"Full Body Burden" the movie is coming

Full Body Burden is based on the award winning autobiography of the same name by Kristen Iversen. It tells the horrifying story of the then secret Rocky Flats plutonium pits production facility in Colorado which poisoned workers, residents and the land in the name of "protecting" Americans during the Cold War.

Full Body Burden combines an enthralling personal memoir with a detailed and shocking account of the United States government’s ongoing attempt to conceal the effects of the toxic and radioactive waste released by Rocky Flats, and of local residents’ vain attempts to seek justice in court. Years of protest, lawsuits, and health studies culminated in a dramatic federal raid in 1989, as the FBI and EPA entered the plant to investigate alleged environmental crimes. The lawsuits and investigations that flowed from the raid began to uncover decades of negligence and deception along with the toxic threat lurking in areas where residential development continues unabated.

For more information visit fullbodyburdenfilm.com

Full Body Burden: Teaser from HaveyPro Cinema on Vimeo.

The lessons of those 38 nightmare minutes in Hawaii

The 38+ minutes of terror felt by the residents of Hawaii after receiving a text alert about incoming nuclear missiles that proved to be a mistake, was a reminder that so-called civil defense is fundamentally useless. People sheltered in their bathrooms. There was nowhere to run to and no time to go. It also reminded us that our nuclear warning and even launch systems are vulnerable, too. This was a human error. The same thing could happen along the chain of command, or in a nuclear silo. A human or systems error could even lead to an accidental missile launch instead of an accidental message about one. The Hawaii incident further brings home the one inalienable truth: that no one should have to live with the traumatic prospect of “inbound” nuclear missiles and the only way to avoid that is for the world’s nuclear powers to disarm. And that’s also why diplomacy with North Korea is the essential and only option. The UN has called for an Olympic Truce. Beyond Nuclear is endorsing the Ploughshares Fund organizational initiative — Call for Olympic Truce Actions: Diplomacy NOT War. As an individual, you can also sign the People’s Peace Treaty with North Korea, here. 

Hawaii’s Nuclear Wake Up Call (And Why We Should Take MLK’s Advice)

An op-ed by Joe Cirincione published in Defense One.

Cirincione is president of Ploughshares Fund and the author of Nuclear Nightmares: Securing the World Before It Is Too Late.

On this Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, Cirincione reflects on King's visions for a way out of the Atomic Age:

This is a time to have faith in our power to challenge these ominous trends. A time, in fact, to heed the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.

For King, the struggle against racism was part of a larger struggle for peace and justice. He repeatedly spoke out against nuclear war. As early as 1957 he said, “I definitely feel that the development and use of nuclear weapons should be banned.”

Accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, King eloquently spoke to the hopes of many.

I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history…I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction…we must transform the dynamics of the world power struggle from the negative nuclear arms race which no one can win to a positive contest to harness man’s creative genius for the purpose of making peace and prosperity a reality for all of the nations of the world.

Amen, brother.

Letting It Be an Arms Race

As reported by Adam Mount in The Atlantic.

The article is sub-titled "A leaked draft of the Trump administration’s nuclear-weapons plan imagines a more dangerous world."

It begins:

As Americans question whether President Donald Trump has the judgment necessary to command the most capable nuclear arsenal on earth, the Pentagon is moving to order new, more usable nuclear options. Trump’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), a Pentagon document that sets the nation’s nuclear policy, demonstrates an aggressive shift that will add to the spiraling cost of the nuclear arsenal, raise the risk of a nuclear exchange, and plunge the country into a new arms race, according to a draft published by HuffPost three weeks ahead of its planned release. Though the document is marked “pre-decisional,” insiders have told me it reflects the final text.

Here is the link to the full article. 

Adam Mount is a senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists.

California’s last nuclear plant to close after unanimous vote by regulators

As reported by David R. Baker in the San Francisco Chronicle.

San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace (MFP) and Friends of the Earth have issued statements.

See here for more info. on this historic victory for a genuinely clean energy future, free from dirty, dangerous, and expensive nuclear power.

Beyond Nuclear, alongside Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), will co-present on radioactive waste issues at a MFP educational event in San Luis Obispo, CA on Jan. 19, 2018.