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Mahatma Gandhi once said,

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"There are two types
of power in the world:

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the first obtained
for the fear of punishment,

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and the second through acts of love."

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He believed in love as a force for change,

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and that any power obtained through
the fear of punishment was weak,

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temporary, corrosive to the human spirit,

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whereas that power enacted
through the acts of love

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was 1,000 times more effective.

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And better yet, permanent.

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I felt that power of love from my father

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the first time he taught me
how to ride a bicycle.

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His love took the form of patience.

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I recall how he gently ran beside me
holding, steadying, pushing,

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gently encouraging me to trust
in what he knew was inside of me.

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I must have failed 100 times.

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But then came that moment,
as if by some act of magic,

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my tires righted for the first time.

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And I remember as this young child

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feeling as if I was floating in flight
through the heart of a neighborhood.

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And for that moment, all the things
that hung heavy in my young heart,

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all the things my young mind
couldn't understand,

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my parents late-night fights,

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their crumbling marriage,
the slow-moving disease

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that crept through my mother's body,

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all of it seemed to disappear
that first afternoon.

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And so it was not long after that
that I began a ritual of my own.

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It began each day after school

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as I'd hurriedly make my way
to my bicycle,

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grab it from the rack,
pedal across my neighborhood,

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push it beneath the fence,

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and then cycle deep
into the heart of a nearby wildlands

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in the east of the San Francisco Bay area.

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And it was there that I found solace.

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Simply peddling over dirt,
through the forest and the trees,

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because there was something
in that simple act of motion

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atop that equally simple machine
of rubber and steel

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that brought me back to myself.

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And in that I was free.

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But then my life changed
as all lives must.

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And within two years,
my parents had argued so much,

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my father moved out of the house,
and I lost interest in that bike.

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And as it sat dormant collecting dust
in some remote corner of the garage,

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my mother died in the midst
of a bitter divorce.

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Needless to say, as I was first thrust out
in the world as a young man,

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I spent the first decade of my life angry,

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bitter, hurting myself, hurting others,

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the power of love nowhere to be found.

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But then my father returned to my life.

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He said to me, "I understand.

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I felt that loss, too.

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And I needed to talk to somebody.

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Perhaps you should
think about that as well."

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Six months later, I sat
before a psychotherapist.

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"I think I'm crazy," I said to her.

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I thought she'd have me committed.

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Instead, she looked at me with warm,
empathetic eyes, and she said,

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"Rick, the ones
who are truly crazy in this world

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are the ones who are trying very hard
to convince you that they're not."

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That was the beginning of my healing path.

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And for the next three years,
I dug deeply into myself,

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sometimes looking at parts
I didn't want to see.

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But after that three-years period,
there came what some people call

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a moment of clarity,
a tipping point, if you will,

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at which I was able to ask myself
one of life's most important questions:

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what do you want before you die?

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What is your dream?

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I had worked 14 years
as a daily newspaper photographer,

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and I knew one thing for sure:
that career was no longer feeding me.

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I had had a larger dream.

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I had always dreamed of riding
a bicycle around the world.

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And so within a two-year period of time,

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I found myself sitting on the top
of the Golden Gate Bridge on my bike,

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saying goodbye to friends and family,
riding 4,000 miles across America.

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I pedaled in America 4,000 miles there,
and moved on to Europe

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where I spent eight months cycling through
the coldest winter in European record.

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From there, I went south
through Greece and into Turkey.

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I was denied a visa to come into Iran

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so I continued through
Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, China,

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18,000 feet over the Tibetan Plateau,
and down into India,

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Nepal, and Bangladesh.

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It was there that I began
to see something different

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from the seat of my bicycle:

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suffering on a level
that I had never seen before.

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And only then did I learn
the second power of love,

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the first being the care of self,
and the second to allow that

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to be reflected outwards,
towards service to others.

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I began volunteering
in the time off my bike.

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The first, the hardest, was comforting

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the dead and dying
in an aid hospice in Thailand.

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That was followed by bomb extraction work

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in Laos alongside these gentlemen

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that extract bombs and keep them
from killing anybody else.

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I followed that up in Vietnam by working
alongside mine victim rehabilitation

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and then taught English
to impoverished children in Cambodia.

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But the reason I'm here today

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is to tell you about
what happened just after that.

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I was cycling south through Thailand,

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and I met this gentleman,
an Iranian from Mashhad, Iran.

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We corresponded by email for a while.

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Mohammed Tajaran was his name.

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He invited me to come to Penang, Malaysia.

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Pretty soon, I was sitting
having coffee and lunch with him.

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We agreed we'd ride
together across Malaysia,

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across Malaysia's main range, one
of the oldest rainforests in the world.

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And as we rode side by side,
I asked him about his life.

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What he told me was profound.

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He told me, his father had died
when he was young,

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and that he'd done
everything right in his life;

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that he got his degree in engineering,
opened a successful business.

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But then as he was climbing
a mountain one day,

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he realized that it just wasn't right.

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And so, he began to plan for a journey.

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For him, he had a dream
to cycle around the world.

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And as he got ready
to do that, he learned English,

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and then he just set out
with 500 bucks in his pocket.

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Well, that afternoon, what I realized

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was this man was telling my story.

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That was my story.

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And I thought to myself: here was
this man that people were saying,

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this is your enemy, when, in fact,
I had more in common with this man

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than I had with many
of my friends back home.

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After the end of our ride,

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into the east coast of Malaysia,
we dug a hole.

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He was riding
around the world planting trees.

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And we decided to plant
a tree together, for peace,

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a tree that still remains
and grows for peace

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between our two countries,
America and Iran.

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(Applause)

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And when I said goodbye to Mohammed,
I told him that I loved him.

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I began to weep because I was sorry
that our two countries

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were hurling a warlike rhetoric
at one another.

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They were not acting
from the power of love,

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but they were acting from this power

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they hope to attain
through threats of punishment.

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And so, over the years
that I didn't see Mohammed,

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we developed a second program project
called "The Wheels of Peace".

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And instead of explaining that to you,

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I'd like to invite him out here
to explain it to you himself.

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Mohammed, are you in there somewhere?
He got lost on his bike somewhere.

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Where are you Mohammed? He's shy.

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He doesn't want to come out now.

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Mohammad, are you back there?

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I don't know what happened.

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(Applause)

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Mohammed Tajaran: I've been waiting
so long for this moment

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to hug one of my best friends in front
of a crowd in my country, in Iran.

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I'm so excited, so emotional now.

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"Wheels of Peace" is a project

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to connect kids
from two different nations.

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They're like two wheels of a bicycle,
totally dependent on each other.

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If one doesn't work,
the other one would fail.

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Rick and I are just like a frame
trying to connect them through our force,

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our letters and exchanging those letters.

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A letter to understand

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they have the same values
in the whole system.

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In the same way, in our world,

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peace is related to the peace
of every single nation.

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As Saadi said,

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"Human beings are members of a whole,
in creation of one essence and soul.

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If one member is afflicted with pain,
other members uneasy will remain."

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RG: And so Mohammed and I visited
classrooms in Iran and America.

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Each one of us would collect
artwork and letters

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to be exchanged by the children.

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Then we met in--
I can't say the word,

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Kish Island, just next door last year.

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And we brought that artwork
and those letters together.

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And I guess the thing
that I want to finish with is:

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what did you learn from all of this?

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And you know, I think it's something
that all of you already know;

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that in our approach every day,
moment to moment,

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we have a choice to operate
from what Gandhi spoke of,

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to operate from that place of love
or to operate from that place of fear.

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And so, for me personally,
I think you know the choice,

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I think you know the choice for Mohammad.

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But we'll be gone soon enough
in so many years,

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and we have the next generation coming.

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So I'd like to share with you
what they had to say

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to one another with their art
and with their letters.

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[What did the children of America and Iran
have to say to one another?]

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(Video) (Music)

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[I love you my friend!]

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[Aren't we all humans,
then why can't we live in peace?]

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[Love]

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[me and you, friends forever]

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[Friends]

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[No more war]

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[Iran, America, Peace]

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[No war, more peace]

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[Love is the only force capable of turning
an enemy into a friend." Dr.MLK Jr.]

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(Applause)

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RG: Thank you.

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MT: Thank you very much.
I really appreciate it.

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(Applause)