time once again for community form and we're very lucky to have with us live in the studio this morning jonathan grant john king grant is the executive director of the tenants union of washington jonathan thank you very much for coming back in and spending time with us seattle the tenants union is pretty much responsible for more or less you know most of the tenant protections that you have as a renter being on the books in seattle in particular we fought for just cause addiction protections tent relocation assistance protecting people from unreasonable lease terms and you know the kind of the heart of the tenants union is the community organizing work that we do you know i think right now in seattle what we're seeing is just an  explosion of renters in crisis there is more and more folks coming to our door and rising rents are displacing more folks out of the city so right now there's a huge need for the work that we do  and more so now than ever and i think that what's important about the tenants union is that because we're a membership base and because it's our members that really kind of steer the organization we can't compromise those values and i think that's really great about us and unique is that you know when it comes down to it if it's you know a problem with you know a landlord a problem with a developer and it's a problem with city hall you know the tenants union is  going to be kind of unwavering in making sure that the interests that we're holding are the interest of our members so if folks are interested in joining the tenants union and joining the movement to fight for renters rights they should visit our web site at ten union dot org and there is actually a little right on the front page there there's a link to become a member and it's just one dollar for every thousand dollars that you make it's a sliding scale because we want to be as inclusive to folks as possible predominately  membership our low income tenants and working class people and so i encourage folks to go and sign up we also have a little action alert that folks can type in their e mail address and get action alerts for coming out to our direct actions if we're doing a campaign you know against a particular developer or a particular landlord or if there is tenant legislation that's out there that you know we need folks to turn out for we're really kind of the go to place for that so we encourage folks to sign up become a member and join the tenet union in it appears from my scanning the news over the last several months that you guys have had numerous direct actions that's right i mean you know in just in the last year we've held you know a half dozen or so campaigns in different buildings where it's you know affordable housing complexes and that this could be either housing that's subsidized or not subsidized but is just you know below market so fordable to like working class folks and you know what we've experienced is that you know if you're living in an apartment complex and you get a you know a notice from your landlord that says we're going to be increasing around by one hundred percent in some cases two hundred percent tenants always get more out of that situation when they come together and organize so at the tenants union does is that we we go to these buildings we send organizers to to do workshops because what we see what we find that if they can developers will try to skirt the law and these are laws that tenants have fought for hard for to get on the books but like any law it always comes down to enforcement and it's often the case that it's up to tenants to enforce their you know that the laws that they have to get on the books in the first place so you know tenants are entitled to just cause addiction protections tenant relocation assistance and all sorts of things like this but if they don't know what their rights are often it's the case that folks kind of throw up their hands and say well i don't know maybe a week you know maybe i don't have any rights so education is really a key piece to the work that we do but then once you know your rights you have to know how to enforce them and when people come together in their building and form a tenet association association or attend a council it gives them collective bargaining power especially with the landlord and what we encourage folks to do is to  organize it's often the case that folks who are you know facing that kind of adversity can ask you know quite a bit more than even what the law demands so we've seen situations where the developer is trying to displace folks and you know the tenants came together and either stop the run increases from happening or the very least get more time to move or get relocation assistance so we always encourage folks to organize because you always get more out of it if you don't  building that serve very low income veterans so we're talking about folks who are on a fixed income and it was actually owned by a nonprofit the volunteers of america now you know we always encourage nonprofits to build more affordable housing into also preserve it as affordable housing but we were really disappointed to see when that nonprofit then sold it to a private developer what that private developer wanted to do was to flip these units they want to get the building and so they get a permit from the city to do that and then you know displace all the tenants and turn in this you know long term housing which is like the only housing for veterans in that entire neighborhood there's no really else that's affordable for folks to live on a fixed income like that and you know they're going to turn it into luxury housing so the tenants actually organized and came together and formed a tenant council called the theodore rescue committee and what they found was that it was actually the same developer that was kicking out tenants you know just across town in ballard at the lock even apartments and so the tenants from both of those buildings started organizing together to put kind of goodman on notice that you can't just skirt the laws you can't just evictee people without some consequence to it and you know for the first time i think in ten years and to my knowledge tenants took this to the streets and marched through ballard and march ravenna and actually picketed john goodman's private residence and i think what's really interesting is that you know when you look at you know the folks who are being displaced mean these are the folks that have been our community members and been in our community for their entire lives i mean the folks that have lived in the theodora and that the lock even some of the folks that live there in that particular building for over twenty years and to have their jacked up in this way to have no stability in you know their their homes you know there's really nowhere else for them to go in this town so that the lock even apartments what just kind of blew our minds was that john goodman was a neighbor  home was just less than two miles away from that apartment complex and that's you know over one hundred units of housing that's affordable to working class people and so the tenants organized a march and a rally in front of his home and i think it should be clear like we're not talking about you know a nice small single family home he actually has a commercially zoned marina that is his home and that's where he lives and he's got you know his  boats out there and it's just less than two miles away from their apartment so we have you know this this just shocking in a disparity of this person living on his private you know marina this little villa on you know on the water and  ballard displacing folks just down the street hundreds of working class families and you know when when the tenants you know organize the first thing and this is what we're seeing happening across town is that the tenants got bogus eviction notices and they said you have to move out in twenty days and one of the protections that the tenant union fought for to get on the books are these what are called just cost protections that a landlord can't just terminate your tenancy for no reason they actually have to have a just cause  reason that's legal for them to do so and many of the tenants at the lock even got these bogus notices and the lock intentionally deserve a lot of credit because the start organizing themselves and then reach out to the tenants union for assistance and  the tenants were able to actually get those bogus eviction notices kind of rescinded in the way that they did that was by filing a complaint with the department of planning and development which is the city agency and the city department that enforces these local codes but their partner can only force what they know about and so it was important that the tenants file those complaints and we always encourage folks so that if you know if you're facing a you know economic eviction or if there is development happening in your building odds are the landlord of the developers probably not following the law in so it's always good to call the city and find out what you know what kind of laws need to be enforced or go to the tenet union and actually you know i should also mention if folks are questions about their rights you can call our hotline at two zero six seven two three zero five zero zero monday tuesday and wednesday and it's a hotline that serves the whole state so sometimes it can get hard to get through but we also have walk in clinics and pretty much everyone gets served at our clinics which are throughout seattle and the locations are can also be found on our website at tenet union dot org so what happened at the at the lock even was that you know tenants demanded that the developer set aside some of the units to be affordable for some the long long term residents that live there that were very low income the tennis were actually able to get the owner and into the into the  into the room and actually sit down at the table to negotiate and what the tenants got was more than what they would have gotten had they not organized they got increased relocation assistance they got more time and again none of this would have wouldn't have none of this would have happened had they not organized now at the at the theodore apartments you know i think the real travesty there was that that building was was ultimately lost and that john goodman will probably be able to turn that intellectually housing and you know there is a truly dick depleting like to set very small number of housing that's affordable for veterans who are who are disabled and the loss of that housing it's over one hundred units of affordable housing and i think what what people need to remember is that it is so much more affordable for the city to preserve those buildings and to invest the money to upkeep those buildings as affordable housing than it is to build a completely new construction and build you know a brand new affordable housing complex and so that's why the tenants union fight so hard to try to preserve these buildings because we think that it's really the city's obligation to preserve these buildings and the tenets of the theater rescue committee actually went to you know the department planning development they went to the office of housing and said you guys you guys need to intervene here like there's an opportunity to preserve it's over one hundred units of housing for very very low income people and people earning you know like you know well below probably fifteen percent of the poverty line fifty percent of their a median income and the city basically said no we're not going to do that you know it's not our role will be consulate heard from the city and the tenets are really frustrated you know we thought this was an amazing opportunity to preserve this very low income housing in ravenna that once it's gone it's gone forever and there's really no place for low income folks in that community anymore now what would happen after after the city refused to intervene at the theodora was that tenants at the lock haven tenants of the theodora were looking at their options and saying well gosh you know what is it why would the city not intervene like why isn't the city doing more to aggressively preserve affordable housing and to kind of back up tenants and you know at the tenants union you know what we know is that the city does a lot of business with developers  so tenant started making inquiries about you know well what kind of business is the city doing with with you know john goodman and these developers and they found out that actually there is a large parcel of land that's right in front of city hall that's public land it's owned by all of us and the city sold it to a developer called triad and then the tenants found out that actually you know the little research that tribes actually coned by who else but goodman real estate so the tenants thought that this was a radius and they came together and formed a citywide coalition called the displaced tenants for accountability and transparency and what the what they found was that not only is it outrageous that that public land was sold to you know one of seattle serial of victors of low income families but the city was actually compelled to break the law for the developer to make that development happen because it turned out that the permit for that plot of land called civic square which is right in front of city hall had expired it expired two years ago and the developer just let it expire we you know the tenants came together and  you know for the information about about the about the permit and we found that you know there was correspondence between the developer in the city that said you know if you don't renew your permit we're going to sue you and  city felt compelled to renew the permit now when a permit expires it kind of opens the door to what's what can happen to that land there be a hole there public process there could be a whole new conversation about what to do about civic square and the city close the door on that by illegally extending the permit which they are not by law allowed to do so the tenets came together and formed a broad coalition of other folks who've been displaced across the city and the filed suit against the city of seattle and triad which is owned by john goodman so right now that is currently being you know the gated in court but i think what the tenants are hoping to see is that one the city shouldn't be doing business with the bad actors in our community the folks who are evicting low income families to if you're going to sell public land you need to get something out of it the only thing that the city was going to get out of it was a small the civic square would have been a public park for people to you know put down their shopping bags and then residential structure that would've had five hundred thousand to a million dollar condos on it and you know that's that's outrageous you know we're living in a time when you know rents are just skyrocketing and one of the things that drives rents in that way is that is property values going up well you know we can't right now control what happens to private property but we sure as heck can control what's going on on public land and so if we're going to prioritize affordable housing and if we're going to be responsive to the crisis that is happening in the city we need to use our public assets wisely and we we think that the civic square development needs to be on the table again and it needs to have a public process to decide you know twenty years ago back in one thousand nine hundred six was when they made the plan for civic square times have changed for the worse right there's now three over three thousand people who are homeless on the street on the streets in seattle that's over thirty percent increase just in this decade alone last year rents increases were the highest in the nation in the nation and you know if we don't use our public land in our public resources to try to address this crisis we're really doing a disservice to the community and i think that is really what tenet's are trying to accomplish with this lawsuit that you know it's not enough to that it's bad enough that developers are getting these kind of sweetheart deals with the city but you know this is there is opportunity to kind of have this you know to readdress what that property and what that land was supposed to be used for why wouldn't the city take it you know take advantage of that unfortunately the city did not the illegally extended the permit and now we'll see what happens in court but we think that you know the conversation should be reopened on how that land is used i mean that could be affordable housing that the city built right there right and the symbolic value of having this gleaming glass in steel tower looming over a city hall after this you know what i would call theft of public land i think that that is outrageous and it maybe would be an accurate symbol of the way that city hall is is making its priorities right now but it shouldn't be and i think that it's up to tenants and up to the community to let city hall know that we need to ask more we needed to demand more not just from developers but from ourselves and you know the thing about it is that more and more people are coming to the tenants you know more folks are being displaced from their buildings we're seeing you know one hundred percent rate increases one hundred fifty percent two hundred percent it's it's amazing to me you know how much i think also that i don't know if this is a northwest thing or what but there's just this attitude of well you know that's just how it goes you know that's just the way markets work well that's you know that's not good enough you know that is just not good enough you know in other contexts we have regulations to per cent of price gouging you know a bank can't just make any kind of loan product they want if you're buying a home you know last year the city council tried to pass a limit on towed trucking fees because they were gouging their customers you know  against this kind of abuse but for some reason when it comes to rental property we can't stop agree just price gouging and that's that's outrageous and we should demand more you know right now the  there's a state ban on regulating rents and that was actually created in the one nine hundred eighty s in response to the city of seattle trying to pass around regulation ordinance and it's important for folks to know i mean it's much like when they passed the minimum wage law when seattle passed a fifteen dollar minimum wage the first thing that you know the business interested is that they went down to olympian they tried to ban it well unfortunately in one nine hundred eighty it was you know the reagan years and they were able to get a ban on the seattle having local authority but since that has happened the city of seattle has never asked has never passed a resolution demanding that the the state give them the authority for regulations and i think that it's important that the city on a on a public of you know official record say we need this local authority for stabilization we want to rent stabilization and i think that is the first step we need to have a conversation locally and create the public pressure locally in order to make that next step to get changes at the state level can you talk about how these outrageous rent increases are really tools to get around existing laws so one of the big problems with the ban on on rent control or stabilizing rents is that it's absolute and so what we're seeing is that when a developer comes in and buys a  building you know typically they want to flip it and they want to you know do these cosmetic improvements and make some structural changes and when you do that you have to get a permit from the city to get authorization to make those changes to the building to make sure that they're up to code now if you get that permit and you raise the rents and it causes folks to be displaced or if the change of the use of the building causes folks to be displaced if you're low income you're entitled to up to three thousand dollars worth of relocation assistance now i can't tell you how many thousands of people have been displaced by this practice because the city doesn't track this information but what they do track is how many people have actually succeeded in getting that relocation assistance and it's in the it's in the hundreds it's a tiny fraction it's like one hundred so tiny amount of people who actually get that assistance and part of the reason is that because the ban is so absolute the city can't stop a landlord from economically evicting people first and then applying for the permit and so what we're seeing are landlords left and right circumventing the law and getting out of paying you know tens of thousands or sometimes much more than that in relocation assistance that they are legally obligated to pay low income residents who are being displaced market speculation and what we are proposing to the city council is to impose penalties on developers that try to circumvent the law right now there's really nothing that authorizes the city to say you know what you can't just raise rents and then not pay the relocation assistance to folks so we would like to see those folks penalized i mean it seems really clear that you're circumventing the law that you jack up the rounds two hundred percent apply for a permit two months later you know after everyone's moved out because they can't afford to live there and then get out of having to pay you know the tens of thousands of realization assistance to those low income families we think that those folks should be penalized if it's the city has the authority to do it and right now  council member mike o'brien is actually looking to introduce legislation to do just that and that's in response to the tenant movement and i really want to commend the council member for taking heed from tenants and actually trying to do something about this and about five minutes left so you also had a recent victory with what is it s h a that was trying to jack the rent yes so you know at a time when rents are rising the seattle housing authority had  this terrible idea this terrible lady a to raise the rents by over four hundred percent and all the working families in that in their housing which would have affected over seven thousand people this was egregious this was a terrible idea they tried to steamroll tenants and you know that the tenant movement responded and tenants you know took over as a you know chair meetings the march in the streets and queeny and which is where the housing authority headquarters is and delivered you know a you know a joint message saying you know no this is totally unacceptable tenets you know put pressure on city council to totally oppose it and right now the council is considering  taken the proposal back and said you know what we're going to we're going to reconsider this maybe in a year but right now we're not going to do it so tents have declared a victory for now but we have to seal the deal and the council has to actually appoint pro ten council board commissioners to make sure that this proposal remains buried because it was a terrible idea we shouldn't ask low income tenants to try to backfill the fordable housing crisis i think that we can ask more from developers more from landlords and more from the city to provide affordable housing screening report so when you apply for housing and you have to pay that thirty five to fifty dollars screening report you only have to pay once and then you can use it again in multiple locations it would also eliminate the practice of landlords using eviction records against a tenant when the tenant won in court that's a would give tenants a ninety day notice for running crease we think that it is you know it doesn't address the root cause of displacement but at least would provide some temporary relief and actually the seattle times editorial board  wrote recently that the actually think it's a reasonable approach as well and so we encourage the senate to move that forward another bill is to prevent discrimination against section eight voucher holders so that you know just because you have a public subsidy landlords can't just say no to you because you're poor so there's there's of some really important tenant legislation coming up this year and it's could be a tough fight because the senate is currently controlled by republicans all right so it sounds like there's battles both at the city level and the state level that's  this the city is always at least been a little more for lack of a better word progressive that's true the city of seattle if we're going to actually secure victories for tenants it's more likely to come from a local level so we encourage folks to join the tenants union and join zero five zero zero and then in seattle we have walk in clinics that you can also find the locations of at our website tenet union dot org we also have monthly membership meetings and we encourage folks to join to become a member again there's a on our website to do that and yeah we encourage folks to make contact and join join the tennis union and is your organization involved with i know that seattle council member want is looking at  so i think she deserves a lot of praise for that we're working with council members who wants council member of bryan to try to push for more affordable housing in the city and you're also a member of the housing affordability and livability committee that's right which has got their report coming out in may yes yes so we're so the mayor convened a group that is contemplating different ideas for affordable housing it's a work in progress we're kind of seeing how it goes so far but we're i should also mention that i were a member of the washington low income housing alliance and they are one of our most important partners at the state level fighting for ten of protections and there are i want to give them a lot of credit for pushing a lot of the state legislation as well issues for more than thirty years he is co founder and coordinator of the global network against weapons and nuclear power in space he is a vietnam era veteran and began his career working for the united farm workers union in florida organizing fruit pickers there for fifteen years he coronated the florida coalition for peace and justice and organized the largest peace protest in florida's history when over five thousand people marched on cape canaveral in opposition to the first flight test of the trident two nuclear missile he is also a member of veterans for peace and the author of come together right now organizing stories from a fading empire bruce thank you very much for coming and spend time with us again this morning good to be with you again thank you so start out tell us about your organization the global network against weapons and nuclear power in space it was created twenty three years ago to essentially create a consciousness and to build a movement internationally around the issue of moving the arms race into space the pentagon says that if the u s can control space and dominate space and deny other countries access to space that they would be able to essentially control the planet on behalf of corporate globalization and so we see that today these military satellites give them the ability to intercept all phone fax and e mail communications a whole n s a snowden story there we see them having the ability to target any place on the planet using drones or other weapon systems and long moving ahead quickly with this whole project that again they say will be the largest industrial project in the history of the planet earth making so much money and costing so much you can imagine building a satellite hundreds of millions of dollars and launching it on rockets hundreds of millions of dollars they blow up now and then you've got to start all over again it's a financial drain and they've said repeatedly that they've got to come up with a dedicated funding source to pay for all of it and they say we have we're now sending our lobbyists to washington to secure that funding source that what is it in title meant programs officially which  social security medicare medicaid and what's left of the welfare program these are the programs that the military industrial complex has a den of fide to defund and it's no coincidence that just in recent days the fifteen new incoming republican senators in washington have signed a pledge saying that one of their first goal is to dismantle the food stamp program imagine that taking money from the  from the children and the elderly taking food off their tables so that they can pay for these systems of endless war the navy for example is saying that their budget is unsustainable that the cost overruns for the new aircraft carriers than modernization of the trident submarines out her bangor naval base the destroyers made in my community in bath maine stores that are outfitted with so called missile defense systems that are key elements in u s first strike attack programs although these programs are costing so much money now the f thirty five joint strike fighter that has all kinds of technical problems it has so many bells and whistles on it it doesn't work properly but it's costing the national treasury essentially all these programs are so expensive and so you know overrun in cost that they've got to drain social progress they've got to destroy social progress in america to pay for to pay for this analysts war and what is this endless war really about it's about controlling the planet on behalf of corporate globalization for resource extraction as fossil fuels decline and availability so that our organization is dedicated to helping people see and come alive around this whole issue of space technology leading in directing modern warfare and we should mention that the what brought you to town was a peace walk with the members of ground zero center for nonviolent action over next to the banner trident nuclear  previous week starting on monday in a limpia we began walking in walked to tacoma through seattle and then out to the navy base yesterday there was a protest at the front gate the nuclear submarine base and about ten people were charged with attempting to you know walk into the forbidden area there at the base and it was there was a day long kind of m conference held at the ground zero p center was wonderful event with music and speakers brilliant day and i was just proud to come and be a part of it i'm really i have a very used to live and now maine where i do live and actually the the monk from bainbridge island send he came the last two octobers to maine to lead our walks through the state against militarization of our state and i really wanted to thank him for walking with us because it adds such an incredible spiritual dimension to to our political activism that i wanted to come and join the walk they just did here the martin luther king walk that talked about militarism and social justice so it was a honor to be part of that whole walk through your state so what do you see as the goals of doing the walks are they just for those participating or are they for those that are seeing you walk by well let me speak personally about it i made a sign my contact with every car going by every person on my right or my left as i walked by and to turn my sign so that every car and every person could see it that was my goal i wanted people to see my message and so i don't talk much on a walk i don't you know i just really work i work on a walk that whole day that we're walking and we were averaging about thirteen or fourteen miles a day and and so i figure that literally thousands and thousands of people read my sign i mean we walked through the heart of seattle downtown area business government district you know at midday there was people all over the place you know a lot of people saw my science so that's my goal and you know the way i look at it is blocked were blocked by the corporate dominated media were blocked by the corporate dominated congress you know there's a filter between the peace movement message and the public and so we're rocking guess what you see everybody you know no matter rich black white asian you know hispanic  own you see people because american want to see america you want to reach america they're in their car so good i'm on the street and walk and you have direct contact with the american people so for me it's a fabulous way of getting around the obstacles getting around the the corporate arterial blockage i like to call it and it works and you really you have contact with people and so do you do that as a compliment to the work you do online because i know for instance both you and i use facebook as a tool to get information out but i'm frustrated a lot in the last several years that i feel most people  to be shifting towards an online presence as opposed to a presence out in the community i think you're talking about click to vests that people have become collectivists and have given up on being on the street that that is an issue i think part of it is though a lot of the peace movement tends to be older people but also there's a deep deep despair ian and across the land amongst the people who care you have good hearts there's a sense of powerlessness because of this our corporate arterial blockage of the congress and of the media and a lot of people have in a way given up you know we have severe problems climate change growing income disparity growing poverty and a growing debt among students you know so a lot of people it's not that they don't care i don't call it i never call it apathy but i call it powerlessness and depression dr helen caldicott we were talking about her before the show she often talks about how high percentages of american people are on antidepressants and she says if you're not upset if you're not angry about all this stuff then you're not paying attention so it's a natural reaction to be depressed but you've got to fight through that depression i get depressed you know you've got to fight through it and for main walking is really great therapy and great liberation you know because i'm betting this this my end colonization that they've stuck into my brain you know through the corporate media so i use every tool possible you know i use blogging i have a blog called organizing notes it's kind of my spiritual practice to daily blog i have a great website the global network space for peace dot org and you know but i try every every avenue possible but i think we need all these approaches but we still have to be public we still have to connect with our fellow human beings we still have to touch each other people's hearts you know we have to understand that is organizes an activist that the human connection is still going to be a priority for us we should clarify in your  your website is space the number for peace dot org right so getting back to your organization and a precursor to the creation of your organization and that protest that largest protest in florida's history against the trident two nuclear missile out of cape canaveral a lot of people including myself up until ten years or so the us brought about one thousand five hundred former nazis to the country to this country about one hundred of them are the nazi rocket scientists that were building the v one in v two rockets hitler used to terrorize the cities of london and paris and brussels near the end of world war two as he was getting desperate as he was losing runner von braun the rocket scientist was brought to essentially create the space program nazis were nazi intelligence they were brought to the u s to help create the cia nazi scientists that were doing mind control experiments on the jews were brought to do the m k ultra l s d drug experiments of the sixty's when people were jumping out of windows because of bad trips those were the nots former nazi scientists that were running those experiments and many many people in fact some years ago jane's defense weekly a british military industrial complex magazine if you will one of the writers wrote a book about the black budget  secret military budget is called the black budget where they store who knows nobody knows exactly figure even congress is not allowed to know how much money goes into it but some people say it's up to seventy five one hundred billion dollars a year and they use for secret top top secret military technology development this writer was trying to figure out where did this secret architecture of this you know black budget come from a traced it back to operation paperclip the nazis had brought it over it was a headless program that hitler used to develop the his his rocket the want to be to program everything else so you know if you imagine seeding the military industrial complex with the top operatives of hitler's nazi regime ask yourself answer this question is there an ideological contamination that comes along with it my answer is absolutely and could it not be then that one reason that we are so aggressive with our blitzkrieg endless blitzkrieg around the world is because this is the nazi program that we the not the you know the nazi were to take over the world is not over that in fact it just it just leaped the ocean and it integrated itself into the u s program and  the empire military empire that we have today is an extension of the nazi program there's a really good books about this one i'm scarred secret agenda by linda hunt former reporter with c n n that wrote kind of the defendant of study on operation paperclip many other books about it out there i highly recommend people learn more about it because it really helps close the circle as we try to understand what's really going on i know it's hard for the american people and he had what was called a rat line a team of anti communist operatives in every cut major city in europe and he went to the americans at the in a world war two and said you probably don't want to try me for crimes against humanity you might want to use me in my rat line and so they brought them to the us put them through the hoops made sure you know he was for and then they sent him back and put him in charge of the new country west germany their intelligence program so imagine this the former head of nazi intelligence now the head of west german intelligence and so with they've been going at it ever since this is where we're at today i know that some of the scientists brought over in project paperclip were also put into u s universities you have to wonder what the trickle down of that operation was and we see the universities today especially state universities because of budget cuts in various states and illustration is university in new mexico in albuquerque they have secret parts of their state funded campus where the military industrial engineering computer science lot of depart robotics you know mathematics in a planetary sciences a lot of those are becoming militarized on the campus leap for republic records request at our local university or washington powerhouse one of the largest might be the largest employer in seattle and i know in the last several years they've been averaging about fifty million dollars a year in d grants this is what we do in the summers ago during the bush administration george w bush donald rumsfeld the secretary of war there was a c span program the speaker was thomas barnett at that time a instructor at the naval war college she had written a book called the pentagon's new map and i saw a three hour presentation he made to a huge auditorium full of high level military brass and cia people and basically what he said was under corporate globalization of the world economy every different country's going to have a different role a different job we're not going to make stuff anymore because and control parts of the planet that will benefit corporate globalization then they put up a big map any showed where we're going to go middle east central america afghanistan and parts of africa where we are and now to increasingly today because of resources there and parts of latin america places like venezuela that is one of the largest supplies of oil on the planet and so that's our job endless war on behalf of corporate interests and so we've got to begin the american people got to begin to understand and see this bigger picture here this is what we're doing in the world and it's no coincidence t today our number one industrial export product is what weapons and when weapons are number one industrial export product what is your global marketing strategy for that product line and war that's right so speaking of endless war talk about what the u s is currently doing with russia and china and other areas of the world where russia has the world's largest supply of natural gas and by now we should know that anybody that has significant supplies of natural gas or oil is going to be deemed an enemy is going to be demonized and it's going to be surrounded and so today nato submit to that the you know the banking and the wrists that control most of the planet and so that's the latest project and this whole ukraine situation is a stabilization along russia's border in order to introduce chaos into russia one thing that is happening as a result of climate change is the arctic ice is melting and that means that the corporations want to go and drool drill under was impossible to do before because of arctic ice and if you look at a map you'll see that russia happens to have the largest landmass along the arctic sea and so one of the guns is to break russia apart russia's huge physical country it's the largest territorial country on the planet so they want to bust it up the rand corporation has created a plan that spells out how we're going to bust it up in the you know various pieces and so this whole situation in ukraine is an early for a of course the us and nato led this coup d'etat in ukraine and now they've created a civil war there that is forcing russia on its borders to make a decision what are you going to do about this it would be the equivalent does anything in response he gets demonized in the western media so it's very very dangerous just this past week the united states was depositing huge amounts of military equipment into lithuania i saw the video i put it on my blo are video of just train loads of us military equipment going into lithuania so russia is freakin out there freaking out saying what the hell are you doing you're surrounded us you know you're you're moving into our backyard and it's very very dangerous very dangerous most people don't even know what's happening and again it ties back to the history of the us allying itself with the former nazis and with galen's organization and the role that several of the countries including ukraine had in world war two against then the soviet union that's right you know when hitler invaded russia he went through ukraine and in the western part of ukraine the part closest to europe there was a guy named band stephan band that was a nationalist and joined forces with hitler to help invade russia and so the russians remember this and in the eastern part of the crane closest to the russian border ukrainian citizens have more connection to russia ideologically and culturally linked to russia and so russia feels a fear that you know these nazi operatives that are just slaughtering slaughtering  ukrainian citizens on the eastern part of the country i mean oh my god i've been following it now for daily for a long time since this whole coup d'etat happened that the u and it's terrible and you know all these refugees have flooded into russia russia's been very very judicious about reacting to it and even though they've been accused of invading ukraine rus tanks in ukraine it's not true and but this is all part of the demonization that's been going on in order to justify more nato expansion more u s military moves in the region it's extremely extremely dangerous if the u s tried to do this during the cold war during the height of the time of the soviet union it would have started a nuclear war and it very well could now as well and as helen caldicott points out there's  what over a dozen nuclear reactors that are in the ukraine and in potential hotz zones for the current conflict exactly exactly so we have left you just about three minutes left to tell us what can people do about all this well it's i think if you want to stop space warfare if you want to prevent the next use of nuclear weapons if you want to prevent and less war if you want to stop the wars in iraq and syria and everywhere else that the united states is doing things cut the military budget defend social justice defend human rights but as you're doing that make the links make the articulation talk about how the pentagon has the largest carbon blueprint on the earth talk about how the pentagon control the vast majority of our tax dollars today in the national treasury but there are literally two trains heading on a collision course one is called endless war and the other one is called social progress and one of them is go survive this collision and one of them is not and so the question that all of us have to answer is which trying do we want to survive the collision i think the answer is fairly obvious and what can really help make sure that this pentagon train gets derailed before this collision really comes to a head so each of us in our own lives we've got to find a way to defend social security food stamps social justice mental health programs education programs all good things that that the social progress has brought us there all under attack now by these can i use the word evil forces that are really running our country and trying to destroy the world we've got to become more human and remember well you know what's the number one job of a human being on this planet earth today i believe it's two of the next generation the chances of  life and to protect our relatives in the plant world the animal world the natural world we have a responsibility as humans to look out for all of our relations on this planet and to protect life on this planet that's what it means to be a human let's do that work together hold hands together around the world i want to congratulate local activists that recently went to jade you island in south korea where a navy base is being built that is going global network against weapons and nuclear power in space and first how can people find out more about your organization they can go to our blog space for peace i mean our website go to my blog which is called organizing notes