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July 13, 2022 Please come to a strategic discussion this coming Friday July 15 at 12:00 pm at Maria's New Mexico Kitchen in Santa Fe (A few of you have received this invitation already. For you, this is a duplicate message. We look forward to seeing some of you on Friday!) Dear friends -- This past Friday a few of us met to discuss some strategic aspects of our work here, as well as some realities and implications of the Ukraine war. This coming Friday, July 15, at 12:00 pm we will have another lunch in the same place, Maria's New Mexico Kitchen, 550 W Cordova Road (map). We hope you will attend. We are opening the meeting to a larger group, hence this email. Space is somewhat limited, so please RSVP by email or phone 505-265-1200 ASAP. At this meeting we want to discuss the nuclear production bullseye painted on greater Santa Fe and northern New Mexico and what to do about it, in the context of changes we are seeing in our world. More: The Study Group hasn't changed politically but our country has -- radically. As we said back in May, abandonment of Ukraine war opposition by progressives in Congress is part of a momentous political realignment. That pro-war realignment is part and parcel of the co-optation and/or intentional destruction of most peace and disarmament organizations by liberal foundations aligned with the Democratic Party. (This is a long story but a vital one. See for example Dave Lindorff, Salon, "Peace-washing: Is a network of major donors neutralizing activism in the peace movement?"; Sada Aksartova, "In Search of Legitimacy: Peace Grant Making of U.S. Philanthropic Foundations, 1988-1996," Darwin BondGraham, "Coopting the Antinuclear Movement," Counterpunch.) Tacit support by local liberals, progressives, and environmentalists for the industrial pit production mission at LANL is an unfortunate part of this realignment. If allowed to proceed this huge new mission will destroy our communities. This will happen through the economic forces unleashed on housing markets, through the subordination of our politics and educational institutions, through economic and political pressures placed on the Pueblos, through road congestion, through development pressures in our cities and counties and the resulting blight, shoddy construction, and sprawl. New Mexico would become a nuclear colony as never before. Inequality would grow even more. Gentrification in places like Dixon is already well underway. Even remote locales like Ojo Sarco (new local nickname: "Dixon Heights") are feeling the pressure. In Santa Fe, realtor Don Barker recently defined the lower-end housing market as "less than $800,000." As for the Pueblos, we were recently contacted by a man in partnership with former tribal council members seeking to build on Pueblo land (among other things) a campground for "space tourism" on the Main Hill Road. The campground's obvious market is LANL construction workers, not tourists, as we told him. We alerted allies in the Pueblo. It's in their hands now. The wider point is that $20 billion or so in sudden, additional nuclear weapon investments at LANL over the coming decade or so creates ample carpetbagging opportunities, in much the same way as the "WIPP Route" around Santa Fe created new sprawl. The road, not the waste, is the greater problem. Recently, Santa Fe narrowly missed hosting a national administrative-training-conference center for nuclear weapons at the Midtown Campus (NNSA's proposal), in part thanks to our and others' collective work. So far we and others have done our level best to oppose John Rizzo's ugly, inappropriate mid-rise tech-worker apartments in western Santa Fe and central Los Alamos. The proposed new road through the Caja del Rio, and the proposed new Rio Grande bridge, also appear dead for now, as attractive as they are for NNSA and LANL. The proposed new power line through the Caja is still very much alive however. So are, as far as we know, LANL's efforts to acquire new offsite, out-of-LA-County facilities, in addition to the three properties NNSA has already leased in Santa Fe. There are a lot of pieces on the pit production chessboard. NNSA and Triad are desperate, as we will discuss on Friday. The good news is that LANL's pit mission is failing and could be made to fail farther and faster. Deadlines won't be met. I won't tell you all the ways this is happening in an email. You will have to come on Friday for that. As an aside, you may not know that nuclear weapons production at the Pantex plant in Amarillo is now proceeding on a 24/7 basis. The whole nuclear complex is straining to rebuild itself while upping warhead design and production. Under conditions of megadrought and economic decline, every additional commitment to nuclear weapons as the centerpiece of our economy -- and willy-nilly, our culture -- makes it more likely that these commitments will be permanent. What's it all for? Not for deterrence, so-called. It's for arms racing with Russia -- for MIRVing a new missile with new warheads built with a few new pits, sort of a lame demonstration of "prowess" -- at a life-cycle cost of a quarter trillion bucks (exclusive of warheads). Money like that does grease a lot of wheels. From the Triad/Heinrich/Lujan perspective, it's also to get Congress so vested in emergency, then permanent, pit production at LANL that it halts investment in South Carolina's much more appropriate site and facility, so as to double down at LANL again and again, bringing an unending gusher of money, and new facilities, and new hires. The SC site cannot produce pits for a decade or more and may never. LANL is supposed to begin next year. A program this vast seems to escape the ability or political license of journalists to write about it. Fewer of LANL's hires will be local than many expect. NNSA has written that northern New Mexico is "depleted" of the skills and qualities LANL needs. In private meetings, NNSA says the northern New Mexico labor market is "tapped out." There is no way LANL can execute the pit mission with its existing facilities. The $13 or so billion in construction alone this decade -- for new construction and for repairs -- is just the beginning. Those who think pit production at LANL is the "lesser of two evils" don't understand what's coming, if we don't stop this now. "Resist beginnings." We are working intensely, and making some progress. "Horrible" truths are beginning to dawn on members of Congress about this. One of them: The U.S. has no viable strategy for managing its bloated nuclear stockpile. Too many pigs got to the trough. Thank you for your help and hard work so far. Without it, there would already be a new factory at LANL, three or four times over. Greg and Trish, for the Study Group PS: Consider penciling into your calendars a panel discussion we will have in Los Alamos at Fuller Lodge on Tuesday August 2, at 7:00 pm. We will discuss a less-known aspect of the Manhattan Project. According to General Groves, the Project was organized and conducted with the idea that Russia was the primary, enduring enemy. Already by the fall of 1945 the first targeting study of twenty Russian cities was developed. By June 1946 the first theoretical nuclear war plan against Russia was approved by the Joint Chiefs. Pit production was by then taking place at Los Alamos' big new plutonium facility, "DP Site," which began operation a month after Japan surrendered. Greg and Trish, for the Study Group
Permalink for this letter. Prior letters to this New-Mexico-oriented list. |
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