 Video and we are now going to hear from Alice Slater will provide testimony. She serves on the boards of world beyond war and global network against weapons and nuclear power in space. She is the UN NGO representative for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and works with Code Pink for a world at peace. Welcome. Thank you. I'm delighted to be here and I'm so overwhelmed by all this information. And I'm just thinking what, how are we going to use this. And if only everybody in America knows what we're listening to now I think we could shift the whole conversation. Because what we're getting now is they're, they're heating it up. I mean, Biden is calling Putin a criminal. He's agreeing. He's criminal. And we had this terrible meeting with China and I grew up in the 50s when we had the Red Scare and we had a comic strip by Walt Kelly called Pogo. And his most famous line was we've met the enemy and he is us. And I was so terrified of communism. I mean, I remember being at Queens College in the 1950s and having the discussion and somebody gave me a pamphlet that said Communist Party of America my heart was pounding with terror. I put in my book bag I went home and the Bronx up to the 8th floor to the incinerator through it directly down the incinerator without even looking that's how scared we were. And years later I did go to the Soviet Union when Gorbachev had instituted perestroika and glass nose I was part of a legal delegation the lawyers Alliance for nuclear arms control. And we were going there. Actually the Soviets had stopped nuclear testing ahead of us and Congress said, we went to Congress our lawyers group. They said, Oh forget it, you can't trust the Russians. So we raise the head of our New York City Bar Association, build a wind he was part of the Dutch to wins up the Hudson raised a lot of money. And the team of seismologists. We went to the Soviet Union, we said, Will you let us put our seismologists at your test site so we can see if you really stopped and they said yes. And we were able to go back to Congress and stop nuclear testing. I mean, it is possible to get progress and I looked at this like I was shocked when I looked at the history that Woodrow Wilson said troops as we heard. And then after we dropped the bomb and we got together with the Soviet Union to form the United Nations to end the scourge of war that was our mission and the number one resolution was the nuclear disarmament. Woodrow Wilson said to Truman, turn the bomb over to the UN, and Truman said no, so Russia got the bomb. Then when the wall came down and Gorbachev let go of all of Eastern Europe without a shot I mean it was like a miracle. Me and Reagan met in Reykjavik and they said let's get rid of all the nuclear weapons. We now have 14,000 nuclear weapons on the planet and 13,000 in the US and Russia so this is not just some abstraction and 2500 in each country pointed on missiles ready to go off. The other seven countries have only 1000 between them, and China smart enough to keep the bombs off the missiles they don't point them at anybody so China has a little Eastern wisdom there. Anyway, Gorbachev said to Reagan, let's get rid of all the nuclear weapons Reagan said great idea so Gorbachev said don't do Star Wars because the US has a military policy to dominate and control the military use of space documents that's what we stand for. And Reagan said I can't give up Star Wars so Gorbachev pulled it off the table. Then he was very nervous Gorbachev about Germany becoming reunited because as we've heard they lost 27 million Russians to the Nazi onslaught I never heard that figure. As a matter of fact when I went there in the 80s every guy over 60 was wearing his World War two medals. You go to the Leningrad cemetery at that time now at St. Petersburg they were like 400,000 mass graves from the Nazi Siege of Leningrad, and every street corner had a monument to the dead. And my guide said to me we had guides he said why don't you Americans trust us and I was being very arrogant American why don't we trust you I said what about Hungary what about Czechoslovakia. He looked at me with tears in his eyes he said, we had to protect our border from Germany. And I looked at him, and that was their truth and we were getting such baloney the American people they're still getting it. They were never coming after us I mean their occupation might not have been the finest occupation of Eastern Europe but they weren't going to let anybody come into Russia I'm Napoleon had marched in 100 years earlier into Moscow. And so anyway, it was that's how Gorbachev said, he was very nervous about East Germany being united with West Germany and going into NATO. And Reagan said, don't worry and Jack Matlock his ambassador has written an op-ed in the New York Times about this. And they give you are where we will not expand NATO one inch to the East, and they put it right up to Russia's border that we've been talking about taking Ukraine in Georgia, and we're doing war games on Russia's border nuclear war games we keep us nukes in five NATO states Italy, Belgium, Holland, Germany and Turkey I mean it's, you know what happened when they had them in Cuba we went bananas. Very interesting to me the Cuban Missile Crisis because we Kennedy made a deal with Khrushchev to get them out and secretly promised to remove US missiles from Turkey a year later, because he couldn't make it a public deal because the Congress never would have agreed to it. And he kept his word he removed them, but we had put them in there. That was part of the incentive for Khrushchev to put missiles into Cuba. And guess what, we now have missiles back in Turkey right on Russia's border with nuclear weapons base there. So, Pogo was right. Then after we went West Clinton bomb possible. That's the first time we broke our agreement with the United Nations that we would never engage in a war of aggression. Yes we were under imminent threat of attack without the approval of the Security Council and Russia vetoed that war and we went in and said the hell with you. Then Putin offered Clinton to cut our massive arsenals at that time was 16,000 down to 1000 each and call everybody at the table but don't put missiles into remaining because we've been starting to build these nuclear replacements Clinton would not promise this and then Bush walked out of the 1972 anti ballistic missile treaty that we had with the Soviets, which helped us to stop building more missiles because we didn't have anti missiles, and we put them in Poland and this is, it's, it's always us. Then they, but Bush and Obama blocked any discussion in 2008 and 2014 on a Russian and Chinese proposals for a space weapons ban. In the committee on disarm and Geneva need consensus from everybody to discuss it the US vetoed it. There's a resolution in the General Assembly, prevention of an arms race now the space Russia and China proposed it and supported and the US says no we, and now we formed a separate space force masters in space, you know, then this was very interesting because we're hearing all this talk about cyber attacks. After the stock snap virus, we are the US and Israel boasted about how they, you know, hit uranium enrichment facilities and I ran Putin proposed to Obama that the US and Russian negotiate a cyber ban treaty. Doesn't that sound good. No, we return down and there's a story in the times. And then, I mean they were having this 75th anniversary of World War two in Europe, and they did not invite Russia. And Putin gave this speech, saying that neglecting 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 two. This includes a large scale project to establish Russia's largest collection of archival records film photo materials about the history of World War two and the pre war period. And I think we have a good partner over there in Putin if we want to do a truth report we should make it like we should get more Russians involved with us it shouldn't just be Americans it should because they want to do it, you know, and even the new arms race, he gave a speech in, I think it was 2018, it was 17, how they begged us not to walk out of that anti ballistic missile treaty and then they tried so hard to negotiate and finally they decided they had to improve their weapons and then we use that as an excuse for why we're spending more money in an arms race. And of course we've heard all these economic drivers and it's insane because we have so much to do for the climate I mean look at Texas they need a whole new grid we're looking for jobs and manufacturers I mean, they let a snowstorm kill all the electric in Texas, you know we need windmills we need so upon we, we need to change our farming over there's so much work that we could be doing for this incredible money that we're spending on the military so right now we got a treaty negotiated with 122 countries that just got disgusted with the nuclear weapons states that weren't following their promises and the non proliferation treaty for good faith efforts and nuclear disarmament so they said but there's no treaty that actually said nuclear weapons are illegal so we negotiated that it passed we won the Nobel Peace Prize for this international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons none of the nuclear weapons states with their interestingly North Korea voted for the negotiations in the past and they were the only nuclear weapons state that did like the western states US Russia, England France and Israel voted no. India China and Pakistan abstained, and North Korea voted yes this was like the first vote whether negotiation should go forward and then they went forward and we got a treaty and it just became entered into force that wasn't 50 countries. And so that's something that we should be promoting here and I mean we have to get up on it to, we really have to get him to change his tune. We got him to change his tune on the big economic. He just passed you know that wasn't his love from an old Leo liberal which got us Trump in the first place so there's like a new talk somehow. That's where not there yet, but we have to mobilize here and am I up is my time up I wasn't. Yeah, then I'll finish there and just urge you to, I'm working with world beyond war I mean it's no good to just stop this war or that weapon we have to get rid of the whole war system and now with the plague and climate catastrophe and the nuclear crisis pointed ready to destroy, you know, we have to shift out of war so I recommend everybody to do the world beyond war and the icon campaign where you can work to get the US, they should definitely stop any kind of capture and all the arms controllers that destroy the message or it's an end up to a man no first use which is ridiculous because we're using them already just by having them Dan Ellsberg always says that it's like if a bank robber walks into a bank with a gun. You don't have to shoot it you're already using it and we're using them so that's how they came up after this whole new treaty to band the bomb we now have all the foundations in America that a part of the military the Mickey Mac that the government calls it you know military industrial academic congressional think tank complex is now pushing no first use which doesn't mean anything so band the bomb and you know let's let's get the message out. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Alice and I think you have a you've mentioned a project us Russia collaboration on a truth commission so. Yeah, good project the opening shot. Yeah, yeah right on. Thank you Alice.