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June 12, 2023 Bulletin 327: Virtual presentation and discussion this Thursday 5 pm MDT; fundraising; new publications Permalink for this bulletin (please forward). Simple home page. Detailed home page. Previously: Bulletin 326: Update, fundraising, town hall, Ukraine, pit production now to cost more than the whole Manhattan Project, Apr 26, 2023
Dear friends and colleagues -- Once again this Bulletin has been delayed far longer than we'd like. I (Greg) have just returned from Washington, DC and am finally able to assemble this Bulletin. 1. Urgent fundraising request! Thank you all so much for helping make our work possible. We'd very much like to bring others -- especially younger persons -- on board to help us. To do this funds are required. Your help, including your thoughtful outreach on our behalf -- would be very helpful. The interest is already there, in young persons we know (and others we ought to know!), but right now the funds are not there. As we said last time, there are opportunities here in New Mexico not found in most other U.S. places, given the huge and rapidly growing footprint of the nuclear weapons industry in this state, and the experience and multifaceted support available in and through this office. At the same time, everything is more expensive than it used to be, and most institutional funders have been "herded" into support for U.S. government policies, or else into various distractive cul-de-sacs. Individual donors who want peace and a way to back out of the current nuclear arms race, which the U.S. cannot pursue and remain intact, are more important than ever. There are many ways to contribute. Thank you for doing so, if you can! 2. National/international Zoom presentation and discussion regarding warhead core ("pit") production this Thursday 6/15/23, 5 - 7 pm This Thursday we will present on, and lead a discussion about, plutonium "pit" production, by far the largest nuclear warhead-related program in the U.S. and one that is central to all future U.S. nuclear weapons plans. Should this program continue in its present form -- which is doubtful -- it is likely to cost more than the entire Manhattan Project, as we have mentioned. More resources on this topic can be found below. This discussion will be of interest to many "old hands" and "newbies" alike. There are a lot of misconceptions floating around; we can respectfully discuss some of those while presenting some of the background and wider context, which involves more than pits and more than nuclear weapons. We intend this discussion to be the first in a series of long-overdue discussions about re-framing nuclear disarmament in the context of an empire in decline. Here are the Zoom coordinates for Thursday's talk and discussion: Time: Jun 15, 2023 05:00 PM Mountain Time (US and Canada) 3. Recent publications and news articles Since Bulletin 325 you have gotten these important press alerts:
The second one of these is a kind of overview of some of the dramatic setbacks that dog U.S. efforts to engage in a nuclear arms race. (Hint: an arms race is not something the U.S. can do any more.) You may not however have seen these analyses:
You can find some recent press articles on our plutonium pit page; two additional recent articles in the Santa Fe New Mexican with our published comments can be found on our home page (`Oppenheimer': The retelling in the movies has promise, May 22, 2023; "New Mexico shouldn't be the nation's nuclear dump," May 13, 2023). We commend those informal comments to you, which deal with a variety of nuclear topics, and would also point out that commenting on news articles, where the option is available, can be an excellent way to communicate with people who are active in our communities. As an aside, we glance over dozens of headlines daily. Most U.S. news articles and "learned" essays about nuclear weapons tend to be a distraction, or worse than worthless, especially for people who are interested in disarmament. Empire-friendly "think-tank land" churns out many awful articles by and for liberal hawks, too many to rebut. Few outside the shrinking "arms control" field read them. We have another mailing list which receives somewhat different content than this one, which we call "local letters." If you want to get those letters, including invitations to local meetings, please send a blank email here. We'd love to see you face-to-face if you are local. 4. Ukraine War developments Did you read what we said in the last two Bulletins (326 and 325) about this war? We see almost no antiwar activity, nationally, or in our state. Strange, isn't it? Please investigate and forward our Ukraine page to your friends. Every day we post some of the best and most accessible analyses of the war and its implications. As we said in the last Bulletin, this selection is a valuable resource that could serve as the foundation for anti-war study, discussion, and then action elsewhere in the U.S. and around the world, given the propaganda stream most people face. Those who have had a chance to read the latest updates will know that the U.S. and its NATO allies, who are fighting Russia using Ukrainian men and boys as little more than cannon fodder, are losing this war. The Beltway Blob and the arrogant Euro-elites who have confused wealth with wisdom are struggling for a way to save face. As a result, they are marching us all toward World War III. Here in the U.S., all of the "Civics 101" democratic avenues are blocked. I was in Washington last week, and this afternoon we spoke with a trusted journalist there who confirmed my impression -- visible everywhere -- that Washington DC is on a semi-war footing. Everyone is afraid to speak out, so the whole rotten enterprise drifts toward its "Niagara," as Henry James put it as World War I began. Listen, please. "Nuclear disarmament" is now a horrible, terrible distraction, a dodge. It isn't happening and it's not going to happen any time soon. It's a theoretical topic, a castle in the air without a foundation, drifting farther and farther away. The peace movement ended -- and was intentionally destroyed -- and we don't have peace. We can talk about and work on ending the war against Russia -- that would be meaningful and responsible. In New Mexico, we can work on halting pit production as long as possible. That too is extremely meaningful. But if we are in the front lines or beyond them, in no man's land -- and we are -- with the responsibility to halt further attacks if we can, we sure as hell should not be talking about "nuclear disarmament." When I hear that, I feel thrown back 30 and more years. It is as if Rip Van Winkle has woken up and realized that nuclear disarmament would be great. Really! Who knew! As a culture we now like striking a pose, as opposed to taking a stand. That's fatal. The U.S. imperial cyclops is blind, drunk, and mad. That's what's happening, not "nuclear disarmament," and it's happening on a scale of days and weeks in Ukraine -- extremely fast. The danger now is war -- war and more war, running out of control fast, because those in power don't want to lose face, or power. Obviously there can be no arms control or disarmament until a modus vivendi is worked out with "America's enemies." Peace is the last thing on the minds of the criminals running this administration, which is also why we urge you to re-read and discuss Bulletin 325. Thank you for your attention. See some of you on Thursday. Greg Mello and Trish Williams-Mello, Los Alamos Study Group |
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