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Bulletin #183:
Please contribute if you haven’t yet this year

Only 4 days left this year, so
if you haven’t yet, please –

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December 28, 2013

First, thank you so much, those of you who have contributed to our efforts, and thank you also for the many thoughtful notes some of you have sent.  If we haven’t already done so we will respond to you personally.

There are only 4 days left in this tax year, and the second theme of this Bulletin must be a reminder of that deadline.  Even one person can make a tremendous difference.

This is what we aim to do, funds allowing: continue disarmament lobbying in Washington; continue to analyze, synthesize, and report on legislation, hearings, and documents; work with journalists; publish; fight expansion of plutonium “pit” production at LANL every way we know how, including in the courts (got that, DOE?); work internationally with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and other international allies; convene public and private gatherings and respond to requests; recruit and train interns; bring forth more on interrelated climate, energy, security, and economic issues and work with other organizations on those; keep up-to-date information flowing to our members and the other organizations and government offices which use our work and our web site.

Third, and at the risk of sounding like a broken record, the nuclear weapons enterprise is in serious trouble now.  Its problems cannot be solved by rearranging the management deck chairs.  This means that the battle for what happens next has come to us, and we have to show up.  So for goodness’ sake, if you can see your way to do so, please join with us now.  Just how far this enterprise fails, and just how much weight is taken from New Mexico’s back in particular, depends in substantial part on citizen involvement.  A little will go a long way, because the weapons complex has become wobbly.  But so has everything, and that’s why we have to push now.

Fourth, two days ago President Obama signed the Fiscal Year 2014 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which modifies the previous year’s NDAA to essentially require, pending Pentagon approval, at least two underground pit factory modules and associated tunnels at LANL if the earlier plan for a Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF) isn’t built.  No money is provided.  Last year’s NDAA was more or less ignored on this topic, as we mentioned in Bulletin 182.  We hope for a similar outcome this year.

There is a lot more to say but we must keep this short and simple for now.  It’s critical to get this reminder to some of you immediately.

Very best wishes to all,

Sincerely,

Greg and Trish, for the Study Group

The fateful question for the human species seems to me to be whether and to what extent their cultural development will succeed in mastering the disturbance of their communal life by the human instinct of aggression and self-destruction.  It may be that in this respect precisely the present time deserves a special interest. Men have gained control over the forces of nature to such an extent that with their help they would have no difficulty in exterminating one another to the last man. They know this, and hence comes a large part of their current unrest, their unhappiness and their mood of anxiety.  And now it is to be expected that the other of the two "Heavenly Powers", eternal Eros, will make an effort to assert himself in the struggle with his equally immortal adversary.  But who can foresee with what success and with what results?

Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents