Opinion Editorials, July 2010

Nuclear Deceptions VS Americans of Conscience

By Eileen Fleming

Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, July 12, 2010

Introduction on Youtube:

US and Israeli Nuclear Deceptions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bslmk5jipGA
 
The DOE/Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons design and production complex consists of eight sites.
 
The NNSA/National Nuclear Security Administration runs the weapons complex, and is planning to build three new nuclear facilities that will significantly expand U.S. warhead production capacity.
 
The Y12 Plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee will produce “secondaries” which equates to 125 new nuclear weapons per year.
 
The Y-12 Plant is currently scheduled to manufacture upwards of 2,000 LEPS/Life Extension Programs warheads by 2016, which are refurbished WMD and which will equate to 80 NEW Nuclear Weapons a Year.
 
This will also exceed the number of deployed warheads permitted under the New START Treaty (1,675), as well as undermining the argument that new production facilities are even needed!
 
Most nuclear weapons in the current U.S. stockpile were produced anywhere from 30 to 40 years ago and they were not designed or intended to last indefinitely. 
 
In the mid-1990’s, the DOE embarked upon “Life Extensions Programs/LEPs to refurbish and extend the ‘shelf life’ of existing nuclear weapons. Under the LEP, warheads in the current arsenal are disassembled, parts are refurbished or replaced with new components, and the warheads are reassembled and redeployed.
 
“The purpose of the LEP is to maintain an enduring nuclear arsenal…[adding] at least 30-40 years to a warheads usable life, according to the DOE [one official has been quoted at 100-120 years], and addresses aging issues of limited life components. [Under the LEP, the] DOE plans to upgrade every type of nuclear warhead in the planned United States arsenal.” [1]
 
While programs for education and cleaning up our environment are being cut or are frozen, this year’s funding for nuclear weapons research and production programs by the Department of Energy’s National Security Administration has increased by 14%. The $6.4 billion we the people who pay taxes are currently providing them; will be increased to $9 billion by 2018!
 
“Any nation that year after year continues to raise the Defense budget while cutting social programs to the neediest is a nation approaching spiritual death.” - Rev. MLK
 
Three decades after the Cold War, we the people of the US are being taxed at a rate 75% higher than the annual Cold War average of $5.1 billion! 
 
We the people are also being forced to pay for “modernization” which equates to EXPANSION to fund new multi-billion dollar facilities for the production of plutonium pits at Los Alamos, NM and thermonuclear “secondaries” at Y-12, in Oak Ridge. Tenn.
 
Nuclear components become WMD when they are combined with the thousands of non-fissile components produced at the Kansas City Plant, and that plant is responsible for 85% of all nuclear components, which ships out thousands of WMD components to the National Nuclear Security Administration for final assembly at America’s WMD facilities.
 
But we the people of Conscience, “hold these truths to be self-evident: That all…are created equal [and] endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; [and] to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men [and women], deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; and, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.” [July 4, 1776. The Declaration of Independence]
 
And because this six billion year old planet could be gone in one dark day and as every nuclear warhead will pass through Y-12 and increase America's nuclear arsenal by 80 warheads a year, two hundred people of Conscience gathered for a weekend long celebration of Nuclear Resistance at the Y-12 Nuclear Plant over the 4th of July weekend.
 
Thirty-six were arrested for NONVIOLENTLY resisting the insanity of nuclear weapons and to stand up to Americon’s Nuclear Policies.
 
A few faces of those who who stood up and did something in Oak Ridge, Tennessee:

Three time Nobel Peace Prize Nominee and a Voice of Conscience, Kathy Kelly, on July 3, 2010 in front of The Banner made from the cloth cut from the clothes of PLOWSHARES 8, Father Philip Francis Berrigan as he lay dying in his bed.

Father Berrigan also said: "If enough Christians followed the gospel, they could bring any state to its knees."

Kathy Kelly had just returned from Pakistan and Afghanistan and told the crowd who attended the 30th year of Celebration of NUKERESISTERS and NUKEWATCH:
“Employees at Oak Ridge and people living near the Y-12 Plant understand the dangers of contamination, accident, waste proliferation and inadequate cleanup. We must expose these dangers. Worldwide, people aiming to acquire and maintain nuclear weapons and nuclear energy jeopardize the safety of present and future generations.”
 
THE LEADERS of 30 Years of Nuclear Resistance [left to right] Ralph Hutchison, Felice and Jack Cohen-Joppa, Bonnie Urfer, John LaForge, lead the 200 activists in song, July 4, 2010.

The Raging Grannies led by Motoko F. Huthwaite lead the crowd in song:

NO MORE HIROSHIMA,NO MORE NAGASAKI TOO! Burn scars never heal, cancer everywhere...Just one bomb a city is gone. People dead and dying. The living are far worse...Burn scars never heal. Cancer everywhere. Home, work, all are lost. Generations come and go. But deformities, disease and death keep following, those who were there.

Motoko informed this reporter: "I was born to Japanese parents in America and after Pearl Harbor I was perceived as the enemy. In 1942, I left America on the Exchange Ship and was in Tokyo when the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When the air raid went off in Tokyo I expected to die. I hoped I would die. The lucky ones died."

The July 5, 2010 Action:

The Bird on The Barb Wire at Y-12, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, July 5, 2010 and those who dared to cross and were arrested for trespassing on 'Federal Property'  

Catholic priest, Father Bix faces the Federal agent just before he is arrested for following the nonviolent Jesus.

At the head of the arrest line is Father Bix/Bill Bischell

Bonnie Urfer on her knee being arrested at Y-12, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, July 5, 2010.
Dominican Sister Ardeth Platte, being arrested by the American Federal Government
Sister Ardeth Platte, moments after being arrested by the American Government for NONVIOLENTLY resisting Nuclear Weapons at Y-12, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, July 5, 2010.

Sr. Ardeth requires a crutch as she had recently undergone arthroscopic surgery-no doubt needed because she spends hours on her knees praying to the NONVIOLENT Jesus to Wake Up the US Christians to follow the gospel/good news that Jesus taught:

"BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS: THEY ARE THE DAUGHTERS AND SONS OF GOD"

And certainly NOT those who will bomb, torture or occupy any other!
Jean Gump and her husband just a few hours before Jean was arrested once again for nonviolent civil resistance against nuclear weapons because she crossed the barb-wired fence at Y-12 on July 5, 2010.

People of Conscience who did not cross the barb-wired fence
The Drums of Conscience beat at Y-12, July 5, 2010
Carrie Schuchardt, wife of "Plowshares 8" John Schuchardt who co-founded The House of Peace- a home which is a physical and spiritual refuge for victims of war, in community with adults with special needs, praying at the barb-wire fence at Y-12.
PLOWSHARES 8, Father Carl Kabot and Carrie Schuchardt, July 5, 2010

A few hours prior to that hug, Father Kabot told me:

“Nuclear weapons are insane! The firecrackers that were dropped on Hiroshima that killed babies, children and women proved we are an insane country!"
Clowns of Conscience at Y-12, 5 July 2010

KA in a moment of shock and awe that America would arrest another Clown for NONVIOLENT Civil Disobedience against the insanity of nuclear warfare
All we are saying is Give Peace a Chance!
Children of America offer, want, and deserve peace!

"No government, not even the most democratic, can force us to live under this threat. No state in the world can offer any kind of security against this menace of a nuclear holocaust, or guarantee to prevent it…Any country, which manufactures and stocks nuclear weapons, is first of all endangering its own citizens. This is why the citizens must confront their government and warn it that it has no right to expose them to this danger. Because, in effect, the citizens are being held hostage by their own government, just as if they have been hijacked and deprived of their freedom and threatened…when governments develop nuclear weapons...they are violating the basic rights of their citizens, the basic right not to live under constant threat of annihilation." Mordechai Vanunu, 1987.

 
LEARN MORE:
 
http://www.ananuclear.org/
http://nuclearresister.org/
http://www.stopthebombs.org/
http://www.nukewatch.org/
http://www.nukewatch.com/
http://www.nevadadesertexperience.org/

1. www.ananuclear.org/Portals/0/.../ANA%20LEP%20final.pdf

Eileen Fleming, Producer "30 Minutes with Vanunu" and "13 Minutes with Vanunu"
Founder of WeAreWideAwake.org
Staff Member of Salem-news.com
A Feature Correspondent for Arabisto.com and Dandelionsalad.wordpress.com
Author of "Keep Hope Alive" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"
http://www.youtube.com/user/eileenfleming  

Only in Solidarity do "we have it in our power to begin the world again."-Tom Paine

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