Nothing Divine About Divine Strake

The people have very high stakes in the proposed Divine Strake. It's time the people stood up to this kind of atrocity to our environment and the health of our citizens. People are beginning to make a stand and are willing to fight the machine which has dominated our society for way too long.

Michelle Thomas always suspected there was something in the Utah dust that was unhealthy for her family. The dust from the nuclear test site in Nevada was always settling on her lawn, the cars, and the other houses in St. George, Utah. St. George is just a few hours drive from the Nevada Test Site (NTS), where between 1951 and 1992, a total of 925 announced nuclear tests were conducted. The ensuing radiation from the test site is said to be responsible for cases of thyroid cancer totaling between 10,000 to 75,000 cases. The people who were exposed to the radiation fallout have been labeled non-chalantly as downwinders.

The 100 atmospheric nuclear tests done by 1962 was instrumental in dubbing St. George, Utah the new title of Fallout City because of the amount of fallout dust that settled over the town. In a piece by AlterNet, Thomas recalled the memories of her childhood.

Born in 1952 in St. George, Utah, just a few hours' drive from the Nevada Test Site (NTS), nuclear explosions were routine for Thomas. She can recall her mother -- wrapped in overalls, boots, and gloves, and with a dishtowel covering her mouth -- pulling the laundry from the line when they heard or saw another bomb go off.

Now the government wants to test a 700 ton atmospheric explosion at the NTS and the people are rising up in opposition to the detonation. Last April the test was postponed due to a lawsuit filed by the Western Shoshone Tribe. The lawsuit claims that the blast will take place on ancestral land and violate a historical land-use treaty.

Additionally, the suit says the Environmental Assessment is lacking, and the tribe calls on the government to conduct a full environmental-impact statement, which requires the agencies to further scrutinize the potential impact of the test.

Raymond Yowell, chief of the Western Shoshone National Council, said in a press statement in April that the Council opposed military testing on Shoshone lands as a violation of international law and "an affront to [their] religious belief [that] Mother Earth is sacred and should not be harmed."

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) prior to the lawsuit had determined the test was safe and would not affect the environment or the quality of human life. But once the lawsuit was filed, the NNSA withdrew their initial statement and in an attempt to quell public discourse, have opened public dialogue asking for comments which just ended February 7th.

Citizen Alert has put up this fact sheet to inform and educate our citizens about Divine Strake. And we need to listen to the real stories of the real people who have had to endure these atrocities. And Thomas' story is one that should enlighten as well as enrage the rest of us.

Downwinders like Thomas are refusing to be silenced, even as they continue to battle physical hardships.

In addition to suffering from the debilitating muscle disease Polymyositis, Thomas was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1993. "We are doing double-whammy," she said. "We're going to our chemotherapy and our surgeries and our funerals, and we're trying to inform the people about what happened to us in the past and light a fuse with them and help us fight this."

Please support our neighbors in the southwest, for what affects them will definitely affect us all. Government supported terrorism on it's own citizens can no longer be accepted! Make a stand, sign a petition, write or call your elected officials! Let your voice be heard and join with other real people who are fighting the fight for all of humanity!