Noam Chomksy - Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe

Source: Democracy Now!

The Inupiat, one of the oldest continuous communities in North America, successfully protested Edward Teller’s Project Chariot; a scheme to carve out an Alaskan harbor with nuclear explosives in the 1960s. The community faces similar risks today as Shell moves forward with its exploration for crude in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas. Critics say the extreme weather conditions of the Arctic and an inadequate oil-spill response plan is a disaster in the making.

Point Hope

Alaska

March 3, 1961

Mr. John F. Kennedy

President of the United States

Washington, D.C.

Dear Mr. President:

We the Health Council of Point Hope and the residents of the village don’t like to see the blast at Cape Thompson. We want to go on record as protesting the Chariot Project because it is too close to our homes at Point Hope and to our hunting and fishing areas.

All the four seasons, each month, we get what we need for living. In December, January, February and even March, we get the polar bear, seals, tomcod, oogrook [bearded seal], walrus, fox and caribou. In March we also get crabs. In April, May and June, we hunt whales, ducks, seals, white beluga, and oogrook. In July we collect crow-bell eggs from Cape Thompson and Cape Lisburne and store them for the summer. In the summer we get some seals, oogrook, white beluga, fish, ducks, and caribou. In the middle of September many of our village go up Kookpuk River to stay for the fishing and caribou hunting until the middle of November. In November we get seals again and we need the seal blubber for our fuel. The hair seal skin we used for trading groceries from the store.

The ice we get for our drinking water during the winter is about twelve miles off from the village towards Cape Thompson. We melt snow also to drink and for washing. In spring, May and June we used ocean ice. In the summer we get our water from the village well.

We are concerned about the health of our children and the mothers-to-be after the explosion. We read about “the accumulative and retained isotope burden in man that must be considered.” We also know about strontium 90, how it might harm people if too much of it got in our body. We have seen the Summary Reports of 1960, National Academy of Sciences on “The Biological Effects of Atomic Radiation.”

We are deeply concerned about the health of our people now and for the future that is coming. The signatures on page two accompanying this letter are the names of residents of the village of Point Hope who share this concern and wish to express their protest against Project Chariot.

Sincerely yours,

Officers and members

of Point Hope Village

Health Council

Source: US Department of Energy

Appendix 1

Reprinted with the permission of the National Security Archive

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 162, s.v. “Document 76”

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/76.pdf

Appendix 2

Reprinted with the permission of the Special Collections & Archives Research Center, Oregon State University

Flyer for a presentation by Noam Chomsky and Linus Pauling on Vietnam War, 1967

Appendix 3

Reprinted with the permission of AAAS

“Scientists Protest Viet Crop Destruction” from “Congress: Productive Year Is Seen Despite Vietnam,” Science 151 (January 1966): 309

Appendix 4

“Letter to R Conard, Subject: Treatment of Atomic Bomb Victims and Attempts to End the Nuclear Threat in the Pacific (Marshall Islands), April 9, 1975”

Marshall Islands Document Collection, Office of Health, Safety and Security, Department of Energy

http://www.hss.energy.gov/healthsafety/ihs/marshall/collection/data/ihp2/1976_.pdf

Appendix 5

“Letter to J L Liverman, Subject: RE Story of 66 of Marshallese Medical Records Had Been Copied and Were in the Hands of the Leftist Anti-A Bomb Group (Gensuikin) in Japan, July 27, 1976”

Marshall Islands Document Collection, Office of Health, Safety and Security, Department of Energy

http://hss.energy.gov/healthsafety/ihs/marshall/collection/data/ihp1a/1383_.pdf

Appendix 6

Reprinted with the permission of the National Security Archive

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 82, s.v. “Document 24”

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq24.pdf

Appendix 7

Reprinted with the permission of the Mercury (South Africa)

“US Senator’s Statement At COP17 Disappointed Us”

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-275270064.html

Appendix 8

Reprinted with the permission of Democracy Now!

“‘Get It Done’: Urging Climate Change Justice, Youth Delegate Anjali Appadurai Mic Checks U.N. Summit”

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/12/9/get_it_done_urging_climate_justice

Appendix 9

“Health Council of Point Hope to J. Kennedy, March 3, 1961, Document #16872”

Coordination and Information Center, US Department of Energy, Las Vegas, NV

Noam Chomsky was born in Philadelphia in 1928. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania where he received his PhD in linguistics in 1955. He joined the staff at MIT and was appointed Institute Professor in 1976, gaining international renown for his theories on the acquisition and generation of language. He became well known as an activist and public intellectual during the Vietnam War; he became known as a formidable critic of media with the 1988 release of Manufacturing Consent , a book coauthored with Edward Herman. With the publication of 9/11 in November 2001, inarguably one of the most significant books on the subject, he became as widely read and as an essential a voice internationally as other political philosophers throughout history. That book, like the present volume, was composed from interviews. Chomsky has written and lectured widely on linguistics, philosophy, intellectual history, contemporary issues, international affairs, and US foreign policy. In 2010 Chomsky, Eduardo Galeano, Michael Hardt, Naomi Klein, and Vandana Shiva became signatories to United for Global Democracy, a manifesto created by the international Occupy movement.

Laray Polk was born in Oklahoma in 1961 and currently lives in Dallas, Texas. She is a multimedia artist and writer. Her articles and investigative reports have appeared in the Dallas Morning News , D Magazine , and In These Times . As a 2009 grant recipient from the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute, she produced stories on the political entanglements and compromised science behind the establishment of a radioactive waste disposal site in Texas, situated in close proximity to the Ogallala Aquifer.

Seven Stories Press is an independent book publisher based in New York City. We publish works of the imagination by such writers as Nelson Algren, Russell Banks, Octavia E. Butler, Ani DiFranco, Assia Djebar, Ariel Dorfman, Coco Fusco, Barry Gifford, Martha Long, Luis Negrón, Hwang Sok-yong, Lee Stringer, and Kurt Vonnegut, to name a few, together with political titles by voices of conscience, including Subhankar Banerjee, the Boston Women’s Health Collective, Noam Chomsky, Angela Y. Davis, Human Rights Watch, Derrick Jensen, Ralph Nader, Loretta Napoleoni, Gary Null, Greg Palast, Project Censored, Barbara Seaman, Alice Walker, Gary Webb, and Howard Zinn, among many others. Seven Stories Press believes publishers have a special responsibility to defend free speech and human rights, and to celebrate the gifts of the human imagination, wherever we can. In 2012 we launched Triangle Square books for young readers with strong social justice and narrative components, telling personal stories of courage and commitment. For additional information, visit www.sevenstories.com.