Fingers Still on the Button

[ensho]

http://counterpunch.com/haber01282011.html


60 Years of Disaster at the Nevada Test Site



January 27 marks 60 years since the first atomic bomb test in Nevada. Codenamed "Able" it was tiny for a nuclear weapon: the equivalent of 1,000 tons of TNT, about 1/15 the size of the bomb that killed upwards of 130,000 people in Hiroshima. Anniversaries are times to reflect, so what is the legacy of the Nevada Test Site (NTS), now called the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS)? What is the current state of the NNSS and what is going on there? Are the nation and world safer for all the Cold War and post-Cold War efforts? As the NNSS re-purposes itself to focus more on detecting and containing national security threats, it still stands as a world-wide symbol of the making of weapons of mass destruction. The name change is intended to reassert its relevance in the absence of exploding nuclear devices, but the inherent problem of the NTS remains. The NNSS is always able to resume testing nuclear weapons within two years should the president order it.

Testing of nuclear weapons didn't only happen at the Nevada Test Site. Historians even argue that using the bombs on Japan rather than demonstrating them on an unpopulated location constitute human experimentation. Treating victims as research subjects rather than patients was widely reported in Japan, as well as from victims of atmospheric testing in the 1950s. Targeting civilians was and remains a crime against humanity, as does threatening nuclear attack on non-nuclear states, no matter how repressive their leaders.

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Taking the land of the Western Shoshone and other native peoples to use it for nuclear testing is not just. Forcing the people of Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands to live on tiny Ebeye Island, creating one of the most densely populated places on Earth is not just. Stealing and contaminating native hunting and fishing grounds is not just.

-snip-

When we devise ways for nuclear weapons to be more precise and kill fewer civilians, to be more militarily useful, we undermine the international consensus against all weapons of mass destruction. And how many design upgrades and revisions can be implemented and still not require a real test? At some point, unless we in the United States get serious about pressuring our government to cut its nuclear weapons arsenal, the Nevada Desert will again quake with detonations...and be filled with peacemakers crashing the gates like in the 1980s to shut it down once and for all. This anniversary should serve as a time to work for peace and disarmament.

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we are so guilty - the world should hate us

[RC]

1. "we are so guilty - the world should hate us"

They do. One reason for our "Defense" budget being as large as the rest of the world's countries combined.

[ensho]

3. the reason our defense budget is so huge is to:

fill the pockets of military/ind. Barons with a constant stream of money. period.

[tjwash]

2. we are so guilty - the world should hate us

If you are feeling a little of the DU guilt for being American, you can always do some self flagellation...it works wonders on the psyche. Try a hair shirt also; I have about 5 in my closet if you want to borrow one.

[ensho]

4. I don't feel guilt, I feel ANGER

I've been against nuke bombs since the very beginning and have always spoken out.