Quick important note and four more items

April 19, 2016

(Letter to local members; tell us if you want off this relatively exclusive list.)

1. 2016 Strategic Deterrent Coalition Symposium, June 20-21, UNM Main Campus. Will you help us protest this event? Write back if you can.
   
• Preview (likely to be of interest only to a very few but it will piss you off): speech by one of the confirmed nuclear hawk speakers, Mello recording (24 minutes + 6 min Q&A) of General Jack Weinstein from February, 2016 Deterrence Summit, Washington
2. We sent you Ted Postol's important Harvard talk ("How the US Nuclear Weapons Modernization Program Is Increasing the Chances of Accidental Nuclear War with Russia," Harvard College Peace Action, Feb 25, 2016) in the last letter. Here is the audio recording of that talk to go with the slides.
3. We have offered complete support for full-time activists, not a trivial offer for us. So far, not a single person from New Mexico has taken us up.
   
4. The Bernie Sanders campaign will lose. Hillary is a war-mongering corporate neocon for whom lying is a way of life. Regardless of the outcome of national elections, expect more war, more corporate pillage, more genocidal squeeze on vulnerable peoples, no effective climate action, and no positive change in America. What now, dear friends?
5. Greg and Trish heading to Geneva; excellent new paper on a nuclear weapons ban -- explains pretty much everything in simple language ("It's Time to Outlaw Nuclear Weapons," Tom Sauer, National Interest, April 18, 2016)
   

Archive of these local letters (for reference; a work in progress)

Dear friends --

Concerning item 1, we hope you will consider penciling in those dates in June -- June 20-21. Wherever you are, please consider spending the summer solstice with us.

With this note we issue a call to join us in protesting this event.

This corporate event is an important part of a coordinated national public relations campaign, funded by the privatized nuclear weapons industry (i.e. taxpayers), to protect and fund the proposed massive U.S. nuclear modernization program, which with deployment costs will require more than $1 trillion. The projected cost grows every year.

The person organizing this event -- Peter Huessy, President Reagan's MX basing czar and still one of the busiest pro-nuclear advocates in DC -- told his audience, in response to my question, that the money for all these nuclear weapons could be found in our (apparently excess) "entitlements." In February he took aim at "welfare"  again. This is in fact their agenda. They cannot so easily take the money from wars (Overseas Contingency Operations) and other weapons programs (overview), nor do they intend to support higher taxes. That leaves more debt, and non-military federal spending, as sources.

If you want to be in a planning group for this multi-day action, which could be nationally important if we make it so, please let us know. I can't write more about this here.

Concerning 2, the addition of this audio recording will help you understand the slides sent previously. Dr. Ted Postol is a very estimable person and what he has to say in this talk is very important.

Concerning 3, it's amazing, isn't it?

Concerning 4, I wonder if the Democratic Party will continue to corral and waste most of the attention, energy, and money of people who don't like environmental destruction and injustice. The notion that elections merely can save us is really pathetic. Return to 3. 

That's it. Best wishes to all. We will be reachable in all the usual ways.

Best,

Greg, Trish, Astrid