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<h1 class="gmail-mvp-post-title gmail-left entry-title">Deadly Legacy of Nuclear Terror</h1>
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<p><span class="gmail-mvp-post-date gmail-updated">July 20, 2023 - </span><font size="1"><a href="https://www.indigenousaction.org/architect-of-annihilation-oppenheimers-deadly-legacy-of-nuclear-terror/">https://www.indigenousaction.org/architect-of-annihilation-oppenheimers-deadly-legacy-of-nuclear-terror/</a></font>
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<div id="gmail-mvp-content-body-top" class="gmail-left gmail-relative"><strong>Read our quick and dirty <a href="https://www.indigenousaction.org/a-quick-dirty-review-of-the-movie-oppenheimer/">review of the movie here</a>.</strong>
<div id="gmail-mvp-content-main" class="gmail-left gmail-relative"><div id="gmail-tps_slideContainer_21114" class="gmail-theiaPostSlider_slides"><div class="gmail-theiaPostSlider_preloadedSlide"><p><em>Klee Benally, Indigenous Action/Haul No! </em><br><em>Contributions by Leona Morgan, Diné No Nukes/Haul No!</em></p>
<p>Printable posters (PDFs): <a href="https://www.indigenousaction.org/wp-content/uploads/Oppenheimers-legacy-poster-color-1.pdf">11″x17″ color</a>, <a href="https://www.indigenousaction.org/wp-content/uploads/Oppenheimers-legacy-poster-BW-2.pdf">11″x17″ black & white</a></p>
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<p>The genocidal colonial terror of nuclear energy and weapons is not entertainment. </p>
<p>To glorify such deadly science and technology as a dramatic character
study, is to spit in the face of hundreds of thousands of corpses and
survivors scattered throughout the history of the so-called Atomic age.</p>
<p>Think of it this way, for every minute that passes during the film’s
3-hour run time, more than 1,100 citizens in the cities of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki died due to Oppenheimer’s weapon of mass destruction. This
doesn’t account for those<a href="https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/downwinder-advocacy-group-to-air-advertisement-ahead-of-some-area-oppenheimer-showings/article_9227b554-25a4-11ee-a893-2f2ce866941f.html"> downwind of nuclear tests</a> who were exposed to radioactive fallout (<a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/take-action/preventing-nuclear-war">some are protesting screenings</a>),
it doesn’t account for those poisoned by uranium mines, it doesn’t
account for those killed during nuclear power plant melt-downs, it
doesn’t account for those in the Marshall Islands who are forever
poisoned.</p>
<p>For every second you sit in the air conditioned theater with a warm
buttery popcorn bucket in your lap, 18 people dead in the blink of an
eye. Thanks to Oppenheimer.</p>
<p>Though you’ll certainly learn enough about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the
“father of the atomic bomb,” thanks to director Christopher Nolan’s
70mm IMAX odyssey, let’s be clear about his deadly legacy and the
overall military and scientific industrial complex behind it.</p>
<p>After the successful detonation of the very first atomic bomb,
Oppenheimer infamously quoted the Hindu scripture Bhagavad-Gita, “Now I
am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Barely a month later, the
“U.S” dropped two atomic bombs devastating the cities of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki and more than 200,000 people were killed. Some of the shadows
of those perished were burned into the streets. One survivor, Sachiko
Matsuo, relayed their thoughts as they tried to make sense of what was
happening when Nagasaki was struck, “I could see nothing below. My
grandmother started to cry, ‘Everybody is dead. This is the end of the
world.” A devastation that Nolan intentionally leaves out because,
according to the director, the film is not told from the perspectives of
those who were bombed, but by those who were responsible for it. Nolan <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/christopher-nolan-explains-why-don-160000284.html">casually explains</a>, “[Oppenheimer] learned about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the radio, the same as the rest of the world.”</p>
<p>Months after the atomic detonation at the “Trinity” site in occupied
Tewa lands of New Mexico, Oppenheimer resigned. He walked away
expressing the conflict of having, “blood on his hands,” (though
reportedly he later said the bombings were not “on his conscience”)
while leaving a legacy of nuclear devastation and radioactive pollution
permanently poisoning lands, waters, and bodies to this day. </p>
<p>U.S. military and political machinery cannibalized the scientist and
turned him into a villain of their imperialist cold-war anxiety. They
reminded him and the other scientists behind the Manhattan Project, that
they and their interests were always in control.</p>
<p>Oppenheimer never was a hero, he was an architect of annihilation. </p>
<p>The race to develop the first atomic bomb (after Nazis had split the
atom) never could be a strategy of peaceful deterrence, it was a
strategy of domination and annihilation. </p>
<p>Nazi Germany was committing genocide against Jewish people while the
U.S. sat on the political sidelines. It wasn’t until they were directly
threatened that the U.S. intervened. Though Nazi Germany was defeated on
May 8th, 1945, the U.S. dropped two separate atomic bombs on the
non-military targets of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on
August 6th and 9th, 1945.</p>
<p>To underscore Oppenheimer’s complicity, he suppressed <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/oppenheimer-los-alamos-manhattan-project-scientists-atomic-bomb-petition-2023-7?op=1">a petition by 70 Manhattan Project scientists</a>
urging President Truman not to drop the bombs on moral grounds. The
scientists also argued that since the war was nearing its end, Japan
should be given the opportunity to surrender. </p>
<p>Today there are approximately 12,500 nuclear warheads in nine
countries with almost 90 percent of them held by the U.S. and Russia. It
is<a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2313-576X/4/2/25"> estimated that 100 nuclear weapons</a> is an “adequate… deterrence” threshold for the “mutually assured destruction” of the world.<br><br>Oppenheimer
built the gun that is still held to the head of everyone who lives on
this Earth today. Throughout the decades after the development of “The
Bomb,” millions throughout the world have <a href="https://www.icanw.org">rallied for nuclear disarmament</a>, yet politicians have never taken their fingers off the trigger. </p>
<p><strong>The Deadly Legacy of Nuclear Colonialism</strong><strong><br></strong></p>
<p>Nuclear weapons production and energy would not be possible without uranium.<br><br>Global uranium mining boomed during and after World War II and continues to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_by_country">threaten communities throughout the world.</a></p>
<p>Today, more than <a href="https://cleanupthemines.org/">15,000 abandoned uranium mines</a>
are located within the so-called U.S., mostly in and around Indigenous
communities, permanently poisoning sacred lands and waters with little
to no political action being taken to clean up their deadly toxic
legacy.<br></p>
<p>Indigenous communities have long been at the front lines of the
struggle to stop the deadly legacy of the nuclear industry. Nuclear
colonialism has resulted in radioactive pollution that has poisoned
drinking water systems of entire communities like Red Shirt Village in
South Dakota and Sanders in Arizona. The U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency has closed more than 22 wells on the Navajo Nation where there
are more than 523 abandoned uranium mines. In Ludlow, South Dakota an
abandoned uranium mine sits within feet of an elementary school,
poisoning the ground where children continue to play to this day.<br></p>
<p>Nuclear colonialism has ravaged our communities and left a deadly
legacy of cancers, birth defects, and other serious health consequences,
it is the slow genocide of Indigenous Peoples.<br></p>
<p>From 1944 to 1986 some 30 million tons of uranium ore were extracted
from mines on Diné lands. Diné workers were told little of the potential
health risks with many not given any protective gear. As demand for
uranium decreased the mines closed, leaving over a thousand contaminated
sites. To this day none have been completely cleaned up.<br></p>
<p>On July 16, 1979, just 34 years after Oppenheimer oversaw the July 16, 1945 Trinity test, the <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/ne8w4x/church-rock-americas-forgotten-nuclear-disaster-is-still-poisoning-navajo-lands-40-years-later">single largest accidental release of radioactivity occurred</a>
on Diné Bikéyah (The Navajo Nation) at the Church Rock uranium mill.
More than 1,100 tons of solid radioactive mill waste and 94 million
gallons of radioactive tailings poured into the Puerco River when an
earthen dam broke. Today, water in the downstream community of Sanders,
Arizona is poisoned with radioactive contamination from the spill.<br></p>
<p>Although uranium mining is now banned on the reservation due to
advocacy from Diné anti-nuclear organizers, Navajo politicians have
sought to allow new mining in areas already contaminated by the
industry’s toxic legacy. It is estimated that 25% of all the
recoverable uranium remaining in the country is located on Diné Bikéyah.<br>Though there has never been a comprehensive human health study on the impacts of uranium mining in the area, <a href="https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/sites/navajo_birth_cohort_study/index.html">a focused study </a>has detected uranium in the urine of babies born to Diné women exposed to uranium.<br></p>
<p>Western Shoshone lands in so-called Nevada, which have never been
ceded to the “U.S.” government, have long been under attack by the
military and nuclear industries.<br><br>Between 1951 and 1992 more than
1,000 nuclear bombs have been detonated above and below the surface at
an area called the Nevada Test Site on Western Shoshone lands which make
it one of the most bombed nations on earth. Communities in areas around
the test site faced severe exposure to radioactive fallout, which
caused cancers, leukemia & other illnesses. Those who have suffered
this radioactive pollution are collectively known as “Downwinders.”<br><br>Western Shoshone spiritual practitioner Corbin Harney, who passed on in 2007, helped initiate <a href="https://www.shundahaiarchives.org/">a grassroots effort </a>to
shutdown the test site and abolish nuclear weapons. He once said,
“We’re not helping Mother Earth at all. The roots, the berries, the
animals, are not here anymore, nothing’s here. It’s sad. We’re selling
the air, the water, we’re already selling each other. Somewhere it’s
going to come to an end.”<br></p>
<p>Between 1945 and 1958, sixty-seven atomic bombs were detonated in
tests conducted in Ṃajeḷ (the Marshall Islands). Some Indigenous people
of the islands have all together stopped reproducing due to the severity
of cancer and birth defects they have faced due to radioactive
pollution.<br></p>
<p>In 1987 the “U.S.” congress initiated a controversial project to
transport and store almost all of the U.S.’s toxic waste at Yucca
Mountain located about 100 miles northwest of so-called Las Vegas,
Nevada. Yucca Mountain has been held holy to the Paiute and Western
Shoshone Nations since time immemorial. In January 2010 the Obama
administration approved a $54 billion dollar taxpayer loan in a
guarantee program for new nuclear reactor construction, three times what
Bush previously promised in 2005.<br></p>
<p>There are currently 93 operating nuclear reactors in the so-called
U.S. that supply 20% of the country’s electricity. There are nearly <a href="https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-603">90,000 tons </a>of
highly radioactive spent nuclear waste stored in concrete dams at
nuclear power plants throughout the country with the waste increasing at
a rate of 2,000 tons per year.<br></p>
<p>From the 1979 disasters of Three Mile Island and Churchrock to the
1986 Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant melted down, the nuclear industry has
been wrought with mass catastrophes with permanent global consequences.</p>
<p>In 2011 Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant catastrophically failed
and began melting down after it was hit by an earthquake and tsunami.
It’s been reported that the Fukushima plant has been leaking
approximately 300 tons of radioactive water into the ocean every day.
Today, the Japanese government is open about its plans to release
remaining radioactive waters into the Pacific.<br></p>
<p>“Depleted Uranium” weapons deployed by the U.S. in imperialist wars (<a href="https://hir.harvard.edu/depleted-uranium-devastated-health-military-operations-and-environmental-injustice-in-the-middle-east/">particularly Iraq and Afghanistan</a>)
have also poisoned eco-systems, including at proving grounds and firing
ranges in Arizona, Maryland, Indiana and Vieques, Puerto Rico. Depleted
uranium is a by-product of uranium enrichment process when it’s used
for nuclear reactor fuel and in the making of nuclear weapons.<br></p>
<p>Nuclear energy production is now claimed as a “green solution” to the
climate crisis, but nothing could be further from the truth of this
deadly lie.<br></p>
<p>In April 2022, the Biden administration announced a $6 billion
government bailout to “rescue” nuclear power plants at risk of closing. A
colonial government representative stated, “U.S. nuclear power plants
contribute more than half of our carbon-free electricity, and President
Biden is committed to keeping these plants active to reach our clean
energy goals.” They, along with Climate Justice activists cite nuclear
energy as necessary to combat global warming, all while ignoring the
devastating permanent impacts Indigenous Peoples have faced.<br></p>
<p>Due to this “greenwashing” of nuclear energy, we face a push for
nuclear hydrogen, small modular nuclear reactors, and High-Assay
Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU) driving a renewed threat of new uranium
mining, transportation, & processing.</p>
<p>Though the Obama administration placed a moratorium on thousands of
uranium mine leases around the Grand Canyon in 2012, pre-existing
uranium claims were allowed. Environmental groups and Indigenous Nations
are currently <a href="https://democrats-naturalresources.house.gov/media/media-advisories/media-advisory-grijalva-sen-sinema-to-join-tribes-in-call-for-potus-to-designate-baaj-nwaavjo-itah-kukveni-grand-canyon-national-monument">attempting to make the moratorium permanent</a> and push for a <a href="https://keepitgrandaz.org/">new national monument</a>, yet these will do little to nothing for the handful of pre-existing uranium mines that have been allowed to move forward.</p>
<p>Despite these actions, underground blasting & above ground work has begun at <a href="https://haulno.com/">Pinyon Plain/Canyon Mine</a>,
just miles from the Grand Canyon. Once Energy Fuels, the company
operating the mine, starts hauling out radioactive ore, they plan to
transport 30 tons per day through Northern Arizona to the company’s
processing mill in White Mesa, 300 miles away. </p>
<p><a href="https://sjrnews.com/san-juan-county/more-70-protesters-gather-white-mesa-protest-mill-operations">The White Mesa Mill </a>is
the only conventional uranium mill licensed to operate in the U.S. The
mill was built on sacred ancestral lands of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe
near Blanding, Utah. Energy Fuels disposes radioactive and toxic waste
tailings in “impoundments” that take up about 275 acres next to the
mill. Since there are limited radioactive waste facilities, White Mesa
Mill has become an ad hoc dump for the world’s nuclear wastes that have
no final repository.<br></p>
<p>In so-called New Mexico, a state addicted to nuclear monies for both
nuclear weapons and energy facilities, there are two national nuclear
labs and two national waste facilities. Along with legacy uranium mines
and mills, there was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Gasbuggy">Project Gasbuggy</a> (an underground detonation), a “<a href="https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/broken-arrow-accidents/">Broken Arrow” accident near Albuquerque</a>,
and countless tons of radioactive waste buried in unlined pits, Pueblo
kivas, and watersheds. Currently, there are planned expansions and
modifications at Los Alamos National Labs, the Waste Isolation Pilot
Plant, and Urenco uranium enrichment facility. Most recently, the state
has been threatened by two newly licensed consolidated interim storage
facilities for “spent fuel” from nuclear power plants in New Mexico and
Texas. The federal government continues to push nuclear projects with
financial incentives.<br></p>
<p>Nuclear proliferation continues as the U.S. allows uranium miners and
others who are eligible for the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to
die. Many continue to suffer and wait for compensation funds to be
allocated or are not eligible due to the limitations of the act. </p>
<p>The devastation of nuclear colonialism, which permanently destroys
Indigenous communities throughout the world, is not entertainment. This
is the terrifying legacy of nuclear energy and weapons that movies like
Oppenheimer and duplicitous climate justice activists advocate. </p>
<p>Indigenous Peoples live, suffer, and continue to resist its consequences every day.<br></p>
<p>END NUCLEAR COLONIALISM!</p>
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<p>Recommended links:</p>
<p><a href="https://haulno.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://haulno.com</a><br><a href="http://www.dinenonukes.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">http://www.dinenonukes.org</a><br><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://tewawomenunited.org/programs/environmental-health-and-justice-program" target="_blank">https://tewawomenunited.org/programs/environmental-health-and-justice-program</a></p>
<p><a href="https://stopforeverwipp.org/home" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://stopforeverwipp.org/home</a><br><a href="https://www.trinitydownwinders.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://www.trinitydownwinders.com/</a><br><a href="http://www.cleanupthemines.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">http://www.cleanupthemines.org</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.nirs.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://www.nirs.org/</a><br><a href="https://www.radioactivewastecoalition.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://www.radioactivewastecoalition.org</a><br><a href="https://www.dont-nuke-the-climate.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://www.dont-nuke-the-climate.org/</a><br><a href="https://www.nuclear-heritage.net/index.php?title=Nuclear_Heritage_Network" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://www.nuclear-heritage.net/index.php?title=Nuclear_Heritage_Network</a></p>
<p><a href="https://yukiyokawano.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://yukiyokawano.com</a><br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBO_C6GkIpM&t=10s" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBO_C6GkIpM&t=10s</a><br><a href="https://apjjf.org/2022/1/Schattschneider-Auslander.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://apjjf.org/2022/1/Schattschneider-Auslander.html</a></p>
<p>Articles:<br>Red Water Pond Road<br><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/a-radioactive-legacy-haunts-this-navajo-village-which-fears-a-fractured-future/2020/01/18/84c6066e-37e0-11ea-9541-9107303481a4_story.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/a-radioactive-legacy-haunts-this-navajo-village-which-fears-a-fractured-future/2020/01/18/84c6066e-37e0-11ea-9541-9107303481a4_story.html</a><br>ABQ Museum<br><a href="https://www.abqjournal.com/lifestyle/arts/albuquerque-museums-online-exhibit-trinity-takes-a-look-at-the-aftermath-of-the-atomic-bomb/article_33d17c15-61c8-5e1f-b32c-99f4ebee5db4.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://www.abqjournal.com/lifestyle/arts/albuquerque-museums-online-exhibit-trinity-takes-a-look-at-the-aftermath-of-the-atomic-bomb/article_33d17c15-61c8-5e1f-b32c-99f4ebee5db4.html</a></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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