April 26, 2021

Reminder: public briefing, discussion Thurs. Apr 29, 6-8 pm, St. John's UMC, Santa Fe; "How Santa Fe liberals and environmentalists are enabling plutonium pit production at LANL in support of Biden's failing foreign and nuclear policies, and what we can do differently"

Permalink for this letter. Please forward as desired. Prior letters to this New-Mexico-oriented list.
Previously (04/21/21): Public briefing, discussion Thurs. Apr 29, 6-8 pm, St. John's UMC, Santa Fe: "The nuclear and foreign policies of the Biden Administration"
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Dear friends --

We hope you are well and finding renewal from the long covid confinement in this beautiful spring.

Please come if you can to the important public meeting on Thursday, April 29, 2021, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm in the Fellowship Hall at St. John's United Methodist Church, 1200 Old Pecos Trail (map).

This is a very large, well-ventilated hall with plenty of room to spread out, as noted previously.

We have adjusted the emphasis in the topic somewhat: "How Santa Fe liberals and environmentalists are enabling plutonium pit production at LANL in support of Biden's failing foreign and nuclear policies, and what we can do differently."

The long and short of it is that many parties are being herded into enabling pit production at LANL by powerful agenda-setting funders and the Democratic Party mafia. These power players are in turn working to support a neoconservative foreign policy that is failing on all fronts, with mounting dangers in the Western Pacific, in central Europe, and in the Middle East. Biden's foreign policies -- just as revanchist as Trump's -- have already failed, in virtually every direction.

As regards Russia, our only nuclear peer, Democrats and Biden continue to act as if all the "Russiagate" myths had not already been discredited. We now have a brand-new "national emergency" because of "Russian aggression."

Going back to the seemingly-narrow issue of pit production (without which the U.S. cannot make new kinds of nuclear weapons), there is a confluence of interests between those who do not want a pit factory in South Carolina and those who do want a pit factory here in New Mexico.

Many concerned but naive New Mexicans do not see what is happening, but it hardly matters if they are passive. In gaming lingo, most people are now "non-player characters" -- that is, citizens without democratic agency, if that is not an oxymoron. This includes most people who think they are being politically active.

We are being divided, distracted, and deluded into not seeing the difference between empty gestures and powerful dissent.

The local press is now generally too understaffed and/or frightened to take on the prevailing myths (such as, LANL does a lot of wonderful non-weapons science and could do more, LANL brings economic development, LANL is good for New Mexico, etc). This probably won't change.

We are very concerned that individuals and our communities have lost, or perhaps in many cases never had, a clear sense of what is real in general and what is not. The question is not who or what is to blame -- the causes, mostly impersonal -- but rather what we can do about it.

Our collective co-optation and paralysis works the same in energy and climate issues, where DC-based NGOs and corporate Democrats have successfully pushed what amounts to a colonial, corporate agenda that is starving the state of renewable energy and conservation and efficiency careers while failing to create energy democracy, local control, or address our advancing inequality. What could have been is quickly being lost. Possibilities for the future are diminishing because the majority of our politicians are too ignorant, corrupt, or cowardly and too many others are swept along with them, not wanting to offend.

Greg and Trish, for the Study Group