The Shundahai Network :A Decade of Resistance

Hello All,
I wanted to forward this news update to you so that you can spread the word and participate with your comments.  Thanks!
Karin Tobin

 

Comments needed on U.S. plans to increase nuclear weapons on Western Shoshone Lands.
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 23:05:18 -0700

ALERT!  Please submit comments on the U.S.’ plan to increase nuclear weapons on Western Shoshone Lands.  Deadline is April 10, 2008.

         Press Release and What You Can Do follow:
******
Press Release

Contacts:
Larson Bill or Julie Fishel, Western Shoshone Defense Project, (775) 744-2565
Launce Rake, Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada,  (702)791-1965 (o), (702) 917-7541 (c)
Sean Meyer, Union of Concerned Scientists, smeyer@ucsusa.org or (617) 301-8065

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

NO PEACE OUT WEST - U.S. PLANS MORE NUCLEAR WEAPONS ON SHOSHONE LAND:

INDIGENOUS LEADERS, CITIZENS AND SCIENTISITS AGREE -  NO NEW NUKES

Comment Period Nearing end

April 3, 2008, 22:42 p.m. (PST)  (Newe Sogobe (Lee, Nevada)):  With gold prices soaring sky-high and the general public watching Presidential candidate antics, there’s more than just gold rush fever threatening the air and water out West.    Under the radar screen, a public comment period closes next week, April 10th, on a proposal by the U.S. Department of Energy to increase nuclear weapons development at the Nevada Test Site.  First announced in 2006 as “Complex 2030”, the new plan is called “Complex Transformation” and includes details on the proposal to upgrade the entire U.S. nuclear weapons complex and recreate the infrastructure to research, develop, and manufacture new nuclear weapons. See www.complextransformationspeis.com/ for more details. The Nevada Test Site is named as one of the plan’s key locations.  The Test Site is located within the Treaty-recognized territory of Western Shoshone lands and has long been protested by Western Shoshone and their supporters.

This newest proposal by the United States’ government puts it once again in direct violation of a recently confirmed decision by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD).  In its decision, made public March 10, 2006, and confirmed again last month, the CERD Committee urged the United States to “freeze”, “desist” and “stop” actions being taken, or threatened to be taken, against the Western Shoshone Peoples of the Western Shoshone Nation. In its decision, CERD stressed the “nature and urgency” of the Shoshone situation informing the U.S. that it goes “well beyond” the normal reporting process and warrants immediate attention. The CERD decision explicitly cited ongoing weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site.  Decision attached.

“The U.S. has never shown how it got title to our land in the first place.  We have never agreed to this.  To us, there is no transformation here– this is just a continued extermination of life– nothing complex about that.  The land, air and water have suffered enough abuse already.  We need to start cleaning things up.  What is being done to our people doesn’t just affect us – it affects everyone and all life.”  Stated Western Shoshone grandmother Carrie Dann as she returned from a recent indigenous convening in Chiapas, Mexico, where she and other indigenous elders and leaders met to discuss traditional teachings about climate change, environmental destruction and solutions for the future.   These discussions will continue at the upcoming Protecting Mother Earth gathering July 17-20th in Lee, Nevada. See Indigenous Environmental Network site www.ienearth.org  for additional information.

Western Shoshone leader and 2008 delegate to the UN CERD session in Geneva, Larson Bill commented:  “By their own actions, like this new proposal, the U.S. is losing all of its credibility in the world community.  Everything good that is out there they want to use for bad purposes.  The materials in these proposed weapons – they came from the earth where they had a purpose.  The companies and military dig them up and nothing good comes out of it.  The world doesn’t need this, it’s got enough problems already.”

The Western Shoshone are not alone in opposing the government’s most recent plan.  The Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada (PLAN) issued a letter to the Department of Energy last month supporting Western Shoshone Treaty rights and raising environmental and political concerns to the DOE.  Letter attached.  Likewise, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is calling on the public to send in comments and has stated publicly that it believes the push for new nuclear weapons could lead to a resumption of U.S. nuclear testing, which would lead to nuclear testing by other nations.  See Union of Concerned Scientist site ucswebsite  for additional information.
According to one recent UCS release:  “A thorough re-evaluation would conclude that it is in the interest of the United States to pursue a world free of nuclear weapons. The DOE should focus on maintaining a safe, secure, and credible nuclear deterrent while supporting efforts to eliminate these weapons globally, and on dismantling warheads and safely securing weapons-grade materials. The United States should NOT pursue new nuclear weapons.”

“The position of those seeking social and environmental justice in Nevada is perfectly clear,” agreed Launce Rake, a spokesman with the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada in Las Vegas. “International law, respect for our environment and common sense all suggest the same thing. We need to stop pouring money into the hands of the defense contractors and do what’s right for the Nevada Test Site: Shut it down and clean it up.”
****
WHAT PEOPLE CAN DO:
Individuals and organizations are strongly encouraged to submit comments on the Complex Transformation draft SPEIS proposal (by April 10, 2008) by fax, letter. or on the UCS website. You can send comments via U.S. mail to:
Mr. Theodore Wyka
Complex Transformation SPEIS Document Manager
Office of Transformation, NA-10.1
U.S. Department of Energy/NNSA
1000 Independence Avenue, SW
Washington, D.C. 20585

by facsimile­1-703-931-9222
or ucswebsite
Please mark your letters, faxes, or emails “Complex Transformation SPEIS Comments.”

A sample letter from the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada is attached. (Sorry the email I got had no sample letter attached, I am trying to get it and will correct this posting)


Western Shoshone Defense Project

So-Ho-Bi (South Fork) office:
775-744-2565 (fax and phone)

Main office:
P.O. Box 211308
Crescent Valley, NV  89821
Newe Sogobi
775-468-0230
775-468-0237 (fax)(

past NTS activities
Las Vegas Review-Journal
Feb. 16, 2008
U.S. NUCLEAR WEAPONS DEVELOPMENT: Test site profile revamped
Little-known Super Kukla delineated
By KEITH ROGERS

Government officials are revamping the historic profile of the Nevada
Test Site to include details about a little-known project that played
an important role in the nation's Cold War quest to develop nuclear bombs.

Documents obtained by the Review-Journal show that the site of the
Super Kukla "prompt burst" reactor in Area 27 of the sprawling
nuclear proving grounds, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, was given
final closure approval in September by the Nevada Division of
Environmental Protection after it had been demolished and its
contaminated remnants entombed in place.

The disposal and closure operation cost $2.3 million, but the
Department of Energy saved $3 million by using this safe, cleanup
method, said Kevin Rohrer, a National Nuclear Security Administration
spokesman in North Las Vegas.

The bulk of contamination from radioactive materials, PCBs,
beryllium, metals and volatile organic compounds was disposed in
various, authorized sites for toxic or radioactive waste. But areas
where remnants couldn't be completely removed from the shielded,
bunker facility were grouted and sealed in place, according to the
281-page corrective action closure report and supporting documents.

Information about Super Kukla currently is being added to the
activities included in the Nevada Test Site's profile for use by
former test site workers and survivors of others who are seeking
compensation for illnesses under a Labor Department program.

John Funk, a former Nevada Test Site worker and chairman of the
nonprofit Atomic Veterans and Victims of America Inc., alerted the
National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health in late October
that the so-called "site profile" document had glossed over Super
Kukla. The document is supposed to include pertinent, historical
information about all tests and activities involving radioactive
materials or releases at the Nevada Test Site.

"It didn't say what it did or what it was," Funk said Friday.

The name Super Kukla stems from the popular television puppet show,
"Kukla, Fran and Ollie," that was canceled in 1957 after 10 years on the air.

A nuclear effects reactor named Kukla, after the troupe's earnest,
clownlike puppet leader, was built first in 1959 at California's
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Later it became Super Kukla,
a so-called "prompt burst" nuclear reactor that was constructed in
1964 in a remote area of the Nevada Test Site to explore the initial
phase of a criticality, or nuclear chain reaction.

A reactor dubbed Fran was built in 1962. It was operated by Lawrence
Livermore scientists at the Nevada Test Site until mid-1967 when it
was dispatched for its last three-year stint at the national lab in
Idaho. NNSA officials and spokesmen at the national labs in
Livermore, Calif., and Los Alamos, N.M., could not document the
existence of a third reactor, supposedly named Ollie.

Las Vegan Troy Wade, former defense programs chief for the Department
of Energy during the Reagan administration, however, had knowledge of
the Kukla-class reactors.

"We used them to make measurements of things like basic physics
measurements that would then relate to the safety of the nuclear
weapon," Wade said in a telephone interview this week.

Wade said the neutron-pulse reactors were not secret or so-called
"black projects." Nevertheless, information about their role in
national security during the Cold War has only been sparsely reported
over the years in internal publications produced for facilities in
the nuclear weapons complex.

After Super Kukla operations ceased in 1979, its core and highly
enriched uranium components were returned to the Y-12 plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

The uranium rings, which weighed nearly 600 pounds each, were some of
the largest highly enriched uranium items ever produced at the Y-12
plant, according to a 2004 employee publication. Declared as surplus
in 1995, the rings were cut into pieces in 2003 and blended down to
low enriched uranium to be sold as fuel for nuclear power plants.

In a 50th anniversary science and technology publication for Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory, the Super Kukla reactor was said to
have "simulated the hostile environment of a nuclear exchange."

By the mid-1960s, "with the large buildup of Soviet nuclear weapons
and delivery systems, the U.S. faced some serious "what-if"
questions," the lab's magazine reported. "If a nuclear exchange
occurred between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, U.S. warheads would
have to contend with defensive countermeasures such as a
nuclear-tipped interceptor or antiballistic missile, which could
deliver a blast aimed at destroying or disabling a U.S. warhead
before it reentered the atmosphere."

Wade said Super Kukla was also very important in giving scientists
the ability to design nuclear weapons so that they would be safe in
storage "particularly in those areas where there were going to be
people close at hand, like on submarines and ships at sea."

While Super Kukla operations ceased as the last decade of the Cold
War approached, scientists at the Los Alamos lab continued to evolve
the testing technique with what's called the Criticality Experiments
Facility that's destined for the Nevada Test Site. The effort is
continuing so that scientists can study the stockpile as it ages to
ensure that it remains safe.

Find this article at: http://www.lvrj.com/news/15698047.html

From 1986 through 1994, two years after the United States put full-scale nuclear weapons testing on hold indefinitely, at least 536 demonstrations were held at the test site involving 37,488 participants and 15,740 arrests, according to government records.

How many of these did you go to? Please send any stories or memories of protest at the Nevada Test Site to me for use in the book "The Shundahai Network: A Decade of Resistance" include your contact info and you will recieve full credit.

Email: gregornot@gmail.com (something is not letting me put a directlink to my email, so please cut & paste) or you can use email icon below article.

 Please put Corbin Harney or Shundahai Network in the Subject Line as I receive hundreds of spam every day.

Peace,gregor 

by GEORGE KNAPP

I WALKED OUT OF THE COLD Ely morning and into the coffee shop at the Jailhouse Motel, searching for my pal Ray Slaughter. Slaughter's many friends in the Las Vegas law enforcement community remember him as a big bear of a man who, in his younger years, was a hard rock miner and tunnel digger, strong as a bull, garrulous but not one to back down from any man.

I looked around the coffee shop but didn't see him anywhere, then realized that the frail guy stranding in front of me was Ray. He looks like he's aged 20 years in the last two and has lost about a third of his body size. He doesn't look at all like the same friend I've known for 20-plus years. His mind is sharp and his humor wicked as ever, but the physical changes are startling.

Ray is dying. His doctors told him he had one, maybe two years to live. That was three years ago. He's been holding on to life, day by day, because he wants to leave something behind for his son and daughter, but it's not at all certain he will be able to pull it off.

Slaughter is one of the thousands of workers at the Nevada Test Site whose exposure to radiation and other nasty substances during the height of the atomic testing program has caused severe health problems. He's been diagnosed with two kinds of cancer, along with a host of other diseases directly related to his work at the test site. It is a medical certainty that his diseases stem from his work for the government. Yet, that government, the one that Ray and so many others loyally served, is doing everything it can to deny benefits to its former employees, men and women who are dying off, day by day. From all appearances, the government is counting on the deaths so it doesn't have to write more checks.

If I told you all of the crap that's been pulled by the Department of Labor over the past few years, you might find it hard to believe. People like Ray get shuffled from doctor to doctor to doctor. They take countless tests and give countless samples and then they get tested some more. One of the doctors Ray saw claimed there's no scientific proof that radiation even causes cancer, which would mean Ray is not eligible to receive compensation from a program that was fully funded years ago, in part because of testimony Ray delivered before Congress. A doctor who says radiation doesn't cause cancer? Where did they dig this guy up?

Ray and his doctors figured Slaughter would be dead by now. The government must have figured that, too. They've done just about everything they could to delay paying him the benefits that are clearly deserved. After a year of forms and documents, they changed his case worker and told him to start all over. They've lost paperwork. They've requested more tests. Finally, the feds seem to have run out of excuses because Ray was told two months ago that his settlement had been approved. He's been hanging on each day, hoping the check would be in the mail.

Last week, Ray called the Department of Labor and learned that the check has been sitting in a manager's office, waiting for a signature. It's been sitting there for more than a month. After that, it will need three more signatures, then will go to the Treasury Department for final approval. Slaughter might not live that long. He's so weak that he's had to forego recent chemotherapy treatments because he can't make the drive to Las Vegas.

When the Department of Labor wants something from the former test site workers, it will bury them in a blizzard of paper. Ray says the department claimed it overpaid him for his meals by a couple of bucks. They sent him five letters in five days, demanding repayment. Five letters in five days, asking him about $8.50 Yet they don't have the time to sign his damned check?

Thousands of other test site workers are in the same boat. Hundreds have already died. Their families will get nothing but will be stuck with the hospital bills and funeral expenses. Despite the best efforts of U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, the Bush administration simply won't get off its ass and do the right thing, even though the money for the program has already been appropriated and is basically sitting there. Maybe they need the dough to fund more tax breaks for oil companies or agri-biz giants.

It's an absolute obscenity and is one more reason that these corporate-loving bastards in Washington need to go.

NAMES AND FACES

Think the casino industry is satisfied with the millions of dollars in tax breaks it received because of the "green building" initiative? Guess again. The casino giants want another bite at the apple. They've asked the Nevada Tax Commission to approve changes that would take the casinos off the hook if they are caught exaggerating the amounts they have coming because of their green projects. The issue comes to a head at the commission's Jan. 28 meeting and it's worth watching. ... Former Las Vegas Councilman and mayoral candidate Steve Miller probably can't count on getting the Culinary endorsement if he ever runs for office again. Miller has always been a bit of a flamethrower, but his latest online newsletter takes rhetorical scorching to a new level. His main article is a slam at his former foe Jan Jones and her support for Hillary Clinton during the recent caucuses. In Miller's view, Jones and the casino industry intimidated Hispanic workers into supporting Clinton at the caucuses. He wrote that the "majority" of the participants at the Strip hotel caucus events would not speak or write English and had to be helped by translators. Miller characterized the caucus participants as "our nations most controversial voting block -- mainly undocumented workers willing to vote as they are told by casino bosses in trade for giving them sanctuary in Nevada." Come to think of it, Miller probably better not count on any campaign donations from the gaming industry, either. ... Word is circulating in D.C. that last year's firings of several U.S. attorneys is not a dead issue, not by a long shot. Two congressional committees are pursuing their own investigations, as is the Office of Inspector General within the Justice Department. Former Nevada U.S. Attorney Dan Bogden confirms that he has been interviewed by investigators. Some are predicting criminal indictments later this year, or at a minimum, some blistering reports that could easily become campaign fodder. By the way, Bogden met with his successor, Greg Brower, in Reno last week, in the office that was once Bogden's. ... Political pundit Roger Stone says in his StoneZone.com blogsite that "more than one third" of the GOP voters who turned out for the Republican straw poll were members of the Mormon faith. He doesn't say where he got this info, but calls Mitt Romney's victory in Nevada "a fugazy, a Magoffin," in other words, a deception. Romney was expected to garner a lot of support from his fellow Mormons but does anyone know if this one-third figure is accurate? If so, please send us the info.

George Knapp is a veteran investigative reporter for KLAS-TV Channel 8. You can reach him at gknapp@klastv.com.