i've been enjoying the privilege of being included in
mailings from J Truman. Of late, with the "hot"
--ratitor
Is the Entire Press Corrupt?
Asian Annihilation Bombing
International Nuclear Mafia's Lastest Puppets Unveiled
story, i've become that much more
appreciative of J's keen, incisive, in-it-for/over-the-long-haul analysis
of what's really going on here, and what we who oppose
such nuclear-envy transgressions must do if mankind is
ever to succeed in jumping off the annihilation-envy
merry-go-round before it makes its final revolution in to oblivion,
taking all the precious remaining infinitude of Life on Earth with
it.
Included below are a selection of some of the more salient
observations J has to share on what the true meaning and implications are of
the explosions fracturing our Mother Earth in Asia. It is incumbent
upon everyone who apprehends the actual dynamics of this situation
to do everything possible to help others understand precisely "who"
the true "loose cannon", as well as the de-facto leader, of this
"problem" actually is. In the best sense, J Truman upholds
the tradition of journalists/writers/editors like
George Seldes,
honoring the same credo that was Seldes guiding light:
"If ever the facts are presented fairly and honestly, truth
will take care of itself."
[W]hen it comes to news which will affect you, your daily life,
your job, your relation to other peoples, your thinking on
economic and social problems, and, more important today, your
going to war and risking your life for a great ideal, then you
cannot trust about 98 percent (or perhaps 99 1/2 percent) of the
big newspaper and big magazine press of America.
© 1994 by George Seldes and Randolph T. Holhut.
Other Observations :
ToC
- NPT extension forced Indian decision
http://www.webpage.com/hindu/daily/980520/02/02200005.htm
Date: Thu, 21 May 1998
Subject: Very good article on NPT and India for discussionOne of the best historical articles I have seen on India's long term position on arms control and disarmament.
India's position on the dangers and unacceptable position of allowing the Perm 5 to maintain nuclear weapons forever, has always been a key national policy no matter what government ruled India. It has also been so strongly held and supported by the Indian people, that it was clear to anyone who cared to look into the situation with the 1996 Test Ban Treaty debate, that India's position either had to be addressed, discussed, and some changes made to the Test Ban draft, or that India would sooner or later wreck the treaty.
Instead, the decision was made to ignore India's concerns, not to even talk about them, ram the text dictated by the Perm 5 nuclear weapons states through, sign the Test Ban at the U.N., "force India to come on board", and then go have big celebrations over winning a Test Ban. By doing that, the Perm 5 and all other Test Ban Treaty supporters sealed the fate of the treaty and insured India would see it as justification of their long held position on the subject, and would before long do just what India did -- test!
It is important to understand this 40-year-old position of India and to realize it doesn't matter what government rules India. It is Indian policy. Regardless of which group in Indian society is in power -- be it a government of the Gandhi family, or the BJP Hindu government -- their actions on this policy and their actions based on this policy will only be different in degree. Likewise any solution to the present crisis will have to be made with this position understood and taken into account. Not ignored as it was in 1995 with the NPT, or in 1996 with the Test Ban. Otherwise this position of India will sooner or later kill both.
J Truman
- India for Talks with Pakistan, China after N-Tests
was (but no longer) at http://customnews.cnn.com/cnews/pna.show_story?p_art_id=2600205&p_section_name=World&p_art_type=330237&p_subcat=Pakistan&p_category=Asia
ASCII text local copy
Date: Sat, 23 May 1998
Subject: INDIA STILL WILL NOT SIGN THE TEST BAN!Please note carefully the statements made by India toward the bottom of this article! There have been a lot of reports in the media this week that now India is ready to sign the Test Ban Treaty, and have left the impression that means sign it as is!
This conclusion is totally incorrect! India has not said it would sign the Test-ban treaty as it exists now. Rather that it would consider signing a new treaty written without the clauses and terms that India has always objected to, and which the Perm 5 members of the nuclear weapons club have refused to change. So we are left in the position we have always been with the current Test Ban: change the text, add a firm promise by all states to get rid of nuclear weapons by a set date, no laboratory experiments and so on, or no signing by India.
The Indian position has not changed!!
J Truman
ToC
- Extracts of Pakistani Prime Minister's Speech on Nuclear Row
was (but no longer) at http://customnews.cnn.com/cnews/pna.show_story?p_art_id=2599674&p_section_name=World&p_art_type=330237&p_subcat=Pakistan&p_category=Asia
ASCII text local copy
Date: Sat, 23 May 1998
Subject: Pakistan clearly rejects the Test-ban too!"The balance of power in the region has been violently tilted. Under these circumstances, our undivided focus must be on the preservation of our national security interests.Apart from threatening Pakistan, India is now blackmailing the world by offers of bargain on the CTBT (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty). We believe that the Indian actions have rendered the non-proliferation regime and instruments such as NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) and CTBT irrelevant.
The Indian tests have posed new challenges and dilemmas in the field of non-proliferation. Fresh thinking is now needed on these issues...."
These comments from Pakistan's Prime Minister's news conference of today clearly shows that Pakistan like India has no intention of joining the current Test-ban either.
It is vital that those of us involved in opposing nuclear testing understand this and come to grips with it, even if we don't like what we hear!! We need to realize that the point is to prevent a resumption of testing by the other 5 nuclear weapons states, try and stop any more tests by India, and to do what we can to stop anyone else from testing. And to do that while working to get a Test Ban treaty everyone will sign. The real issue is to save the concept of a viable Test Ban, not focus only on trying to save the current treaty that is likely dead. Without both India and Pakistan that treaty can not ever enter into force and they are not going to sign it as is!
If we are going to have any hope of stopping a full resumption of nuclear testing worldwide, we have to understand that the battle for a Test Ban is far from over and that saving the basic concept of a Test Ban is what is really at stake here, and not just trying to find a way to force India and Pakistan to sign the currently proposed treaty, a treaty neither of them is going to sign. In the case of India the prime reason it won't sign is founded on the fact that the Perm 5 nuclear weapons club has no right to force anybody to do anything as long as they refuse to even discuss giving up their nuclear weapons and development programs. Thus the more we try and force India to sign the current treaty the more we do nothing but prove India's point, which has been a part of their nation's -- not any specific Indian government's -- policy since 1954!
We must concentrate on saving the Test Ban concept itself and the dreams of humanity that go with it.
J Truman
ToC
- India, Pakistan took different routes along nuclear road
was (but no longer) at: http://cnn.com/WORLD/asiapcf/9805/27/building.the.bomb.ap/
enhanced version of the above: http://www.envirolink.org/orgs/hecweb/archive/nucs/canada.htm
Date: Wed, 27 May 1998
Subject: Good Background Article
"India, whose nuclear program relies on plutonium from reactors, got a jump-start from President Eisenhower's 1953 "Atoms for Peace" plan, which spread nuclear technology to nations that agreed not to use it for military purposes. "For those of you in California, Nevada, Utah, and Idaho, you might note that we are soon to be blessed with shipments of the highly radioactive spent fuel from many of the foreign reactors Eisenhower peddled with his "Atoms for Peace" program, They will be sent from the Bay area to INNEL for storage until a final disposal site is built. Shipments start this month.
Needless to say, we are not hearing about the history of these shipments, nor how the program they belonged to started the process that has lead to this current crisis. But most importantly we are not being reminded by the media that the whole purpose of the Atoms For Peace program was a PR campaign to defuse international and domestic demands for a Test Ban!
Monte Bright
DownwindersToC
- India needs to conduct more N-tests to acquire weapons capability
http://www.dailystarnews.com/199805/27/n8052713.htm#BODY5
Date: Thu, 28 May 1998
Subject:VERY RELEVANT ARTICLE -- Count on more tests!A most relevant article that needs to be understood.
There is a very relevant point raised in this article! It always took the US between 8 and 12 nuclear tests to perfect a fully functioning weapons system past anything other than a simple bomb to drop out of an airplane. The more special the weapons system like those for missile warheads, the more the need to test. Over time computer system and data from extensive past tests -- like 1500+ U.S. tests -- could allow for new weapons without full scale testing, but not with 100% certainty they will perform as planned.
Russia had the same problem and close to the same ratio of tests to perfected weapon.
Therefore India would likely have to conduct more tests or risk not being able to fine-tune its weapons for various uses and delivery systems. Pakistan on the other hand doesn't have that big of a problem in this regard since it is using a proven bomb design already proof-tested by China and adaptable to sit atop missiles also based on a design obtained from China.
India may say it has done enough tests and doesn't need any more, but the truth is that they likely will have to use Pakistan's tests and threats of putting on missiles as excuse to test a few more times. Pakistan likewise can't match India's claim for having a full fledged 2-stage H-bomb, and so will do the same for more tests of their own.
J Truman
ToC
- Canada's unwitting role in latest nuclear race
http://www.thestar.com/thestar/back_issues/ED19980529/news/980529NEW16_FO-BOMB29.html
http://cnn.com/WORLD/asiapcf/9805/27/building.the.bomb.ap/
http://www.envirolink.org/orgs/hecweb/archive/nucs/canada.htm
Date: Fri, 29 May 1998
Subject: WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM OUR FRIENDS -- THE REST OF THE STORY!A most useful source of facts from today's Toronto Star. Everyone talks about nuclear non-proliferation but everyone continues to make big bucks spreading the necessary technology around the world while saying don't you dare! Reactors from Canada and the USA, missile technology via China via campaign contributions via the USA, nuclear capable jets from Russia, and for Pakistan actual bomb designs from China.
And we can't understand why a lot of the third world think our sacred arms control agreements are worthless, and why they speak of disarmament instead of arms control?
This is also why sanctions against India and Pakistan are likely little more than a short-term joke. There is too much money to be made spreading this technology around.
If the public does not want global nuclear proliferation then the public has to be willing to step forward and demand total and universal nuclear disarmament, and we in the activist community must be willing to reach out to the public at large and undertake the slow and difficult process of education and organizing required to insure public involvement. If not, the money will keep on rolling in and the nuclear weapons technology will keep on rolling out.
J Truman
See Also:
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/national/980607/1768057.html
"Why Candus are bomb kits", Sunday 7 June 1998ToC
- Nevada officials concerned about recent nuclear tests
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nevada/1998/may/29/507273957.html
Date: Fri, 29 May 1998
Subject: IMPORTANT! Slowly setting the stage for US Tests!Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said, "I don't think there is any need whatsoever to proceed with underground testing at this stage, although I think it is important we set an example for the rest of the world by testing the safety and reliability of our weaponry."
"At this stage" is probably the only factual statement made by those officials quoted in this article, and thank you Mark and Mary for pinning them all down to do it! The rest of the official's quotes in this article is, pardon my un-PC choice of words, pure BS!
Please do not forget for a single moment that one of the promises -- "safeguards" -- both Bush and Clinton made and the Congress wrote into the moratorium legislation, insisted when they stopped full-scale nuclear testing that the U.S. DOE/NV was "To retain a capacity to immediately resume testing at the Nevada Test Site should the President determine it to be in the national interests and so informs the Congress"!
This malarkey about two years at least, or 18 months if absolutely necessary, or war having to be declared first, is just that, pure malarkey!
Another "safeguard" is that if other nations continue to conduct nuclear tests, the United States shall be free to resume nuclear testing of its own!
The actions and statements of Nevada's Congressional Delegation and good old "Derek Scammell, spokesman for the Department of Energy" are nothing more than a trial balloon, and the best name for this here balloon is, "Not at this stage".
The U.S. can resume underground nuclear testing at any time the President so orders, and the capacity to do so immediately is U.S. law!!! That is the problem and the danger with this current crisis. It offers a wonderful excuse, that sooner or later will be utilized!
J Truman
--Which has been done explicitly as of June 8th: http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/1998/Jun-06-Sat-1998/news/7631174.html "Senate OKs funds for subcritical tests" --ratitor
ToC
- Thinking about the Unthinkable: Nuclear War in South Asia
was (but no longer) at: http://customnews.cnn.com/cnews/pna.show_story?p_art_id=2615468&p_section_name=World&p_art_type=330237&p_subcat=India&p_category=Asia
ASCII text local copy
Date: Sat, 30 May 1998
Subject: SOME PERSONAL THOUGHT AT THE END OF A LONG, LONG DAY!
Bigger bombs could threaten people with radiation sickness and death for miles downwind, Taylor said.And fallout, of course, is likely to spread worldwide through the air and water. The effects of radiation from Hiroshima and the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster, including birth defects, were far-reaching and may not yet be fully understood.
The world already has weathered fallout from dozens of above-ground nuclear blasts, including more than 100 test blasts in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan alone. Environmentalists estimate those tests exposed 1.5 million people to radiation; the exact toll there remains unclear as well.
All;
At the end of a long, long day of being an anti-nuclear testing activist and watching the nuclear crisis in So. Asia worsen almost hourly, one last article hits my computer screen at the same time a strong wind starts blowing in the latest thunderstorm. As I read it the storm's lightning flashes suddenly lit up THAT SECTION of the western sky that will always remain a too vivid reminder of my own childhood. THAT SECTION where as a child growing up I watched the skies of my home town of Enterprise, Utah suddenly come aglow with the unnatural flash of that day's nuclear bomb test at the Nevada Test Site 120 miles away.
At that point my focus on my work and reading off the computer as an anti-nuclear activist suddenly went out, replaced by that of a small boy living downwind of one of the most horrible aspects of 20th Century Reality. My focus was now that of a frightened and angry downwinder.
Lines in the article forced my eyes away from the screen to some of the items of personal memories I keep on the wall behind my computer monitor. They fell on a photo taken by my longtime companion of me in the company of two other downwinders on the steps of Kazakhstan, one a Russian with a scar where his cancerous thyroid had been removed, and the other a beautiful little Kazakh girl deformed and retarded. Off in the distance were the flat steps leading off into the main Soviet testing ground. One American, One Russian, and one Kazakh, all there because of one thing we shared in common. We all had lived in lands where to quote the AEC, "The tall Mushrooms grow".
It set me off and made me so terribly angry and frustrated upon reading the remainder of the article on my screen.
Pardon me for getting emotional, but I would like to share with you those thoughts and those frustrations that raced around inside my head. I hope they do not offend, and that they will be read in the context they occurred with the understanding that I feel a need at this moment to speak out as a downwinder responding to the memories of those "tall mushrooms" of so long ago, and out of the inner fear that I and the rest of us just might be forced to see them grow again.
Carefully read through this article. It clearly shows the problem we have all got to work to overcome if we are ever to successfully marshall public opposition to and proper media attention of this worsening crisis. The problem is nobody "gets" the point on fallout from past testing: how much of the world it exposed, and how many it killed, and the lies accompanied and followed it!
Here we stand on the edge of the worst nuclear crisis the world has seen since the Cuban missile crisis, and this is the garbage the public is being fed about the fallout dangers!
Note the total lack of any understanding that 160 million Americans were exposed to just about the same level of radiation, and it sickened and killed, and that the government lied about it!
Worse is the reference to the movement;
Environmentalists estimate those (In Kazakhstan) tests exposed 1.5 million people to radiation; the exact toll there remains unclear as well.Nonsense! Those tests and those elsewhere in the Soviet Union exposed damned near every single living Russian of every shape, color, gender, and ethnic strain -- just like the U.S. population -- to just about as much radiation no matter where they lived.
Here in this country, the "Environmentalists" insist on playing the same "indigenous peoples card", instead of dealing with the awful reality that fallout from nuclear testing is color and ethnic -blind -- it is an equal opportunity victimizer and kills whoever and wherever it goes!
Why is this the real problem? Simply because fallout worldwide from testing killed likely on the order of tens of millions to date, and millions more injured who are not yet dead from it. Wholesale mass murder is what it is, and the public "needs" to know that right now! Especially when they "ALL" no matter who they are, where they live, how they live, or what color they are, Are already its victims. Only by realizing that and all that goes with it, is there "any" hope the public here, or worldwide will stand up to their governments and say no before those governments blow them up at the worst, or use this as a "wonderful" excuse to get back to nuclear weapons development business as usual!
Likewise the activist community has got to stop playing organizational politics, and stop playing the race card. The movement can no longer play the indigenous peoples game simply because it is more "PC" and most specifically because it is "more fundable". To say nuclear testing's victims have always been indigenous peoples is not only incorrect, but is a sign of total stupidity on the issue, as the only indigenous people victimized by the testing was -- and are -- the human race! And the human race better get that point real soon and come to terms with the fact that on that one level at least we all share one thing in common on this planet. We all carry a little bit of the Nevada Test Site, the Semipalatinsk Test Site, The Lop Nor Test Site, the British and French Test Sites and soon perhaps the Indian and Pakistan Test Sites inside all our bodies.
This does not mean that what happened to people forced from their homes -- first for the factories, then for the testing sites, or the reasons why testing sites were put where they were -- are not important, or are insignificant, or to excuse examples of environmental and atomic racism. They are all too clear examples of the utter sickness present in the minds of those responsible. Pick on those least able to defend themselves first and then slowly and steadily expand the circle to those you don't really give a damn about! Just like Joe Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Jim Crow, or George Armstrong Custer!
Those stories and those histories and those facts must be exposed and justice demanded right along with ALL the rest of the terrible legacy of nuclear testing. All it means is that to stop the nuclear arms race the truth has to come out, the full truth, the complete truth, and not a truth focused to look better organizationally or politically. Because if it is, it only plays into the hands of those responsible for the testing in the first place, and is a "god-send" to them in helping to minimize the open public exposure of the full extent of the horrors they unleased.
No group of victims is better, more worthy, less worthy, or better to focus and raise funds on. We are all one race -- the human race -- and we are all testing's victims. That is the one truth that when our race knows it, we will truly be free and no more, never ever again, will those damned tall mushrooms and their deadly spores carried on the winds to sicken, kill and mame, be allowed to grow anywhere on this planet we all share as home!
As always;
J Truman
ToC
- Pakistan detonates 1 more nuclear device
was (but no longer) at: http://customnews.cnn.com/cnews/pna.show_story?p_art_id=2616699&p_section_name=&p_art_type=330237
ASCII text local copy
Date: Sat, 30 May 1998
Subject: Pakistan Explodes another bomb!So much for all the lead headlines in U.S. papers from the New York Times on down about India and Pakistan moving away from more threats and toward talks -- a have-a-nice-weekend-folks flavor. Knowing full well another test was extremely likely to occur, and knowing things were not getting better, such reporting is not acceptable and is rather chilling.
We still expect one more test -- or claim of a test -- by Pakistan this weekend or very early next week so they can claim they have matched India not only to the letter of how many it has tested in its history -- 6 -- but has gone 1 better for a total of 7. We also expect either today's, or most likely the 7th will be the largest of Pakistan's tests and will be claimed to be a hydrogen bomb, again to match India.
We feel strongly that the words of President John Kennedy from the summer of 1963 as he pondered making his famous speech that lead to the rapid signing of the Limited Test Ban Treaty apply equally as this summer begins:
We test, and then they test, and then we have to test again, and you build up until someone uses them!
J Truman
ToC
- U.S. learns from nuclear tests
Explosions tell much about capabilities of India, Pakistan
http://www.msnbc.com/news/169189.asp
Date: Sun, 31 May 1998
Subject: Very interesting report to keep in mindThe attached report is very important because if the claims it makes are true, then it clearly shows why we are probably not yet finished with testing by either India or Pakistan, especially Pakistan.
From personal experience I can also see that in reality things did not go as they were claimed by the media with regard to Pakistan's tests. During the Reagan years the issue of test verification via seismic signals from underground testing was a major debate, along with charges all the time of the Soviet's exceeding the 150 Kiloton limit among other things. Because of this, and in an effort to monitor worldwide testing activity, Downwinders spent considerable time and resources gathering seismic data from around the world and establishing network contacts at various seismic facilities in order to analyze and understand what was actually occurring.
As a result some of us became very familiar with reading the seismic signals from underground tests. We also received extensive coaching and personal training from some of the world's leading experts on the subject. Based on that, after studying the signals given off by Pakistan's tests, it is clear to me that there were not five explosions, and no more than two at the most, and most likely only one. The yield estimates place them far behind those of India and not over 15 kilotons at most.
Because of this I would lean towards accepting the claim in this article that Pakistan had major problems and not all their weapons fired as planned, and those that did had some problems reaching planned yield. Therefore no matter what Pakistan says about having finished its series, I would expect additional tests fairly soon as they try to solve their technical problems. I also would expect an attempt by them to match India by exploding a full fledged H-bomb.
Pakistan claimed its devices were "boosted fission weapons", which is a weapon where the core contains a small amount of tritium that when the fission core -- plutonium or uranium 235 -- undergoes a chain reaction, it is heated and compressed, allowing for some limited fusion reactions which boost the yield dramatically. Most US and Russian weapons used this approach almost from the beginning which allowed a bomb like that used in WWII to have its yield boosted from, say, 20 Kilotons to 100 or more depending on how it was designed. This is not a full fledged 2-stage hydrogen device, but is a quick way to get a bigger bang for the bucks.
Clearly Pakistan's low maximum yield rules out "boosted weapons".
Bottom line in all this is that both sides are still going to have to do more actual tests to perfect weapons systems more advanced than simple gravity bombs dropped for aircraft like the U.S. first did, and I doubt either nation is going to stop now until they reach the goal of usable, proven weapons to put on their missiles, and especially until they can have significant yields in the 100-200 Kiloton range.
I hope my personal conclusions are in error and that we have seen the end, but I seriously doubt it!
J Truman
ToC
- India Blasts Nuclear-Haves; UN May Deny Nuclear Status to New Powers
was (but no longer) at: http://customnews.cnn.com/cnews/pna.show_story?p_art_id=2633315&p_section_name=World&p_art_type=330237&p_subcat=India&p_category=Asia
ASCII text local copy
Date: Sat, 06 Jun 1998
Subject: Back to the same argumentsThis is a return to the same arguments that caused this nuclear crisis in the first place: the insistence from the Perm 5 that they can maintain tens of thousands of nuclear weapons forever, and can threaten everybody else with them while refusing to allow anyone else the same privilege and right. And on the other hand India maintaining for over 3 decades that unless that situation changed it would be forced to develop its own nuclear weapons. It did, and a refusal now by the rest of us Perms, to even discuss total disarmament at this stage will only drive the crisis on.
It is time to stop looking for some place to point the finger of blame elsewhere, at a new Indian government, Indian fundamentalism of one flavor or another, regional politics and relations, and face the fact that the bottom-line behind India's decision to finally exercise its nuclear option was the refusal of the rest of us to stop exercising ours. For over 30 years it has threatened to do just that and it did just as it has always maintained it would.
Furthermore it is time to face the answer to the equally relevant question of who's pimping of nuclear weapons and strategic missile technology allowed this to happen? Was it us of the perm 5, and thus do we doubly share the blame?
Further, the refusal to acknowledge that India and Pakistan are now nuclear weapons states is stupid. They have by their explosion of nuclear devices, especially India with the testing of a hydrogen bomb, by fact of being, clearly demonstrated they are nuclear weapons states. Whether the Perm 5 likes it or not, the possession of usable nuclear weapons by any state, by definition of reality, makes that state a nuclear weapons state.
Instead of playing word games and trying to maintain a status quo that no longer exists, it is time the Perm 5 faces the facts and acknowledges they have a choice: give up their weapons, or face more and more nations following India and Pakistan in developing weapons of their own so they cannot be threatened by the Perm 5's nuclear monopoly any more.
Arms control and non-proliferation as we know it, no longer exists and playing the same old game by the same old rules not only will not work, but it is as dangerous, if not more so, than anything in the history of nuclear weapons and the nuclear arms race to date! Disarm or self-destruct, may ultimately be the choice we face and it is time to face that ugly potential while there is still time to make rational choices.
J Truman
See Also:
http://www.desnews.com/cgi-bin/libstory_reg?dn98&9806150108
"World's nuclear states are hypocrites", Deseret News, 6/15/98ToC
- Religion Figures Into N-Tests in India, Pakistan
was (but no longer) at: http://www.sltrib.com/06061998/religion/37065.htm
ASCII text local copy
Date: Sun, 07 Jun 1998
Subject: Fwd: Salt Lake Tribune's Sunday editionSure god figures in -- or gets his fingers into -- everything doesn't he? Perhaps that's the problem, because usually it has nothing whatsoever to do with things happening, only in being used after they have occurred to either explain it all away, or write it off as more his will be done BS. But as in this case, the real cause has nothing to do with god or religion, but in a policy of opposing the Perm 5's self-appointed membership to the nuclear club going back to 1954. And the solution to this nuclear crisis is only going to come when we take everything else out of the picture -- including god -- right off the bat!
J Truman
ToC
- India Cheated
originally was: http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-06/15/009l-061598-idx.html
now archived: http://newslibrary.krmediastream.com/cgi-bin/document/wp_auth?DBLIST=wp98&DOCNUM=31589
ASCII text local copy
Date: Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998
Subject: Atoms For Peace -- The Legacy ContinuesA very good article from the Washington Post that is finally starting to examine the Atoms For Peace program of the United States and its legacy.
As the article clearly shows without the Atoms For Peace program India and Pakistan would never have been able to first start their nuclear programs. It is even more shocking that the actual fuel for India's nuclear tests came from nuclear reactors supplied under that program.
As I keep trying to point out it is very important that the media focuses on the Atoms For Peace program and the role it played in giving birth to nuclear proliferation in the first place and then going on to make it possible. If the media would bring attention to this then perhaps the general public will come to understand it as well. It is an important historical event and factor that has left a legacy that continues to endanger all humanity and whose story is still far from over.
The main thing to realize about the Atoms For Peace program is that from its beginning in 1953 it was never what it was claimed to be and behind all its hype as being for the betterment of humanity it has always had a much more sinister purpose. It was first proposed and implemented in early 1953 shortly after the U.S. had conducted the first full scale test of a hydrogen bomb and at a time when domestic and international political fallout over U.S. nuclear weapons tests were beginning to be heard and the first calls for a global test ban were being raised.
It was billed to the world as a humanitarian gesture by the United States to give the world the benefits of the atom and to show how the peaceful potential of atomic energy far out weighed the negative aspects of the atomic bombs. In point of fact it was established clearly and simply to defuse both domestic criticism and international concern over our nuclear weapons tests specifically the radioactive fallout from those weapons tests and to prevent those concerns from endangering or halting U.S. nuclear weapons development.
The Atoms For Peace program was launched with great fanfare from the holder of the Oval Office in the White House on down. It was presented to the United Nations General Assembly by the President. It was as major a White House public relations campaign as any before or since.
Giving the world's poor the clean and too cheap to meter benefits of nuclear power as well as medical isotopes food irradiation and so on surely demonstrated the benefits and necessity of continuing to explore the power of the Atom through more nuclear test explosions. We could not deprive the world's poor of the positive side of the Atom just because of nuclear weapons. Those were the bottom line rallying cries echoed and defended by the White House at every opportunity.
The more domestic politics called for an end to testing the more health concerns were raised over fallout from Nevada bomb tests raining down coast to coast the more the White House drug out the Atoms For Peace program to use to defend more testing and to try and beat its critics back in their "un-American" holes.
Research reactors were given to third world countries especially those whose poverty and under development like those of India could best serve the programs public relation's needs. Foreign scientists were brought to the U.S. and trained in the secrets of nuclear fission -- of course only its peaceful secrets!
Domestic critics were targeted in the summer of 1955 by one of the Atoms For Peace's greatest public relations coups. Standing before the nation's TV cameras waving a magic wand with a light bulb at its end the President with a stroke of it gave the signal and 2 000 miles away a nuclear reactor atop the Snake River Plain of southeastern Idaho went critical and produced electricity to light up the tiny nearby rural community of Arco Idaho heralding it as the first city ever powered by atomic energy. Once accomplished this great achievement of mankind -- the ability after 3 million years of evolution to fission uranium to boil water and generate electricity to light a few bulbs in Arco -- was used at every opportunity to call for more nuclear tests more nuclear development and to call it nearly an out right crime against humanity to call the power of the Atom bad.
Later as the international cries against testing worsened the Atoms For Peace program was given a new mission that of harnessing the power of nuclear explosions themselves to benefit mankind by blasting out new harbors building dams redirecting rivers increasing the flow of natural gas and maybe even extracting oil and gasoline from vast deposits of oil shale. The U.S. even talked and experimented in Nevada blowing craters into the desert and raining fallout downwind using 37 megatons of nuclear bombs to make a sea level canal across Panama.
International conferences were held on this new aspect of the Atoms For Peace program given the name Ploughshares -- "they shall beat their swords (this time nuclear) into ploughshares and learn war no more". We even gave other countries help with designing the special bombs to be used for such projects including directly to our supposed enemy the Soviet Union.
But at the same time of course we had to make it plain that because of the possibilities of this new peaceful use of the atom there could be no Test ban because we needed to test more device designs so we could develop a really clean bomb to use for these wonderful peaceful purposes.
The Atoms For Peace Program must share as much responsibility as anything else for getting the world from totally outlawing nuclear testing a generation ago and its legacy is still haunting us today on many many fronts. Not only did some of those we used as props for the Atoms For Peace extravaganza like India used this technology to develop the non peaceful aspects of atomic energy -- their own nuclear weapons but the environmental legacy of the Ploughshare portion has left a trail of death and destruction across much of the former Soviet Union.
They not only went out like we did as leader of the pack and test a few nuclear devices for so called peaceful uses they implemented the concept in as many ways as possible. The Russians exploded over 140 so-called peaceful nuclear explosions at sites across their nation for such purposes as digging canals damming rivers to make lakes even putting out runaway oil well fires and using them as seismic signals to geologically map Siberia. Worst of all they used scores of nuclear devices to develop their oil and gas resources and thus sent truly "hot gas" to all regions of their country and via their natural gas pipeline -- a system where much of the underground storage facilities had been blasted out by nuclear devices such as the key facility at Orenburg -- on into Western Europe.
Now in the late spring of 1998 we stand facing the legacy of the Atoms For Peace Program head on on two different fronts. First off we stand subject to a new age in the nuclear arms race where outright nuclear war looms over South Asia as a direct result of what the Atoms For Peace Program gave India and Pakistan and taught them how to make -- atomic bombs! Those of us living in the American west also face this summer the shipments of some of the highly radioactive spent fuel from the reactors passed out around the world by the Atoms For Peace Program as they are shipped from either California or the East Coast on to the INEEL facility east of ARCO for temporary storage while this nation trys to figure out what to do about a final site for this and all the other waste the Nuclear Age much of it the spawn of the Atoms For Peace program has given us.
Absent reaching a final decision on where to put and how to store that waste the area that made ARCO Idaho the first city to be lit by nuclear power and thus was the birthing site of that industry could also become both the cradle and the grave for the Atoms For Peace Program and any long term radioactive nightmares it may possess will be there to haunt us its prime victims once again.
Before we allow these shipments of Atoms For Peace waste into Idaho we should at least demand our local regional and national media tell the public its real history and let them have the rest of the story.
As always;
J Truman
DownwindersToC
- India Says it WON'T Sign Nuke Treaty
was (but no longer) at: http://customnews.cnn.com/cnews/pna.show_story?p_art_id=2758342&p_section_name=&p_art_type=330237&p_subcat=India&p_category=Asia
ASCII text local copy
Date: Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998
Subject: What part of NO don't you understand?Perhaps the question should really be is why is this considered news? We have had two days of reports stating how the U.S. and India are bridging the gap, narrowing their differences, and "have moved closer to resolving" the nuclear stand off over their recent bomb tests. Sounds all real go and has such comfort, it makes Clinton's foreign policy look real effective and all. But then comes the bottom line. India still ended it by saying just exactly what it always has said: "NO"!
So what part of NO is it that the US can't understand?
- NO India won't sign the CTBT the way it is written.
- NO it won't sign it and/or the NPT until there is a firm timeline for total disarmament by all nuclear weapons states.
- NO until the CTBT bans all sub critical and computer simulations allowing the US and other nuclear weapons states to keep going forward with their weapons development, while banning every one else from doing so.
- Or most importantly NO until their is an end to the concept that some nations can keep, maintain, and threaten other nations with nuclear weapons and the rest of the world has to live with that?
There is no progress being made to resolve anything, and it is both stupid and cruel to imply that we are making progress when we are not. India has said NO, India has always said NO, and India will continue to say NO until the Perm 5 nuclear weapons states agree to start talking disarmament instead of arms control where by they get to have nuclear weapons forever and nobody else does.
That is the entire reason and history behind what India did with developing nuclear devices and exploding them. It has always been its policy to do that if the Perm 5 refused to talk disarmament and is why it never signed the original NPT, nor why it refused to sign the CTBT. Every single Indian government has maintained this position now for over 35 years, and it is nothing new. Nor will blaming it all on the new BJP government solve anything since this is India's consistent policy.
There is one and only one way of resolving this nuclear crisis and that is for the Perm 5 nations, especially this one, to realize they have a choice: total nuclear disarmament or global proliferation. The rest of the world does not accept -- nor will they allow -- this current status quo. India was simply the first to take action to develop nuclear devices against the wishes of the Perm 5. They will not be the last.
It is a simple choice, give them up, or everyone will get some of their own for their own national security interests.
We don't have to like it, approve of it, or support India's position. But we have to start trying to understand what NO means and why India keeps saying it.
As always;
J Truman
ToC
- [Fwd: Nuclear Testing and Earthquakes]
http://www.applicom.com/pnews/earthquakes.htm
Date: Fri, 15 May 1998
Subject: [Fwd: Nuclear Testing and Earthquakes]Dave;
Please do not forget and overlook the fact that this question, Do nuclear explosions trigger earthquakes?, was one of the key issues in the battle fought between the eccentric billionaire Howard R. Hughes, the AEC, and two White House administrations from 1966-1972 (and beyond to some extent). A fight over the fallout from bomb testing had a damned sight more to do with Watergate than any other single factor!
As one of those deeply involved in that fight, I strongly suggest you obtain the book, Citizen Hughes by Michael Drosnin, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1985, ISBN 0403-041846-1, and read about it in Hughes' own words. It contains copies of the infamous yellow legal pad memos written by Hughes including discussing being "molested by some stupid ass-holes making like earthquakes". [1]
The earthquake mentioned [in www.ratical.org/radiation/inetSeries/testsNquakes.html], which was near Yucca Mtn., was the result of a major new event discovered, or admitted, by scientists, when a California quake, triggered a series of quakes across Nevada and into southwest Utah. Until that time the USGS had maintained such a thing could not happen. Saying that such things could and indeed would happen with underground tests was a key Hughes battle cry. Howard was correct.
Also note that the hottest seismic site in the United States is Mammoth Lakes California west of the NTS, and it underwent a dramatic rebirth in 1980. It is the most dangerous volcanic site in the country. For what it is worth, one of the warnings for the Hughes-AEC battle was that the large underground tests in the megaton range then being exploded in Nevada would reawaken Mammoth lakes within 25 years. Who knows if there was indeed a relationship between the tests and what did happen in 1980, and if Hughes was right. There are not enough facts out there to say one way or the other.
Another Hughes claim was that tritium and plutonium from underground tests would move steadily off-site and would reach ground water locations far sooner than planned. Well guess what the DOE is now doing in Nevada? Trying to explain why tritium and plutonium is moving so fast from the sites of underground tests and how this is a potential problem for all sites with plutonium problems.
Strange world isn't it.
As always;
J Truman
ToC
- THE SCOOP for June 1, 1998: The Conqueror & Other Bombs
http://www.westsong.com/bobharris/060198.html
Date: Wed, 03 Jun 1998
Subject: Great column -- THE SCOOP: The Conqueror & Other BombsLove the column! Got it right for a change.
But I regret, as I always do when this story gets some additional ink, that no one ever goes on to finish the story. The rest of the story on this one remains to be told: That Hughes in his madness realized that nothing could protect him from radiation from Nevada bomb tests, even the looney practices he did to protect him from germs; that Hughes felt personally responsible for all those deaths of the crew, and from that was born typical Hughes' action.
After moving to Las Vegas in 1966 Hughes attempted to buy the State of Nevada and the White House in an effort to stop nuclear testing in Nevada, offering LBJ $1,000,000 if he would, and pouring out the bucks on Dick Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, and Paul Laxalt.
In fact it was money from Hughes for exactly that purpose that ended up being the infamous $100,000 in Beebe Robozo's safe that helped bring Nixon down. In fact during the time from 1966-1971 close to $20 million in Hughes money went poof and disappeared in the Hughes-AEC battle. Much of it ended up in the pockets of politicians from everybody running for president in 1968, to a former Utah Governor, and a Salt Lake City Mayor.
The man hired by the Hughes organization to run the Hughes ban the bomb tests in Washington, DC was none other than Larry O'Brien, and it was concern over how much he knew of the Hughes-Nixon nuke-tests bribes that lead to the witch hunt among Nixon's aides that sent the burglars into O'Brien's office, and the plumbers into trying to open the safe of Las Vegas Sun Publisher Hank Greenspun. Thus it is so fitting the memo flashed to Hughes from his chief lawyer the night before Nixon resigned, "Nixon will resign at 12:00 EDT tomorrow to save both himself and his friends."
Hughes money poured out of the cage of the Sands in nondescript $10 and $20 bills and into a wide variety of efforts to stop the bomb tests, including the Utah Peace and Freedom Party in 1968, WILPF, involved such well know figures as Barry Commoner and Linus Pauling, and funded covertly a march down Salt Lake City's State Street of over 1,200 carrying signs, "Ski Utah the Hottest Snow on Earth". And on and on!
It was also this raging battle between Hughes and the AEC that gave birth to the downwinders'-fallout victim's movement in southwest Utah, and all of us original community activists who started it go back in one form, or another to those days, and that battle. Eventually we won! We got the media's attention locally, regionally, statewide, nationally, and finally internationally, and one of the most effective media actions we took was to leak the story of poor John Wayne and that damned movie to British tabloid journalists and stood back and watched the media freak show, knowing they may not give a shit about those of us who lived around Snow Canyon, but they'd hold the presses for good old John Wayne. And when they did we were there waiting to line up the survivors for People mag, LIFE, and the morning tv shows, and the hundred or so others, to hit the tv talk shows, and to demand Congressional action.
Trouble is the real rest of the story behind this is that it wasn't just Snow Canyon, St. George, or John Wayne, as the National Cancer Institute fallout report forced out last summer and fall clearly shows -- it was all 160 million Americans living during those "hot years". Those 160 million American's all got just about the same fallout levels as did we folks in St. George, and just as much as did good old John Wayne! And what happened to John Wayne and what happened to the people in St George happened, and still is happening all across this country.
The NCI fallout report was only concerned with ONE radioactive isotope produced by the bomb tests -- Iodine 131. There were 359 others, and many of them were far more deadly than Iodine 131, and unlike the thyroid cancers the Iodine caused, the ones they did were not 95% treatable, and survivable. The NCI report said the Iodine alone caused 75,000 cases of thyroid cancer nationwide. Add the toll from the other 359 not discussed, and the total number of American dead, including John Wayne, would reach into the hundreds of thousands at the least and into the millions most likely.
People should rent that movie, should watch it, and should quickly learn to understand the full meaning behind it, and the tragedy of it all not only for John Wayne, or the people in St. George, but for themselves where ever they live, and for this nation as a whole. Absent such an understanding, we have no hope of ever surviving the endless nuclear crises of which India and Pakistan are todays current chapter. Because only the truth of how many of our own we have already killed will ever make us free of the nuclear testing demon!
As always;
J Truman
ToC
- The Conqueror & Other Bombs, 1998, The Scoop
http://www.envirolink.org/orgs/hecweb/archive/nucs/hollynuc.htm
Date: Wed, 03 Jun 1998
Subject: Re: Great column (Personal)Paul Goettlich wrote:
>
> J
> >
> > > The Conqueror
> > > And Other Bombs
> > > ) 1998 Bob Harris
> > > TheScoop@earthlink.net
> > >
> > > [] = italics
> I used this.
>
> http://www.envirolink.org/orgs/hecweb/archive/nucs/hollynuc.htm
>
> Paul
> *************************************************
> Paul Goettlich, Member Board of Directors
> Hoosier Environmental Council
> P. O. Box 6854 South Bend, Indiana 46660-6854 U.S.A.
> gottlich@sbt.infi.net http://www.envirolink.org/orgs/hecweb/Paul;
Way to go! I was 15 when that battle started, and was just starting to raise the issue of fallout past and present -- we were getting underground leaks and nuclear rocket engine tests. My wee little noise was heard in Las Vegas -- 140 miles away, and I got contacted by one of the key people in the Hughes-AEC battle, John H. Meier -- see the book Age of Secrets, and remain close friends with him today. I passed some of those $10 and $20 out, and "Ski Utah The Hottest Snow on Earth" was my creation passed on to John Meier, and I watched first hand the resulting Hughes-AEC battle rage, and watched it turn into Watergate. I have thousands of pages of Hughes and other documents relating to it, and from it. That was also how I got to be on such good terms with the Las Vegas Sun and many of the key figures involved from Hank Greenspun to many of the scientist Hughes employed to fight the battle. Some day I hope to complete a book on the Hughes-AEC Battle.
I was also involved in leaking the original story of the John Wayne link, and organizing the media strategy that followed it, along with my good friends Dr. Robert Pendleton -- who is pictured in the People mag article standing on the sand dunes in Snow Canyon letting sand fall from his hands, Irma Thomas. Irma arranged for all the local people to appear for the People mag and the LIFE mag articles. She also was the one who appeared on the first national TV shows when the story first broke, all the time scared to death we'd get in trouble for having deliberately leaked the story and played with it to get attention to our plight. After all we were talking about John Wayne here and how bomb test fallout may have killed him!
Irma's oldest son is married to my dad's sister's daughter the same age as my only sibling -- sister, and Irma's youngest daughter now fighting both breast cancer and polymysystes (sp?) was in my graduating class at Dixie High School in St. George at the time I first started working with her mother. Irma's daughter and I were both in the 3,000 school children in Washington, County Utah that were forced into the first AEC-US Public Health Service Thyroid Study in 1965. Her daughter was one of the 250 called high risk, for what they have never been told.
When they came to my school in Enterprise they told all the school's assembled students they were from the Mayo Clinic and were there to help us because we didn't have proper health care. I clearly remember one of the head blood suckers looking in my direction when he said it too, and that load of bull shit has never faded from memory. The bastards lied to us, and to our parents and did not inform us they were there to check the guinea pig's cages to see how many they had killed. I learned from my ear nose and throat doctor in Salt Lake -- a native of eastern Nevada and a distant relative -- what they were really looking for, and why, and spreading that all over town and to anyone who would listen was actually my first major political act as a downwind activist.
If you've every seen the film Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang (1979) [2], the scenes of Paul taking his pain shots were filmed in Irma's St. George Bed Room. Irma, Dr. Pendleton, and I were the first to speak out among the downwinders in an organized effort, and by 1970 were working together to get the downwinders' story out. We also were active in one degree or another in the Hughes-AEC battle.
With a few other people we started calling ourselves "The Downwinders" by the mid-1970's, and of course that is where Downwinders came from. Without the Hughes-AEC battle and that horrible movie we never would have had a safe platform to begin the fight. Of that first original group, I am the only one still here today. And this is why the Las Vegas Sun started referring to Downwinders as the west's oldest radiation victims and anti-testing organization, and why we use that with some degree of pride.
As to Snow Canyon, it was off the road that ran from my home town of Enterprise, Utah (U-18) 40 miles south to St. George, Utah. During the early 1950's and at least until 1965 it was used all the time for making movies, and some still much later. I had to drive that road and look down into Snow Canyon twice each day for half my senior year in high school when I had to finish school in St. George because of medical treatment of lymphoma and not having a doctor in Enterprise. Right after Christmas that year I turned 18 and was legally able to get my own apartment in St. George for the rest of the school year and didn't have to drive back and forth every day.
There were many western films filmed on those sand dunes, or in and around Snow Canyon. Movies like Broken Arrow, Jeramiah Johnson, and even parts of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. In fact just a half mile up the road from the sand dunes was a regular old west movie set of a fort and mission. As children, my dad's family -- 89 first cousins -- always went to Snow Canyon on Easter Saturday and spent the day -- we kids -- playing on the old movie set and climbing on the red rocks. Many times we had school and church outings there and family cook-outs.
One of my favorite keep-sakes from childhood came from an outing of my fourth grade class on "E" day -- the day we celebrated school spirit and the senior class white washed a hundred foot high "E" made out of stones placed on a volcano cone just out of Enterprise. All grades from kindergarten through 12 grade got the day off and went somewhere. At night after dark the seniors set fire to cans of diesel fuel outlining the "E" and it could be seen for 60 miles.
In 4th grade our class of 36 students spent the day on the sand dunes in Snow Canyon playing. I have a couple of old black and white photo's -- some of the very first I ever developed and printed my self of our class out there that day, including some of the boys in the class buried up to their necks in the dunes and others rolling around. Then we ate our lunch there, dust and all, and nobody ever told us the place was a confirmed AEC hot spot! It was a common party site for the whole region.
As I am writing this on the wall is a photocopy of two old RKO PR photos for that film. Once shows John Wayne's son Patrick with his shirt off playing on the sand dunes with a geiger counter when the film was being made. You can see it is reacting. Next to it is one of Susan Hayward on horseback in her costume with Dick Powell standing next to the horse and John Wayne decked out as Genghis next to Powell. As a kid I also personally attended the premire of the movie in St. George the same night it premiered in Hollywood.
Movie making in and around St. George was big all during this time. Many of us locals, my self included as a very young kid barely old enough to remain on horseback, were extras in dozens of westerns.
I wanted to share these memories with you not because they are anything special, but rather because they are not. They are common memories of growning up in southern Utah in the 1950's. And to thank you for running the bit on The Conqueror, for while it may have been the worst movie Hollywood ever made, it was also the most significant film Hollywood ever made, because it was the only film that ever brought down an American President, and fallout from that film via Hughes' political payoffs to Dick Nixon certainly did!
As always;
J
ToC
- U.S. used nerve gas during Vietnam War - report
was (but no longer) at http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2554523956-002
ASCII text local copy
Date: Mon, 08 Jun 1998
Subject: SICK NEWS FROM THE PAST!Most disturbing news here. When those of us opposing and organizing against the war at the time made similar charges that chemical weapons were being used the media treated us all like we had just dropped acid or something. The standard line was two fold: 1) that this country would never do anything like use nerve gas; and 2) That President Nixon was working aggressively to stop the proliferation and first use of weapons of mass destruction.
Well now the cat is out of the bag. We critics hadn't been practicing better living through chemistry after all. But our government had been engaged in ending living through outlawed chemistry! And once again we have the proof that no one with the ability to read and remember should ever be caught saying "our country would never do something like that". Not only would we, but we have, and there is more where this newly released story came from.
It also is relevant to the current nuclear crisis and debate going on. Here we have a classic example of saying one thing on the arms control and weapons of mass destruction front, and in our actions doing exactly what we condemn. It is this double standard of Thou Shalt Not Dare, but we can anytime we want to, that has gotten us into the current mess in So. Asia, and is why third world nations will engage in covert nuclear and chemical weapons programs as long as we refuse to clean up our own house first before preaching and dictating to everyone else.
J Truman
DownwindersToC
- A new nuclear message for a new generation
Unlike in 1950s, DOE now touting nuclear safety
originally was: http://www.desnews.com/cit/vi0n07ft.htm
now archived: http://www.desnews.com/cgi-bin/libstory_reg?dn98&9806090188
Date: Tue, 09 Jun 1998
Subject: While we work to oppose, they brainwash our children!Why is it that those with a record as sex offenders are not allowed, or wanted in our schools to harm the minds of our children, but those with a 50 year track record of crimes against humanity are welcomed in by the state?
After the Duck and Cover of the 1950's, the electricity too cheap to meter, and after radioactive fallout coast to coast, an admitted 75,000 cases of thyroid cancer alone, and human radiation experiments by the hundreds, do you want these people educating your children and grand children? Do you want your children and grand children to grow to worship all things nuclear? Does the PTA still exist?
J Truman
DownwindersToC
- MAMMOTH LAKE ALERT!!!!!!!!
http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/QUAKES/WEEKREPS/98Jun11/
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998
Subject: MAMMOTH LAKE ALERT!!!!!!!!At the ultimate problem decider for Yucca Mountain and the ultimate moral solution for Las Vegas among Bible thumpers, things have been a moving and shaking the last three days.
A new significant earthquake swarm has hit Mammoth Lakes -- the nation's most active and dangerous volcanic area. The USGS has so far been very wrong in saying it was rapidly dying down from a 5.1 quake on June 8, as was proven by two moderate quakes last night. We are also at the height of the land-tide caused by the lunar cycle so the USGS may be in for some more shaking up out there.
This is one of the things the old Hughes-AEC battle predicted would happen as a result of the large megaton range underground tests at near by NTS. The claim was that they would speed up weaking of faults and reactivate the Mammoth Lakes Candera and that unless they were stopped activity would get started within 10 to 15 years from 1968 and by the year 2000 the volcano itself would erupt, and there would be similar activity along the ring of fire. It was laughed at like crazy and written off as more of Howard's madness and John Meier's bull shit.
But in 1979-1980 a series of three 6.0+ quakes rocked the old Mammoth Caldera and the dome from the last massive eruption has been steadily rising. A major swarm hit from July, 1997 until January, 1998 and several times the USGS almost went to full volcanic alert. Now it appears to have started up again and as usual USGS is into their own, "There is No immediate Danger" mode.
I personally have NO firm conclusion on the old Hughes theory one way or the other, but have, and do still following activity at Mammoth Lakes on a daily, and sometimes several times a day basis. Over the years I have seen certain patterns and a seeming relationship with moments of extreme lunar tides. I jokingly make bets and sarcastic predictions with some people at USGS for the pure scientific fun of it.
Based on that I was aware there was a likelihood of major activity like this around this full moon time frame. I also say the odds of more moderate or better quakes is much closer to 50/50 than the 1 to 3% admitted by the USGS.
When this puppy blows again, and it will over the next few hundred to thousands of years it will likely bury both Yucca Mountain and Las Vegas under up to 25 feet of ash and upset the existing water tables for the whole region, plus activate any existing earthquake faults close by and increase activity on them. It, not discussed in the debate of Yucca Mtn, will be the ultimate mediator on how big a health and safety horror a high-level dump at Yucca will produce, or not produce over its lifetime.
Is what is happening at Mammoth Lake dangerous and serious right now? Who knows, but it is amusing to see and watch just in case, like he usually was over time, that long haired bearded old loon atop the Desert Inn worried sick by the AEC "stupid ass-homes making like little earthquakes" at NTS, might once again be proven right after all. Time will tell.
Myself, I think one of these days I am going to wonder down there to get the first half of my personal before and after pictures, just in case, if for nothing else than the humor of it all. Howard was right about the water pollution problems at Lake Meade, right about the much faster spread of tritium and plutonium from the underground tests, so perhaps a little gas and a few rolls of film isn't too much out of order.
As always;
J
See Also:
http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/QUAKES/WEEKREPS/
For each weekly report going back to 1/92ToC
- Ignorance to blame for fears associated with anything nuclear
http://www.desnews.com/cgi-bin/libstory_reg?dn98&9806160049
Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998
Subject: Editorial Writers Need Education, BADLY
ALL;
I think this editorial gives us a wonderful opening to go after the whole DOE education program by using it to explain to the Deseret News how we couldn't agree more that education is needed, as this article clearly shows by one key and fatal flaw, and how that flaw is also why the entire DOE has no business being in our schools doing this education.To do this I would blow off the entire rest of his editorial and focus in on the following, and nothing else;
Ignorance has resulted in much of the fear associated with anything nuclear. The U.S. government had no clue how harmful the effects would be when it conducted atomic bomb tests in the '50s at the Nevada Test Site. Now we know how deadly and debilitating the fallout from those tests were. The government compounded the matter by covering it up. But mistakes made 40 years ago would not be made today.He is right, ignorance has resulted in much -- but not fear -- associated with anything nuclear, as his next line, which is really the only relevant point, and it clearly shows :
The U.S. government had no clue how harmful the effects would be when it conducted atomic bomb tests in the '50s at the Nevada Test Site.Right there he both shows that education is clearly needed, starting with himself, and apparently right on up the editorial board at the D News and then on to what few percentage of the Utah public there might be that agree with it. Why? Because that is the whole point behind what happened with the Nevada Bomb Tests and why the DOE can't be allowed to teach our children, and why the public damned well better fear all things nuclear.
Because the government not only had a clue, but knew damned good and well what was going to happen and that they were going to kill people and sheep downwind, and just how far downwind downwind was going to be, and then did it anyway, and then dragged in every available resource the Feds could lay their hands on to lie and cover it all up -- something they are still doing even today. (With the NCI Report having to be leaked after 14 years to be forced out into public showing the whole country got screwed.)
When one adds the educated truth to that one sentence, the whole premise behind his editorial comes crashing down, because if they did not only have a clue, but full well knew before they did those tests that people were going to die, then the public, for its own health and safety, and for their own lives, not only just might, but should fear all things nuclear, since it is the same lying, covering up, cold-blooded murderers who knew and killed anyway then and are still active in covering it up, that have and are still giving all the promises of safety that he says the public needs to educated about.
Add the fact that the public needs to be fully educated not only about this, but about all the nasty little human experiments done all those years on innocent people, orphans, disadvantaged children -- even prisoners at Utah's own prison -- and lied about too, by many of the same people who's safety assurances he would have us use to educate the general public. And the fact that after the Final and Complete Coming Clean Report On Human Experiments was issued by the DOE in 1994 dozens of other such radiation experiments have been exposed that weren't reported and glastnosed by the DOE, including some just last week where we'd even gone so far as to use poor people in Norway, a NATO ally, to do them, and of course how the biggest human experiment of all, that touched on in the NCI report was not on the DOE's come clean 1994 list.
Also throw in education about the body snatching, including in Utah, and then ask why is it wrong to allow known sex offenders to teach our children, but O.K. and something to endorsed and pushed through editorials in the D News, to allow those active in conducting past and present -- suppression of known human experiments and up until last July the NCI report -- which of course was leaked first and is the same -- crimes against humanity -- to have at the minds of our children. Why is it O.K. for those with a 50+ year record of lies, deceit, cover-up, and falsehood about the dangers of nuclear radiation being dumped on residents of Utah to now screw up our kids with stories of how safe it is, and how we shouldn't fear things nuclear.
It is no different -- is it? -- than allowing Adolf Eichmann to teach little Jewish kids about the policies of the Third Reich toward Europe's 6 million late Jews?
Two Utah courts -- Jenkins, and Christensen in the Sheep case -- clearly determined beyond question that the government had a clue and knew, and in the case of the sheep went and doctored reports after the fact to show no effect -- ruling they had committed fraud and perjury upon a Utah court. Now does the D News really approve and want convicted perjurers and people who engaged in fraud and falsifying scientific reports to make things look harmless teaching our children the truth about things nuclear?
Screw nuclear waste, screw nuclear power. Robinson opened this door for us by saying the government didn't have a clue, and therefore we shouldn't let mistakes 40 years old get in the way of ending fear today. It is not our fault that if 40 years ago they weren't mistakes changes everything he proposes and makes it clear they do have relevance and not being mistakes but deliberate demands the fear and vigilance.
I suggest:
Writing a response that hits on just that one point and then follows up with wording strong enough to grow hair on a new born baby's fanny and ends with the question,
If it's not O.K. for sex offenders to teach our children and we require background checks for criminal activity in the past of all prospective teachers, then why is it O.K. for those -- with a history of crimes against humanity and those convicted in courts of this state for fraud and perjury over trying to hide it -- to be allowed to teach our children and educate them to ignore their past criminal activity so they can possibly engage in it again?Hand carry the letter to the D News editorial board in mass and ask the D News to explain why it's not O.K. for sex offenders but it is O.K. for mass murders?
Issue a press release asking the same question, thus forcing the D News to have to cover it, and then use the Salt Lake weekly papers and KRCL to hit the other cultures down there in asking them do you want these people teaching your children.
See if a pro-bono attorney would be willing to threaten the Salt Lake Board of Education, or the Utah Board with a federal lawsuit over banning sex offenders and others with a criminal history, but not those guilty of fraud and perjury and those party to what a prudent man would classify as crimes against humanity, using the 14th amendment right of equal treatment under the law. Use the threat to demand a public hearing. See it is set 60 days at least in the future and then we round up the victims and have a crimes against humanity tribunal of our own before the school board or the state people.
Mainly make it nasty, and as un-PC as possible.
The D News is stuck in a way with all their own articles -- White, Bauman, Davidson showing how the government had far more than a clue! Call them on it. And call them on it with somebody down there that has kids in school who would become targets for these criminals if allowed in our schools!
That is how I would respond to this. Don't get mad, get even! Robinson gave an opening -- use it.
Utah also now, or soon will have another newspaper who's editor has somewhat of a concern about the integrity of the D News, that can always be urged to challenge the D News if they run and hide.
Also if they say "NO" there is always the ownership, again just on that one little point of had NO clue!
As always;
J
ToC
- Howard Hughes Memos
Date: Sun, 05 Jul 1998
Subject: Re: HH memos> Dear J.,
>
> I started re-reading Bartlett and Steel's ``Empire'' about Howard Hughes
> this weekend. Funny, when they talk about the Boxcar test, they say in a
> footnote, and later in the text, that Hughes did not have any proof the
> nuclear testing was contaminating Nevada's environment. Yet, when I read
> the abridged versions of his own memos published in the book, I got the
> distinct impression he DID know about radioactive contamination. It will
> be nice, if we can ever find it, to get our hands on the AEC documents,
> themselves, because I don't think Hughes -- although he was paranoid by
> then -- was stupid enough to go up against the U.S. government without
> some kind of proof.
>
> Fondly,
>
> MaryMary;
from Howard R Hughes hand-written memos to Bob Maheu, 4/16/1968:
"When we first came here, you will remember, it was a close decision between this area and one other. I finally chose this one, oddly enough to avoid the hurricanes. Well I promise you I did not come here to avoid hurricanes only to be molested by some stupid ass-holes making little earthquakes.
And further on, as Drosnin writes:
"The whole operation just makes me want to vomit. I cannot for the life of me understand Laxalt permitting these bastards to dessicrate and lay forever waste, poisoned, and contaminated all of those miles and miles of beautiful virgin Nevada soil.
"I am not saying the bomb is unsafe in terms of leaving a crack in the middle of Fremont Street into which somebody might fall. I have said from the start that the real damage from these explosions was in the contamination of the underground substances and the pollution of the very bowels of the earth on which we live. . . .
"Who can possibly contest the fact that thousands upon thousands of tourists will be lost to Nevada if the testing continues and if Nevada becomes identified with the ghastly spectre of nuclear devastation?
"I have insisted from the start that any damage would be in the form of destruction to the attraction of this community as a peaceful paradise-like resort, at which people could get away from, and not be reminded of the gruesome, ever present, over hanging threat of the ghastly image of the scarred and mutilated bodies which remained after the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima.
"As I say, the future image of this area should, hopefully, represent a vacation resort of the very ultimate quality -- not a military experimental testing ground for exterminating devices.
"Nuclear explosions in the atmosphere were once considered entirely safe, and those opposed to them were laughed at. Now nobody in the free world would consider exploding a nuclear bomb in the air or in the sea.
"Who is to say that, in the future, contaminating the earth upon which we live may not be frowned upon just as much?
"If the gigantic nuclear explosion is detonated, then in a fraction of a second following the pressing of that fateful button, thousands and thousands, and hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of good potentially fertile Nevada soil and underlying water and minerals and other substances are forever poisoned beyond the most ghastly nightmare. A gigantic abyss too horrible to imagine filled with poisonous gases and debris will have been created just beneath the surface in terrain that may one day be the site of a city like Las Vegas.
"I say Nevada is no longer so desperate for mere existence that it has to accept and swallow poisonous, contaminated radio-active waste material more horrible than human excrement.
"I am sure that some expert somewhere must have pronounced as safe the bomb test in Utah, but that doesn't help the sheep lying dead there on the prairie.
"Some day, guides will take tourists from here to Reno, and when they pass [NTS] the guide will say: 'And on your right is the ghastly grave-yard of atomic poison and pollution, that is so dreadful no tourists are allowed to go near it for fear some child may wander away from its parents and step within the contaminated area.
"Rome proudly displays its battlefields of historic fame, but this misserable [sic] blemish on God's creation, the earth, is such a tragedy nobody points to it or boasts about it, it means only one thing: `Shame!'"
"Well, none of this is getting us any closer to stopping this shameful program. Now how do we go about it?
We must find a way to close them down."Citizen Hughes, Drosnin, 1985, pp. 185-86, 190-91 [1]
Humphrey . . . seemed, however, to be doing quite well for Hughes in Washington.
Soon top AEC officials were exchanging memorandums almost as frequently as Hughes and Maheu, trying to determine if the man who might soon be president of the United States had actually joined with its wealthiest private citizen in an antinuclear alliance.
"I called Col. Hunt in the Vice President's office to discuss with him rumors we had been hearing in Las Vegas as regards an agreement between the Vice President and the Hughes organization," reported the agency's director, Arnold Fritsch. "I indicated to him that while we had this only as a rumor, we were concerned since the high-yield test program involves some vital national security needs."
When the AEC discovered the rumors were indeed well founded, it first tried to abort the "independent" Hughes study, then, unable to block it, scrambled to remove the panel from the billionaire's control.
AEC Chairman Seaborg got word to the president. Johnson was angry. He had enough troubles without a new ban-the-bomb crusade to fuel antiwar feeling, and he did not appreciate Hughes's attempted end run. Besides, Humphrey was hardly being discreet about his dealings with the billionaire. Already it was common knowledge in the White House that the vice-president was getting campaign money from Hughes. Johnson was not merely angry. He was worried.
"Hubert had better keep his pants zipped," the president told an aide. "He's going to get caught with his pecker in Hughes's pocket."
Nervous about Humphrey's now open advocacy of the Hughes protest, Johnson took charge. He scuttled the Hughes-Humphrey plan by himself appointing a panel to investigate the bomb tests. But instead of Humphrey's half-dozen doves, Johnson picked a group of scientists more likely to call down tactical strikes on the Las Vegas Strip.
Still, Humphrey had forced the first official probe of nuclear hazards. And when the presidential panel made its report, its findings came as quite a shock. Hughes was right. The big blasts were dangerous. A blue-ribbon panel of conservative scientists hand-picked by the AEC, led by its own former research director and two top White House advisers, declared Hughes fears were well founded, warned that the megaton explosions could trigger major earthquakes, and called for a halt to the Nevada tests.
Humphrey had come through. Too late, however, to do either himself or his hidden benefactor any good. By the time the scientists convened in November, Humphrey had already lost the election. He was never even allowed to see the report, which first Johnson and then Nixon entirely ignored and completely suppressed. Despite the warnings of real and present danger, the bombing continued unabated.Ibid, pp. 244-45 [1]
More later;
J
ToC
- New U.S. devices will better detect nuclear tests
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2555275483-9b4
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998
Subject: The Rest of The Story!This article is choice, and one I cannot help but respond to. It is too good an example of so many things, issues, and history, yet will receive so little attention.
First off is the obvious. How can these devices work at all since the AEC/ERDA/DOE/etc have always told us underground tests don't leak radioactivity? So how can there be any to measure? Or is it just "those peoples" tests that leak, never ours? Humorous, but revealing.
Next comes the real darkside of all this. These new devices are not new. They are only the current incarnation of a government AEC/USAF/CIA program dating back to the earliest days of the atmoic age and a program that directly affected hundred of thousands of people adversely from exposures to massive releases of I-131 and other short lived isotopes. Next to the bomb tests themselves, this program of detecting tell-tale gasses from nuclear exposions and from the production of plutonium for their construction, ranks next in line for the source of radiation exposure to people and all life everywhere on Earth. !
The health of hundreds of thousands were put on the sacrifical alter for these devices and their descendants! And it is still eaiser to get the facts about the bomb test fallout than it is to get the facts on the radiation releases involved with the detection program.
Let's take a little historical stroll down memory lane on this one and see where it leads. Let's start with the second largest incident (The Nevada Test Site being number 1) of radiation exposure to American citizens from Cold War nuclear activities -- Hanford's infamous "green runs". From Hanford over 750,000 curries of Iodine 131 were released into the atmosphere exposing hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens in three states -- Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.
Why? Because of some type of carelessness or accident? No. Simply to see if high flying U.S. spy aircraft could detect the radiation released at ground level so they could get a figure on how much plutonium the Russians were producing in THEIR facilities similar to Hanford. No other reason!
The Soviets were playing hurry-up and catch-up with us in the just-begun arms race. One way they were trying to catch-up was taking the irriadated fuel of their plutonium production reactors directly from the reactor to their reprocessing plants to extract the plutonium, instead of first letting them set in holding pools until the highly radioactive short half-life isotopes decayed. They were extracting plutonium from "green" fuel. It was dangerous and it was dirty. And it released loads of radioactive materials into the surrounding environment.
So the thinking went that if we could detect the very small traces of those radioactive isotopes present at the super-high altitudes with our spy planes (like the U-2 then under development), and had sufficent reliable data to compare it with, we could figure out how much plutonium the Soviets were producing and how many warheads they were producing. Trouble was we needed that reliable data, which could only come from conducting "green runs" of our own, and sampling the radioactivity released from it at spy plane allitudes and correlate it with how much actual plutonium we recoved from our "green runs".
There was only one little obstacle to consider in doing this and that was the people living downwind. But it was decided to simply not consider it. In essence, screw the downwinders as getting the green run data was all the people in charge truly cared about.
Hence, Hanford Downwinders are downwinders simply because the AEC/CIA/USAF needed data! Data to make the first generation of sniffing devices work! Nothing more!
The next big source of radiation releases was INEEL. There too the bulk of the Iodine 131 off-site releases, as well as those of other similar short term isotopes, came about for the purpose of making better sniffers and better refining the technology for our U-2s to spy on the Soviets.
And this is why to this day, we can eaisly find out more about off-site radiation releases from the Nevada Bomb Tests than we can from Hanford and especially INEEL. Those remain classified national security and require a "Q" clearence to read. Because of the off-site radiation doses the public received? No, because nobody wants to allow the public to learn the full truth of those spy programs the releases provided the data for!
And when you get into those spy programs you have truly reached Pandora's Box and see both why they continue to hide behind national security and classification of anything that might expose the truth to the light of day. And you also can see why that truth must come out. Further, the exposures are behind the whole question of what we found over Russia, the hiding from the American public of the 1957 Kyskum waste explosion, the fact that there was no missile gap, and then an even worse stench. The stench of the May 1, 1960 shooting down of Francis Gary Powers's U-2 and the wrecking of Eisenhower's Crusade for Peace summit meeting days later that would have produced a Test-ban. And with that we arrive at the specter of such as Lee Harvey Oswald, the whole Cuba mess, E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, James McCord and shades of their involvement in the darkest moments of our post-WWII history.
So now we have a new high-flying spy plane sniffer. How many Americans has it killed or doomed to death? And perhaps since they have a new sniffer, shouldn't we at least do, and demand, some new sniffing of our own? Like sniffing out the whole lethal and stinking truth behind this program and all that has gone on, and all that has rained down with it and from it?
As always;
J Truman Downwinders
Many used copies of this book can be found at www.bibliofind.com's search page, an excellent resource for locating all manner and form of out-of-print, and otherwise difficult to find books.
Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang 16mm color film, 1979, 60 mins.
A dramatic story of the cover-up by the U.S. Nuclear Program and of the hazards of radiation to American citizens. This film documents journalist Paul Jacobs' personal and political struggle of 20 years to uncover the cover-up beginning with his investigation of the effects on civilians and soldiers of being exposed to fallout from bomb tests in Nevada. The emotional impact of the film stems from its close attention to human detail: the shock and quiet indignation in the voices of the dying men and women of St. George, Utah, used as guinea pigs by the Atomic Energy Commission, and the blandness and cynicism with which government officials justify past actions and current politics. The film also has clips from old AEC and Army films of soldiers being marched into bomb test areas and of citizens being assured that fallout won't hurt them. Not available for college rental. Colleges must contact: New Time Films, 1501 Broadway, Suite 1904, NY, NY 10036. (212-921-7020) You will need an extra large takeup reel. Fee CThe above comes from http://www.afsc.org/nero/bigcat/pbigcat.htm
American Friends Service Committee
AFSC Video & Film Library
2161 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02140
617-497-5273
See Also: Radiation: Impact on Health & Environment
How to use: The Big [film] Catalog