Project Save the World Podcast / Talk Show Episode Number: 145
Panelists: Colin Archer
Host: Metta Spencer

Date Aired: 18 December 2020
Date Transcribed: 26 January 2021
Transcription: Otter.ai
Transcription Review and Edits: Metta Spencer and Adam Wynne

Metta Spencer

Hi, I’m Metta Spencer, in Toronto, and I’m looking forward to this conversation with a friend of mine in Leeds, England. I’m going to have a wonderful conversation with Colin Archer. I was on the steering committee or whatever it was called in those days of the International Peace Bureau for I think, three years. At a time when Colin Archer was the managing guy. We call it CEO. No that’s not the term

Colin Archer

No, no, in Geneva it’s called the secretary general, it’s even more elevated

Metta Spencer

Either one sounds very impressive to me. And you were a very impressive executive. So and and and now he’s turned into Santa Claus

Colin Archer

That’s right. I just thought we all need a little cheering up, and he’s the guy we need to have around.

Metta Spencer

That’s wonderful. Okay, well, it’s a good hat. And it’s wonderful to see you. Colin, for a long time, devoted his life to the International Peace Bureau, which is, I guess, the longest lived umbrella organization of peace groups in the world. And it won the Nobel Peace Prize in — what year was it?

Colin Archer

1910. So it’s going back a long way. Right? Founded in 1891.

Metta Spencer

Ah, yeah. So Nobel was … When did Nobel die? Do we know?

Colin Archer

It was something like 1895. And the first prizes were awarded in 1901. And the IPB pioneers were part of that whole circle around, well, including Nobel and Bertha von Suttner. And many others, at the founding, both of the Nobel Prize institution and also of the League of Nations, which, of course, was born just after the First World War. It was a very special period, a period of tremendous optimism in world politics. And in society. There are all these modern inventions coming about; there hadn’t been a war since 1870. And everybody felt that we were now approaching a new era where war would be a thing of the past, and everyone will behave rationally, and so on. Well, I’m afraid we had a terrible comeuppance, not once, but twice. And you know, war is still with us. But that was the origin of the IPB, which I then took over in 1990.

Metta Spencer

Wow, I didn’t remember when you started. All I knew was — I think when I became aware of IPP, you were already the Executive Secretary General, Secretary, General– I love that title. Yeah. Okay. So you’ve been retired two, three years, three years now?

Colin Archer

Yeah. Yes, I was 27 years at IPB? It was a very long haul.

Metta Spencer

It was based in Geneva. But as after you retired, there’s been some reorganization so that the work is dispersed in some sense. Can you explain how that works?

Colin Archer

That’s right. Well, you know, Geneva is a very expensive city. And, you know, money is difficult in the peace movement. And we made the decision, you know, it was my proposal in a way that we should, in fact, close the Geneva office and move it to Berlin, which is not only cheaper, but it also politically very interesting, being sort of halfway between, let’s say London and Moscow. It faces in both directions. And it’s a powerful country with a big influence, and a very strong peace movement. And our co president, at that time, Reiner Baum, was based in Berlin. And so he is basically taking it over. And he’s now running it as the CEO, whatever you want to call it. So also, we decided that we would split off the Global Campaign on Military spending, which was the main campaign that I worked on in the latter period of my time. That is now based in Barcelona, with the Centre Delàs, which is one of our member organizations. And we keep a small presence in Geneva too. So yes, it’s more decentralized.

Metta Spencer

Yeah, that global campaign, they changed the name it was Global Day of Action Against Military Spending, originally, GDAMS, right? And it has become a week long event — is that…

Colin Archer

A month long event, you know, different people want to have it at different times according to their own political calendars. So we say well, let’s have a season. In the spring around the time that the annual military spending figures are announced by SIPRI, the Stockholm Institute for Peace Research. So we base it on that day and also tax day in the United States is an important mobilizing moment to discuss what is done with the citizens’ taxes. So, but you know, other dates to other people. And then we decided that, you know, we needed to have a permanent year round campaign because military spending is such a huge beast to tackle. It’s not going to be in, we’re not going to make a dent in it just by having a day, a week or a month, it needs to be a permanent campaign to challenge the priorities of our militaristic governments. So it’s GCOMS now – Global Campaign on Military Spending.

Metta Spencer

And military spending four is, in a way, the linchpin of the whole thing. You know, if if we just did nothing, work on, you know, changing where we put our priorities about money, that would handle about 90% of our military problems, right?

Colin Archer

I mean, well, yes, that’s right. And that was, in a way, the case that I made when I suggested that IPB should take up this issue. We had done, you know, campaigns on nuclear weapons, on the illegality question, taking the question of nuclear weapons to the World Court in the early 90s. Then we’d had several years running a campaign on Peace Education worldwide, that was connected to the Hague Appeal for Peace conference in 1999. But after 911, and all the debate about human security, we felt we needed a new focus. And there was a sort of gap, if you like, nobody was really running a campaign on military spending. A lot of people would talk about it and say, Oh, isn’t it terrible, we’re spending so much, but that’s very different to actually having an organized, coordinated campaign. So that’s what we we set up. And that’s what we’re still doing. But and I do say that it is, in a sense, the trunk of the tree, you know, you can you can snip off little branches, if you like, which might be one particular weapon system, or even one, one war. You know, the Vietnam War movement was an enormous thing. But it wasn’t to abolish all wars for all time, it was one aspect of the war system, one occasion if you like. But you know, when you say the whole thing, because it depends which forest you’re in. And to continue the metaphor of the tree. You know, there are many other challenges to human society, apart from the military, climate change the environment, gender inequality, poverty, pandemics. I mean, you go on and on. It’s a very big forest. And this is only one tree. But I think it’s a very important element.

Metta Spencer

Okay. No, that’s that’s exactly what you’re pointing not away from my point. But Right, exactly. To my point, that you know, what is Projects Save the World, which is what we’re doing right now, you know, that saving the world, whether we like to joke about it or take it seriously, the world needs to be

Colin Archer

saving yes, yes, right. Right. Right.

Metta Spencer

And what are we going to save it from? Well, we’ve got to save it from war. But we also have to save it from global warming,

Colin Archer

or other things. Yeah,

Metta Spencer

we have six, we have six things that we’re trying to save the world from: global warming. We’re not, so far, we haven’t gone in to save the world from plastic in the oceans. We’ll have to leave that for somebody else. But we’ve got six. And that’s enough to keep us busy.

Colin Archer

That’ll keep you busy. Yeah, for sure.

Metta Spencer

We’ve got global warming, famine, pandemics, radioactive contamination from something like Chernobyl or something, and cyber risks. And to make these all happen, we have to have some changes in governance and in civil society and in the economy. So some of these changes, enabling measures are really crucial to us. But the heart and soul of the whole thing is that if we divert our spending from weapons of war into these other six global things, it would be it would solve a whole bunch of problems. And I think, frankly, I think that when people are talking about changing military spending, part of the Congress session ought to be: What are we going to create jobs in these other fields to do? and we should be doing more economic research and planning how to specifically divert money from, say tanks and bombs and so on to particular changes that need to be made in in these other areas. including more concrete proposals for how to take, you know this number of dollars out of this budget and put it over in this other one

Colin Archer

Yeah, well, you remember the work of Seymour Melman, for example, who was a pioneer in this, this very field. And there are people, you know, dotted around who are working a bit on this. But I think it’s important to say that simply reducing a military budget, or even just cutting off one, one weapons program, for example, like the F 35, around which there’s been a lot of peace movement activity, or around a particular whole system, like nuclear weapons, or chemical weapons or killer robots, you know, these are all aspects of the disarmament element of the peace movement. That’s only one stage because governments can easily say, Oh, right. $20 billion, that’s great. We can use that, we’ll we’ll put it into roadbuilding. Or we’ll put it into the conventional military, you know, instead of the nuclear, or they’ll just give it away and tax cuts. You know, it’s by no means automatic that simply because you win one battle by reducing the spending on a piece of the military system, that it goes into the good stuff that you also want to do. And then then there’s a competition between different fields, is it more important to put it into green energy production? Or poverty reduction, production or reduction? Is it more important to invest in good education for girls, or black lives matter? You know, so it’s difficult for a movement to come up with one plan that everybody will get behind, because everybody’s got a different idea about what the good stuff is. So that is why we’ve left the campaign as a rather open space for particular groups, and Coalition’s particularly, to make the case in their own way for their own priorities in their own political space. And I think that’s been quite successful. If we had said, it’s got to be this, it’s got to be 10%. And it’s got to be spent on climate, you know, it would have been too, too restrictive. So that’s the way things worked out with that particular campaign. But, you know, I’ve been involved in many campaigns in my life. You know, I had a life before the IPP as well. Depends how much time we’ve got to go into it. But that’s a good example of campaigning.

Metta Spencer

Yeah. Ah, okay. Well, no, you know, I never had this conversation about this before, I was not, I hadn’t thought about the, the idea that there had been a consideration of whether or not we wanted to specify where the money should go, that is taken out of military spending, or not, I just assumed that it was kind of overlooked, that we that it wasn’t specified. I wonder, you know, my notion is that we should have a coalition of movements, a social movement of social movements, work together, because if we got everybody on the same page, and and I get, I see your point, there’s your competition among, I don’t know what to do with this excess money that we’re going to have so much, I’m

Colin Archer

wearing my Santa Claus hat, this is not for nothing. It’s all about free gifts. But what do you do with the free gift? Yeah, anyhow?

Metta Spencer

 Well, let’s think I would love to do more to, to try to integrate people and make people aware that these, these issues, these six global threats, are so interdependent, because if you work on it, any one of them, you really have to do make some progress with at least one of the others in order to have any success. And therefore, we ought to be aware of the fact that we’re all on the same team working on a system that needs to be changed. And the military spending is a very key part of it, to take care of an awful lot of it, but we have to think I think more about how to how to reallocate our priorities. And I’ve loved to see more interaction among leaders of different movements, to talk about how we really can cooperate rather than just compete for the these dollars that we’re going to say,

Colin Archer

Sure, I mean, there’s a competition for fundraising as well. I mean, that’s another kind of competition, you know, Christmas time, you get this enormous end of year, sort of avalanche of requests for financial support, and especially during this very difficult time of the pandemic and the and the economic impact of the pandemic, you know, which is it’s been having on on NGOs and movements, as well as you know, people of all kinds in health in education in the arts. suffering, and everybody competing to try and bring in more more cash. So it is it is hard. And I take your point about, you know, we should all be cooperating and we’ll be singing on the same page. But you know, my experience of coalition building is that it’s extremely difficult. There have been attempts like the World Social Forum, which is still going, in fact, and they’re going to have a big meeting online in January. I don’t know if you know about that, but might be worth tuning into, because that’s one of the areas where so many different sectors all come together to pull their critiques of the system we’re in and to share plans. But whether, you know, it’s very difficult for that huge meeting to produce a sort of agreed plan. We had this challenge at The Hague in 1999. We could spend a moment on that perhaps, I don’t know. Would that be interesting to talk about?

Metta Spencer

Yes, but flesh out your your comment about the World Social Forum’s January meeting, because I was not aware of tha. I thought, in a way, that the World Social Forum is kind of on the ropes that they have not been flourishing the last few years. So I’m glad to know that there’s one January, we’re near. On top of that,

Colin Archer

I think I think you’re right that it is somewhat on the ropes. But I mean, it was at its at its height, you know, those huge meetings in Porto Alegre, and in other cities around the world, it was a terrific thing with hundreds of 1000s of people or was or even a million in India, I can’t even remember the numbers, but they had really big it was a massive mobilization, you know, beginning in Seattle, at the time of the WTO, and so on. But I think it became a bit unwieldy. And a lot of people said, well, we’re putting money into this. We’re bringing people from across the world, we’re spending money on airfares, and, you know, that’s got its ecological footprint as well. And is it producing anything? And I mean, there were a lot of, you know, grand statements that came out. But in terms of real working together, I’m not sure that, you know, it’s proven that it was very helpful. And I think that’s why you haven’t heard about it, because there hasn’t been nearly so much for us. And I think there won’t be as many I mean, there’ll be maybe a few 100 on this zoom call, which is probably enough for a zoom call. But there won’t be 10s of 1000s, you know, but the circumstances are very special. And these things come and go. And it can be that if there’s a big mobilization for some particular reason around something. Donald Trump was an excellent mobilizer because everybody hated him. And so wherever he went, there’ll be a huge demonstration. So that, in a way is proof that our movements and not just the peace movement, but particularly the peace movement, I think, tends to be very reactive. Whenever there’s a war, it’s good for the peace movement, because we all mobilize and we’re out in the streets, and we’re shouting with our placards and banners and making a big fuss. But when there isn’t a war, like when Obama was in office, and things look slightly better, you know, it demoralizes us and demobilizes us. So who knows what will happen with Mr. Biden, but you know, that’s a more speculative discussion, and I’m sure you’ve got other experts from the US to talk to about that.

Metta Spencer

And Canadians

Colin Archer

and Canadians.Yeah, you’re very close. Yeah.

Metta Spencer

Everybody in the world is speculating on what’s going to happen. Yeah,

Colin Archer

right. Right.

Metta Spencer

Uh, huh. You wanted to talk about the the the the meeting in The Hague? Sure, I have to admit this — that’s one I didn’t go to. Haha. I’m not sure that there’s anything still lingering from an agenda that was set there. Would you say that that was in any sense a turning point?

Colin Archer

Well, yes, in some ways, I think it was perhaps not in the way that was intended at the very beginning because it was 1999. Right. And it was coming up to the Millennium and everybody thought we must do something big. And it turned out that it was the 100 year anniversary of the centenary of the first Hague peace conference, that was really the very first international intergovernmental conference, to make a plan for peace that wasn’t just about dividing up the spoils after a war, like we’d had at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and so on, or even Treaty of Versailles. But, but 1899 was the turning point in that way. And then of course, there was 1907, the second one. And although it wasn’t a full success, it was worth celebrating. So we gathered a huge coalition of NGOs, from the human rights to the environment, to women’s groups, and centrally the peace movements. And we got 10,000 people to The Hague in 1999. And we produced this Manifesto, which is a really excellent kind of roadmap to piece in 50 small chapters. And, you know, we felt like we were giving birth to a whole number of new content. campaigns and Coalition’s, for example, on small arms. And on the campaign for the International Criminal Court, which was successful. We have, we now have an International Criminal Court. However, you know, a mere two years later, we had 911. And we, you know, we know the rest of the story, it did not go in the direction of world peace, to put it mildly. So in that sense, it was a turning point, but we didn’t expect it to be. However, it was a smaller turning point in the peace movement in that it gave rise to a very important new coalition, the global camp coalition on peace, education, global campaign for peace education, which still exists to this day, and has a really excellent website. And the best newsletter, I know, on peace education, definitely worth subscribing to that with all kinds of references and resources from people beavering away quietly under the media radar, mostly around the world. And so that was the first time that we had a campaign of an organized kind that was designed not just to have some small programs of peace education, but to actually introduce it into the official education programs in each country. And there’s been varying success in that ever since, of course, the militarized climate that we’ve been living through in the last 10 years or 20 years really has not helped. But the campaign exists. And, you know, there’s a lot of great work going on there. So I think we should be pleased that the Hague conference gave rise to that. And then as I mentioned, subsequently, you know, we were focused on the economic side of things, and the military spending.

Metta Spencer

Okay, well, now, the wonderful thing about IPB was that at least aspirationally, it’s already oriented toward a transnational global sense of bringing together peace groups. And under, you know, at least we had some contact with each other, and very crucial in being in occupying the place where the convergence occurred. That is, you probably had more contact with global peace groups around the world than anybody else. I know. I don’t have that much contact. And I don’t know, in fact, I sometimes wonder, for some countries, maybe there just isn’t anything like a peace movement. But I’m told that in even the Soviet, you know, space or post-Soviet space, there, there are peace groups, and that we should be more in touch. And I’m not in touch with them. How can I do that better?

Colin Archer

Well, let me just say that there are dozens and dozens of peace internationals. It’s not as if the IPP is the only one however, the International Peace Bureau was and is probably the most general. It tries to be the sort of big tent, if you like, with a whole wide range of organizations under its auspices. And so running, that was a real privilege in the sense that I was in touch with organizations not only all over the world, but across very many different sectors, both professional, both in terms of their ideologies, their relationships to political parties, to the parts of the military tree that I was describing that they focused on some on nuclear, some on arms, trade, some on peace, education, some on peace, history, some on gender, human rights, and so on. The whole, the whole shebang, it was really too much. If you look in the Housmans’ database, I don’t know if you’re aware of the Housmans database, are you? Or the Housmans diary to get hold of it?

Metta Spencer

So that fella who runs it at you know, maybe it’s because of the pandemic, he’s not really finding as quickly as we’d like, but we’re trying to get sure to include all of those. Those links in our rather extensive mailing list — we do have a mailing list of emails that I try to send out posters — are sort of a newsletter now. And then the next one, I

Colin Archer

Yes, well, they have 1400 groups 1400. Now they used to have twice as much. That is an indicator that the peace movement is no longer as strong as it was. You know, it’s very important that people understand that the movement goes in waves. And the waves are very often related to what the governments are up to. And as I said, when there’s a war, the peace movement flourishes because it stimulates so much opposition. But also it depends on the mood of the times, you know, the ’60s, you know, there was a sort of very idealistic time. And there was a whole biodiversity of different peace activities and and social change in a more general sense. And then we had retrenchment. We had Reagan and Thatcher and all of those kinds of things. And then then we had, you know, Bush and the Iraq War, where there’s enormous demonstration 10 million people on the streets. On one weekend, I think it’s the biggest demonstration ever 15th of February 2003, you know, and then we deal with Trump again. And you know, so the thing goes in waves, and it may well come back up. My internet connection is unstable, perhaps I’m talking too much. But if I if I disappear, you know why?

Metta Spencer

Yeah. Okay. Well, that’s certainly true. And I’m very mindful of that. Because running Peace Magazine, what we see is, if there’s going to be a, I remember exactly when the Iraq war began, boy, did we have an increase in circulation, everybody was calling in and saying they were to subscribe to Peace Magazine.

Colin Archer

Right now. That’s how it goes. That’s how it goes. So we’re in a bit of a downturn now. And of course, environment, climate, you know, is probably the biggest thing with Black Lives Matter, maybe, you know, a second top priority. So you had an interview about Nagorno Karabakh. I mean, we’ve got a big crisis in Ethiopia, you know, but those places don’t have big peace movements, they have smaller groups and brave individuals speaking out, who usually get shut up pretty quickly. It is very different in the developing world. And I think we’ve often had a tendency to look at the peace movement through a lens, that’s mainly, let’s say, global north, mainly, you know, Anglo Saxon, very often. And so I’ve been very conscious to try and spread things out and develop a really global network, certainly, while I was at the IPB. But it’s it’s a very difficult thing to do with tiny resources. I mean, you need to be at least as big as Greenpeace, if not as big as General Motors, you know, if you want to really organize things on a big scale,

Metta Spencer

you also undoubtedly have strong memories of especially influential and effective leaders in these different countries. Oh, gosh, yeah. I know, you stay in touch with many of these people.

Colin Archer

Quite a few. Yeah, not always the leaders, though. I hesitate to name names, it’s very invidious. I have done some writing about the IPB in the period that I was running it and even before, you know, the longer history, but I tended to avoid giving credit to individuals. You know, it’s it’s a very tricky business. I’m more interested in organizations and in general trends.

Metta Spencer

Now, in terms of your own activity there and Leeds — are there local groups, so you participate in Are you still into the transnational movement?

Colin Archer

Well, I said, when I retired, I’m going to be local and transnational. And that’s that’s the way it is. But not only local, also national, you know, there are, I always say there are five levels, five geographical levels, local, regional, national, regional, again, and global. And so I, I’m active with with Leeds, I’m active with Yorkshire in terms of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, but also with the National Organization movement for the abolition of war, which was founded by Bruce Kent, and is a direct successor, if you like to The Hague appeal, it was inspired by the Hague appeal in 99. And then I’m connected in various ways through international peace bureau networks and and other things.

Metta Spencer

Of course, at the moment, Brexit is still

Colin Archer

just in the balance, yeah,

Metta Spencer

up in the air, you know, the negotiations, and they still even in, in overtime right now for for negotiations, I believe. And I don’t quite understand what difference Brexit will make on military policy. For example, will it have anything to do with any change of policy with respect to these nuclear subs, these Trident things because the British Trident seems to go on forever and ever. Will it make any difference in for the peace movement in general?

Colin Archer

Well, the short answer is no. You know, the EU is not really a military alliance. It’s true. It has an involvement with promoting the arms industry in those countries from an economic point of view and so on. But, you know, the alliance that Britain is part of is NATO. And there is certainly no sign that Britain is going to pull out of NATO; it’s a very loyal member of NATO. And you know, when when the US president says jump, you jump, so that’s not going to change much. The kind of changes that Brexit might affect are to do with cooperation between police forces across Europe in tackling terrorism and organized crime; we’re no longer going to have access to the European databases on crime. You know, that’s only marginally a peace issue. Terrorism, yes. But it’s more about policing. So that’s that’s that as for Trident, well, it’s it’s UK policy to have nuclear weapons to have a nuclear deterrent. The old one was getting rusty, so they put a 200 billions into making a new one. So we’re going to have spanking new submarines full of nuclear submarine, a new nuclear weapons that can, you know, destroy whole countries. And, you know, it’s all totally useless. And so we’re campaigning against that and to transfer the money into something more useful, but it’s not affected by Brexit.

Metta Spencer

Okay, but now, it might be affected if Scotland secedes, so to speak?

Colin Archer

Well, that’s an interesting whole discussion. Yes, you’re right. I mean, the Scottish National Party has a policy of opposing Trident, which is based in Scottish waters. And the expectation, let’s say, among peace movement activists is that if Scotland becomes independent, they will close down the base. And they say here, you can have your nuclear weapons back

Metta Spencer

now.

Colin Archer

Or, you know, there was a chap called John Ainsley who sadly died not long ago, who was one of the key organizers in Scottish END. And he did a report basically saying that the English in this case, not the British, but the English, don’t have a suitable deepwater port to put the thing in, ergo, you know, Scotland will get rid of Britain’s nuclear weapons. Now. I have a slightly perverse line on this, which is, I’m not sure that it will necessarily get rid of British nuclear weapons, because they could say, all right, well, we’re scrapping the submarines, we’ll we’ll put them back on aircraft. You know, they had them before they had these freefall bombs. Now, I think the reason that they’re not keen to do that, of course, it would cost a huge amount of money to do all that transfer. But you know, if it’s deemed to be necessary, I’m sure they would. It’s just that aircraft are more vulnerable to attack than submarines are. There is evidence that even submarines now you know, with new technologies can be found out deep in the waters of the Atlantic or ever, in a way that they were not detectable before. But, you know, this is a subject that’s not been discussed much. But I suspect that if push came to shove, the Ministry of Defense might well say, well, we’re going to have a change of delivery platform, as they say, and we’ll put it on aircraft. You won’t know which ones they are, it’ll all be hidden away in the air bases. But we’ll still be able to, you know, get rid of Moscow at a stroke. So the problem is the underlying attitudes, I don’t think it’s the particular weapon systems. It’s about the well, the theory of deterrence — does it hold up? Does it actually deter anyone? And it’s also about Britain’s status in the world. Why do we have to have nuclear weapons, but other major states don’t. It’s about the net. And then the NATO Alliance, it’s about Anglo-American dominance. It’s about the Five Eyes. It’s about a whole post-imperial legacy, which we’re really struggling with, and to have a government like Boris Johnson’s in power, you know, constantly referring to the glories of Dunkirk and D day and all that stuff. I mean, it doesn’t help. It doesn’t help move us on to a more realistic appreciation of what Britain’s status in the world should be. But I’m afraid we’re stuck with it, even with the excellent Ban Treaty, which everyone’s supporting and applauding, and we’re getting ready to commemorate the entry into force on January 22. But you know, nobody in the Conservative Party is really listening, it seems. Now sometimes there are underground movements of opinion, which are not detectable immediately, but then gradually, a change of opinion begins to operate. And that’s what we’re hoping for. But I think that’s another whole discussion, and you’ve discussed the boundaries here with other people I know and I wouldn’t want to get too drawn into that.

Metta Spencer

Yes, yes. Yesterday I had a conversation with Walter Dorn, who had just given testimony to Senate committee, really about chemical weapons, but he managed to sneak in several references. And getting some of the senators I think engaged with the idea

Colin Archer

excellent. Well, yes,

Metta Spencer

we have work to do on promoting that for sure. locally and

Colin Archer

yeah, for sure.

Metta Spencer

You’re doing your part. Well,

Colin Archer

now Yeah, yeah.

Metta Spencer

Without a Santa hat on Christmas tree.

Colin Archer

It’s a Christmas tree.

Metta Spencer

Oh wonderful.

Colin Archer

It’s a tiny little Christmas tree very flat. That came through my letterbox.

Metta Spencer

It’s wonderful and

Colin Archer

nice to chat to you. We can do it another time on the subject or whatever you like.

Metta Spencer

Absolutely. Thank you. Well, Happy Christmas to you Christmas and

Colin Archer

let’s say the world next next year.

Metta Spencer

Every every year now. Bye.

Bye Bye now.

Metta Spencer

Okay, you too. Bye Bye.

Adam Wynne (Intro/Outro)

This conversation is one of the weekly series talk about saving the world produced by Peace Magazine, and Project Save the World. Please visit our website at Tosavetheworld.ca where you can sign the platform for survival. A list of 25 public policy proposals that if enacted, would greatly reduce the risk of six global threats to humankind. Come back next week for another discussion of a serious global issue.