[GPSCC-chat] Ed Ehmke's Lockheed/Trident Sentencing Statement

[Brian Good]

Ed got 10 days in jail.

His statement is here.  http://www.wevigil.org/

I've digested it below:


Lockheed Martin is the world’s largest arms manufacturer, the
largest 
manufacturer of nuclear missiles, and last produced a
commercial aircraft 
thirty years ago.  It spends millions in
political contributions, funding “think 
tanks” and in lobbying
–300 in Washington–not just to sell its weapons but 
to sell war
itself. This brings it annual sales of $40
billion, almost all from 
taxpayers.

Lockheed is the lead contractor for the Trident D5 nuclear
missile. The 
USA's 14 Trident-carrying submarines can each carry 24
D5′s, each with 
up to 8 independently targeted warheads. (The W88′s
are over 20 times
more powerful than the bomb that destroyed
Nagasaki.) 


Almost 40 years ago, Richard McSorley, a Jesuit theologian
teaching at 
Georgetown University, characterized nuclear weapons as
the taproot of 
evil in our time. Plants send taproots deep into the
ground for water and 
nourishment.  Nuclear militarism draws similarly
upon our emotions, needs, 
and material resources to feed and be fed
by a self-absorbed culture that 
is increasingly unable to look at and
beyond itself.  Our fears about our 
economic and physical security, our desire of
power--even our passive 
hopelessness in this world of video games,
consumer culture, and 
entertainment masquerading as news--keep us
living in the moment.  We 
quibble about the costs of health care,
education, preserving natural 
resources; and aid for the poor,
unemployed, and homeless; but we don't 
question nearly a trillion
dollars spent annually on wars, on weapons that 
could easily destroy
our planet, on drones that insulate us from the 
violence we inflict,
on nearly 1000 military bases and the thousands of 
soldiers and
mercenaries who people them.


Lockheed Martin is not solely responsible for all of this. We are.
 Lockheed 
and its cohorts thrive on our passivity. By turning a blind
eye, or fatalistically 
accepting the situation, we all are complicit.
Only by speaking and 
acting—peacefully–can we achieve peace. We
cannot be silenced.  We
cannot be silent.





 		 	   		   		 	   		   		 	   		  
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