NH #662: Belly of the Beast: LASG’s Greg Mello at DC Nuclear Deterrence Summit + NEW! ICAN Update

This Week’s Featured Interview:

• Greg Mello is Executive Director and one of the founders of the Los Alamos Study Group, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The group has worked for nuclear disarmament, environmental protection, social justice, and economic sustainability, with actions including policy research, environmental analysis, congressional education and lobbying, community organizing, and litigation.
  
  Recently, Greg took himself to the belly of the beast – the DC conference Nuclear Deterrence Summit 2024, for front-line purveyors of nuclear weapons components, self-serving justifications, and lobbying opportunities to grab taxpayer money while preparing the means to obliterate the world.
  
  To even walk into such an environment, Greg Mello shows himself to be a braver man than I. We spoke on Feb. 16, 2024.

A networking session, with trade booths, at the 2024 Nuclear Deterrence Summit in DC.
Each of those tables costs $6,000 – $7,500 for 90 minutes of branding. Logo keychains, anyone?

Links referenced in this interview:

• Los Alamos Study Group
• Call for Sanity, Not Nuclear Production- PLEASE SIGN!

NEW FEATURE: The ICAN Update – From the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

The ICAN Update – with Alistair Burnett, Susi Snyder

With this episode, Nuclear Hotseat introduces our first monthly report from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). Every month, we’ll present an update produced by ICAN and coming to us directly from their headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. It will contain cutting edge information on what’s being done to pass the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, as well as insights into the tactics and strategies being used – and what you can do to help the world get rid of nukes. A Nuclear Hotseat EXCLUSIVE.

Here’s Alistair Burnett, ICAN’s Head of Media, coming to us from ICAN’s Geneva, Switzerland headquarters, with this update on the campaign to get the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, or TPNW, enforced as international law. He’s joined by Susi Snyder, ICAN’s Programme Coordinator.

Links:

• Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan, upon winning Best Director at the BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) awards, shows that maybe he’s becoming aware of the world of us who protest against nuclear weapons and do not worship at the shrine of Oppy. Comments pertinent to the anti-nuclear movement start at 1:40:

• Karl Grossman, veteran award-winning environmnental journalist, was acknowledged for his outstanding independent journalism through that most telling of acknowledgements: an editorial cartoon (below). It even looks like him!