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January 26, 2024 Update to The Call for Sanity, please help! / Come to the Santa Fe City Council Wednesday, Jan 31st, 6 pm Previous letter, 01/09/24, Four upcoming events in Santa Fe: a) volunteer mtg TOMORROW, Jan 10, noon; b) City Council mtg Jan 10, 6 pm; c) study session re new LANL power line Jan 11, noon; c) public meeting re power line, 4 pm Permalink for this letter. Prior letters to this New-Mexico-oriented list. Good afternoon! We hope you are all well, and encouraged. Welcome to those new to this list! First, our public registry of opposition to plutonium warhead core ("pit," or "nuclear trigger") production, the "Call for Sanity, Not Nuclear Production," is growing. As of this morning we had 169 businesses and 755 individuals on board. Many nuclear disarmament, social justice, anti-war, and peace-making organizations are already on board. Others will join them in the coming days. We find that the primary barrier to rapidly growing this registry is simply that people are busy and have many distractions. Most of us need a little nudge to do things that may be important but don't seem urgent. Wherever and whenever you can help provide that nudge, please do! Many people ask, how can I help? This is one very good and easy way. Many people don't quite understand the importance of the Call. There is really no other standing democratic process in which opposition can be registered or heard. We entirely lack democratic fora and representative government, as far as federal national security policies are concerned. Here in New Mexico, writing our congressional delegation about those policies is worse than useless, because the illusion of representative government encourages passivity among those who might be more effective if they knew how hair-on-fire awful the situation truly is. Another barrier is that many people don't understand that we will never get adequate, or even any, climate protection while also indulging in militarism and empire. It's not just the money wasted and the emissions spewed, which are certainly huge, bigger than the economies and emissions of most countries. It is also that these priorities shape our political system, even as they shape our thoughts and narratives. They stunt our imaginations, inserting death-oriented solutions where life-giving social and environmental commitments should be. Meanwhile tsunamis of military -- and in New Mexico, nuclear -- campaign cash help put the wrong people in charge. The Call signals to local (and national) political actors that there is local and national opposition to pit production, "first and foremost at Los Alamos," since pit production is slated to begin a decade earlier here than elsewhere. We also hope that some local governments will join us in opposition to pit production, and this registry makes that easier. Each endorsement makes it easier for other organizations to stand up. To make it very local, here in New Mexico nuclear weapons destroy our sovereignty. Nuclear warhead work comprises roughly ten times as much of our GDP as the next most "nuclearized" state (TN), but the effect on our politics is even more disproportionate than that. Colonization is not a process that ended in the 20th century. It is rapidly picking up speed right now. New Mexico's ability to chart its own future and nurture its children is being "horse-traded" away for federal favors, with northern New Mexico's required acceptance of its assigned role as "plutonium foundry for the nation" front and center. Second, if you can volunteer to help us reach out, please do! Write Bex, or call 505-265-1200. Leave a message if we don't answer right away, and we'll get back to you. Third, please come to the Santa Fe City Council meeting this coming Wednesday, January 31st, at City Hall (200 Lincoln Ave., map) at 6 pm to show your support for a City resolution opposing all pit production at LANL. We will meet in the hallway to the immediate west of the council chambers. Trish and Bex will be there; I (Greg) will be in DC, calling in to the Council during Petitions from the Floor at circa 7 pm Mountain Time. We hope you will speak at that time, in person or via Zoom. As most of you know, Councilor Cassutt withdrew our proposed resolution against pit production at LANL, in part because she did not believe she had the votes, given the retirement of her co-sponsor Renee Villarreal. We have met with her along with brand-new councilor Alma Castro, and also with the Mayor and his new Senior Advisor Bernie Toon, a long-time Washington insider and lobbyist (including for Bechtel and LANL). These two articles will bring you up to date:
What we have not mentioned up to now is that Mayor Webber and his advisor Mr. Toon brought to our meeting a copy of the executive summary of the The Final Report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States (Oct 2023). As discussed here, this report proposes a radical increase in scale and pace of modernization, along with an increase in the size of nuclear forces. This report makes the claim that unless the U.S. greatly increases its nuclear weapons efforts along with other strategic system acquisitions over the 2027-2035 period, "deterrence" vis-a-vis Russia and China will be lost. This happens to be the same period of time in which LANL is expected to make all the pits for what these authors hope will be an expanding U.S. nuclear arsenal. Absent new pits from LANL, no new warheads will be possible. We believe Mr. Toon is helping Mayor understand that the "pit business" is big business, something Santa Fe can count on as a basis of its economy and growth. There's more on this topic, which we will leave to another time. Let's just say that it looks to us as if this resolution is being brought forward in the nick of time. So to repeat, please don't hang back and please come on Wednesday evening! Some central talking points:
Bechtel, formerly the world's largest engineering and construction company, not only was a major part of LANL management from 2006 to 2018 but also is now part of the team managing Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as well as the team managing the Pantex and Y-12 nuclear weapons production sites. Bechtel has a major role in the troubled Sentinel ICBM, the largest civil works project in the U.S. since the completion of the interstate highway system. The Sentinel system comprises the entire "market" for LANL pits for the foreseeable future. Bechtel has been more or less deeply involved with the CIA and various "Deep State" machinations for its entire post-1945 existence. Bechtel lobbied for, and gained lucrative contracts from, the Iraq War. (Please see Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story: The Most Secret Corporation and How It Engineered the World by Layton McCartney and The Profiteers: Bechtel and the Men Who Built the World, by Santa Fe's own Sally Denton).
Please come on Wednesday! Best wishes, Greg, Trish, and Bex |
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