Anti-Nuclear, Political Activist

Raytheon Missile and Defense contract a bad idea

A recent article in Defense news came to my attention thanks to Carly Brook of WPSR, staff support to Washington Against Nuclear Weapons Coalition. Our work to abolish nuclear weapons is a David vs. Goliath story. Raytheon corporation has been a primary private sector supplier to the Pentagon for decades. I have a personal connection to Raytheon through my uncle Thomas Hope Johnson who served as vice-chairman of research for the company during my college years.

Raytheon has just been named the sole provider of a Long Range Standoff Weapons Program. This story probably won’t make the national news although some Members of Congress are asking questions about this decision.

 Air-Launched Cruise Missile for a Nuclear Weapons System
Airmen from Minot Air Force Base, N.D., prepare an AGM-86B Air-Launched Cruise Missile for a Nuclear Weapons System Evaluation program test flight on April 10, 2013. (Tech. Sgt. Mark Bell/Air Force)

I decided to send a letter to the current head of the Missile and Defense arm of Raytheon. Here is what I had to say:

Dear President Wesley D. Kremer,

In your role as head of Raytheon Missiles & Defense, you have the power to stop the escalation of nuclear weaponry across the globe. The United States already has enough nuclear firepower to destroy the planet. Other countries with nuclear weapon arsenals know this. We have nothing further to prove.

Your words, “LRSO will be a critical contributor to the air-launched portion of America’s nuclear triad,” speak of Raytheon’s ability to manage the risk of arming aircraft with a weapon that could be either nuclear or conventional. This addition to a conventional aircraft could unnecessarily raise the risk of miscalculation, triggering a nuclear war. [I quote the recent article in Defense News by Valerie Insinna. 4-20-2020]

I write to you as the niece of Dr. Thomas Hope Johnson who retired from his position as Vice President of Research at Raytheon in 1965. Uncle Tom began his career at Brookhaven working with the Manhattan Project’s nuclear physicists to split the atom. During the Second World War, he turned to military projects. As chief physicist at the Ballistic Research Laboratories from 1942 to 1947, he measured the blast force of bombs and used microwaves to record movements of bullets and other projectiles.

Two years after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he became vice president of research with the Atomic Energy Commission to discover peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

Do you and your scientists have that youthful excitement in the power of microwaves and nuclear energy I witnessed in my uncle when I was a freshman at Bryn Mawr College? I visited him and my aunt in Georgetown, DC in 1955. He was working at Raytheon at the time. At breakfast, he emerged from the kitchen with the grin and gleam of a ten-year-old with a new discovery. He opened a mason jar full of freeze-dried strawberries. “Betsy, someday you will open a box of cereal, pour milk on it and these little red flakes will bloom into strawberries.”

He, Leo Szilard and other physicists from the Manhattan Project were horrified that nuclear fission had been used to kill millions of people. They formed the Council for a Livable World in 1962, determined to educate our citizens and our government about the destructive course of nuclear armament buildup. Surely the current mission of Raytheon could be life-giving instead of life-destroying.

Raytheon’s overall mission states that the company can be trusted to do the right thing and act with integrity. How is your division operating in harmony with this larger mission? How is a revenue stream of 60 Billion and a mission to provide the industry’s most advanced end-to-end solutions to detect, track and engage threats a trusted way forward? That 60 billion could be spent in diplomacy and arms reduction rather than producing weapons we never plan to use.

You have the power to change the “Peace Through Strength” model. The world needs Raytheon’s leadership for peace, not war.

Elisabeth Johnson Bell

The Washington Against Nuclear Weapons Coalition needs you, dear Reader, and your organization to join us. We must increase the voices in Washington State that urge, request, demand that our Members of Congress stop spending money on nuclear weapons. Please join www.WANWCoalition.org

If you are curious about how my Uncle Tom influenced my work in the anti-nuclear movement, check out my memoir, Open Borders: a Personal Story of Love, Loss and Anti-war Activism.

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Anti-Nuclear

Book talk June 16th

Come: discuss way to end the threat of nuclear war. Sunday, June 16th, 6:30 p.m., Woodland Park Presbytrian Church, 225 N 70th St, Seattle, WA 98103 Near #5 bus.  Seattle Fellowship of Reconciliation program with Betsy Bell in a Book Reading and Discussion.  Betsy’s book, “Open Borders: A personal story of love, loss and anti-war activism” describes how she and her husband Don Bell, advocated with many others, for a peaceful end to the Cold War through People to People friendship.  All are welcome! Free, an offering will be taken.  Info 206-789-5565 or wwfor@wwfor.org

WE DON’T WANT WAR!  And here is some INFO and quick ACTIONS you can take.

INFO

Senator Udall’s S.1039, the “Prevention of Unconstitutional War with Iran Act of 2019” – has 14 co-sponsors but Washington Senators Murray and Cantwell have NOT co-sponsored yet.  See https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/1039/cosponsors

Its House companion H.R.2354 has 18 co-sponsors. Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer can put this bill on the House floor for a vote any time they want. More co-sponsors will help pressure Pelosi and Hoyer to put the bill on the floor for a vote.  None of the WA state Reps has co-sponsored yet!  See https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/2354/cosponsors

Senator Merkley’s S.J.Res.11, the “Prohibiting Unauthorized Military Action in Venezuela Resolution of 2019,” has five co-sponsors, see https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-joint-resolution/11/cosponsors .  Washington Senators Murray and Cantwell have NOT co-sponsored yet

Its House companion H.R.1004 has 72 co-sponsors.   See https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1004/cosponsors .  Rep. Jayapal is the only WA state co-sponsor.  Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer can put this bill on the floor for a vote any time they want.

ACTIONS:  Let your Congressional reps know you want them to support these bills!  (and thank Rep. Jayapal) You can leave a message for any Senator or Representative at the Congressional Switchboard 202-224-3121.

Contact Sen. Murry https://www.murray.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/contactme (please cosponsor S.1039 and S.J.Res.11)

Contact Sen. Cantwell https://www.cantwell.senate.gov/contact (please cosponsor S.1039 and S.J.Res.11)

Contact Rep Jayapal https://jayapal.house.gov/contact/ (thanks for co-sponsoring H.R.1004, please sign on to H.R.2354)

Other Congressional contacts can be found at the League of Women Voters wonderful “They Represent You” directory, https://www.seattlelwv.org/uploads/1/1/7/8/117877553/try_web.pdf (scroll down to pages 33 and 34).

Together we can change from agression to peace-making. It takes every voice.  Betsy Bell, author and peace-activist

dalai lama

Anti-Nuclear, Political Activist

conventional or nuclear bombs–what’s the difference?

This just came across my desk. You need to know about it. Our planet depends on us for survival.

Anti-nuclear weapons groups of every ilk have written a letter to congress to help our elected officials understand the strategic difference between a nuclear weapons and a conventional weapon. The risk of starting an irreversible conflagration between hostile nations increases exponentially with the deployment of so-called low-yield nuclear war heads. Please read the document and consider expressing your opinion to your Member of Congress (MOC). Make a call; make a difference.

2019 NGO stop W76-2 ltr-1
Anti-Nuclear, Political Activist

Holy Saturday Heartbreaking Grief

News of Death

Last night they came with news of death,
not knowing what I would say.

I wanted to say,
“The green wind is running through the fields,
making the grass lie flat.”

I wanted to say,
“The apple blossom flakes like ash,
covering the orchard wall.” 

I wanted to say,
“The fish floats belly up in the slow stream,
stepping stones to the dead.”  

They asked if I would sleep that night,
I said I did not know.

For this loss I could not speak,
the tongue lay idle in a great darkness,
the heart was strangely open,
the moon had gone,
and it was then
when I said, “He is no longer here,”
that the night put its arm around me
and all the white stars turned bitter with grief.

David Whyte, River Flow (Many Rivers Press: 2007), 313 published today in Richard Rohr’s meditations.

I’ve been asking myself why so few movements, presidential candidates, justice organizations like the Church Council or Faith Action Network or Earth Ministry–to name a few local to Seattle–have put the banning of nuclear weapons first and foremost on their agenda? I think we are in deep denial. We speed past Holy Saturday, that awful presence of death counting on the truth of resurrection.

The Trident submarines proliferated since the first one steamed into Puget Sound in 1981 and scared many of us into action against it. When I tell my Open Borders audiences that there are eight of those submarines over there, just twenty miles away, their eyes open, then glaze over, then drop to their lap or the floor; their shoulders drop. Some may shake it off. Anyone under fifty has lived their whole life under the potential cloud of nuclear winter.

We can not find true resurrection unless we acknowledge the death that is happening to our planet right now and the threat of death hanging over us. 

Can we grieve together? Knash our teeth, beat our breasts, weep harsh, wet, unstopable tears of grief for the state we are all, everyone of us, from here to North Korea, to Pakistan, to Iran, to Russia, to India, all of us? Standing in the darkness, let the night put its arm around us, comfort us, so that through our grief we can open our eyes to the steps we can each take, however small and seemingly insignificant, to bring life back into our future.

Join me with Washington Against Nuclear Weapons. Together we can awake from denial and change the future.

Act II of the Great Tridium of Easter

Betsy

Anti-Nuclear, Buy Open Borders

The Nuns, the Priest and the Bomb

A good group of people came out to The Nuns, The Priest, and the Bomb, playing last Friday at Meaningful Movies in Gig Harbor. The organizers invited me to bring books, read from Open Borders and field the after-movie discussion. The movie featured dangerous direct non-violent action by elderly people who entered high-security places: Bangor’s Trident Submarine Base in Bangor, WA and Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee. The audience applauded these actions. They favored increased travel into “enemy” countries and friendships across borders, the subject of my memoir. Over half-dozen people went home with my book tucked in their pockets, hopefully, to be inspired to move from fear to action. There is a No First Use bill awaiting votes in both houses of Congress right now. Why not call your member of Congress and encourage him or her to sign on to this bill? It’s easy to do by calling the Congressional Hotline: (866) 255-3207 Watch this TED talk by a nuclear scientist if you aren’t convinced we need to do something NOW.

Watch this and then do something. You’ll be glad you did.

Together, we can stop this madness. Citizens made a difference before. We can do it again. That’s the way Democracy works. Betsy