Editor's Note: Due to her research, activism and leadership, it is fair to say that Cathy Garger has become an authoritative voice in the area of nuclear poisoning of the earth. Her research is exhaustive; her knowledge of the history and science of nuclear pollution is comprehensive and her activism has always been exemplary. Many of her essays explain the science on this subject and others urge action, but her passion comes through in all of them. Ms. Garger will be presenting her work along with Dr. Rosalie Bertell and Dr. Janette Sherman on the Trinity Bomb at the Inaugural Unholy Trinity Day on July 16 in Baltimore, MD. We urge all those who are able, to attend this important event:
"The purpose of this event is to shed light on the continuous ionizing radiation pollution and contamination of the United States and other locations throughout the world. The focus of this event will include a most UN-Holy "Trinity" of radiological horrors: (1) nuclear bombs, (2) nuclear reactors, and (3) conventional Uranium Weapons (such as Depleted Uranium or DU) now used in military testing, training, and military combat."
Additional details for registration and attendance are provided at Un-Holy Trinity Day
On the subject of nuclear energy, we are particluarly concerned that as people experience the horrors of the corporate/government crime-in-progress in the Gulf of Mexico and rightly judge the petroleum industry, their resistance against nuclear energy may soften. If we worry about energy sources that pollute our planet, nuclear reactors are clearly the wrong alternative. As Cathy says in this essay, we successfully fought off the nuke barons in the past and we can do it again.
- Les Blough, Editor
There is reason for optimism. No social movement in U.S. history has been more successful than the people's fight to prevent construction of nuclear plants and to existing plants from their communities. For the few in the pro-nuke industry, the financial incentives overshadow the costs to the consumer, damage to the environment, daily health risks and periodic nuclear disasters. We, the people must return to our very effective battle that shut down nuclear reactors as an energy source in the 1970s and 1980s. We did it before and we can do it again.
The deliberate use of manmade ionizing radiation is an assault upon people, the environment, and all living things. Since the first Plutonium and Uranium nuclear bomb was exploded in New Mexico on July 16, 1945, the continuous contamination of the United States and the rest of the world is like something out of a very bad dream... a dream from which we can not seem to awaken.
Those responsible for seven decades of both domestic and international radiological assault are our own government agencies: the Departments of Energy and Defense, and the NRC (some say it stands for the Nuclear Radiating Committee) along with a multitude of corporations involved in various aspects of manufacturing munitions of both nuclear and "conventional" weapons varieties. Used in military combat, these radioactive munitions have been contaminating the Middle East and other nations wherever they are fired and "tested."
Beyond military weapons applications, energy firms that use nuclear reactors to generate the electricity that powers America's TV sets are similarly polluting our air, water, and soil with these DNA-wrecking poisons. Yet there's More. Always More. For as we speak, there are efforts underway to enrich even More Uranium as well as plans to build More weapons facilities and fund bailouts using taxpayers' money to build More experimental nuclear reactors with unsafe designs like the Westinghouse AP-1000 and AREVA's European Pressurised Reactor (EPR).
While Nuclear-Everything is being pushed on America as a "clean" energy alternative sanctified under the guise of reduced carbon emissions, consider if you will just a few effects of ionizing radiation: decreasing fertility rates, miscarriages, genetic mutations, increasing rates of cancers, some forms of heart disease, neuromuscular disease, and thyroid disease, diabetes, and other endocrine-related disorders and many other radiation-induced diseases.
Indeed, if those in power were deliberately trying to destroy the future of life as we know it, they could not possibly have chosen a better method than the continuous, obscene use of ionizing radiation in the environment.
Speaking of obscenities, just for starters, consider the focused efforts since 1990 to irradiate the Middle East with "conventional" munitions employing the use of odorless, invisible ceramic Uranium Oxide gases with no foreseeable end in sight. Then, back in the USA, there's the matter of a facility under construction in South Carolina designed to turn deadly Plutonium from nuclear bombs into fuel for use in America's commercial nuclear reactors.
Never mind that previous tests using bomb-grade Plutonium fuel produced in France were discontinued in order to avert disaster. Mangled fuel rods assemblies be damned! Human safety is no longer a consideration in what is tantamount to radiological war being waged upon humanity.
Adding insult to injury, nearly all commercial nuclear reactors have been documented with current or past radiation leaks. Furthermore, bodies of water including the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the Chesapeake, Cape Cod, Biscayne, and Barnegat Bays, the Long Island Sound, Great Lakes, the Hudson, Connecticut, Delaware, Ohio, Tennessee, Illinois, Missouri, Colorado, Cape Fear, and Columbia Rivers - as well as other American lakes, rivers, creeks, canals, reservoirs and bays have been contaminated with radioactive chemicals from routine discharges from nuclear plants. Add to that the groundwater plumes that leech lethal chemicals through the soils into these same bodies of water and one becomes leery to drink a single drop of it - never mind the 8+ glasses we're advised to consume!
Meanwhile, well-meaning activists led by anti-nuke organizations clamor for "arms reduction" and bomb dismantlement with the intention of trying to avert future nuclear war. Yet the good-hearted are misdirected in their focus, as nuclear wars are already underway - and have been waged by the US in several countries for the past 20 years, under the cover of "conventional" weaponry including tanks, A-10 Warthog jets, and bombs containing deadly Uranium-238, the principal component of what the War Department has deceptively named Depleted Uranium.
What seems to shock people the most is the discovery that nuclear poisons are not only used across the Atlantic. From coast to coast, right here at home, the Military and National Weapons Laboratories have been endlessly firing, exploding, and burning radioactive materials like Uranium and Tritium in our open air under the auspices of "testing," demilitarization, and military training. Starting with the 1945 "Trinity Test" and steadily ever since, between the weapons and nuclear energy industries, it's a wonder we're not all glowing in the dark!
So if we're fed up with the nuclear pollution of our land and water, our air and food, the damage to our health, our fertility, and our kids' mutated genes... and if we're no longer willing to accept the life-destroying effects of toxic and radioactive chemicals on all life forms? Instead of thinking of ourselves as victims, we can become empowered and make the choice to put an end to this full blown nuclear madness once and for all.
With this goal in mind, you are invited to an event to be held on the 65th anniversary of the detonation of the first nuclear bomb, the "Trinity Test." Thus, in Baltimore on July 16, 2010, at our first Un-Holy Trinity Day event, we will have the honor of hearing esteemed international anti-nuclear experts Dr. Rosalie Bertell and Dr. Janette Sherman (see bios) as well as this writer speak on radioactive weaponry and nuclear pollution. We will also discuss ideas for action - plus, the critical need for maintaining hope as we work to stop the rampant nuclear poisoning of our planet.
The continued bombardment of ionizing radiation that remains for up to thousands of years in our environment is a blight on the health of America's children and all other living things for countless generations to come. Yet we do not have to passively allow this nightmare to continue, for we, as persons of conscience, possess the ability, will, and sheer, undeniable power that comes from strength in numbers.
If you're concerned about the preservation of life on the planet, please join us on Friday, July 16 in Baltimore for our Un-Holy Trinity Day presentations and discussion. Admission is free. For more information about this event and to reserve a seat, visit our website at Unholy Trinity Day.
READ HER BIO AND MORE ANALYSES AND ESSAYS
BY AXIS OF LOGIC COLUMNIST, CATHY GARGER