Environ-Mental Impact: the Nuclear Security State

This was written already a while back (Sept. 2006). It was meant as a critique on the existing SWEIS  (Side Wide Environmental Impact Statement) for los Alamos future --the thinking at that time. You can see that things has developed since then. However it also tries to analyse the unseen environ-mental impact of building a bunker like the CMRR: building that CMRR-Nuclear Facility is like an endorsement for a nightmarish vision of Fascist rule with ever increasing numbers of "Hibakusha"(nuclear victims) roaming the planet....


Here are some ideas that have kept their urgency....  

willem

Willem Malten | Los Alamos Environmental Impact

    Los Alamos Environmental Impact
    By Willem Malten
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective
    Wednesday 06 September 2006

what democracy looks like....

    When over 80% of the American public has expressed a desire for mutual nuclear disarmament and still the US nuclear labs (Los Alamos and Sandia in New Mexico and Lawrence Livermore in California) keep pursuing nuclear weapons upgrades - and now a new plutonium warhead core ("pit") factory - there is something seriously wrong. The sheer magnitude of nuclear weapons and everything that comes with them - the research and testing, the production, the contamination, the ever-increasing security - is simply incompatible with a functioning democracy. Now that democracy may have to be rebuilt from the bottom up.
    The latest nuclear insult to democracy, common sense and morality is described in a document called the "Draft Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement," or SWEIS for short, for the operation of Los Alamos National Laboratory. In it, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), an autonomous fiefdom within the Department of Energy (DOE), describes the first 5 years of its plan to turn Los Alamos into a nuclear bomb factory.
    Few details of this plan are provided, despite nearly 2,000 pages of text. In sum, the SWEIS says Los Alamos will be making 80 new plutonium pits per year by 2012. Allowing for defective pits and pits needed for testing, NNSA expects to be building 50 brand-new nuclear weapons per year by that date, pits being the limiting factor in the whole nuclear bomb-making business. After 2012, production is expected to ramp up to 200 pits per year or even more. Billions of dollars in new construction funds are planned.

nordic design....

 Pits are hollow shells of fissile material, usually plutonium, and other metals. When surrounded by high explosives, they make an atomic bomb. In a thermonuclear weapon, this first (or "primary") fission stage ignites a second stage (the "secondary").

    The SWEIS purports to examine the environmental impact of the waste and contamination that will be generated in pit manufacture - as if Los Alamos could be trusted in this regard, and as if writing a big book about the problem somehow fixed it. In reality, the SWEIS is a bit of a macabre sideshow, with multiple levels of absurdity, like talking - and just talking, mind you - about reducing the smoke from the ovens of Auschwitz.
    Much more than just environmental impact is at issue here. What's not mentioned in the SWEIS is the psychic environment that goes hand in hand with the manufacturing of Weapons of Mass Destruction - that is, the denial of any sort of future for our children and what that disturbing realization does to them. Is it a coincidence that New Mexico has among the very highest rates of juvenile suicide of any state?
    We should be equally concerned about the international "environment" created by trashing treaties like the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). It is our own complicity in the nuclear build-up, this bad faith, that gives people all over the world reason to see us as enemies. If the world's largest conventional army needs nuclear weapons, doesn't every country?

ahhhhh Bush....torture... torture everywhere....

    And what about moral contamination? Nuclear weapons help condemn most of humanity to live in a perpetual state of fear, slavishly following a global master elite, being brainwashed to accept the propaganda slurry that masquerades as education or news.
    What about the commercial "environment?" How are we going to control a privatized corporate nuclear-weapon industry, especially now that the contract for Los Alamos' Weapons of Mass Destruction Factory has gone to Bechtel and its cronies. Corporations work to maximize profits for their shareholders, in this case fomenting global conflict to support a lively market for their "product." We need more Congressional and regulatory oversight, not less. Concern about rogue contractors is not farfetched: remember, the FBI had to raid Rocky Flats Plant to shut it down.

fascism: the face of security state.....

The vision behind making new pits is a combined nightmare of Fascism and Hibakusha. The threshold of Fascism is crossed when spying and fear become tools of control, when torture is condoned and when civilian targets become commonplace.

Originally, the term Hibakusha referred to the survivors of the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Most of the Hibakusha, even those who at some point were able to function again in some semblance of normalcy, are marked by scars that will never heal from the torture that was perpetrated on them in one single flash of human madness.

hibakusha hibakusha......everywhere.....

    The Hibakusha phenomenon has been spreading over the whole world since 1945. Now we have Hibakusha in the Bikini Atoll, in Australia, in Kosovo, Afghanistan and in Iraq. We have Hibakusha in the Ukraine, and Belarus. We have Hibakusha here in America itself like the Shoshone Nation (the most bombed nation on earth) in Nevada, or here in our backyard, New Mexico, we have Hibakusha in Laguna, Acoma, in Grants, in Navajo, and in Espanola. If it were up to corporations like Bechtel, BWTX, Lockheed Martin, the Washington Group, plus the University of California, we soon could all be Hibakusha.

 Declaring war on ill-defined concepts like "terror" or "drugs" involves the prospect of endless wars, without any measure of victory and with a totally arbitrary distinction between the "good guys" and the "bad guys." The only winners are the corporations that make the weapons, which gives them an interest in "privatizing conflict" and in managing the public perception by media control. In a world where most of the money is spent on weapons, most of the problems start looking like military problems and most of the solutions look military as well.

here is one.....poor thing.....who's responsible ?

    We need to understand the bankruptcy this has wreaked on civil society. This blind militarism is the cause for proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear bombs, worldwide. Nuclear weapons are the very spear point of this culture of violence - the ultimate failure of diplomacy - highlighting our inability to talk with each other as humans among humans. People have to understand that the Fallujahs of our time are just a prelude to the use of nuclear devices. These weapons are not just aimed at the people of the world, they are not just taking away the resources of the next generations - these weapons are aimed at the heart of human dignity. Yet our whole foreign policy rests on the fear that these weapons instill. They provide a kind of "civilized terrorism" as a tool for the commander in chief.
    Neighborhoods, communities and cities are now the vehicles that express the people's will and have to represent the changes we are seeking. True security and democracy comes from a stronger sense of community, from getting closer. This is why it is significant that Santa Fe adopted a second resolution against pit production in Los Alamos and in favor of strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and other disarmament treaties.

hey you.....we are in this together

Being a City of Peace and Holy Faith (Santa Fe) at this point means we must resist the Weapons of Mass Destruction Facility called LANL on a mesa nearby. The people of the world are watching and wondering if We the People are up to the task. Brothers and sisters, let's take courage: It started here, let's stop it here.

---

 For More Information:     Los Alamos Study Group: http://www.lasg.org/
        http://www.lasg.org/NNSAPrivatization.pdf

CMRR-Nuclear Facility Update

 Update Mon. Nov.1st, 2010:

In the few short months since this blog entry:"New START", the proposed CMRR Nuclear Facility and the LASG lawsuit against the DOE and NNSA, also appeared in the local newspapers and some national blogs -- lots has happened. 


First of all, the lawsuit is in full swing now, and the Los Alamos Study Group under leadership of Greg Mello has already forced the Lab to admit that the 2003 EIS is not adequate and the Laboratories have called for a new SEIS (Supplemental Environment Impact Statement). 
A public meeting in Los Alamos

at Hilltop Hotel Los Alamos
...an early Halloween...

and a couple of scoping meetings have  been underway. Fairly poorly attended by the larger public but richly staffed with lab and covert security personnel, these meetings were mainly kind of a propaganda attempt. One has to realize that contrary to a real EIS, a SEIS (Supplemental EIS), is kind of a swiftly made up thing, that doesn't look at real alternatives to the CMRR- Nuclear Facility, nor stops any design or even physical construction from progressing.

John Tegtmeier, NEPA

I attended both scoping meetings and because the one in White Rock was so poorly attended I got a chance to speak at length with John Tegtmeier who is charged to see the NEPA SEIS investigation through. I felt an urgent need to find out about timeline of the SEIS process. In the sincerity with which he spoke I could see that he wanted to understand the SEIS as kind of a mini EIS where all significant work stopped until later next summer, when the NNSA boss-man D'Augostino can make a decision about the building of the new CMRR-Nuclear Facility ('cause ultimately it is up to him). But when I pressed Mr. Tegtmeier and asked him if any contracts or work were underway as we spoke, he said couldn't tell and instead referred me to Steve Fong, NNSA CMRR-NF project manager.  

Steve Fong, NNSA CMRR Project Manager

My lucky day..... Mr. Fong also was available and so I engaged him on the project and I specifically wanted to know the contracts that are being worked on, and when the new contracts will be signed. When he refused to give me a straight answer I couldn't help but in so many ways ask him again....and again: "Are there any contracts being signed now ?". It clearly bothered him and he accused me of "badgering". I am sorry that Mr. Fong felt like that and I apologize if I was too heavy handed -- really, all I  wanted to have is a conversation together with him and a straight answer to a simple question. 

But I feel worse about what his refusal to answer reveals: I am afraid that this incident points out that the SEIS is not done in good faith. It is a transparent attempt to confuse the public ("....eh...something is being done....an SEIS....") and thus quash the lawsuit that LASG has filed against NNSA DOE and the Labs. The Los Alamos Study Group is calling for a full Environmental Impact Statement. Not some "make do SEIS".


Not surprisingly the NNSA has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. In LASG's response to this motion Thomas Hnasko’s (LASG chief lawyer) brief pointedly mentions “283 employees or contractors ... now at work on the project,” and argues that design work and site preparations now underway are being done without legally required NEPA coverage. 

By the way: those contractors and the work that is already underway is precisely what Steve Fong didn't  want to talk to me about. Speaking privately, officials close to the project have begun building the case that any court action to halt work pending NEPA review would mean all those people would end up unemployed.

 Willem Malten speaking out at SEIS Scoping meeting
in Pojoaque calling it "a fraud"
...what a way to spend a b-day...

This concern of unemployment betrays again the hollowness of the national US investments that are being made. If the CMRR is some kind of employment program, and indeed makes part of Obama’s misguided stimulus moneys for “Complex Revitalization”, then all the more reasons this CMRR bunker needs to be questioned -- also in the light of civil alternatives, that could in that case include investments into alternative energy production (to name just one possible priority of our time) and create employment that way.

The Los Alamos Study Group is not going to drop its lawsuit. It is aiming to win this lawsuit. And I am happy to mention that communities all over New Mexico, Pueblos, and towns along the 'Rio Grande Corridor' are stirring and are proposing resolutions in support of a full EIS.

All this noise has apparently also woken up Dr. Chu in his lair, and he and his staff announced that they are going to do their own study on the CMRR over a 6 weeks period. We think that the time Dr. Chu has set for himself is too short, to come to a final conclusion about the desirability of the CMRR, for the issues involved are complex and manifold, but I do want to say that the effort Dr Chu is making, while belated, is correct. At times I have been critical of Dr. Chu, but if this attempt to crock the CMRR is for real, I will withdraw all my snideness and give Dr. Chu the benefit of the doubt. I wish him insight and wisdom--the odds he is facing to come up with a balanced position are certainly enormous. 

Dr. Chu ...balanced position...

Meanwhile the projected costs are spiraling up. Earlier this year I had stated that the costs were around 4 billion but I was corrected by Mello: costs were 'only' at 3.4 billion at that time. However now, only a few months later, the latest we hear of, is the figure of 6 billion dollars to construct the CMRR-NF. This would represent a inflation rate of about 15 % per month (Of course.... this does not reflect the drop in value of the dollar itself in any way shape or form.....lol.....but it makes you wonder...).


Last word: About START. 
Instead of making START a treaty, let's downgrade it to an "International Agreement" between the USA and Russia. Unlike a "Treaty", this would only require a simple majority in congress. The fact that the president of the USA, Obama and the president of Russia, Medvedev, have signed this treaty, already means a commitment to live up to it. Compare it to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT): even though the CTBT  signed by Clinton, never made its way through Congress, nevertheless there has not been any new nuclear bomb testing in the USA. It is binding. 


The people of the USA and in particular the people of New Mexico,  shouldn't be held hostage to building the CMRR-Nuclear Facility and all that it stands for, in order to sign START. In its final analysis, the START Treaty would be so much more significant if we don't built these monuments of doom at the same time.




.....here is the original article:
"New START", the proposed CMRR Nuclear Facility and the LASG lawsuit against the DOE and NNSA

Tree of Live

                                                

Some people find Madonnas in tortillas or Jesus likenesses in frying pans. Frankly, in all of our years of cooking and baking (25) that has never happened at Cloud Cliff..... Not from lack of imagination.....




However this last friday some markings manifested on one of the Nativo Hearth breads. Unmistakingly the Tree of Life made its appearance on a 2 # Peasant bread.....
ala early Mondrian or even Van Gogh or Kiefer ....... My mother Bon Malten would have been glad to know......

Rethinking a Weed: the Truth about Amaranth

Happy to report that the UN University under the guidance of Carol Smith re-edited my previous Amaranth article and added the necessary links for further study and will be published in the Our World  2.0 United Nations Webzine on 10-11-10

It was only going to be a matter of time before Nature caught up with the over-abundant use of herbicides. Particularly regretful is the advent of glyphosate — made famous by Monsanto with their product called Roundup — and the ensuing reliance of the United States’ agricultural industry on corn, soybean and cotton seeds that the company genetically modified (GM) to resist Roundup. 

Studies began   several years ago but the problem continues to mount, with The New York Times warning of the   “Rise of the Superweeds” analogous to that of the ‘superbugs’ in medicine. About 22 states and many millions of acres are apparently affected by the scourge, in particular a plant dubbed ‘Palmer pigweed’ that has developed the ability to thrive on glysophate.

It seems Monsanto may have long ago anticipated the inevitable failure of the devious combo of genetically modified seeds plus Roundup. The company started experimenting with a ‘souped-up’ Roundup almost 10 years ago, to manage the problem of superweeds. Not that this is today any consolation to the farmers who are financially suffering from the expense of buying costly products that do not work, leaving them with lower crop yields.

Indeed, Monsanto’s own website includes instructions encouraging farmers to mix glyphosate and older (i.e., leftover) herbicides such as 2,4-D, a herbicide which was banned in Sweden, Denmark and Norway over its links to cancer, reproductive harm and mental impairment. 2,4-D is also well known for being a component of Agent Orange, a toxin used in chemical warfare in Vietnam in the 1960s. Imagine that, Agent Orange finally coming home to fight the superweeds: a  dark sequel to Vietnam in the making?

You call that a weed? 

Now let’s look at the vilified pigweed for a minute. First the name, ‘pigweed’, makes it an easy target for demonizing. Who could possibly appreciate something so base as ‘pig’ and ‘weed’ combined?

Before we go any further, I would like to state the true and dignified name of pigweed: it is used to refer to several wild species of the genus Amarantus. The word comes from the Greek amarantos and means the “one that does not wither,” or “never-fading”.

This plant family includes a wide variety of species, some of which are cultivated for their nutritious leaves (oft-compared to spinach), others for their grain (which is actually a pseudo grain or seed). Various wild   species of amaranth are saddled with the label pigweed, particularly in North America, and several of those now feature on the list of the world’s weeds that have developed a resistance to glyphosate.

(Apparently, the weedy types are  also edible and taste much like the cultivated kinds. They simply don’t grow as large or produce as many leaves or seeds.)

The ‘never fading’ aspect therefore seems not just refer to the flower — which indeed keeps its deep reddish or rust color for a long time — but it also aptly applies to the sheer tenacity of the plant itself. It flourishes in a large variety of soils (from acidic to alkaline) and climates (from hot to cold); wild amaranth comes back without being planted; it grows in dry conditions; and some species thrive even in fields treated with glysophate — never fading.

Manna from heaven 

My own relationship with amaranth began around 1983. I wanted to make a special bread for my business, the Cloud Cliff bakery, at that time just a tiny venture in the Barrio of Santa Fe, New Mexico. I was looking for something indigenous, hardy, and full of protein and rare nutrition (such as minerals and vitamins).Through the Rodale Institute, I stumbled upon the humble amaranth, long cultivated by many peoples around the globe, including ancient cultures like the Romans and the  Aztecs who valued it in ritual and as a staple food.

Amaranth seeds have a protein content of about 16%, more than other widely consumed cereals like conventional wheat, rice or maize, according to  a book on the topic by the US National Research Council. Amaranth’s protein digestibility score is an impressive 90 percent, much higher than problematic foods such as soy, milk and wheat.

Amaranth seeds contain 5 percent to 9 percent high-quality oil, again, much higher than the common grains. Found in the amaranth oil are tocotrienols — a relatively rare and very beneficial form of vitamin E — and squalene, another rare compound reported to have anti-cancer properties.

(Vegetable varieties, though undervalued and looked down upon  in some cultures, are also a nutritional powerhouse. There is even one species that is both a seed producer and  a vegetable, Amaranthus cruentus.)

The seed is small and hard and it requires some processing to make it digestible. But, as with other grains, it can be prepared by using simple low-energy techniques. Cleaned, unprocessed seeds can simply be boiled briefly to make porridge. If toasted, the seeds taste better and can be eaten without further preparation. As is common in Mexico and Central America, amaranth can also be popped or puffed. I started exploring ways to bake with amaranth and settled on germinating the seed to soften it before adding it to bread. Experimental plots in New Mexico and Nebraska provided the amaranth grain.

Cloud Cliff’s “Aztec amaranth bread” became my first commercial best seller, and people loved not only the taste, they enjoyed the health benefits as well. I have had many anecdotal comments on this over the years. So even now, after 26 years, I still bake with amaranth, and I highly respect it as “an ancient grain for our future”.

What’s in a word? 

Calling amaranth “pigweed” or “superweed” is perhaps an attempt by Monsanto and others who fall into the trap, to make an ideological statement. In 1984 when the New York Times first discovered amaranth,  Jane Brody wrote about it like this:

“Agricultural researchers are cautiously hailing this relic of antiquity as ‘the grain of the future’ for its potential to provide protein, vitamins and minerals to people worldwide, including the United States.”

Then, 26 years later the NY Times writes again about amaranth, but this time referring to it only as pigweed and describing it as the main invasive superweed. I believe this is an example of how language can manipulate perception. In other words: classifying amaranth as a superweed and ignoring its noble heritage and untapped potential is an ideological statement designed to make the proposed solution (reviving the toxic herbicide used in Agent Orange) seem rational.

We need to look at this problem of invasive weeds very differently and luckily in this case we have a great opportunity to do so. Amaranth’s protein filled seed heads weigh up to two pounds and are relatively easily harvestable. Amaranth grows great where others can’t. In this age when we devote too much acreage to GM crops, Nature seems to be offering us a gift in the form of amaranth.

Call for ingenuity 

The challenge should therefore be not to destroy it, but rather find ways of processing it into flour, bread, candy, and high quality green roughage and distributing it into the markets of affluent countries that currently rely on very resource-intensive protein (i.e., livestock), as well as sharing products and/or agricultural knowledge with nations where nutrition is scarce and people are hungry.

Malnutrition is widespread in sub-Saharan Africa. Easy-to-grow nutrient rich foods, can  boost nutrition and food security in communities that depend on subsistence agriculture. Amaranthus cruentus (the species that is both a seed and vegetable) is known as both easy-to-grow and nutritious. Further, it is among the  highest-yielding leaf vegetables of the tropics.

Thus you can see why I take such offence at the prevailing attitudes towards amaranth guised as pigweed. Rather than being torched with toxic agents, should not the wild plant relatives of such superfood warrant research and development?

Sadly it seems to me that before the advent of corporate agriculture, farmers used to be more self-reliant and cunning. They always saw opportunities where others didn’t or couldn’t care. History is filled with examples of this, but let me just quote one:

“Rye came into the world suddenly in the form of a revolt of the lowly. In Pontos, on the shore of the Black Sea — a city surrounded by excellent wheatland — grain ships were loaded to take seed to southern Russia. A few weeds that none regarded became mixed with the seed. But Behold! When time came for sowing, the soil proved too harsh for the wheat, and the weed flourished mightily. Rye had abruptly become a cultivated plant. The sowers intelligently exploited the accident, and within a few hundred years rye had spread to many soils that had been exhausted by continual crops of wheat.”

— (H. E. Jacob in   Six Thousand Years of Bread, 1944)

So I propose that we adjust our research, technology and diets and start a more wide-spread processing of the mighty amaranth into food. We potentially have millions of acres of it. Amaranth is a gift and we better learn how to use it.

About the author

Willem Malten is a baker, filmmaker and community activist. He owns and runs Cloud Cliff Bakery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is active in supporting the re-emergence of native and organic wheat farming and in 1993 helped establish the   The Northern New Mexico Organic Wheat Project. Malten directed Cry at the End of the 20th Century, a documentary featuring Amy Goodman, Greg Mello and others, about nuclear weapons and civil disobedience. With the Shipibo Konibo tribe in the rainforest of Peru, Malten directed a movie about   a coming of age ceremony for girls, for which Correo Aereo composed the original score and Gene Hackman narrated. He also produced a series of short movies on beekeeping, adobe, algae, solar, and sustainability for   Ecoversity TV. Malten has a masters in anthropology from the University of Amsterdam in his native Netherlands. He is a long-term director of  Los Alamos Study Group and writes a regular blog called   Vortex Politico.

The Case Against Agent Orange and All Mutagenic Weapons

After writing the article on GM and Pigweed I came across this article on Agent Orange I did some years ago. Agent Orange and its mix of chemicals is so toxic and dangerous precisely because  it produces multigenerational genetic defects. 
It is pretty much outlawed everywhere, but now some component of it, "2,4 D" , is proposed as a solution for invasive "Superweeds" in the US itself. see amaranth article

Anyhow, we need to recognize the real faces of humanity's enemies in order to be able to take care of our children.

Photos by Petronella Ytsma 
(go ahead click on them)  

    By Willem Malten
    t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor

    Thursday 14 June 2007

    I hadn't thought about Agent Orange for 34 years - until recently.

    I met with a group of Vietnamese citizens, led by Dr. Nguyen Trong Nhan, bearing witness to the plight of millions of Vietnamese people affected by Agent Orange. Now 77 years old, Dr. Nhan is one of Vietnam's foremost ophthalmologists. He was Vietnam's minister of health from 1992 to 1995, and recently he served as president of the Vietnam Red Cross. Today he is vice president of the Vietnam Association of Victims of Agent Orange - VAVA.

    Professor Nhan is sadly disappointed by the US lack of response to calls to help Vietnamese sufferers, and by the outcome of a lawsuit against the chemical companies - including Monsanto, Dow, Union Carbide and Diamond Shamrock that produced Agent Orange.

    "Vietnam can't solve the problem on its own," Dr. Nhan says. "Hanoi helped the US military track down remains of US servicemen missing in action, and we asked them to reciprocate with humanitarian aid for victims of Agent Orange."

    Around 10,000 US war veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange receive disability benefits for various types of cancer and other serious health problems that have been linked to dioxin. "American victims of Agent Orange will get up to $1,500 a month. However, most Vietnamese families affected receive around 80,000 dong a month - just over $5 - in government support for each disabled child," says Professor Nhan.

    When former US President Bill Clinton visited Hanoi five years ago, Vietnamese President Tran Duc Long made an appeal to the US "to acknowledge its responsibility to de-mine and detoxify former military bases and provide assistance to Agent Orange victims." But Washington offered nothing beyond funding scientific conferences and further research. Apparently, in both the Clinton White House and the Bush White House, the thinking has been that increased trade agreements will wash away all sins.

    Agent Orange, named after the color of its containers and billed as a defoliant herbicide to remove the jungle cover in order to better spot the enemy, had been sprayed over large swaths of land - over 3 million acres - during the Vietnam War. The use of Agent Orange from 1961 to 1971, perpetrated on the Vietnamese people, was the longest sustained chemical warfare in history. More than 80 million liters of Agent Orange were dispensed during that time, containing about 800 pounds of dioxin - one of the most toxic substances known to mankind. Over 3,000 villages were sprayed directly, and between 2 and 5 million people are estimated to have been directly exposed to the chemicals.

    After the end of the Vietnam War in 1972, the Agent Orange story seemed to end also. Concentrations of Agent Orange seemed to quickly dwindle in the monsoon rains of Vietnam, and that was that.

    Then in 1984, the story of Agent Orange resurfaced when several chemical companies settled a lawsuit in the amount of $180 million with US Vietnam veterans who complained that their health and that of their families had been affected by their handling of Agent Orange in Vietnam. It seemed that some genetic defects were related to Agent Orange exposure.

    On January 31, 2004 the VAVA filed a class action lawsuit in a US district court in Brooklyn, New York, against several US companies, claiming liability in causing personal injury by developing and producing the chemical. Dow Chemical and Monsanto were the two largest producers of Agent Orange for the US military, and they were named in the suit along with eight other companies. These are the same companies that spray toxic chemicals over large swaths of land in the US and elsewhere, peddling genetically deformed crops as a business in the form of genetically modified (GM) seeds, threatening the genetic inheritance of us all.

    On March 10, 2005 the district court judge dismissed the suit, ruling that there was no legal basis for the plaintiffs' claims. The judge, Jack B. Weinstein, concluded that Agent Orange was not considered a poison under international law at the time of its use; that the US was not prohibited from using it as an herbicide; and that the companies which produced the substance were not liable for the method of its use by the government. The US government, which has sovereign immunity, had not been a target of the lawsuit. Even so, The National Toxicology Program has now classified 2,3,7,8-TCDD, the dioxin in Agent Orange, to be a known human carcinogen, frequently associated with soft-tissue sarcoma, Non-Hodgkins lymphoma, Hodgkins disease and chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). Its use has been banned by the Geneva Convention on Chemical Weapons.

    Though concentrations in the open have dropped, Agent Orange binds to fatty acids (much like DDT) and has worked its way up the food chain, causing a proliferation of birth defects and genetic abnormalities affecting many children in Vietnam. Cleft palates, mental retardation, abnormal or missing hands, feet, limbs and fingers missing or added are quite common.

    During the VAVA presentation in the US, a 15-minute video was shown, exposing the suffering of an estimated 13 to 17 million Vietnamese, many born decades after warfare had ceased. Perhaps the most disturbing was footage of many preserved fetuses, one after another exposing the most grotesque deformities.

    To retroactively classify Agent Orange as an herbicide and, solely because of that classification, deny any justice to the Vietnamese and Cambodian victims of its use is immoral and unethical.

    Any kind of war is horrific, and Agent Orange is an illustration of the horror of chemical warfare. Used as a chemical weapon, it inflicts damage genetically, through generations. The unborn and innocent are targeted. Most of those affected by Agent Orange were born long after the Vietnam War ended.

    Whether genetic abnormalities are caused by bombs in Hiroshima, Agent Orange in Vietnam or depleted uranium in Iraq, the use of all chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons is intolerable - a crime against humanity - and should be reclassified under one banner as "Mutagenic Weapons, illegal under international law."

    Henry Kissinger promised reparations to Vietnam when the Vietnam peace accord was signed. The US government must take responsibility for having waged illegal chemical warfare. We must act now to support and join the efforts of our Vietnamese brothers and sisters to hold these companies and the US government responsible. If we do not, white phosphorus and depleted uranium will continue to rain on civilian populations in other areas of the world, whether in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon or Iraq. In the drug war, watered-down variations of Agent Orange will continue to be sprayed on the South American rainforest, causing much the same childhood defects as seen in Vietnam.

    We must stand against "Mutagenic Weapons," just as we stand against "torture." If we don't, we will condemn ourselves to lives of mourning, helpless and unable to prevent genetically degenerate hordes being born to future generations.

From the Airforce: The Fight Against Windmills is On...

Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, "Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless."    Miguel de Cervantes

Apparently large windmills interfere with the radar capacities of the American airforce. Some say the airplanes simply disappear from the radar screens when flying over windfarms.  Aside from the interference of the rotating blades,  what might interfere with the radar systems are possibly the large specialty magnets inside the motors of the Turbines ( my thought -- experts tell me they are most likely not). 

The NYT reports that windfarms look a lot like storm activity on weather radar.  Thousands of existing turbines in the gusty Tehachapi Mountains, to the west of the R-2508 military complex in the Mojave Desert, have already limited its abilities to test airborne radar used for target detection in F/A-18s and other aircraft. It is the reason why the airforce has opposed the building of windfarms.

So a conflict of interests has been shaping up between energy security and national security. In many cases the Airforce has stopped or stalled windfarm projects. In the Columbia River Gorge on the Oregon-Washington border and in the Great Lakes region. But the conflicts now appear to be most frequent in the Mojave, where the Air Force, Navy and Army control 20,000 square miles of airspace and associated land in California and Nevada that they use for bomb tests; low-altitude, high-speed air maneuvers; and radar testing and development.

california testing and training area

It may also play a role in the slow-down of  large wind projects in New Mexico which is now chosen to be a low flying military aircraft testing ground. This is what the airforce has in mind for New Mexico:

proposed LATN area: Low Altitude Tactical Navigation

To meet SOF mobility training requirements, the Air Force is proposing that various types of C-130 and CV-22 Osprey aircrews, flying as low as 200 feet above-ground-level (AGL) with speeds below 250 knots indicated airspeed, train in the proposed LATN area.  The proposed LATN area is necessary because the existing Military Training Routes (MTRs) controlled by 27 SOW at Cannon AFB are generally narrow corridors over flat terrain designed for use by F-16 aircraft previously flown from Cannon AFB.  These MTRs do not provide the access to aircrew training opportunities over high mountainous terrain need to represent current real world taskings.  .......  These aircrews would hone unique skills by flying:   

1.  At night 
2.  In high altitude mountains 
3.  With vertical terrain separated from large human populations.  
4. This SOF mobility capability is a unique, national asset and profi ciency at 
5. these skills are required for successful operations in ongoing global conflicts. 
6. The northern New Mexico and southern Colorado area proposed for the 
7. SOF training meets these terrain requirements.  This environment is very 
8. challenging for crews to keep the aircraft on the proper time schedule and 
9. course while avoiding simulated threats. 

There are also suggestions that testing of new generations of drones will be involved in this area. Though I am not independently able to verify these claims, it deserves a hard look by in-depth journalism. What is the full vision of DOE and DOD for New Mexico? Is it just nuclear weapons or does it involve so much more that the populous is not even remotely aware of ?


Let's get back to the question of energy security. After examining the AF requirements for the LATN area -- guess what ? Most likely no windmills in New Mexico.

Here I want to recognize that in the Airforce's rejection of windfarms is also an unspoken preference for nuclear power. The future of  Richardson's vision of New Mexico as the Saudi Arabia of the US with windmills and solar panels in the desert, generating energy that is distributed over the whole of the US, now looks instead like a Nuclear wasteland with nuclear waste, nuclear bomb facilities, enrichment,  nuclear power plants and low flying aircraft overhead..... This is sadly part of the continued story of New Mexico as a militarized colony: a true national sacrifice state, with a small marginalized population and little political power or 'voice'.

...Whether or not the AF is successful in halting the most reasonable solution for energy production in NM, wind turbines (and solar),  the added effect of interfering with airforce radar, should give pause to most other countries in the world.... Here is a thought: Re-allocate defence money towards the creation of large wind farms. 

It is a beautiful thing when people realize that energy security and national security in fact can go hand in hand. 


Go ahead, adjust your radar.....build windfarms as fast as you can.....!

The Failure of GM: Plenty of Pigweed.....Now What ?

It was only going to be a matter of time before Nature would catch up with the overabundant use of glysophate, or Round-up (made by Monsanto) as it is commercially known, in particular on GM corn, GM soybean and GM cotton fields. The New York Times is warning of the "Rise of the Superweeds" analogous to the rise of the Superbugs in Medicine. About 22 states and many millions of acres are apparently affected with uncontrollable growth in particular of 'Pigweed' which seems to thrive on Glysophate.....it just loves Round-up.( .... Irony of History.....the Revenge of the Natives......)

Monsanto must have anticipated the inevitable failure of the devious combo of Genetically Modified Seeds plus Round-up for a long time. It started experimenting with a 'souped-up' Roundup almost 10 years ago, to manage the problem of 'superweeds'. Indeed, according to Monsanto own press releases, company sales representatives are encouraging farmers to mix glyphosate and older (=leftover) herbicides such as 2,4-D, a herbicide which was banned in Sweden, Denmark and Norway over its links to cancer, reproductive harm and mental impairment. 2,4-D is also well-known for being a component of Agent Orange, a toxic herbicide which was used in chemical warfare in Vietnam in the 1960s. Imagine that......Agent Orange finally coming home......to fight the Superweeds..... A dark sequel to Vietnam. 



Now let's look at the vilified Pigweed for a minute. First the name, 'Pigweed', sounds as a easy target of demonizing. Who could possibly appreciate something so base as 'pig' and 'weed' combined ??

Before we go any further, I would like to re-enstate the true and dignified name of "Pigweed": it is "Amaranth". The word comes from the Greek amarantos (Αμάρανθος or Αμάραντος) the "one that does not wither," or the "never-fading". The 'never fading' aspect may not just refer to the flower (as the wikipedia suggests) --which indeed keeps its deep reddish or rust color for a long time-- but it may actually refer to the sheer tenacity of the plant itself. It grows in a large variety of soils (from acidic to alkaline) and climate (from hot to cold),  Amaranth comes back without being planted, and it grows in dry soils.... thrives even in fields treated with glysophate......never fading..... 


My own relationship with Amaranth began around 1983.  I wanted to make a special bread for my business, the Cloud Cliff bakery, at that time just a tiny venture in the Barrio of Santa Fe. I was looking for something.....indigenous, hardy and full of protein and rare nutrition (such as minerals and vitamins). Through the Rodale Institute, I stumbled upon the humble Amaranth, once considered a 'sacred plant' with taxes in the Aztec empire meted out in bushels of Amaranth. In fact, when rated by nutritionists for general nutritional quality, amaranth scores significantly higher than other common foods such as milk, soy, wheat and corn. Amaranth’s digestibility score is an impressive 90 percent, much higher than problematic foods such as soy, milk and wheat.

amaranth...ancient grain for our future....(magnification about 8X)

Amaranth seeds contain 5 percent to 9 percent high-quality oil, again, much higher than the common grains. Found in the amaranth oil are tocotrienols—a relatively rare and very beneficial form of vitamin E—and squalene, another rare compound reported to have anti-cancer  properties. I started finding ways to bake with Amaranth: The seed is small and hard and it requires some processing to be able to add it to food and be digestible. In my case I settled on germinating the seed to soften it before adding it to  bread. Experimental plots in New Mexico and Nebraska provided the Amaranth grain.

Cloud Cliff's "Aztec Amaranth bread" became my first commercial best seller, and people loved not only the taste, they enjoyed the health benefits as well. I have had many anecdotal comments on this over the years. So even now, after 26 years, I still bake with Amaranth, and I highly respect it and see it then and now  as "an Ancient Grain for our Future".

Calling Amaranth "Pigweed" or "Superweed"  really is an attempt by Monsanto and others who fall into the trap,  to make an ideological statement. In 1984 when the New York Times first discovered Amaranth, October 16, 1984, Jane Brody wrote about Amaranth like this:


Agricultural researchers are cautiously hailing this relic of antiquity as ''the grain of the future'' for its potential to provide protein, vitamins and minerals to people worldwide, including the United States.
Amaranth contains more protein than other common grain foods (the tiny seeds are 16 percent protein, as against 12 to 14 percent for wheat) and the quality of that protein - its ability to meet human protein needs - exceeds that of protein in soybeans and even milk. Unlike other grains, amaranth is rich in the essential amino acid lysine. When combined with corn, for example, which is deficient in lysine, a ''protein score'' of nearly 100 results.......


Now, 26 years later the NYT classifies that same Amaranth plant as "Pigweed" and labels it as the main invasive "Superweed". This is an example of how language is intended to manipulate perception. In other words: Classifying Amaranth as a Pigweed and a Superweed is an ideological statement in order to make the proposed solution (Agent Orange) seem rational.

perfect amaranth in soy field....now what ??

We need to look at this problem of invasive Pigweed very differently and luckily in this case we have a great opportunity to do so. Amaranth protein filled seed heads weigh up to 2 pounds and are relatively easily harvestable. In so many ways we already devote too much acreage to GM Corn, GM Soy and GM Cotton, and now Nature is offering us a gift in the form of Amaranth. Amaranth grows great where others can't. Challenge is not to destroy it, but rather find ways of processing it into flour, bread, candy, and high quality green roughage (ala spinach) and distributing it into a market that is protein and nutrition scarce and feed a populace.

Sadly it seems to me that before the advent of corporate agriculture, farmers used to be more self reliant and cunning. They have always seen opportunities where others didn't or couldn't care. History is filled with examples of this, but let me just quote one:


Rye came into the world suddenly in the form of a revolt of the lowly. In Pontos, on the shore of the Black Sea --a city surrounded by excellent wheatland-- grain ships were loaded to take seed to southern Russia. A few weeds that none regarded became mixed with the seed. But Behold! when time came for sowing, the soil proved too harsh for the wheat, and the weed flourished mightily. Rye had abruptly become a cultivated plant. The sowers intelligently exploited the accident, and within a few hundred years rye had spread to many soils that had been exhausted by continual crops of wheat.....(H. E. Jacob, 1944)


So I propose to adjust our combines and diets and start processing the mighty Amaranth into food. We potentially have millions of acres of it.....
Amaranth is a gift from God, and we better learn how to use it.

Mushroom Intermezzo

I took a walk once (not far from where these photos were taken, see vid below) with Lydia Popova, Russian scientist and an undersecretary of MinAtom, while Chernobyl was happening.
 Later she became a wisleblower on the Soviet Nuclear weapons industry. Because she died relatively young and her visit here relatively short, my time with her was way too brief for meeting a person with such a sharp intelligence and (Russian) depth,  clarity and kindness. She pointed out something that has stayed with me over these many years since that walk and her visit to Los Alamos and the United States.

Lydia Popova made the following statement in Los Alamos in 1999:

"I now always appeal to imagination, to inspiration and try to teach and appeal to simplicity and sincerity..... I believe that this is the best way to try to approach the experts who have very limited imagination, and also to activate people to try to understand that we are not just the Kings of the World....we are just one species among many other species.....we are all connected....and we are connected by the Beauty of this world......"

Most of us are living now in such stressful existence, that we forget to take time connecting with nature, and deny ourselves to experience the beauty of our whole of our interdependent web of relationships (as the Buddha would say)..... our deeper 'communion' with all sentient being. Yet this is what we need to do to remain focussed, and have our priorities straight. Anyhow, to illustrate the point,  take a walk with me.....enjoy!

"New START", the proposed CMRR Nuclear Facility and the LASG lawsuit against the DOE and NNSA

Tom Udall’s recent interview on Santa Fe's local public radio station"KSFR" with Bill Dupuy, was very instructive as to how the New Mexico's democratic senator thinks about the recently filed suit by the Los Alamos Study Group versus the NNSA and DOE and what he furthermore said  about the new CMRR-Nuclear Facility in Los Alamos is worth analyzing as well.  While he says he is not trying to influence litigation he does note that litigation is expensive and cumbersome for all. In other words: he doesn’t really like it.

Udall  is still trying to figure out if official Washington would like to do another Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and has written a letter to that effect to Dr Chu. 

Well...I can answer that for him: no, Washington has made no gestures suggesting a new EIS,  especially if that EIS is to be written before committing to the facility, as legally it must be.  Instead the Obama administration has been pushing for this monstrosity called CMRR-NF as hard as they can. 
A new EIS ?? For a project that has already in the paperwork stage absorbed 290 or so million dollars ?? Let me tell you: they are not jumping for joy at the prospect of a lawsuit, because they know that if the NEPA rules are the law of the land, they'll have to have a new EIS.  Why ?

A project that costs 10 times as much as was projected at the time an EIS was done (2003), is a different animal all together than before. Currently costs are projected around 4 billion and going up. Nobody is sure what the final pricetag will be.The way it is designed now it will take as much as 55 times the concrete that was originally projected and its foundations will go about twice as deep (125 feet). 


The latest design concept for the facility is interesting: CMRR-NF is to be a  nuclear weapons "hotel” --that is: we don’t really know what or who it will host and what it will produce over time......the flexibility of the building’s purpose is seen as a plus. “Grab the money, Built now, Deny everything, Think later” seems to be the motto. It is rapidly becoming another example of a mixture of Obama’s misguided stimulus moneys for “Complex Revitalization”, corporate cronyism (after all LANL is now highly privatized and part and parcel of the Bechtel  Corporation), and an inexplicable worship of godfather Pete Dominici --all wrapped up together and poised to incarnate as a 4 billion dollar bunker on a earthquake fault-line "on the hill" in Los Alamos, New Mexico..

One can easily see the necessity of a new EIS by law. One can also easily see why the administration would like not to do one and has proceeded with its project, as if it makes no difference......

What is the political motive behind something so irrational and pompous and out of touch with the crying needs of our time ?  We have seen a lot of “natural” manmade disasters in the last few years, Katrina, flooding, fires and drought, oil gushers, more fires, landslides, earthquakes, dead zones,  etc. etc. and mostly, despite individual heroism, we have been helpless in the face of them. Yet somehow the “nation” is to find comfort in the idea that we can inflict such manmade disasters anywhere in the world at a moments notice by dropping a tennis ball sized nuclear warhead core designed and built at the new 4 billion dollar CMRR-NF building at LANL.

Udall says that the main rational for the CMRR-NF behemoth is to modernize the nuclear weapons production establishment which would be in accordance with the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) published this year. Udall also clarifies the relationship between the signing of the START  Treaty and the CMRR-NF. It takes 67 votes to pass a treaty. So that means that one has to cater to the republicans and neocons and cajole them to sign a substantially meaningless  new START treaty with Russia. The new START arguably reduces the arsenal (though here opinions are quite mixed....does this treaty really reduce the amounts of  deployable warheads ??), but at the same time allows the parties to modernize their arsenals. Despite heaped up praise through the Obama propaganda machine, New  START is a pretty insignificant step towards a nuclear free world. Less warheads but more destructive (and accurate, etc.). In so many ways a meaningless treaty, also since both sides shortly after the signing of the treaty, edicted their own conditions for possibly leaving the treaty at some future date of their own choosing.

So the latest rational for suport from a senator like Udall is that a CMRR-Nuclear weapons Facility should be built, in order to gather votes for the  New START  disarmament treaty. Are we living in an Orwellian world yet ?? 

Obviously we have a Faustian quid pro quo here... Udall thinks that he can get armament and disarmament, make peace with the peaceniks and build a new Nuclear Facility for new warheads.. As an existentialist I say: that is not serious...

It is correct for the Los Alamos Study Group to call for a new EIS. NEPA rules require the public and government agencies and native tribes alike to be apprised  of  LANL’s vastly expanded plans for a CMRR- Nuclear Facility and its dramatic impact on the environment. Not having done so already is a violation and thanks to the LASG and their legal representation by Santa Fe attorney Thomas M. Hnasko this is coming to light. The public thus far has been largely kept in the dark about the tens of thousands cement trucks that will line the roads, or the disposal problems that come with 400.000 cubic yards of powdered vulcanic ash, or the environmental impact of making three hundred and fifty thousand cubic yards of concrete. That last fact in itself --the production of that much concrete -- will emit over a  100.000 metric tons of CO2, which requires analysis of the project as a “Global Warming” source under the most recent guidelines. It is obvious that in so many ways the CMRR-Nuclear Facility is no longer a local issue.

With the lawsuit against the NNSA and DOE, holding the feet of Dr Chu and Mr. Obama (and Mr. Udall) to the fire, the LASG clearly acts in the public’s interests -- in the interest of ‘good governance’. We hope this lawsuit will give pause to these plans so all parties can re-consider what is at stake here.
 Our time is one of declining resources. The government is running out of money. Real challenges like global warming, poverty, unemployment, and hunger, are much more threatening than any of the imagined problems that the CMRR-NF is intended to solve. It is time to come to our senses and make real choices about our future. 

You can make a good start by supporting this important lawsuit demanding a halt to the CMRR-NF, a new EIS and accountability of the DOE, LANL and the NNSA:  contribute generously to the Los Alamos Study Group here:  LASG. 




Though all credit for following through on the LASG lawsuit goes to Greg Mello, head of the Los Alamos Study Group, I am proud to mention here that I also have been a long term director of the Study Group