 F35 program is sort of a microcosm of the military industrial complex. Each year the US government funnels massive amounts of money into the program while letting places in the US go without clean water for months or years. Sustaining this program for any longer will have detrimental effects on human life and the earth. CodePing organized this letter with the intention of bringing together groups affected by this program sort of at all levels. We have many groups from Vermont where F35 training is carried out and has made life in the training areas very difficult. We have groups from Madison, Wisconsin where the F35 training may begin very soon. We have groups that focus on the corruption of the arms trade, climate and environmentalist groups and organizations from countries the F35 program does or plans to partner with like Germany and Canada. This abroad coalition of members is necessary in stopping the F35 program and calling for a reinvestment of that project's money into life affirming programs. In our letter that signed by over 220 organizations from around the world, we highlight the harm caused through militarism specifically in Palestine. We discussed the failures of the program as well as the cost to the taxpayer, the environmental impact of the F35 and the effects on US locals like in Burlington, Vermont. The letter was just the first step at uniting these organizations against this horrible military project. We're planning a day of action around the world on March 20th and lead up actions until then. People can follow what we have going on at codepink.org on our action calendar and then individuals can sign on to the letter at codepink.org forward slash ground the F35. At that link, you could also see all of the organizations that signed on and read the full letter. Thank you, Danica. So now we're gonna go and hear from folks who either have been fighting this campaign for a long time or are just into this fight because they do not want the F35 program to come to where they live. So we're gonna start with Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben and Jerry's, who's been leading a fight in Vermont. Ben? When the people of Vermont heard that the F35 the F35 was potentially gonna be based there. There was a huge outcry against it. For many reasons, but one of which was that the airport is the Burlington Municipal Airport located in the heart of a residential area. And the noise studies conducted by the Air Force itself indicated that there would be a large zone of houses that would be considered to be unlivable due to the deafening jet blasts from these aircraft. You know, it's interesting that in those same noise studies, they talked about the noise from regular commercial aircraft as being de minimis. So, you know, the extreme level of noise is a little hard to understand. You know, you can hear decibel numbers but nobody really relates to it. So we created a mobile sound truck that replicated the sound of the F35 and we were driving it around and you know, the police calling numbers lit up with complaints from the community and eventually I was arrested for violating the noise ordinance. But apparently, so I mean, it showed that the level of noise was illegal but you know, the Pentagon gets an exception. I mean, and the interesting thing about the area that's impacted is that it's of course a low income area, the area of Winooski neighboring Burlington which happens to be the home of many war refugees who experienced this deafening roar as being part of the war landscape that they left. Again, the Air Force's own studies have shown that it creates cognitive problems for kids that are in schools that are located nearby and that it creates physical and mental problems for old people and for young people. So it's an assault on your senses that is similar to living in a war zone and what a horrible way to wake up in the morning and that's the way it is. You know, it would be one thing if these planes were actually necessary for the defense of the United States. Of course, we would all make that a sacrifice but the reality is that there is no credible Air Force from any other country that is capable of penetrating the United States. So this is just another example of a misuse of dollars that of course benefit the weapons contractors who make these things and I think we need to start to understand that our country, the last remaining superpower on earth needs to learn to measure its strength not in terms of how many people we can kill but in terms of how many people we can feed, clothe, house and care for. Thanks. Yeah, thank you for that. That's such a great point you made at the end there. So now we're gonna hear from Vicki Burrenson from Madison, Wisconsin where the training program I believe is coming but she can tell us more about that, Vicki. Go ahead. Sure, thank you. Thanks for everybody for being here. So we are just outraged that the Air Force decided to house the squadron of F-35 fighter jets in Madison where like in Burlington the Truax Air National Guard base sits in a densely populated residential neighborhood. Even though their own environmental impact statement clearly said that the greatest impact would fall on low income families, people of color and children living in close proximity to the base. As Ben already said, children are especially vulnerable to chronic loud noise and there are about a dozen K through 12 schools and approximately 15 daycare facilities in the area not to mention the residents. And we're already tasked with repairing educational disparities here and we don't need anything to exacerbate them. For sure, we don't need destructive and overpriced weapons. I know people who have sold their homes and moved away in anticipation of the F-35's arrival next year. Louder jets and we are told there will be 40% more flights than we have been subjected to with the F-16s that have been here for years. Not everyone has the means to move. The air base is located in one of the only remaining affordable neighborhoods in Madison. So there's no place to go if you up and sell. So we've been educating and mobilizing people since 2019. We submitted a record number of comments on the environmental impact statement to no avail. We circulated petitions, held community speakouts and protests and we obtained statements from neighborhood associations, community groups and government entities. We captured media attention and got the support of local elected officials. Still our senators have supported bringing the F-35s here citing dubious economic benefits. Safe Skies Clean Water Wisconsin has filed a number of lawsuits. Most recently an environmental justice complaint with the EPA asking them to stop construction at the base until the Air National Guard has cleaned up its PFAS contamination of our waterways where residents fish for feeding their families and the fish has been found to have dangerous levels of PFAS that emanate from the air base, the Air National Guard base. In 1983, Madison was declared a nuclear free zone prohibiting the production of nuclear weapons delivery systems or related components. Yet here we are forced to allow pilots to practice flying F-35 fighter jets that can drop nuclear bombs and with each flight spew enormous amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as we are trying to reach zero carbon emissions. The F-35 program is morally unacceptable at any level. Our taxes need to provide us with affordable housing, healthcare, education and economic relief, not enrich weapons makers. Thank you Vicki. So we know that we've heard how the F-35 program is affecting the US domestically but we know that nobody suffers greater from our military industrial complex than our friends from different countries across the world. And so we want to hear now from some of those folks or folks who are representing parts of representing different countries. So right now we're gonna hear from Kalthar. Is it Kalthar? Yeah, Abdullah from, she's going to, from the Yemeni Alliance group and talk to us about what they ever see cells means for Yemen. Hi, thank you Madison. Thank you everyone for being here and organizing around this very important cause. As everyone before me mentioned, the F-35 program is a weapon of war, a weapon of war with 857 deficiencies. Deficiencies that the environment you are still close in the global south are impacted by. And I'm not saying if there were any deficiencies that F-35 would be acceptable. I mean on the country, its whole purpose is to kill and or gather intelligence to kill. And the continuation of the F-35 program means potential sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, both countries that have shown interest in F-35s. And for the last seven years, we've seen how brutal and inhumane the Saudi UAE led coalition. So aggressive military campaign on Yemen has decimated the country. Over 300,000 Yemenis have been killed. One can only imagine what they would do with access to F-35s. For me, as a Yemeni-American who has lived in Yemen during the Saudi UAE military, aggressive in Yemen, I can tell you firsthand how hard and painful it is to see your home reduced to ashes by Saudi air strikes in matter of seconds. Providing F-35s to Saudi Arabia and the UAE would potentially mean more airstrikes, indiscriminate airstrikes, airstrikes on homes, supermarkets, schools, farms, public roads, hospitals, soccer stadiums, school buses full of children and other civilian places. We've seen consistently the harm that is done as a result of F-35s. This weapon of war that is expected to cost taxpayers over one trillion in its 60-year lifespan, one trillion that can be invested in universal healthcare, education, and other very important causes here in the US. And it breeds nothing but destruction to our already climate crisis, impacts the locals that endure the risk of our government using their hometowns as a practice for their war ambitions. And of course, the global South countries in Yemen who the F-35 will be used on. And for every living being safety, like it's very important that we all condemn the continuation of the F-35 program. And for Yemenis, when we say stopping all arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the F-35 is a part of it as it is one of the most highly loved arms sales. So again, I cannot stress how important it is to condemn and to organize around this because that number of over 335 Yemenis being killed can go way, way up. And that's excluding the blockade and whatnot and the human end of the salvation and the famine that Yemenis are being pushed to. So that's another layer of destruction for Yemenis. Thank you. Thank you so much for that. Now we're gonna hear from Andrew Feinstein from the UK. Hi, thank you so much for the invitation and thank you for putting together this campaign and this event. Very briefly, this jet that'll actually cost the American taxpayer probably in excess of $1.5 trillion heading towards $2 trillion over its lifespan was described by a former Pentagon aerospace design engineer as, and excuse his language, a total piece of crap, far worse than the planes it is replacing. He said the best thing about the F-35 is that the only people it will endanger are its test pilots. Sadly, Peer was not entirely correct as while the plane is the most expensive weapon system in history and probably one of the most dysfunctional, it still has the ability as we've already heard today to cause great human suffering and immiseration. Crucial to this is the fact that the United States has sold 33 F-35s to amongst many other countries, Israel. Now, as we all know, Israel is engaged in an illegal and brutal occupation of the Palestinian territories. International humanitarian law is violated on a daily basis. Not only does the F-35 give them huge additional power to enforce this occupation and to enable and facilitate their daily violations of international law, but Israel also to some extent, as I suggested in my book, The Shadow World, acts as something of a research laboratory and shop window for US military equipment. In most parts of the world, this sort of sale would be illegal because of its role in the ongoing perpetuation of IHL violations against civilians. But in addition to that dimension of this, that the plane is effectively being used to reinforce this illegal and brutal occupation, is the reality that the reason the United States, and I'm sorry to use old-fashioned terminology, but I think it remains relevant. The military, industrial, congressional complex, as Eisenhower called it, the reason that sales continue to countries who are serial abusers of human rights is that the corruption in the defense system in the United States of America, as Ben and others have revealed over many years now, is that the corruption of the arms trade actually oils the US and other political systems. It provides money for political campaigns, it provides money to individual politicians. And given that this industry is responsible for around 40% of all corruption in all world trade, we must oppose the F-35 project, not only because of the suffering and immiseration that it causes in countries around the world, including the occupied Palestinian territories, but also because it distorts, undermines, and de-democratizes our systems of governance. Thank you so much, Andrew. And so now we're gonna hear from Ruth Rhodes. She is calling, she's joining us today from Germany, Ruth. Thank you, thank you everyone for organizing this event. And so building on what Andrew and others have said, I just wanted to introduce a concept from behavioral economics called the sunk cost fallacy, which is basically a phenomenon whereby people stick to a strategy that would be rational to give up just because they have invested heavily in it. The F-35 is a textbook example of this. The United States are continuing to pour money into a project that by any rational measure of functionality, cost effectiveness, and security policy has failed. And now US allies are also buying into the sinking ship. In all of this Germany, my own country, is a special case because in the spring of this year, we announced that we intend to buy the F-35. This was preceded by a lengthy and rather disgraceful debate about replacing the aging German tornado fighter jets with F-18 and or Euro fighter jets. But the question remains, what is it that sets the F-35 apart from these other options other than being basically almost comically expensive? And as Vicki has already mentioned, the F-35 will be nuclear capable. So for those of you who may not be familiar with the context, America has nuclear weapons stationed abroad among other places, about 20 of them are, it's an open secret that about 20 of them are stationed in a small German town called Büchel where German fighter jets and pilots would be used to drop these weapons on other human beings. So basically, not only is Germany being pushed into refinancing a struggling American development, no, we're also cementing a security policy that has not prevented a major war in Europe and instead is making us a target. In the Cold War, there was a saying with reference to the distance a nuclear missile could reach. The shorter the range, the deader the Germans. Today it is Ukraine that is in the middle space between the two nuclear armed blocks. I guess there are more nuclear armed blocks but these specific nuclear armed blocks. Nuclear deterrence relies on many unreliable factors among other things it relies on the very questionable rationality of the likes of Vladimir Putin, from accidents to miscalculations that are ever more likely in the current context where international trust keeps hitting new lows weekly. This policy is painting a giant target on the back of Europeans. Billions will be spent on this dangerous policy while only last year the area around the air base in Büchel was affected by severe floods that have become ever more likely due to the deteriorating climate crisis. The US has invested much in the F-35. Germany and the US have invested much in the idea of nuclear deterrence but both countries need to wake up to the reality that these are sunk costs and that continuing to invest in them monetarily or ideologically can only lead to disaster. Thank you, Ruth. And so lastly, we're gonna hear from Tamara Lawrence from Canada who I believe has been in this fight for what 15 years or so. She'll let you know more about that, Tamara. Good morning, everyone. I am representing the No Fighter Jets Coalition. It is a network of over 25 Canadian civil society organizations and we have worked very hard for over a decade to keep the Canadian government from buying a new fleet of fighter jets. And we are very pleased to join this important international campaign to ground the F-35s. In March of this year, the Canadian government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with the support of opposition parties announced its intention to buy, to enter into negotiations with Lockheed Martin to buy 88 F-35s for $19 billion. It is a shameful about face. Justin Trudeau promised not to buy the F-35s because they are not affordable, they are highly flawed and they are not fit for purpose. Now this planned purchase of F-35s is the second most expensive procurement in Canadian history. We have estimated that the true life cycle cost will be over $77 billion. We believe that it is highly irresponsible for the Trudeau government to invest in a new fleet of F-35s when so many Canadians are struggling to find affordable housing and to feed their families. Earlier this year, our coalition released a report entitled Soaring the Harms and Risks of Fighter Jets Why Canada Must Not Buy a New Fleet and we describe the many adverse financial, environmental and social risks, particularly to indigenous communities of fighter jets. Canada's largest Air Force Base is located in Cold Lake, Alberta and it was established on land that was taken effectively stolen from the Dene and Kree people 70 years ago. The loss of their traditional territory caused terrible trauma and poverty that is ongoing. Today, the severe noise and air pollution from the current fleet of CF-18s continue to harm the indigenous communities. If Canada proceeds to buy the noisier F-35s, it's going to continue to cause harm to indigenous communities and Canada will also be locked into five decades of carbon-intensive militarism that will make it impossible for our country to rapidly decarbonize and meet our commitments under the Paris Agreement. So we are in a climate emergency and in a poverty crisis, we are calling on the Canadian government to cancel the contract and to ground the F-35s. Thank you. Thank you, yes, they're all connected. It's an environmental disaster, an economic disaster, yeah, an evasion of indigenous lands and rights. So I appreciate you tying that all together, Tamara. Okay, so we are going to open up two questions from the media. I have one question already in the chat. It's from Roger McKenzie with the Morningstar and he was asking if there is an estimate as to the cost of the program, and I believe we answered that maybe, but if someone wants to kind of reaffirm that for Roger. It's around $1.7 trillion or $1.75 trillion. All right, is there any other questions from the media? Someone also asked me if this would be recorded and sent out, if they could use it later. And yes, if you're a member of the media that attended today, I will send this to you. Any other questions? I'm not seeing any right now. So with that, I'm just gonna wanna, I'm probably gonna put Danica on the spot, but just real quick to remind folks how that they can get involved with the campaign and our next steps. Yeah, and also for members of the media who are here who might have questions later, you can email me. My email is just danicaatcodepink.org. I'll put it in the chat. But for individuals, you can go to codepink.org. slash groundf35 to see all the orgs who have signed on. If you have an organization that would like to join our group in planning the day of action around the world, you can email me and I'll get you involved in all of that. You can also see people like Ben Cohen and Roger Waters who have signed on and been a part of this really exciting initiative and sign the letter as an individual for yourself. Hopefully we'll gather thousands and thousands of signatures by our day of action on March 20th. Okay, so if there's any other questions, feel free to email me or Danica later, but that concludes today's press conference and webinar. And I thank everyone for joining. I thank all the speakers and for the members of the media who joined to listen to this very important campaign and what we had to say today. Appreciate everyone. Thank y'all. Thank you so much. Have a great day, everyone.