 A careful, bright rote of the murdered socialist, Rosa Luxemburg. She told the world what life is about, and so the rich have rubbed her out. Students I teach in the New Jersey prison system are acutely aware. All empires die in the same act of self-immolation. The tyranny of the Athenian empire, the acidity noted in its history of the Peloponnesian War, has finally been posed on its side. To fight back, to reach out, and help the weak, the oppressed, and the suffering, to save the planet from ecocide, to the rise of a ruling class, to live intrepid, to span graven evictions, is to bear the mark of king. Those in power must feel around, which means acts of sustained, nonviolent, civil disobedience, social, and political disruption. For they can save us. Politics is a game of fear, and it is our duty to make those in power very, very afraid. It obscures and falsifies the truth to increase this obscene wealth and unchecked power. I'm introducing Robin Lloyd and Duncan Nichols, two of the organizers of this event. Which is in observation of the demonstration which is happening in Washington DC. And which is playing on the TV in the next room. So, I would like to ask you, what has motivated your idea about forming a new party to a new anti-war party? Coalition. Yeah, we're not forming a party. Okay, a new anti-war coalition. Well, maybe that's the first question. What exactly is the constitution of this coalition? Who are the members of this coalition? The organization is totally amorphous as for now. But today is an important meeting to bring left and right together in Vermont to deal with this crisis that is facing the world. And, you know, every night on TV you see more people being shot and killed and missiles flying in all directions. And the United States is providing so much of that ordinance for Ukraine. We are against that. We want to stop the war. We want negotiations. And I think a lot of people feel that way. In fact, I'm hoping that today will be a upsurge of blossoming of anti-war initiatives around the country. So, don't you agree? Yeah, I do, of course. Well, the question again was why are we here? What was the question you just asked? Who are the members of the coalition? Okay, I think Robin described that pretty well. Really what was going on for us was that Nancy Rice and Robin and I and others, Joseph Gaines and others in Vermont have been talking about doing the anti-war coalition of some kind. And so that's already sort of got started. And then Robin contacted Olga and we said, okay, let's throw our, what do they say, throw your velices in with everybody here. Because the Libertarian Party, the Vermont Libertarian Party is very fired up about being anti-war. And Ron Paul and all their leaders are saying great things. So we need to work together because the Democrats and the Republicans have a lock on everything, particularly in Vermont. So we'd like Vermont to not be, it's becoming, we feel like a military base. The F-35 is now deployed in Europe and the F-35 is deployed in the South. You know, Israel has the F-35 airplane. They're nuclear capable. So what we feel like Vermont is our home and that we need to have a concerted and wide coalition in Vermont to deal with the powers that be. These liberal think tanks and the neocons are all in lockstep and we have to resist. For example, one of the initiatives that we might support is protect the guard. By protect the guard we mean don't send them out on wars that have not been formally announced by the president. And the president is very cherry about declaring war. And war hasn't been declared, I mean war was not declared in Vietnam, right? So all of these wars have just been a kind of upsurge from the dark side, from the pro-militaristic people in the Pentagon and so on. And they have not been supported by the people. So this would be a way to protect the guard by giving them the option to not go. So there's the guard in the state house. One thing that might be introduced is that legislation to protect the guard from being deployed anywhere outside of Vermont that isn't declared as a declared war. And that's what Robin just described. But the other thing we can continue to do is to have the resolution to have no nuclear delivery systems in Vermont which was almost made in the last few years. There's a lot of organizing around that. So we want to put pressure on Vermont politicians and the governor. And we think this is a national, this event today is a national event. And we just want to be part of a bigger, you know, probably worldwide, you know, movement to stop war. You know, end in war. End in war. End in war. So we're willing to work with anybody. And we hope that anybody is willing to work with anybody when it comes to this because the consequences are massive. We're willing to work with the nuclear threats and weapons and the military industrial complex. It's gotten too big. So do you feel that this issue, this crisis issue is a moment when the left and the right might actually be able to meet each other and begin to end the massive polarization which we're experiencing in this country as well as in the entire planet right now? Yeah, well definitely. I mean, for example, out there we're listening to Ron Paul who is a very active libertarian person in Congress. And he's against war. He's against sending our weapons overseas when we, there's so much here we need to do. And so I think there's a genuine potential of coming together. And this is a unique moment. I'm really excited about today and what follows from today. Yeah, and your question about polarization is a key question. And I think underneath the subject to all of this is about the polarization because with the polarization becomes the weakness of our movements is the polarization. That's the whole point of the polarization. So we're there to point that out. And, you know, we're forming. So we would like to know what other people think. We're not coming out with the rules. There are huge groups. I mean, the extension rebellion, the youth people, they are fired up. 350.org just held a great demonstration here last weekend. And so us anti-war folks reaching out to the environmental folks and coming together there is an obvious marriage that should take place. And yet somehow it's not always stressed that, you know, the F-35s are the greatest contaminator of Vermont airspace of anything. An environmental polluter and the military. Not just the United States military, but all these militaries. They're the number one polluter apparently because some people have done research. So we all need to work together. But I think your question about polarization and the antidote to polarization is really the key question here. It's not so much which war we stop, but how we come together and have common sense together and live together. And do you have hope that this effort will go some way in banning nuclear weapons? Say you have hope. Say you have hope. Yeah, absolutely, because 120 countries have already done that. They've already made it law and it's already in force in the UN, the second year in force. So that means it's being practiced. It's a law. It's international. Just the countries that haven't signed to the nuclear countries. So the hope is that we're going to influence them. And we can. It's a good start on it. What's a treaty to ban nuclear? Is it TPNW? Yeah. You're looking it up. There's a lot of good things in the works. There's a lot of irons in the fire that are good, including some things to protect the guard, you know, protect our troops. I mean, the 101st Airborne apparently is already in Ukraine. So that was six months ago. So it's already in process. So the question about hope is a really good question because it's easy to not have hope. That's easy. It's hard to have hope. And therefore you have to do something. You have to write your senator, you know, and say, come on, we want you to do the right thing. You know, be responsible. And that's where our hope is. So common sense. There's currently no bill in impossible progress in the State House about banning the F-35s in Vermont? No, it has to be revived because it's a new biennium starting this year. So it would have to be reintroduced and there are some people who are talking about that. Yes. And so it's a good, it would be a great thing and we'll get behind it. Okay. Did you want to say something? Well, I was just looking up the number of diseases that are predominant and people who live downstream from nuclear weapons tests and that have proliferated around the country, whether you live near them or not. And it's just, it's just amazing what, you know, and of course now it's gone away. Oh, here it is. But, you know, leukemia, cancer of the pharex, of the small intestine, of the brain, cancer of the stomach, of the urinary bladder, of the colon. I mean, these people are being killed by our government's obsession to be the most powerful country in the world by making so many more nuclear weapons than are ever needed. We know weapons, nuclear weapons are needed, but the stockpile of weapons, and the stockpile means the mining of uranium, which injures the Indian people, where most of the uranium is on their plantations and the refining and the whole process. The waste is going around in trains right now. Yeah. It's incredible. The waste is going around in trains every day that's nuclear waste. So we need to just call it out, you know, and be responsible. Yeah, some people say, Robin said to me, would you rather be alive after a nuclear exchange or dead? You know, that's, it might be better not to be alive because it's a terrible thing, terrible thing. Even small nukes, they're making some big mistakes talking about small nukes. Okay. Well, thank you for your interview. Okay. Well, thank you very much. Anything else you want to say to wrap this up? Okay. I think we've said it. We better go talk to people. My name is Olga Maria. I'm the chair of the Libertarian Party of Vermont. Hi, Olga Maria. Glad to meet you. So, as a reporter, I'm wondering if this anti-war movement that is a coalition of forces between progressives and libertarians might be a moment in our country when we can actually begin to deal with the polarization that we have experienced for some years now and which is not only an American phenomenon but a global phenomenon. What words might you be able to say about that? I absolutely think that's exactly what's happening. For a really long time now, the body politic in our culture has taken a role of dividing everyone in such a way and driving a culture war which is driving a wedge between everyone. And I think the wonderful thing about this coalition that is being built not only in Vermont but around the country and honestly around the world between folks that on most issues maybe are on opposite sides or misunderstand or even have misconceptions of one another. I think that the wonderful thing about this moment is that it's truly an issue where we are understanding the dire nature of where we are in the history of the world right now. We have an elite class that has taken us through the last three years of tyranny in a lot of countries including ours and continues this drive of authoritarianism essentially and is pushing this nation really to the brink of disaster and the world to the brink of disaster. And I think so many folks just coming out on the other end of the past couple of years are really sick and tired of the authoritarian nature of the elites at this point and are looking on the other side of the proverbial aisle to say what can we do together at this point? Because whatever our differences are they're really not the most important thing right now. We can argue about Medicare for All or a free market healthcare system another time. Let's get through what is happening right now so that we can have those discussions because at the rate that we're going and at the rate that our president and a lot of the quote unquote leaders around the world they're really not interested in the things that affect working people and the things that affect human beings they're more interested in feeding this war machine and the other side of this war machine isn't only the military actions that take place overseas it's the surveillance state and I think that's the other piece that people are really putting together is how much the militarization that we see across the globe how much that militarization is actually being weaponized and used here. Yes, thank you very much. How do you feel about the issue of Vermont housing F-35s and how that affects the nuclear balance in the world and particularly in this particular moment of crisis? I think this situation right now with the war in Ukraine the essentially a proxy war with the United States and Russia has really changed the way we are looking at the issue locally in Vermont with the F-35s. Prior to any of this happening a lot of the arguments were you know the pollution, the sound, the way it impacts folks here who live near the air force base of the airport where you know the planes are flying. Now we're looking at things in a really different way and I think that that's an important point of conversation for us to start having because it is what this it's bringing to light what is this actually being used for? What are these things being used for? One thing that we're looking at here is our National Guard. There's an initiative that we're working on it's called Defend the Guard and basically that's about that's an initiative. It's a national group that is started by veterans. They are anti-war veterans and this initiative is designed for states and for groups like ours excuse me for groups like ours to bring to our state house to find sponsors to propose a bill that would not allow the governor to send our National Guardsmen unless there's an official declaration of war by Congress. It's a form of nullification that we could potentially have in this state that other states are working on a form of trying to at least decentralize some of the military hold and it's these types of conversations that we can have locally around our local military and how they're used and what the effect of that is overseas but I think we've been so disconnected from that. We don't see anywhere in our you know on the mainstream media or even the local media no one knows about what's happening in Yemen, no one knows about what's happening in Syria and it's interesting the United States military is all over the globe engaged in all types of conflicts and yet we only have a spotlight on the particular ones that are able where they're able to drive the emotionality of people where they're able to drive the narrative and I think the positive thing that this is doing the gathering that we're having today and the coalition that we're starting is that it's engaging people to really learn about what really is happening on this larger scale. We have no idea how engaged the military is, how engaged the Pentagon is, how engaged of a tax dollar that are taken from us and that are utilized to fund the Pentagon and to fund all of these things all over the world and the effects that they're having in creating genocide and atrocities that we can't even imagine and the media is not even reporting on it. Well that's very interesting what you've just said really shows bridge building between the progressives and the libertarians and I congratulate you on that, I congratulate both sides. In fact, the Duncan was just talking about the bills, the same bill about the guards in the State House. So there's a place of total agreement on supposedly both sides here so maybe there aren't two sides. I think the trick of the duopoly of the Democrats and Republicans of liberals, conservatives, the trick of it it's really it's one party that just has two tastes, two different flavors of authoritarianism. Which one do you like? I don't like any of those flavors and I think a lot more people who are aligning themselves whether it's the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are really starting to realize that these are two sides of the same authoritarian bird and they're sick of it. And so they're kind of stepping out, they're becoming independents, they just want to focus on or on coalitions, they want to focus on issues because they are becoming way more aware that the two sides they talk a lot but when we look at what the Democrat and the Republicans agree upon especially when we look at these major bills that are passed in DC, it's very scary. When they are in agreement we need to run. When they are in agreement we're in a lot of trouble and all the other talking points back and forth that they have about this side is this and this side is that that's all just to distract us and that's all to drive us into their identitarian conflicts and for us to just divide ourselves and I think this is why this event is very scary, this coalition is scary because we're trying to rise above it and transcend that and we're trying to just say let's focus on what we can do to work together because it really is a lot more that we agree upon than we think. It's great to hear. Thank you. Thank you so much, I appreciate it. Hello everyone. I'm glad to see you here. As you can see we're in the midst of a public meeting. Hello everyone. I'm glad to see you here. As you can see we're in the midst of a public meeting about the protest, the anti-war protest which is joined by both parties, by the Libertarian Party, by the Libertarian Party, by the Libertarian Party, by the Libertarian Party, by the Libertarian Party and progressive party. This is very interesting development. And the model of today is to watch some of this live stream from Washington, D.C. which is the Libertarian Party and the People's Party event and it's pretty well, it's certainly got wonderful speakers and we want to hear some of them but we also want to talk amongst ourselves and get some ideas of where we might work in Vermont to stop war and stop this militarism. There's a lot of very active people in this room. So in a little while we'd like to all stop other things and just have a conversation. Do people think we should be in a circle? Do they think we should be in one small layer? How do people see that? Because we have this competing and parallel event here. What do people think? There's also a room in there people wanted to kind of just sit. So some people really want to listen but people wanted to keep talking. There's also a nice room in there too if people just wanted to do that. How would you guys feel like it would work better? Okay, so that's an option is to go in this room. It's a lovely room. But then that means everybody has to go in there who want to meet. I have a feeling, Robin maybe has a sense of this, Robin Lloyd, that we want to talk without other things going on for a little while anyway. Because what we're doing here is we're really going to the next step which is to form a wider Vermont coalition which includes any party that is in it and they include us and all of us and so it's a step. And so the next thing we'll do is we'll have a meeting, a follow-up meeting on March 16th in the evening on a Zoom and we'll continue this. We want to hear what people think, what they want, where their heads are at, where they think we should go, whether they believe in consensus or they want to, we all just want to get things done fast. We want to hear everybody's opinion, okay? The Libertarian Party is one of the hosts and I would say Nancy Robin Lloyd, Nancy Rice, Robin Lloyd and I are kind of helping organize and Renee is helping organize this other hostishness. And so that's the Vermont Anti-War Coalition and that's why we want to hear where you want to take organizing in Vermont against war. So it's forming, it's just kind of being for us a little bit here. So we have a questionnaire and we hope you'll go talk to whoever's at that table, Nancy or me or Robin and sign in and give us your emails and we'll contact you again. Thank you. I just wanted to welcome everyone to this event. I think it's wonderful that we're all here meeting and talking and listening and yeah, it sounds a little bit wonky so maybe that's kind of like the universal way of saying, you know, talk amongst yourselves and get to know one another, enjoy some good food. But I think what's happening right now this moment is very momentous and historical. What's happening right now in Washington, D.C. is the largest anti-war gathering in at least 20 years. And I think what we're doing here in Vermont is equally historic. There are sister events like this one that are happening all over the country today, this whole weekend. So we're really in good company and I think the importance of the fact that, you know, we're all focused on different sides and different places of the political spectrum and we're able to still kind of gather and break bread and talk amongst ourselves and plan and all that and I think that's great. So I just want to welcome everyone and when you get a chance just make sure you sign in, sign in some libertarian party tables, sign in make sure you fill out that questionnaire because what we're trying to do is just gather information and see where we can take this, where we can take this movement honestly is what really we're just trying to build together. Jerome LaHoney is public access TV and he's asked me to ask all of you if there's people who would rather not be filmed and he can avoid that. He's just taking various interviews of people individually. So can everybody hear that question? So if you don't want to be filmed, raise your hand. That is enough here. So Jerome, are you here? I'm right here. What do you think? I can turn off the camera at any moment. I don't have to be filming this public part at all. You're doing interviews with people. Okay, I'll do that. I'm glad to do that. Greetings, my name is Christopher Hallali. I'm the International Secretary of the Party of Communist USA. Our student mass organization, the American Student Union, has co-sponsored this Rage Against the War Machine event here on February 19th. They're done in D.C. at this moment and a lot of great things are happening. I'm very happy to see a large coalition being built. Very pleased to see organizations on all sides of the political spectrum coming together to fight against the war machine, to call for the abolition of NATO, to call for an end not only to the war in Ukraine, but the wars around the world, and to focus on the human needs first. To focus on the needs of the people in this country and around the world instead of on the war machine and their corporate holders, stockholders, and the military industrial complex as a whole. So I think overall I'm very pleased that we are finally building an anti-war movement again. We can see organizations coming together that haven't necessarily been allies before. And I think that this is so good to see something that's a breath of fresh air. And I'm hopeful that in the coming months and in the coming years we can build a powerful anti-war movement that will be able to go against the U.S. government's role around the world as an empire and as a purveyor of violence and destruction with its war machine to call an end to that and to begin to rebuild a peace movement that can bring about fraternity and solidarity amongst all peoples around the world. That's what I'm hopeful for and that's what we continue to fight for. Thank you very much. So I'm so excited to be here at this meeting today with all these people. This is a first real positive meeting against the war in Ukraine and calling for abolishing this tremendous proxy war that's escalating every month. We keep seeing a massive increase in U.S. spending and participation and it's just driving forward to the next, very soon, a next step may be a direct NATO involvement in the war against Russia. This is something that's really very dangerous for humanity and for all of us and for all living things. So we are really fortunate that nationally and here in Vermont we're seeing people of very different viewpoints coming together to oppose this war to say let's stop the war, stop U.S. funding for the war, let's use our money for what we desperately need at home to rebuild so many things, our infrastructure, affordable housing, childcare, our education, our healthcare, so many things that are in distress at home and we're spending huge resources to really destroy the country of Ukraine. It's doing nobody in Ukraine any group whatsoever to have this war. It's killing and wounding people by the thousands every week. It's not producing a positive result and we don't need to be involved in where different parts of Ukraine are what country they're a part of. If the Russian speakers in the eastern Donbass want to be part of their own country or Ukraine or Russia, that's up to them, not us. So if we have any participation in this, it can be to advocate for self-determination by the people in the eastern part of that country. Otherwise, we're just using their issue to assault Russia where it's a matter of using the people of Ukraine for our purposes. We want to weaken Russia according to our Secretary of Defense. Well, this is a very dangerous thing to do. What if they wanted to weaken us and started a war somewhere to weaken us? We've been through that actually. We were weakened by the Vietnam War. We were weakened by the Afghan War and the Iraq War and all these other wars and interventions that the U.S. has taken on and have served no valuable purpose for the people of Vermont or Michigan or California or anywhere else in our country. It's degraded living in our country to spend trillions of dollars in these wars of aggression. That's what they are, wars of aggression. And then we are assaulting our own people, physical assault on people living in South Burlington, in Winooski, in Burlington on the east side of Burlington and in the new north end and in Williston with these F-35 jets that are based at our airport, our civilian airport in a city, okay, if they were 10 miles away from any populated area they could be operating without hurting anybody, maybe animal life, but at least not people, not children. The Air Force itself said that almost 7,000 people live in the incredible noise danger zone of the F-35 where the noise level reaches 115 decibels, hundreds of times a month with all of these training flights. This is not for a city any more than dropping napal, would be something you would do in a city. This is military training operations, the military zone regulations prohibit conducting operations in a place where there is a strong possibility of hurting civilians or civilian infrastructure. There are 3,000 homes in that desperate noise zone. We should be stopping that. This is bringing the war home to our own people. We're making our own Vermonters suffer for the military, as if the military rules us, but that contradicts how this country was established with civilian rule over the military. We've got to enforce the military's own regulations, help the military conduct its operations in compliance with distinction, which means separation of military operations from populated areas and all the other military regulations that protect civilians. Even during the Vietnam War, there wasn't like a military assault on civilians. The thing that we're seeing here is that I think they picked Burlington for it because what's near the airport is working class neighborhoods and they think, oh, they can get away with that and to some extent, to a large extent, they have. Winooski is a working class city. It's one mile in direct line with the runway. The runway aims right at the center of Winooski and it has the most ethnic diversity in Vermont. 30% of the population is non-white. And then, of course, in South Burlington, the runway is located in the Chamberlain School neighborhood, which is an area of these little houses with backyards, like seven houses to an acre. So it's a really nice area for what they call workforce homes. But it was built in the 50s and 60s. It's an area where young people could get a starter home and build a family and have children. Well, it's dangerous to live there now with this F-35. It's not a good place. The FAA says it's unsuitable for residential use and the Air Force says the same thing. You shouldn't be living in that neighborhood. In fact, the Air Force says an area of more than 22,500 acres is in that oval-shaped noise zone. They have contour lines. How the noise goes down with distance. Well, you could see that if you're just a few miles from the runway, you're safe. Why not, if you're going to be doing this, go to a runway in Vermont. There are 18 airports in Vermont. Why not go to one of them that's far away from populated areas? Why use the one in a city surrounded by other cities? South Burlington, Winooski, Burlington and Williston are all right up against each other and right up against the airport. We have a huge population in that noise zone. But it's not just the noise. This F-35 is a nuclear bomb delivery vehicle. It was designed for the purpose of delivering two B-61 nuclear bombs. This is an airplane which has stealth capability. It's supposed to be able to evade the radar. It's supersonic, faster than the speed of sound. It's designed to get in, drop the bombs and get out. Well, that makes the Burlington Airport a legitimate military target for Russian and Chinese missiles, whether they're nuclear-tipped missiles or conventional. But it's a legitimate military target. And it's not me saying that. It's the Federal Emergency Management Administration that says that. And they have their list of areas that they think will be targeted by nuclear missiles from Russia and China. And Burlington Airport is on that list because we have the F-35. And of course, it is a danger for those countries. The F-35s can be forward-deployed, and they were forward-deployed last summer. Eight of them traveled across the Atlantic and did air policing around the borders in Eastern Europe, the borders of Russia. And the idea was somehow, and what they promoted that tour for three or four months in Eastern Europe was that we're somehow protecting Eastern Europe from Russian advances. They didn't go into Ukraine fortunately, but they did go in the areas around, in the Baltic area and in the other countries in Eastern Europe. So they announced very clearly that Vermont has F-35 jets. They're based here and they're ready for forward deployment and they're ready to be upgraded for carrying those nuclear bombs once they are forward-deployed. We don't expect them to have nuclear bombs in Vermont and then carry them over the ocean. No, those bombs are already in Europe. So the F-35s would fly over, get the bombs, and then whatever be deployed if we get to that point. We don't want to get to that point. We want to oppose the F-35 program, the F-35s in Vermont, the drive to escalation and war with Russia or China over Taiwan or any of that. We've had enough of wars of aggression, of regime change wars, of interventions, of overthrowing foreign governments, of intervening in their internal affairs. The United States has a record of incredible intervention and it's up to the people to put a stop to it. We can build a mass campaign and I'm so excited that so many people have come today to build a movement here in Vermont and I hope it's happening all around the country. I understand it's not just a demonstration in Washington, D.C. the rage against the war, but also on the West Coast and the Midwest, the South, all over the country people are coming out together. Even if they disagree on different things, they're coming out to get together to participate. Yeah, we disagree about many other things, but we're united against the war and we're going to work together to build a campaign to bring in working class people, students, women, gay people, all kinds of different people who are concerned about the escalation of this war, concerned about who's making money from the war and it's not us. There are rich people who are just taking in trillions, billions of dollars in weapons sales. We don't need that. We don't have to have a militarized society. Our main product doesn't have to be war machines. In fact, we have a climate emergency looming over us and every bomb that is dropped, every missile that is launched takes away from the ability to fight our real enemy, which is climate warming, climate disaster. We don't need to have wars about pipelines. We don't need to be blowing up pipelines or building pipelines. We need to focus on eliminating, over time, our dependence on fossil fuels, build a renewable energy system, build a geothermal energy system, build solar and wind and geothermal. These are the things that we could be doing on a mass scale an industrial scale to equip every house with renewable energy, every industry, every kind of transportation, high-speed rail. What are we wasting our resources on war for? We could be doing, instead of destruction, construction. Some of what the U.S. considers adversaries, like China, they're not wasting on wars. We don't see them intervening. They're building their economy. They've created wealth for people who are living in poverty. Hundreds of millions of people were in poverty. They've done a lot to up the scale and the standard of living for millions of people taking them out of poverty, providing education and health care and housing, building cities, building high-speed rail. So many things, they're catching up and we're falling behind, because we're focusing on military. It's not the right thing to be doing. We need, well, we had a revolution. We need another one. We need some serious change, some very substantial change in how our country operates. And I think that it's a really amazing thing to see libertarians and progressives and all kinds of other people coming together around one issue. We may only agree on one issue, but that's all you need to agree about to build a movement and this is a very, very serious issue and it has impact on many other areas. If we can put a stop to the war focus of our administration and turn this around, we can solve so many other problems and the differences we have over many other things are inconsequential if we can come together around opposition to this war. Hi there, my name is Charlotte Dennett and I am here because I feel that the American people are not being told the whole story about not only what's behind the war in Ukraine but what's behind all the endless wars that have gone on since 9-11. And I've done some research. I've written a book, follow the pipelines. The subtitle is Uncovering the Mystery of a Lost Spy and the Deadly Politics of the Great Game for Oil. And The Lost Spy is my father who was head of counterintelligence from the whole Middle East in the World War II and post-war period and who died in a mysterious plane crash after a top secret visit to Saudi Arabia. So that got me looking into the background what was he doing, why did the plane crash and he was involved in Saudi Arabia. So that's how I started my quest which took me, actually taken me right up to the present and the war in Ukraine. And I came here because I wanted to educate people. You have to fight like crazy, first of all. If you are telling a narrative that's different than the official narrative, you've got to constantly seek out the alternatives to find people to tell them, look, there's much more to this story. You've got to go into historical context. One of my favorite influences I should say even when I was writing an earlier book on Bush was a forensic pathologist who said, he was in a major lawsuit, a murder lawsuit and he said looking at the facts in isolation will not get you anywhere. Looking at facts in a context that's when you'll find the proof of what happened. And that's what I do. I trace things historically. But if we come right up to the war in Ukraine the tip-off for me that this was probably yet another energy war was when I found out that the first US sanction against Russia was the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. And that was right at the time of the invasion. And then, of course, what I had to do is look back, you know, what was it about this pipeline that was so threatening? And I found out that it was Russian control and that they were feeding natural gas into Germany and into Europe at a much cheaper rate than the western oil companies were trying to deliver their natural gas. And they felt threatened by Russia having, what they were worried about was having a monopoly over the energy distribution through all of Europe. And so, incredibly, we have Cy Hirsch has just come out with this incredibly big, brave article how America took out the Nord Stream pipeline and that's been covered up a lot but he had sources who describe how this covert operation happened and in cooperation with the Norwegians to sabotage the pipeline. Because there are two pipelines. One was active and the other one was just about to come online when the war happened. And so, I started writing about this right at this time a year ago and I predicted that the war in Ukraine could easily become the mother of all energy wars and I feel like I've been sort of vindicated in that. I mean, it's inescapable now. The whole oil connection to wars used to be covered up as a national security issue and the primary reason is because oil continues to be the main fuel of the military. In other words, put differently, it is the military that is the biggest consumer of oil and the reason that they are so protective of oil is historical lessons, namely Germany ran out of fuel in World War I and that's why they lost it. And then Hitler became so obsessed in having oil supplies to carry out World War II that he developed artificial oil and developed a plant to develop it out of IG Farben, it never got very far, but that goes to show if you don't control the oil, you lose the war, see? So any power that has the ambition of being a great power in the world has to capture oil supplies and once they get control over the oil then they have to figure out how to distribute it because it's not going to do anything if it just sits in the ground. It requires pipelines. Those are the main distributors of oil. All right, if you're going to do pipelines you've got to figure out how to protect them militarily. And one of the, one of my father's reports that got declassified because I sued the CIA said right as he was starting out on his mission to the Middle East in 1944 there's this key paragraph about what his tasks were to be key among them. We must protect the oil at all costs. And at this point it was Saudi oil. And Americans knew this was a prize that was unbeatable. It was the great treasure. And the American allies were very jealous that the U.S. had gotten control over the oil of Saudi Arabia. And now we just fast forward all the way up to the present and look at what Biden had to do when the war in Ukraine began and there was concerns about Europeans not getting access to the oil and natural gas that ran through pipelines that were ruined by the Russians which were built by the Russians when they had control over Ukraine. And so, you know, Biden was very concerned. What did he do? He went hat in hand to Saudi Arabia to Mohammed bin Salman, the prince, the acting ruler of Saudi Arabia. And despite all these previous efforts to sanction him and to distance him because he was the guy responsible for the murder of Khashoggi who was the Saudi dissident and reporter for the Washington Post, you know, he was dismembered. I mean this shocking murder of this Saudi. And so, the CIA even said that he was responsible. So here's Biden who had called him a prime having to go to Saudi Arabia hat in hand to try to lower the price of oil and gas. And so, that's very transparent very out in the open and all the concerns about Europe and how they're going to get access to natural gas to fuel their industries and oil culminated in what we have today with, well, first of all, the sabotage of the Nord Stream 2. And what are the implications of that? The implications are that Europe is going to be more and more dependent on U.S. Some people see this war as actually aimed at weakening Europe if you can believe that and particularly Germany which was going to be the major benefactor of the second Nord Stream 2 pipeline which was going to terminate in Germany and then be distributed throughout Europe. And I don't see that as inconceivable because one of the things I learned is investigating the great game for oil that was going on after World War II it was between the Allies. They were all spying against each other. They were warring against each other and the U.S. was target number one. The British were horrendously resentful of America getting control over Saudi oil. This suddenly catapulted America into being a great power. So on the surface they're allies but in reality they're fighting each other they're spying on each other and I come to some conclusions in my book about who might have been responsible for the plane crash and I strongly suggest that it might be one of the most famous spies of the 20th century and my father's direct counterpart worked for the British but unbeknownst to the British he was also working for the Soviets and that's Kim Filby. He was all very much involved in this area at this time. But anyway, I learned things. I learned about how espionage is related to scouting for oil and protecting oil routes and then that incomes the military so there's that and then no international finance will go near a pipeline plan unless there's stability. So again, that brings in the role of the military that have to make sure that they got the right people to protect the pipeline routes and I find this in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and now Ukraine. Will you can ask me a question? Yes, well what I've been thinking about when you've been talking about this going back to Hitler and his losing the war because of not having enough oil I'm thinking that the modern the current dependence on fossil fuels it really represents a paradigm that should be defeated that needs to be defeated at this point completely. Absolutely. And so we are stuck globally we're stuck in this situation that belongs really to history and not to the present needs is not at all supplying the present needs of life on this planet. Oh, you're so right. You're sorry and I appreciate your passion on that subject. It just drives me crazy because it's traditionally censored. It's a national security issue that's what's considered. In fact, I think it was somebody from inside the foreign policy apparatus who was in Rochester, Vermont and was being filmed by you and I had spoken out we were talking about Ukraine and I was talking about but you never get the oil context and I said that's because it's a national security issue so I was glad to get that vindication. It's absolutely true. You will not hear the oil connection to this war. Some part of the New York Times has to talk about the European countries are in a quandary because they were moving away from it. Germany number one. They had dismantled their nuclear plants and they were all prepared to go first with natural gas and they were going into solar and this was very threatening to American oil companies and many of them by the way during the Trump administration were independence and have been constantly fighting to get their own markets because the majors are the ones that usually get them Exxon, Mobile, Chevron, BP, Total, you know the big ones are usually the ones that get the big deals after the little guys first go in and then they buy them out but the independence based in the Southwest and Southern California they're the ones that have been angling to get in and the first effort of that angling was the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and one of the key people that was doing the scouting was Dick Cheney Dick Cheney of Halliburton was buying the Caspian Sea and because they knew that the Caspian Sea was going to be the new release it's loaded with oil and natural gas so he was scouting all over and trying to figure out which was the best pipeline routes to get it distributed and so when you look at Ukraine you got to look at the Ukraine's location next to the Caspian Sea and of course Ukraine and I've got a whole thing followed the pipeline's website that shows the whole trail of pipelines that are distributing natural gas through Europe and a lot of it was Russian control now there's fighting in Azerbaijan with Armenia the poor Armenians are once again trapped in an almost genocidal situation and as I was talking to an Armenian filmmaker they've got the curse of location you got to look at maps when you look at maps everything becomes clear I have 12 maps in this book and that's when you start to understand the energy routes and the competition and then of course propaganda plays a big role as well you got to justify a war and the last thing you can do is mention that a mother is going to send her children to war for oil it doesn't work so you've got to come up with a pretext for why the war is being fought and even though it's true that Russia had invaded a sovereign nation there's more to that story that has to be explored and one of the things I found out is that under for instance the Obama administration they knew that the eastern part of Ukraine had the richest reserves so far unexplored in the eastern part of Ukraine where all the fighting is going on right now and when you see a Biden saying we'll stay to the end it's not because he cares about Ukraine I don't think maybe he does but the real objective is to get hold of those resources and prevent Russia from getting them these are oil wars all the time that are going on absolutely and it's in my book I talk about it anyway you wanted to know who I've met today I went right to a quote younger person he's 38 years old he had stood up and said we're mostly old people and I said why are you here his name is Lincoln he was telling I said what is it with the young people why aren't they involved he says they're too busy looking at their iPhones and consuming and they're consuming information and that's what they're doing they're like totally addicted to getting getting whatever information they want and they're not paying attention and I find that really really sad what can we do there are a few people there and I had to thank one other person who was a bit younger saying I thank you older people for what you've done to try to educate us about the wars that America's been involved there are a lot of Vietnam well quite a few Vietnam vets that were in the room and to have him actually acknowledge what our generation we were the 60's generation the 60's and the 70's what we tried to do to prevent yet another illegal horrific war and all that we've learned and that's one thing that I think what we need to do is that we need to sit down with younger people and have the conversations that we're going on in this room look at trading ideas about where do they get really good information because they're just getting a lot of very sophisticated propaganda on the TV I think TV and through the internet and that's why you know a lot of people all of Congress buying into this the whole thing is around Russia invading a sovereign nation and I was just talking to one fellow there who said well he's got more information on that that what was going on in Eastern Ukraine at the time is that there were pro-Russian separatists who were getting attacked all the time excited I do think that Putin had an overall imperial objective I do believe that and so I condemn him for the invasion but on the other hand I condemn the NATO powers and the US for provoking him they keep calling it an unprovoked war and all you have to do is go back in history and when you go back in history and find out about the US and NATO countries the resources of this region then it all starts to make sense so do you feel that this very point of view is a place where the progressives can meet the the republican anti-war people yeah I do what was going on in Washington today you've got Rand Paul for instance that's talking there and yes we should be talking absolutely it's wonderful that this dialogue has finally begun maybe this is the moment that we have needed in order to mitigate the horrible polarization which has been happening in this country over the last few years and it's been intentional you know divine rule I was at a conference two decades ago out on the west coast where there was the beginning of people coming together to try to understand what was really going on and there are just a few conservatives there one thing that's common is that they're looking at the elites and they may be funded by corporations who like I say independence for instance who are also resentful against the elites because the elites are getting all the big deals and they're being shut out so they're willing to fund these grassroots movements you know criticizing the elites and the billionaires and so one of the things that people need to understand is who's funding which movements and how the activists are being manipulated and it's through the necessity of dialogue and education that we have to get far more sophisticated because the stakes are huge and we're so close so close to a mistake happening and having a nuclear conflict ration I mean this war is insane and that's why I'm here I feel like I tell people I say a war the plague on both their houses really the Russians and the NATO and US because their objectives are not to protect Ukraine's democracy necessarily they have to say Ukraine is a sovereign country I get that and it shouldn't be invaded but let's look at the whole picture and I think once we do there will be a reckoning there will be a reckoning on this war but at what cost you know I keep coming back to my father's statement in this heavily redacted document and somebody forgot to black it out this one sentence we have to protect the oil at all costs what are the costs and now people tell me well it's not just about oil and natural gases about lithium and the long minerals in Ukraine it's really true in lithium oh my god now I'm beginning to feel for all the countries that have lithium what's going to happen to them but I keep reminding people that until the US moves away from oil gasoline as the fuel of this military machine we're going to keep having these wars and there is a consciousness now of how the fossil fuel companies have been lying to us and I've been trying to reach out to these other groups that have come to this consciousness of the climate activists for instance and I need to reach out more to them and to expand the dialogue that it's not just the result we're not just suffering from global warming we're climate change we're suffering from these energy driven wars that they're lying to us about that's it my name is Spencer Sherman I'm the vice chair of the Libertarian Party who has organized the region against the war machine rally today and I think it's it's a good place to start in a world that's so polarized by different people's opinions where everybody sort of gets so secular to share that today's event was far from that we have groups of people from all different parts of the political spectrum from the Libertarian side to the Communist side here and we're all getting together on the idea that war is bad for humans that this incessant military industrial push really only profits a small few and doesn't really help humanity the current war that we're concerned about is the ongoing war in Ukraine there was the potential for peace before all the military industrial complex stepped in and pushed and rallied for the war machine to continue and pretty much everybody here today is against that concept war for profiteering whether it was the Rockefellers just before World War II whether it was the Bush Cheney group during the Iraq war in Afghanistan and now it's the the left wing Democrats who are rallying the banner not to let go of the war and it just war is hell and my dad fought in the last year of World War II in the Battle of the Bulge and in the river valley and our conversations about that were nothing more than horrific and you would not want that you wouldn't wish it on anybody and to see what's happening to a generation of Ukrainians today is equally as horrible and the fact that it continues because we're just continuing to fund it without anyone suing for peace just seems so nonsensical to be polite so yeah, so a group of us got together from all different walks of life to try to figure out what we can do to make our voices known so that funding this godforsaken war that is killing so many people and just because they're not American soldiers dying over there doesn't mean that we shouldn't stop it and so we as the Libertarian Party got together with some other folks and to take this opportunity at the war against the Rage Against the War Machine rally in DC and do a sister rally here in Vermont and it was remarkably successful because it left the people who care a place to try to figure out how to consolidate our message and how to share it with people in such a way that hopefully more people see how ugly and evil war is and work towards ending it so you're actually so in progress in that in this dialogue being able to occur I did see some progress as I sort of took on the role of the moderator in my small group and the hardest part was trying to get people who were emotional about the issue to focus in a single direction because emotions can often get us a little bit scattered in our thought process but with a little bit of guidance everybody just simply bringing it back to the concept of why we're here today and not just every other war in the past but why we're here now and my heart goes out to the Ukrainian people I have friends of Ukrainian origin who are working really hard to help feed people among other things and taking refugees and such and again war is hell and we need to do something to end it and that's why we were all here today we have a beautiful day if only all this were used for good instead of evil right here in the heart of the empire look at it come here to DC in order to get here did they cross state lines great I love to say that because the whole point of this is to overcome barriers not just ideological barriers as well to come together and say that we're tired of this war as many of the speakers have mentioned before me so I'm honored to be here as others have emphasized how inspiring it is to be former presidential candidates four of them Dr. Jill Stein, Tulsi Gabbard Ron Paul Dennis Kucinich they each have their own even though they each come from something different we don't always get the opportunity to come together and show what this country is actually about which is what I see in front of me today I'm also disappointed that there are some people who couldn't share the stage with me today Scott Ritter knows what it feels like to risk and up to the greatest humanitarian catastrophe so far this century via rock wars so thank you Scott I know her and love her I do too, Medea Benjamin a legend what she's up against to the same people that I've been talking to for in some cases decades other cases years that people can come together and discuss areas where they disagree and we can debate what have to share locker rooms or competing athletics against biological males another time because the reality is the cost of the war and the cost of the war regardless of what they believe in on other issues we are all affected by this not just in terms of the tax paying to people that the price of gas at the pump the price of the food they're buying right now is all tied to this war you think sanctioning Russia's oil means that Russia's not going to make money off their oil no it just means we're sanctioning ourselves it's about communicating the stakes and the real cost to people who might see the war itself as abstract but it is also I think about being serious about what we're actually living through right now I hear a lot of people talk about the lead up to World War 3 and that's what we're experiencing right now hello through World War 3 because the World War that we are going to experience that we are experiencing in our generation is not of the same nature as the World War's past there's not trenches the nature of the war is different the battle is different it's a hybrid war they have economic sanctions that they let as part of this war they wage a media war on the television but through social media as well there's a proxy war which is what we're seeing play out in Ukraine don't think for a minute that it's a war between Ukraine and Russia it's a war between the United States and Russia and our leaders openly say it you've heard them all the biggest cheerleaders of sending more war to the frontline in Ukraine always make this really actually is a good investment feed them the money and they don't fight the war and we don't have to haven't you heard that you've heard them say it over and over again I heard Hillary Clinton say it I heard Lindsey Graham mention that their whole vision for the war is dependent on their ability to send every last Ukrainian to fight to the death of the last Ukrainian the United States is and so standing here and organizing something like this is actually the real way to stand up for Ukrainian lives to be serious about communicating the stakes and the cost and that the same system that is responsible for the train derailment in Ohio or a corporation and the government basically now have nuked entire US city it's the same system that grew up the Nord Stream 2 pipeline creating the greatest environmental catastrophe in my lifetime it's a military system it's evil and it's rotten to the core and when we are clear about those objectives and about the stakes it's not hard to put away our differences and to come together and rage against the war machine so thank you all for doing it Angela once again and no more