Editorial on the bomb test in June

The following is an important editorial by our local paper (The Daily Spectrum) on the U.S. government's impending above ground bomb test scheduled for June 2. It is good to see the usually slumbering sheeple of this area begin to stir from their torpor. Protests are being planned. I'll let ya'll know more when I hear something definite.

This vital health and safety issue should bring the people of southern Utah together like nothing else in our history. So come all ye rednecks, hippies, cowboys, Indians, illegal immigrants, trust funded wastrels, ostentatiously retired bureaucrats, second-home scum and navel gazing new agers; let us join together under the banner of righteous indignation at this heinously evil act. We do NOT want to ingest radioactive sludge into our bodies and enviornment just to slake the never ending thirst of the war gods in DC.

To all of my Mormon friends in this area: your God says do not worship false idols and the gods of war are as false as they come. You must remember that this is the same government that deliberately poisoned you in the past (and still officially denies it), but all that I notice you doing lately is cheering on the 222nd National Guard unit in Iraq who are supposedly "defending our freedom". How blind you must be! They want to poison you and your children again, when are you going to finally stand up and use your moral authority against this obvious evil? The 12th Article of Faith, which promulgates obedience to earthly masters could well end up being your undoing. It's time to wake up and smell the Postum!

Big blast, Big mistake

It's not easy to remain calm about the potential for history to repeat itself with the large explosion, code-named "Divine Strake," scheduled to detonate in seven weeks only 150 miles west of St. George at the Nevada Test Site. It is expected to create a dust cloud that could reach an altitude of 10,000 feet. While it may not be seen in Southern Utah, long-term ramifications are feared to be felt without adequate means to control wind shifts of the radioactive particles caught in that dust from earlier nuclear tests.

The government contends the 700 ton blast - equivalent to 593 tons of TNT - is for conventional research purposes, but we've been lied to before regarding activities at the test site. We've also heard sudden changes in terminology to soothe concerns, which has once more yielded its ugly head as the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency altered its original nuclear reference in relation to the test to being merely an "improper" use of language.

Why does the government deem the population of the western United States so disposable? Thousands of downwinders - who have suffered and died from various cancers and other life-threatening illnesses caused by nuclear fallout from the 1950s and 1960s - can attest to the government's past falsehoods.

It is absolutely hypocritical of the U.S. government to initiate a war in Iraq against dictator Saddam Hussein on the basis of the development of weapons of mass destruction, only to create and promulgate low-yield nuclear devices.

Experimenting with the lives of civilians in the name of national defense with the simulation of a nuclear arsenal is a travesty and injustice we'd have thought our elected politicians would've learned from by now. But we won't let their memories fade so easily. The message is loud and clear with a resounding: "NO!"

We praise Rep. Jim Matheson for being the first to publicly express his skepticism to the government. We add our firm voice of dissent because we, too, have every right to be uncertain. We've been lied to before. Underground testing has leaked, and the pretty hues of orange the school children rushed to the windows from their classrooms to view were anything but colorful drifting clouds.

Why should we believe new nuclear weaponry is not be pursued? We dare the government to prove otherwise.