Aug 31, 2021

Protest and press conference at "Q Station" in Nob Hill tomorrow, Wednesday September 1, 11:00 am. If you don't want a military takeover of NM please come.

Permalink for this letter. Please forward as desired. Prior letters to this New-Mexico-oriented list.
Previously (08/23/21): Door hanger update; help wanted; protest and press conference at Q Station in Nob Hill 9/1/21
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Dear friends --

Good afternoon everybody!

Protest and press conference at "Q Station" in Nob Hill tomorrow, Wednesday September 1, 11:00 am

As mentioned a week ago there is going to be a demonstration and press conference tomorrow at the "Q Station," 3225 Central Ave NE, Albuquerque (across Central from the former Kelly's Brewpub), on Wednesday, Sept. 1, at 11:00 am (map, photo of Q Station in action).

For background on Q Station and the broad space war thrust in New Mexico, see this previous letter and this one.

As mentioned last time, the "Q Station" is meant to suck young people into the "pipeline" of America's war machine -- it is, quite literally, a storefront for what Martin Luther King called a "demonic, destructive suction tube."

We would like as many people as can come to show up at the Q Station at 11:00 am, joining with the ANSWER Coalition, Stop the War Machine, Veterans for Peace, and other allied groups. Bring signs and friends. You know the issues. See also below.

Please recruit people who are active on other issues.

Please alert talented people who might want to work with the Study Group here in Albuquerque.

Why is this important, and why is it important now?

This is not just about space war. Far from it. It's about empire, militarism, and war in general of course, but also much more than that.

New Mexico is being ever more deeply colonized by:

• the military;
• the nuclear weapons industry;
• the nuclear waste industry;
• the oil and gas industry, which makes NM a leader in destroying the planet;
• the idiotic space tourism industry, mutually enabling militarization of space as well;
• extractive renewable energy (RE) corporations that profit from sending NM RE to fuel climate-killing growth in other states;
• the suburban real estate development industry;

Etc.

Basically our colonial mindset, limited-capacity "territorial-style" government, widespread corruption, and lack of education among the political classes and their advisors, make us ripe for the plucking by whatever organized extractive industry comes knocking, as long as they say the magic word: "jobs." That kind of economic development philosophy has made New Mexico poorer than any other state in the ways that count most. We have been bottom-bouncing in the well-being of our children for decades.

The world, dear friends, is burning. Not just in the sense of the Buddha's Fire Sermon, but also physically. The earth's heat imbalance is now equivalent to about four Hiroshima detonations per second, or to "every person on Earth using 20 electric tea kettles at once."

Please do not misunderstand me. We have tried to create some baby steps so that people could feel comfortable getting involved.

Now I suggest we all have some family meetings about how our families are going to face the end of the world as we know it, and what we personally are going to do with the remainder of our lives. Kick back, watch the world burn, the species disappear and hope flicker and die out in our young people? If you think that please get off this list.

Expectations of the younger generation about their standard of living need to change, lest disappointment and despair be overwhelming. We of the older generation need to help them and protect them as best we can.

There are no solutions to our environmental problems that do not involve, in the U.S., a huge decline in overall consumption of resources, particularly energy. "100% renewable energy" at present levels is an utter fraud. Shame on those nonprofits who promote it.

Most importantly, nothing whatsoever is going to change for the better by the methods most beloved by liberals. In many ways, liberal progressivism is the biggest obstacle we have. As Caitlin Johnstone says, trying to reform the Democratic Party is like trying to walk through an exit door painted on the wall.

We think the time is propitious for making this and subsequent public actions embrace the need for a whole-of-government, whole-of-society response to climate change and the grotesque, crushing inequality that is destroying our society. We need to broaden our thinking and our base for action to matter.

As I wrote here, we need to start throwing sand in the gears. We at the Study Group see the Q Station action as a beginning of that.

The conjunction of hell (drought, fires, and smoke in the West) and high water (Hurricane Ida, TN floods before that) provide an ideal moment for talking about our national priorities in a time of climate collapse.

What is bigger than the military-industrial complex is the sum of all the people getting screwed by it. We have to reach to them and help them find a way to understand their material losses in light of predatory national security priorities and attendant corruption and moral failure.

The Afghanistan war cost $19,000 per U.S. household so far, and has directly caused the deaths of roughly 241,000 people. The number killed indirectly is many times that. It is the U.S. war machine that has been the primary killer of women in Afghanistan since Operation Cyclone began in the 1970s, is it not? The fury of an embarrassed empire is likely to kill millions more, through crippling sanctions, political destabilization campaigns, and sponsorship of covert killing. The CIA Afghanistan heroin "rat-line" killed millions more, all over the world, as the CIA's cheap heroin flooded the world market. Heroin production increased some 25-fold under U.S. occupation, making Afghanistan the main source of the world's heroin.

That's just Afghanistan. Worldwide, the U.S. government is the world's greatest killer. As Chris Hedges observes:

Its [the U.S.'s] entire economy, a “military Keynesianism,” revolves around the war industry. Military spending and war are the engine behind the nation’s economic survival and identity. It does not matter that with each new debacle the United States turns larger and larger parts of the globe against it and all it claims to represent.

It has no mechanism to stop itself, despite its numerous defeats, fiascos, blunders and diminishing power, from striking out irrationally like a wounded animal. The mandarins who oversee our collective suicide, despite repeated failure, doggedly insist the U.S. can reshape the world in its own image.

This myopia creates the very conditions that accelerate the empire’s demise.

Not just the empire's demise. Everyone's. And all the animals. We are pushing the envelope toward an entirely different planet. The timeline for action is very short.

It's nice to cultivate our own gardens, and we should. But let's not kid ourselves. If we do not stop the Empire, it will stop us, in every way.

We need to get people into the streets. Tomorrow, at Q Station. We have to feel our way forward. We need to be humble but firm. We need to cry out for the rising generations, not write worthless letters to the president or our sociopathic senators -- who, don't you know, demand fealty from our new congresswomen to their perverted national security priorities.

We need to understand that the New Mexico Democratic Party is a mafia that derives a decisive amount of its power through its subservience to the national security state. Get real. It's completely given over to greed and further colonization. It's not listening yet.

A press conference with a dozen, or two dozen, or even a few dozen people may or may not be that terribly interesting to the press, but events that grow in size and continuity, uniting issues around themes related to our horribly misplaced priorities, would. Love must find a way.

Greg, Trish, and the rest of the Study Group gang