War on the Earth!

Environmental Impact: Atomic

Appalachia and the Militarized Southeast

U.S.

The Military Industrial Complex

Military, Global Corporate & US Government

“The problem in defense…

is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Is This National Defense?

The Military Industrial Complex: Acts with impunity Violates International Treaties and Law Consumes the majority of oil and petroleum Pollutes physical, cultural & political

environment Leaves a toxic legacy for endless generations Drives Global Warming and Climate Change Determines, pushes & profits from US War

Policy Supports & exports Capitalism—a voracious

and polluting economic force

Militarism defiles the sacred Earth, the air…

Hiroshima after the atomic bombing

…the Rivers and Springs

Uranium from Nuclear Fuel Services plant in Erwin, Tennessee contaminates the beautiful Nolichucky River

…the Oceans & Seas

WWII (1939-1945) - Every ocean and sea bears the hazardous effect of over 9,000 sunken military, auxiliary, and merchant marine vessels.

…and the very Heavens.The U.S. Air Force tracks more than 18,000 objects in orbit—bolts, broken satellites, fuel tanks, rocket motors and other junk.

National Defense or “Full Spectrum Dominance?”

Full-spectrum dominance is a military concept whereby a joint military structure achieves control over all elements of the battlespace using land, air, maritime and space based assets.

Alabama: Redstone Arsenal

“The south is vital to this plan for the weaponization & Nuclearization of space.”

Bruce Gagnon, Global Network against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space

US Recruits Nazi Scientists In 1945 Operation Paperclip brought SS officer Werner von

Braun and more than 700 other Nazi Scientists to the US to exploit Germany’s expertise with supersonic rockets, nerve gas, jet aircraft, guided missiles, stealth technology and hardened armor.

Von Braun was soon installed at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama

Contaminated with Rocket Science

Perchlorate from rocket fuel has been found in drinking water, groundwater or soil in at least 43 states.

The most common and most significant perchlorate contamination is from the manufacture, testing, and disposal of solid rocket fuel, explosives, and fireworks.

Perchlorate disrupts the thyroid’s production of hormones critical to developing fetuses and infants.

5 – 17 million people may be served drinking water contaminated by rocket fuel.

“We Take Care of Our Own?”

Camp Lejeune, NC (1957-87):

For 30 years Marines and their families drank and bathed in contaminated water.

Bases, Bases, We all fall downFDR’s “Deal with the Devil “to Seed the Jim Crow South with Military Bases in

exchange for Congress’ Approval of his New Deal Legislation

Military Oil ConsumptionThe U.S. military

uses enough oil in one year to run all U.S. transit systems for the next 14-22 Yrs.

Civilian use ~ 1.3 gals/day

Deployed soldier uses ~ 15 gals/day

The Awful Truth “…Even if every person, every

automobile, and every factory suddenly emitted zero emissions, the Earth would still be heading head first and full speed towards total disaster for one major reason.  The military...produces enough greenhouse gases, by itself, to place the entire globe, with all of it’s inhabitants large and small, in the most imminent danger of extinction."

Barry Sanders, The Green Zone

Alabama: Anniston Army Depot Toxins were disposed

in trenches, lagoons, landfills, or other holding vessels.

1997: The U.S. signed the Chemical Weapons Convention treaty for the destruction of chemical weapons stockpiles by 2007, extended to 2012.

Pine Bluff: “America’s Arsenal”

Pine Bluff Arsenal released 721,364 pounds of chemicals into the air, water and land and was listed in a DOD report as a top polluter.

2010: completed disposal of 12 % of the US chemical weapons stockpile.

Arsenal “recycled” 6.5 million pounds of “decontaminated” steel chemical weapons tanks as part of “the Army’s commitment to protect the environment.”

West Tennessee: Milan Arsenal

American Ordnance Systems, Inc.

loads, assembles, packs, reconditions and disposes of munitions, including weaponized uranium ordnance.

East Tennessee: Holston Army Ammunition Plant

Produces explosives and propellants for the Trident Nuclear Submarines

Explosives manufacture requires the use of concentrated nitric acid and anhydrous ammonia 2011: Breaking ground near Kingsport,

Tennessee for new High Explosive plant

Lethal Advance of the Atomic Age

“The most severe and enduring” impact on human health & the

environment

Radioactive fallout from atmospheric

nuclear tests caused 86,000 birth defects

and 150,000 premature deaths—

World Watch Institute

Atomic Soldiers & Downwind Civilians Sacrificed

210,000 US Soldiers exposed to U.S. atmospheric nuclear tests

US conducted nearly 200 atmospheric nuclear weapons tests from 1945-1962.

Mississippi: Project SalmonUnderground Nuclear Detonations

5.3 KILOTON NUCLEAR DEVICE detonated underground

U.S. government officials erected a large stone monument at the site, with a brass plaque warning future generations not to drill or dig in the vicinity of this test site.

Ground Zero is marked by a headstone-like monument

Atomic “Secret City”

Oak Ridge Y-12 Plant enriched uranium for Hiroshima Bomb2010 Resistance to Bomb Factory

Life Extension or Generations of Genocide?

In 2011, Obama approved an additional $7.5 billion dollars for a Uranium Processing Facility able to produce 80 thermonuclear “secondaries” every year, assuring a stockpile of death for generations to come.

Oak Ridge: Toxic Tennessee Town

711 contaminated sites identified— 247 buildings, 56 waste burial grounds, some leaking toxic solvents, lubricants, chemicals and metals like uranium, lead, mercury, strontium, thorium and tritium, into the groundwater.

Some contaminants are still classified as secret

32 “Broken Arrows” 1950-2000 Nuclear Weapons Accidents

Goldsboro, NC: "The bombs' arming mechanism had six or seven steps to go through to detonate, and it went through all but one…" Robert McNamara

Nuclear Industry Workers Irradiated US Sailors & Soldiers

are Lab Rats

Over 300,000 people, or half of those who ever worked in the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, have been affected by exposure to radiation.

Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” Ike’s Not Right this time!

"Atoms for peace and atoms for war have a marriage made in hell.”Ann Harris, TVA Whistleblower

The Evil Twins: Nuclear Weapons

& Nuclear Power

“Interchangeable and Interdependent”

Nuclear Power

USA has over 70,000 tons of nuclear waste—deadly for tens of thousands of years—with no place for permanent storage.

104 USA nuclear reactors add 2000 tons each year of high level radioactive waste.

Wasting the Future

95% of high- level radioactive waste comes from irradiated fuel in the core of nuclear power reactors. Each 1000 megawatt nuclear power plant produces about 500 pounds of plutonium a year and about 30 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste.

“All six of the nation’s licensed nuclear waste dumps have or are leaking” –Nuclear Information Resource Services

South as Sacrifice Zone?

“Environmental risks were offered as unavoidable trade-offs for jobs and a broadened tax base in economically depressed communities.”

-Dr. Robert D. Bullard

South Carolina: Barnwell Radioactive Waste Dump

For 35 years, Barnwell was the only “low-level” radioactive waste dump east of the Rockies.

Rad Waste is stored in steel drums, encased in concrete vaults and buried.

Rad Waste: Move it?

Where?Yucca Mountain, NV? Big Sandy Mush, NC?

Who Will Decide?

North Carolina: Asheville At the Nuclear Crossroads

Three Fatal Flaws of Nuclear Waste Transportation

1. Inadequate Emergency Response2. Risk of Terrorism and Sabotage3. Radiation Exposure from Routine Shipments

….all of which endanger public health and safety.

South Carolina: Savannah River Site

Most Contaminated in the World

TVA Watts Bar Nuclear Reactor & Tritium Production Plant

Educate, Organize, Agitate, Activate

Local Activist

giving the NRC Hell

Mississippi: Grand Gulf Nuclear Station

The first two years after Grand Gulf startup resulted in significant increases in local rates of fetal deaths

After the 2011 floods, plant workers pumped water containing radioactive tritium into the Mississippi River for days before they realized it and shut off the pumps.

Deadly Nuclear Radiation Hazards USA

Dumping & Burning in Tennessee

Middle Point Landfill Rutherford County,

75% of U.S. low-level radioactive waste—41 million pounds per year—comes to Tennessee.

Coming soon to Oak Ridge:

1,000 tons of German Radioactive Waste

Energy Solutions, Inc. has applied to import 20,000 tons of Italian nuclear waste for processing, including burning, melting and compaction

Tennessee is the only state that allows commercial burning of radioactive waste, licensing six incinerators.

Round & Round & Round We Go

Tennessee: US Army Defense Depot Memphis

“The way they have treated people of color throughout the U.S. is the way they are treating countries of color throughout the world.”

– Doris Bradshaw, Memphis neighborhood activist

Studsvik Memphis Nuclear Waste Processing

African Americans exclusively assigned the most hazardous work—to cut apart a damaged and highly-radioactive reactor.

Dosimeters were manipulated to mask the actual exposure levels workers received.

Tennessee: Nuclear Fuel Services, Erwin

Responsible for years of nuclear contamination, radiation exposure, countless code and safety violations, property damage, cancers, brain tumors, mysterious illnesses, and wrongful deaths. Since 1954.

Supplies nuclear fuel to the U. S. Navy Trident Submarine fleet.

Converts weapons-grade uranium into commercial reactor fuel.

The East Tennessee plant discharges enriched uranium into the Nolichucky River.

Georgia: Trident II Nuclear Submarine Base

There is no weapon system in the U.S. arsenal with the operational risks of a Trident submarine. No weapon has as much explosive material, in the form of solid rocket propellant, and the number of nuclear warheads tightly packed in a confined vessel.

Florida: Radioactive Baby Teeth

The highest levels of radioactive Strontium-90 were found in the six S.E. Florida counties closest to the Turkey Point and St. Lucie nuclear reactors.

Strontium in baby teeth increased 37% from mid-1980s to mid 1990s.

Virginia: North Anna Nuclear Generating Station

20l1: The 5.8-magnitude earthquake shifted 25 massive concrete containers holding high-level nuclear waste. Nuclear plant is 12 miles from the epicenter.

Earthquake Zones with US Nuclear Power Reactors

Genocide for Generation after Generation after Generation

after…

Jonesborough: Aerojet Ordnance Tenn, Inc. produces uranium weapons coated with the radioactive waste from fuel production for nuclear reactors and atomic bombs.

Hundreds of tons of exploded uranium weapons create genetic damage for generations.

Weaponized UraniumWarfare

Gulf War I: 315 - 350 tons of uranium weapons.

Gulf War II: Estimated DU use 5 times Gulf War I.

The U.S. has sold DU weapons to 29 countries.

A minimum of 500 or 600 tons of DU dust now litter Afghanistan. Several times more are spread across Iraq. ½ life 4.5 billion years.

Eternal Devastation

American War Christianity : An American Religious Jihad?

The conviction that the U.S. is God's chosen instrument to bear the sword against evildoers, and thereby advance the gospel wherever we decide it needs to be forcibly planted.

Civil Liberties & Loss of Freedoms

The undoing of our democracy is so severe that without concerted and deliberate action, the principles & values which have defined us Before 9/11, may never be regained.Adapted from: Center for Constitutional Rights Alert September 8,2011

“Stop Killing Our Future”Asheville Students take to the Streets

Parting Words

“I do not ask that you put bands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply

That you support him no longer;

Then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away,

Fall of his own weight.”