US explodes more plutonium on Western Shoshone land

7 June 2002

Once again, while trying to avert a nuclear war between India and Pakistan, the United States government continues to plan and prepare for nuclear war by conducting another hypocritical subcritical nuclear weapons test at the Nevada Test Site in Newe Sogobia, the Western Shoshone Nation.

After being postponed for two days, due to "technical problems", the Nuclear War Department (aka Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration), plan to blow up an undisclosed amount of weapons grade plutonium on Friday, June 7, 2002. The test, code named Oboe 9, will be exploded about 980 feet below the surface, right above the underground aquifer where this plutonium will undoubtedly migrate to.

This will be the first subcritical explosion since the United States last declared its love for nuclear weapons by blowing up plutonium on Valentines Day, February 14 in a test known as "Vito". This is the 17th explosion containing plutonium since this subcritical nuclear weapons test program was started in 1997.

Join with activists from around the world in protesting this continued hypocrisy. The nuclear weapons programs are a waste of precious money and resources and send the wrong signal to the rest of the world. These tests continue to violate the spirit of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Non Proliferation Treaty, and the World Court's ruling on the illegality of preparing for nuclear war. It is also a continued violation of the Treaty of Ruby Valley signed with the Western Shoshone Nation. The Western Shoshone National Council has declared that "Newe Sogobia" is a nuclear free zone and have demanded an end to nuclear weapons testing and waste dumping on their lands.

It is time to end nuclear weapons testing around the world! It is time for Nuclear Abolition!

Call, fax and mail President Bush! Demand an end to the hypocritical subcritical nuclear weapons tests. Talking points below.

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave
Washington DC 20500
Comment Line: 202-456-1111
Fax: 202-456-2461
Email: president@whitehouse.gov

Nuclear Abolition: Talking Points

• Since 1945, the world has been held hostage by US nuclear policies that started and fed the international nuclear arms race.
• The US is the #1 nuclear terrorist organization in the world, since we have refused to back down from our possible first strike use of nuclear weapons.
• The US through the Department of Energy's Nuclear Weapons Stockpile Stewardship and Management program is modernizing the nuclear weapons industry to be able to continue to design, test and produce new nuclear weapons for the next 20 years.
• The only safe and reliable nuclear weapon is a dismantled and destroyed nuclear weapon.
• NTS is currently testing nuclear weapons under the guise of subcritical nuclear weapons experiments. This violates the spirit of the CTBT and destroys global trust in U.S. nuclear policy, fueling a continued international arms race.
• The Nevada Test Site is part of the military occupation of Western Shoshone lands. The Western Shoshone believe that U.S. nuclear programs within their country are part of the ongoing efforts of genocide against their people.
• The nuclear weapons programs at the Nevada Test Site and all of the DOE laboratories are directly contaminating the ground water and land around the facilities with radioactive material that will be deadly for hundreds of thousands of years.

For more information about the US nuclear weapons programme, check out http://www.shundahai.org

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