By Tracy Turner (about the author)
July 16, 1945 through September 23, 1992 the United States of America conducted (by official count) conducted 1054 nuclear tests. Bradley Manning faces 52 years, essentially life in prison, for "leaking documents", as Daniel Ellsberg did, surreptitiously. Daniel Ellsberg did not do 52 years in prison; many of us including me feel he did "the right thing".
According to the Energy Research and Development Administration and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, all of the corn, meat, milk, fish, fruit and vegetables raised in the United States are "safe".
206 above ground atomic weapons were detonated in New Mexico and Nevada. According to the US EPA, the old AEC, now the Energy Research and Development Administration and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission(s), everything we eat and drink downwind from those tests is "safe". Conversely, the Bikini Atoll Rehabilitation Committee [BARC], overlooked by renowned international scientists, considers that the fruits, vegetables, meat, fish and milk from Bikini Atoll are a health hazard. How can the food from Bikini Atoll be "too radioactive to habitually consume"; but the food downwind of the two US atomic test sites be "safe"? In other words, all the many tons of dirt and dust lifted skyward by 1054 tests just magically disappeared? All that Tritium, Plutonium-239, Iodine-131, Uranium-238, Cesium-137 just magically vanished? I (so far) can only find 109 "off-shore" tests (Pacific, Atlantic, Bikini Atoll, Enewetak Atoll, etc.).
According the many studies of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, 5% of the detritus of those two mushroom clouds fell near the two cities, while 95% of it went further airborne and "dispersed over a larger area". Much of that "larger area" is the rest of Japan. But here in the US lower 48, east and North where 95% of those 1054 poisonous plumes settled are places like Lubbock Texas or Columbia, North Carolina, just to name two.
In plain English, all that Strontium-90, Cesium-137, Tritium and Plutonium-239 went somewhere e.g., in sage flats, upon dirt roads, in cattle ranches, dairies, farms and orchards of all kinds. Being the land of capitalism, the leaking of those kinds of documents, documents showing that general electric and general dynamic are liable for the slow poisoning deaths of millions and millions of American people would end a multi-billion dollar industry. The leaking of documents showing that US corn is contaminated with trace amounts of Tritium in its inherent moisture (even feed-corn contains moisture) would ruin a trillion dollar industry. It is easier and more capitalistically fortuitous to give Bradley Manning life in prison, or even a death sentence, than it is to admit some type of truth about human nature and government human nature in particular. Let's put Bradley Manning to death, by public stoning, rather than admit are government makes huge mistakes, all in the name of "efficient" capitalism. Let's not admit, that from 1945 to 2011, the gross domestic product of this country, in dollars and cents, has been nuclear poison. We somehow must keep alive the notion that this is sane, for the public's own good, and that none of it has to do with gigantic corporate-welfare machines feeling it is their divine right to continue the status quo. God forbid that the company, which sold nuke-tech to France, who sold nuke-tech to Iran, should have to downsize the corporate yacht. All I ask is that at Bradley Manning's public stoning, that the politician with no corporate money behind them "cast the first stone". Is it only me, who sees some resemblance between our "political leaders" and the Taliban? Both use any means necessary to keep their "ideology" front and center. Political ideology and truth are not synonymous, mostly.
By the way, has anyone from the renowned international scientific community "verified" the "safety" of our 1054 nuclear tests, including the two under President's Bush and Obama? The American people deserve the truth, for a change, not the censored version of government "transparency". If John Lennon were alive today, I believe he'd ask for nothing less "than the truth"" Before he died, the American people were asking "is milk from the great plains downwind of the two test sites safe for babies, safe for us all"? I don't recall any satisfactory answer, internationally verified.
source: www.opednews.com
