Monday Jan 29 Santa Fe mtg (note location change!): Pu pit production; Trump nuclear and defense policies: what we can do (with simple dinner)

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January 26, 2018

Dear friends --

Our Monday, January 29 meeting in Santa Fe is just around the corner!

We'll meet from 5:30 to 8:30 pm in the Gathering Room of St. John's United Methodist Church, 1200 Old Pecos Trail (at Cordova Road, map) for a simple buffet dinner, short briefing, Q&A period, and discussion and planning around actions we can take. (Call or write if you want to help with food prep!) Note the changed location!

We provided some background in our January 15 letter and in Bulletin 242, particularly as regards the regressive role of our congressional delegation.

These past weeks have seen a leaked draft of the Trump "Nuclear Posture Review" (NPR) ("Leaked Trump Nuclear Posture Review Aims to Continue Obama Weapons Modernization, with Significant Tweaks"), the "National Security Strategy" and the "National Defense Strategy" (Summary). We have done some radio interviews on some of this material (see home page).

The coming two weeks will see the Trump "State of the Union" (SOU) speech (Jan 30) to Congress, release of the final NPR [update: Feb 2], which will differ slightly from the draft, and the federal congressional budget request (CBR) with agency program details (update: Monday, February 12). Also in February we may see an "Engineering Analysis" for larger-scale pit production options at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina.

That is, nuclear issues as a whole, not just pits, and war and peace issues as a whole, are "on the move" -- and not just temporarily either.

Today there was another A. Journal North article of interest on pits (please read our explanatory comment).

A lot of the problem right now lies with Democrats, and not just in New Mexico. We have to talk about that because it is leading toward war. It is primarily Democrats who are pursuing the fallacious "Russiagate" meme, to our national peril. Charges that Russia was somehow involved in Trump's electoral victory, or that senior Trump officials had some kind of inappropriate "contact" with Russians, have been refuted more thoroughly and authoritatively more times than I care to count. We now have a "Russiagate" inquiry that continues for political and "deep state" reasons, without any credible evidence involving Russia actually, despite the formidable powers of the surveillance state. (The new Russophobia actually began early in Obama's second term, in the fury felt by many neoconservatives and liberal hawks over Obama's failure to initiate a bombing campaign in Syria after the chemical weapons incident of August 2013, as Robert Parry and others have noted. As in many other matters between these two administrations, there is more continuity and development than meets the eye.)

We will not be able to take time to debate the broad topic of our collapsed relations with Russia at this meeting (we will bring resources if you are interested) but please note: they lie right smack in the middle of our road forward when it comes to "what we can do" about pit production, nuclear armaments, the Trump Nuclear Posture Review, and Trump's other national security policies. Why? As one White House insider put it to us, Obama failed on nuclear weapons policy and ended up committing to the biggest nuclear weapons investment since Reagan because he lost political "bandwidth" on the Russia issue. No kidding. He gave it away -- or fecklessly and passively allowed it to be stolen by neocons and liberal hawks in his own administration. As a result, relations with Russia are now worse than at any time since the 1950s -- and we are heading into some very perilous waters this year. The US public is almost utterly in the dark as to the basic facts of what we are doing these days, and where. For example, the Ukraine government (that the US and its allies installed, in what Stratfor's George Friedman called "really the most blatant coup in history") just essentially declared war on Russia. A lot of chickenhawks and imperialists hope Russia will take the bait. Ukraine in that case would burn, and maybe so would we all. These are very dangerous times. To repeat, most people have no idea.

Our regional response on these issues is critically important. This meeting will be a very good time and place to come together and plan. We have a lot of wonderful friends, here and far away. Many opportunities beckon.

I hope everyone on this list understands that significant successes toward progressive goals are incompatible with continued wars and militarism, full stop. We don't see that awareness in enough places these days.

Also, as we said before, we are aware of a lot of "low-hanging fruit" in our field these days -- valuable truths which could be revealed with concerted labor. Once plucked and prepared it is easy to spread.

In our previous letter I asked whether anyone knew any New Mexico politicians who are not supportive of New Mexico's oil and gas industry. I didn't hear back from anyone. Neither did I hear from anyone with any explanation of how Obama's methane regulations and Clean Power Plan would make a significant difference in New Mexico's overall greenhouse gas emissions. Well, would they? Do any politicians in either party in New Mexico have any kind of coherent climate and energy platform? Do tell.

Sincerely,

Greg Mello, for the Study Group

PS On Thursday February 1, from 5 - 6 pm, Greg will be speaking at O'Neill's Pub, 4310 Central Ave SE (map) about the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, sponsored by the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History (yes) as part of their "Science on Tap" series.