[Peace] Fwd: NOT GOODBYE - YET

Fri Mar 3 15:39:22 MST 2023

Folks,

I thought you might like to see this.  While I did not have the strong
friendship that Joe Gerson had with Dan, I was one of the organizers of
that first Deadly Connection conference and worked
on  a slide show (do you remember what they were!) on the same topic that
featured Dan.

Tony

Steering Committee
Watertown Citizens for Peace, Justice and the Environment
P.O. Box 1194
Watertown, MA 02471-1194
watertowncitizens at gmail.com
www.facebook.com/WatertownCitizensPJE
http://watertowncitizens.org
https://twitter.com/WCPJE

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Joseph Gerson, The Campaign for Peace, Disarmament & Common Security <
jgerson80 at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Mar 2, 2023 at 4:02 PM
Subject: NOT GOODBYE - YET
To: <watertowncitizens at gmail.com>

Heart Breaking News From Daniel Ellsberg
Friends,

I write to share heart breaking news from Daniel Ellsberg. He has been
diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given just months to live. Typical of
Dan, he is resolved to do all that he can in the time that remains to him
to continue working to prevent catastrophic nuclear war and is encouraging
us to do much the same and more.

I am profoundly indebted to Dan, first for his courageous sharing of the
Pentagon Papers, the Pentagon’s secret history Vietnam War decision making.
Risking what he expected to be life in prison for sharing those secrets, he
helped to end that genocidal war. Just over four decades ago, Dan helped me
to understand what we came to call “The Deadly Connection”, the U.S.
practice of preparing and threatening to initiate nuclear war to reinforce
its miliary interventions/imperialist wars. Dan spoke in numerous
conferences and rallies that I organized, including the first Deadly
Connection conference.

Over the decades Dan has played leading roles in working to prevent nuclear
war, opposing U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Ukraine, as well as
being out in front in support of whistle blowers like himself who are
essential to the preservation and creation of democracy.

As Dan writes below “Not Goodbye – Yet.” Please take a couple of moments to
read his valedictory message, and as we can, let’s find ways to thank Dan
for all that he has given to us and the world.

Joseph
Dear friends and supporters,

I have difficult news to impart. On February 17, without much warning, I
was diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer on the basis of a CT scan
and an MRI. (As is usual with pancreatic cancer--which has no early
symptoms--it was found while looking for something else, relatively minor).
I’m sorry to report to you that my doctors have given me three to six
months to live. Of course, they emphasize that everyone's case is
individual; it might be more, or less.

I have chosen not to do chemotherapy (which offers no promise) and I have
assurance of great hospice care when needed. Please know: right now, I am
not in any physical pain, and in fact, after my hip replacement surgery in
late 2021, I feel better physically than I have in years! Moreover, my
cardiologist has given me license to abandon my salt-free diet of the last
six years. This has improved my quality of life dramatically: the pleasure
of eating my former favorite foods! And my energy level is high. Since my
diagnosis, I've done several interviews and webinars on Ukraine, nuclear
weapons, and first amendment issues, and I have two more scheduled this
week.

As I just told my son Robert: he's long known (as my editor) that I work
better under a deadline. It turns out that I live better under a deadline!

I feel lucky and grateful that I've had a wonderful life far beyond the
proverbial three-score years and ten. ( I’ll be ninety-two on April 7th.) I
feel the very same way about having a few months more to enjoy life with my
wife and family, and in which to continue to pursue the urgent goal of
working with others to avert nuclear war in Ukraine or Taiwan (or anywhere
else).

When I copied the Pentagon Papers in 1969, I had every reason to think I
would be spending the rest of my life behind bars. It was a fate I would
gladly have accepted if it meant hastening the end of the Vietnam War,
unlikely as that seemed (and was). Yet in the end, that action—in ways I
could not have foreseen, due to Nixon’s illegal responses—did have an
impact on shortening the war. In addition, thanks to Nixon's crimes, I was
spared the imprisonment I expected, and I was able to spend the last fifty
years with Patricia and my family, and with you, my friends.

What's more, I was able to devote those years to doing everything I could
think of to alert the world to the perils of nuclear war and wrongful
interventions: lobbying, lecturing, writing and joining with others in acts
of protest and non-violent resistance.

I wish I could report greater success for our efforts. As I write,
"modernization" of nuclear weapons is ongoing in all nine states that
possess them (the US most of all). Russia is making monstrous threats to
initiate nuclear war to maintain its control over Crimea and the
Donbas--like the dozens of equally illegitimate first-use threats that the
US government has made in the past to maintain its military presence in
South Korea, Taiwan, South Vietnam, and (with the complicity of every
member state then in NATO ) West Berlin. The current risk of nuclear war,
over Ukraine, is as great as the world has ever seen.

China and India are alone in declaring no-first-use policies. Leadership in
the US, Russia, other nuclear weapons states, NATO and other US allies have
yet to recognize that such threats of initiating nuclear war--let alone the
plans, deployments and exercises meant to make them credible and more ready
to be carried out--are and always have been immoral and insane: under any
circumstances, for any reasons, by anyone or anywhere.

It is long past time--but not too late!--for the world's publics at last to
challenge and resist the willed moral blindness of their past and current
leaders. I will continue, as long as I'm able, to help these
efforts.  There's tons more to say about Ukraine and nuclear policy, of
course, and you'll be hearing from me as long as I'm here.

As I look back on the last sixty years of my life, I think there is no
greater cause to which I could have dedicated my efforts. For the last forty
years we have known that nuclear war between the US and Russia would mean
nuclear winter: more than a hundred million tons of smoke and soot from
firestorms in cities set ablaze by either side, striking either first or
second, would be lofted into the stratosphere where it would not rain out
and would envelope the globe within days. That pall would block up to 70%
of sunlight for years, destroying all harvests worldwide and causing death
by starvation for most of the humans and other vertebrates on earth.

So far as I can find out, this scientific near-consensus has had virtually
no effect on the Pentagon's nuclear war plans or US/NATO (or Russian)
nuclear threats. (In a like case of disastrous willful denial by many
officials, corporations and other Americans, scientists have known for over
three decades that the catastrophic climate change now underway--mainly but
not only from burning fossil fuels--is fully comparable to US-Russian
nuclear war as another existential risk.)

I'm happy to know that millions of people--including all those friends and
comrades to whom I address this message!--have the wisdom, the dedication
and the moral courage to carry on with these causes, and to work
unceasingly for the survival of our planet and its creatures.

I'm enormously grateful to have had the privilege of knowing and working
with such people, past and present. That's among the most treasured aspects
of my very privileged and very lucky life. I want to thank you all for the
love and support you have given me in so many ways. Your dedication,
courage, and determination to act have inspired and sustained my own
efforts.

My wish for you is that at the end of your days you will feel as much joy
and gratitude as I do now.

Love, Dan

Campaign For Peace, Disarmament & Common Security
Campaign for Peace Disarmament and Common Security | 4 Washburn
Street, Watertown,
MA 02472
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