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Bulletin 250: Help us continue and expand our work; what we aim to do

December 7, 2018

Only he who knows the empire of might and knows how not to respect it is capable of love and justice.…Such is the nature of might.  Its power to transform man into a thing is double and it cuts both ways; it petrifies differently but equally the souls of those who suffer it, and of those who wield it.…Thus it is that those to whom destiny lends might, perish for having relied too much upon it.
            Simone Weil, "The Iliad or the Poem of Force"

Historically, [internal] differences have never prevented disarmament campaigns from becoming effective.  What has crippled them is lack of clarity on the point that nuclear weapons are wholly evil, unacceptable and indefensible -- that is, failure to mobilise enough moral force internally.  Moral force is all-important when you are rolling back an epochal injustice.
            Praful Bidwai, "The Struggle for Nuclear Disarmament," in Out of the Nuclear Shadow, Smitu Kothari and Zia Mian, eds.

1. Help us continue and expand our work in the coming year!
2. What we aim to do, in a nutshell

Dear friends, colleagues, and interested parties --

We have not written a Bulletin to our members since August 3. Every draft since then has been overtaken by new developments, responsibilities, opportunities, or challenges.

We try to properly contextualize the issues for our members as best we can; this has proven difficult to do in a timely fashion, in our time of converging crises, massive historical change, unprecedented propaganda from elite news media (just one topic debunked) and the subsequent loss of consensus reality. We will need to circle back to some of these new developments in later bulletins and other publications. Readably-short bulletins tend to be painfully incomplete, risking misunderstanding. That is however how it will have to be.

Our most active New Mexico members have been meanwhile receiving local organizing letters. (If you live in New Mexico and want to receive these, ask.) We've also given some 29 public presentations this year so far, a few of which are posted on our web site for those who are interested but couldn't attend.

1. Help us continue and expand our work in the coming year

We don't tediously ask for money all the time, although like everybody else we do very much need it.

Please help us if you can. If you have already done so, thank you.

Most of our operating revenue comes from individual donors large and small. Larger donations obviously help more, but we experience considerable moral support from even the smallest donations. Opposing nuclear weapons in and from New Mexico (where nuclear institutions have deeply infiltrated and variously biased, co-opted, or corrupted essentially all elements of civil society) is powerful but often lonely work. Sometimes moral support is expressed in financial terms, at other times in your political activity, and other times in the kind and thoughtful, engaged notes you send. Your solidarity and participation are very important to us.

The first $1,000 we receive will be doubled by a generous donor!

If you are familiar with our work and want to help in another way, please be our ambassadors. Reach out to friends on our behalf.

We need to raise money both to continue our current work in 2019 and to increase our visibility, research, writing, web and social media outreach, publications, and consequently our strength and ability to effect major change.

We would like to be able to hire two additional staff members, a research associate and an outreach and communications associate. We find ourselves in a uniquely promising position, with many doors open and publishers and news media asking for copy, interviews, etc.

Your contributions can take many forms:

• Matching gifts are obviously very valuable; some of you might offer such a gift or ask someone else to;
• Some employers will match their employees' contributions;
• Remember the Study Group in your will and/or estate plans; memorial gifts, or life insurance;
• Donate old cars, boats, or real estate;
• Donate stock (thus avoiding capital gains and the associated taxes);
• If you are age 70½ or older and make a contribution directly from your traditional or Roth IRA to a qualified charity, you can donate up to $100,000 without it being considered a taxable distribution;
• Become a sustaining donor to the Study Group and contribute a specified amount each month. Being able to depend on a regular income of a certain amount in sustaining donations each month provides organizations such as ours with a big measure of stability;
• If you live in New Mexico, ask Sunpower by Positive Energy Solar to install a photovoltaic system at your home or business and/or ask a friend or associate to do so. When the project is complete Positive Energy will donate $300 to the Study Group; you must mention our referral when you contract with them; and finally
• You, our loyal friends and members, are the only ones who can reach out to your personal connections and email lists. We do not have your personal connections and contacts. You can forward this letter, for example, with your personal note. We have an on-line donation portal through PayPal, or anyone can simply mail a check to our office at: 2901 Summit Place NE, Albuquerque, NM 87106.

We are now receiving support for some of our plutonium-related work from Princeton University's Program on Science and Global Security, which we advise. While this is a big help, it does not include most of what we do, or what most needs to be done.

2. What we aim to do, in a nutshell

Though unabashedly seeking nuclear disarmament, our perspectives on nuclear issues and policies are nonetheless respected in government. We have far more opportunities to educate lawmakers, expert audiences, and readers of general interest and specialist publications than we can follow up on.

Our program for 2019 will focus most heavily on:

1. US nuclear weapons policies;
2. Plutonium warhead core ("pit") production issues;
3. Warhead complex issues, especially infrastructure and budgets;
4. The interrelationship of security issues with climate change, energy, budgets, and related social issues.

Regarding 1, a decade-long preparatory period in nuclear weapons policy is over. Now the bulldozers are revving up again, not to tear down or clean up but to build up. New warheads, weapons, and factories are being planned, designed, and built. Budgets are sky-high and rising. One nuclear weapons factory is already working double shifts and will soon be working around the clock. The administration wants out of New START as well as the INF [Intermediate Nuclear Forces] Treaty, having already trashed the UN Security-Council-endorsed Iran agreement. But cost and schedule overruns, Democratic opposition in the House, competition with conventional military "needs," ballooning interest payments on the national debt, and in some cases a lack of engineering realism are impacting these plans.

Thus there are suddenly many dangers and opportunities, of which these are only some. We must bring our expertise, connections, ability to convene and organize, and every bit of communication and outreach we can muster to rise to this new occasion. We were in Washington for five weeks this year, holding dozens of meetings on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. We need to intensify our outreach and publication. This is a major reason we want to hire experienced help. We need your help to do that.

Regarding 2, please see this page. Multiple parties need from us a fresh analysis of the engineering basis for pit production proposals, and we need to continue to brief what we know in Washington. And prior to these details, it's still true that new pits are only needed for new warheads, both "new" as in novel, and "new" as in "additional." The real source of "demand" for new pits is in the nuclear agencies themselves, not the nuclear "deterrent" so-called.

Regarding 3, the Trump Administration is rushing into an enormous program of near-term warhead production, "going for broke" as one official recently put it. After the initial "boom" of production -- which is breaking budgets (and safety oversight) -- there will be a dearth of work for the huge new workforce now being hired unless another series of new warheads is produced -- or thousands of warheads surplused and dismantled. Obama set the train on this crazy track but it is now Trump's deputies that are pushing this multifaceted disaster.

Regarding 4. humanity faces a complex existential crisis bearing on the US social contract in ways that, barring nuclear war, will sooner or later impel disinvestment in nuclear weapons. They are, as actor Martin Sheen said in Los Alamos in 1999, "the weapons that bring us suicide." For the United States to survive, we need to hurry this political awakening along. This awakening needs a narrative basis, toward which we must do our part. Everyone must.

Our immediate need, as policy and as a political movement, is a large-scale "Green New Deal" on an emergency basis, designed to build resilient communities, careers, families, and identities. Our story must change. We need such a family of policies to face and possibly survive the crisis we are entering with at least some of the web of life intact. As we partially explained in a talk at 350.org and subsequent letter (see also this), we cannot leave this job to the environmental NGOs alone.

In sum, we must convey the reality that emergency action is now required inside and outside government, based on a new conception of national security. Despite spending roughly one trillion dollars per year on national security programs, the US government is failing to provide security, normally the first duty of government.

It is becoming clear that investing further in nuclear weapons is incompatible with preserving civilization -- ideologically, politically, militarily, fiscally, and morally. Recognizing the lack of any real military threat to the US proper, the US should reduce its nuclear stockpile rather than modernize it. This should begin with cancellation and retirement of the most destabilizing planned and current weapons. There is no optimum non-zero, steady-state US nuclear arsenal. There never has been, nor will there ever be, any prudent or justified use of nuclear weapons, under any circumstances. 


This is all we have time for today. Thank you for reading, contributing, and for your own work, so necessary --

Greg Mello, for the Los Alamos Study Group