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<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:
normal'><b><font size=2 face=Tahoma><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:
"Tahoma","sans-serif";font-weight:bold'>From:</span></font></b><font size=2
face=Tahoma><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>
occupymendocino-bounces@lists.mcn.org
[mailto:occupymendocino-bounces@lists.mcn.org] <b><span style='font-weight:
bold'>On Behalf Of </span></b>Lewallen<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>Sent:</span></b> Friday, February 9, 2018
9:04 AM<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>To:</span></b> VFP-116@yahoogroups.com;
vfpchapter71@gmail.com; Bruce Gagnon; marylia@trivalleycares.org; babs@mcn.org;
occupymendocino@lists.mcn.org<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>Subject:</span></b> [Occupymendocino] Finding
Delight in Avoiding War With North Korea<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Calibri><span style='font-size:11.0pt;
line-height:105%'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><font size=2
face=Calibri><span style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:105%'>Finding Delight in
Avoiding War With North Korea<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Calibri><span style='font-size:11.0pt;
line-height:105%'>--by John Lewallen <avoidingnuclearwar.com><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Calibri><span style='font-size:11.0pt;
line-height:105%'>Feb.9, 2018<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Calibri><span style='font-size:11.0pt;
line-height:105%'>Howdy Neighbors,<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><font size=2 face=Calibri><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:105%'>I’m here on a beautiful day in
Mendocino County, California. For me, my sense that the risk of nuclear war is
rather high just now is exacerbating my delight in my wife, my friends, and the
delightful world we share. Psychologically, it is to me like the Reagan years.
We made it through Reagan and we can make it now!<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><font size=2 face=Calibri><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:105%'>I’m inviting you to come with me as I
find delight in trying to understand the ecology of the nuclear weapons
industry, and to join with people worldwide to avoid nuclear war and eventually
eliminate the threat of nuclear war completely. I’m 75 now, which is about the
same age as the era of nuclear weapons. All my life I have felt the terror of
impending nuclear war, and have avoided despair by studying nuclear
confrontation and working with activists to reduce the threat of nuclear war.
So far, so good! There hasn’t been a nuclear weapon detonated in battle since
the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><font size=2 face=Calibri><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:105%'>
I’d love to hear from people who are thinking and organizing to avoid nuclear
war. May we enjoy each amazing day on this Earth free of nuclear war! <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><font size=2 face=Calibri><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:105%'>
I’ll be a bit loose and reflective in this writing. It is urgent right now to
advocate for no war with North Korea! The president said that North Korea would
be able to strike the United States with nuclear missiles “in a few months” in
his State of the Union Address a few days ago. Vice President Pence is in Japan
demanding that North Korea give up its nuclear weapons. The implication of
impending U.S. military attack on North Korea soon is obvious. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><font size=2 face=Calibri><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:105%'>
All my heart and soul is with the Koreans at the Olympics in Seoul, especially
the five hundred peaceful envoys from North Korea. It is a macabre nightmare
that the U.S. is imposing what Pence called the “heaviest sanctions ever” on
North Korea, and organizing nations in Vancouver.B.C. for a possible military
attack on North Korea (China and Russia, not invited, denounced this rally of
Korean War allies as “Cold War mentality”). At the same time. North and South
Korea are earnestly beginning peace talks. The U.S. should stop threatening and
sanctioning North Korea, and begin peace talks to end the Korean War.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.5in'><font size=2
face=Calibri><span style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:105%'>When the 1953
armistice in Korea stopped the bombing which had completely leveled North
Korea, neither North Korea nor its ally, China, had nuclear weapons which could
reach the United States. Now both these nations have focused on having nuclear
weapons primarily to deter attack from the U.S., to prevent exactly the sort of
“nuclear blackmail” President Trump is using to demand that North Korea give up
its nuclear weapons. Yet President Trump and other “experts” believe they can
keep any war in Korea, as he has said, “over there.” <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><font size=2 face=Calibri><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:105%'>The idea that North Korea can’t reach
the United States with a thermonuclear weapon yet is a catastrophically
dangerous misconception. Here’s the lead paragraph from Professor Scott D.
Sagan’s article “The Korean Missile Crisis” in the Nov/Dec. 2017 <i><span
style='font-style:italic'>Foreign Affairs :<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><font size=2 face=Calibri><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:105%'>“It is time for the U.S. government
to admit that it has failed to prevent North Korea from acquiring nuclear
weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles that can reach the United
States…The gravest danger now is that North Korea, South Korea, and the United
States will stumble into a catastrophic war that none of them wants.”<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><font size=2 face=Calibri><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:105%'>We’re being dragged into a war with
North Korea by President Trump and everyone who follows his military orders,
and it’s time to start kicking and screaming! Trump et.al. are playing it like
it is a Western movie: the bad guys are holed up in the barn and threatening to
kill attackers and hostages, and the good guys are screaming ”Drop your weapons
and come out hands up—you’re surrounded and cut off from supplies!”<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><font size=2 face=Calibri><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:105%'>
The real world is an integrated global society utterly dependent on
interconnected, computer-dependent systems worldwide. Now North Korea has the
ability to use a high-altitude nuclear EMP weapon, one bomb, to damage or
destroy computerized civilization throughout the continental United States, and
in satellites in line of sight of the blast. This was the first thing mentioned
by the North Koreans when they tested what they said was their first
thermonuclear bomb on Sept 3 last year: now we could do a high-altitude EMP
attack!<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><font size=2 face=Calibri><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:105%'>
Also, China has strongly hinted in public that it would intervene to prevent
the U.S., from overthrowing the North Korean Government, if the U.S. launched a
first-strike on North Korea (see my post “China Draws Red Lines to Restrain
Both U.S. and North Korea”). China is fully able to disable the U.S. in many
ways, military, economic, and financial.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><font size=2 face=Calibri><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:105%'>
It is virtually unthinkable that North Korea would launch a first-strike
against the U.S. North Korea was leveled by U.S. bombers by 1953, and will do
anything to avoid being destroyed again. They clearly believe in classical
Nuclear Deterrence Theory: They believe only way they can deter overwhelming
attack by the United States is by having “Second-Strike Threat Credibility”,
defined as being able to strike the United States causing unacceptable losses
even if they suffer a U.S. first- strike completely disabling their nuclear
forces on land.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><font size=2 face=Calibri><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:105%'>Trump et.al. are blindly focused on
seizing land-based nuclear facilities in North Korea, ignoring nuclear weapons
and missiles possibly in orbit, on submarines, smuggled into the U.S., or
delivered some other way. Unfortunately, deterrence theory is effective only
against rational and sane commanders, and Trump seems simply not to believe in
thermonuclear EMP weapons. Question: Is this why North Korea has threatened to
do an atmospheric H-bomb test, which inevitably would put out some damaging
EMP, maybe a lot of it?<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><font size=2 face=Calibri><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:105%'>Let’s all cheer on the Koreans who
are struggling for peace in their homeland, and demand that the U.S.
immediately stop all war threats against North Korea. With the North Koreans
believing they absolutely need a nuclear force capable of reaching the U.S. to
effectively deter being attacked, and the U.S. threatening to attack unless
they give up their nuclear weapons, it’s a nightmare showdown that must stop to
prevent a war of “suicidal omnicide,” a thermonuclear exchange destroying the
U.S. and possibly much more. Let’s have a great time working in loving nonviolence
to end this threat to our lives and
homes. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><font size=2 face=Calibri><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:105%'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Calibri><span style='font-size:11.0pt;
line-height:105%'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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