Western Shoshone Defense Project

Shundahai Network

Joint Press Release - April 4, 2006
(contact information at end)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE :

U.S. Defies U.N. Decision– Plans Massive Military Detonation on Western Shoshone Land

Western Shoshone call for halt to planned June 2 “Bunker Buster” detonation at the Nevada Test Site

Speaking with media last week, US military spokesman James Tegnelia confirmed U.S. plans to detonate a 700 ton explosion at the Nevada Test Site on June 2, 2006 in a test called “Divine Strake.” The location of this test would be on Western Shoshone land, and would be in direct violation of a recent decision by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD). In its decision, made public March 10, 2006, 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 under the Committee’s Early Warning and Urgent Action Procedure.

The CERD decision explicitly cited ongoing weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site as well as efforts to build an unprecedented high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, NV.

James Tegnelia of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency was quoted by Agence France Presse as saying, "I don't want to sound glib here but it is the first time in Nevada that you'll see a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas since we stopped testing nuclear weapons," and notes further that this is the “largest single explosive that we could imagine.” The Department of Defense announced in late October 2005 that the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrating (RNEP) weapon project was being dropped in favor of a more conventional methodology.

The detonation plan also runs contrary to earlier public statements made in late March to the Las Vegas Review-Journal by Linton F. Brooks, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration. In his statement, Mr. Brooks announced that the Bush administration had no plans to start detonating warheads at the Nevada Test Site. "We have absolutely no evidence that we're going to need to test. ... We don't see any specific reason now that leads us to believe we'll need a test," Mr. Brooks said. "On the other hand," he said, "we don't know everything about the future."

According to Raymond Yowell, Chief of the Western Shoshone National Council, “We’re opposed to any further military testing on Shoshone lands. This is a direct violation of the CERD finding and an affront to our religious belief - Mother Earth is sacred and should not be harmed. All people who are opposed to these actions by the U.S. should step forward and make their opposition known.”

Carrie Dann, Western Shoshone grandmother and Executive Director of the Western Shoshone Defense Project, “The U.S. has named this 700 ton explosive ‘Divine Strake’. It’s a mystery why they use ‘devine.’ Isn’t ‘devine’ used for your deity, God, Your sacredness? Why don’t they call it ‘Hell Strake?’ I believe when you are working testing weaponry of destruction of life, you should not associate it with ‘devine.’ We want this insanity to stop – no more bombs and no more testing.”

Eileen McCabe-Olsen, Associate Director of Shundahai Network noted, “This test, besides being an egregious violation of Western Shoshone sovereignty, is an escalation that should outrage anyone concerned with peace, justice and care of our environment.”

Pete Litster, Executive Director of Shundahai Network said “Ongoing weapons tests at the Nevada Test Site violate international law. They violate the standing treaty between the U.S. Government and the Western Shoshone people. They also violate the spirit of non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The Test Site is located on Western Shoshone territory, and must not continue to be misused in bold violation of standing agreements between the U.S. government and the Western Shoshone nation.”

Although approval for the test was sought and obtained from the state of Nevada in January 2006, the test detonation can be cancelled. The Western Shoshone National Council, the Western Shoshone Defense Project, and Shundahai Network call for the United States Government to do so immediately. Concerned citizens can call or write to express their opinions:

President George W. Bush
comments@whitehouse.gov 202-456-1111
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld http://www.dod.gov/faq/comment.html

Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld Secretary of Defense
1000 Defense Pentagon Washington, DC 20301-1000

James Tegnelia dtra.publicaffairs@dtra.mil (800) 701-5096

Defense Threat Reduction Aagency Attn: James Tegnelia
8725 John J Kingman RD Stop 6201 Fort Belvoir, VA 22060-6201

CONTACTS:

Julie Fishel, Western Shoshone Defense Project 775-468-0230 wsdp@igc.org

Pete Litster, Shundahai Network 801-637-1500 pete@shundahai.org

The Western Shoshone Defense Project's ( http://www.wsdp.org/ ) mission is to affirm Newe (Western Shoshone) jurisdiction over Newe Sogobia (Western Shoshone homelands) by protecting, preserving, and restoring Newe rights and lands for present and future generations based on cultural and spiritual traditions. The W.S.D.P. was established in 1991 by the Western Shoshone National Council to provide support to Mary and Carrie Dann, Western Shoshone grandmothers who were facing the confiscation of the livestock that they graze on Western Shoshone lands.

Shundahai Network ( http://www.shundahai.org/ ) is dedicated to breaking the nuclear chain by building alliances with indigenous communities and environmental, peace and human rights movements. We seek to abolish all nuclear weapons and an end to nuclear testing. We advocate phasing out nuclear energy and ending the transportation and dumping of nuclear waste. We promote the principles of Environmental Justice and strive to insure that indigenous voices are heard in the movement to influence U.S. nuclear and environmental policies. All of our campaigns and events incorporate the values of community building, education, spiritual ceremonies and nonviolent direct action.

Western Shoshone Defense Project
P.O. Box 211308
Crescent Valley, NV 89821
775-468-0230
775-468-0237 (fax)
http://www.wsdp.org
wsdp@igc.org


UNITED FOR PEACE & JUSTICE | 212-868-5545

From ufpj-news


Informant: Jackie Cabasso

Written by Marie Neptune
Tuesday, 04 April 2006

In this short piece, John LaForge calls attention to seven recent research reports indicating that there is no “safe” level of exposure to radiation. -- “All radiation exposure carries the risk of cancer” -- a fact generally ignored or suppressed because acknowledging it would mandate costly changes in how electricity is generated from nuclear power plants. -- This piece was originally published in the Winter 2005-06 number of the Pathfinder, a newsletter published by the foundation Nukewatch http://www.nukewatch.com/, the latest addition to UFPPC links....

RADIATION FOUND TO BE HARMFUL IN ANY AMOUNT

By John LaForge

** Low doses more dangerous than earlier estimated **

Pathfinder Winter 2005-06 Back page

http://www.nukewatch.com/pathfinder/20054winter/backpage.pdf
More news arrives daily of the ever-deadlier damage to the body by exposure to allowable “low doses” of radiation from nuclear reactors and radioactive waste. The findings -- if widely recognized -- could provoke a rewrite of guidelines for “allowable” exposures and bring an end to reactor operations in the U.S: Operating them so their emissions didn’t kill anyone would be too expensive. This is why critical scientists are pushed out of academia and industry and their studies ignored or suppressed.

In 2003, a dissenting group of British scientific experts found that internal exposure to plutonium is 100 to 1,000 times more dangerous than officially estimated (See p. 5). Their finding was cut from the official record and had to be published independently.

The National Research Council reaffirmed last summer their position that all radiation exposure carries the risk of cancer. The Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation VII (BEIR VII) report explicitly refuted the “hormesis” theory -- propounded by professors Todd Allen and Paul Wilson of the Department of Engineering Physics at the University of Wisconsin -- that a little radiation is good for you. “The scientific research base shows that there is no threshold of exposure below which low levels of ionizing radiation can be demonstrated to be harmless or beneficial,” said BEIR committee chair Richard Monson of Harvard.

This November, a study published in Radiation Research by U.S. and Russian scientists blamed excess cancers in the Ural Mountains in central Russia on chronic exposures to low doses of radioactivity leaked from a weapons factory 50 years ago. Science magazine calls the new report -- along with a large scale study revealing an elevated cancer risk in nuclear industry workers around the world -- “the strongest direct evidence yet of chronic, low-dose health effects.”

In 2002, British researchers also published in Science their finding that low level radiation from Soviet bomb test fallout caused genetic mutations in families living nearby, mutations that can be passed to future generations. The rate of mutation was found to be 80 percent higher than in the corresponding generation in the control group.

In 2001 the National Cancer Institute was forced to reveal its finding that atomic bomb testing in Nevada, which spread radioactive fallout across every state in the union, has caused at least 15,000 cancer deaths and up to 212,000 nonfatal thyroidcancers. The 67 bomb tests blown off between 1946 and 1958 were said at the time to be safe.

A two-year government study in 1990 found a marked increase in leukemia deaths among people living near the Prairie Island nuclear power reactor in SE Minnesota. The “significantly high” risk of leukemia death appeared among residents between the ages of 40 and 59, the National Cancer Institute said. Northern States Power, now Excel Energy, which runs the reactors, said, “Power plants have releases that are so low that one would not expect to see any health effects at all.” That was then.

The journal Environmental Epidemiology and Toxicology reported in 2000 that infant mortality rates around five U.S. nuclear reactors dropped almost immediately after the reactors closed. In areas surrounding five reactors shut down between 1987 and 1995 (Genoa, in Wisconsin; Rancho Seco in California; Ft. St. Vrain in Colorado; Trojan in Oregon; and Millstone in Connecticut), infant death rates dropped an average of 18 percent in the first two years. The average drop elsewhere in the U.S. was 6.4 percent.

Add to this growing understanding of the deadliness of low doses the fact that in 1987, 19 months after Chernobyl, the federal government officially doubled its estimate of the amount of background radiation we’re exposed to -- from 170 to 360 millirem per year.

--

LULLABY VS. REALITY

Professional bias in reporting of radiation issues is often subtle. The New York Times leads the sophisticated effort to downplay findings of increased danger from low dose exposures. Just one example: “But even the new estimate that radiation is a more potent carcinogen than previously believed should cause no concern for the average person, experts said, because the public is not exposed to enough radiation to exceed levels considered safe.”

In fact, there is no level considered safe. Today, not a single government agency is willing to say that some particularly small amount is harmless. A sampling of current official positions:

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): “Radiation is a carcinogen. [T]here is no level below which we can say an exposure poses no risk. Based on current scientific evidence, any exposure to radiation can be harmful (or can increase the risk of cancer) . . . In other words, it is assumed that no radiation exposure is completely risk free.”

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE): “[T]he effects of low levels of radiation are more difficult to determine because the major effect is a very slight increase in cancer risk.”

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC): “[T]he radiation protection community conservatively assumes that any amount of radiation may pose some risk for causing cancer and hereditary effect. . . .”

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS): “Ionizing radiation is invisible, high-frequency radiation that can damage the DNA or genes inside the body. Most studies on the long-term effects of exposure to radiation used to diagnose or screen for cancers or other diseases have not shown an elevated cancer risk, but it is possible that there is a small risk associated with this exposure.”

National Academy of Sciences (NAS), BEIR VII, 2005: “[T]he smallest dose has the potential to cause a small increase in risk to humans. . . . It is unlikely that there is a threshold below which cancers are not induced. . . .”

Last Updated ( Tuesday, 04 April 2006 )

http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/4322/


Informant: jensenmk

From ufpj-news

For those of you that can read and understand Swedish, or get automatic translations, please note that we today have yet a paper printed:

Hallberg Ö, Johansson O, "Glesbygd är en sjuk miljö, nu börjar även friska dö" (="Say to countryside goodbye, when even healthy people die"; in Swedish, with a short backside abstract in English), The Experimental Dermatology Unit, the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Report no. 6, 2004, 45 pages, ISSN 1400-6111.

[If you already have ordered a copy of it, it will arrive in the paper mail in 5-10 days time. For everyone else, if you want a reprint, please, send me an A4/C4-envelope (i.e. at least 18x25 centimeters in size) with your name and address on. Within Europe enclose an international stamp coupon (you buy it at your post office) to the value of 40 Swedish Kronor, and outside of Europe to the value of 50 Swedish Kronor. Please, do not forget this, since I can not return the envelope without proper postage coverage.]

One thing more... For those of you that can read and understand Swedish, or get automatic translations, please note that I today - as well as March 31 - have a commentary in several of the Swedish newspapers. It is about the connection between watching TV and Alzheimer's disease --- is it only because of the passivity of the situation or could the electromagnetic fields play a role?:

"Kan TV-tittande leda till Alzheimer?", Sourze., 2006-03-31
http://www.sourze.se/default.asp?itemId=10524898

"Alzheimers sjukdom och TV-tittande"; Dagbladet, 2006-04-05
http://www.dagbladet.se/artikel.php?id=336193&avdelning_1=108&avdelning_2=0&sokdatum=

"Vem vågar undersöka strålningens effekter?"; Sundsvalls Tidning, 2006-04-05
http://www.st.nu/asikter/debatt.php?action=visa_artikel&id=545201


Yet another thing: For those of you that can read and understand Swedish, or get automatic translations, please note that also "Miljömagasinet" now has printed my commentary:

"TV-tittande och Alzheimers", Miljömagasinet, 2006-04-07

[As far as I know, the journal can not be accessed via the Internet.]

For those of you that can read and understand Swedish, or get automatic translations, please note the following very well written interview:

"Dagens forskning - morgondagens sanning: Forskningen visar att den elektromagnetiska strålningen från bland annat mobiltelefoner har långt mycket större påverkan på oss människor än vad som är känt för den stora allmänheten. Även stråldoser långt under de rekommenderade gränsvärden kan vara farliga" by Ola Blomkvist (from yesterday 2006-04-10):
http://www.arbetsmiljoupplysningen.se/AFATemplates/Page.aspx?id=7462

For those of you that can read and understand Norwegian and Swedish, or get automatic translations, please note the following two articles:

1) Läs gärna - i dagens (21/4 2006) nummer av den norska avisen Aftenposten - denna intervju "Plagsom el-hverdag" av Lars-Ludvig Røed: http://www.aftenposten.no/helse/article1286798.ece

2) Även undertecknad har en insändare införd idag (21/4 2006) i tidningen Metro. För de som ej har tillgång till den återges texten nedan:

VI VILL STUDERA KOPPLINGEN MELLAN OHÄLSA OCH STRÅLNING
Signaturen "Kenneth, 37" (19/4) skriver att den största sjukfrånvaron hittar man inte i Stockholm - trots alla avgaser och dubbdäck - utan på landsbygden. Han efterfrågar kunskap rörande andra fenomen som kan orsaka denna ohälsa.

Jag och min medarbetare har publicerat flera arbeten som berör just detta faktum, bland annat "Alzheimer mortality - why does it increase so fast in sparsely populated areas?" samt "Glesbygd är en sjuk miljö, nu börjar även friska dö".

I dessa arbeten undersökte vi huruvida dödlighet i sjukdomar i nervsystemet i olika delar av Sverige, samt annan form av ohälsa, korrelerar till mobiltelefoners uteffekt, som är större på landsbygden. Det visade sig att en statistiskt signifikant koppling finns mellan ohälsan och uteffekten av mobiltelefoner. Jag uppmanar därför ansvariga myndigheter, riksdag och regering till en djupare analys av denna komplexa fråga.

Vi själva skulle gärna vilja göra en detaljerad studie av kopplingen mellan ohälsa och strålning, men vi har ännu inte lyckats få pengar till det. Vill man kanske inte veta?
2006-04-21
Olle Johansson, docent i neurovetenskap vid Karolinska Institutet


Olle Johansson, assoc. prof.
The Experimental Dermatology Unit Department of Neuroscience Karolinska Institute
171 77 Stockholm
Sweden

Landesverband Baden-Württemberg

29.03.2006

Strahlungen von Mobiltelefonen besonders riskant für Kinder

Stuttgart. Seitdem bekannt geworden ist, dass Schüler über ihre Handys Porno- und Gewaltvideos verbreitet haben, wird deutschlandweit über ein Handyverbot an Schulen diskutiert. Der Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland (BUND), Landesverband Baden-Württemberg, begrüßt diese Überlegung vor allem aus Gründen der Gesundheitsvorsorge: Denn für Kinder und Jugendliche stellt die elektromagnetische Strahlung, die von Handys ausgeht, ein großes Gesundheitsrisiko dar. „Wir fordern daher für Baden-Württemberg ein Handyverbot an Grundschulen und handyfreie Zonen in allen übrigen Schulen“, erklärte die BUND-Landesvorsitzende Dr. Brigitte Dahlbender.

Wie Rundfunk- und Fernsehsender geben Handys eine hochfrequente elektromagnetische Strahlung ab. Zahlreiche Studien belegen, dass Kinder auf diese Belastung empfindlicher reagieren als Erwachsene, weil der kleinere und leichtere Körper der Kinder beim Telefonieren per Handy die gleiche Strahlung verarbeiten muss wie ein Erwachsener. Doch das kindliche Nervensystem ist noch nicht voll entwickelt, der Schädelknochen noch dünner und das Immunsystem weniger robust als bei einem Erwachsenen. Schüler des Spaichinger Gymnasiums sind 2005 mit dem 1. Preis des Wettbewerbs „Jugend forscht“ ausgezeichnet worden, weil sie herausgefunden haben, dass sich das Blutbild bereits nach einem Handytelefonat über 20 Sekunden verändert und zu potenziell gefährlichen Verklumpungen der roten Blutkörperchen führt.

Omega siehe dazu „Fünf Schüler leisten wichtige Basisforschung“ unter: http://omega.twoday.net/stories/568914/

Vor dem Hintergrund dieser und anderer Forschungsergebnisse müssen Kinder nach Meinung des BUND besonders geschützt werden. Diese Auffassung vertritt auch Wolfram König, Präsident des Bundesamtes für Strahlenschutz (BfS). Bereits 2001 hatte er Eltern empfohlen, ihre Kinder möglichst von der Mobilfunk-Technologie fernzuhalten. Deshalb fordert der BUND an baden-württembergischen Grundschulen ein generelles Handyverbot, an allen anderen Schulen sollten die Klassenräume zu handyfreien Zonen erklärt werden.

Generell sollte die Strahlenbelastung durch Handys so gering wie möglich gehalten werden, der BUND empfiehlt daher:

• Schalten Sie ihr Handy wann immer es möglich ist ganz aus.
• Benutzen Sie so oft wie möglich das Festnetztelefon.
• Telefonieren Sie mit dem Handy so kurz wie möglich.
• Telefonieren Sie möglichst nicht bei schlechtem Empfang, z.B. in abschirmenden Gebäuden, weil hier das Handy mit voller Leistung strahlt.
• Verwenden Sie Handys mit niedrigem SAR-Wert (Spezifische Absorptions Rate): < 0,6 W/kg.
• Nutzen Sie Head-Sets, um die Antenne möglichst weit vom Kopf entfernt zu halten.
• Nutzen Sie die SMS-Möglichkeiten, da Sie dann das Handy nicht zum Kopf führen müssen.

Die Pressemitteilung enthält 2626 Zeichen (mit Leerzeichen). Pressekontakt: BUND Landesverband Baden-Württemberg Paulinenstr. 47, 70178 Stuttgart Tel.: 07 11/6 20 30 6-0 Fax: 07 11/6 20 30 6-77

bund.bawue@bund.net

http://vorort.bund.net/bawue/aktuell/presse.php?start=0&id=266


Nachricht von Ulrich Weiner

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Handy-Verbot an Schulen
http://freepage.twoday.net/stories/1677088/