that they threw just for fun. They brought in 80 witnesses in which 21 went from Israel. We had zero witnesses. It was the longest trial since 9-11, still is, six months from opening to verdict. And with all that, with all the advantages in which they spent over 200 million dollars in that trial, they got zero convictions. There were four of us, they could not convict in a single accusation, single charge, even though they had over 100 charges. But they were not ready to let go. So I had to deal with them, give up my rights and leave. And after the agreement, they kept me for another eight years waiting because another prosecutor, a Zionist who didn't like that murder, he had to bring me and drag me there, trying to get me to testify, even though we agreed that there will be no cooperation. And I had to wait another eight years in which I was charged in another charge and put on first two years in prison and then six years in under house arrest. And at the end, because we had a decent judge, the government had to give up. And of course, I have already given up all my rights despite 40 years living in America. At any rate, what this was, what it shows is simply a new face of America that is ugly, that has been exposed. And what we need is grassroots movement to stand up to these policies and to stand up to the ugliness of this so-called war and terror that has done nothing but devastation, destruction, death, all in the name of American people. And if this is a true democracy, then people really have to resist, mobilize, organize, and make change. And I appreciate the efforts of many people who are attending today and many organizations and institutions who are trying to do that. But we have to think also outside the box, meaning that there is something fundamentally wrong with how we're resisting. I remember when I was under house arrest, the Occupy movement, there was a lot of good people there in the streets, but they could not come together to make an effective change. The challenges are many. The money that is in politics today and corrupting the whole system has to be faced and has to be dealt with. But all in all, we need to bring all good-hearted grassroots people together and think of how you can make a change because, believe it or not, what America does, it's destroying the whole world. A lot of people who live in America see only part of this, but the impact is huge. And when people resist, certainly they can win. But at the end still, the stick is big. The devastation is why the manipulation of the economic institutions throughout the world just like destruction and mayhem all over. And therefore, it makes a whole difference when we have people who care about peace and care about real freedoms and care about people that they come together and make a difference in this world. And since America is doing much of that destruction, then it's very important that people, American people, people with conscience take the responsibilities serious and try to make a difference in this world. Thank you. Thank you so much, Sammy, for sharing. Next up, I am pleased to introduce David Swanson. David is an anti-war activist, journalist, radio host, and author. He is also the executive director of World Beyond War and a campaign coordinator for Roots Action. Welcome, David. Thank you, Emily. What a powerful story we just heard and we should remember that Guantanamo is going strong no matter what wars they claim to have ended. Thank you for including me with all of these wonderful people. Matt Ho said he wanted to belong to something. I am very glad to belong with all of you, all of everyone speaking and not speaking here. I think Matt knows too that he belongs to something better now. I'm going to try to share my screen and see if it works. I hope you're seeing a PowerPoint that I'm going to go through really fast here. Let's see if I can get to the next screen. So just a basic overview of what we've been through. We're looking at despite all the focus on the horrors of that one day 20 years ago and all the focus on the ending of a war as itself, supposedly a catastrophe, the wars of the 20 years. We're looking at millions dead injured, traumatized, homeless, the rule of law eroded not just in certain spots but around the world, the natural environment, devastated, government secrecy and surveillance and authoritarianism increased worldwide, the right to protest constrained, the wars for freedom and we're not getting our freedoms back with the ending of the wars for freedom. Terrorism increased, not eliminated, not decreased, increased worldwide, weapons sales increased worldwide, racism and bigotry spread far and wide, trillions and trillions of dollars wasted that could have done a world of good, wealth transferred upward to a handful of profiteers, a culture corroded, a drug epidemic generated in the United States, a disease pandemic made easier to spread and the US military turned into such a machine of one sided slaughter that its casualties despite being 98% of the media coverage are less than 1% of those in these wars and the top cause of death in the US military is suicide. On the other hand we opponents of this madness leave behind in these 20 years a number of additional wars prevented, wars ended, bases stopped, weapons deals stopped, money divested from weapons, police demilitarized, people educated, ourselves educated and the tools to carry all of this further as we must do, developed. These wars that have used the excuse of war on terror have been in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Philippines and additional military actions that they don't call wars in a dozen more countries listed on this slide and then dozens of attempted coups despite the endless wars on top of that. The dead, there ought to be a serious scientific study and survey now if you're going to justify these wars as somehow doing more good than harm you have to know what the harm is. The best evidence we have suggests a couple of million dead in Iraq over a million dead in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a total of almost 7 million dead and then 7,000 US troops on top of that. So you're looking at one-sided slaughters and nobody's being told that and those envying the dead of course the much greater numbers bigger than 6 or 7 million, many millions of people injured, traumatized, made homeless, lives ruined. Financial costs for everybody bought a handful of lucky short-sighted profiteers include the direct cost of the militarism, also the lost opportunities, the destruction, the future healthcare costs, the transfer of wealth to the wealthy and the ongoing cost of the military budget that is increasing despite a war ending. Between 2001 and 2020 with numbers from Cypri, you're looking at the US military alone spending this amount of money. These are hundreds of billions of dollars a year, but people who look at the US budget have been consistently telling us that there's another half a trillion dollars not in those numbers. There's a couple of hundred billion dollars spread across numerous other agencies outside the Pentagon, outside of some of the nukes in the energy department, the secret agencies, all of these military expenses plus another 100 or 200 billion dollars in debt for past military expenses and another 100 billion dollars or so in the cost of healthcare for veterans. So we're looking at maybe 22 trillion dollars in military expenses just by the United States just in these 20 years. The Institute for Policy Studies has just come out with a report finding 21 trillion dollars for that period. So if you read reports that we've spent six trillion dollars or we've spent eight trillion dollars on these wars, these are very well intended reports from very good organizations that do tremendous work, but they normalize the bulk of the military spending, which over these 20 years has not been 38% wrong. It's been 100% wrong. What could have been the calculations that economists have done, including at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, you get more jobs and better paying jobs, putting the same dollars into decent things like education and clean energy. So apart from the moral and environmental and humanitarian concerns, just with the economics alone, you're talking about much more than 22 or 21 trillion dollars if you had spent it more wisely. And of course, with tiny fractions, you could end starvation on the planet. You could end the lack of clean drinking water on the planet. You could fund attempts to forestall the destruction of the Earth's climate beyond the wildest dreams of the best environmental groups out there if you just moved the money. So the money kills vastly more people even than those millions killed directly by the wars by being diverted from where it's needed. Looks like I've reached the end and stop sharing. And thank you very, very much for including me here. Thank you, David. Just wonderful to see the juxtaposition between what, you know, and for you to break it down for us, what the difference between what we spend it on and what we could have and what we lost also. We here in LA with so much pollution and concentration on switching to clean energy. We have what's called a just transition campaign. And we need to just transition from war. Our entire economy needs to be decoupled from the war economy. So much fascinating jobs, so much fascinating work for people for youth. Earlier in the program, I talked about Los Angeles and all the challenges we're going through. Imagine if instead of having one of the seats of military industrial complex in Los Angeles, if all of that tens of billions of dollars were turned over into the rescuing of the Los Angeles Greater Los Angeles area and all that could be done and how interesting it could be for people. Just in the LA Times today or yesterday was an article bemoaning the fact that workers don't want to go back to work and people are realizing it's not just pay. It's that the work that American workers have been asked to do for decades has been brainless but also horrific. Imagine if we were called to action for something much more beautiful. We have the money you've just shown us that we have. With introducing our next speaker, I want to say that one of the thoughts that I had in early 9-11 was, you know, we're all told to remember 9-11. Well, I would say let's remember 9-10. Also, let's remember the world before this. There was a huge progressive movement for the people who weren't around or alive or, you know, young people on this call right now. There was a huge progressive movement the day before 9-11. We had had the Battle of Seattle. We had had the IMF World Bank protests, the UN conference on racism, so much the Nader campaign. Our next speaker was called the Paul Revere of the anti-globalization movement. And so with Kevin Downerher is going to be our next speaker. He is an American author and activist and he is the co-founder of Global Exchange. He's the founder and executive co-producer of Green Festivals and he is executive director of the Global Citizen Center. Thank you so much from your tent, Kevin. Yeah, yeah. And I should warn people I'm up in the mountains near the Dixie Fire. We survived the Dixie Fire. It went around us to the north happily here in Quincy, California. But if you want to come live in a beautiful place, Plumas County is awesome and we're going to have water when no place else has water. We've got three major catchment areas up above us in height. I think we need to understand that the roots of this go very, very deep. This country was founded on genocide and slavery. If you look at the historical roots of the Second Amendment, it's not about the right to own guns. It's the need for a well-regulated militia. And the reason that a well-regulated state militia was needed was for two reasons, to kill Native Americans and to return escaped slaves. That's the history involved in was predicated on somebody did something against it. We didn't start it. They did it to us and we're just being violent and it's justified because somebody attacked us. We stole Arizona, New Mexico, it sees at the time protested. He said, this is BS. We shouldn't be doing this war. So throughout the history, we have had voices within the system calling out going, wait a minute, this doesn't work. The reason why his piece, we're coming back from Vietnam saying, dude, don't go. Don't go. It's horrible. We're burning villages. We're killing innocent people. It's a mess. Every time we've gotten involved in these wars, it's been predicated. If you look at all the movies, Sylvester Stallone and Schwarzenegger, it's always, oh, they killed the guy's wife. So he goes out and kills 20 people and it's okay. And I apologize if my internet connection is unstable. This is part of living in the mountains. So what we need to do is we need to own that and not out of a feeling of guilt, but you need to understand your own history. Look at the whole notion of roots. The fact that I went to Ireland and saw the home where my father grew up and heard from him the stories of what it was like growing up in Ireland under British military occupation, where he had to hide in a church basement to study his own language like Gaelic Irish. And hearing those stories, he's out milking the cow one day and the British troop truck comes along and they start shooting at him and they killed the cow, one cow for nine children. And now those children don't have any milk. So it was easy for me to understand that I would be the British going to kill the Vietnamese who would be the Irish. Why would I do that? I grew up with guns in the woods of New Jersey. I knew what guns did. So we need to bring up our children with an understanding of, yes, this is an ugly history, but we need to embrace it. This is a cleansing therapeutic process. And part of that, something that really ticks me off, is whenever I raise the issues of building seven, building seven at World Trade Center falling in six seconds, it's a 47 story building. That's like the Trans America Tower in San Francisco. 47 stories and it comes down in six seconds. And no plane hit it. There was no major physical damage to it. The 2004 official report of 9-11 didn't even mention building seven and it's never been explained to this state. And then look at the tenants of building seven. It was the Pentagon for New York, the CIA for New York, the FBI for New York, Giuliani's Disaster Control Center. No terrorist could get into that building to plant explosives. You and I couldn't get into that building to plant explosives. But when you raise this, when you say to people, steel buildings don't melt. They never have and they never will. Just the other night I raised it and some young guys, they go, oh, don't go there. Oh, so we're not allowed to question the official story that was used to incur all of this horror and destruction and waste of resources and trauma on so many people around the world. If we are going to bring down the U.S. empire, we need to be assertive and we need to be honest. And I want to pitch people, before I shut up, I want to pitch people on an idea. It turns out there's quite a bit of green economy within the U.S. military. They're doing solar energy. They're doing biofuels. They're doing all sorts of what we would qualify as green technology. Imagine if the over 800 U.S. military bases around the world were eco universities, were platforms like the Green Festival for generating green economy enterprises and green economy jobs, then we would be liked around the world. We would be loved and we would be embraced. What we have seen in Afghanistan and we saw in Iraq and Yemen and Syria and all these other places is violence doesn't work. War doesn't work. If it worked, we would have had peace by now. It doesn't work. And one of the other things people need to look at in terms of the official story is September 10th. You can Google this on YouTube. September 10th, there was a Pentagon briefing where Rumsfeld and the comptroller of the Pentagon admitted that there was over $2 trillion missing from Pentagon budgets. And the next day, boom, September 11th, all the violence and all that got wiped off the headlines. It was never a headline. Well, let's go look at that. Why isn't there ever been an audit of the Pentagon? The Pentagon brought in official auditors, auditing companies, and when they looked at the Pentagon books, they said we can't even do an audit based on these books. It's such a mess. So this is our tax money being used against our will. We were never asked and it's being used to do violence against poor people around the world. And God help us if we don't have the courage to look at these facts and call for an official investigation. Let's investigate. How did building seven come down in six seconds? That's free fall speed, a 47-story steel building. And who were the tenants? And why is there video of people saying get back, get back? This building's coming down. A BBC reporter reporting that building seven collapsed and the building is still behind her. A press release was sent out in advance that they knew the building was going to come down. All of that needs to be made public so that we find out who really was involved, totally who was involved. Yeah, there may have been some amateur terrorists from the Middle East, but there may have been some professional terrorists based right here on our own soil. Thank you for your attention. Thank you, Kevin. And I completely agree war doesn't work. Rachel, did you want to say something? Oh, I'm sorry. I thought I was entered, but Mickey's not next. Okay, bye. Well, Mickey is next. And I thought I was introducing him. Well, then you go for it. Oops. Okay. Sorry. Hey, so just wanting to kind of honor that space that Kevin took and just say that, okay, you know, it's a tough call. But I would say hearing that from Kevin, one of the things I remember Fidel Castro saying something else we're not supposed to talk about, Fidel Castro, but saying, you know, it's less important who did it than who benefited. I mean, if you look at who benefited the absolute right wing. And Kevin, when we asked you on, it was, you know, really to, to remember, you know, those days pre 9 11 and, and the champion all over the world and, and how convenient that was that that was truncated. I remember something in the news of someone said, well, that's the after night, right after 9 11, they said, well, that's the end of the anti globalization movement. And I remember thinking, what does that have to do with it? Aha, how convenient. So, you know, once again, the military is dictating what we do. I think that's called a military dictatorship. So someone else who loves to speak his piece is Mickey Huff. He's up next. He is the director of Project censored president of the media freedom foundation co editor of the annual censored book series, and professor of social science and goodness and history at Diablo Valley College. Let your lucky students. Thanks so much, Rachel, Emily, Frank. I want to thank everyone here today. It's an honor to be invited for this 20 year anniversary slash commemoration of the 9 11 events. Go Kevin. Hard act to follow brother, but I'm going to I'm going to do my best. And thanks for speaking your piece and your truth. Man, you've been doing it for a long time. And I've learned a lot from you learned a lot from so many of the people here. So again, honored to be here. Thanks to again, Emily, Rachel, Frank, media, code, pink, peace, action, Massachusetts. Also want to thank my good friend, the great scholar, author of giants, the global power elites, previous director of project censored Peter Phillips, who had the courage to question dominant media narratives around the events of September 11, despite the lack of support from many on the left. His collections of unanswered questions around 9 11 are still ever relevant today. And his book giants is actually speaking of who benefits is a who's who of who benefited from the global war of terror kicked into high gear by the events of 9 11. As William Faulkner once wrote, the past is never dead. It's not even past. And history matters, the teaching of history matters. And now 20 years later, 9 11 literally is history to millions of people who were too young to remember or not even born yet. And this generation now comprised many of my undergraduate students taking courses for me in US history, political economy, and a course called critical reasoning in history that I've taught with a focus on contemporary historiography and the events of 9 11 for about 17 years now. It's called history in the making contemporary historiography in the rough draft of history. The subtopic is today's fake news is tomorrow's fake history riffing on the CIA whistle or Ralph McGhee case studies and media mythmaking and the propaganda of historical construction. Well, this is all basically around the recent history of 9 11. I certainly go back and set the stage for these things. But nevertheless, my brief talk here today in my WTC seven minutes is to focus on young people and another generation of people learning our history. So I wear a lot of hats as you heard, Rachel say, I'm co chair of the history department chair of the journalism department director of project censored, the anti censorship pro free press group project censored. And for the last 45 years project censored, I've been involved since 2008, have been surveying the rough drafts of history, journalism around major events and topics that impact all of us, including but not limited to the events of September 11 20 years ago. It's not exactly fun or easy thing to do. It doesn't win one many popularity contests. And in fact, it's it sometimes turns erstwhile allies into something else. So so challenging is the path that follows, transparently sourced factual reporting that dare challenge the status quo and official historical narratives, right? I hereby would like to ask everybody here to please not participate in the circular firing squad so prevalent on the left. And remember who we are really fighting against and fighting for 10 years ago this week, the Occupy movement was born and gave us the language of the 99% and the 1% and you heard Rachel riffing on that just moments ago. Let's not lose sight of that cabal of billionaires, war profiteers, big pharma drug pushers, fossil fuel polluters and purveyors of big brother incorporated the surveillance capitalist of our technocracy. This is where our ire must be directed, right? This is where it not toward each other. We must we must look up not at each other to to to fight amongst ourselves. George W. Bush said, let's never accept outlandish conspiracy theories around the events of 9 11. Well, don't let that label shut down inquiry as the biggest conspiracy theory around 9 11 has come from US government and our corporate media. And of course, the conspiracy theory label was weaponized and used by the CIA in the 1960s to discourage people from challenging the Warren commission and JFK CIA memo 10 35 9 60. I urge you to look into it and read the great book by Lance to Haven Smith about this called conspiracy theory in America. Well, let's move in here back to the teaching of history. Gore Vidal once noted that we are the United States of amnesia, right? The great political scientist Michael Prenti cautioned us. Those engaged in the manufacturing of history often introduced distortions at the point of origin well before the history is written or even played out. This initial process of control is not usually left the chance but is regularly pursued by interested parties who were situated to manipulate the record. It is important to teach these unhistories, the untold history leading to 9 11 and thereafter in this past 20 years with thanks to Oliver Stone, Peter Kuznick and other historians. The media and the political class is weaponized 9 11 and cast a cloud of fear not just across the United States but the world. And when we look at this media, we see that elites do not want us to forget, right? They want us to remember to be fearful to be distrustful of each other to be racist and lust for violence against innocence around the world because we relied to about 9 11 and that such people allegedly hate our freedoms. This is not true. What is hated is our ignorance, our apathy, our privilege and our jingoistic behavior. What I hope we do not forget however is the road to 9 11 and from remember the main world war ones try fight them over there. So we don't have to fight them over here, which was echoed after 9 11, right? The day that will live in infamy Pearl Harbor, right? The lies around the Gulf of Tonkin into Vietnam were exposed by Daniel Ellsberg pending on papers including coverups against state. The anti war activists in media Pennsylvania who uncovered the FBI's Cointel program still alive and well to this day operating under other names, right? Given new life after the 9 11 attacks Cointel pro was, it seems that there's a very clear pattern of lies and deception around US wars followed by crackdowns on civil liberties at home. And that pattern continues with 9 11. The history of bin Laden, the CIA, Iraq and WMVs, the list goes on and on. But looking at 9 11 in particular quickly, the rise of the neoconservatives, the project for the new American century, let's not forget them and who they are. The document rebuilding America's defenses, it calls for a new Pearl Harbor in order to unleash an American century, a new American century. Those wars were already planned well in advance of 9 11 in the Middle East. Once Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld were in place, they immediately looked to put into effect what the project for the new American century called that new American century and dominated with US hegemony. 9 11 was the event that gave them the opportunity. It was the catalyzing event like the new Pearl Harbor that gave them the quote opportunity to unleash US empire across the world with impunity. So let's not forget the failures around 9 11 that are many that the FAA nor add failing to scramble planes to stock market short sales just prior to the attacks. Let's not forget the dust and deceit of the environmental fallout and destruction of the twin towers in New York City when Chrissy Todd Whitman at the EPA lied about the safety of the air so Wall Street could open and thousands of fallen ill and even more have died. The government failed to do anything about these victims of 9 11 until they were shamed into action by a comedian on late night TV and John Stuart pathetic, absolutely disgraceful. Let's not forget about the anthrax attacks ultimately traced to US military bases subsequently boss investigation by the FBI that fell into the vast memory hall which turns out is quite a rabbit hole. Speaking of the FBI let's not forget whistleblowers like Colleen Rowley about the many forewarnings that were all somehow missed by an unelected presidential administration. Let's not forget the CIA and counterterrorism czarist that said attacks were coming the summer of 9 11 of 2001 and that quote the attacks would be spectacular. Let's not forget CNN and the BBC announcing in advance that WTC seven tower fell 20 minutes before it did. That's some crackerjack reporting. Let's not forget the Afghans offered to assist our are looking into bin Laden asking only for evidence of his complicity and the US said we don't need any evidence and likely didn't have any. Let's not forget let's never forget we invaded two countries not technically involved in 9 11 killing over a million innocent people displacing millions of people more based around the lies of 9 11. Let's not forget the media fear porn and propaganda that's still with us to this day. Let's not forget the endless invocations. Let's never forget Condi Rice who wrote books with Phillip Zellekal who was ahead of the editing the 9 11 Commission scaring Americans with phantoms of mushroom clouds over New York City lying to the commission about never predicting an attack that would take place even though she delivered a presidential daily briefing saying exactly that. Let's not forget you know the normalization of total surveillance and torture taking shoes off at airports endless breaking news from terror suspect roundups and scary soundtracks constantly waving flag trying to cover the shame of killing innocent people with thanks to Howard's Inn. Let's never forget the coverups of the 9 11 Commission with Phillip Zellekal who saw to it that over 75% of the questions of the victims families around 9 11 that fought for the Bush administration for over 400 days. The former commission were never even addressed. Only 9% of those questions were satisfactorily answered further underscoring the purpose of such political commissions it's to cement propaganda of official narratives in the public consciousness and move on the corporate media not mainstream corporate dutyfully health in this process and history demands that we do not simply move on it demands we continue to ask questions to not accept contradictions and lies from above. I could go on about 9 11 historiography and I do a whole course on it in the semester and I can never address it all and I know my time here is coming to an end which I'm grateful to have this opportunity to talk to everybody and be here today. To all the young people here please never stop asking questions. Never stop never stop striving for the truth no matter how hard or unpopular. Stand up for social political and economic justice for your generation and those that even will come after you. What we do today shapes the kind of world you inherit and while it's hard to imagine as a young person one day you too will be older and another youth will ask what you did with your time here. Emma Goldman said most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought I encourage more sinners and more true seekers about our past about the events of 9 11 in hopes we become a more accurately informed more empathetically driven and truly more just inequitable society in order to never forget we need to pursue those infamous unknown unknowns rumsfeld mused about we must strive to teach the truth about our history triumphs and tragedies and learn from our calamitous mistakes so that we won't be so they won't be repeated by yet another generation forging its own future in hopes of eventually being on the right side of history please feel free to follow more of our work at project censored.org this past couple weeks we're featuring specials on 9 11 and you can contact me through project censored.org mickey at project censored.org everyone that's here is invited to be on the show and I'm hoping to use excerpts from today's amazing testimonies on future shows thank all of you very much for the important work that you do again it's an honor to be here. Thank you so much for that mickey and especially thank you for saying that you will spread the word yourself by taking these testimonials and rebroadcasting them I would encourage all of our audience to do the same I know people may be scrambling for all the great links and information that's being shared in the chat don't worry we're going to send that out to you we're going to send out a bunch of relevant links and actions you can take and most importantly the recordings of this program and once again I encourage you to share that with your friends family and colleagues who could not be here live. Next up I want to introduce Ray McGovern who is an activist who writes and lectures about war and the role of the central intelligence agency he's a former intelligence officer himself who worked as a CIA analyst for 27 years in 2003 he co-founded veteran intelligence professionals for sanity more commonly known as VIPs so without further ado I'm going to pass the floor over to you Ray McGovern thanks for being with us Ray. There you are okay am I unmuted we can hear you just fine okay great can't get rid of this little thing here oh we can hear you all set thanks for having me especially for the organizers here um you know my irish grandmother used to always say to me as she said no Raymond show me your company and I'll tell you who you are well I couldn't be a better company it's sort of like homecoming here I won't mention all the people Sammy Allarian I will mention because he's a special friend and it's so terrific to see him looking so well let me start by uh by mentioning three conspiracy theories in which I believe now the first one is by the the heads the chairs of the 9-11 commission and what they said here was that they were set up to fail they wrote a book a book uh two two years after the 9 11 commission produced their book and they said that we were set up to fail we we were aware that the commission would be doomed to fail if not actually designed to fail so I believe that it's it's odd to to attribute a conspiracy theory so the co-chairman of the commission would but I think it fits you know the second one would be um well um I have the 9-11 commission report here and you know when they caught Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who's supposed to be the main you know the brainstorm or guess or bat bowl or stuff they said where'd you do it and here's what they said in the commission report uh Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's animus toward the United States them not from his experiences in at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro it wasn't like they called him a towel head or that he had a bad experience with a with a somebody there but rather from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel favoring Israel the little footnote there says you know that's what Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's nephew said when he tried to knock down the Twin Towers in 1993 he said he was really proud to be to be sentenced to many years in prison because of his deep deep hatred for U.S. policy favoring Israel so Jamil Aryan was quite right and the the reasons the real reasons for 9-11 that he adduced they're the right ones and I'll just say the third conspiracy theory that I believe has to do with the New York Times today believe it or not front page here's the headline evidence disputes U.S. claim of ISIS bomb in Kabul drone strike whoa is the New York Times saying that our top military lies to its teeth well that suggests that they are okay so there's a conspiracy theory and the which the New York Times is participating suffice it to say that I really really react really strongly against people who who accuse my former colleagues and my former neighbors in New York City of being conspiracy theorists my god there's so many conspiracies you can't shake a stick at them now what I'd like to move toward here is what the Kathy Kelly actually talked about and that was you know we're not all responsible but we're all we're not all guilty but we're all accountable we're all responsible and I think it's it's fair enough to say that when we talk about acknowledging guilt it's really really difficult it it's like looking at the sun we blink and then we turn away and what's hard for individuals is doubly hard for nations now the old monasteries know this and so they had a certain process they called the chapter of false where they recited some of the some of the indifference that they showed to others now indifference as Rabbi Heschel said is worse is the greatest sin than hate in other words well I don't have to spell that out for you do I indifference is a greater sin than hell hate it's our neglects not our deeds that condemn us Jeremiah the prophet the standing of your sin is still there and I see through it though you wash your hands with soda and do not stint with soap so in this spirit I think the September 11 and its sequels and its wars beckon us to a national examination of conscience why is it why is it so easy for us to to kill people who don't look like us let's face it racism is a major issue here now what I'd like to point out here is that this was very clear during Vietnam and not only were our troops trained to call Vietnamese VC gooks and that kind of stuff and the ones in Desert Storm towel heads and so forth but you know back in 1970 there was a letter written by James Baldwin from France to Angela Davis who had just been arrested okay and she appeared on the cover of Newsweek Newsweek magazine in chains okay now here's James Baldwin dear sister Angela one might have hoped by this hour that the very sight of chains on black flesh would be so intolerable a sight for the American people and so unbearable a memory that they would spontaneously rise up and strike off the manacles but now more than ever Americans appear to measure their safety in the chains and corpses of others and so Newsweek puts you on its cover chained let me put it this way sister Angela as long as white Americans take refuge in their whiteness they will allow millions of people to be slaughtered other people so long as their whiteness puts so sinister a distance between their own experience and the experience of others they will never feel themselves sufficiently worthwhile to become responsible for themselves as they once put it in our black church they will perish in their sins that is in their delusions it finishes up this way my dear sister Angela some of us white and black know how great a price has already been paid to bring a new consciousness if we know that then we must fight for your life as though it were our own which it is we must render impassable with our own bodies the corridor to the guest chamber for if they take you in the morning they'll be coming for us in the night therefore a piece for the James I think we have to recognize the racism that underlies a lot of what we do abroad we can recall the words of general William Westmoreland after the carnage in Vietnam saying to a interviewer you know the oriental they don't put the same price on life life is cheap in the orient you know well is life cheap in afghanistan so what do we do i think first we have to recognize that we're all all responsible even though we're not all guilty okay we have tried womanly and manfully to prevent all this for over 20 years now we have to keep trying and the first thing i think we need to do is bind up the wounds and welcome in the biblical sense the poor the refugee the orphan and the widow that's what we talk about in a biblical sense about the preferential option for the poor those are the people that Yahweh and Jesus and the prophet cared about first and foremost that we do justice okay we do justice to the least of these and how can we do that right now well after vietnam there were three million refugees from indochina there were another half million that perished at sea we took in a million by 1982 i believe it was we had a million indochinese refugees they made a great contribution to our civilization and to our society we have to do the same thing now we owe it to the people who cooperated with us who are now in danger because of their cooperation to do the right thing and biden to his credit has tried to make sure that we are prepared to do that it's going to take a monumental effort and there will be a lot of resistance to it but that's one thing we can do has a lot of other things we could do and uh you know as uh dan helsberg started after katensville he said you know people say oh we can't do anything we can't do anything well we can do things we can do things and sometimes it doesn't feel you know like they're efficacious and dan warns us he says you know it's not about results results are not unimportant but they're secondary to the goodness of the act i'll just finish with a little portrayal of how dan pictured uh philip and his own and the others katensville people in the only federal building in katensville maryland as they port after they port their own blood on draft carts uh how they how they're sitting around and dan says you know i was thinking about you know this this was a big deal uh people are going to call me an idiot or a clown or or a commie or so was this worth doing i said yeah it was worth doing uh results are not unimportant but they're secondary the goodness of the act speaks for itself and then dan a poet uh edited this he said into this post office came portentiously an fbi and specter they looked around the room and he saw my brother philip who had his clerics on and he said you again i'm gonna change my religion and dan comments no higher compliment could ever come to my brother philip so what we need to do is keep our sense of humor as we're doing this it's hard work and uh those of you that i've been associated with for the last 20 plus years have been able to keep that sense of humor younger people remember you've got to lighten it up every now and then but stay true uh to the justice aspects of this because you know if we want peace in the biblical sense uh peace is no more nor less than the experience of justice thank you very much thank you reywood govern uh let me just say i'm i'm honored to be in your company um sir and wise and powerful words uh and and part of what we're doing today um in in remembering uh 9 11 and the global war on terror and the absolute destruction is to be in fellowship with one another and to provide each other comfort much needed comfort as we do this important work to truly change what our country has been doing and to to turn a new page next i want to introduce someone who we're very lucky to be in her company um assault rod uh who is a senior research fellow for the national iranian american council her writing can be seen in news work newsweek independent the national interest uh and responsible statecraft he is a fierce advocate for peace uh and also uh an advocate against incredibly destructive economic sanctions um assault are you with us yes i'm right here okay the floor is yours i have to hit that uh thank you so much brian for that introduction and of course for giving me this platform to join you all today um you know there have been so many incredible presentations uh very really emotional ones evoking a lot of the the memories many of us share from from this tragic event from 20 years ago and what i really wanted to share today was sort of my experience um as someone who was a teenager starting undergrad right like a maybe a very particular kind of experience that for me and i think a lot of americans of of my generation 9 11 shaped not only the world around us right it literally shaped the way that the world has come about in the last 20 years but it shaped our own views of that world and it shaped our views of the us role in that world and as someone who was in a position you know the best position you could possibly be in if you want to learn at the university uh i really took that opportunity to try and understand you know try to understand the tragedy of that event and when you started to learn about the history when you started to learn about the history of afghanistan the history of the united states and intervening in other countries uh u.s militarism that's when you know on top of what was already an incredibly devastating tragedy to watch unfold on top of that there was this new sort of layer of devastation and that was the role that we actually played in bringing those events about you know when you learned about the fact that uh the u.s trained uh and and encouraged the the jihadism that you saw transpire in 2001 in the 1980s in afghanistan when you saw the fact that the u.s trained the very people who came later to attack us and the reaction to those events right we use words like blowback and collateral damage and leverage and those are all really great terms to mask war devastation mass slaughter destruction those are the things that we mask by using things like collateral damage oh well you know hundreds of thousands of people have died that's just the collateral damage of of the war on terror and the other interesting thing about being at that age at the time that it happened was to be in a position where you had you know i had older professors who had gone through their own experiences and i had one professor of sociology his name is chuck o'connell brilliant professor and his area of expertise was vietnam and i'll never forget when he formulated a class called the war on terror right as we were you know right as these events were happening and he described his own experience with the vietnam war he said you know when the vietnam war started he went to college he went to graduate school he got a phd he got married he had kids the war was still going and he warned us then he said what you're witnessing now this will be your vietnam i don't want to say this to you but you will experience the same thing and now for me 20 years later that's exactly what happened right here was my professor 20 years ago said these things to us and and you know i went through a very similar parallel experience as did like i said many of my generation and i remember there was another professor at the university who said uh before the sort of rhetoric and the build-up to the iraq war started right after 9 11 was like well we're going to invade iraq and when i think back to those events to those things that these uh that my instructors had said my instructors had said it's not because they were psychic right it's not like they were fortune tellers the fact that they could very easily describe what was going to transpire in decades ahead was because they had studied its history they had studied the history of us interventionism they had studied the history of these other wars they had studied the history of the middle east and so they didn't you know it was predictable for for those who were privy to that information so for me it became so important to really learn everything i could to understand how we got to where we are but not just because of some you know sort of academic exercise and wanting to understand but how we can actually change it moving forward and it was so unfortunate that the anti-war movement that was inspired in the lead up to iraq was not able to actually prevent that invasion from taking place the fact that our wars are not particularly popular wars the fact that the us public you know poll after poll will show that we have no appetite for conflict and yet we still find ourselves in them constantly if anything really questions our own democracy right the the notion of a democracy is that yes you have a representative government in in the united states but the idea of a democracy is to carry out the will of its people and administration after administration republican and democrat will come in and use the catchphrases like yes ending endless war and fruitless war and all of that and yet we repeat the exact same scenarios and the same mistakes and so while i think it's an incredibly important step that the biden administration it finally withdraw troops from afghanistan the reality of it is that is not the end of endless war when you have 800 military bases around the world when you spend two billion dollars a day on the military on warts you're not ending endless war you're just shifting things into different directions the reality of it is until we have a real conversation until we have an acknowledgement that our wars you know in in recent weeks obviously looking at what's happened in afghanistan over the last several weeks has prompted these conversations even more beyond the anniversary that we're looking at today the fact that we basically come full circle after 20 years it's almost as if our presence there for 20 years made absolutely no difference and this really requires us to reflect on how we got there people keep talking about the failure in afghanistan the debacle of afghanistan but something to keep in mind is that it wasn't a failure for everybody it wasn't a failure for the people who made lots and lots and lots of money right we talk about the cost of war there've been presentations here that have talked about how many trillions of dollars have been spent and you know you can talk about the fact that those resources those us tax dollars could have been spent on maybe americans and in doing things that were actually beneficial to our own population and if we actually wanted to do something benevolent something moral for the rest of the world then we could have used those dollars for that as well but instead we use them to to certainly not bring democracy right now the Taliban is taken over afghanistan we didn't bring human rights we didn't bring those things because the reality that we have to face is that that was never our intention we never intended to bring peace and stability we never intended to to fulfill these promises that we talk about these lofty promises that we always talk about but the reality of it is we are mired in hypocrisy right we talk about a world-based order an international rules-based order and yet we violate those very rules and that very order we talk about the fact that everybody has to be held accountable under international law and yet we selectively hold people accountable we sanction iran into starvation under the guise of this idea of terrorism and yet we arm with billions and billions of dollars of advanced and sophisticated arms Saudi Arabia to commit war crimes in Yemen so there is a problem in the way that we are communicating things now i don't want to say all this to believe that we don't have hope i've i've i always try to stay hope hopefully optimistic and that is that we do have an alternative the things that we say are great it's just that we don't do them if we actually upheld the idea of an international rules-based system that would be great that is anti-imperialism something that i always like to say is when people think anti-imperialism is some kind of you know obscure idea it is the rules-based order anti-imperialism is the idea that we should not have empires it's the belief in sovereignty it's the belief in borders and respecting them it's the belief that we resolve issues without going to war that's what anti-imperialism is that's what we espouse but we just don't do it and as long as we use international institutions as tools of empire they will never work we are the most powerful country in the world we are arguably the most powerful entity in human history and so as americans we have a special role people sometimes you know will criticize me because like why are you so critical of the united states well number one because it's my country seems like a logical leap to be critical of your own government especially when that government claims to be democratic and therefore has to answer to me and to all of us as citizens but also on top of that because there is no comparable power in the world and so the role that we play the role that we could play could be something positive but we don't the role that we play is war profiteering the role that we play is to talk about this idea of ending endless wars and you know holding a country like uran accountable for a civilian nuclear program whilst we have thousands of nuclear weapons and plan to spend trillions of dollars to build more these are the questions that we have to start asking ourselves why is this the way that we're spending our resources why do we continue to spend our resources in this way and you know this idea of never forget is incredibly important we should never forget the victims of 9-11 because you know i will never forget the images of that day i watched it live early in the morning for me i mean i was in california i'm still in california and the images of that day are seared into my mind just like they're seared into anyone's mind who is watching that day and we should never forget that but we should also never forget the other victims of the war on terror across this world if we believe in human rights then there's no differentiation between a human life whether it's an american life whether it's an iraqi life whether it's an afghan life a human being is a human being and so never forget should never have been a call for revenge it should be a rallying cry to bring people together to fulfill the very promises that generations before us had when they created something like the united nations in the wake of the devastation of world war two never forget has not been just used for 9-11 never forget has been used for other massive human tragedies and so what we should be learning from that we should we should be taking from it is how to avoid those tragedies not worsen them by inflicting even more devastation on innocent populations which unfortunately we have done and while you know this particular quote from president biden has been thrown around a lot when he said nothing will fundamentally change maybe something should thank you wow thank you so much so incredible us all thank you you know you're you make me think because you're you're talking about your time as a young person when 9-11 happened how that affected your generation and professors saying this will be your vietnam um i was in high school during ron reagan and so central america was our vietnam of my era um and so maybe we need to start thinking about this generally generationally and when we think about who we talked to and how we talk to them what did you miss out on i'm gonna not read this piece but i want to give a shout out to eric a great activist with code pink here in los angeles he's writing and one of the reasons we're kind of focusing towards youth right now is is a conversation he and i had it and i just thought wow the youth really need to be talked to about this he was in between high school and college and 9-11 happened and it just really um i want to say messed up his college career he believes that a lot of people who a lot of young people went to drugs at that time um that a lot of kind of the social ills that we have in our country of that generation come from the trauma of that time so i would ask us to maybe think about generationally when we talk to people so i bring that up also because our our next speaker um is chris aji and chris aji is uh his father was phil aji cia he he um uh renounced his time in the cia in 1968 for what he saw in the organization in the company and um ended up passing away in cuba and i just want to say chris that i met your dad on his 70th birthday and such a kind kind man um and and i want to thank you thank him through you for for everything he did for latin america um for stepping up so chris aji is an adjunct professor in the greater new york metropolitan area he teaches a variety of courses in sociology and political science and he's the editor and publisher of covert action magazine take it away chris uh thank you very much can you hear me yes great thank you so much rachel and um thank you a solid well that was a very powerful testimony as as were all the testimonies we've heard so far and thank you emily rachel frank and everyone who has organized this event um and thanks for everybody who's showed up and for giving us all the opportunity to share our thoughts on this commemoration um so i i'm the executor of editor of covert action magazine and teach sociology at cuny and cuny i'm the son of philip aji as rachel mentioned um and uh who you know my father helped start the magazine called covert action magazine um back in the late 1970s with lewis wolf um ellen ray bill chap michael rattner william cunster and others and at covert action magazine we strive to carry on their work and provide hard hitting facts um facts based and well footnoted analysis of us foreign policy and domestic policy essentially we are blowing the whistle on us imperialism and plutocratic interests worldwide together with uh jeremy kuzmer off our incredible managing editor and our talented editorial board we strive to do this online through various publications including articles videos webinars and podcasts as well as in-person events all available at our website um at covert action magazine dot com so please reach out if you want to get involved and or submit articles we're particularly looking for writers and marge uh from marginalized communities in the united states to those in the global south all of whom are bearing the brunt of class warfare and um us imperialism much of which is carried out through various forms of covert action broadly defined so on this day the 20th anniversary of 9 11 for example we just published the first part of an excellent three-part series by aron good our new editor at large ben howard and the great peter dale scott entitled the 20 years shadow of 9 11 us complicity in the terror spectacle and the urgent need to end it part one focuses on how the us has used radical islam and 9 11 to advance imperialism and override the constitution it provides a reevaluation of 9 11 in light of startling new evidence that undermines the official government's story of this traumatic and defining event which is so tragically continued to misdirect us policy um in this first installment aron ben and peter examined how the us has for decades utilized islamic terrorists as assets for its own ends bringing about the so-called unintended consequences or blowback as i will comment later and as aside commented earlier in part two we will run on which we will run on monday they look at how cia figures actively prevented other government agencies from exposing the al-qaeda presence in the united states prior to the attacks and in the final and the third and final installment the authors explore the deep political and historical implications of the us government's emergency powers in order to offer some conclusions about 9 11 so check those articles out as they come out over the next couple of days the first one is already up these articles and the work many are doing in different organizations and at different outlets as well as the testimonials and analysis that we have heard here today have been excellent and i would like to add a few comments here and some suggestions for action first of all the whole concept of never forget right um yeah as you know um as assault mentioned it's very important and has as the testimonies have shown us but in my experience this sort of the as the flyer for this event points out never forget it is sort of about it's sort of a rallying cry you know 9 11 and never forget understanding 9 11 is unfortunately not about never forgetting the reality is is that most never knew and still don't know about what's what happened and so we're still in the popular consciousness this 9 11 and never forget is a rallying cry for more war unfortunately or a don't mess with us because we won't forget and we're going to go after you for revenge right unfortunately what we need to never forget and remember is quite the opposite as us all was mentioning first we need to do is set the record straight and then we need to learn from it so as to not forget and change our ways so 9 11 for me is a great example of blowback right it's a cia term is charm charmers johnson taught the business book published in 2000 and updated with material in 2004 on 9 11 a few weeks after 9 11 johnson penned the following definition in the nation blowback and i quote is a cia term first used in march 1954 in a recently declassified report on the 1953 operation to overthrow the government of muhammad masadeq in iran it is a metaphor for the unintended consequences of the u.s government's international activities that have been kept secret from the american people and that was the whole quote so johnson and the cia call it unintended consequences perhaps a better term is misunderstood repercussions what he is also pointing out johnson is that most americans don't know or understand what is going on behind the scenes and what the u.s is really doing and and understanding why are we receiving these repercussions attacks like the 9 11 are responses to us imperialism responses to overt military political and economic imperialism and domination as well as covert activities including paramilitary operations clandestine economic warfare election meddling and assassinations kidnapping torture and the like all of which serve to advance u.s corporate interests at the expense of local populations interests in access to cheap resources cheap labor markets and geo political control another term in addition to blowback i'd like to borrow the term from Naomi Klein sorry can you still hear sorry can you still hear me sorry technical difficulties interrupt me all right shock doctrine okay to to borrow Naomi's term right enforcing economic oppression through neoliberal policy changes in the midst and wake of crises this can also be applied to using pre-tax like 9 11 to launch wars and curtail civil liberties it's important to note that 9 11 gave the u.s government carte blanche to implement what it was already doing covertly but now had become law of the land as john kediaku has well pointed out and you know took a stand on that went public about the official terror torture policy that they've been doing all along even before 9 11 so we're talking about the u.s government uses these crises to carry out a hidden agenda of military aggression and crackdowns including things that we've all talked about today widespread surveillance curtailments of civil liberties torture kidnapping assassination secret known legal illegal prisons including guantanamo widespread drone warfare programs the cost trillions of dollars is david swanson and and medea bencham and have point so well pointed out suggestions all right so what what do we need to remember right what should we never forget many of us are doing good things in different ways this event is an exact excellent example but we have to figure out how to reach more of the american people obviously it's great that this event has brought in so many young people but this is still a puzzle yet to solve firstly we need to continue to ramp up and disseminate fact-based information developing a critical consciousness on the way we need to utilize platform traditional platforms but also emerging and innovative ones we need to look at successful historical examples of people organizations and leaders like harry atubman martin luther king maca max rose parks howards in oliver stone including my father philip who were successful in their activities and getting their messages across we need to figure out what they did and what they are doing right secondly we need to engage in direct action code pink is a perfect example of that engage in an organized marches demonstration civility we need to mobilize resources and nurture political opportunities and some we need to educate agitate and organize many here already agitators and organizers others here or watching online i need to educate yourselves and express and and who are here to educate yourselves and express all other solidarity this is great but convert yourselves and your activities if you have not done so already into educators activists agitators and disseminate information engage in direct action and finally it's all hands on deck in addition to avoiding millions more casualties and deaths climate change is likely to bring about an increase in temperature closer to two degrees centigrade and the military is one of the greatest contributors to carbon dioxide emissions we are already experiencing the repercussions as david swanson midday adventure and another so well demonstrated we need to eradicate the military budget and use those funds for deploying alternative renewable sustainable sources of energy and food focus on education healthcare and affordable housing and the like immediately transition to a peaceful co-existing uh coexistence organized around an economy and society focused on serving human need not profit for the one percent as mickey duffin pointed out and on this 20th anniversary of 9 11 we need to take advantage of this opportunity to never forget and engage in what needs to be done thank you for listening to me thank you thank you chris chris and friend wonderful um thank you so much so you know um our next speaker our penultimate speaker works with youth specifically and i want to reemphasize a point that i'm not sure has been made um about 9 11 and and that i i know young people they're might still be asking like why it even happened or osama bin laden we just really need to emphasize and and help you all understand the kids that um the first iraq war in the first iraq war we put bases in saudi arabia and most of the hijackers were saudi arabian osama bin laden saudi arabian he was radicalized by that event you know among other things but by that event and and vowed revenge so um you know without iraq one there wouldn't have been an iraq two and i know high schoolers you you listen at i'm not gonna say ad nauseam but for months and months and months they cover world war one and world war two in such a bland way often but without world war one there wouldn't have been world war two so the anti-war voices in the united states of america and around the world have been the correct voices all along war begets war not peace so as you are listening to um these months and months that you go through history class and and here war after war that's pretty much all it's taught everyone in history class fyi really think with a critical eye and don't be afraid to use these resources you've learned today and and raise your hand and you know um do alternative research papers and things like that bring it into your classroom so with that said um uh our next speaker is um excuse me i'm lost my paper uh rick jan kow and rick jan kow works with the national network opposing the militarization of youth or know me um and they he they oppose the growing intrusion of the military into young people's lives all around the united states and thank you so much rick you're on i just discovered that for some reason my camera is not facing the right way instead of facing me it's facing my desktop so i need to get that fixed but i'm going to get started anyway uh while i while i at the same time i multitask here um i've heard a lot of really important questions asked but not until the tail end of this webinar and that concerns me greatly um because i think these are questions that should be discussed and debated and critiqued by every one of the groups that's present or represented here and they're not it's not happening i don't see it questions like um why was the anti-war movement unable to stop the invasions why have we come full circle after 20 years i would say why after 60 years because i my generation was part of the movements of the 60s and we thought revolution had actually been achieved but obviously it hadn't so it's it's really concerning to me that and and i'm still working on this uh i'm sorry this this video problem it's really concerning to me that people haven't stopped they're organizing long enough to critique themselves and critique their their focus and their direction and instead we follow the same pattern that basically protest movements have followed in the united states for generations which is we focus on the crises and then we react we try to put out fires that are handed to us instead of trying to deny fuel for any fires and that's where education and the school system is is the most important factor because what what what i learned um looking back at this in a critical way over the last 35 years that i've that i've been working with schools and in schools and with young people is that um people don't think so much about where behavior comes from they just think about the behavior and the reality is that the other side the the corporations the military conservative organizations they do think about that and they act on it and and you will find them in the school system in many ways you won't you won't you won't find very many progressive groups that are represented here in the school system and that's a major major error a mistake because it's all about planting seeds if you don't plant the right seeds when people are captive audience for 13 14 years five days a week seven or eight hours a day nine months of the year the other side is planting their seeds and they're planting seeds for weeds that's the reality and and so it's to me it is paramount that more progressive organizations organizations with progressive goals reevaluate their direction and find some way to prioritize at least some work focused on the school system particularly the k through 12 system academic study and research and writing and all is very important and valuable because it helps us with resources but it's the k through 12 system where the seeds are planted or the kind of wars that we have been having and and that and the and you know we have to learn we have to learn from the military the military you know they're not random about what they do they they pay very expensive companies to advise them on marketing and and marketing strategy we need to do the same thing we don't have the money to pay for those companies but we can strategize and we can ask critical questions like the ones that that some of us have mentioned here toward the end of the webinar so I mean I was asked originally to come on to this to talk about for example and I'm going to try to do this about recruiting in schools and what impact 9 11 had on recruiting well okay you'll see headlines like these today I'm trying to make it seem as though 9 11 spurred this patriotic response and that people were recruiting like crazy or enlisting like crazy well in fact it's not true it's not true that's not really what happened and for a year or two yes there was there was a temporary increase in interest in the military among young people but it wasn't because of 9 11 so much it had more to do with the economy and this is something that I've tried to educate people about because they they like to think oh it's counter recruiters who are forcing the the enlistment rates down or war and it isn't it's a combination of those factors but primarily the the the economy so you see here this is I'm just showing this because it really graphically illustrates my point when blue the blue lines go up unemployment goes up and so do so so do the enlistments of what the military what the army calls high quality enlistees when unemployment goes down they have more difficulty and that happened if you if you look at 2002 and 2003 you you see that temporary surge of of enlistments but then in 2005 the army fell 7 000 short of their 80 000 enlistment goal and it didn't really change for them until unemployment rose again and and that's that is really what drives enlistments more than anything else so I just I want people to understand that because they may think oh war does that it doesn't I would like to think it did but when people are forced because of their socioeconomic status to make a hard decision like agreeing to join the military and become an infantryman and and go out and risk their lives they're doing it because of desperation and there's no way that that they're just going to ignore that and recruiters understand it so I get what I'm getting at here is that we really have to we have to think more about what goes on in the school system not make assumptions really here's the danger of what's going on in the school system and this relates back to what I was saying about you know where we should be focusing our time and our energy in in the in 3400 high schools there are junior ROTC units and the combined number of students who on any given school they sit in a military and doctor nation class is almost is over half a million okay and many of them are also offered in school marksmanship training um think about that over half a million students and they don't just absorb JROTC propaganda and that's it and it stays while they're in the class they go into other classes and they take it with them and it also follows them into adulthood now you go okay there are many more high school students than half a million well here's the deal um right now they're they're they're trying to solidify proposals to greatly expand the JROTC program and one proposal is to increase it to 6000 schools so then you're going to have a million or more students in that program and and while that's happening these are the kind of lessons they're being taught this is this is the results of a review that that we did last year um and and some of the conclusions we had which is those textbooks show racial racial ethnic and gender stereotypes there's anti-moss anti-muslim propaganda there's whitewashing of our wars um but the most important concern that that I have from what I what I read was that constantly that program tries to teach young people that military values and codes of conduct conduct are present or presented in a way that um they should they should want it for civilian society that that's what they're convinced of when they walk out of their JROTC classes think about that we have a half a million students going through that system coming out and they've been taught that military values and codes of conduct are are appropriate for civilian society and we want to ask ourselves you know how does it we come for a full circle and have the same struggles today well this is the answer it's what goes on in this also of you who are teachers including Rachel and and probably a few others uh in this webinar understand this and and that is that is the thing that that I feel we should be talking about that's the kind of critique that we so um I do have a list of links these are resources that people can use if they if they decide yes I want to do something about this I do want to address this problem in K through 12 schools these are links to resources and I pasted them in the chat earlier but I'm assuming they'll also be here in the recording and I can paste them in again but this is a practical way for groups to get involved and I'm not saying you have to drop everything else you're doing but I'm saying you know groups groups like Code Pink and and um uh uh Peace Action and and and a variety of other organizations they're doing valuable work in in agitating for um more progressive change they should look at how they can maybe shave off some of their attention some of their resources to focus on this and that's pretty much all I have to say and thank you very much for giving me a chance to to share this information thank you so much rick um for posing those critical questions and for reminding us just how deeply embedded militarism is within our schools um last but certainly not least I want to introduce Jodi Evans Jodi is the co-founder of Code Pink and the afterschool writing program 826 la she's been a visionary advocate for peace for several decades and she inspires us at Code Pink to call out the lies and the fear that lead us to war and to see the parallels between the war on terror and the new wars being started today so I'm going to pass it over to Jodi to speak and share a very special announcement thank you Emily great job today um and also thank you rick you know um after congress voted us to war I started an afterschool writing program with Dave Eggers 826 la because I realized how uneducated even our members of congress were they were incapable of critically thinking about war and writing fostered critical thinking and we've served over a hundred thousand students in la unified school district who qualify for school lunch many of whom don't have an english speaking parent at home and um too many who are homeless and um foster kids so yes education is part of the peace economy that is strangled and privatized more and more every year by the war economy so um thank you for what you're raising today we've heard from so many departed peace field who's telling activists on this tragic day that was followed by horrific terrorism violence and brutality by this the united states of america I thank you all so much for your openness honesty and your intimate stories some we will be grieving for days and yet many um I think they will fuel also our passion for peace and our desires to end this insanity tomorrow is 912 we can all model how to respond in a different way first we ourselves must practice the forms of peace divesting ourselves in the war economy that forces us to act from alienation scarcity transaction selfishness competition distraction reaction limitation urgency and us versus them instead we need to practice what it is to cultivate a peace economy listening connection community building interdependence relational engagement quality attention both and because we are all connected you can learn more about divesting patterns at um code pink and download our 21 days to divest from the war economy but I just wanted to make sure we knew it's up to us first then we need to bring our listening relating connected selves into the streets exposing the costs of war that affect everyone all needs lead back to the pentagon and its suck of money into death destruction annihilation and as we have seen today much grief war and the pentagon serve the war economy and what has happened since 911 is the rich have gotten richer the united states has moved right and the social fabric is in tatters while the world is less safe and terrorism has increased everywhere so tomorrow on 912 we launch hashtag cut the pentagon a big tent intended to pull the already grassroots activism together to show that the needs of the people and the planet are being denied by the stupidity of wars and the pentagon we plan to raise up direct actions teachings on the costs of war and where we can try to light on the places sharing caring relationality is happening in our communities the places where the money should be going to create conditions conducive for life each day we will focus on one of the coalition members and what they're doing so first of all we're reminded of our breath and nourished by each other's engagement where we can learn what we can share in our community and take local the website is a place where we can go to get under the tent where we can bring others to grow the tent you can drop in every day you can raise awareness we all must become tuning ports for peace changing this culture of war we live in to one of kindness and caring and sharing and understanding and connection and my favorite words love and peace the next war is already happening we hear it from members of the military right now china is who they are told their enemy is and they think they're saving the people of taiwan there are already victims of this war on china and they are in the united states violence against asians in the u.s. is on a steady rise if you care about the people in taiwan the only answer is no war do not sell weapons to them to be a pawn in the u.s. aggression on china they will be destroyed i have been in north korea and what happened there is beyond unspeakable a violence and a genocide that cannot fully be grasped so as always the only answer is no war and china is not our enemy we all need to be more educated on china so we can be in cooperation and relationship for a future as aggression on china is with a nuclear power and our us tax dollars are funding more nuclear weapons just as a few of those weapons will bring an end to the world with a nuclear winter this is a very existential threat let us show them that it is people not money that wins it is up to all of us and it will take all of us the beautiful c al ryan said we need a grassroots movement the pentagon is a place to pull everyone under a big tent and show them all the issues lead back to the pentagon those funds were sweeps into the pockets of the rich while destroying the people the planet and all past apiece need to be diverted to the needs of the people planet peace and a future use the hashtag cut the pentagon when raising up your issue join the coalition if you haven't already and be in the streets be teaching be sharing what you learn and do not be silent in the face of the costs of war that are all around you you thank you danica emily rachel frank fray and thank you to code pink and mass peeps action teams for all your super hard work that went into making today happen and for creating this space for us to touch these deep and personal stories remember to grieve to feel and to touch our passions for peace it is time to build that big tent we need to make it necessary and the only answer for members of congress to cut the pentagon or what they risk the shame as the costs of war are wrapped around their necks and they are exposed for denying the needs of the people don't accept their words call them on their votes and like norman solomon said instead of votes for a little less money for war need we need to be calling members to say they will not vote money for war anymore you right now can call on your member to join with barbalee and cutting the pentagon budget down to what was called a peacetime budget and funding what is needed for peace emily's posting that link in the chat so act right now as we say goodbye today please make a commitment to be visible to be beautiful from the deep love we have all touched today to educate and educate and organize and engage engage engage onward to peace and can we all unmute and share our appreciation to the team to the speakers and say yes to our commitment to rise up thank you teams thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you Thank you so much. Thank you all. Thank you guys. Thank you everybody. You're in every month. Thank you. You're rising together. You're in. . Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. And the program, Jody. Love you all. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Are we going to sing Midea, happy birthday? Oh. Oh no, no. It's a lot. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Thank you so much, that's beautiful. Bye to everyone. Thank you so much. Thank you. Bye, Cynthia. Thank you so much. By the way, tomorrow, as Jodi Evans said, is September 12th, and the Lines for Global Justice has a webinar on media disinformation on Nicaragua at 3 p.m. Eastern. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I'm going to let Jodi speak. Jodi is still here. Thank you so much for joining us. Please join us. Tyg has made a crazy amazing cake of the Pentagon. We are going to cut the Pentagon cake and eat it too, along with some Ben and Jerry's ice cream while we hear from some of the coalition members of why it's necessary to join this big conversation. I'm going to get a cake. Or join together and watch the live stream. Share with each other what you would find instead of war. That's what we're going to be doing. We're going to be hanging hearts on the White House fence of what we want the funds invested in instead of war. Post those on the Facebook. We're going to be asking that question tomorrow. Not only what should we be funding instead of war, but what are some ideas for direct action? We're exposing the costs of war. We're talking about what we should be funding. We need some great ideas, y'all. Share with us your ideas of ways we could be engaging. We're going to west tech on Tuesday to expose the war mongers who are fueling their ideas to the State Department instead of ways to peace. They're fueling ways to war. We've got a bean bag game at one of the universities on Thursday. Either you can throw the bean bag in the black hole of the Pentagon or the rainbow of education, health care, caring for each other. We need your ideas. We need to be engaged every day. We're looking for ideas and support. We're looking for ideas and support. And also for you to join the coalition and have something that you're doing that day that inspires other. We're hoping that like the vigil of code pink outside the White House that things like this start to arise up in other communities and people take it on locally. Rachel, you already do this. So it's about doing it more. It's that we just need to do more. We need to do more. We need to do more. I think they can vote more money to war. We were not, they're not feeling us. They got to be feeling us more. And we're going to Pelosi's on 9 21. Have a big tea party with a big Pentagon cake. So join us up at Nancy Pelosi's from four to six. On the 21st. She's at 26 40 Broadway in San Francisco. And we're going to dance in the streets. And we're going to deliver a message to her. We're going to deliver a message to her. We're going to deliver a message to her. We're going to deliver a message to her. We're going to deliver a message to her. You know, Jodi, I just, we in San Pedro, we have the kind of distinct privilege of having all our politicians within blocks of each other. So it's, it's easier, but yeah, definitely we feel, we feel a lot of empowerment by actually going. To a Congress person's office. And for the last, of course, year and a half, they've been pretty shut down because of COVID, and this is what gets them out because we were out August 31st on, on Tuesday, you know, the last troops home. And we called them beforehand. And depending on who your Congress person was, we said, we're not there to protest. We want you to come with us and like come to our side. And so they kind of, you know, we, we coax them. But, you know, if more and more people can go to their congressional offices and vigil out there, but you just gave a great idea, Jodi, what are the needs? What are the needs for sure? That's a great idea. Okay. And everyone enjoying code pink Congress on Tuesday, every other Tuesday night to learn more. I mean, like has been stressed. We all need to learn from each other. It's we've learned and fell from each other. Today, but that never ends. You know, it's, it's nourishing each other. You know, it's, you know, it's, you know, it's, you know, it never ends. You know, it's, it's nourishing each other's hearts as part of being an activist and learning from each other. We've all got the places where we're learning and where we can be sharing and raising up what we learned. So thank you so much, Rachel and Emily and Frank and Brian and Danica who I'm sad is not here with us. So I just want to raise up Danica. Yeah. Yeah. She's been pivot key, key organizer of this. Yeah. So is it okay if we, we steal the half a cake idea? I love it. It's not stealing. I know. It's like, it's sharing caring. And it's like, if it's a great idea and you like it, then like, let's do it. Take it, take it. Since your form of flattery, right? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Well, maybe we could take a slice and send it up to our Congresswoman and say, here's your. Right. Very good. Yeah. I was going to say, I think it's a good time for some music. Oh, and, and to, yeah, put a little music on. Oh, just so you know, we are staying open a little bit for people who want to share. So if you want to stay with us. Jody, you want to say something? Oh, no, I just, we'll get, I'll do a little video with tags so we can have the cake instructions up on the site. Where will be your live stream tomorrow? Oh, the live stream. Cut the Pentagon.org cut the Pentagon.org. No, just cut the Pentagon.org. Okay. Thank you. And anything about the international day of peace, September 21st. We have many actions and they are up on CutThePanagon.org and Cynthia, I don't know what city you're in, but Cynthia Papermaster just talked about some. Anyone else? I would like to see... I mean, Concorde Massachusetts, three years doing constant peace vigil with the people that been doing peace vigil. I have walked all over the world for peace, was walking in the on September 11th. Yeah, we will share. Thank you. Thank you for organizing this. I've met Medea years ago in LA with Ramsey Clark. I met Kathy Kelly in Pennsylvania in the Quaker School, George School with, yeah, and quite a few of the others. I tried to be in touch. Thanks for coming, Arthur. We appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. We appreciate you. It sounds like you're in LA, Arthur. No, I lived in Southern California the longest, but I'm in Concorde, Massachusetts. Oh, okay, my neck of the woods. It's yours, Brian. I'll send you my information, Rachel. Video there today around the center in Concorde with my flags and... I like the idea. So just what we're doing here, we're not sure, but we're keeping it open. And so I think if people raise their hand, they take stack, or maybe if we see something in the chat that we moderators can maybe ask someone their idea. Wendy, would you like to share your idea of what we can do on September 21st? Hi, yes. I'm a member of Upper Hudson Peace Action.