POISONING THE FUTURE SO A FEW MAY PROFIT
Robert Oppenheimer, a leader among the scientists who directed the production of the first nuclear weapons, likened the first test to an experience of Armageddon. He and his fellows actually had a betting pool as to whether the atmosphere would ignite as a result of the detonation. In order to insure the political viability of the infant “Military Industrial Complex,” the U.S. spread the components of the Manhattan Project all over the nation.
By the early 1980’s, however, except for theortetical research, every region save one was in the midst of rejecting nuclear weapons, and for the most part the nuclear power complexes that gave hidden subsidies to the bomb-makers. The huge reservation at Hanford Washington was on its way to mothballs, though it would remain toxic for some several thousand years. And a few years later, in 1989, the managers at the Rocky Flats facility outside Denver so bungled their work that the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the plant and shut it down. Over and over, where organized progressive democracy had any sway in America, nukes were under attack and on the run.
Unfortunately for the South, the only hints here of progressive politics have collapsed under the double onus of racism and police powers, which rival any Banana Republic on the planet. Thus, Dixie has become the earth’s H-bomb breadbasket. In addition to the only active production facility for H-bombs, at Oak Ridge, Tenn., outside Knoxville, the Savannah River Site---across the river from Augusta, Ga. and the annual Master’s Golf Tournament---has enough plutonium in storage to create tens of thousands more thermonuclear weapons, especially given the assistance of the Tennessee Valley Authority, which extracts Tritium(Heavy Hydrogen, for heavier hitting H-bombs)from several of its civilian nuclear reactors. These power production plants originated in the ‘Atoms for Peace’ program, of course, which activists have always deemed a dodge for the weapons flacks.
The story of nuclear weapons, the suicidal impulse which they represent, and some of the current issues and happenings in this regard will be ongoing topics in these pages, albeit ones that I will explore intermittently. Theodore Hesburgh, former Notre Dame Provost, suggested a logical attitude toward nukes when he said, “It’s like having a cobra in the nursery with your grandchildren…. You get rid of the cobra or you won’t have any grandchildren.” In my ongoing commitment to rid our nest of these genocidal arms, the following BLOGS are a minimum commitment over the next year.
1)A THREE PART HISTORY OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS, FROM 1942
THROUGH THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION;
2)A TWO PART EXAMINATION OF IMPORTANT, RECENT, GENERAL
NUCLEAR ISSUES;
3)AN ANALYSIS OF THE COMING H-BOMB PRODUCTION COMPLEX
PLANNED FOR THE SOUTH;
4)TWO ARTICLES EACH ABOUT THE SAVANNAH RIVER SITE AND OAK
RIDGE, TO EXAMINE HEALTH, SOCIAL, AND ECONOMIC PROB-
LEMS INHERENT IN THE SITUATIONS THERE;
5)FOUR OR SO ‘CASE-STUDIES’ AND PERSONAL HISTORIES OF FOLKS
AND EVENTS DEALING WITH NUCLEAR MATTERS;
6)A LOOK AT THE BROWN’S FERRY ACCIDENT, NEAR FT. PAYNE, ALA.,
THAT NEARLY CAUSED A MELTDOWN, AND WHAT’S HAPPENING
THEIR NOW;
7)A COUPLE OF ARTICLES LOOKING AT MILITARY NUCLEAR WEAP-
ONS FACILITIES, THAT ARE ALSO DISPROPORIONATELY
SOUTHERN;
8)ONGOING UPDATES ABOUT THE SECOND “WALK TO WAKE UP THE
WORLD,” WHICH INVOLVES FOLKS WALKING FROM ATLANTA TO
AIKEN, S.C., NEAR THE SAVANNAH RIVER SITE, AS WELL AS
OTHER PLANNED PROTESTS AND EDUCATIONAL EtENTS
CONCERNING DIXIE’S H-BOMB BREAD BASKET.
9)A REPORT ABOUT LAST YEAR’S WALK, WHEN FOOTSORE JIMBO
AND A FEW INTREPID FRIENDS WALKED AND SANG AND MADE
A WITNESS TO THE PROPOSITION THAT DEMOCRACY AND
PEACE ARE POSSIBLE EVEN IN THE FACE OF PLUTOCRACY
AND THE PROFITS OF PLUTONIUM.
10)ONE OR MORE ASSESSMENTS OF THE INEVITABLE USE OF
NUCLEAR WEAPONS AGAINST THE UNITED STATES IF WE AS A
PEOPLE DO NOT DEMONSTRATE THE SOCIAL STRENGTH AND
THE POLITICAL WILL TO END THIS MENACE TO HUMANITY.
Miyoka Matsubara came to Atlanta last September, for the opening of an exhibit at Emory University that illustrated the lethal results of atom bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where over 200,000 Japanese civilians died on August 6 and 9, 1945. Of course, these sole instances of the use of nuclear weapons are the result of the decisions of the U.S. government, and by all odds, Ms. Matsubara should have been one of the fatalities on August 6, sixty years ago.
As a middle school student, she was outside at the time of detonation, less than two miles from the million degree celsius hypo-center, where people died, not as bodies, but as shadows. The blast burned her so badly that she still wears the scars like a suit of clothes that is impossible to discard. She has had multiple tumors and cancers removed over the years, all the likely results of the radiation that dosed her on the day of the bombing and in the weeks that followed.
She has committed her life to speaking about the horrors of nuclear war, pledged to plea the cause of peace in spite of her pain and her weariness, until the death she cheated when she was 12 ultimately claims her. She spoke to private school children, to audiences at Emory, to folks at the Martin Luther King Center, to the few politicians and journalists who would listen. I had the honor to record her and to watch diverse audiences blanch and weep as she spoke of her ordeal and illustrated her talk with the artwork she has produced, over the years, about that day---a combination of Heironymous Bosch and Primitive Modern.
Ms. Matsubara arrived here roughly a month after the completion of the initial “Walk to Wake Up the World.” A small but intrepid squad made the 160 mile journey along the scorched highways of Georgia, in just over 80 hours, between Aug. 6-9, to commemorate the victims of our country’s attack six decades ago, and to condemn plans to continue building plutonium and weapons factories today. We concluded that one area of dire need, that could benefit from spending differently the $100 billion slated for nukes, was sidewalks, or the scandalous lack of said same on most Dixie highways.
One of my colleagues on this first “Walk” composed a darkly hilarious song about the human prospect, based on his experience of being the bard for our merry little band. He debuted the lyrics with his wife, a couple of weeks before our brutal, torrid sojourn. The first verse and the chorus would be worth noting; with a little music they comprised a ditty only the stonehearted could resist.
“Now some people worry ‘bout the nucular bomb,
It makes them oh so sad!
But I don’t worry ‘bout the nucular bomb, cause
It’s the best bomb we ever had.”
Oh, we’re gonna throw a party when they drop the bomb!
Don’t worry baby you can come along.
We’re gonna throw a party when they drop the bomb
We’ll all get together and we’ll sing this song.
We’ll play pin the tail on the mutant,
We’ll have hot dogs and French Fries.
We’ll even give out a special award
For the first one to vaporize.”
There were five verses, altogether, plus the chorus. Our party in August included a Pentacostal Preacher with a wild, wild life story, a couple of ironic/Goth hyper-punk youngsters, and a few minstrel hangers on, as well as bard Richard and I.
Obviously, we didn’t even make a dent in the H-bomb plans of the politicos and mass killers who foist this murder on us. But we’re coming back again this August. We’d like some company, and support of any sort. The idea that PEOPLE, here in a land “OF, BY, AND FOR” them, should actually be able to determine their own fate, shouldn’t be a radical notion.
What if it were a vote? We could select utter poverty and collective annihilation, or a different expenditure of our treasure and death from natural causes Bertrand Russell sums up the inherently persuasive case for standing up for ourselves and for the only direction in which a human future is possible.
This idea of weapons of mass extermination is utterly horrible and is
something which no one with one spark of humanity can tolerate. I
will not pretend to obey a government which is organising a mass
massacre of mankind.
He spoke about his native England, but his assessment is hundreds of times more applicable to the America of the last half of the twentieth century. As another colleague expressed the situation, “the time has come to take a stand. We have no choice really. We may die standing up and fighting, but it is better than living as slaves on our knees, in which posture we will surely meet our end as well, anyway.”
STAY TUNED AND BE IN COMMUNICATION! WE NEED TO ACT, INSTEAD OF REACT, AND THAT STARTS WITH THE CREATION OF COMMUNICATION NETWORKS THAT ACTUALLY WORK ON A DAY TO DAY BASIS, NE’S PAS?