Proceeds from this event benefit the Ground Zero Legal Defense Fund, and support the three Ground Zero activists going on trial Jan. 22 in Kitsap County District Court.

Ground Zero presents

International Law Expert John Burroughs to Speak in Seattle

International law expert John Burroughs will be the featured speaker at Town Hall, Seattle, on Saturday January 20 at 7pm. His talk, “From Auschwitz to Trident:  The Nuclear Weapons of Puget Sound, the Power of International Law, and Citizen Responsibility in Abolishing Nuclear Weapons,” will be a major public address in Seattle's premiere venue.

His talk will be a fundraiser for Ground Zero. Tickets are $10 each and can be purchased in advance through Brown Paper Tickets. (See Town Hall's calendar here.) Town Hall holds 850 people. We hope to fill it up and get Ground Zero's message out to a wider audience. There will be a reception after his presentation.

Ground Zero is bringing Burroughs to Town Hall as part of his trip to serve as an expert witness in the trial of three Ground Zero activists. Other speaking engagements and media appearances for him are being organized as well. In addition to Town Hall, Burroughs will also be the guest on “Weekday,” KUOW—94.9 FM and http://www.kuow.org—on Weds. Jan 24, from 9-10am.

Burroughs is an adjunct professor of law at Rutgers Law School and serves as Executive Director for the Lawyer's Committee on Nuclear Policy. The LCNP was instrumental in bringing the landmark case before the International Court of Justice in 1995 that resulted in the advisory opinion of 1996, which stated that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is illegal.

In his talk, Burroughs will discuss how, In 1996, the International Court of Justice held that governments must never use weapons incapable of distinguishing between military targets and civilians and that threat or use of nuclear weapons is generally contrary to international law forbidding the infliction of indiscriminate harm, unnecessary suffering, harm to neutral nations, and disproportionate damage to the environment.

He will show how the Trident nuclear-armed submarines based at Bangor cannot meet these tests; indeed, launch of the Trident missiles would cause an unimaginable atrocity, comparable only to Auschwitz and the genocide in Rwanda. The incompatibility of Trident with binding international law was underlined by the creation of the International Criminal Court in 1998, charged with prosecution of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.

Burroughs will explain how the United States is also required by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to negotiate nuclear disarmament in good faith, to engage in verified and irreversible reductions of its nuclear forces, to diminish the role of nuclear weapons in its security policy, and to reduce the operational status of nuclear forces. The International Court of Justice held unanimously that the NPT obligation requires states to “bring to a conclusion negotiations on nuclear disarmament in all its aspects.”

The maintenance of Trident missiles ready for launch, 15 years after the end of the Cold War, shows a complete U.S. disregard of its disarmament commitments. Principled, reasonable, and non-violent direct action in opposition to the Trident system is in the spirit of the Nuremberg principle of individual responsibility, under which individuals must terminate their complicity in the commission of international crimes.

Burroughs represents LCNP at Non-Proliferation Treaty review proceedings and the United Nations. He is co-editor of Rule of Power or Rule of Law? An Assessment of U.S. Policies and Actions Regarding Security-Related Treaties (2003), to which he contributed the chapter on the NPT; author of The Legality of Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons: A Guide to the Historic Opinion of the International Court of Justice (1997); and co-author of articles in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the World Policy Journal. He is an adjunct professor of international law at Rutgers Law School, Newark. He first became involved in opposing nuclear weapons in 1979, when he was arrested in a nonviolent direct action against the Trident nuclear-armed submarines based at Bangor.