 Okay, well, hello. Let's start recording and welcome to our zoom discussion with John Royer on the treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons which will be coming into force on January 22. This is a momentous event. And we're delighted to have john here to explain how it came about and how it will be enforced. This event is part of a series sponsored by the Vermont Institute for Community and international involvement. Vicky with two eyes at the end is a sequel to Vicky with one eye. Vermont Institute for Community involvement, which was the original name of a college that will walls that became Burlington College. Under the bankruptcy and demise of the college in 2016, some of the staff, primarily Sandy Baird, and friends wanted to bring back opportunities for community discussion with the goal of supporting civil society and municipal democracy in Burlington. So you can see that here it is just a moment, and I will share a screen image with you here. Can you see it. Yes, yes. Okay, there it is. You can see that the added I in Vicky is stands for international involvement. So check out our website Vicky.com for our track record events dating back to September 2019. Also coming up, we will be sponsoring the first Burlington mayoral debate on January 21. This is rising. So, I will get rid of that now. Before John speaks, I'd like to just draw attention to an event that happened in in 2018, and that is a kind of precursor of to the treaty that we're talking about today that the players weapons are illegal. In the plowshares seven, who entered Kings Bay Trident submarine base Georgia on April 4, 2018, sought to make real. The command to beat swords into plowshares. They acted on the ground that these weapons are inhumane and should be considered illegal. In the plowshares seven, Martha Hennessy from Vermont, whose granddaughter of Dorothy Day is now in Danbury prison for 10 months for taking what she calls my nonviolent sacramental action against nuclear weapons. So what I like for us to do here, and here's another screenshot. I hope, wait a minute here. There it is. And share screen. Okay. Someday we'll, we'll go very smooth. There it is. Okay. And at the at the weapon system that these folks were were protesting against at in Georgia, and what is a Trident submarine engineered to do. So this graphic was drawn by Vermonter Jim Geyer in 1983, then the Soviet Union, as you can see still existed. The numbers may have been changed by requirements of the start treaty. There, but at the moment there are six Trident submarines at Kings Bay. Each submarine can carry 24, trying to ballistic missiles there you see them 24. If, God forbid, all of these missiles from one submarine were launched they will upon re entering the atmosphere, each of the 24 missiles could release up to eight warheads independently targeted reentry vehicles they call them in other words targeted to this one. This one to hit Moscow this one to hit, etc. And these unleashing 192 nuclear warheads to wipe out dozens of cities off the map and that's only one of the sub of the six submarines. These are the nightmare weapons of the apocalypse. So Martha and her Catholic worker compatriots are now facing prison sentences for bringing attention to this floating potential Holocaust, Harvard at Kings Bay, Georgia. I am hoping that we and john john Royer and this movement supporting the treaty will further reveal the military madness that stains the arms race, and that American citizens will agree that we too, our country the United States join the treaty prohibiting your weapons. She always says it. I know. So, just a few, few words now about john. He is a member of physicians for social responsibility and serves on world beyond wars, board of directors. He was a professor of conflict resolution at St. Michael's College here in the Burlington area. And then to bring his commitment to non violence into areas of conflict. He recently spent four months last year in South Sudan with the non violent peace force. He spent the last two months on the streets of Washington DC, including last Wednesday with members of the DC peace team, providing safe space for protesters and engaging in conversation with Trump activists. So, john will talk for about 2025 minutes and then we would like you to, if you have questions to put them in the chat you all know about the chat at the bottom of the screen there, you click on that and you write a little message and best will be monitoring that. And we hope that that will be the way to get a dialogue going. So, all right, please start john. Thank you all for having me. And being willing to talk about a topic that is just seems to be like one more God awful thing to worry about on top of all the other God awful things that are in our lives. But I think it's worth doing, everybody see the slides. You can, you know, you can make your screen larger the slide larger and your people smaller by moving the little line between them on the side if things are in the way. So this new treaty called the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons that was adopted in 2017 and about to go into force. So I want to go over what does that mean and why should we care. I mean obviously we have enough to worry about right we've got a virus that's taken taken over the planet that shows no sign of slowing down despite the vaccine having been out for a full month. And climate disasters everywhere. My daughter in LA tells me the hospitals out there have been struck the mts that if they go to a house where somebody's had a cardiac arrest, that is no pulse or, or breathing at the time they get there they're not to bring up to the hospital, where they would have a chance at resuscitation I spent my career doing. That's how tight things are. And now of course we have this whole civil strife within the US so we're the nuclear weapons come in. Why should we care well Nancy Pelosi reminded us maybe why should we care because we've got a guy who's rather impulsive in his speech and in his orders, firing and hiring people and he has absolute soul legal authority to launch nuclear nuclear weapons one or all of them without consulting anyone. She gave us the news that she had talked to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and she felt reassured by that. But the legality of it is the only thing that would stop him as a mutiny policy gives him the right to do that. What is the message to enemies and allies around the world that the only thing that would stop us from attacking is a mutiny against our own president. Very much reason to worry. But aside from that, nuclear weapons I think most people recognize how dangerous they are to use, but few recognize how dangerous they are to possess. Currently this treaty is the best opportunity to eliminate them, since the non proliferation treaty came into force in 1970 that led to such disarmament via the strategic arms reduction treaties that are still in effect until February 5 this year, when for the first time the United States is not just automatically renegotiated or renewed them. Furthermore we should care because while solutions to the environmental and pandemic crises that we face are very complicated obviously long term and very expensive. Whereas solutions to the threat of nuclear annihilation are relatively easy and not just cheap but because we stop spending money on creating the risk. It pays for itself and can help pay for solutions to these other existential threats we face. Just as a review and I'm sure most folks on this call are familiar with this but just update ourselves. The total nuclear warheads in the world's arsenals are now between 13 and 14,090% of which are controlled by Russia and the United States. Russia and the United States are also the only countries that have something just under a thousand each on hair trigger alert that is they can be launched on warning or launched by a leader within a half an hour or less. And to review the size of these weapons, these four mushroom clouds show at the bottom the very small one being the Hiroshima weapon that destroyed Hiroshima and the one at the top being the largest that the United States ever tested in the atmosphere, which itself was about one third the size of the czar bomb that the Soviet Union tested in the 60s. For most of the history of nuclear arms race the weapons were in the hundred kiloton or the one megaton range the cloud on the left. And now most of those 13,000 weapons are between the 15 kiloton weapon and the 350 kiloton weapon. Just remind ourselves of why we should worry about these of course if they're used, which is not the biggest issue because I think people recognize this but it's good to remember just how bad it's going to be much worse than anything we're facing now. Just remind us that it's a very personal thing because our beloved senators and governors and mayors have decided that the nuclear weapons delivery system of the F 35, despite what the National Guard tells us is listed as as a nuclear weapon delivery system makes us a target for other planners who have to eliminate nuclear weapons delivery system in the event of a nuclear war, making us a nuclear target. So if we take a 200 kiloton airburst that is one besides those between those two small mushrooms and typical of the Soviet submarine arsenal that could be in the North Atlantic right now and be here within 15 to 20 minutes, if they so choose would create this fireball over the airport. That is the several hundred yards across and vaporizes absolutely everything the small yellow circle. The red circle then is the 20 pounds per square inch blast which destroys absolutely everything but reinforced bunkers, everything is gone and destroyed in that area. And if anybody managed is just to not get hit by the blast directly the green is the 500 millirem radiation burst gamma radiation that kills 90% of the people who are exposed to that. The gray circle then shows the five pounds per square inch over blast pressure from the blast that destroys all unreinforced buildings and injures about 90% of the people who live in that area. You can see that puts us over the hill toward downtown Burlington and way out past Williston and south. And then finally the tan larger circle is the thermal area, where the intensity of the heat from the flash is enough to ignite absolutely everything flammable gasoline tanks and cars and dry wood trees, wood houses and causes immediate third degree burns on exposed skin. And this is a air burst that is a bomb detonated in the atmosphere to do maximum blast damage. If on the other hand you're trying to eliminate underground bunker. You do a ground burst which makes huge amounts of soil and everything underground radioactive and puts that into the mushroom cloud, causing these large plumes of radioactivity that creates much disease and death. And this is that same 200 kiloton burst, and it's, and it's a radiation cloud over the next week or so. And the direction of course is determined by when that day. And then the other element that we often forget besides those first three problems with nuclear weapons is the firestorms it causes from all the things that coalesce and burn this is actually what destroyed most of heroshima. And the problem with that much burning is in dense areas where there's a lot of combustible material it puts enormous amount of soot far more than the mushroom clouds into the atmosphere. And climate scientist at Rutgers, who've been studying the effects of climate change for many, many years and trying to predict it says that in a war between India and Pakistan, which are the only two nuclear powers to be at war with each planet in the last few years, if they use half of their arsenals, which is now up to about 150 here shine here she miscized nuclear weapons, the amount of soot from all the cities burning in those areas, forgetting about the 10 or 20 million people that would be killed outright would put enough soot in the atmosphere to drop the temperature in the northern hemisphere about a degree and a quarter. And, and that has enormous effects as can be seen in this next screen. Can you all see my faces there trying to. Okay, so a temperature drop of one degree would create enough problem growing food in the northern hemisphere and eventually in the southern hemisphere that the famine caused by that would probably leave the 2 billion of the world's poorest people to die from starvation alone. And that's a limited war between India and Pakistan that would not have immediate effects on us until the weeks and months later. A war fought between those high alert nuclear weapons that if a mistake happens and they just launched those weapons and then they realize oops that was a mistake we won't launch anymore. And then they tell us would drop at least four degrees centigrade in the, in the atmosphere conditions, which would create unbelievable amounts of, of temperature change and, and starvation for the rest of us. Then of course if all of the, the weapons that are available are used, we're talking about temperatures of eight degrees which would create in a couple of weeks, what 10,000 years of the ice age. And that would create a basically ending civilization and this is on top of all the billions of people killed directly by the, the effects of the fires blast and radiation. So, given that good news, why do we have these things. Well, somehow buried in our, in our teaching and our, in our learning over from the time we were young is that this is deterrence it keeps the bad guys away. It's the destruction, which is, is much more like a short suicide at this point. But those who protest them are thought to be safe from attack. No all out wars after all have occurred between powers and the advent of nuclear weapons, and not have been used as an act of war in the last 75 years. And those to some people seem like pretty ironclad arguments. You could say a lot about whether that's true or not. Think for example, that the nuclear weapons save us from the attacks at 911. Did nuclear weapons allow us to easily beat Vietnam in a war or allow the Soviets to beat the Afghans in their own country. They stop nuclear arm Britain from suffering an attack on the Falkland Islands by Argentina. So, in my mind it's rather limited thinking that believes these things. But more to the point, you know as a doctor, when I tried to talk people out of unhealthy habits say smoking, you know, quite often I get the thing back well my granddad smoked until he's 90 and he never got cancer. And so it's a psychological phenomenon in human beings and other species to that the longer things do well. The more we come to believe that they will continue to do well in the greater sense of well being we have. And that's the way I look at us with nuclear weapons. Think of it like a turkey being hatched for a nice egg and it's human caretakers carefully place it in an incubator with the proper heat. The hatches they feed, they feed it well and they keep it warm and they give it, whatever they need to give it to grow well. And that turkey no doubt has a lot of faith in its human caretakers until a certain day, like Thanksgiving. And all of a sudden, everything they believed is just not true. And they think how could we've ever believed that and I think that's the way it's going to be with nuclear weapons unless we take action. So what are the risks of deterrent? They fit in three main categories. First of all, any current leader can use these weapons to win a war or to make a point. Then there's the problem of nuclear terrorism. We know for a fact that terrorist groups are forever trying to obtain materials or the weapons themselves. And then there are accidents. And we know a lot about these. In Trump's early years, we had he and Kim Jong-un both with nuclear weapons saying all kinds of nasty things about each other. And if those weapons had gone off like they almost thought they did in Hawaii, nobody was terribly surprised. And here's Pakistan threatening the world because of being angry at what India is doing in Kashmir. And these are two nuclear armed powers that two soldiers shoot at one another. Then there's the problem of terrorism. So the US has nuclear weapons in five NATO countries. The interest to terrorists would be in Sirlich air base in southeastern Turkey, where I've been told in 2017 or 2015, there was a coup against the Erdogan, the Prime Minister of Turkey. And one of the leaders of that was the commander of the base where these nuclear weapons are stored in Sirlich. And he cut off all power to the base. And that led for an opportunity that that created some chaos where those nuclear weapons were put at risk. At the time, ISIS was at the height of its geographical power and was less than 100 miles from those nuclear weapons for taking that's another chance we're taking. And then if you ever read the records about how many kilograms of fissile material are on account for from the forward Soviet Union and even from us and how many nuclear weapons we've lost here and there becomes something to be concerned about. There have been six documented times where either Russian or US forces came to believe that they were under attack, and only at the last moment pulled out from unleashing total army again. And this is separate from the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was probably our closest ever to nuclear war. Stanislaus Petrov, you know who died last year and just put out a wonderful movie I hope you'll see it if you haven't so far called the man who saved the world helped design the system that he was running. He saw this movie show so well and actually interviews him but what he remembers is seeing this incoming signals from the computer saying we were under attack first there was one and another and another. And in a very difficult decision he simply refused to believe it. But he just couldn't bring himself to to launch those weapons. And that's just one of many. And then there are broken arrows defined by the US Defense Department as nuclear weapons that have been launched, at least their carriers have been launched accidentally, a lost or unaccounted for. There have been 32 of those I'll spare you the movie about this at the time. And so generally Butler former commander of all us nuclear forces both submarines and ICBMs and aircraft, the Air Force general. Omar said the world escape nuclear Holocaust by some combination skill luck and divine intervention. And he finally decided it was mostly divine intervention. And when I studied this stuff before his time back in the 80s that's the same conclusion I came to that there's any proof of the existence of God it's the fact that we're still here when we've tried to do everything we can to do ourselves away. But actually it was more than just divine intervention it was people taking action. Some of us here, I wasn't the only one here that was in in Central Park in 1982, when a million people gathered to say it's and time to end the arms race and that followed many, many years of work with the nuclear freeze campaign and nuclear free zones that were highly participated in by towns in Vermont. People like Helen Caldecott and a Jack Iger who just died this week, and the others from physicians for social responsibility that I met when I was a young doctor who convinced people to change. In particular Ronald Reagan who got my interest by saying we were going to win a war for the Soviet Union when he became president and had plans to do that. And a mere three years later through I think tremendous activist efforts agreed that a nuclear war should cannot be one and must never be fall. And while he didn't do anything to reduce nuclear weapons himself he did finally, after a number of years signed the intermediate intermediate range nuclear forces treaty. They just want to show you this map and the effects of treaty since that's what we're talking about tonight and how critical that is. And you can see on this graph the the blue lines are us numbers of weapons and the red or the Soviets and how they played a game of ketchup and eventually had to prove themselves superior. And the strategic arms limitation talks that that came before Reagan really accomplished almost nothing and even the non proliferation treaty of 1968 1970 you can see, but only the tiniest dent in this. And the intermediate range nuclear forces treaty that things really started to happen. And that's one of the treaties that Trump pulled us out of that thing that had saved us so many billions of dollars in unnecessary weapons and reduce the risk for all of Europe. And then the treaties are also made a huge difference or the strategic arms reduction treaties. These treaties are what continue today start to and now what they call the new start in 2010, which you can see but the rate of decrease in nuclear weapons is slow dramatically. And as of February 5, none of these treaties are any longer in place and there's no reason in the world don't think these to think that these weapons are not going to be increased in number, though they may be decreased in size because that makes them more usable in some planners minds. And so our decision is already being made for us, starting with Obama, despite what he said in Prague about wanting to get rid of nuclear weapons he said well it's not going to happen in my lifetime. It's going to begin to a lot money for modernization of nuclear weapons over the next 10 and actually 30 years to the tune of $1.24 trillion, which of course since this Congressional Budget Office report in 2015 or so is now going to $1.6 or $1.7 trillion. Very similar in price to the cost of the F 35 fighter jet actually. And the leaders of course of all the nuclear nations. Don't like this ban treaty at all they want to bomb the band so the choice is really ours we can either ban the bomb with the prohibition treaty, eliminate these things for good. Or we can agree with the way things are, heck with the band and face our new nuclear arms race and I think absolutely inevitable catastrophe. So what is the treaty to on the probe prohibition of nuclear weapons do it actually bans everything to do with nuclear weapons. If you think about it nuclear weapons have really been technically illegal under humanitarian and every law for because they're indiscriminate and how they slaughter civilians and noncombatants, and they're totally disproportional to any military objectives. So technically if it was a true court of law, they would be banned on the basis of current law. But this treaty bans everything about them. Development testing production possession transfer, or the threat and use of it and essentially any kind of support to nuclear weapons and that's what makes all the difference. I adopted and I was there for that in 2017 by the majority of nations in the world so far it's been signed by 86 nations who all expected eventually to ratify it ratified by 51 nations, which has allowed it to enter into force this Friday. Now, what is the value of it entering into force so you hear criticisms of, well, what good is it going to do. It's not signed by any nuclear nation, and they're the only ones that matter. It will eliminate a singular nuclear weapon by itself, which is true. And then the, the State Department statements that I've heard and basically say it doesn't account for international security concerns, but I can't make any sense when they say that what that actually means that somehow. It's just a belief that in deterrence, we have more security than we do do without it and I just don't see any evidence for that. And then it that it's not verifiable and we can talk about that too if anybody has questions how do you be sure that you get you're rid of all yours and the other guy doesn't. Well, the fact that it's illegal to even support these is, and it's the effect that we'll have without not everybody signing it. We have lots of evidence for that. The biological weapons and chemical weapons which were signed by the big powers in 1972 and 1993 of course have made those weapons of mass destruction unacceptable, so that when Syria may or may not have actually used them but when even threatened to use them the whole world went nuts and said no way, no way. You can't do that. And so they've been used very very little since then. Landmines were banned in 1997 and cluster bombs were banned in 2008 the US hasn't signed either of those. And yet, except for North Korea we pretty much observe them we don't spread landmines and sell them all over the world anymore cluster bombs have a very interesting story in the US because we don't want part of that treaty. And yet the only munitions cluster munitions manufacturing plan in the US which was run by Textron just shut down a few years after this saying that people aren't interested in them anymore. So not everybody has to sign these things to have a huge, huge effect. What it will do for the nuclear powers, instead of nuclear weapons now being a badge of honor and a source of pride which they still are from many people in the world. They're now illegal, they're prohibited where they have a stigma and states possessing them over time we believe will become rogue states, rather than powers to emulate. And what is has been a moral long is now unequivocally illegal under international law. And it's a very good reason when we push our, our Congress people to stop voting money for these things to say look this is one more really good reason not spend money on things we can never use and could do us in. So what can we do well Robin brought up this brave group of seven. You know if the nuclear weapons go off, there's not many people who think nothing of these people know nothing of these people now could care less about them will see them as anything but heroes. As one of them and more than one of them said in their statements as they were being sentenced to jail, speaking out against these weapons and their submarines at Kings Bay. You know, ultimately, what am I going to say to my children and my grandchildren or what are they going to think when things go wrong. And they say well mom what did you do to try to stop that, and they have the answer we did everything we possibly could. But I don't think we have to go to jail necessarily I think there's a place for that and if we all did it they packed the jails and nobody would have to go to jail. If really just a few thousand of us did it did it but it takes a lot of guts and a lot of risk that most of us aren't willing to take. So what else can we do. Well the immediate things that are really likely to succeed are to push President elect Biden to renew the new start treaty which expires in just a couple of weeks. When that goes away, there's no limits on a new nuclear arms race. So renewing that treaty and he has expressed a willingness to do that. Another thing that could be done immediately that he has expressed a willingness to do is rejoin what they call the joint comprehensive plan of action which is some people called the Iran nuclear deal, which all international inspector inspectors who work inside Iran said was working. Iran destroyed most of its centrifuges that concentrate to sell material. And we're doing everything in compliance with the deal. And Trump withdrew from it. And now Iran has started to enrich rainy until much higher percentage again, and unless are attacked viciously in a war with unbelievable suffering, or get back into this agreement. They within a year or two or three could have a nuclear weapon. And of course, always because this is all money driven push for reduction in nuclear spending, even if you don't believe in reductions in all military spending. The representatives are three fairly liberal folks in in Congress need to support Biden in this which I think they all have the two things I mentioned. They're much less enthusiastic about decreasing military spending. And then the best single bill that will have to be a new bill I guess in 2020 because it's a new session of Congress is, is the one introduced for the last 10 years by Eleanor home Norton's the non voting member of Congress in from DC, called the nuclear weapons abolition and economic and energy conversion act. And you'll see a version of this in 220. We went from for the first five years having no cosponsors not a single other Congress person to having about eight last year. And we can push our three people who have never voted for it to to sign on to that. The national campaign to to eliminate abolish nuclear weapons supported by its US version of the nuclear ban dot or nuclear ban tries to get as many politicians at all levels from city council to federal to even though they're not in a position to vote on the would vote for it if they ever have the opportunity. So that's called the parliamentarian pledge and has become really important in Europe, where the countries are refusing to the leaders are refusing to sign but higher and higher percentages of the parliaments are signing on, and that will eventually change that who joins the treaty in Europe. So the background on this nuclear weapons abolition economic conversion, I like it because it does everything eliminates nuclear weapon and demands that the money spent on them go into green energy conversion and other things to help people. It's a very simple bill that's less than two pages summarized here says the United States government should provide leadership and signing ratifying this, this treaty or if they don't like that when any other international agreement that provides for the elimination of all countries in the country. Nobody here is talking about unilateral disarmament, but under stick strict international control and redirect resources you use for nuclear weapons for these better things, and a peaceful economy, including addressing human infrastructure needs. And then finally be a leader in, in getting all other countries to join their commitments can you imagine if the US said, we're going to go with this thing, the influence they could have. In, in getting people to go along with it. Just as some evidence of that, just before this treaty was finally ratified by enough nations to put it into force in December. The US State Department sent a letter to all the countries that had signed it asking them to rescind their signature, saying that this was going to disturb the international order and please withdraw from the treaty not a single one did. I mean, within Vermont, what can the Vermont Legislature do. Well, if you remember back in 2019 I think the Senate passed SR five, which is saying it was a resolution against having any nuclear weapons delivery systems in Vermont. And then some people I think from our federal office, lobbied against the House version of that and it was shot down. I testified before the Legislature last year to try to revive it but the, the pandemic was just starting. And they put everything else aside since then. The other thing that we've done is in the cities of South Burlington Burlington when new ski, we've passed back from the brink resolutions, and I'll tell you a little bit about here. So, if the US is not ready to actually sign the treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons there are things we can do immediately that will at least bring us back from the brink of the danger of nuclear war. And that is, these one and two almost together now and Trump has given us all the more reason to do that. We can end the sole unchecked authority of any US president to launch a nuclear attack. But if we just renounce the option of using nuclear weapons first it kind of accomplishes both things. Right now, the only nations that I guess China is the only one of the nuclear powers is said we will never use the weapons first. And the only one that regularly puts them on the table under the, the sentence, all options are on the table. We could stop that, which, if you were anybody else in the world would probably make you feel safer rather than less safe. Then finally taking the, the weapons off hair trigger alert and canceling all the expenditures on replacing these new weapons with modernized or enhanced or more usable weapons. So these are the five back from the brink things and these three townships so far have signed these in a way similar to towns that signed the nuclear freeze resolutions back in the 1980s that eventually led to such tremendous reductions. So anybody that's in the town in Vermont that wants to do that it's pretty, pretty easy we had no trouble very little resistance for these very common sense things and now it's a good time to do it if you can get people's attention away from all the other problems. Meanwhile as individuals I would say just get on the listserv of I can the international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons. We are starting a new movement in with the help of a group called code pink, who has a lot of expertise in, in divestment. See, these companies are going to be very susceptible to public pressure now, and unlike governments, who ultimately answer to corporations and and the whims of their politicians and have guns to stop us from doing things, corporations are extremely sensitive to their bottom lines. And when people talk about divesting from from those companies in their pension funds and in their personal finances and so forth, they really perk up and pay attention. Letters to the editor I had one come out about this that I think Robin sent out the invitation to this that still is very relevant from September and I just submitted another one to Vermont digger. Just let people know about this this is just too easy not to do. So I'd be happy to take questions about this all let me show you one more slide. And that is, this is how many. This is the 26 worldwide major nuclear weapons contractors and almost none of them make just nuclear weapons they have business everywhere. And because they have businesses in countries that have signed the treaty, they're now going to be subject to questions from those countries about their involvement with nuclear weapons and that's going to create new conversations that have never happened before. And these are this don't bank on the bomb again as a program of the international campaign to Bosnian weapons which led to this treaty which actually created this treaty. And these are all major financiers in investment companies around the world who have digested from nuclear weapons. So this is no pie in the sky stuff this is really really doable. So thank you. Thank you. Take questions. We have one two questions in the chat. Hedeko, are you there now. Can you if you wanted to ask your question. You said Hedeko. Yes, I'm here. Yes, great. Thank you. Do you want to go ahead and ask the question for everyone in the chat and then john can respond. Well, one of the reasons that the speakers addressed included deterrence effect and I thought well that is fine among sovereign nations but now it isn't that difficult I understand it making atomic bomb and some role band of individuals can make it to. Use it to insist on their rightful cause, quote unquote, we're not protected from that. I think that the doctor's point in the significant gain would be to make it very shameful actually to be associated with this illegal weapons productions and considering the use of it against humanity. I take it and then I must really say that I'm very grateful for this happening because it was very difficult for the last 75 years no matter where it was, we didn't have a good listening years. No, we do. Oh, excuse me. We when I speak of it myself and others survivors of the nuclear bomb. You're a survivor, Hedeko. Yes, I am. Thank you. And thank you. I, if it were not for positions for social responsibility, I would not open myself to share anything because I was determined to leave it alone because I had to spend my life denying that I was so affected and protecting myself disclosing the very deep personal grief. But the I was at the University of Chicago hospitals and the another institution there, the group of radiologists really were interested for their understanding how I could have survived it and really wanted information in their monthly meeting. And just on the academic reason, I shared the information and and from there, I had to accompany them. They said, you know, you would really help us if you could come with us. It was a year of nuclear freeze and they were doing a fantastic work and I was so moved by their enthusiasm and compassion and dedication. And I, I'm now even though these were very difficult times and difficult tasks. I have to carry out. I thank you for your persuading me that there was a place for survivors to share their testimonies. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, and I'd like to just add that Hedeko did a wonderful webinar with us disarm. Will disarm. It was at Nagasaki day, I believe, with photographs from her childhood and you can go to will disarm and see the link, because we we taped that. I'd like to ask a question. We were we're trying to figure out in the sense what to do here in Burlington on the 22nd, and it's two days after the inauguration. So, emotions may still be high, I don't know, but I have looked at that list of 26 organizations and and compared it here in Burlington and we, we don't have any directly but we do have Pratt and Whitney. So, I actually emailed Susie Snyder who's the head of don't bank on the bomb and said well, Pratt and Whitney I think is associated with nuclear issues and she said well Pratt and Whitney is a subsidiary to United technologies which is subsidiary to Raytheon. I mean, this is the games they play, and there is a decent factory or office up there near the airport I think it's mainly associated with making the engines for the f 35 in virgins. As anyone here research that that's what there is a factory that makes engineer makes engines for the f 35. Would that be a proper destination for a car. Caravan on the 22nd and I know some of you on this call have looked at the nuclear band site where they suggest going to nuclear company and wearing, wearing plastic garb and calling yourself a a code code, what is it called, you know, as if you're coming to check out whether they're fighting. Pardon compliance is treaty compliance unit. Yes, yes. And so they did that down in North Hampton and, you know, it's a it's sort of a media event. And you have to, we would have to call Pratt and Whitney and say we are coming and then call the call these media as well. So that is in in process and anyone who wants to take part or has other ideas of what to do on that day. Please let me know we want to let more people know you. I mean, look at us here. We're mainly older people who actually remember back when Helen caught up came and talked about many of the things that john has just talked about, but we need to get the younger generation involved and we need at least for them to know by doing taking some action. So any thoughts on that score. If I could just clarify, and I see there's a question about the F 35 going after Pratt and Whitney wouldn't be directly relevant to this to this particular treaty because the F 35, which is a separate topic in itself in an equally costly program over the next 30 years is a dual use aircraft, you know, right now nobody's saying that the F 35 is ready to carry a nuclear weapon, although it could be any day. But it's, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're, you're delivering nuclear weapons. Did you isn't there a general dynamics facility somewhere in Williston. Yes, and that's very involved with the Gatling gun they used to occupy the whole building down on Pine Street, where they manufactured the gun, but that's been moved elsewhere, but the residue of that they have some offices so there again it's not a nuclear. It's not a nuclear office or doesn't doesn't make nuclear materials but I mean that would be a possibility, nevertheless, but I believe general dynamics is involved in the manufacturer of nuclear weapons I'm not sure Pratt and Whitney is specifically the manufacturer of those weapons so they wouldn't have to be doing that here to call them accountable for that. Yeah, yeah. Okay, there's some other questions on the chat. Sally is asking, did you did I just want to I guess you wanted to clarify does that do the F 35 also cost $1.24 trillion. If you look at the lifetime cost of the airplane over the next 30 years it's remarkable to me how similar the costs are there. The 30 year to 50 year life of the F 35 and the next 30 years and nuclear weapons spending are in the trillion now in the trillion and a half dollar range and it magically that always goes up with time. Right, but those are two weapon systems that I just don't see any use for in the world at all even if you're the believer in the strong military defense, these are neither these are defensive weapons of any kind. Nuclear weapons certainly can't protect you from anything and F 35 is is not even the best yet to shoot down an incoming bomber with a nuclear weapon on it. The older plans do that equally well yet 35 we're paying so much for because it has stealth capability to penetrate into some other country and bomb their country, which is not a defensive move in any sense of the word. It's just interesting and to translate that into Vermont terms. I haven't looked at the latest figures for the F 35 per year, but nuclear weapons, the amount we're spending each year amounts to about $125 million a year of Vermont tax dollars, going into all the aspects of nuclear weapons. That's not a small piece of change. Jane is asking. Well, first let me say, it's not a big group so if anybody wants to unmute yourself and ask a question. I don't think chaos will rain. But for now, I'll just add. I'll just put James out there which is, she's curious how the American public feels about nuclear weapons and Trump's acting these days. Have there been any polls recently. I haven't seen a poll on Trump particularly it was Nancy Pelosi that brought that to to the news recently. But there was kind of a discouraging poll which goes against almost all prior polls out of Harvard and it was a small sample I looked at is no more than five or 600 people, but 53% of the people in this most recent polls said that we need to spend more money on nuclear weapons. But that is in contrast to everything it's been going on for for most years. When you look back most Americans want to see nuclear weapons reduced or eliminated. I mean if you just ask people what their future wants to be almost all it said that so I don't know what was going on with that particular poll. But it's, it's, it is a little bit worrisome and I think it reflects the fact that we have forgotten what we learned in World War two that war needs to go. But because we've all been raised with the belief that World War two was some kind of a rogue event that the US saved the world from evil, which isn't really true in the historical record. We've come to think of war was maybe a good thing and any weapon that we can win a war with and all nuclear weapons the best weapons of all is this kind of mythical thinking that that that permeates permeates us. And the sheer lack of education just like kids really don't know how the system works I understand the civics classes aren't universal anymore. People don't even know what the vote means. They certainly don't know what, what nuclear weapons can do. PSR had a little video contest and the winner was a four minute video where they interviewed groups of young people and asked them how many nuclear weapons there were. Everybody had it right. They were off by a handful to many. Almost everybody underestimated how many there were. So education is just a huge part of this. You know we brought some Hibakusha to the Burlington schools and reached about 1500 kids two years ago. But my follow up calls to the schools let's continue some education about this fell on deaf ears. So any ideas are more than appreciated. Let me say something and that is that on the call here is Cheryl Spencer who is active in will disarm and has been compiling some resource guides for for January 22nd. And why don't you say something about them it's it's compiling all the events that are happening around the country. And we haven't put anything in yet because we don't know we haven't made anything happen but so many communities are let us know what you found Cheryl. Yes. Good afternoon everybody I'm sitting here in Palo Alto California, and I work with Robin on the disarm committee of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. And I think we have like 18 branches of wealth. 40 branches but 18 of them are actually going to have in person demonstrations on on Friday the 22nd on street corners. These are political protests and therefore even though California is completely locked down at the moment we're not supposed to gather with other people at all but political protests are allowed. So we are. This is a kind of an educate the public bring attention to the fact that this treaty, which makes nuclear weapons illegal in 51 countries and of course we know there's going to be more. Bring that to the attention of the passing public. And then the icon w.org has a map of all the events that they've been told about and I just saw an email that there are 87 events. They've got on their map, including ones in Australia in New Zealand in Germany. Most of them are in are in the US. At the same. So those are in person, you know, we're always outdoors always with masks, etc. And, but there are a lot of webinars that are going to be happening, organized by other organizations like plowshares and PSR in Oregon is having a webinar and hideco is actually going to be one of their speakers. And global zero. So, in my resource guides, I spent a lot of time finding all these webinars and events. And then I can w just yesterday announced that they are going to be live streaming. They say only for 90 minutes. We'll start at noon. No, start at 3pm, your time. And they will be having the kind of going to be following the countries where the, as it comes into effect in its time zone. And they're going to have speakers and music and rather like the live streaming that happened on Hiroshima day last year, where we had many organizations, we submitted, you know, short videos and we had panel discussions. Hopefully some of you saw those. Yeah. So you if you go to icon w.org, and then look at their website. You will find the notice about that live streaming on your computer. I mean, and there's some big countries that have ratified the treaty now to ratify the treaty is a big step it means their parliament has mulled over this thing. What does that actually mean to not allow possession or transportation, or boats to come in with radioactive material. They're pondering this and, and they, you know, Mexico decided to Austria. Maybe someone knows some of the others bigger cities that are. Interestingly enough, the Vatican was about the first one to ratify it it doesn't take very much for the Vatican to ratify anything. I think the Pope has to say so. But if you look at the countries by population, like a quarter of the world's population are actually represented. I think it's a quarter in in the 50 countries because you've got Bangladesh. You've got Indonesia. There's a few other places that have gone a lot of people who live there. So, some of them are small states, they are islands in the middle of the Pacific that you've never heard of, but they are sovereign nations. And they have letting the world know you're not. We don't want, you know, your nuclear weapons. The other thing you're supposed to do in the treaty is assist other people who suffered from nuclear weapons. The Marshall Islands, for example, was where the US detonated, let me see, tens of bombs in the 1950s and they're still suffering from the radiation left over. So it's actually relatively short. It's only 10 pages, the treaty, and it has 20 articles. And so you can find it again through ICANNW.org. You can find the actual text of this treaty and see, and then you can understand. It's a contract between these countries and we're trying to make nuclear weapons and anathema is one of the things like we've made chemical weapons and anathema. So that's a hope is that even though the nuclear weapons states haven't signed it, that nevertheless people will look down on them for having it, having them. Carol, I want to amplify something you said. I think equally important to remember that while so far the nations have signed it are less than a fifth of people. That'll change when big countries like Brazil and Indonesia sign. But of the countries under India and China, of course, with their vast populations. When you survey people in those countries, China, I don't have the data on, but certainly India, most people want to get rid of nuclear weapons. And so it's the governments you're going against. It's not really going against the will of the people to join this treaty. I mean, I think it should be pointed out that Africa, the nations in Africa, they signed some sort of anti-nuclear treaty or not to promote nuclear weapons and Latin America also. Isn't that true, John? Nuclear free zones. They're actually nuclear free zones. Large part of the Pacific, most of Africa and most of the Caribbean in South America. We really need one in the Near East, of course, but that's going to be tough. People are working on that. So just another interesting fact. I read the BBC News website every day and every five minutes today. So he was impeached, by the way, if you've all missed it, it's done. He's impeached. The UN bishops in the UK issued a statement the other day saying that nuclear weapons are terrible and Britain should sign the TPNW and so on and so forth. So religious groups are very much against them. And, you know, we appreciate their efforts. They're just spoken out against them totally. And the Trident submarines that the plowshares people were active against, which we also, several of them are also in Washington state, but they were created in collaboration with England and they are in Scotland and now with Brexit. Scotland is like they may just go on their own and they hate the Trident submarine. In fact, one of the activists, Tim Wallace, who did a wonderful webinar a few weeks ago has spent years there and has studied it and written a book about it and is very hopeful that Scotland will just say we don't want these weapons anymore. Yeah, Scotland voted to stay in the EU. When you when you divided the votes out and look, you know, by region, how different parts of Britain voted. Scotland actually didn't want to leave. And they may, there's a threat that they will leave Britain, you know, to go back into the EU. Yeah, yeah. This treaty may well play a part in that. This treaty may well play a part in that equation. Yeah. So again, the simplest things I think to do is, is, is to write to your, your Congress people Catherine Bach I don't have Catherine you're still listening over there but she's familiar with lobbying our Congress people through the Friends Committee on National legislation which agrees with all this and, and getting a hold of these guys and saying these two things right off of that rejoin that new start treaty that's the single most important thing. Work out the Iran thing the Iran thing was sounded like was going to be a no brainer also until Trump assassinated one of their major scientists and now the people in Iran are so furious about that they may not want to get in the and, and then this back from the break resolutions you know should we try to get that through the state legislature and how do you do that in a time when they're so preoccupied with coven. But the thing is to keep bringing it up every time you can. No, so there's this big effort for next Friday the 22nd, because that's the day that becomes in force from those 51 countries who ratified it, but of course, it's an ongoing process. So we have to keep it in the public view, and Nancy Pelosi talking about the nuclear button. That was marvelous. Raising the issue in the general public's mind. And we're trying to, you know, I'm tweeting about that I'm trying to get the public, you know, keep keep some focus on that. Yeah, well and we haven't mentioned the banks I mean that could be another focus is that the the investments that banks have made in nuclear industries and we. Some of us met with a woman from code pink to look on the state level and the pension funds that have are developed and of course, then there's the dichotomy that if for example the teachers union and their statewide pension fund, they might, you know, they have to be argued they have to be cajoled to see that this is an important thing to do because they might feel that they are will lose money if they divest from these nuclear industries but John you've you've researched that and that usually it hasn't happened. Yeah, what's a little better there is I haven't seen personally been been told by people working on this for a while is that that the fear that that people lose money if they divest from these certain things isn't isn't born out at all people. If you look at weapons companies they actually haven't done any better than the general market surprisingly. Yeah, good. So are there any anyone else who wants to have something to say sandy bird. You often have comments. I noticed when I was teaching school that most of my students never knew that the United States had been the first ever to use nuclear weapons and I think it's important to understand that that we also understand the United States will never give up this idea of first response because the United States also has done that already United States is the only nation that has used nuclear weapons in a war right. What's always amazed me about that it wasn't because they were desperately about the loser. They won the war and still use that. I know. But thank you very much, Sean that was very interesting and thank you Robin for organizing it and best for recording it. So, I'm going to have to leave now to but thanks. Thanks Robin. Me too well best wishes to everybody don't hesitate to contact Robin or I and let me just throw my chat to say I was going to put my email in there but Robin knows how to get in touch with me if anybody wants to get in touch with. Thank you. Good night. Yeah. Okay. Blessings everyone. Thank you. Thanks, Cheryl. Thanks everybody. Thanks everybody. Bye bye.