Bulletin 277: Solstice; gratitude; please support our work; the coming year; Congress all but fully funds massive increase in NNSA warhead programs

December 21, 2020

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Dear friends and colleagues --

We hope you are all well -- and yes, happy -- and that you are able to stay that way through the pandemic and related economic crises. Please do not be discouraged.

Here, we are well and, despite our concern about these and other circumstances our dominant feeling tonight, as we light our solstice fire, is one of gratitude to all those -- parents, teachers, friends, many of you -- who have made our work and the many successes of this organization possible.

This is the time of year when I must ask for your financial support. What we can do next year largely depends on it. To those who have already contributed, or who contribute all along as sustaining donors -- thank you again.

As a reminder, there are many ways to contribute. The simplest ways are to mail a check to our office (Los Alamos Study Group, 2901 Summit Place NE, Albuquerque, NM, 87106), or to contribute by credit card through the PayPal Giving Fund. No fee is deducted by PayPal. Or you can --

• donate stock (thus avoiding capital gains and the associated taxes), or
• become a sustaining donor, contributing a specified amount each month, or
• donate old cars, boats, or real estate, or
• make a contribution directly from your traditional or Roth IRA of up to $100,000, if you are age 70½ or older, without it being considered a taxable distribution, or
• remember the Study Group in your will or estate planning.

Importantly you, our loyal friends and members, are the only ones who can reach out to your personal connections and email lists. We cannot easily or cheaply penetrate the cacophony of electronic noise bombarding people except through our friends.

For those unfamiliar with this organization -- some of your friends, perhaps -- please see the postscript to this message.

It has been another very long day here and I don't want to make this note a long one, so I will close.

I do however want to add that in the omnibus appropriations bill Congress managed to fund, as far as we know so far, almost everything requested in the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) budget request for warheads, amounting to a massive increase in warhead spending. Only 1.65% was cut ($257 million) out of the $15.602 billion requested. Not all the details have been published, so stay tuned for more on this. It is frankly a shameful performance from Congress.

Very best wishes to all,

Greg Mello, for the Study Group

PS: A quick sketch of this organization:

Since 1989, the Los Alamos Study Group has worked for nuclear disarmament, environmental protection, social justice, and economic sustainability – mutually-reinforcing aims that map directly onto the converging crises we face, regionally, nationally, and internationally. Throughout this time, we have contributed thoughtful popular and policy leadership on Department of Energy (DOE) and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) weapons laboratory and warhead issues, in which we have considerable – in some respects unparalleled – expertise. We have conducted hundreds of public meetings and over five hundred briefings and other meetings on Capitol Hill. We are strictly nonpartisan and factual, and we anchor policy details in a broad historical and technical perspective. We focus on practical outcomes. We have wide technical, legal, and public education experience as well as strong academic and work histories in science, engineering, law, and organizing. We draw on a wide range of other experts as needed. We have been quoted in thousands of newspaper articles and interviewed on hundreds of radio and TV programs. We have won environmental, civil rights, and freedom of information lawsuits. We have blocked major nuclear warhead infrastructure projects at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), in which efforts we have had to work against the arms control community and the New Mexico delegation. We were named one of the nation’s “top ten small green groups” in 2011 and one of eleven “favorite groups” in 2013 by Counterpunch. Our analyses of U.S. nuclear weapon modernization have been significant contributions at Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) review and preparatory conferences and other international fora since 2015. We were early supporters of, and significant participants at and between, all international fora leading to the successful creation of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).

We have led dozens of public workshops on energy and climate policy and related economic viability issues, and in 2017 devoted much of the summer to training young people in energy and climate policy intervention. Everything we do, in Congress and elsewhere, is informed by these concerns and our expertise in them. We seek to further leverage our knowledge, government access, and media relationships in these pressing national security issues.

Today our independent, nonpartisan, principled, broadly-informed voice is more important than ever as our society attempts to navigate through unprecedented political and environmental upheaval. This will intensify. The previous “normal” order will not return. We began with a mission of assisting in the reordering of nuclear weapons policy after the Cold War. A new Cold War is now underway. We seek to help end that war, in the context of preserving human society and a living planet. To do this, considerable leadership and training from outside the present centers of power appear necessary. We can, and to the best of our ability will, provide this.