April 8, 2024

"Russophobia, the Ukraine war, and nuclear weapons" -- panel discussion Tuesday April 16, 6 pm, St. John's United Methodist Church, Santa Fe

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Previous letter (04/01/2024): Opposition to building more nuclear warheads is growing, but slowly -- please help just a bit!

Dear friends --

"Russophobia, the Ukraine war, and nuclear weapons" Panel discussion Tuesday April 16, 6 pm, St. John's United Methodist Church, 1200 Old Pecos Trail, Santa Fe (map)

Please join Peter Kuznick, Steven Starr, and myself (Greg Mello) to discuss the dangerous phenomenon of "Russophobia" in the West in the context of the potentially widening war in Ukraine, with its attendant nuclear dangers. Dr. Kuznick is a Professor of History and Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University. He is the coauthor with Oliver Stone of 12-part documentary and companion book, "The Untold History of the United States" and is in high demand around the world as an analyst of current events. Steve is medical scientist and former department chair at the University of Missouri; he was a Senior Scientist with Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR). He is a board member of the Study Group.

All three of us have been following developments in U.S.-Russian relations on a daily basis. We at the Study Group have conducted multiple teach-ins on the Ukraine war since 2014 and we maintain a news and analysis page updated more or less daily regarding this war, with occasional commentary. In March 2022 our prescription for peace in Ukraine was, with the encouragement of the late John Pilger, published here and in Europe (Zeit-Fragen). Of local interest, my (Greg's) views were highlighted and criticized in a prominent local news article early last year ("Anti-nuclear activist opposes helping Ukraine, encourages peace," Santa Fe New Mexican, Feb 5, 2023).

Failure to heed warnings such as ours has cost hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian lives and tens of thousands of Russian lives. At this point Ukraine is basically a broken country surviving on donations and "loans," which has lost a much of its productive population to emigration and battlefield casualties, as was obvious would happen and as many of us predicted.

Should the U.S. House appropriate the proposed $61 billion in additional "aid" as is now likely (the Senate has already passed the bill; most of the money will go to U.S. arms manufacturers), Ukraine will be even more destroyed than it already is.

To illustrate this danger I could quote dozens of independent experts, but the illustrious Jeffrey Sachs will do nicely:

This is purely money down the drain. If they want to rip up another $61 billion, which is not chump change, they seem intent on doing it but it will mean nothing except more destruction of Ukraine.

If you don't listen to the nonsense in our mainstream media, but listen to your show and others, people would know that this war has destroyed Ukraine. And the longer it continues, the less there will be of Ukraine. It is very simple, if this goes on longer, Russia will capture more territory. If it goes on long enough, Russia will capture Odessa. Kiev, if we continue the way we're doing. This is a Biden project that goes back 10 years now, we'll completely destroy Ukraine. The idea that this is "siding with" Ukraine is absurd. Anyone who really follows events knows that we're not siding with Ukraine, we have paid for hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to go to the front lines and die, for more and more territory to be lost.

The most basic point of this war, which is that we overthrew a government in Ukraine in 2014 that wanted neutrality so we could push NATO enlargement was reckless, stupid, and doomed to fail. And it failed. Now Biden is trying to hide the failure to get past November, but the failure is seen on the battleground every day.

If the Republicans play into this, it is unbelievable, shame on them. They are basically on the right side although Biden bludgeons them every day -- you'll be the one to lose Ukraine. The truth of the matter is Biden has been a disaster for Ukraine for a decade. The disaster is there in the graves of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and lost territory. sa

This is a war that never should have happened, it was about NATO enlargement. The Russians said no NATO on our borders. And Americans who were following this, like our CIA director Bill Burns who was then the US Ambassador to Russia in 2008, said no way, this is crazy. The entire Russian political class is against this. But Biden and Obama and Hillary Clinton and Victoria Nuland and Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken just barged ahead, wrecked everything, and now they want another $61 billion to get them past November. It is a disgrace.

With this money and the political commitment it symbolizes in train, other European countries (led by France's Macron) would be more likely to send troops to Ukraine, counting on the U.S. to backstop them in some way. Or, in the cases of France and the UK, if they commit troops in any number, their own nuclear weapons would also be implicitly "on the table" if Russia wipes out these expeditionary forces, as senior Russian leaders have said Russia will do. So this is quite dangerous, to say the least.

I am trying to say that this is a war that involves all of us, whether we want to be involved or not. It is very dangerous for everybody and highly consequential for the future not just of Ukraine but also Europe and the U.S.

Please come, and tell your friends! There is plenty of room. We will take questions from the audience. We will not stream this event although it will be available for viewing later.

Meanwhile we urge you to peruse our Ukraine war page and recommend it to your friends as an antidote to the U.S. mainstream media if nothing else, which is utterly unreliable on this topic as it is on many others.

Finally, please help us recruit endorsers to the Call for Sanity. We really need you. We are up to 200 businesses and organizations but still there are plenty of powerful people in New Mexico and in the "arms control community" and its big funders who actually want to accelerate pit production and an arms race. Each pit will be the trigger for an explosion the size of 20 Hiroshima bombs put together. LANL wants to make about 40 of these per year. This is the equivalent of 800 Hiroshima bombs per year. If everyone would approach one business or organization they know to endorse the Call for Sanity, Not Nuclear Production, it would make an enormous, helpful difference. Stay tuned for more.

Greg