Welcome login | signup
Language en es fr
We are the 99 percent

August 6: Day of Action Against the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Arsenal

Posted 11 years ago on July 31, 2012, 6:01 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt

unOccupyABQ No Nukes

Updated, 8/1: Joint press release by Occupy Wall Street Environmental Solidarity Working Group, Occupy San Francisco, Occupy Santa Fe, and (Un)Occupy Albuquerque added at bottom of article, with updated information on actions occurring in NYC and and the San Francisco Bay Area.

(un)Occupy Albuquerque and allies are organizing a civil disobedience action on Hiroshima Day, August 6th, in Los Alamos as part of the wider three-day events planned by the Occupy Santa Fe Nuke Free Now Coalition. See here for a full events list for August 3-6 in Santa Fe and Los Alamos.

There is no single institution on earth that undermines the well-being of the world more than the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Northern New Mexico.

NUCLEAR WAR
As a tool of the U.S. empire, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) developed the only nuclear bombs to be used as weapons of war—in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and three days later in Nagasaki. At least 225,000 civilians were killed. Hundreds of thousands died later of cancers, and thousands more inherited birth defects. Today, the U.S. nuclear stockpile contains enough warheads to destroy 159,000 Hiroshimas. With threats of a U.S. strike against Iran and Israel’s U.S.-backed hegemony in the Middle East, it is time to shut down the war machine.

TOXIC EARTH
The development and maintenance of nuclear weapons displaces indigenous people, pollutes air, water, and land & degrades the health of all life on Earth. The U. S. has exploded over 1100 nuclear weapons in tests above and underground and in the ocean, exposing millions of unsuspecting humans and animals to damaging radiation. LANL is built on and is contaminating indigenous land “borrowed” by the U.S. government and never returned.

CORPORATE GREED
Los Alamos is NO LONGER operated by the U.S. government. In an egregious breach of world security, U.S. nuclear weapons industry operations have been managed by private, for-profit corporations since

  1. Among the largest of these, Bechtel Corporation—the engineering firm that built almost half of the nuclear plants in the world as well as the oil infrastructure of Saudi Arabia—now runs daily operations at LANL, and last year was awarded more than $55 million in pure profit for LANL management alone.

LOST EXPERTISE
The resources and scientific expertise devoted to nuclear bombs are critically needed to address such pressing issues as global warming, declining fossil fuel supply, overpopulation, species extinction, and poverty.

Join us in Los Alamos, NM Aug. 6, 2012 to put the Empire on notice:
No more nuclear weapons!
No more corporate greed! No more war!
!Ya Basta U.S. global domination!

Some facts on the U.S. nuclear weapons system, via the Environmental Solidarity Working Group at Occupy Wall Street:

  • The U.S. maintains more than 10,000 nuclear warheads.
  • Obama's FY 2012 budget request designates over $7.6 billion to programs directly related to nuclear warheads. This is an 8.9% increase from the previous year. The increase will be sustained and then increased further "in the later out years."
  • Accord to a White House fact sheet: "The plan includes investments of $80 billion to sustain and modernize the nuclear weapons complex" ... and "well over $100 billion in nuclear delivery systems to sustain existing capabilities and modernize some strategic systems" by the year 2020.
  • Federal spending for nuclear weapons between 1940 and 2007 was about $7.2 trillion, exceeding "the combined total federal spending for education; training, employment, and social services; agriculture; natural resources and the environment; general science, space, and technology; community and regional development, including disaster relief; law enforcement; and energy production and regulation."
  • Nuclear weapons' relationship to human security was put on display in Japan 67 years ago. We know what they do.

For even more facts about nuclear weapons, see NukeFreeNow.org:

Every facet of the nuclear industry poisons our planet. The nuclear business is wildly profitable, yet it collects billions in taxpayer subsidies.

Nuclear subsides go beyond mere money. The biosphere and creatures who depend on a living planet pay the largest subsidy through illness and premature death.

Nuclear weapons manufacturing and testing has poisoned millions, but secrecy has keep us misinformed. Secrecy has blocked accurate measures of how much radiation we have been exposed to. Misinformation has allowed downwinders, uranium miners, defense workers and the subjects of secret tests to suffer and die without medical attention or compensation. The lack of medical care given to nuclear victims has impeded scientific study of the long-term effects of weapons development and testing.

In spite of this neglect, scientists do know that exposure to the fallout from nuclear weapons testing causes cancers, tumors, genetic damage, infertility, birth defects and death.

Plutonium is so poisonous that one inhaled microscopic particle can cause lung cancer.

A few reap billions in profits, while we, the 99%, have diminished futures. There is always money for more bombs and new wars, but we’re told there isn’t enough for healthcare, education, housing, pensions. Sustainable-energy projects languish. We live with the nightmare of nuclear war.

A major nuclear war — between the US and Russia —would leave Earth virtually uninhabitable. A regional war — limited to India and Pakistan would cause a global famine that would kill one billion people, according to Alan Robock and Brian Toon, two of the foremost experts on the climatic impact of nuclear war.

It’s time. We must make this end. Read the rest at NukeFreeNow.org

occupy nukes poster, see top of article for text

Occupy Nukes: Hiroshima Day - August 6, 2012
A National Day of Action Against the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Arsenal
NO 80 billion dollar modernization of facilities in Los Alamos, NM, Kansas City, MO, or Oak Ridge, TN!

The 99% will be confronting the US's massive nuclear weapons arsenal on August 6, Hiroshima Day. Occupy Nukes demonstrations will be held in the San Fransisco Bay Area, Los Alamos, and New York City

Where and When:
30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, New York, 5:30 PM;
Japanese Consulate at 50 Fremont Street, San Francisco, 2 PM;
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, all day.

August 6 will be a day of solemn remembrance of those who suffered and perished in one of the most horrific and genocidal war crimes ever committed; the dropping of the atomic bomb on the civilian population of Hiroshima in 1945, equal only to the atomic bombing Nagasaki three days later. At least 225,000 civilians were killed in the Hiroshima bombing. Hundreds of thousands died later of cancers, and thousands more inherited birth defects. But August 6 will also be a day in which the 99% took action to ensure such destruction is never wrought on anyone ever again.

Nuclear weapons allow us to gauge the full extent of brutality that the 1%, which rules through exploitation, coercion and violence, is capable of committing. Money spent on nukes is irradiating social programs for the 99%.

We further recognize that nuclear weapons have a bastard twin; nuclear power. So called “safe”, “civilian” nuclear technology is used to justify the fossil-fuel intensive mining of uranium in some of the worlds most economically decimated regions, in country's such as Romania and Niger, and on indigenous lands in South Australia and the American West. Continued reliance on nuclear power has led the people of earthquake-prone Japan to experience the radioactive horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki all over again with the continuing disaster at the Fukushima-Daiichi plant.

On August 6, people power challenges nuclear power. The Occupy Movement stands in solidarity with those threatened, poisoned and murdered the globe over by the 1%'s nuclear fueled rule.

Occupy activists in New Mexico, ground zero for US nuclear weapons development, will hold a series of film screenings, teach-ins, and rallies, culminating in a mass, non-violent direct action at Los Alamos National Laboratory. (Un)Occupy Albuquerque says “No more nuclear weapons!
No more corporate greed! No more war!
!Ya Basta US global domination!”

In the San Fransisco Bay Area, Occupy activists will be gathering in hazmat suits at the Japanese Consulate, drawing connections between nuclear weapons and nuclear power, Hirsohima and Fukushima, Japanese and US reactors, as well as drawing attention to the near eternal life of nuclear waste. Occupy Oakland says, “Our government disregards radioactive pollution from the corporations that fund elections, and the people are unprotected from the nuclear threat.”

Occupy Wall Street and affiliate groups in NYC will be congregating at 30 Rockeller Plaza, headquarters of General Electric, the world's biggest company and builders of the melted-down reactors at Fukushima. Demonstrators will be staging a die-in or, melt-in, calling attention to the costly and continued development of nuclear weapons and nuclear power technology in concert between the government and corporations.

GE brings good things to death. The mega-corporation, along with its Japanese nuclear partner Hitachi, is seeking permission from the industry-captured US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build a new uranium enrichment facility in Wilmington, NC. The facility will utilize new laser technology that makes the processing of nuclear fuel swifter and more convenient for the 1%'s weapons and power plants.

OWS Environmental Solidarity says, “The 99% possess tools to transform waste and danger of the Nuclear Industrial Complex into structures that meet our real needs: true sustainability and security, just food production, jobs, renewable energy, affordable housing, education, and economic justice.”

No Nukes Now!

Occupy! Resist!

Groups taking part in Occupy Nukes: OWS Environmental Solidarity, (Un)Occupy Albuquerque, Occupy Santa Fe, Occupy SF Environmental Justice Working Group, Coalition Against Nukes, No Nukes Action, Green Action for Health and Environmental Justice, Nuke Free Now!, War Resisters League, Catholic Worker Movement, Shut Down Indian Point Now! Abolition 2000, Brooklyn for Peace, Pax Christi, Todos Somos Japon.

55 Comments

55 Comments


Read the Rules
[-] 3 points by Shule (2638) 11 years ago

Poem you all might like: The Nuclear Apprentice.

Apprentice in the shop alone,

Thinks since Meister went for the day,

He'll have some magic go his way.

I will make power he atones,

I can take this nuclear fuel,

And put it in a water pool.

Steam will rise,

And turn a blade,

Easy way this power is made.

There were things he did not surmise,

And much he did not consider,

For retrospect made him bitter.

Geisters from the closet,

he called on for detail,

Without thought on what they entail.

Next thing you know he lost his bet,

Radiation flew all about.

Humbled apprentice lost his clout.

Meister the situation is grave,

The geisters that I bid,

Now I can't get rid.

Meister looked sad for this even he could not save.

Nuclear Geisters are not his to command,

Atomic power is something for only the good Father's hand.

This take on the famous ballad unfortunately ends differently than Goethe's original work. Nuclear powers are not brooms, and have no closets to go back to. The message should be clear especially to those who promote the proliferation of nuclear power. One must heed to the dangers.

[-] 0 points by 99nproud (2697) 9 years ago

Ca Fallout! What to do.

http://www.nationofchange.org/2014/10/05/fukushima-fallout-california-1000x-greater-expected-can/

"The estimations of fission products (i.e. carcinogenic and radioactive particles) being leaked into the ocean and carried by currents to the Pacific Coast of the U.S. are staggering. From the start of this crisis, understandably, people have wanted to look the other way. It is a huge issue, and it seems there is little we can do about it, but this is not true."

Anti nuke is pro 99%.

Peace

[-] 8 points by Shule (2638) 9 years ago

Thanks for the article. Its been so long I heard anything about Fukushima, I thought it totally fell off the media radar screen. I personnally think the entire Pacific Coast is "FUCKushimaED," And the U.S. government is still out funding the design and construction of new nuclear power plants, as well as funding development of micro-reactors designed to be put into every small town and big city hotel.

[-] 0 points by 99nproud (2697) 9 years ago

Pro-Peace=anti Nuke

Join the fight to eliminate ALL nuclear weapons!

http://www.nuclearfreefuture.org/

Peace

[-] 1 points by MattHolck0 (3867) 9 years ago

because conventional US bombs are not WMD

[-] 0 points by 99nproud (2697) 9 years ago

More likely because Nukes are bad.

[-] 0 points by MattHolck0 (3867) 9 years ago

wait conventional US bombs kill by radius

[-] 1 points by 99nproud (2697) 9 years ago

Horrendous, criminal, requires massive action on the street against all military death.

[-] 1 points by MattHolck0 (3867) 9 years ago

requires that the US simply stop dropping bombs

Why doesn't the military stop the bombing ?

is there some reason the military are unable to stop dropping bombs ?

[-] 0 points by 99nproud (2697) 9 years ago

Give a man a hammer & he sees everything as a nail.

I can't defend/speak for the military death that exists.

I only offer peace & love as the solution. I further submit that the only way Peace & Love succeeds is if we grow the anti war movement (by all non nviolent means) & create massive street protests to pressure all pols, & counter MIC $.

It's the only way I know.

But I know it WILL work.

[-] 1 points by MattHolck0 (3867) 9 years ago

simply stop working for the military

[-] 2 points by 99nproud (2697) 9 years ago

I support that tactic.

[-] 3 points by Shule (2638) 9 years ago

Only problem is that the next starving guy is going to take the job. Better tactic is to take the military job, but then guber it up before they figure out you gubered it all up for them, and you walked off with a paycheck.

[-] 3 points by 99nproud (2697) 9 years ago

Best tactic is to March 9/21 in support of action on climate change.!

http://peoplesclimate.org/march/

End nuclear power! Not a solution to climate change.

http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/2557652/the_bbc_friends_of_the_earth_and_nuclear_power.html

Create alternative energy jobs, not military jobs

[-] 0 points by MattHolck0 (3867) 9 years ago

programming should be intuitively translatable

[-] 2 points by Manna (85) 11 years ago

Salute to Shule! A scientific poem--I never could imagine such a composition could exist! So, one salute for the composition, one more for the content and yet another for your concern for people on this planet.

[Removed]

[-] 2 points by lkindr (58) 11 years ago

Japan was ready to surrender without any nuclear bomb scare tactics. And the humane way to bomb them would have been to detonate such a bomb in an unpopulated area, just to show them the threat. The allies were more in the right than were the axis powers, but Britain is who made Japan turn to the axis in the first place after WW1. And the allies engaged in cruel terrorism by bombing the civilian city of Dresden where there were many refugees etc. Also by bombing civilian parts of other German cities. The allies also wasted lives by trying to route the Japanese from every island in the Pacific, when all they needed to do was bypass them for the most part and go on to the Philippines and Okinawa. It's only the fascists in our government at that time who determined to use the nukes on Japan. Fascists are terrorists who like to terrify everyone else, as well as see others suffer and die.

[-] 3 points by VQkag2 (16478) 11 years ago

Wow! Thats a lot of criticism for the democratic Allies, and a bit of sympathy for Nazis and the empire of Japan. And a good bit of second guessing military strategy/tactics. Have you considered that you might not have enough info to say you know better?

Are you sorry we won.? Do you consider your self in that "we"?

Peace

[-] 1 points by Clancy (42) 11 years ago

No Japan was not about to surrender, you're and idiot if you be,I've that. Yes we did need to island hop for strategic airfield locations so we could bomb the shit out of Japanese controlled islands and island Chains prior to invasion. We needed to control those islands to hold strategic naval refit stations as well. You cannot just ferry massive amounts of troops and supplies over huge distances at one time. Yes innocent civilians did die and that is a horrible horrible thing.

[-] 1 points by marvelpym (-184) 11 years ago

every island?

Island hopping was a strategy used in the Pacific theater whereby selected islands were secured by allied forces (usually the marines). Usually, these islands would have some strategic value (like an airfield or anchorage) which helped to move the fight closer to Japan. Many islands were bypassed because of significant Japanese defenses. As we "hopped" from island to island, we were able to shorten the distance to Japan and establish forward land bases for supply purposes.

[-] 2 points by georgeorwell84 (15) from Montgomery, NJ 11 years ago

I agree. My grandfather was one of the many soldiers that would have been needed to take Japan by force. Those bombs shortened the war and probably saved more lives than they took.

They definitely saved many American lives. We did not start the war - the Japanese did. Remember how brutal they were to the POW's.

[-] 1 points by Clancy (42) 11 years ago

Exactly, my grandfather was a marine throughout the war. He knew how brutal and savage the Japanese were. They were brutal to the Chinese also. Just randomly killing and raping people.

[-] 0 points by gnomunny (6819) from St Louis, MO 11 years ago

And laughing when they blew the head off a baby, ran one through with their bayonet or threw it off a cliff.

[-] 0 points by gnomunny (6819) from St Louis, MO 9 years ago

I don't give much credence to an article that pulls so many punches, but it's no surprise, really, since the Times of India is nothing more that the Indian 'branch' of the New York Times and they sure aren't into ruffling any feathers. That being said, I find it appalling that the government would even consider spending upwards of a trillion dollars upgrading an obsolete system. We're way beyond nuclear in terms of waging war. So articles like this are nothing more than the 'theater' used to distract the masses, something I complain about regularly, both here and in real life, so try not to waste too much of my time with this sort of thing.

Don't misunderstand, though. By "waste my time" I don't mean nuclear disarmament itself, I mean articles that rely so heavily on the words of politicians and sources so disgustedly MainStreaM as the New York Times or its puppets. Nuclear disarmament is definitely an important concern, but in my opinion (call me a pessimist) there are too many testosterone-laden Neanderthal hawks and religious Fundamentalists in charge of the world's military powers to even consider the concept of a nuclear-free world anything more than a pipe-dream for the very foreseeable future. And you do realize when a US President says something like, "the United States had a moral responsibility to seek the security of a world without nuclear weapons," he's talking about the rest of the world, not the US, right? It's political double-talk.

I also believe that the US military is so powerful (and power-hungry) and entrenched, the only way it can be changed is from within, something surprisingly possible, as hard as that is to believe. Not everyone at the Pentagon, or DC for that matter, thinks the extinction of the human race is a good idea.

Peace, and solidarity, V. I know we've gone to verbal blows a number of times in the past but I've never denied on this forum that we've always been on the same side. Keep up the good fight.

This is the only time I'm going to comment on this thread. If you want a reply from me, find one of my many comments with substance, not an innocuous comment about the atrocities of WW2. Okay? They're not hard to find.

[-] 0 points by 99nproud (2697) 9 years ago

Take action! Against Nukes

http://www.wagingpeace.org/sunflower-newsletter-october-2014

The Nuclear Zero Lawsuits are proceeding at the International Court of Justice and U.S. Federal District Court. Sign the petition supporting the Marshall Islands’ courageous stand, and stay up to date on progress at www.nuclearzero.org."

Join us. We need you

[-] 0 points by 99nproud (2697) 9 years ago

Anti nuke=antiwar!!

http://www.unitedforpeace.org/category/nuclear-disarmamentredefining-security/

Please join our fight against Nuclear weapons/power.

we need you

[-] 1 points by 99nproud (2697) 9 years ago

Another day of action against nuclear arsenals, slashing defense budget & supporting diplomacy is necessary!!!

Rest assured protests continue!!

http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/international/europe/2014/03/greenpeace_activists_occupy_french_nuclear_plant

https://www.facebook.com/OccupyNRC

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Occupy-Nuclear-Plants/290311597696946

No real cuts proposed, or even discussed!!!

http://mashable.com/2014/02/24/proposed-u-s-military-budget-cuts/

Laughably inadequate!

And even this meaningless reduction exposes the enemies of defense cuts.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/02/25/defense-budget-cuts-history

(Just laughable) Pressure ALL pols to cut defense budget!

And support those pols who push diplomacy.

http://en.trend.az/regions/iran/2286697.html

http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2014/06/18/gop-senator-says-u-s-air-strikes-part-of-diplomacy/

And vote anyone who says 'bombing is diplomacy'!!!

Now I'm laughing.

You laughing?

Laugh.

[-] 1 points by Clancy (42) 11 years ago

They were just as bad as the Nazis.

[-] -1 points by 99nproud (2697) 9 years ago
[-] -1 points by 99nproud (2697) 9 years ago

Japan protests Nukes!

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/07/japan-decision-war-201475142233628897.html

Join with the good Japanese who share our desire to eliminate ALL nuclear weapons

[-] -1 points by 99nproud (2697) 9 years ago

Not your grandmas anti nuke campaign

http://www.globalzero.org/blog/not-your-grandmas-anti-nuke-campaign

Join us

[-] -1 points by 99nproud (2697) 9 years ago

Anti nuke is pro 99%

http://nukefreenow.org/?page_id=132

And some tactics to achieve our goal of all nuke (weapons/power)elimination.

http://www.nationofchange.org/get-bench-and-playing-field-guide-professional-activism-1403793375

Agreed?

[-] -2 points by 99nproud (2697) 9 years ago

Anti war = anti nuke

http://www.icanw.org/

Join the fight

[-] -1 points by 99nproud (2697) 9 years ago
[-] 2 points by Nevada1 (5843) 11 years ago

Great----corporations control nuclear weapons.

[-] 1 points by georgeorwell84 (15) from Montgomery, NJ 11 years ago

Wrong - the Air Force does.

[-] 3 points by shoozTroll (17632) 11 years ago

What?

You've never heard of the military industrial complex?

It's become an establishment these days.

The 4th branch of government.

It is fully capable of controlling that part of the arsenal.

[-] 0 points by georgeorwell84 (15) from Montgomery, NJ 11 years ago

They can make them -can't release or deploy them.

[-] 2 points by shoozTroll (17632) 11 years ago

You don't know that.

It's not like they are going to tell you.

None of us know what CEOs have what Generals ears.

[-] 1 points by georgeorwell84 (15) from Montgomery, NJ 11 years ago

Think higher - only the President (with confirmation) can authorize a release. It has nothing to do with CEO's or generals.

Back in the 60's there was an idea for shoulder launched that would have been authorized by LT's (tank killers). That never came about.

A rogue crew on a boomer up till the 80's could have theoretically released weapons - that was changed also.

I would not worry about a CEO getting a nuke released - not happening. Way too many safe guards.

[-] 2 points by shoozTroll (17632) 11 years ago

Safeguards?

Well, that's what they like to make us think anyway.

Here in the world of bunker busters, tactical nukes are pointless anyway..

[-] 1 points by 99nproud (2697) 9 years ago

Boom!

[-] 1 points by Manna (85) 11 years ago

So, scientists are getting in war! I wonder if they know the nuclear radiations will not only kill us but will kill also them. If not immediately, by slow-poisoning of foods, vegetables and beverage. Our heads sign up United Nations treaty and then they get busy building most lethal weapons. It is time we shut down such irresponsible works and force the scientists and leaders to visit the schools to learn how to behave on this planet that is our COMMON HOME.

[-] 1 points by p2p (1) 11 years ago

I'm an OccupyWallStreet supporter, but I'm not sure what this has to do with Wall Street. Los Alamos scientists spend their time on non-proliferation, cleaning up toxic earth, converting warheads in the U.S. and Russia into reactor fuel, studying global warming and renewable energy, as well as a huge list of great fundamental science projects with scientists that come from all over the world. Los Alamos is landing an instrument on Mars the same weekend you will be giving speeches there and acting like you know what you are talking about. We can't rely on the big corporations to do the fundamental research that will solve our problems, we need to support the scientists at our National Laboratories to do that.

[-] 0 points by DanielBarton (1345) 11 years ago

Yeah use that uranium for something beneficiary like electricity for the American people

[-] -1 points by 99nproud (2697) 9 years ago

8/6/14 Nuclear Zero Lawsuit!!

https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/158599902

http://www.nuclearzero.org/

Get infolved, stay informed.

[Removed]