 Welcome to season three, episode five of CN Live, the silenced nuclear threat. I'm Elizabeth Boss, co-host of CN Live. As written by Caitlin Johnstone in April, the nuclear issue should be the main thing everyone talks about. There is literally no more urgent matter on earth than the looming possibility that everyone might die in a nuclear war, but people don't see it. If mainstream journalism actually existed, this flirtation with nuclear war would be front and center in everyone's awareness and people would be flooding the streets in protest against their lives being toyed with as casino chips in an insane all or nothing gamble. And now we turn to Abel Tomlinson, a peace activist and writer who has been organizing protests at the University of Arkansas for its involvement in research with Honeywell, which is a creator of nuclear weapons. So Abel, will you tell us a little bit about your protest and your background in nuclear weapons protests in general? Yeah, well, my background in protests, I mean, this is my first sort of protest effort focusing on nuclear weapons. I've been an anti-war activist since the Iraq war started. I was a freshman in college when they run up to the Iraq war. And I could tell the Bush administration was lying about the weapons of mass destruction and connections to 9-11. There was a lot of experts saying that. I was reading a lot of independent journalists that had very powerful cases to say that the war was based on lies. Ultimately, it's cost trillions of dollars and up to a million people or more have been killed, probably millions more harmed, wounded orphans, widows, and so forth and refugees. So the cascading effects of that war are immense. So I became an anti-war activist from that moment on and I've been constantly protesting war, all the wars and threats of wars that have happened since then, including coups, the coup on Bolivia, protests of threats of war with Iran, the Cold War. And so right now this is just kind of a continuation of my work just as a local peace activist. I may not reach as many as some peace activists, but I'm in Arkansas, it's in some ways backwards. And I think I do a good job for where I'm at. And I think that people like me are needed more in supposed red states where there's even more religious ignorance, I would say, and just more backwards politics, even more corrupt politics than normal, I mean. But so yeah, so this is kind of a continuation of that body of work since 2002, when it ran up to the Iraq War. And I've done a dozen different kinds of activism, not just street protests. I've been a writer, a journalist for a couple of newspapers. I've hosted a TV show, and I've worked on a bunch of other campaigns too, including medical marijuana legalization. I was a director, a regional director, and I've also worked with, in terms of campaign finance, reform, moved to amend, trying to confront corporate personhood and so forth, and a bunch of other things. But anyway, so right now our current campaign is focused on the University of Arkansas and its nuclear weapons program. And essentially, I found out about this around 2017, a few years ago, when a report was issued by ICANN, which is the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. And they're the ones that spearheaded a recent effort. Well, it started in 2017, ICANN initiated, it's a coalition of anti-war, anti-nuke activists all over the world, and they spearheaded a treaty that to abolish nuclear weapons essentially to make them illegal. And they were subsequently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their work. I think 122 nations initially negotiated this treaty through the United Nations and introduced this treaty and got the ball rolling, and then they got the Nobel Peace Prize at that point. And so in the same year, 2017, ICANN issued a report called Schools of Mass Destruction and it lists about 50 universities in the United States that are involved in nuclear weapons production and the University of Arkansas is one of those. And so it kind of been on the back of my mind since then that I should do something about that. It's a local target. I always do these kinds of street protests that I never see any tangible results. I'm just, sometimes it feels like I'm just screaming at a brick wall or something, but I feel like I felt like this campaign, here's a local target, there's a potentially achievable objective to try to get university to cancel this nuclear weapons contract. And so after I read that report that they're involved in nuclear weapons production, I thought about it for a while and then just this last January, January 22nd is the date that the treaty actually entered into force is what they say. And so for the treaty to become international law, it has to get a number of signatories, a certain number of nation states have to sign the treaty and then it also has to be ratified by a number of, a certain number of, specific number of nations. So originally it was 122 nations negotiated the treaty. Then I think it was like something like 80 or more have signed it so far. So not all of the 122, but it was required that at least 50 of those nations ratify it. So the 50th nation ratified it, I think it was last November or something to 2020. And I think it was Honduras, it's kind of arbitrary, but anyway, after the 50th nation sign ratifies it, then I think it was something like 90 days, like three months it enters into force. So it becomes international law. So January 22nd, 2021, it entered into force as international law. And so that was kind of a momentous day for peace activists and people that are concerned about nuclear weapons abolition. And as we all should be, but unfortunately not everyone is. And so I saw this momentous day and decided, well, hey, what better time to actually confront the university about this, what I consider an unacceptable program. And so we held a protest and a demonstration on campus to celebrate the treaty, but also to protest the university nuclear weapons agreement. So anything else, there's a lot more, but. Yeah, no, definitely that I think catches us up on the current protests that you're leading against this. But I'm also wondering, I mean, as an anti-war activist, obviously nuclear weapons and the issue of nuclear violence would be something that you're aware of and would be protesting in general. But what do you think right now makes the nuclear issue so important? And what are some of the things you wish that the public knew that they're not hearing from corporate press about this subject? Well, oh yeah, there's a lot to say about that. I mean, obviously a huge element of the urgency of this issue, you know, we're focused on the university, but we're also focused on the broader issue of nuclear weapons abolition and the danger of nuclear war. And obviously the new Cold War is with China and Russia is extremely dangerous. It's, I mean, it puts everyone in danger. It could potentially lead to our extinction if things just go the wrong way. And obviously there's this whole Cold War propaganda going on to try to generate, I think, a hysterical fear, exaggerated fear about Russia and China. And a lot of the reports that Americans are being told are questionable or false propaganda. But so, you know, there's a threat of nuclear war and I would say I would like to really point people to a very powerful book called The Doomsday Machine by Daniel Ellsberg, who was the leaker of the Pentagon Papers. When he leaked the Pentagon Papers, he was also a nuclear war planner at the highest levels of government. I think it was with the RAND Corporation. And when he leaked the Pentagon Papers about the Vietnam, it was explosive and the government called him the most dangerous man in America. I think it was Kissinger may have called him that. And there was actually an excellent documentary called The Most Dangerous Man in America that I would suggest everyone tried to watch. It's one of the best documentaries ever made, I would argue, and it's Edward Snowden credits that documentary for inspiring him to leak about the NSA mass surveillance program. And anyway, Ellsberg, when he leaked the Pentagon Papers, he also had a lot of documents that he wanted to leak about nuclear weapons. And he was at the time, but he made a calculation at the time that it was better just to focus on the Pentagon Papers and the Vietnam War, you know, try to help end the Vietnam War, I think. And so, but he also had a lot of nuclear weapons information that he wanted the public to know. And actually his book is published in the last few years here called The Doomsday Machine, Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. And it includes a lot of the information that he wanted to leak back in the Vietnam War era. And I mean, there's a lot I'm gonna leave out, but just some high points is that, you know, he talks about how the government had plans to, and still has plans for their main, when they talk about nuclear war, they're never talking about them dropping a couple bombs. They, their plan all along has been what's called a full scale first strike nuclear attack. So they're not just gonna, you know, bomb Moscow. They're gonna try to bomb every major city in Russia or China or both. And obviously China or Russia would try to retaliate and do something similar, maybe, but that kind of anyway, the plans at the time, they knew they would kill, I think, hundreds of millions of people, you know, and they were fine with that. They were like, this is our plan. We're gonna kill hundreds of millions of people, cities full of civilians. And he said that they would have killed, if they didn't understand nuclear winter at the time until the late 1980s, I think, scientists figured out that this issue of nuclear winter. And so nuclear, he explains what nuclear winter is. People don't know. If enough nuclear bombs go off in enough major cities, it creates so much smoke that it sends it up an upper atmosphere and it can block out the sun for 10 years or more, which would kill virtually all plant life and all the animals and humans that require plants for food. So that's how it would create extinction. I mean, large numbers of people would be incinerated immediately and even larger numbers would get radiation and cancer, birth defects, poisoning of the food supply and so forth. But the bigger element on top of all that is the nuclear winter, is nuclear famine, is that there's no food. There's a great documentary or a movie called The Road. There's a book too that I think is kind of an example of what a potential nuclear winter scenario would look like and there's cannibals and it's horrible. It's one of the scariest movies ever because to me it's such a realistic depiction of what one of the worst nightmares would be is a full-scale nuclear war. We saw Hiroshima Nagasaki, that was a good example of how horrific a nuclear bomb in just one or two cities is and obviously a full-scale nuclear war would be a thousand or million times worse than that. And so he talks about those things and very powerfully, the book is a very powerful argument for nuclear weapons abolition and not just that, even not even total abolition at first but just to take away the ability for the United States and Russia to have the capacity to cause our extinction. So that means that we don't necessarily at first have to get rid of 100% of the nuclear weapons. We just need to at least get rid of, he identifies certain ones that are the most dangerous. I think some of the certain specific intercontinental ballistic missiles are, anyway, he lays out the plan very carefully and he's very extremely knowledgeable about this. So he explains how we could just dismantle and deactivate certain nuclear weapons to begin with and that would protect us from making ourselves extinct. One of the things that you mentioned when it comes to nuclear winter and one of the important points about that that people may not realize is it only takes 100 nuclear weapons being detonated for it to induce that level of photosynthesis death and all of that. Yeah, and I think that, okay, that's the other major point probably the biggest point is that one of the biggest points he makes is that so a lot of Americans are kind of under the false assumption that only the president can launch nuclear war and that's not true. And he was an investigator of command and control of nuclear weapons in the field in the Vietnam War era and it's still kind of a similar situation. And the authority didn't launch nuclear war it was actually delegated to quite a few lower level commanders in the field. And so for instance, just a year or two ago, a couple of years ago, there was a false alarm of an incoming missile to Hawaii. So there was a possibility there that a commander in Hawaii or wherever the nearest nuclear weapons are or something could have taken that false alarm as, oh, shit, we're under nuclear attack. I have the authority to retaliate and initiate a nuclear war. And he explains how other things can lead to, I mean, we saw some of that decades ago with the Cuban Missile Crisis and there was that Russian commander and a submarine off the coast of the United States that some people say saved the world or whatever because there was this, I mean, so it can happen by false alarm, it can happen by accident, it can happen by unauthorized launching, you know, Dr. Strangelove is that it? I think that would be an example. And he actually says that movie is actually halfway based on reality. You know, it's an exaggeration, but there's a lot of truth to that movie. But so we're in a much graver danger than the vast majority of people in the United States comprehend, I would say. And we should take it way more seriously than we do. Yeah, and I mean, there are only a few journalists even talking about the subject at all. I mean, one of them comes to mind that's Caitlyn Johnstone, obviously, but amongst corporate media, it's just not a subject whatsoever. But even amongst independent journalists, it's pretty rarely talked about. Why do you think that is? Well, money in the military complex is a huge one. It's just like, why don't we never tell the truth in mainstream media about Israel and Palestine? Why don't we have really sharp, harsh, intense critics of imperialist wars on mainstream media? I mean, there's massive money in war is the same with nuclear weapons. There's massive money in nuclear weapons. And another big thing that a lot of people may not know is that under Obama, we committed, the United States committed to over a trillion dollars for modernization is what they call it at the nuclear arsenal to redesign and rebuild all the nuclear weapons. And then Trump increased it to 1.2 and then 1.7 trillion and Obama, I mean, Biden's on track to continue this policy. And so we're spending, I think it's 30 or $50 billion every year to rebuild the nuclear arsenal. And this includes a new nuclear weapon too. So that to me, for someone that would, obviously United States violates a lot of treaties and international laws all the time in terms of aggressive war and so forth. But I would argue the United States is violating a treaty that we've signed and ratified about nuclear weapons, the NPT treaty, which says the United States is supposed to disarm in good faith and all the signatories and ratifiers of the treaty and building a new nuclear weapon is like the most egregious violation of the treaty in my mind. That's the complete opposite of disarming in good faith. I mean, the U.S. and Russia didn't make some progress a few decades ago in reducing the nuclear arsenals, but now it seems like we're whipping ourselves back into stupidity, Cold War, you know, Neo-McArthurism, the whole, it's like we're gonna repeat the Cold War because we haven't learned our history. Why do you think we're going in that direction? What do you think changed substantially? Was it just the fact that the United States feels as if it's losing its monopoly on the world stage? What do you think is driving this increase? I mean, more recently it's the Russiagate and the China hysteria, but... Yeah, I think, well, in terms of Russiagate, I think part of that was, you know, Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party trying to save face for losing to Trump and so forth. But, you know, and again, I think the United States is an empire and I think it has the goal of global domination that any nation that truly stands up to it, those are often the nations that get face cues and wars, invasions, Iraq, Venezuela, Iran, anybody that really stands up or, you know, goes against the economic policy of the United States is in danger. I think Russia and China are both kind of, you know, the United States sees them as competitors in dangers and like somebody that can cause them resistance. So I think ultimately, I think they're working on cues in those countries. I mean, in many different ways they do it through sanctions. They try to economically weaken countries and they try to make the public suffer so they get pissed off at the leaders and want to overthrow them and maybe they can install a puppet more favorable to the United States. So I think that's kind of what's going on is the United States wants to be the global dominant position and they're especially, I think, concerned now with China because China's economy is exploding and has the potential to surpass the United States if not already in the near future. And I think American elite that really runs things don't want that to happen. They've said that, they've explicitly said that they're not gonna allow China to become the dominant player in the world. And I think a lot of that has to do with that but the United States, I think, is making really a stupid mistake and massively investing in war and nuclear weapons. Russia and China spend tiny fraction of what the United States spends. They invest in a lot of other things that make their economy and their people stronger. I mean, in a lot of other ways. I mean, you look at China's high speed rail, infrastructure like that, whereas we're just investing in war all the time. And so, yeah, I think that's some of it. Definitely. And one of the things that you're protesting at the University of Arkansas sort of highlights is that in addition to the media as we've discussed kind of consciously ignoring this subject you have that collaboration not only with the media but also with academic institutions. And that's again, something we don't talk about. So do you wanna just speak on that for a little bit? And I would really suggest people read a really great article that was, I would say it's probably the best article written so far about our campaign that's just been, you know, we've only been doing this for a few months but there's a great author named Jeremy Kuzmarov who writes for, he's a professor, I think in Oklahoma. And he comes over here to some of our events and we work with him. And he's a great activist. He speaks at some of our events but he's also an editor and writer. He's an editor for a great journal called Covert Action. I would say in some ways it's similar to consortium news. It was founded originally by a great CIA whistleblower named Philip Agee. I think one of his sons is now the editor too, Chris Agee. But Kuzmarov works through them and he wrote a really great summary of our campaign efforts. And he spoke at our original event in January 22nd and he wrote an article called Military Industrial Academic Complex or something like that. It talks about the intersection of all that of the academic complex and being added on to the military industrial complex. And yeah, I think it's extremely unfortunate that, you know, we have bright young minds going to the university. And I think they're, I would argue they're being wasted when they build weapons of mass death and destruction and especially nuclear weapons which could kill everyone. That's the very worst. And there is strong evidence for some of the ramifications of this because if you search Honeywell, University of Arkansas, things like this, a bunch of former or quite a few former students of the university. It's an engineering college. So former engineering students are going to work for Honeywell. I assume building weapons and so forth. And so a lot of their LinkedIn profile say, oh, former University of Arkansas graduate now working for Honeywell. And so, yeah, I mean, it's a pipe. And they talk about the school to prison pipeline or something like that. It's kind of like a school to military complex pipeline or something. And you hear about, you know, CIA recruiters coming on campus and things like that. So to me, it's kind of something like that. One aspect of it is it's a recruitment tool to use the brains of bright young minds for, I think, awful purposes. Yeah, and that highlights in that broader sense the way in which academia has been for a long time working with not only intelligence, but the military establishment as well. And it's something that's even less talked about, as we said earlier, than the media's collaboration with that same state. So it really points out, in my opinion, it highlights the broad institutional support of the war machine, essentially. Yeah, and another thing we might add on to that in terms of the media silence about nuclear weapons, nuclear war. I think Bill Moyers, I consider him a pretty good journalist overall. And one time there's an article on his website and it said, this is talking about the 2016 election. He says, don't you think it's odd that the single largest public expenditure, this is the trillion dollars on nuclear weapons that Obama initially committed to. Don't you think it's odd that this single largest public expenditure wasn't brought up one time in any of the presidential debates? And the same thing I watched for in 2020 election too. It wasn't brought up one time. And they've crossed this increase since then. And so, yeah, there's a deathly silence about it. And I think also a good point about that is that, I would say that nuclear weapons and environmental destruction, that would include climate change, but also the destruction of our forests and pollution of our water, biodiversity collapse, insect apocalypse, as they call it. These environmental disaster or nuclear war, those are the two things that could end it for our species, like that are in our control. We can't control asteroids as much, but I mean, so to me, those are the two most important issues is nuclear weapons and environmental disaster. And so, we talk about plenty, well, they don't talk about all the other environmental issues that really matter, but a lot of people do talk about climate change and it's a mainstream issue, but the other greatest danger to human species is not talked about as it needs to be. It's extremely rare in mainstream media to hear about it. Yeah, and with what many are calling new cold war tensions ramping up, it's particularly alarming that the public does not seem as concerned as they were during the first Cold War regarding nuclear violence and the detonation of nuclear weapons. What can we do as independent journalists as the public to kind of raise awareness about this subject? Yeah, I think just to keep speaking out, I mean, we're doing everything we can to try to deal with the university. We're doing, we did monthly protests. Right now we've filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the university. So, I mean, if there's journalists out there that are familiar with Freedom of Information Act, we could kind of use some help with this. I mean, or work on the other universities in the United States, look them up, the other 50 universities confronting these universities. That's a powerful thing that people can do, journalists can do, obtaining more information. That's the big thing is the university is not releasing information. They're keeping it mum. We've got very minimal information. They say they've signed a nondisclosure agreement. They say it's not top secret, but they have a nondisclosure agreement. So they're trying to use that as a way to say, well, we're not gonna tell you all the details of the program. So we really don't know which professors how many professors are involved. We don't know how many, we don't know the scope of it, the size of it. We don't know what part of the nuclear bombs they're working on. We don't know how much money is involved. We want answers to all these things. And we've filed a request and we filed it a middle of last month, I think, we have a detailed request. They responded that they received it really quickly the next day, but then they seems like they keep giving us the runaround and their stonewalling as they're delaying. They kept saying like, oh, we'll give you at least some initial details within a week or two. Our week comes by and they say the same thing again. Oh, we're still working on it. Give us another week. Again, so they've said that like four times and they said that the last time that they talked to us, they said, oh, we'll give you something, we'll tell you something on May 7th. And they didn't even say anything on May 7th. So now they're kind of like not even talking to us. I guess they're like, oh, we'll just ignore them. Even though they promised to give us some initial information a couple of times. And so we're not really sure what to do next in terms of what's the best way to pressure them. I mean, they have legal requirements to supposedly release information, but it seems like they're, I don't know, they're good at making excuses of why they shouldn't have to release the information or they're just hoping we give up. I don't know. I know you can file court cases on these matters. I don't have any idea. That would probably take a massive amount of energy and expertise. I'm putting this. I'm sure that's a whole nother headache. But yeah, so if we had, I think, trying to obtain more information is very important. That really highlights as well. The government is only going to release the information that it wants to release most of the time, the vast majority of the time, whereas that highlights that importance of organizations like WikiLeaks and the information that they release because that really does show the full picture. So in addition to what we've already talked about, what are some of the issues around nuclear weapons that you think people don't realize? I mean, we've talked about the hidden academic institutional support for this. We've talked about the media and their silence on this subject. You know, for example, one of the things people might not know so much about is the way in which nuclear weapons are constantly in circulation around the globe in what we've discussed earlier is the triad of land, air, and sea. Can you talk about that a little bit and just how dangerous that is? Yeah, I mean, it's extremely dangerous. And like I said, the war can happen by accident and unauthorized attack and so forth. But I mean, it's not just the United States and Russia too are the new Cold War. I mean, you got all these other players. You have Pakistan and India have nuclear arms and they're at each other's throat over Kashmir or whatever. And then you have, you know, Israel is nuclear weapons and they're in the middle of bombing the fuck out of Gaza. Dozens of people being killed bombing residential buildings and they're bombing media towers. So we're protesting that tomorrow actually here in Fayetteville. But I mean, so Israel is armed with nuclear weapons. I don't know if it's true. I heard there was like, it's possible there was rockets launched from Southern Lebanon. So there's this potential when any country has nuclear weapons that it can spiral into something bigger. There's all these unintended consequences. So I mean, when Trump assassinated Iran's general that could have spiraled into a much bigger war. I mean, it could just drag in Russia or China in that case and then become, so we don't know like when we start some of these really dangerous wars, what the final outcome will be. We think, oh, we'll just go in and kill this dictator and everything's great and we'll have their oil or whatever. But we never know like, if it could cascade into other nations, draw other nations and destabilize regions even more. And so Israel's a worst case scenario probably because they have nuclear weapons and they're led by, I would say batshit crazy people. In my opinion, they wanna control all of Palestine and ethnically cleanse everyone out of there. They wanna control all the land and so I mean, and that's what pisses most of the Arab world off is that the United States is always supporting Israel no matter what and giving them military funding. And so if Israel keeps joining the United States and bombing Syria and Iraq and all these other neighboring nations, annexing part of Syria and keeps annexing more and more in Palestine. And so there's all these other Arab actors, nations and non-state actors that are pissed off at Israel and the United States and Israel's doing these horrible things. So there's this danger that there's a potential now for Lebanon to be drawn in. Obviously Syria is part, Israel's waging war on them and Iraq has devastated there and Iran's got a hand in the deal. And so, and of course there's Yemen and Saudi Arabia so the whole regions and flames and there's this potential for something like, we think, oh, it's one thing if Israel drops some conventional bombs on Gaza and it's horrible, it's a crime, it's war crimes but there's always this potential for things to spiral out of control. And if you add nuclear weapons to the equation, so if Israel is to drop nuclear bombs on Iran I think they would like to if the US would give them the green light or whatever they had, whatever assurances but then if they did something like that then what is Russia or China? How are they gonna react? So there's just, it's too big of a danger to leave it as a big question mark like what could happen? We should be sure that even if there's these small or petty or whatever conflict it's not gonna cause the extinction of our species and I think a lot of people just don't see that. I've talked to some veterans of the Middle East wars and they don't have to be veterans. I'm sure there's a lot of civilians that have this kind of mentality but they would talk about, oh, this was at the height of the Iraq war and they're like, oh, it's so fucked up over there and they've probably seen horrible shit or maybe their buddy died or whatever and they would say, we should just nuke the whole place and turn it into a glass factory or whatever. I remember statements like that. I've heard several people talk about turning it to glass whatever, we'll just nuke the desert and turn it all to glass. So like, and they say that maybe tongue in cheek or whatever kind of joking but I think they're half serious and but they have no clue of all the other effects like not just spiraling into something else but just the environmental effects of nuclear weapons like they're environmentally devastating like just all the wildlife and trees and everything just like, it's just disastrous. To me, it's unacceptable and it's indefensible. And I think Ellsberg makes the point in the book. He's like no policy in human history other than towards the conclusion. He's like no policy in human history is more deserved to be categorized as evil and immoral insane. And he goes on and on but like pretty much all the negative horrible words you could come up with that no policy is worse like it's genocidal, et cetera. I mean, what we did to Hiroshima and Nagasaki is horrible. We knew hundreds of thousands of men, women and children and I've read stories. You got, if people wanna know what nuclear war is really like read some of the stories of the survivors of the Hibakusha of the nuclear bombings of Japan they're just the worst stories you could possibly imagine. I mean, there's a little girl, I mean, she go to Godama or something and she says, I was a little school girl in a school building when the nuclear bomb went off I saw a bright flash or something. And then all of a sudden splinters flew all throughout the school room and the splinters stuck into the wall and in my skin and my father came to rescue me and as he carried me home in his arms like I saw hell on earth essentially like people with their skin peeled off and their eyeballs popped out a woman holding her like charred burnt baby and like crying and people screaming for water, water and she had no water and her and her dad couldn't help anyone like they just had to try to go home. And she said she got home and then like for her one of the hardest parts was her closest cousin who is near her age, she said that she was badly injured by the nuclear bombings and her body was so damaged and all the hospitals are destroyed or whatever so nobody really has any help and you just have to die a slow death if you don't die right away. And she says her cousin was terminally dying and her skin was all damaged and she died within a few days but she said while she was dying she held her in her arms and all she could do is try to hold her and comfort her a little bit but she said there was like flies coming up and laying maggots all in her body and everything and there's a little bit of girls having to deal with this and if you really read these stories like you would understand nuclear weapons are fucking evil and you should be on the side of justice and peace and like do whatever you can to try to speak out against this horrible policy. One of the arguments that I've heard Katelyn Johnstone make is that that degree of horror is one of the reasons that people put it out of their mind so easily that it's just too much for people to bear. It's bad and I think the other part is what I mentioned earlier is that the vast majority of people don't realize how easily nuclear war and nuclear Holocaust nuclear winter, nuclear famine can happen. They think, oh, it'll never happen. It's impossible or none of the leaders are that stupid and they mutually assure destruction on both sides too crazy or whatever but we're led by mad men, massacre millions of people and they make those kinds of sick calculations in their mind and they think that they could just totally destroy a nation. So I don't put it past our leaders at all and it's not just the extreme danger of the United States system. It's also there's a massive danger with the Russian system and not just the fact that they have enough nuclear bombs to kill everyone just like the United States but the major problem in the Russian system is something and I'm not being cold or hysterical. This is just a fact. The Russian system is something called the dead hand system and so we have the first strike policy that we would destroy all the major cities in Russia instantly to try to prevent them from retaliating. So we'll try to destroy everything before they can do anything. The Russian also has a system where the dead hand where essentially if one bomb goes off in Moscow their system automatically launches nuclear weapons. So I don't even know if there's a human element to that like they have an automatic nuclear launch system. So the problem is it could not just be the United States dropping a bomb on Moscow or something. It could be a non-state actor. There's nuclear weapons loose in parts of the world in Russia, et cetera after the collapse of the Soviet Union there was nuclear weapons that became loose like go into the black market or whatever. And so there are serious terrorist groups that could potentially get a hold of one of these and drop one off in Moscow. And then that would cause this automatic launching of nuclear weapons. The United States would obviously respond by massive nuclear retaliation. So again, that's another big element of extreme danger. And yeah, I think it's a crime the mainstream media doesn't talk about the thing but it's just about every issue the mainstream media doesn't talk about. They don't tell people the full truth about a fuckload of things. And that is I think the biggest problem in our world is the monopolization and control of media. I mean, it's been happening over time a huge milestone in this is obviously the Telecommunications Act of 1996 under Bill Clinton mostly Republicans supported it some Democrats dissented but the monopolization of media we had way more diversity of radio and broadcast and print all over the United States. There was hundreds of thousands of these stations and newspapers and it was all consolidated down into five or so massive corporations. And now it's just a small number of rich boards of directors and investors that control editorial decisions of all the public information and they all have interlocking interests and a lot of them make a fuckload of money off war and nuclear weapons. And so the journalistic code of ethics says there should be no real or perceived conflict of interest. Well, there's very real conflicts of interest within our major media corporations. I mean, a great example of that is General Electric. I'm not sure if they still own NBC but at one point General Electric owned NBC News and they also made engines for jet engines for the warplanes. So I mean, that's an extreme direct conflict of interest and there's a bunch of other cases to that and then a lot of the boards of directors sit on the boards of the media corporation but also sit on the board of Lockheed Martin or whatever, you know? And so there's if they call interlocking directorates. So there's a massive issue of interlocking directorates of the richest, most powerful few sit on multiple boards and have a majority stake, you know, say in the shareholders of if they have most, the richest few own most of the shares in various corporations. So they have, you know, the dictatorial control about what the corporation does. It's oligarchy. I mean, we live in an oligarchy. That's... Well, even Stanford found that in their study on it. They found that, you know, the will of the people when it doesn't align with corporate interests has almost zero influence on policy. That's the Princeton study. Right. So the other thing is that and what you're saying really highlights is that as early as the 1970s, we were hearing through the church committee that the CIA had been basically, you know, funding and placing stories with journalists and they were had a relationship with newspapers and journalists and that type of thing. But now you see John Brennan on MSNBC just giving talking points directly. I mean, it's really shifted in such an overt way. Oh yeah. Yeah. I call it there's stenographers for the CIA. There's stenographers for the Pentagon. There's no real journalistic pushback. There's no adversarial journalism. It's they just regurgitate whatever they're told. They say, oh, this government official said that. So it must be true. Even an anonymous Pentagon official said this. So we're just going to report that as true, even though, you know, it's either false or needed to be fact checked or whatever. So yeah, it's a joke. One of my big hopes though is that more and more people will start to see through the illusion is to see through the propaganda. I mean, right now I say a small percentage of Americans understand propaganda and able to question it productively. But I'm hoping that, you know, that's increasing. A growing number of people are becoming disillusioned with the mainstream media and are seeking out alternative information. I think a lot of people on Twitter find, like for instance, the issue of Israel and Palestine right now, like that mainstream media is fucking lying to everyone about the conflict. I mean, they essentially are saying, well, Hamas is evil and shot some rockets. So Israel is acting in self-defense and has to go massacre dozens or hundreds of, you know, bomb all these residential buildings. That's a lie. Like the initial, they always say Israel's responding. All the politicians say Israel has a right to defend itself, which means they have the right to massacre the Palestinians. But I mean, if they were telling the truth, if they were good journalists, a real journalist, they would say, well, let's break it down. What's really causing the conflict? And if you really break it down, it's the occupation. It's the land theft. It's the land seizure. It's, you know, the increasingly shrinking space for Palestinians. It's the fact that most Gazans don't have clean water and then only get a tiny bit of electricity. It's the fact that Gaza is arguably, a lot of people, experts call it the world's largest open air prison, that the people can't leave, like Israel's bombing them, but they're locked in a cage. Like, I mean, so the mainstream media is not telling the people the full context of the conflict, what's causing it. Even now, they say, well, Hamas shot all these rockets. So Israel has to go carpet bomb Gaza. But already the occupation is violent itself, but there's just every once in a while, something especially egregious happens and it causes the Palestinians to fight back to some extent, whether nonviolent or violent. And in this case, it was the al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest place to all of Islam. And people were in there worshiping during one of the holiest times of year, Ramadan. They're in there praying or whatever. And Israeli troops or police come in there and start firing tear gas and rubber bullets that people will injure. I think a couple hundred people, maybe a few people were killed, I don't know. And so that's what caused Hamas or some people in Gaza to respond with these joke homemade rockets that overwhelmingly fall on the ground and the United States has funded this iron dome thing so they can intercept most of them. They're like, to me, they're like fireworks. So yeah, they've killed a couple Israelis, but it's always massively disproportionate. And I'm not endorsing the rockets or Hamas or anything like that, but you have to understand why the Palestinians are doing what they do, what's causing it. It's like a JFK said, a riot is the language of the unheard. It's the same thing, like Hamas is acting like a rioter. I mean, and they're not being heard. So if the Palestinians were heard and their grievances were looked at and treated and they were given more justice, they wouldn't be doing a lot of the things like that. But even then, like the Palestinians can't even protest non-violently. They tried to do that in the last year or two and they had massive non-violent protests and Israeli snipers were killing them from long distance and laughing about it and joking about it, like killing, not just unarmed protesters, they were killing medics and journalists with press written across their breasts and medics clearly in medical outfits. And so those are war crimes. And of course Israel commits tons of war crimes and the United States always protects them in the United Nations. The Security Council tries to condemn them and the United States has veto power. I think the whole Security Council veto thing is massively problematic. It undermines the potential for democracy of having an international body that really treats people fairly and tries to really productively increase peace and justice in the world. I mean, I think the United Nations does some good but I think the fact that you have the most powerful nuclear armed nations in control of the United Nations in a large degree and they have that veto power, it kind of undermines a lot of the potential that the United Nations could have. But I mean, we're going back to the media. Yeah, I think that, so the Israeli conflict is a great example of the media lying to the people. But what's inspiring is that a lot of people are kind of starting to see through the lies. And I think you look at Twitter, there's all these videos that people can watch of what's going on and they see the truth of it. And so that helps people to see the lies of the mainstream media. And so the more I think that people can learn to see through the lies, the better off we're gonna be. And the more people will see them as kind of a pariah, they'll see them as liars, we'll see them as guards of the corrupt wicked system that endangers us all with nuclear weapons and has no problem killing a million Iraqis if they've got oil or whatever, their strategic interests or whatever or they armed the Saudis. I mean, you saw Obama and Trump arming Saudi dictators, one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world and they're giving them massive arms while they're committing war crimes on Yemen. That's like extremely indefensible. It's one of the most indefensible things in the world, the whole international arms trade and selling weapons to dictators, like making the world more dangerous. That's to me, that's unacceptable, just like nuclear weapons. Yeah, no, and I think that that brings up something really important that we kind of touched on earlier, but that is that the Democrats and Republicans have issues like war, nuclear weapons and sanctions on countries that don't go along with US foreign policy that are totally bipartisan. And those are also the issues that conveniently are left out by the mainstream corporate press. And so I'd like to just ask you as well to comment on Biden because a lot of people, especially on the center left, would have this impression that Biden is a change from Trump substantially, that he's at least been pushed a little bit left by the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Can you comment on Biden's presidency, but especially in terms of war and nuclear weapons? I mean, Biden to me is horrible. I mean, to me, he's one of the biggest war criminals in modern American history. I mean, during the Iraq war, the Bush administration was lying to Dick Cheney, lying in public about Iraq's weapons and mass destruction and so forth. And Biden was the number one most responsible congressman or senator to help launch the Iraq war, a war based on lies, a war crime, and a war of aggression, the Supreme International War Crime, according to the Nuremberg Charter. And so he's a war criminal. And to me, that kind of wipes away anything else about him, but I understand the arguments you're saying that people are saying, oh, well, he's a little bit better than Trump and these kinds of things. But no, I mean, he's another massive corporate puppet. I mean, and I don't have any real hope for him doing anything serious. I mean, maybe if there was a mass movement of millions and millions of people and where they have to either follow the will of the people or be ejected out of office physically if necessarily, I mean, I don't see him changing on his own. He's doing what his corporate donors was. He does what rich people want. He's continuing the policy on Israel and Palestine. I mean, one of the most egregious things Trump did about Israel and Palestine was moving the capital to Jerusalem or whatever. And that kind of gave is the embassy. Yes. Yeah, the embassy. For Israel to be able to call Jerusalem their capital, I think. But anyway, I think that whatever that was, it kind of gave Israel more justification to try to seize the other half of Jerusalem to try to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from that. And Biden has continued that policy. And to me, that's like, it's so insane. And I mean, I don't see Biden really changing. So I don't really have any hope in him. I had some hope with Bernie, but like after he got screwed twice, it just so discouraged me about the electoral system or like twirl change at all. I mean, I see like our only hope is some kind of revolution. I would prefer it to be nonviolent, but I think that we have to, I don't know. I'm not even sure if a third party has any chance. Like the system is so controlled by the media and the rich. I just, and they control the elections and so many, you know, a dozen different ways that like I ran as a Green Party candidate for Congress in the 2008 when Obama was running. There was no Democrat running. I ran against a Republican here in Arkansas, very conservative district. And I mean, I didn't run as a Democrat because in Arkansas they charge $7,000 or $10,000 just to get on the ballot, just a file to run as a Democrat or Republican. And so you almost have to be rich to run in one of those parties in Arkansas anyway. And so Green Party was $500, so I could afford that. But to really be a serious, what they call serious candidate, you have to raise a million or if you're a senator, five million, whatever it is, you got to raise a buttload of money. And usually you have to promise a lot of rich and powerful people in corporate interests that you're gonna pay them back once you're elected. And I certainly wasn't willing to do that. I mean, I was driven by opposition to war. And so right there, I'm gonna turn off a lot of really rich donors. So I mean, I have very minimal faith in the electoral system. I mean, I prefer, I would really like to see a massive nonviolent revolution that calls for a new constitution. I think we need to rewrite the constitution that's ultimately what I wish would happen. And that would include writing a constitution that would ensure peace and justice. And that would include getting rid of nuclear weapons yesterday. Well, on that hopeful note, thank you so much for joining us this evening. It's been a great discussion. And hopefully we'll see you back sometime later. Thank you. Author and Nuclear Disarmament Advocate, Alice Slater joins us today to discuss this issue. Alice serves on the board of directors of World Beyond War and is the UN and geo-representative of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. And she has done much writing and work beyond that as well. But Alice, thank you for joining us. Thank you. I'm delighted to be here. So tell us what the public is missing out on, hearing about the current issue with nuclear weapons and the threat of nuclear war. Well, to me, the main problem is that we are always blaming someone else for our own bad example. And it started when they formed the United Nations after we won World War II and we dropped the first bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki which killed over 300,000 people, you know, that was like unbelievable. Stalin, we were forming the United Nations with Russia with the Soviet Union because we and they had defeated Nazi Germany and Japan and now it's time to have a world at peace. And the mission of the UN was to end the scourge of war and the first resolution adopted was to eliminate nuclear weapons. And Stalin said to Truman at the time, or president, turn the bomb over to United Nations control and let us keep it safe from anybody. And we turned him down and Russia got the bomb and the nuclear arms race was on. And if you follow history, Gorbachev said to Reagan when the war came down, it was like a miracle. He let go of all of Eastern Europe without a shot. You know, he liberated them all from the Soviets. He's they met in Reykjavik, Gorbachev and Reagan and Gorbachev said to Reagan, let's get rid of all my nuclear weapons. And Reagan said, great idea. Gorbachev said, yes, but you can't install wars because the United States has a policy to dominate and control the military use of space. We're shameless. We say that's our policy. And Trump just established a space force. It used to be part of the Air Force and Biden's not getting rid of it. So this is not a Democrat or Republican issue. It's a Republican, you know, elite arms through running the whole country. So anyway, Gorbachev pulled it off the table because he wasn't going to give up his nukes if we were going to dominate him in space. Then Putin offered Clinton, let's cut to 1,500 nuclear weapons or 1,000 each. At that time, we had each about 20,000. We actually got down from 70,000 to now there are 14,000 on the planet. And 13,000 of them right now are in the US and Russia. So it's up to us. You know, the other seven countries, which is England, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea, they have 1,000 between them. So it's not up to them. It's up to us and Russia. And Russia keeps putting the votes on the table. So Putin said to Clinton, let's do that, but don't put missiles in the menu because Bush had, he said, I can't promise that. Then Bush comes in and he walks out of the anti-ballistic missile training that we had with the Soviet Union. It's not just Trump that's walking out of the treaty. Bush walked out of this treaty that we had since 1972 with the Soviet Union that we weren't gonna build anti-missiles so that we didn't have to build a lot of missiles. And we only permitted missiles in one place in each country. So they had it at Moscow, anti-missiles and we had it in North Dakota. And that's how it stayed. And then Clinton started putting in placements into the manor and Bush walked out of the treaty. So Putin pulled his offer off the table but we weren't gonna not put missiles in the manor. He wasn't gonna negotiate the nuclear disarmament. And another thing has made this situation so bad between us and Russia is that the Soviet Union lost 27 million Russians in World War II. I mean, who hears this number? I'm Jewish, we talk about the six million in the Holocaust, you hear this number over and over six, but I never heard 27 million, it was like amazing to me. So when the war fell and we were gonna unite East and West Germany that had been divided, Gorbachev said to Reagan, don't take them into NATO. They were very nervous about a re-armed Germany, rightly so, and Reagan and Baker, his ambassador promised Gorbachev, don't worry, let them be united and be part of our NATO. But we promise we will not expand NATO one inch to the East. And now it's right up to the Soviet border. We are doing war games, nuclear war games on Russia's border. I mean, what happened when they put missiles in Cuba, we almost had World War III, you know. And even that Cuban missile crisis is very interesting because Kennedy made a secret deal with Khrushchev that if they got the missiles out of Cuba, we would take on missiles out of Turkey, which is why they went to Cuba in the first place. And that was never reported because Kennedy couldn't, the Congress wouldn't have let him make a deal with Russia that we're gonna take missiles out of Turkey. So we did, a year later we took them out. And now they're back along with US nukes in Turkey and in four other NATO countries. We keep American nuclear weapons at a base in Germany, Belgium, Holland, Italy and Turkey. I mean, who could blame Russia? It's like ridiculous, it's all us. You know, in the fifties, they had a cartoon, Paul Goh by Walt Kelly and he had a line, we met the enemy and he is us. It was during the Red Scare then and the coffee. And I want to talk a little bit about that Red Scare. I mean, I went to this, in 1953, when I went to Queens College, I grew up in New York. We were so terrified of communist. That was in the coffee time, people were going to jail and they executed the Rosenberg. I mean, it was like terrible. So I was in the cafeteria talking to somebody probably about civil rights or something and she said, here, you should read this. And she gives me a pamphlet and it says, Communist Party of America. And my heart is pounding in terror. I put it in my book bag, I go home on the bus, I go up to the airport, I walk directly to the incinerator and throw it down without looking. That's how frightening we were of communist and they're doing it all. They're starting that up again now. So it's interesting because in 1989, I went to Russia when Gorbachev was president and he was doing glossness and Paris Stryker as part of the noise alliance for nuclear arms control. And Russia had stopped underground testing. Kennedy tried to shut all the tests down but they wouldn't let him. So testing went underground when Kennedy was president. And then we did a thousand more tests at the Nevada test site on Western Shoshone Holy Land, poisoning the water. Anyway, they were doing the same thing in Russia in Kazakhstan, the Kemi-Palatins. They kept up with us every step of the way. And this Kazakh poet, Oza Suleyman, led a group of Kazakh miners and workers to pick it that they shouldn't do these nuclear tests because it was leaking into the water in the end of getting cancer. And he had a world of terrible things. And Gorbachev said, okay, I'm gonna stop. And he stopped nuclear testing. So our lawyers group in New York, we went to Washington and said, Russia stop, we should stop. They said, oh, you can't trust the Russians. That was the answer from Congress. So they headed the New York City Bar Association Bill DeWin, who had formed the Lawyers Alliance for Nuclear Arms Control. From the Dutch to winds up the Hudson, you know, an old family with lots, he raised like $6 million, put together a team of seismologists. And we went over to the Soviet Union and we met with their lawyers and they have come to me and said, listen, you let us put our American seismologists around the Kazakh test site so that we can see if you really stopped. And Gorbachev said, yeah. And then we came back to Congress and said, you don't have to trust the Russians. You can verify. Which is exactly what happened over the years. We went down from 70,000 to 14,000. So we know how to do, you know, it's not like we don't have to inspect America. Anyway, the other thing I learned when I was in Russia in 1989, every guy over 60 was walking around with his World War II Medal on his chest. And you go to the Leningrad Cemetery now, St. Petersburg, there were 400,000 mass graves from the Siege of Leningrad. And every street corner had a memorial to the dead of the war. And my guide said, you know, we had guides walking us around. Why don't you Americans trust us? I said, why don't we trust you? What about Hungary? What about Czechoslovakia? Well, I should we trust you. You know, total arrogance in America, the ignorance arrogance in Europe. And he looked at me with tears in his eyes and he says, we had to protect our borders from Germany. And I looked at the guy and I said, that was their truth. They were never coming after us. Whatever they did in Eastern Europe, that was terrible in terms of the occupation and everything, it wasn't against us. They were in a defensive crouch after Napoleon marched into Moscow 100 years early. You know, I mean, that's what the, and we were getting this whole story that they're coming after us and it became the driver for the arms race and selling more arms, you know. And now that we're running out of terrorists, we're making a new enemy with China and Russia again. So to keep the machine going, it has nothing to do with reality. And the media, there's a guy, Ray McGovern, I don't know if you've ever interviewed him, but he talks about the Mickey Mat. You know, Eisenhower warned us about the military industrial complex, the general, the one world war two in New York. But McGovern says, no, it's not the Mickey, it's the Mickey Mat, it's the military industrial congressional, institutional, academic think tank complex. Like, oh, media, media is very important, that's in here. Because they're all united in keeping this war machine going. There's not, so anyway, where should I go now? Well, I'd like you to- Well, I wanna say one more thing, sure. I told you, Putin also offered Obama to negotiate. Now, when we did the Stuxnet virus in Israel and wiped out Iranian enrichment facility and boasted about it, hacking, look at how we boasted and how it's coming back to us. I mean, it was stupid, and we think that nobody else could do this. I mean, that's not as complicated as a nuclear bomb. Anyway, Putin asked Obama to negotiate a cyber war ban treaty, and we turned it down. And there's a lot of, China and Russia keep talking about the enemy you went, and we keep rejecting it. And the other thing we rejected was that they wanted China and Russia to table the draft treaty and keep weapons out of space in 2008 and 2014, that in the Committee on Disarmament and Geneva, where you need consensus to talk about it, the U.S. would not discuss it. We voted no, you couldn't even discuss it. And every year there's a resolution at the United Nations Paris prevention of an arms race and out of space that Russia and China promote. They just made a big speech about it last week. Lavrov and the Chinese foreign minister made a big speech there on the, I think China is now the chair of the security council. So in the U.N., they made this huge speech how we have to keep space at peace and stop the arms race and stuff. So they have a peaceness. I mean, Americans don't believe this, but maybe groups like you can get the word out. Thank you. Well, that does bring us to something I wanted to ask you about and have you talk about, and that is the role of the media because the corporate media does not discuss this issue at all, as Caitlin Middleston points out. It's left to independent journalists. So what do you see the media doing? Because I mean, in the Cold War era, at least the populace was aware that there was a danger. It was in the popular imagination, as you described. So what's changed and what is the media doing wrong? I don't think much has changed, but we got stronger so the media got more repressive because I had my first experience of the media. I became an activist. I was a suburban housewife in West Pupulong Island, 1968, during the Vietnam War. And I was watching television. I'd never been an activist. And I see this CBS reports or something when they told you real news, showed Ho Chi Minh going to Woodrow Wilson in 1990. He was like in his 20s, this young guy was the head of Vietnam, begging America to help them get the French out of Vietnam because the French had rubber plantations. They had the guys in cages and in shade. We turned him down because France was our ally and the communists were more than happy to help him. It showed and that's how he became a communist in Vietnam. You know, he wanted to be like an American. He modeled his constitutional analysis, they said. So I'm watching this news and the same night, the kids at Columbia University in Manhattan were rioting. They locked the president in his office and they didn't want to be drafted in this terrible war. And I was terrified and I had just turned 30. They the same don't trust anyone over 30. My husband came home and I said, what is the matter with these kids? Don't they know this is America? We have a political pro-war. And they rioting and I go down to the Democratic quote. And they were having a debate between the Hawks and the Doves and Massapeak. When I joined the Doves and within a month, I was active in Jean McCarthy's campaign and I never stopped. And what I noticed after McCarthy lost the nomination, we organized a new Democratic coalition and took over the whole country, grassroots, door to door, you never incident. And we collected enough delegates in 72 to nominate George McGovern, who was an anti-war candidate and the war and the media never goes. The New York Times never reported on him. They cooked up this whole thing he had appointed as his vice president, Thomas Eagleton, who was a senator from Missouri, who 20 years earlier had been hospitalized and manic depression. And that's all they wrote about. That was the big front page story. You know how they did that to Gary Hull in the 80s? He was a great guy. They talked about his affair. Well, Roosevelt had an affair, except they all had affairs. Kennedy was spitting his brains out whatever, but they never wrote about it except now with a liberal progressive candidate. And they did that to McGovern and he was so badly like. He only won Massachusetts and Washington. And you know the superdelegates that stopped Bernie from getting the nomination? They put them in because of us. They couldn't believe it, all these grassroots, they were never writing about McGovern's campaign. They were all saying Muskie is the front runner. You know, and I see we were stealth, we were stealth activists. The order to avoid, you know, getting our vote to the polls, collecting our delegates and winning the nomination. When you could never do it again after that because they put in all the superdelegates so no matter what the grassroots did, they can just say the power is the bigger. So that's the meteor. And then of course, so that was the New York Times. I mean, my father used to bring out every day on the subway, I grew up in the Bronx, New York, marked up in blue pen and read out loud the story. I mean, we love the New York Times. It was like on New York Times, you know? And I thought I was so hurt how they covered McCartney. That was what, when I got McGovern, that was when I first realized it. And of course, the men, weapons and mass destruction, that was disgusting. We all knew that Siddam Hussein had given them up in the first go for it. They were under lock and key, but the IAEA, it was a total lie. And they had it on the front page every day, stirring up the war. So this is not Fox News, this is the New York Times. And they are the ones that are supposed to be, you know? Anyway, that's the media. We're in trouble because of the media. I mean, I got rid of my cable, I couldn't stand. It's not as if Rachel Maddow is any better than Tucker Carlson. I mean, the liberals are really good on abortion and gay rights and marriage rights. But when it comes to military, I think you're right. That's the crucial thing. And I think that the book, What Happened to Bernie Sanders by Jared Beck, who was a lawyer for the plaintiffs, the DNC for a lawsuit, starts out with McGovern's campaign. And really how it was basically reacted to by the Democratic Party to make sure it could never happen again. I didn't even know somebody wrote it in a book I've been talking about. One of these days I should write my book. Definitely. And speaking of that, can you tell our audience a little bit about your work with the United Nations, with the different groups you've been a part of, and just what you've seen happen and really the progress that you've helped make in this area? Well, we've had victories, but every victory is accompanied by enormous setbacks. I mean, that test then when Russia stopped and we got Congress to stop, it was a moratorium. It wasn't a treaty. We just gave our word that we weren't gonna do it. And then the Congress, they passed a law that we're gonna stop. But in seven, I forgot how many months we can do another seven great tests to test the safety and reliability, the arsenal. And Clinton was coming in and we got a whole group to stop them from doing those extra tests because that would open the door for Russia. And we stopped it. We had a big campaign to unblock the bill with Clinton blowing on the sacks over the nuclear explosion coming out of the sacks. Anyway, I was part of all of that. That was fun. So we stopped it. But then Clinton, that SOB, he signs the comprehensive test ban treaty. This is a little, not just a moratorium where they gave the word. And he gives this little deal to the Doctor Strange Loves and the Weapons Lance for $6 billion for so-called stockpile stewardship. The nuclear stockpile, which included laboratory tests and sub-critical tests. What do you think sub-critical tests were? At the Nevada test site on the Western Cheshire, Hollyland, 1,000 people all the desert floor, they did about a hundred tests where they blew up plutonium with chemicals, but it didn't have a chain reaction. So Clinton said it's not a test. Like I didn't inhale, I didn't have sex. I was doing testing. And of course, Russia did it and then China did it. And the thing has been going on forever. Now, Obama made this little deal with the temporary presidents in Russia for the start. I think we cut another 2,500 weapons out of all 16,000 or whatever it was. And he promised the Congress a trillion dollars over the next 20 years to new bonds, missiles, submarines, and that's what we're fighting now. We're trying to stop this missile, but we should stop the whole thing. There should be a moratorium on any new expenditures for nuclear weapons, especially when we have to deal with the climate and the plague and it's such a waste of IQ points and money and it's down the wrong rabbit hole. Yeah, you mentioned earlier the degree to which we've reduced nuclear augmentation, but it's clear that even a few missiles being launched and exploding would do horrendous damage. Can you give us some idea of what impact the remaining nuclear arsenal could have if we were to engage? Well, there are all kinds of studies coming from the international positions and prevention, that we would have global winter. We're also worried about global warming, but that it would put such a cloud, even a hundred bonds going off between India and Pakistan would create such a cloud of dust and that all the crops would fail and we'd be starving, you know, to it. There's no way. I mean, we only use two of them. Since 1945, there's no way we can use them appropriately. And there have been so many in-misses with totally pushing our luck. We had this Lee Butler became the head of strategic command, I think during Clinton. I saved the congressional record. There were 36 airplane crashes carrying nuclear bombs because they were flying 24-7, what was in the air and the submarines and the missiles in the airplane. And we, none of them ever went off. Two of them spewed a little plutonium in Palomere, Spain, to the Greenland. We cleaned it up and it's off the coast of Georgia that they've never found. But Lee Butler, the general, grounded the planes. I mean, that was like, duh. No, never. And then for the story, we had the missiles, you know, in Russian, it was a terrific movie. The man who saved the world about Colonel Petrov in Russia, where they saw us to blip out the machine and they thought we were attacking them and his instructors all let him all go, New York, Washington, and he didn't. And it was a computer error and he got in trouble because he didn't follow orders, you know. And he didn't. Well, and that also brings up a really interesting point that, you know, some are not aware of how many missiles are in the air and on not only the land, but also on the ocean at all times. And earlier this year, the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation wrote that the US nuclear arsenal comprises thousands of nuclear weapons, obviously, and through those three methods of delivery, which are called legs that make up this triad. And collectively these delivery methods are being modernized at a cost of about 494 billion or about 50 billion every year from 2019 to 2028. So can you describe a little bit how much of an accident prone situation this is and the fact that it's not simply the president that has his handle of red buttons, so to speak, but there are all of these different methods I wish accidents could take place. I mean, about four years ago, a plane was missing from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota carrying six missiles loaded with nuclear bombs. And it went to Louisiana by mistake and they didn't know it was missing for 36 hours. I mean, that congressional record with the 36 airplane, I mean, we have just been lucky. I mean, we have got outside that's just protecting us from accidents here or there or anywhere. So the best thing now would be a total more time on any new development testing, keep everything in place and make a deal. You know, we negotiated this fabulous treaty, 122 countries voted at the UN. And by the way, this nobody talks about this. I wrote about it in the nation. When they were having the vote at the UN, whether there should be negotiations to ban the bombing because the only treaty we have now was the non-proliferation treaty. We have five countries, US, England, France, China and Russia promised to make good faith efforts for nuclear disarmament. And the whole rest of the world promised not to get the bomb. And everybody signed except India, Pakistan and Israel and they got the bomb. Then it had the spastic and bargain where it gave you an inalienable right. I mean, that was the language like our bill of rights, inalienable right to peaceful nuclear power. So North Korea got the peaceful nuclear power and they walked out and they made a bomb. So when we were, the countries and the MPT goes every five years to review, it was extended in 95 with a lot of pressure from the US. One ambassador told us at the UN, they stopped twisting arms. They're taking out baseball bats and breaking knees. So we said, what do you mean? They said, well, one of the people in our delegation in New York, his son is applying to all of it and the US government told us, your son will never go to all of it. If you don't vote for the indefinite unconditional extension of the MPT. I mean, that's how personal they get to get their way. So the MPT was, we've never made good on this good faith promise, we keep building more and improving them. And the rest of the world got disgusted. South Africa gave a great speech in 2010 or whatever it was saying, this is like nuclear poetry. The nuclear countries are holding us hostage and we need a treaty to ban the bomb, like we ban nuclear chemical and they voted at the UN to go ahead with the negotiations. US and NATO allies were boycotting the vote outside the door and voted no. India, Pakistan and China abstained on the vote and North Korea voted yes to ban the bomb. This was never reported in the meeting, right? I mean, they're just waving their couple, their 10 nuclear bombs at us to say talk to us and stop starving us. That's another thing you have to really look at. I'm looking at this very closely and hoping we're all beyond what takes us on. The sanctions, everybody thinks sanctions, it's not like shooting people. It's starving them and keeping medicine away from them. It's, that's what we've been doing to North Korea. Absolutely. So they're up for it. The problem is that we should lift the sanctions and talk to them and make peace. And they have a president in South Korea. It would be as if we had elected Dennis Kucinich. He was a total peace guy and that's how all these talks got started and even Trump, the broken clock that's right twice a day, wanted to learn a Nobel Peace Prize for settling the Korean issue. So he went and made all these deals and he agreed with North Korea that we would take 10,000 troops out and the Democrats and Republicans voted against them. We have 38,000 troops there since 1953 and we never signed a peace treaty. I mean, this is simple. And the media, when you go back to the media, they're always telling you what this country's doing and that country's doing it. They never tell you what the US is doing. Iran has to give up their blah, blah, or North Korea has to give it up and make, but they don't, why shouldn't we have to give it up? Why aren't we setting the example? And we have a willing partner in Russia and China. They're willing. They keep asking us to, you know, Putin just walked out of this start treaty. I read about this, you know, that start, the open skies treaty. You know, Trump walked out of it, but they kept wanting everybody to come back in on the start, which Biden did. That was one good, thank you for that. He's still screwing up with the Iran deal, right? I mean, he's making trouble. But anyway, Putin just announced that they're walking out of the open skies. He's not keeping it open. Why? Because we're getting all the information from our NATO countries. He's not getting anything. So it's like we never left. We're getting our advantage. We're just not letting them get those. I mean, that's disgusting. Cause we think America's good and great and wonderful. You know, we just don't know how ugly we've been. And when we are like January 6th, what happens? They covered it up and nobody's even told me what happened. I mean, we almost had an over throw of our government. You would think people would be a little more up and on about it, you know, very hard to live with this. When you love America and you think, you know, I mean, I grew up, I was so happy I was here. I didn't live in Europe. Yeah. And you bring up President Biden. I think that's a really important, you know, person to discuss here as our, you know, president now because we can talk about Trump, Obama, Clinton all day long. But right now it's Biden that I guess we should be focusing on. His proposed 2022 military budget includes $30 billion for nuclear weapons modernization, excuse me. So you mentioned before that both ends the political spectrum have failed us that basically they're the representative of the military industrial complex, so to speak. So have you, what do you think about Biden's policy, especially not only with this modernization program that he's wanting to fund, but also with statements about wanting the Korean Peninsula to be nuclear free, which has angered North Korea kind of going back on Trump's efforts there. How do you see Biden moving forward in his presidency? He's the tool of that group. He had to move to the left because of Bernie and Elizabeth and Alexandria and people are hurting so much and it made him, he could live with that. He could live with helping the working guy that fixed his, not enough to give Medicare for all of three college or $15, you know, he didn't give in on any of those, you know, he compromised on that, but at least people are getting something, but on the military, he hasn't compromised at all. He's just as hawkish, he's worse than Trump. Trump was really trying to dial it back, not for any good reason, but he was, you know. So no, it's, he's very disappointing. And I just think he's sort of like a dummy that they put up there, like he's quiet. He doesn't even offend too many people. They figure they can get by with him, but he's being run. That's how I feel. I feel like he's not his own man when he talks. Or if he is, it's not impressive, you know. Yeah, I mean, you could argue that every president for quite a while has been a representative of interest other than just their own and their constituents, for sure. So, you know, we've talked again about the media kind of having a blackout on this subject. Given that, what can the public do to act against this increasing threat of an outbreak of nuclear violence? Where can they go to for good information? Well, first of all, the ICANN campaign, the international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons. Eleanor Holmes-Murray has put a resolution into the Congress for us to join the treaty and, you know, convert from military to economic, you know, green economy. And we're getting members of Congress to sign on to that. And they also have an ICANN pledge. And cities are passing resolutions, calling on the president to support nuclear disarmament. So I recommend that. But my favorite work right now is World Beyond the War, Dr. Holmes. They are doing such incredible work. And David Swanson, who's like the Eminence Greese, you know, one of the co-founders and brilliant, and one of the co-chairs with Leah Baldwin. He was Dennis Kucinich's press secretary, you know, who worked for Acorn, you know, all the good things that got wiped out. I mean, look what they did to Kucinich after he lost, they redistricted him. The Democrats, they redrew the congressional district so he had all Republicans in his district and he couldn't get elected again, you know. And he was the only one that every man went back to peace and the department of peace and everything. So those, I think that's one way that people can do. World Beyond the War and ICANNW.org, for the nucleus specifically. And there's also Nuclear Ban US, but you can get through that through ICANN too. But there's a group just working in the US. And the other thing that I want to talk against, which I didn't, all beyonds controllers and the so-called peace, you know what I'm going to call it, the foundation of plowshares and the blah blah, they're all putting millions of dollars into a campaign to get a pledge of no first use. What the hell is no first use? We're already using them like Daniel Ellsberg says, when a bank robber walks into a bank and points a gun at you, he doesn't have to shoot it to be using it. So here we have this huge campaign for the Ban Treaty, they're illegal, they want them to be illegal, they're immoral, they get to government. And in comes all this money and they never talk about the Ban Treaty and they talk about no first use, which is a verbal pledge that anybody can, President could say, I promise never to be the first to use them as they, oops, I changed my mind. It's not even a treaty, you know what I mean? Not that treaties ever stop us. We walked out of the ABM Treaty, start creating the Iran Treaty, whatever. So that's, I mean, a lot of us are getting involved with them because they are anti-nuclear people and it's good, but I'm just saying be wary if they're not talking about Eleanor Homs' resolution in Congress, you know, there's also, there's a big move on, which is admirable, mocking, and kind of just cut one of the missiles. Oh, one missile, I mean, you know, why aren't we cutting all of it? Are they afraid to say that, to put out this message and start educating people that we don't need any of it? That we'd be much safer without it? It's like, oh, why do you think this is making us safe? One of the few politicians that spoken out against nuclear modernization, the increase in nuclear tension between the US and Russia and China has been Tulsi Gabbard. I think one of the few people who've been willing to speak out against this, have there been any other politicians, whether, you know, sitting members of Congress or anyone else that has supported your efforts over the years? Over the years? You know, Ron Dellon, I don't know, I don't think so. We don't have anybody. Markey is considered, but I don't like Markey. There are so many things he took wrong. No, Eleanor Homs' resolution, she put it in. Some of the people are signing on to it. So, you can look, you know, she's got about 10 other people that signed on to the resolution because my Congresswoman signed on, but if she doesn't really care about the stuff, Caroline Maloney, she's not that good on these issues. But she did sign, because I asked her, and I guess she figured big deal will never go anywhere. You know, it's Eleanor Homs' button. They don't even vote yet. Well, tell us a little bit more about this resolution. When was it introduced? Well, it's been, she's been doing it every year, but after the treaty, you know, every year to get rid of the weapons, but after the treaty, she made it a conversion and the Green New Deal, she added that in. So, last year was very powerful in terms of the treaty because we want to know about peace price for that treaty. I was in Oslo, you know, it was like me and 2,500 other people, I mean. But anyway, it was terrific. So, she's been, but she's been on the case forever. She's wonderful. And you know, there were people in Congress like the labs and, you know, the whole anti-war group, Wellstone, he was a terrific senator. We don't even know what happened to him, he was legit. You know, there's one thing, I mean, I don't want to sound like a paranoid nut job, but Trump tried to get declassified the Dwaran Commission report, and they wouldn't let him, 50 years ago. And the last chapter of the 9-11 report, and they wouldn't let him do it. They're still classified if they won't let us know why. 50 years after the guy was, 9-11 was how many years ago, I don't know. So I think, you know, we're in trouble, but the only thing that's going to work is very aggressive grassroots action, talking to Congress, you know, picketing, sending money, you know. I think that people can make a difference. I think the young people are on the march, you know, people are starting to get it about climate. That's been a big job for us, like a world beyond war, in other words, to push the climate and the militarism to get. Because, you know, the military is the biggest planet around the planet, you know. So, but a lot of the climate people are wary of that. You know, they just wanted to, everybody's in this silence. Yeah, they're anxious. And that's really damaging, because I mean, there is no greater threat to climate than nuclear war. Whatever, I mean, we're facing, the earth has gone down the hill, you know, either by nukes or climate or plagues. I mean, we have to take it all on. And you know, Martin Luther King's speech is coming back a lot. The one that got him in trouble with everybody. You know, everybody loves Martin Luther King when he's talking about civil rights and black rights. But he gave his speech in New York on the three evils of racism, militarism, and corporate overreach, right? And they talk badly about him in the New York Times everywhere. They criticize, should stick to his last, whatever. But that's where we are now. And they've been sort of reintroducing that speech. It's a good thing for all of us to look at how he talks about the three evils, because that brings everybody together. Oh, and I've been having an email exchanged with some guy that's very active in the Sierra Club and they're taking on nuclear weapons. I mean, it's a big deal. It would be good to have them, the Sierra Club. Yeah, are they speaking openly about that yet? Yeah, they have a project within the Sierra Club. I think, I don't know if it's just a local group or the national, but I'll send you his name to talk to him and find out. Yeah, the other thing that I'd like to ask about would be just in general, the public awareness. I know that we discussed the censorship a little earlier, but the public awareness, at least from my vantage point, seems to be much lower on the nuclear issue. It's something Caitlin Johnston mentioned. Why is that in the 1980s, there was a great public fear of nuclear violence? Why is the public so unaware and what damage has that done to the ability of the military industrial elite establishment to kind of silently expand their efforts, expand the NATO issue and all of that, the issues in Ukraine, without people being upset or concerned about it? It's because of the consolidation of the media. I mean, we had so much more liberal, independent press journalism that was putting out news all the time. I mean, it's like one big drama. There's no difference to me with the three networks. I mean, sometimes I watch Fox News just to get the other point of view, but I got rid of the cable all together and stand it because there's not a word of truth on it. It's all a pre-packaged program to keep people like what, 1984, when little girls said they're being controlled, our mind just being controlled. There's a wonderful writer, Caitlin Johnston, do you know her? Yeah, we quoted her at the beginning, yeah. She really meant it, you know. And I mean, I have two grown kids that are raised liberal and what, you know, they can't stand to hear what I'm saying. They're so anti-Trump, it's not just anti-Trump, we got to support Democrats and people don't get it. They don't get it. And I consider them very intelligent and educated. I mean, there are very few people that want to hear this. Yeah. They can't believe it. They can't believe it, like it's a miracle. You know, it's so interesting. I have a friend, Blanche Reason Cook. She's a historian and she teaches at John Jay College and she wrote a three-volume biography of Eleanor Roosevelt. And in volume three, Eleanor is appointed by Harry Truman to work with Stalin and the Russians when they're setting up the UN, what should it be like to end the scourge of war? So Stalin, she writes, absolutely refused to agree to a declaration of human rights unless we agree to a declaration of economic and social rights. And we said, nothing doing. And he said, nothing doing. And they fought and fought and finally they put them both in and they never signed the human rights. And Jimmy Carter signed the Declaration of Economic and Social Rights. That's like 40 years later, but we never ratified him. So I mean, our view of America is very skewed. It's like, what could a human rights to starve? You know, I mean, what could an economic and social rights if he can't talk or speak? Because, you know, it's, you need everything. And we're at that inflection. I mean, yeah, the West talks a lot about human rights and freedom of speech, but then we have Julian Assange sitting in Belmarsh even after a judge ruled against his extradition. So the last question I wanted to go over with you was about Russiagate as well. And not only Russiagate, but the way in which the US's kind of slow gradual loss of its kind of monopoly of power on the world stage has really increased this problem of nuclear weapons. And it's as if the United States wants to just hold on to the power it has with everything, with all of the, you know, militaristic options that it has, which I would argue includes this Russiagate narrative, which has obviously increased tensions with Russia. And it has been very dangerous. And a lot of people have talked about that over the years, but I wanted to hear your opinion on it, what you think of it and how that's contributed specifically to the nuclear issue. Well, first of all, I think people should look at Code Pink, we have a group of China on our enemy. And there's another one that we did a 10 hour seminar in the new Cold War with Rachel Bumpy. I don't know if you are familiar with, but those are groups that people should look into. In other words, to counter this narrative that they're trying to sell us. We're in the last gas for the patriarchy and the empire. I mean, that's what's happening. The empire is dissolving and we need a soft landing. And there's a lot we have to take care of. It's not just like the whole planet is falling. So you have all the leftover crazy patriarchs, waving their guns and their missiles and their bombs. And then you've got the rest of us same people. I think there are more of us than them. And we just have to take back the country. In a way, I can't believe Lynn Cheney is such a good help to us, but I'm clear. And there are, now there's this, what's the right, there's a good new group, Quincy, the Quincy Institute. Like all the right wing thinkers of being anti-militaristic and saying, people are starting to get it. So if the extreme right and extreme left and all the kids in the middle and all the women that know the men are doing it, like the patriarchy and the black lives matter and the indigenous, I mean, there's all this counter-energy coming up. And we just, I hope we can, you know, mobile, we did. We took back the Congress this time. We've got to, you know, increase it and take it back and sit on Biden's head, you know, so it doesn't matter. But I don't know how else, that's my optimistic perspective, but you're right, it could be very dangerous. But it's always been dangerous with the nukes. Now it's dangerous with the climate. Well, the climate, you know, I mean, we got a lot of dangers. So how can we waste time, you know, fighting, we have to all, and you know, who's speaking beautifully. Lavrov, the foreign minister of Russia and the Chinese foreign minister. I mean, if I was young, I would marry him. I adore him. He's so warm and he gets it. He's just kind and thoughtful. It's not, they're not rattling savings. Putin, I read his speeches. Everybody should read Putin's speeches. Who gave one in 2016 that they tried in vain to keep us in the ADM treaty. And then we had to do armed assistance. So whether in our military industry or wherever, use Putin's breaking out as an excuse to do even more, you know. But then he did another one. Oh, they had this anniversary of World War II. I think it was the 75th anniversary and they Europe, you know, all these former Nazis supported Eastern Europe country. And they did not invite Russia to the celebration of the defeat of Nazi Germany. And he wrote that rejecting the lessons of history inevitably leads to a harsh payback. We will firmly uphold the truth based on documented historical facts. We will continue to be honest and partial about the events of World War II when they have to be archived. But we have to promote the truth the better who did what to do. I don't know if that's an answer. I'll call it an answer. Yes, thank you. And I really appreciate you coming on. It's been a wonderful pleasure to talk to you. For CN Live, I'm Elizabeth Boss. And thank you to our executive producer, Kathy Bogan and my other co-hosts, Joe Lauria and John Kiriakou. Good night, everyone.