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December 12, 2023 Bulletin 336: Precis on pit production for NM newspaper; Zoom seminars last week (video) and next week (scheduled); Sentinel missile warheads; Santa Fe resolution against pit production; impeachment Permalink for this bulletin (please forward). Simple home page. Detailed home page. Please Contribute if you can! Previously: Bulletin 335: Zoom seminar on plutonium pit production, December 7, 11 am MST; trainings; the Year of Resistance is coming; help us financially if you can (thank you) Dear friends and colleagues -- We hope everybody is doing well, as winter approaches. First, as we wrote to local friends and colleagues, tomorrow's Santa Fe Reporter, a free weekly, will publish a "double-truck" ad of ours, viewable and downloadable here, in which we try to lay out some of the basic issues involved in accelerating pit production and thereby also accelerating the acquisition of additional accurate, modern warheads for U.S. land-based missiles. Hopefully you will find it interesting and helpful. There is both a quantitative and qualitative aspect to the stockpile augmentation enabled by accelerated pit production. With early pit production, highly-accurate W87-1 warheads could be added sooner (in the early-to-mid 2030s), and in greater quantity over the course of the decade, to the multiple-warhead-capable Sentinel missiles to be deployed over that decade than would be the case without early -- Los Alamos -- production. The greater accuracy of the new W87-1 warheads over the retiring W78s makes the former a "force multiplier," allowing greater probability of hard-target "kill" for a given warhead. We at the Study Group believe it would be wise to delay or cancel the new W87-1 warhead and we are working to do so. Early pit production, and the W87-1 program it enables, are critical vertebrae in the backbone of the new nuclear arms race. On this topic see also some informal comments this past Sunday to the useful "A gigantic new ICBM will take U.S. nuclear missiles out of the Cold War-era but add 21st-century risks" (Tara Copp, AP, Dec 10, 2023). Second, a video recording of last week's Zoom seminar is available here. The second of the two parts to this seminar is tentatively scheduled for Tuesday December 19, 2023 at 11 am. By Monday we will send out Zoom coordinates and written material for that second meeting. Third, a City of Santa Fe resolution -- weakened only slightly from what we proposed -- that opposes all pit production at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) will be introduced tomorrow evening (item 16c on the agenda). Voting will come early next year. The operative part of the resolution more or less echoes the "Call for Sanity, Not Nuclear Production." A number of us will be there; see this letter for more information. If you oppose early pit production (or pit production at LANL, the same thing), please come in person if you are local (the best), or attend virtually. See today's letter for more details. If you wish to be more involved with the Study Group in New Mexico, please subscribe to our New Mexico listserve by sending a blank email here, which gets all our notices for local engagement opportunities, and more local nuclear news. Fourth, Ukraine's looming political transition gets closer every day. Read about it here. Today, Bernhard at Moon of Alabama writes, "I am sure that the U.S. will find Zelenski a place where they can put him away. He will likely be allowed to keep his loot. He may survive for awhile but the fascist powers in Ukraine, which he helped to increase, will come back to haunt and probably kill him." We agree with that assessment. With or without Zelensky, after the violent U.S.-led Maidan coup which put so many neo-Nazis in high places in government, nobody was going to be able to build an open, democratic, or prosperous society in Ukraine. Ironically, the fastest way to stability and relief in Ukraine is now a negotiated peace on Russia's terms, if the West will allow it. Alas there is no real sign of that at the moment. Fifth, Israel's genocide in Gaza, supplied and supported by the United States, continues and increases. I cannot recall a more shameful moment for the U.S. in my life. Yesterday, John Mearsheimer succinctly summarized the atrocities (please read!). Craig Murray writes: The world has been jolted, suddenly. Masks have been ripped off. Almost the entire political Establishment of the West have outed themselves as enthusiastic proponents of a racial supremacism, prepared to give active assistance to a genocide of indigenous people....Where the World goes from here, in the face of the raw racial hatred and enthusiasm for the killing of babies that has been revealed by those in power, is very difficult for people to come to reckon. Today, Joe Biden vowed the U.S. would “continue to provide military assistance to Israel until they get rid of Hamas” -- while watching out for public opinion of course! That statement and the shameful, solitary U.S. vote at the U.N. Security Council against a ceasefire this past Friday, are just the latest events in the continuing saga of support by this country for genocide. As Craig Murray noted, the International Court of Justice has ruled, on the basis of the Genocide Convention, that states have a positive obligation to prevent genocide before it happens -- quite logical, and the polar opposite of what this administration is doing. This is a criminal administration. So -- what to do? Shall we beg the administration, and members of Congress, to stop killing Palestinians? How can we get through to people? We don't know the answer to that question. It's a big subject and a Bulletin like this is not the place to discuss it. We have our hands very full with our nuclear work. Among the possible answers is an impeachment campaign, the only way -- and it is a good way -- provided by our Constitution to replace a president. You will recall that in Bulletin 325 (02/18/23, "Understanding the Nordstream sabotage and punishing those responsible"), we set forth reasons to investigate the possible impeachment of the President and his foreign policy team. The reasons included the possibility that the White House, if left unpunished, could go on to other even worse outrages. We're there. That is happening. Meanwhile starting tomorrow, the President is about to be subject to an impeachment inquiry, for other very substantial reasons. Chips are going to fall where they may, so there's no point in being too afraid of all that. Biden is very likely to resign, or suffer a debilitating health episode, or be impeached and quite possibly convicted and replaced soon. To influence the next president -- who might take office before the November 2024 election -- and her team, it will be necessary to impress that team that our votes, and the nation's business, depend crucially on stopping the killing in Gaza, and Ukraine. Sixth, please help our work financially if you can. We are planning a big program next year and we hope most of you will be a part of it, one way or another. Thank you so much for your support, and best wishes to all, Greg, Trish, and Bex |
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