 to have you with us tonight and we just ask that everybody mute themselves as we review the agenda and welcome you to tonight's program. Block the bill defeating Biden's $95 billion supplemental. We have a few guests you'll be hearing from tonight, including Nicolai Petru, who is the University of Rhode Island's political science professor, who wrote a book, terrific book, called The Tragedy of Ukraine, he'll be talking about why there is no military solution. We have Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst, who briefed the president, Lyndon Johnson on a daily basis, and we had some very specific questions to ask him about what he thinks might happen and where the strategic context might be within the Biden administration to reverse course, this genocidal course. We also, of course, have Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CodePink, who will be talking with, holding a conversation with Mota Salim Taz, who has joined the CodePink delegation on Capitol Hill to advocate for defeat of this bill. He has family, unfortunately, suffering in Gaza. So we'll hear more about that. But first, I just wanted to say thank you and to encourage you to introduce yourself in the chat, your name, where you're from, any affiliation that you want to share, and to please respect the norms. Grace will be posting them or has posted them in the chat, but basically, you don't show respect to everybody, disagree agreeably, mean what you say, but don't be mean, that kind of thing, and certainly honor our guests. So news updates. What's going on? Well, the United States rejected for the third time a ceasefire resolution in the United Nations today. We have read, however, that the Biden administration plans to introduce or propose to introduce an alternative resolution perhaps as early as tomorrow that calls for a temporary ceasefire or a six-week ceasefire and opposes a ground invasion of Rafa. We've also at CodePink been focused on Julian Assange this week because today and tomorrow the courts in London are holding hearings on extradition, the extradition request of the United States. And of course, we oppose him being extradited. We think that he revealed the crimes of the U.S. government and for that, he's paying a terrible price, years in solitary, virtual torture. And we certainly want to call for his freedom. So those are a few news updates. Medea has been very busy in Washington. She has been going from one office to the next with a group of about 20 to 40 people to talk about why this $95 billion supplemental is so disastrous. But before we actually go to the conversation between her and Taz, we're going to take a look at a few videos. So let's take a look at the video on Assange. This is from the International Association or Federation of Journalists. The actions for which they are seeking to prosecute Julian Assange are actions that journalists undertake every day. He recognized that there had been wrongdoing. He found a confidential source. He encouraged that confidential source to share the information with him and he published it to the world. Be under no illusions. If this prosecution is successful, vital cases will not come to light. So many famous investigative cases, the names of which we all know. The Lidemite, the Panama Papers, MPs, expenses all came to light because whistleblowers shared confidential information and journalists published it. If Julian Assange goes to prison, journalists the world over will be dissuaded from doing the same. That's why our message should be clear, free Julian Assange, support journalism, safeguard free speech. Thank you. Yes, and we're cheering that those extradition charges will be dropped. Trump in the final days of his administration issued the extradition order and Biden has yet to drop that order and we know that it's not just a threat to Julian Assange but to freedom of the press throughout our country. All right. We have one other video. Medea, perhaps you want to give us a few words about what happened when Susan Sarandon visited Capitol Hill and then we'll go into the video. Yes, we were so excited to have the actress, Susan Sarandon, who herself has paid dearly for having come out in support of Palestinian rights, losing her Hollywood agent and being blacklisted in a number of projects, but she continues to speak out and agreed when we asked her to come to Washington, D.C., and she was surrounded. We had about 80 people come. Our co-founder, Jodi Evans, came all the way from Los Angeles to be part of it, and it was an amazing day in which we went through the halls of Congress with this huge entourage, not only of individuals who joined but of press, and there was so much press. We had to just be trying to make our way through the halls, and Susan was really remarkable. She was so generous with her time. She's so intelligent on the issues. She held very brilliant conversations with people who totally disagreed with her, and then we had a chance to have a nice interaction with Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and Congresswoman Cory Bush. We also met with a number of different Congresspeople, so it was a great day, and I think Marcy will play a little clip from that. Yes, and if I'm allowed, I just want to share what you shared with me earlier, and that was that when Medea went from office to office with Susan and many others, some of the staff members had never heard, you know, they're young, and they didn't know who Susan Sarandon was, and Medea said, you know, maybe your boss might be interested in meeting her, and of course, once they checked, the response was, yes, definitely, and they came out of their offices. Well, we don't agree with your politics, but we're so, we're so enamored of your acting ability. We love you. All right, let's take a look at the video with Susan Sarandon. We have to change the narrative. We may not have as much money as APAC, but we have more people and we have more truth. Well, I wish that I had a million plus, which is what Jeffries has received, and as far as also to try to have a conversation, but they clearly don't want to have a dialogue, which to me makes it seem as if they're afraid to know the truth of what's actually going on, and I guess their APAC donors make that very difficult should they start to listen to what actually the rest of the world, the rest of the United States, the bulk of the United States wants to ceasefire. There's never been a piece that's been attained through violence. We have to have a permanent ceasefire and save the lives of all those people that are now basically in a corner, just being shot at like fish in a barrel or something very, as we know, and was seen during the South African testimony, pages and pages and pages that clearly say this is genocide. There are a lot of Americans that, you know, don't understand why we're able to find billions of dollars for war, billions of dollars to a country that has health care, that has subsidized housing, that has free education when we're told in this country it's impossible. So I think that's another element of the people that need to be listened to. So I'm very happy to be here to be able to stand with these women, some of whom have so much personal loss. And as a mom, I just can't bear any longer to see this kind of devastation with so many of the victim's children and women. I don't understand how people can turn a blind eye to that. I just don't understand it. I think we've got that. All right. Yeah, we don't understand it either, Susan. So we'll keep trying to communicate, right? All right. Now we're going to go to a conversation between Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink, political author and Mo Taz, known as Taz Salim, who's a Palestinian American residing in D.C. He's completing his doctoral studies in clinical psychology. His father grew up in a refugee camp in northern Gaza. Currently, the vast majority of Salim's family on his father's side, cousins and uncles are living in Gaza, where they have been displaced on several occasions. Tragically, the relentless onslaught against Gaza has claimed the lives of many of Salim's family members. Taz has joined Code Pink's Capitol Hill delegation to tell lawmakers this genocide has to stop. So with that, I thank you so much, Mo Taz, for joining us. Medea. Thank you for your production. And thank you, Medea, for having me here today. I really appreciate it. Terrific. Well, we are so appreciative of you joining us many times in Congress, in fact, day after day. And I hear your testimony. I look at your face in anguish. And I think how difficult it is for you to be doing this. So maybe we could start out about what your own situation is and why you have been going to Congress with us. Yeah. So I. My my father's from Gaza. And so I have almost the entirety of my family on my dad's side there. That's nine. So he's one of 10 siblings. So I would say eight of my aunts and uncles are there as well as many numerous cousins. So it's been quite difficult in terms of just dealing with the day to day, especially. I I find that in most spaces I'm in throughout my day, there's like this almost forced normalcy to everything. Everyone just is trying to go about their day and. Pretend that everything is fine. And unfortunately, I don't have that privilege because I my heart's always in Gaza. I'm always thinking about my family there. I'm always trying to be in contact with them. And there are many days where I many days pass by where I have no contact and you're really sitting there just thinking. Are they still alive? Are they have they passed? Or, you know, it's it's just like a horrible horrible situation to be in. So could you say what your experiences have been in Congress? What might have been surprising to you? Maybe some of the positive and negative examples. Yeah, so going to Congress has been. It's been on one hand great. I'll start with sort of the positives of it. For one day, like you're the fact that you're organized this and like I joined pretty late is just it's crazy that you've been going there every day for months now. I think the most positive thing is just the people who come even if for a day, even if for a few days, or even the ones who have been coming very regularly just being able to be in this space with a lot of like minded people with people who look at what's happening in Raza and in Palestine and, you know, refuse to just say, okay, I'm over it or what am I going to do? Or, or, you know, they're these are my people. Why should I care? No, they see that there's a genocide happening. And their humanity sort of compels them to do what I think is right, which is to go and be in front of all these congressmen. And be in front of all these congressmen and these senators and to say, hey, like, this is enough enough is enough. So I mean, in terms of some of the positive interactions which are sadly far and few in between. There's, for example, like Mark Pocan, who is a congressman. I think his district like encompasses Madison, Wisconsin was very supportive. We talked about how his, his like own efforts to try and call for a ceasefire to raise awareness about Raza and also he himself told us that he provides funding to Inarwa, which is just like incredible. And I think other sort of positive experiences are any room we go into it. This is really just like an encapsulation of this. What's happening in Raza and how it sort of is reflected in the discourse and in people, any, any room we go into for any senator. We've, we've seen a lot of people sort of like, like we'll be talking with the chief of staff and in the back all the like interns or stuff are just like sort of nodding their heads with us and like simply listening and so you have all these like lower level people trying to like hint their their solidarity with us, as well as I one time got like a thank you for what you're doing from someone who was working in the cafeteria. I mean, that's, I feel like a reflection of like what the people feel versus what those who are in the systems of power are doing. And so switching to, I'll go sort of a middle area where a lot of the, and you can speak to this because I know you've met a lot more of the actual senators or Congress people. But I, some of the most unfortunate, I guess, interactions that I've had with staffers or, or, you know, the actual senators is, you'll have these really really sort of outwardly kind staffers who will be so nice and so welcoming and, you know, have a seat and they're listening intently and I, you know, I, every time I go to talk to them, I always just share my own personal story in hopes of trying to like appeal to the humanity. And I talk about how I, you know, I've lost numerous family members. And what ends up happening is this really weird thing where they they're sort of on the outside being really nice but then at the same time they'll, they'll say, you know, but it's unfortunate that you know we can't like our hands are tied or there's a lot of excuses as to like that's not realistic, I'm trying to be realistic with you and just very, very, very invalidating. And then, you know, there's the other end of this, the spectrum which is just straight up very disturbing incidents of like, like for example, the hearing we went to we went to a hearing last week, which was a Houthi, the Iranian proxy Houthi threat to trade something along those lines. And it was really like, you know, excuse my language, it was like 90 minutes of bullshit. It was really just, you know, like you had all of these like both Republican and Democrat Congress people and they had these witnesses in front. And it was this really, really, you know, as especially for me that was the first time I've ever sat in on a hearing in the in Congress and it was just, everyone was just like reaffirming what someone else said, and even those witnesses they had in front where all these like think tank heads who just reflected back to the congressman, like the same points and pretty much said like everyone was just like agreeing with each other and the whole just a horse. It was like, what are we doing here. And I can't believe that this is like what happens behind these closed doors, so to speak, where it's just like, there isn't any actual, especially when it comes to the issue of Palestine there isn't any actual I just did him a discourse about okay how what what can we do here. Riza wasn't mentioned once ceasefire wasn't mentioned once. And even one of the, one of the witnesses who I was sort of like, chased him out after chase after him when when they were done. And I told him like, why did you not mention Riza even once. And he got mad at me and he was like because it's not about Riza, which is just an absurd thing to say when the Houthis as well as all these other proxy groups have clearly stated like you and the aggression on Riza, and we will stop our attacks or we will stop you know the Red Sea blockade. So just, it was really a very like clear cut moment of how like not in touch, these people are. Well, I wanted to pick up on a couple of things that you said. One is about the people who come and that that gives us inspiration. The diversity is incredible we are young old in fact there are several times where we've had school children come and join us Montessori schools. We've had a group called teachers against genocide that have come with their with parents and children. We've had doctors against genocide who are on their own doing lobbying every single week and sometimes we join with them, and they are very effective when they talk to the members of Congress. We always have Palestinians and we make sure that they're the ones who are the first voices that are heard by the members of Congress or their staff, and it's always changing. Never is there the same group every day. People are coming in from all over the country. They come in by train they come in by plane they stay for two days for three days. And we help if they need to put put them up some people put a go fund me up to raise money so they can come here. It is really wonderful to see the depth of commitment of people who take off from work call and sick whatever they have to do to come. And the other thing that you said about going into these offices. I want people to know that we don't go in with already set up meetings because when we ask for meetings we usually never get them or never hear from them. So we just walk into these rooms and we have been in the same some of the same rooms over and over again. And what we hear from the younger staff as Taz was implying is, please come back again please keep coming. This is really important. I can't tell you enough how your visits make a difference on the inside in the way that the narrative is changing in the way that our boss or is talking about these issues. And not only do we talk to the staff but we do what what's called bird dogging which is run after the members of Congress as they're going into hearings as they're coming out into hearings we have it down to a science where we see that one is standing up and getting ready to leave the room and we send a team out to various possible exit doors so that we can catch them. And it is important sometimes we have serious conversations sometime we're just running after them saying how many Palestinians will have to die before you will call for a ceasefire. You on this call know how hard it is to get a meeting with a senator. You have to be a major donor or represent some huge organization to get a private meeting. This is one of the only ways that we can actually talk to them. So it has been very important and I want to say that the the Congress is on recess this week next week the Senate will be in session and the week after that the House and the Senate will be in session. If any of you can come and join us or know people who can please do that's the week of March 4th to 8th. We know that this this supplemental package for $14 billion more for Israel is going to pop up again it's going to rear its ugly head. That week of March 4th is also the week of the State of the Union and it's the week of International Women's Day so there will be big protests around those issues as well. So that's a great week if you're considering coming to join us. And of course we do appreciate all the calls that people are making on a regular basis into their offices. In fact there are people who come with us to say I wake up in the morning and the first thing I do is make a call to my two senators and my member of Congress. And I think that's a great wake up action to do. So Marcy do you have any maybe final questions for us. You're on me Marcy. Thank you. I'm sure that our audience will have a lot of questions and so what I want to do is reserve some time for that and and we'll move on to our next speaker but Taz we are really honored to have you with us tonight so thank you and thank you for being on Capitol Hill. I mean I think it's very powerful to have somebody with family and guys visiting these offices. These Congress people they need to. Yeah, I right and that's sort of why I the biggest one of the biggest reasons I joined is like I haven't. I'm personally like my background there isn't. I wasn't very much involved in activism, especially because you know I think a lot of Palestinians especially who moved to the US can attest to this, you know we're told we're told to keep our identity hidden. Because of fear of being doxxed because of fears of just being like targeted for our identity. And, you know, and I say this also to add to Medea's point about like if anyone in this call knows people or they themselves can join us. I can't tell you how much we need you and how powerful it feels as well. And how like the first time I went I was super nervous and I had no idea that I could literally just walk in like I just walked into a Senate building, met up with the group there that day, and we were going senator to senator just making our points and seeking with them and you know if you are on sort of. I'm forgetting like on the fence about really like joining an action I highly recommend that you do because I can't think of a better decision I've made in recent times truly. Thank you. Thank you Taz. We'll get back to you soon. Our next yes, our next speaker is Nikolai Petru. He is an author he's a political science professor at the University of Rhode Island. He wrote his book The Tragedy of Ukraine it's a fabulous book about the roots of the tension in Ukraine and Nikolai Petru has also been a Council on Foreign Relations fellow he served as special assistant for policy toward the Soviet Union in the US Department of State. His other books besides the tragedy of Ukraine include Ukraine in crisis, crafting democracy, the rebirth of Russian democracy, and others. So welcome, Dr. Nikolai Petru and I think you're going to be telling us about why the supplemental which includes $60 billion for Ukraine. In addition to the $14 billion for Israel for transfer of weapons and another I think it's $8 billion to militarize East Asia for a confrontation with China. Prohibition against funding for UNRWA and the ability for the President the White House to bypass congressional notification on weapons shipments. Why this is not the answer, certainly as it regards to Ukraine and then after we hear from you, Ray McGovern who's with us former CIA analyst will be joining me and media for a conversation. So, take it away, Dr. Petru. Thank you very much, media and Marcy. So I'm going to try to give you in 10 minutes or less an impartial analysis of the problem with US funding of the war in Ukraine. An impartial analysis has to begin by reviewing what the current policy has accomplished and then use that as a baseline to assess what will happen if we continue on the same course. This is actually not very hard to do. Since those who favor continued war funding make four claims about how this war has improved America's national security. First, they say Ukraine is winning the war. Second, that NATO has expanded. Third, that the Russian economy is collapsing and fourth, that the Russian army has been decimated. These points were in fact made last week at the Munich security conference by Senator Lindsey Graham, who therefore concludes that American support for the war in Ukraine continues to be, and I quote, a good investment for the American people. Unfortunately, the senator's information is incorrect. Ukraine is currently losing the war. After surprising Russian forces in the summer of 2022, it sought to break the Russian supply lines connecting eastern and southern Ukraine than Boston Crimea, but was unable to do so. In a string of subsequent defeats, Ukraine wound up losing significant territory and manpower in 2023. Russia is now clearly on the offensive. Second, NATO expansion actually means much less than is commonly thought. While formally neutral, Sweden and Finland were already integrated into NATO operations, conducting joint regional defense and logistics operations together. In Russian military planning scenarios, they were always assumed to be NATO assets. Their value to NATO is largely in terms of public relations, not security. Third, the Russian economy is not collapsing. In fact, it grew faster than all G7 economies last year and is predicted to do so again in 2024. In power purchasing parity, Russia even became Russia's Europe's largest economy last year, overtaking Germany. And while the IMF expects the Russian economy to shrink eventually in four to five years time, this is only compared to the IMF's own pre-war forecast. In other words, it is a loss of what might have been had Russia never invaded rather than of actual economic production. Finally, Russia's army has not been decimated. Losses on both the Ukrainian and Russian sides have been horrific. But while Russia may have lost anywhere from 50,000 to 150,000 souls, for a population of 100 to 145 million, this is far less devastating than the 200 to 500,000 losses estimated for Ukraine. Out of a population of just 30 million. A ratio of 1 to 100 versus 1 to 1,400. In 2023, Russia also added 400,000 new recruits, while Ukraine added just 100,000, less than half the number it hoped to recruit. Moreover, as Ukraine's weapons supplies have dwindled, Russian supplies have ramped up. According to the head of Estonian military intelligence, current Russian stockpiles will allow it to supply its army at the current rate for over a year. For Ukraine, meanwhile, the US army is currently spending its own money from its own budget to support Ukraine. Since the Western equipment given to Ukraine was rapidly depleted during last summer's counteroffensive and is not likely to be restored anytime soon, many military analysts now agree with the former inspector general of the German armed forces, Harald Kujat, that the growing disparity in military capacity now makes Ukraine's defeat inevitable. According to Senator JD Vance, the White House admits as much in private. To sum up, therefore, further military assistance by the United States to Ukraine would be unsound because it has failed to achieve its objectives. Indeed, it has backfired. Further expenditures of money to continue the same policy will only deepen this failure. But here the defenders of the war believe they have an ace up their sleeve. The reason that the policy has failed so far, they suggest, is because the West has never committed to the victory over Russia and did not support Ukraine sufficiently. With enough money, they say, Ukraine's victory is assured. Just how much money? We know, because just talking about it is one of the things that got the head of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Valery Zeluzhnik, fired earlier this month. In an interview last December, Zeluzhnik pointed out that a mere 61 billion US dollars would not suffice to liberate all of Ukraine. That, he said, would require five to seven times that amount, or 350 to 400 billion dollars. Well, my time is just about run out, so let me leave you with a few points made by Ambassador Chas Freeman. Ambassador Freeman has served with distinction in nearly every branch of our foreign policy. As US Ambassador to China and Saudi Arabia, former US Assistant Secretary of Defense and former Acting Director of National Intelligence. He therefore has a wealth of insight to offer. Here are four lessons he would like us to ponder when thinking about the war in Ukraine. Number one, Russia has been militarily strengthened, not weakened by this war. It has been reoriented and freed from Western influence, not isolated. Second, combating Russia to the last Ukrainian, says Ambassador Freeman, was always an odious strategy. And now NATO is about to run out of Ukrainians. Third, democracies lose when cheerleading replaces objectivity in reporting and governments prefer their own propaganda to the truth. And finally, wars never decide who is right. They only determine who is left. Thank you. We've found words there. Thank you so much, Nikolai Petru. We have a lot of questions for you as well and we'll get to those during a Q&A with all of our panelists. At this point, it's my pleasure to introduce Ray McGovern, who was a CIA analyst, who focused on Russian relations with also relations with China and Europe. While he briefed President Lyndon Johnson, perhaps others you'll tell us on a daily basis. Ray McGovern is a founder of veteran intelligence professionals for sanity MIPS. He's written extensively about both Ukraine and Gaza. Asserting that Israel use the October 7 attack as a pretext for the preexisting master plan to rid Gaza of Palestinians, whose presence blocks the establishment of greater Israel with sovereign control over the West Bank and Gaza. Ray has testified before the United Nations. He has a website. He has a wealth of knowledge and information. So welcome Ray. Great to have you with us on Code Ping Congress. I hope that you and Medea, if she wants to jump in, we can have a conversation that will be insightful and revelatory for our participants because you have a lot, obviously a lot of insight into how the CIA works and so forth. I want to start off with just a question about what you think about William Burns, the head of the CIA, who years ago warned successive administrations that if you try to surround Russia, if you encourage Ukraine to join NATO, that that will be a red line and lead to something horrific. So what do you think of him now? He's a cog in the wheel of the machinery. A word about Chas Freeman first. I'm really glad that Nikolai quoted from Chas Freeman. Because when Nikolai mentioned that Chas Freeman was for a time the head of the National Intelligence Council, I want you all to know that that was for six hours. Six hours was Chas Freeman, head of the National Intelligence Council, which has purview over the president's daily brief and national intelligence estimates it doesn't get any more important. Six hours? Yeah, it took six hours for the lobby to get him. For the lobby to tell Obama, oh no, no, this guy is too risky. He has a measured response to what's going on in the Middle East. Can't have him heading analysis. That's a new record. I don't know of any high intelligence official who did not require Senate confirmation. This was just a very high, it was a lower post than Chas had. So I'm just trying to set the stage here. Yeah, Chas Freeman was head of the National Intelligence Council for six hours one day. So, okay, now what about this guy, William Burns? He was told on the 1st of February 2008, look, it was Lavrov, the foreign minister at all. Mr. Barnes, we have, do you know what NET means? Well, NET means NET. That's a red line, no admission of Ukraine or Georgia to NATO. 1st of February. Burns played it straight. He reported that back, the title of his cable, which we have by virtue of WikiLeaks, by the way. And if I've seen one cable from Embassy Moscow, I've seen about, oh, thousands, okay. He reported back and he said, in the title, NET means NET, Russia's Red Lines on Admission of Ukraine or Georgia to NATO. Okay, so this is 2008. Two months later, Bush and Cheney succeeded in brow-beating people like Angela Merkel and the president of France. So, the declaration in Bucharest on the 3rd of April 2008 was Ukraine and Georgia will become members of NATO. Now, Burns knows that. He put in his memoirs. Now, what Lavrov also told him on the 1st of February 2008 is, look, we have strategic interests in Ukraine. If you admit Ukraine to NATO, there will probably be a civil war in Ukraine. We will have to decide whether or not to intervene. Do you get that, Mr. Burns? Yeah, I get that. And as I said, he reported back matter of factly. What does William Burns say now? Oh, what a terrible thing the Russians did. It was completely unprovoked. And for those who went about in line here, Lavrov said, you would provoke us. And now Burns, having forgotten all this, is saying, totally unprovoked. So, answer to your question. Sorry to take out so long. Burns is a cog in the wheel and he just does what the president tells him to do or what his nominal boss, April Haynes, the existing National Intelligence Director, tells him to do. It's a waste. Okay, Medea has a question. Thank you. Yeah, Ray, the US has been either trying to sabotage negotiations as happened early on in the war. And as recently as the end of last year and the beginning of this year, Reuters has reported that the Russians had reached out to the United States to talk directly to the US, but the US nixed that as well. But the narrative that we hear from the White House is constantly Russia will not negotiate, even when Tucker Carlson had that long interview with Putin and Putin talked about being ready to negotiate. The US response was, no, he's not serious. On the other hand, as Nikolai just told us, he says the Russians are in a good position. And so it will be would be in their interest to continue this war. So are the Russians serious about wanting to negotiate. We have good questions, as usual. The proof is in the pudding. The Russians did negotiate. A week after the war started, they were feelers sent up from Kiev and from Moscow. My God, this is awful. Let's see if we can end this damn thing. Negotiators from both sides, Russian and Ukrainian met in Belarus and then in Istanbul in Turkey. They worked out a deal. Cease fire. Ukraine remains neutral. Other things worked out in a carousel. What happened? They were just about to not only initial it, but sign it when the US came in. They say Boris Johnson came in. Yeah, he did actually. But the idea was we told Zelensky, no deal. You do that. And we're not going to support you anymore. If you turn that down, then we will support you for as long as it takes with increased weaponry and everything else. Whoops. Now we don't say for as long as it takes anymore. We say, the president says for as long as we can. And given the situation in Congress, we can't anymore. So that leaves these people in the lurch, Zelensky and so forth. But again, the proof is in the pudding. The Russians did negotiate. We next it at the very beginning. We're talking late March, early April, 2022. Now since then, Zelensky was persuaded to put into Ukrainian law a provision that says Zelensky himself can't negotiate with the Russians. And this is a point, of course, that Putin made. How am I going to negotiate with the Ukrainians if their law forbids it? Are the Russians ready to negotiate? Of course they are. Who would they negotiate with? Well, presumably the Ukraine, but they know who's running the show. It would be with the what's her name, the wicked witch of the West, Victoria Nolan. Yeah, okay. And she came 10 days ago to Ukraine. The place has fallen apart. The Russians have just overcome the main obstacle to going all the way to the Dnieper River, and there was confusion in the leadership. Zelensky and Zolozhnyi, and then Victoria Nolansky came in, and Zolozhnyi was cashiered, Shirsky came in, and Shirsky committed some of their most prized reserves to relieve Adyeevka. And as usually happens, surveillance found these prized reserves, decimated them, and now Adyeevka, the key. This is, you should know, Adyeevka is from whence the Ukrainian army was shelling the civilians in Donetsk city. Okay, since 2014, okay, 14,000 until the war, couple thousand after that. So that's gone now. So the situation is, is the Russians willing to negotiate? Of course they are. But they're willing, they always say, but you have to recognize the facts on the ground, and the facts in the ground happen to be that not only Crimea is part of Russia, but so are those four oblasts, those four provinces that the Russians have claimed and that have had politicized now and are in Russia's view, part of Russia. Ray, you have inside knowledge on how an administration works. We're here tonight because we want to defeat this $95 billion supplement. We don't want to spend another $60 billion to continue a war in Ukraine that will only profit Raytheon Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman. This is a giant money laundering operation as far as I'm concerned. And at the end of the day, you'll still have internal conflicts, as I'm sure Nikolai Petru will talk about later, between the East and the West of Ukraine. So for those who are very serious about trying to defeat this bill, where do you think would be the most strategic place to apply pressure in terms of the administration as opposed to Congress? Or maybe Congress. Yeah, I think that Julian Assange, my friend here, is right. When he says, if wars can be started with lies, they can be ended with the truth. It's our job to spread the truth around. And that's why I'm in awe at my friend Medea. Motaz and all the others that are going doing this stuff day after day. I've watched this happen before Iraq. We weren't able to prevent Iraq, but this time I think we can prevent that $60 extra billion, not $60 billion over 127 other billion. Did it work before? Of course not, as Nikolai pointed out. Now here's a mixed quote for you, okay? It'll give you some encouragement and then something different. It's very, very small, and I used it with Larry Wilkerson in a op-ed we published on Consortium News on Friday. Two sentences. It comes from Anthony J. Lincoln. So if you're playing on the military terrain of Ukraine, you're playing to Russia's strength because Russia is right next door. We looked at the map. It has a huge amount of military equipment and military force right on the border. Anything we did as countries in terms of military support for Ukraine is likely to be matched and then doubled and then tripled and then quadrupled by Russia. End quote. Tony Lincoln. Bad news. That was 2015 in Germany. He was working for Obama. Obama thought it was a dumb idea to send lethal weaponry to Ukraine. Why? Because he said specifically because that would give the Ukrainians the idea that they might be able to prevail in a war with a much stronger Russia. So what am I saying here? I'm saying these guys lie through their teeth. They bend their, they're sort of like windsocks on an airport and you just have to confront them. Hey, Tony, why did you say this back in 2015? And what has changed? Has the map changed? Has the Russians changed? What made you think you could prevail this time? The last thing is that Obama himself on this particular issue had his head screwed on right. He warned. He said, look, there are countries that have core interests. Russia has a core interest in Ukraine, okay? We don't. And so please, please be careful of where you get involved in military activities. If you don't have a core interest there, don't do it. That was Obama. Where was Biden then? I think he was vice president, but he must have been asleep. It's things like this that can consensitize people to say, my God, what's with these people? Who came in? And the last thing I'll say on this is I think was very, very illustrative of the mindset of Joe Biden. 60 minutes, a month ago, at the end, the interviewer says, now, Mr. President, do you think that you can take on two wars at the same time, like Ukraine and maybe Southwest Asia? And Obama looks at him and he says, where are the United States of America? The strongest country in the history of the world. Did you hear me? The history of the world. That's megalomania. That's delusionary. And if Blinker and Sullivan are unwilling to get him out of this mindset, that's going to be real trouble, trouble for all of us because wars are very easily started these days and very difficult to finish. Thank you so much, Ray McGovern. We appreciate you joining us tonight. Yes. And we're going to ask all of our panelists to now be on screen and we'll take questions from the chat. We'll ask a few of our own and we'll have a Q&A for about 10 minutes. And then after that, we ask that you stay with us for our capital calling party because we're going to be calling Capitol Hill, talking to our congress members, house representatives and saying or leaving messages. They usually take messages that we want them to vote against this supplemental, this $95 billion supplemental with $60 billion for Ukraine and $14 billion for another transfer of weapons for genocide in Gaza for Israel. And we want also to call the office of the ranking member of the House. That's Hakeem Jeffries. The Republicans control the House. So Hakeem Jeffries is the ranking member and he has said that he wants to issue a discharge petition. If the Republicans will not bring the supplemental to the floor because the Freedom Caucus of the Republican Party is opposed to the money being spent for Ukraine and they want more money to militarize the border. So for that reason, if Mike Johnson, the House Speaker says I'm not going to bring this to the floor then Hakeem Jeffries wants to push a discharge petition with a majority vote of Congress to force a vote on this supplemental. So that's what we're looking at possibly in March and we want to leave a message for him to. So thank you for staying with us and continue. Please continue to stay with us. All right, let's start our question and answer session with our panelists. Nadia, you want to start off? Yes, I have one question that I'd like Ray to answer and then Nikolai and then one question for Taz. On the issue of Ukraine. Is there a rational voice somewhere in this administration, might it be coming from the Pentagon? What's the difference between what the National Security Council is saying? What the State Department is saying? What the Pentagon is saying? And how might that influence how we try to stop this money from going through? And then for Taz, if you could just talk about this in terms of the Palestinian American community and this campaign that's been going about genocide, Joe, abandon Biden, how you think this might influence the upcoming election? So Ray, could we start out with you? Sure. I'm sort of an optimistic type by bent. But the answer to your question in my view is no. There is no rational voice in our administration. Now, the only saving grace is that there are some people in the armed forces who know what nuclear war would result in. There are others that think we can use a little mini nuke to scare the Russians and give the US administration time to get through November and the election. There is a real drive not to lose the war in Ukraine, which is already pretty much lost, because if you lose the war in Ukraine, you lose the election. And then if you lose the election, you could lose your freedom if that other guy comes in and uses all the evidence already amassed about bribery and everything else. I kid you're not. These people are afraid of that. So my answer here is there aren't any reasonable people. There are just the opposite. There are people who have a personal stake in preventing the Russians from having an overtly big, big win in Ukraine. What they might do scares the hell out of me because I do not rule out they would pick some of these naive armed forces people who think they can use a mini nuke and think that would save the situation, save their own hides when if the other guy wins, it comes out that way. So no, there are no reasonable people. I'd be interested in what Nikolai thinks. Yeah, I have found both in government and as a private citizen out of government that there are a lot of individual rational people who are actually quite interested, quite willing to listen to your opinions. The problem is that they are constrained and limited by their professional obligations to carry out the policy of the administration. And at some point you reach a wall and you find yourself carrying out policies that you cannot support. And at that point, as we've seen in the past, a professional diplomat doesn't have much choice. They have to resign because they can no longer conduct that policy. And so we lose a lot of good people that way. So there's two things that limit the ability of wise people to influence policy. One is if they, if the administration itself is hell bent on war, and we've seen what that leads to in the past, in other areas of the world, and secondarily, institutional discipline and constraints. But as individuals, no, there are a lot of I found very intelligent and reasonable and sensible people. It's just they cannot act on what they know to be true. And in order to do that, they really have to leave the system and try to influence it from the outside, which is a very, very difficult thing to do. Thank you. And then you had a question for Taz as well. Yes, does the the issue of how, and you know where we're quite far from the election so there might be a lot of enthusiasm now and the abandoned Biden but do you think it will last until election time. Thank you for the question. I think I would say that it will most certainly last. And I think part of that is, we're sort of at a kind of a pivotal moment in the in like Arab American political engagement. Because it is the first time that we're sort of shifting towards actually unifying our voice and understanding that we as as Arab Americans and also as Muslim Americans as well. And there's an ability for us here to actually influence the election. I mean, Michigan is one of the swing states. And there are also other Arab population Arab American populations across the country. And we have a chance to actually influence the election. And from all the people I've talked to or Arab American, I really really don't think that there's sort of going to be any wavering in terms of that stance. I know personally for me there isn't anything in the world that Joe Biden could do for me to vote for him. And, you know, I want to remind also that obviously that's not an endorsement of Trump. That's us sort of exercising our, you know, I think that's what it what a democracy is about, you know, like the democratic establishment and Joe Biden in particular have let us down in every way shape. So Joe Biden has, you know, consistently, and even recently shared sort of these already these stories that have already been debunked from earlier in the war. I've been genocide. The administration, you know, I watch like Matt Miller every day that the spokesperson for the White House and don't get me started on Kirby. They're just, you know, spouting these lies day after day. I mean, a great example from just earlier today that there's a report that came out about Israeli soldiers actually like there are allegations against them, raping Palestinian women. And when questioned about it, you know, it's, we've heard, we're looking into, you know, how credible the sources are. And when the Israeli media just straight up says whatever it's taken as this is, you know, God's word, like there's no doubt about it. I would say as as Arab Americans to conclude, I think we've, we see just how hypocritical the democratic establishment has been, we see just how, you know, a genocidal Joe Biden has been just seemingly unrelenting and his stance to keep on to keep the war going. And you know, trying like going to Michigan and trying to meet with literally any like Imam or anywhere that will take him and everyone is saying no because enough is enough that it's it's. And you know there's there's a lot of like discourse in liberal circles of like but you're going to let Trump when he's worse. Probably worse. Yes, I mean honestly probably he's who would be even worse than Joe Biden, but that being said, you still can't expect us to vote for someone who just threw us under the bus is continuing the genocide. And when when Palestinian Americans died, they're not given any sort of like, like there's what the in Chicago, there's the 17 year old in the West Bank, Palestinian American 17 year old who died and there was nothing said about that. So, yeah, I, I don't think people are going to waiver and you know I'll end it with come November, we will remember, we will remember. I don't speak for code pink but just as an individual I, I understand what you're saying and I agree with what you're saying. When people tell me, oh but Trump, oh but Trump, I say you know, when you vote for a president who is committing in broad daylight live streamed, you are putting your seal of approval on that person, there is after that what what else what else is there that we would object to. This isn't a red line of genocide and killing 1315,000 children, you know, 30,000 Palestinians wounding 60,000 displacing to if this is not a red line and you're going to vote for that man, then you are saying you're okay with that. And we have to remember you know that LBJ dropped out when his approval rating was 36% Biden is at 37%. So when people send me these emails vote for Biden because of Trump, I say I remind them of this, and I say we need to be him out, not in. This is the time. All right, that's my personal opinion. I do not speak for code. I'm just a quick point because I think sometimes we forget some of the things he did earlier, like closer to October seven. I personally will never forget when he came out and said, we can't trust the numbers from the Hamas run as the health ministry, essentially like calling us liars about our calling Palestinians liars about their reporting of deaths as if you know we are these people who would like inflate the numbers just to you know make a point or something and then like every like a variety of sources came out and said, actually you know these numbers are very reliable and even some some. I think it was like a US based think tank or and you know or something came out and said actually they might be underestimating because we don't actually like, we can't count that well and that's so just horrible, like, we can we can forgive him for doing. I have a capital calling party in a minute but I have one last question that I would really appreciate answered. Nikolai and Ray and that is this statement that I inevitably hear from people who say we have to curl another $60 billion of taxpayer money at this war in Ukraine. Because if we don't, who will march in here march in there and soon he'll be taking over all of Europe. What do you say. First, well, every military, independent military analyst that I know of, including some famous names. John Meersheimer and the person I mentioned before the inspector general of the German forces. None of them take such an assessment seriously beyond the obvious fact that Putin has disavowed any such intention, which we can take with a grain of salt. There is nothing in the strategic planning that anyone can point to which prepares Russia for that sort of engagement. There is nothing and I've read not just what is available in terms of the foreign policy concept of the Russian Federation, but also the military concept. These are the guiding documents, the marching orders, if you will, that nations give and that are really important to take seriously because they are the marching orders for the entire administrative bureaucracy from top to bottom. The president, whoever it is in any country cannot tell each individual head of department what the objectives of foreign policy of that country's foreign policy are. They need a guiding document that everyone can go back to and refer to and say, aha, I understand now where we're headed with this or that aspect of policy. And so there would have to be some serious preparation for that sort of campaign and objective and it's just not there. It's just not there. So, aside from it being foolish suicidal and inconsistent with Russia's foreign policy objectives. There is simply no evidence to point to. And I think we can then reliably dismiss this as as a prospect. Thank you and your thoughts Ray, and then we'll wrap this up. Well, I begin by placing amen, amen, amen to what the professor teacher has just said. You know, if you look at the situation, and you realize that Russia was willing to settle for a whole lot less than all of Ukraine in March, April of 2022, six weeks into the war. And if you look at the lack of any indication that Russia wants to do anything more, not even take it all of Ukraine. I would guess they don't even want to take all of Ukraine east of the Dnieper River. Look at the map. If I were Putin, I would want to make a deal. I wouldn't want to be responsible for all of Ukraine east of the Dnieper. That would be an invitation to the kind of insurgency. Oh, that the British and the US are so clever at. So there is no evidence. Now the scary thing here is you have a president who is delusional. And he talks about if Russia hits one of our NATO nations, we'll have American boys fighting Russian boys and we don't want that. Well, Russia is not going to attack a NATO country. That's what Ukraine is all about. They don't want Ukraine and NATO. So it's a kind of a false premise, right? And then you get to the mother of all false premises. Donald Trump saying, haha. I've told major NATO allies that if they don't pay up, if they don't pay up, I'm going to encourage Russia to have its way with you. I'm sure Putin likes encouragement from Donald Trump. I mean, he's already distant by saying I'd prefer a providential, an epithetic, a kind of what's the word, a predictable, predictable president. So all I'm saying here is that whatever Donald Trump says in his egotistical way, if it's a false premise before, it's a false premise here. And there's no need to even comment on what delusionary things Trump says or Biden says. The reality is the reality. The Russians want to stop Ukraine from becoming part of NATO. The Secretary General of NATO has said that a couple of times. That's the deal. That's going to stick. It's just a matter of how soon the U.S. allows its satrap, its vessel in Kiev to stop fighting. With that, I want to thank all of our guests and ask Grace to help everybody unmute so our participants can also thank our guests. It's been an insightful conversation. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.