February 6, 2023

Bulletin 324: Opposition to Ukraine war gains visibility in New Mexico and via our web site, more broadly

Permalink for this bulletin (please forward). Simple home page. Detailed home page.
Press releases. Bulletins. Letters. Plutonium pit production. Ukraine war updates, analysis.
Contact us. To subscribe send a blank email here.
Please endorse the "Call for Sanity, Not Nuclear Production" if you have not done so (check the list of endorsers if you aren't sure).
Contribute if you can!

Previously: Bulletin 323: "Nuclear Hotseat" interview / Ukraine war updates, Feb 4, 2023

Dear friends and colleagues --

This morning, the article we mentioned previously in Bulletin 323 was published ("Anti-nuclear activist opposes helping Ukraine, encourages peace," Santa Fe New Mexican, Feb 5, 2023). If you have trouble reading it on the New Mexican web site (where you can read the comments) you can read it on ours here. It isn't what we'd write but we are far from displeased, as it airs issues that need to be aired.

We added this published comment:

This was an accurate portrayal of our views here. Thank you Scott for raising these important issues for wider debate in a fair and balanced manner, which is so important right now. We've been writing about the first phase of this war, the forgotten part, with some 14,000 casualties according to the UN, and warning of the slide toward war with Russia we saw then, since 2014; we led a couple of discussions at UNM in 2015 about it. We urge everyone to read and learn. Public opinion is thankfully shifting against this war -- which, thanks to the idiots in this Administration, has become an ever-greater "hinge" in world affairs. Washington is now looking hard for a way out of the mess they did everything they could to provoke, having spiked peace negotiations last spring (see various articles summarizing former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's 5-hour interview with Israel's Channel 12 on Saturday). The deeper the U.S. gets involved, the worse it will be for us and all who sail with us. We urge people to go to our web site on this war for updates, at https://lasg.org/Ukraine/Ukraine.html. By the way, I am not making a special trip to DC to go to that march; I will already be there for various nuclear weapons related meetings.

Later today, after the first 70 comments -- more than I (Greg) have ever seen on any New Mexican article, though I don't look at them all -- we added these further remarks:

To those who have commented thoughtfully thus far, thank you, and thanks again to the New Mexican for raising the subject. Of course, an individual had to be the foil; otherwise the New Mexican would look like it was fomenting dissent from government policy, God forbid.

Unfortunately, we live in a society in which critical thinking is scarce, propaganda is pervasive, and "groupthink" is strongly enforced. In a recent essay (https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/the-utter-disconnect-between-realities) Alastair Crooke, a former British diplomat who is the founder and director of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum, writes, "So arguments no longer revolve around truth. They are judged by their fidelity to the tenets of singular messaging. You are either ‘with the narrative’ or ‘against it’. Remaining loyal to ​'​the group​'​ becomes the highest morality. That loyalty requires each member to avoid raising controversial issues, questioning weak arguments, or calling a halt to wishful thinking. And to further reinforce conviction in the rightness of the ‘narrative’​,​ those outside the bubble must be marginalised and, if necessary, their views mercilessly caricatured to make them seem ridiculous."

Again we urge readers who wish to understand this war, and how lasting peace can be brought, to read from the articles we collect each day at https://lasg.org/Ukraine/Ukraine.html. This is not just a "bulletin board," as the New Mexican described it (but at least it was linked!). We select these articles and updates from a wider torrent of "open source intelligence" for their quality and insight. We don't agree with everything there, to be sure -- that would be too high a standard. We will try to add some brief comments in future editions, or else short quotes, to pique interest.

I hope readers understand that the former ambassador quoted in the article has a job to do. That job involves, let us gently say, "painting a picture." "Selling a bridge in Brooklyn." Yovanovitch spouts a particularly thick and blood-soaked version of the company line. It's amazing that grownups still buy all that malarkey -- but again, the propaganda is piled so high the sun was blotted out long ago.

"Supporting Ukraine" really means throwing more Ukrainian boys and older men into a meat grinder, there to be cut to pieces by Russian artillery, to keep politicians from losing face and to keep the war contractors in high clover, and to keep the campaign donations rolling. There's nothing virtuous about that support, nothing honorable, any more than there was anything virtuous about sending American boys to Vietnam, there to kill and die, to poison the Vietnamese people and the land and be poisoned themselves. It's sadly ignorant, in most cases. For those in power, including Zelensky and his gang, it's criminal.

There isn't space in this column to list all the wars the U.S. has fomented since World War II. All of them were in the name of "peace" and/or "human rights." Most if not all of them featured a Hollywood-like "bad guy." I am not saying the U.S. record of violence justifies what Russia did. To judge that, the specifics of the Ukraine situation must be studied, as many of us have done. Already years ago, it was clear to many of us that U.S. provocations were leading directly to war, and [were] supporting the war already underway. The record is chock-full of leading U.S. political figures saying that war was exactly what they wanted, to weaken and regime-change Russia, if the actions themselves aren't enough proof for you.

For peace, detailed study is not necessary. "There is no way to peace; peace is the way," said A. J. Muste. I agree with Col. MacGregor: after all the lies that led to this war and which have continued non-stop since, negotiations without preconditions will be necessary.

I do not agree with all those here who prefer death to life -- for other people.

It's important for those who have the ability to speak and work for peace to do so. [emphasis added]

It would be a really good time to promote our Ukraine web page, and our web site generally, by social media.

Also if you -- and especially, any organizations with which you are involved -- can endorse the Call for Sanity, please do so. (There is no need to do so twice!)

Some of you have told me that you really don't know what to do in the face of the tyranny of the war machine. Speak up! The more you speak up, the more you will see what can be done. The realm of the possible will expand as you act. No serious human problem can be solved from the outside.

To quote Matthias DeSmet (relevant excerpt at the link, pdf),

The first and foremost task to keep speaking out. Everything stands or falls with the act of speaking out. It is in the interest of all parties.

"All parties" includes, as DeSmet says, ourselves.

In that regard, several people have found Caitlin Johnstone's Jan. 23 fine short essay "There Is Always Hope, And There Is Always Wonder" helpful. The notion that "there is nothing we can effectively do" presumes we know more than we do. It isn’t always obvious, but even one person can make an enormous difference, in multiple ways. We cannot see all the steps ahead, and never will. What's necessary is to start walking. “[D]oes the individual,” wrote Carl Jung, “know that he is the makeweight that tips the scales?”

One ray of light is the February 19 "left-right" coalition action in Washington and wherever else you and we can act, as outlined in our last Bulletin. Interestingly, our endorsement of this event was the catalyst for the above article.

Thank you,

Greg Mello, Los Alamos Study Group