Global
warming, Greenhouse effect, CO2 emissions the "green" folks of this
world are busy having conferences and new laws drawn up over no
scientific data. The strange thing is that no one seems to be interested
in the devastation done to the planet and our sustained living
conditions by warfare.
In reality we do not care much about Mother
Earth as long as it supplies us with our daily needs in minerals, base
materials, oil, food and drink.
Over the past hundreds of years we have done practically nothing to
preserve the earth or give back something in return for what we have
taken.
We have dug, dynamited, extracted, build and destroyed with
every available means possible, we have used every type of bomb and
rocket to destroy life on earth and still we have not damaged the planet
to a point that we cannot live anymore.
But our destructive power with a little help from nature can easily put an end to all life and very soon. The only thing we are concerned about is if our lively hood is threatened.
On the one hand we have nature itself, which is in constant evolution and can provoke amazing and sometimes abrupt changes to earth, we have to live with this and cannot do a lot about it.
Personally I believe that increased nuclear explosions on our sun (sun spots) trigger climate changes, thus inundating the earth with gamma rays, which deflect cosmic rays, responsible for the creation of clouds. Less clouds means more heat arriving and a warmer environment. There is nothing we can do against this, since we are not even capable with all our technology to produce one single natural cloud! Our sun will do what it likes to do and that is give warmth, only sometimes it is a bit too much for our liking. You either live with this or not and there are many things we can do to shelter from the effects of raising temperatures.
Currently we do not have enough precise data to determine whether we are moving to an ice age or that the earth will become hotter. We cannot even prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the sea level is or will rise from melting ice. The earth has gone through many periods of soaring heat, ice cold, watery wet etc. and it will continue to do so with or without us. For instance during the thousands of years of the existence of the dinosaurs, the earth contained nowhere any ice or snow, however there was enough vegetation, thus water, to feed the giant beasts.
In certain areas of the world we are experiencing draughts since a number of years. Water becomes scarce, but nobody seems interested to build desalination plants. While in other areas they have inundations from storms and rains. Most of this damage if you look closely is due to; building in river beds, forgoing maintenance on dikes, deforestation, building on sliding hills. We seem to think to be cleverer than nature and trick it into anything we like. Sorry, it does not happen, nature wins always.
The polarity of the earth is changing and will invert, as it already has done previously. The last time the poles switched was 780,000 years ago, and it's happened about 400 times in 330 million years. There is also ample proof that the magnetic poles are moving. In the last 150 years, the pole has wandered a total of about 685 miles (1102 kilometers). The magnetic South Pole moves in a similar fashion. This wandering of polarity has an effect on our life and there is nothing we can do about it, it is nature’s way. We do not know the mechanics of this inversion.
An eruption of a volcano spews an enormous amount of gasses, CO2 and chemicals in the air, which would be comparable to the pollution volume of a major city over a period of 10 years.
What is much more destructive for the living beings on this planet is our ways of continuous warfare; destruction of the land, vegetation, animal life, leaving behind unexploded lethal bombs, letting loose dangerous chemicals, generating radiation levels that makes all beings sick and that remain active for millions of years.
Not only the actual act of war contaminates mankind, the manufacturing processes of warplanes, rockets, tanks, bombs, bullets and chemicals emit continuous high quantities of CO2, poisonous gasses and produces dangerous waste. War consumes vast amounts of precious resources. Waging war requires vast amounts of oil, minerals, and metals and generates giant volumes of greenhouse gasses.
Desert Storm: 45 million barrels.
The Pentagon consumed 134 million barrels in 2001.
The world’s armies consume nearly 2 billion barrels of oil annually. The Pentagon is the largest consumer of oil, chemicals, precious metals, paper and wood. In 2005 the Pentagon purchased 133 million barrels of oil for the year. The US Air Force consumed a fuel budget of 1.6 billion $ in 2006, which translates into 9.8 billion liters of aviation fuel. For instance an F-16 fighter jet burns 105 liters of fuel every minute. The US dept. of Defense project to lose in 2008 to the amount of $ 86.8 million during combat, this is not what is consumed during fighting. In theater fuel evaporates form desert heat, vehicles suffering mechanical breakdown and that have been hit add to the fuel loss bill. It would cost 400 $ for every gallon of fuel to be transported to the battlefield.
In WWII the US used about 1 gallon of fuel per soldier per day, in Desert Storm this was 4 gallons. In 2006 they burned 16 gallons of fuel per soldier per day! The USA spends an average of $ 44 billion per year to safeguard oil supplies in the Persian Gulf.
It seems that we have to wage war for oil to ensure that we have enough oil to continue to wage new wars. A Catch 22 situation that wastes precious resources.
The other aspect of the war industry is the on-going testing of new and more powerful destructive agents. Since most of these tests are kept very secret, we cannot even estimate the amount of damaging materials that have been and are projected in our environment and hushed up by politicians and arms merchants. America, Russia, France, England, Israel, China, India and Korea have carried out more than 2000 atmospheric nuclear test explosions between 1942 and 1992. Each explosion leaves behind a radiation zone with a half-life of tens of billions of years. What we have not measured yet and are for the moment incapable of defining is the damage done to the environment by the trembling of the tectonic plates by these mega explosions.
Warefare materials become also quite quickly obsolete and are then partly dismantled and stored somewhere, just dumped in the sea or in landfills. Or even worse offhandedly sold to “freedom fighters” and rogue dictatorships. This is one way of creating terrorists and the so called “axes of terror”.
Today, 60 years after WWII, fishermen in the Baltic Sea are severely burned by mustard gas that comes free when they pull up their nets containing dumped rusted bombs from WWI and II. We just have to wait for the day that fishermen catch some rusted obsolete plutonium warheads in their nets.
The US dropped more than 25 million bombs and 72 million liters of toxic Agent Orange as well as other chemicals on the forests, farmland and villages in Vietnam. Cambodia is still trying to cope with 1,300 sq miles littered with millions of landmines and so is Angola with over 10 million landmines. Vast surfaces of the Baltic Sea and Pacific Ocean are contaminated by radioactive leakage and chemical waste from Russian war ports. Cluster bombs and projectiles covered with DU are indiscriminate weapons of mass destruction and are used on a daily basis by Israel, the USA and its allies. Vast areas consisting of prodigeous farmland in the world have been made unusable by the destructive antics of the warmongers.
So you and me are told by the political geniuses such as Al Gore and the like to reduce our CO2 output, to separate our waste, to use less oil, reduce on water, drive cleaner cars, use a bicycle, so they can keep on starting wars left right and centre and undo in a split second what takes you and me years to accomplish.
Something is terribly wrong and totally unacceptable.
“Continue to contaminate your bed, and you will one night suffocate in your own waste. Your destiny is a mystery to us.” Chief Seattle leader of the Duwanish tribe in Washington Territory in an 1854 letter to U.S. President Franklin Pierce to mark transfer of ancestral Indian lands to the United States .
Since WWI we have not stopped to develop more powerful explosives, delivering these over longer distances and finding ways to destroy more buildings or to kill all people and destroy no buildings. Chemical warfare was probably first used in WWI by spraying mustard gas on the battlefield. Soldiers in the trenches died a terrible slow and agonising death. The effect of this weapon spurred the industry on to make more potent chemicals, which eventually led to the use of the atomic bombs jettisoned on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. The devastating and horrible results were very apparent and the world agreed: never again! We even drew up rules and laws for weapons of mass destruction and weapons used against populations.
Years ago, President Bush withdrew the United States as a signatory to the International Criminal Court’s statute, which has been ratified by all other Western democracies. The White House actually seeks to immunize U.S. leaders from war crimes prosecutions entirely. It has also demanded express immunity from ICC prosecution for American nationals.
It took 40 years before sick WWII veterans were compensated for exposure to atomic bomb radiation. So since Hiroshima we have developed a whole new arsenal of atomic, neutron, hydrogen warheads and now “atomic pocket bombs”. Some of them have been given the fun name of “bunker busters”, which sounds a bit like a tool to remove the unwanted weeds from your garden. In fact a typical bunker buster bomb contains 1.5 tonnes of depleted uranium or U-238 isotope, which makes the bombs on Hiroshima shrink to the level of a toy for a 2-year-old child!
During the losing battle of the Vietnam war, started on false flag pretexts, the great idea was to de-foliage the whole bloody country, because the enemy (and the population) were hiding under the leaves. So “agent orange” was developed and used. Even today (45 years later) the jungle does not grow back and a major part of the country is infested with high levels of dioxin, provoking a whole string of diseases.
So why are we making such a fuss about cutting teak trees in Burma, or burning down vast expanses of the tropical forests in Indonesia, Malaysia or the Amazon? What takes normal industrious humans years to burn down and replant with other plants to try to feed their family, takes the military just a couple of days to annihilate for thousands or millions of years to come.
The Pentagon took 25 years to acknowledge the problems with the corrosive defoliant Agent Orange, used in Vietnam to destroy the jungle. The dangers for us living beings are lurking around the corner and will become every day more deadly, more secretive, more painful and more impossible to clean up.
Apparently we need war, but the question is how much war is needed to destroy our planet for us to perish completely as a human race? Planet earth will happily continue without us, it really does not need us; actually it would be quite happy without the parasite human beings making a mess of everything. After we have destroyed ourselves, just a couple of 100 thousand years later, there would be no evidence that human beings have ever been around. Just like the dinosaurs.
If you want to live, you need this planet. And you need it in a state that is liveable for us. Thus do nothing and die a slow and agonizing death. Or unite, make and keep peace, and get rid of the war mongering puppet masters. In a democratic society, where countries manage to come together to make larger united nations, we should be able to get rid of the hideous dictators by locking them up and get on with building a cleaner world where everyone can live a normal life.
So if we get rid of wars, we have cleaned up at least 50% in the process. Since 1900 we have been fighting modern wars in practically every country in the world and today we still have wars in progress on every continent. We are extremely creative in creating new enemies and wars. If we do not have one, we just invent them. Like government institutions have invented ‘global terrorism’ and ‘the war on terror’. Almost all so-called ‘terrorists’ are trained operatives from CIA, MI6, Mossad or ex-KGB. And practically all other terrorists are family men trying to protect their families, house, land and village from invading foreign military forces. Some years ago this was called legitimate self-defense, now it has been brand named Terrorism.
Many Palestinians have to live from the meager income by growing olives. It takes 10 years for an olive tree to bear fruit. By building the seggregation wall, the israelians have destroyed or moved thousands of these trees. Most wars in this century have been directed to civilian populations; the largest number of casualties consist of women and children. Bombs, missiles, shells, bullets, and military fuels poison our lands, air and water with lead, nitrates, nitrites, dioxin, hydrocarbons, phosphorous, radioactive debris, corrosive and toxic heavy metals. Un-exploded ordnance lies scattered over more than 15 million US acres.
The world’s armies are responsible for as much as 10 percent of global air pollution. The 1991 Gulf War generated 80,000 tons of global-warming gases. On any given day, more than 60,000 US troops are engaged in operations or military exercises in about 100 foreign countries. The Pentagon is the world’s largest polluter, generating 750,000 tons of hazardous wastes each year. US military bases have polluted communities in Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Greenland, Iceland, Italy, Panama, the Philippines, South Korea, Spain and Turkey. There are more than 14,000 contaminated military sites in the US, many located near low-income neighbourhoods and communities of colour.
The “liberation” of Iraq by dropping 100,000 tons of bombs has destroyed villages, homes, farmland, bridges, dams, water systems, power plants, irreplaceable ancient landmarks and cultural artefacts, it killed 500,000 Iraqi children. It has left a desolate destitute country basically uninhabitable for any living being for millions of years.
To get rid of the Taliban 300,000 cluster bombs were dropped on Afghanistan, most of which still have to explode and will most probably one day where children play.
All these liberation efforts in the name of democracy have devastated whole societies in many countries such as: Afghanistan, Angola, Burundi, Chechnya, Colombia, Congo, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kosovo, Lebanon, Liberia, Mozambique, Palestine, Somalia, Sudan, Turkey, Rwanda, Yugoslavia. The danger remains that some rogue president or vice president of a nuclear nation gives an order to bomb another nation.
This nearly happened on August 30, 2007, when a B-52, with its cargo of six deadly nuclear-armed cruise missiles, was ordered by VP Cheney to attack Iran. Luckily army personnel, following the proper procedures, stopped the B-52 from starting its overseas journey. The world will still need oil for quite a long time. The option for running things on hydrogen is not a real viable option. The production of hydrogen for cars and industry would consume billions of liters of distilled water per day. That is water which we actually do not have. The world has and will have a great water shortage. Thus water will be the next commodity to fight wars for.
There are some urgent matters to clear, before it is too late. They concern: Depleted Uranium, Plutonium, rockets, bombs, mines, warships, submarines, warplanes, chemicals, … Have a closer look at our magnificent tools of destruction.
Depleted Uranium
Depleted Uranium (DU) remains a flagship tool for the US Army, which extensively used and uses such munitions during fighting in Gulf War I, Kosovo, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq. DU is a chemically toxic, radioactive element with a half-life of 4.5 billion years that damages the kidneys and lungs, causes genetic mutations of DNA and cancer, and is associated with a number of major medical problems.
The US nuclear industry has produced 1.2 billion pounds of DU waste as a by-product of nuclear energy and weapons production. This nuclear waste is being recycled into DU munitions, which were first given to Israel in the form of armor piercing shells for use in the 1973 Sinai war. Since then, DU has been tested, manufactured and sold to a number of countries by US arms manufacturers. Considered highly effective in penetrating armor and concrete walls, uranium munitions are used by the main US Abrams battle tanks, Bradley Fighting vehicles, A-10 attack aircraft and a host of other ammunition, including bunker busters.
Upon impact, DU munitions burn at 3000 to 6000 degrees Centigrade and combust into a radioactive gas of fine (nano) particles of uranium oxide dust, which remain suspended in the air and, once inhaled, become a chronic source of uranium heavy metal and contact radiation poisoning. Estimates vary on the total tonnage of DU used by the US and include: during the US bombing of Yugoslavia, 34 tons of DU; in Gulf War I, up to 375 tons; in Afghanistan in 2001, 1,000 tons; and in Gulf War II in 2003, up to 2,200 tons. An estimated total of 3.609.000 kg of radioactive waste spread over the earth! The U.S. government has produced more than 1.1 Billion pounds of DU in its uranium enrichment facilities in Ohio and Kentucky. DU is also used as military tank armour, and aircraft, ship and missile counterweight ballasts as well as to provide the massive casing for hydrogen bombs that enable them to undergo fission and give off about fifty percent greater energy "bang for the buck". The release of radioactive and chemically toxic dust and uranium fragments causes devastating medical problems.
According to Leuren Moret, an independent scientist and international radiation specialist, depleted uranium is considered a factor in Gulf War syndrome, which affects many of the 325,000 Gulf War I veterans who are on permanent medical disability. In August 2004, the VA reported that over 518,739 Persian Gulf veterans were on medical disability since 1991. Moret attributes many of these disabilities to DU exposure. Although some remain controversial, Moret compiled a list of 100 illnesses that veterans associated with DU, including brain tumours, Hodgkin lymphoma, leukaemia, rectal cancer, Parkinson's disease, respiratory problems, rashes, kidney and eye problems, and thyroid cancer. Others point to definite connections between DU and brain tumours, and Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. "Under international law, depleted uranium meets the definition of WMD and violates US military law as well as the Geneva and Hague conventions," says Moret. "There has been a cover-up by three administrations including Bush Senior, Clinton and Bush the younger because reparations, which the countries attacked are entitled to, would bankrupt the US.
" Two years ago, President Bush withdrew the United States as a signatory to the International Criminal Court’s statute, which has been ratified by all other Western democracies. The White House actually seeks to immunize U.S. leaders from war crimes prosecutions entirely. It has also demanded express immunity from ICC prosecution for American nationals. The Pentagon asserts that DU "is only mildly radioactive" and a White House website stated that reports of health problems and cancers caused by DU are propaganda, although a US Army report by Col. E. Wakayama in August 2002, confirms serious health and environmental problems. The report recommends long-term sampling of water and milk from sites heavily contaminated with DU and the removal of contaminated soil from populated areas. Vietnam and Gulf War veteran and former US Army Depleted Uranium Project director Doug Rokke charges that the Department of Defence (DOD) deliberately ignores its own orders for testing soldiers who come in contact with DU. In August, 1993, General Eric Shinseki issued an order requiring training for anyone who "may come in contact" with DU equipment, complete medical testing for solders "exposed to DU contamination," and the development of "a plan for DU contaminated equipment." Rokke cites a number of other orders including an April 2004 Surgeon General's order and US Army regulations requiring medical and environmental clean up from DU contamination.
Rokke charges government and political officials with a deliberate cover-up to limit liability and to ensure uranium munitions use during combat. He insists that DOD officials provide medical care for all DU casualties, complete environmental mediation, and complete decontamination of all DU damaged equipment, structures, and terrain as required by US regulations. He also emphasizes that documented health problems exist in many of the 55 US locations where DU is stored, processed and tested.
"Clinton and Bush totally were aware of the use of DU and made conscious choices to disregard the law," said Rokke. "The world needs to know about it: It's a horrible mess and it will continue until someone holds these people accountable for what they've done and demands compliance. The children of the world don't deserve this." DU a tremendous public health disaster for generations to come .
Experts who have studied the properties of Depleted Uranium and its deleterious effects upon human health have a great deal to tell us. Recently in a letter to Tracy Press, Marion Fulk, local resident and nuclear physical chemist retired from the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab formerly involved with the Manhattan Project, tells us a bit about the uranium that is being exploded at Livermore and its effects upon human health: "Uranium-238, sometimes called 'depleted uranium’, poses a serious health threat, especially if inhaled in finely divided particles like those created by open-air explosives testing. Because of its properties, uranium-238 is a triple threat to human health. Its properties as a heavy metal create health damage once inside the body. Its properties as a hazardous chemical catalyst cause additional health risks. And its properties as a radioactive material offer a third route to cellular and DNA damage, illness and premature death in humans and animals." Despite the fact that Uranium-238 is commonly called "Depleted", this was a label invented to get the public to think that it is a weakly radioactive material. Nothing could be further from the truth. This poison dust packs a powerful punch to the human body, as Dr. Rosalie Bertell, biometrician and environmental epidemiologist, international radiation expert, and Founder of The International Institute of Concern for Public Health explains, "Depleted uranium concentrate is almost 100 percent uranium. More than 99 percent of both natural and depleted uranium consists of the isotope U-238." In addition, the U.S. Department of Energy and the 1995 U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute admits that a small amount of additional toxic heavy metals and radioactive isotopes are also present in Depleted Uranium, such as plutonium, neptunium, and americium, Uranium-236 as well as Uranium-234 and Uranium-235. At the May, 1999 Hague Peace Conference, Dr. Rosalie Bertell stated that Depleted Uranium is "converted at high temperature into an aerosol, that is, minute insoluble particles of uranium oxide, UO2 or UO3, in a mist or fog…Uranium oxide and its aerosol form are insoluble in water. The aerosol resists gravity, and is able to travel … in air. Once on the ground, it can be resuspended when the sand is disturbed by motion or wind. Once breathed in, the very small particles of uranium oxide, those which are 2.5 microns [one micron = one millionth of a meter] or less in diameter, could reside in the lungs for years". Once in the lungs, the uranium slowly passes through the lung tissue into the blood. Uranium oxide dust has a biological half-life in the lungs of about a year. Eventually, the uranium passes through the lung tissue and then into the blood stream, which may then be broken down in body fluids. Eventually the uranium may be stored in bone, lymph, liver, kidney or other tissues. When found in urine seven or eight years after exposure, it is an indication of its long-term internal uranium contamination through storage in the body’s tissues.
Marion Fulk gives us an energetic picture of how DU creates havoc once inside the body. "It is an alpha emitter, which means that it is particularly damaging if lodged inside the body. Uranium-238 decays with an energy of 4 million electron volts per alpha particle. The energy emitted tears up surrounding cells and may initiate a whole bunch of negative health outcomes, including, but not limited to, cancers." Dr. Doug Rokke states how fast DU works once inside the body, "Alpha particle emission measurements show that the dose or exposure rate is in excess of 10000 counts per minute." DU, he says, "is a serious internal hazard". Explaining this nasty cell-busting process, Janette D. Sherman, M.D., specialist in internal medicine and toxicology, member of The Radiation and Public Health Project, and author of Life's Delicate Balance: Causes and Prevention of Breast Cancer and Chemical Exposure and Disease states that when we are exposed to Depleted Uranium, it is a serious hazard as a chemically toxic heavy metal, plus it is also radioactive. Because the uranium is so concentrated, the alpha activity is increased, and a decay process occurs. Both alpha and beta radiation are emitted into the cell tissue that surrounds the miniature DU particle, affecting other cells and disrupting cell membranes, DNA, and the cell development process. Quoting from Dr. Sherman’s book, "Aside from the radioactivity of uranium, it is a heavy metal poison and foreign body irritant with the potential to remain in the body for decades."
Uranium poisoning also involves general health impairment to the kidneys, liver, lungs, and cardiovascular, nervous and cell production systems, and cause disorders of proteins and carbohydrate metabolism. In an effort to de-mystify what is called by the US Military "Gulf War Syndrome" in veterans of wars in the Middle East, Dr. Sherman explains what many have come to call Depleted Uranium Poisoning. In "Life’s Delicate Balance", Dr. Sherman details precisely how we get sick from breathing in Uranium-238. "When DU burns, it releases fine particles of radioactive material, much of it as small as nano particles which when inhaled go deep into the lungs and from there are transported to the liver, kidneys, bone marrow, brain, skeleton, seminal fluid, and other parts of the body. DU that is swallowed from airborne particles is transported to the intestinal tract and absorbed and transported to other parts of the body, including the liver and kidneys.
" In effect, scientific evidence suggests that Uranium-238 does appear to have an adverse impact on reproduction and the destruction and mutation of genetic material, which is passed down to future descendents which can lead to birth defects in the exposed individual’s offspring. Another disorder linked to Depleted Uranium poisoning in soldiers from both Gulf Wars is asthma. A chronic lung disease characterized by persistent cough and wheeze, incidences of asthma have been steadily increasing. The most common serious chronic disease of America’s children, more than 5 percent of the U.S. population or nearly five million children younger than 18 years - are affected by this disorder. Asthma is the cause of nearly three million doctor’s visits and 200,000 hospitalizations each year. In children ages 5-14 years, the rate of death from asthma almost doubled between 1980 and 1993. The 1943 memo also stated that it could be used as radioactive warfare to make evacuated areas uninhabitable, to contaminate small critical areas, and as a radioactive poison gas to create casualties among troops, and to create casualties among civilian populations. It also mentions that "These materials may also be so disposed as to be taken into the body by ingestion instead of inhalation. Reservoirs or wells would be contaminated or food poisoned with an effect similar to that resulting from inhalation of dust or smoke, " and in the respiratory tract, "articles smaller than 1µ [micron] are more likely to be deposited in the alveoli where they will either remain indefinitely or be absorbed into the lymphatics or blood… It would seem that chemical gases could accomplish more and do it more quickly so far as the skin surfaces and lungs are concerned." In other words, the US Military has known since 1943 precisely what it was doing with regard to the life-destroying use of aerosolized uranium. In the words of award-winning Robert C. Koehler in his piece on Depleted Uranium, "Silent Genocide": "Before the damage we inflict grows greater, before history's judgment gets worse, before we contaminate the whole world -- even before we vote in the next election -- we must stop what we're doing. We must stop now. " From a February, 2006 report by Busby and Morgan, measurements were examined on air sampler filters deployed by the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) in Aldermaston, in Berkshire, UK. Examination of the air filters showed a statistically significant increase in uranium in all the filters beginning at the start of the United States bombing of Iraq in March 2003 and ending when the US "Shock and Awe" bombing campaign ended. Levels of increased uranium in the filters were found in England, up to 2,500 miles away from Baghdad. Thus we can assume that as a result of the bombings in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq practically the whole area of Europe is covered with a fine dust of nanoparticles of U-238 or DU. Radioactive Ammunition Fired in Middle East May Claim More Lives Than Hiroshima and Nagasaki by Sherwood Ross November 19, 2007. By firing radioactive ammunition, the U.S., U.K., and Israel may have triggered a nuclear holocaust in the Middle East that, over time, will prove deadlier than the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan. So much ammunition containing depleted uranium(DU) has been fired, asserts nuclear authority Leuren Moret, "The genetic future of the Iraqi people for the most part, is destroyed." "More than ten times the amount of radiation released during atmospheric testing (of nuclear bombs) has been released from depleted uranium weaponry since 1991," Moret writes, including radioactive ammunition fired by Israeli troops in Palestine. Moret is an independent U.S. scientist formerly employed for five years at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and also at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, both of California. Adds Arthur Bernklau, of Veterans For Constitutional Law, "The long-term effect of DU is a virtual death sentence. Iraq is a toxic wasteland. Anyone who is there stands a good chance of coming down with cancer and leukemia. In Iraq, the birth rate of mutations is totally out of control." Moret, a Berkeley, Calif., Environmental Commissioner and past president of the Association for Women Geoscientists, says, "For every genetic defect that we can see now, in future generations there are thousands more that will be expressed." She adds, "the (Iraq) environment now is completely radioactive." Dr. Helen Caldicott, the prominent anti-nuclear crusader, has written: "Much of the DU is in cities such as Baghdad, where half the population of 5 million people are children who played in the burned-out tanks and on the sandy, dusty ground. "Children are 10 to 20 times more susceptible to the carcinogenic effects of radiation than adults," Caldicott wrote. "My pediatric colleagues in Basra, where this ordnance was used in 1991, report a sevenfold increase in childhood cancer and a sevenfold increase in gross congenital abnormalities," she wrote in her book, "Nuclear Power is not the Answer"(The New Press). Caldicott goes on to say the two Gulf wars "have been nuclear wars because they have scattered nuclear material across the land, and people---particularly children--- are condemned to die of malignancy and congenital disease essentially for eternity." Because of the extremely long half-life of uranium 238, one of the radioactive elements in the shells fired, "the food, the air, and the water in the cradle of civilization have been forever contaminated," Caldicott explained. Uranium is a heavy metal that enters the body via inhalation into the lung or via ingestion into the GI tract. It is excreted by the kidney, where, if the dose is high enough, it can induce renal failure or kidney cancer. It also lodges in the bones where it causes bone cancer and leukemia, and it is excreted in the semen, where it mutates genes in the sperm, leading to birth deformities. Nuclear contamination is spreading around the world, Caldicott adds, with heaviest concentrations in regions within a 1,000-mile radius of Baghdad and Afghanistan. These are, notably, northern India, southern Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Tibet, Pakistan, Kuwait, the Gulf emirates, and Jordan. "Downwind from the radioactive devastation in Iraq, Israel is also suffering from large increases in breast cancer, leukemia and childhood diabetes," Moret asserts. Doug Rokke, formerly the top U.S. Army DU clean-up officer and now anti-DU crusader, says Israeli tankers fired radioactive shells during the invasion of Lebanon last year. U.S. and NATO forces also used DU ammunition in Kosovo. Rokke says he is quite ill from the effects of DU and that members of his clean-up crew have died from it. As a result of DU bombardments, Caldicott writes, "Severe birth defects have been reported in babies born to contaminated civilians in Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan and the incidence and severity of defects is increasing over time." Like symptoms have been reported among infants born to U.S. service personnel that fought in the Gulf Wars. One survey of 251 returned Gulf War veterans from Mississippi made by the Veterans Administration found 67% of children born to them suffered from "severe illnesses and deformities." Some were born without brains or vital organs or with no arms, hands, or arms, or with hands attached to their shoulders. While U.S. officials deny DU ammunition is dangerous, it is a fact Gulf War veterans were the first Americans ever to fight on a radioactive battlefield, and their children apparently are the first known to display these ghastly deformities. Soldiers who survived being hit by radioactive ammunition, as well as those who fired it, are falling ill, often showing signs of radiation sickness. Of the 700,000 U.S. veterans of the first Gulf War, more than 240,000 are on permanent medical disability and 11,000 are dead, published reports indicate. This is an astonishing toll from such a short conflict in which fewer than 400 U.S. soldiers were killed on the battlefield. Of course, "depleted uranium munitions were and remain another causative factor behind Gulf War Syndrome(GWS)," writes Francis Boyle, a leading American authority on international law in his book "Biowarfare and Terrorism," from Clarity Press Inc. "The Pentagon continues to deny that there is such a medical phenomenon categorized as GWS---even beyond the point where everyone knows that denial is pure propaganda and disinformation," Boyle writes. Boyle contends, "The Pentagon will never own up to the legal, economic, tortious, political, and criminal consequences of admitting the existence of GWS. So U.S. and U.K. veterans of Gulf War I as well as their afterborn children will continue to suffer and die. The same will prove true for U.S. and U.S. veterans of Bush Jr.’s Gulf War II as well as their afterborn children." Boyle said the use of DU is outlawed under the 1925 Geneva Convention prohibiting poison gas. Chalmers Johnson, president of the Japan Policy Research Institute, writes in his "The Sorrows of Empire"(Henry Holt and Co.) that, given the abnormal clusters of childhood cancers and deformities in Iraq as well as Kosovo, the evidence points "toward a significant role for DU." By insisting on its use, Johnson adds, "the military is deliberately flouting a 1996 United Nations resolution that classifies DU ammunition as an illegal weapon of mass destruction." Moret calls DU "the Trojan Horse of nuclear war." She describes it as "the weapon that keeps killing." Indeed, the half-life of Uranium-238 is 4.5-billion years, and as it decays it spawns other deadly radioactive by-products. Radioactive fallout from DU apparently blew far and wide. Following the initial U.S. bombardment of Iraq in 2003, DU particles traveled 2,400 miles to Great Britain in about a week, where atmospheric radiation quadrupled. But it is in the Middle East, predominantly Iraq, where the bulk of the radioactive waste has been dumped. In the early Nineties, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority warned that 50 tons of dust from DU explosions could claim a half million lives from cancer by year 2000. Not 50 tons, but an estimated two thousand radioactive tons have been fired off in the Middle East, suggesting the possibility over time of an even higher death toll. Dr. Keith Baverstock, a World Health Organization radiation advisor, informed the media, Iraq’s arid climate would increase exposure from its tiny particles as they are blown about and inhaled by the civilian population for years to come. The civilian death toll from the August, 1945, U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been put at 140,000 and 80,000, respectively. Over time, however, deaths from radiation sickness are thought to have claimed the lives of another 100,000 Japanese civilians.
#(Sherwood Ross is a Miami, Florida-based free-lance writer who covers military and political topics. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com.
Ross has worked as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News and several wire services and is a contributor to national magazines.)
But our destructive power with a little help from nature can easily put an end to all life and very soon. The only thing we are concerned about is if our lively hood is threatened.
On the one hand we have nature itself, which is in constant evolution and can provoke amazing and sometimes abrupt changes to earth, we have to live with this and cannot do a lot about it.
Personally I believe that increased nuclear explosions on our sun (sun spots) trigger climate changes, thus inundating the earth with gamma rays, which deflect cosmic rays, responsible for the creation of clouds. Less clouds means more heat arriving and a warmer environment. There is nothing we can do against this, since we are not even capable with all our technology to produce one single natural cloud! Our sun will do what it likes to do and that is give warmth, only sometimes it is a bit too much for our liking. You either live with this or not and there are many things we can do to shelter from the effects of raising temperatures.
Currently we do not have enough precise data to determine whether we are moving to an ice age or that the earth will become hotter. We cannot even prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the sea level is or will rise from melting ice. The earth has gone through many periods of soaring heat, ice cold, watery wet etc. and it will continue to do so with or without us. For instance during the thousands of years of the existence of the dinosaurs, the earth contained nowhere any ice or snow, however there was enough vegetation, thus water, to feed the giant beasts.
In certain areas of the world we are experiencing draughts since a number of years. Water becomes scarce, but nobody seems interested to build desalination plants. While in other areas they have inundations from storms and rains. Most of this damage if you look closely is due to; building in river beds, forgoing maintenance on dikes, deforestation, building on sliding hills. We seem to think to be cleverer than nature and trick it into anything we like. Sorry, it does not happen, nature wins always.
The polarity of the earth is changing and will invert, as it already has done previously. The last time the poles switched was 780,000 years ago, and it's happened about 400 times in 330 million years. There is also ample proof that the magnetic poles are moving. In the last 150 years, the pole has wandered a total of about 685 miles (1102 kilometers). The magnetic South Pole moves in a similar fashion. This wandering of polarity has an effect on our life and there is nothing we can do about it, it is nature’s way. We do not know the mechanics of this inversion.
An eruption of a volcano spews an enormous amount of gasses, CO2 and chemicals in the air, which would be comparable to the pollution volume of a major city over a period of 10 years.
What is much more destructive for the living beings on this planet is our ways of continuous warfare; destruction of the land, vegetation, animal life, leaving behind unexploded lethal bombs, letting loose dangerous chemicals, generating radiation levels that makes all beings sick and that remain active for millions of years.
Not only the actual act of war contaminates mankind, the manufacturing processes of warplanes, rockets, tanks, bombs, bullets and chemicals emit continuous high quantities of CO2, poisonous gasses and produces dangerous waste. War consumes vast amounts of precious resources. Waging war requires vast amounts of oil, minerals, and metals and generates giant volumes of greenhouse gasses.
16 warships 'produce' the equivalent of CO2 and noxious gasses as ALL cars in the world!
WW II consumed 6-9 billion barrels of oil.Desert Storm: 45 million barrels.
The Pentagon consumed 134 million barrels in 2001.
The world’s armies consume nearly 2 billion barrels of oil annually. The Pentagon is the largest consumer of oil, chemicals, precious metals, paper and wood. In 2005 the Pentagon purchased 133 million barrels of oil for the year. The US Air Force consumed a fuel budget of 1.6 billion $ in 2006, which translates into 9.8 billion liters of aviation fuel. For instance an F-16 fighter jet burns 105 liters of fuel every minute. The US dept. of Defense project to lose in 2008 to the amount of $ 86.8 million during combat, this is not what is consumed during fighting. In theater fuel evaporates form desert heat, vehicles suffering mechanical breakdown and that have been hit add to the fuel loss bill. It would cost 400 $ for every gallon of fuel to be transported to the battlefield.
In WWII the US used about 1 gallon of fuel per soldier per day, in Desert Storm this was 4 gallons. In 2006 they burned 16 gallons of fuel per soldier per day! The USA spends an average of $ 44 billion per year to safeguard oil supplies in the Persian Gulf.
It seems that we have to wage war for oil to ensure that we have enough oil to continue to wage new wars. A Catch 22 situation that wastes precious resources.
The other aspect of the war industry is the on-going testing of new and more powerful destructive agents. Since most of these tests are kept very secret, we cannot even estimate the amount of damaging materials that have been and are projected in our environment and hushed up by politicians and arms merchants. America, Russia, France, England, Israel, China, India and Korea have carried out more than 2000 atmospheric nuclear test explosions between 1942 and 1992. Each explosion leaves behind a radiation zone with a half-life of tens of billions of years. What we have not measured yet and are for the moment incapable of defining is the damage done to the environment by the trembling of the tectonic plates by these mega explosions.
Warefare materials become also quite quickly obsolete and are then partly dismantled and stored somewhere, just dumped in the sea or in landfills. Or even worse offhandedly sold to “freedom fighters” and rogue dictatorships. This is one way of creating terrorists and the so called “axes of terror”.
Today, 60 years after WWII, fishermen in the Baltic Sea are severely burned by mustard gas that comes free when they pull up their nets containing dumped rusted bombs from WWI and II. We just have to wait for the day that fishermen catch some rusted obsolete plutonium warheads in their nets.
The US dropped more than 25 million bombs and 72 million liters of toxic Agent Orange as well as other chemicals on the forests, farmland and villages in Vietnam. Cambodia is still trying to cope with 1,300 sq miles littered with millions of landmines and so is Angola with over 10 million landmines. Vast surfaces of the Baltic Sea and Pacific Ocean are contaminated by radioactive leakage and chemical waste from Russian war ports. Cluster bombs and projectiles covered with DU are indiscriminate weapons of mass destruction and are used on a daily basis by Israel, the USA and its allies. Vast areas consisting of prodigeous farmland in the world have been made unusable by the destructive antics of the warmongers.
So you and me are told by the political geniuses such as Al Gore and the like to reduce our CO2 output, to separate our waste, to use less oil, reduce on water, drive cleaner cars, use a bicycle, so they can keep on starting wars left right and centre and undo in a split second what takes you and me years to accomplish.
Something is terribly wrong and totally unacceptable.
“Continue to contaminate your bed, and you will one night suffocate in your own waste. Your destiny is a mystery to us.” Chief Seattle leader of the Duwanish tribe in Washington Territory in an 1854 letter to U.S. President Franklin Pierce to mark transfer of ancestral Indian lands to the United States .
Since WWI we have not stopped to develop more powerful explosives, delivering these over longer distances and finding ways to destroy more buildings or to kill all people and destroy no buildings. Chemical warfare was probably first used in WWI by spraying mustard gas on the battlefield. Soldiers in the trenches died a terrible slow and agonising death. The effect of this weapon spurred the industry on to make more potent chemicals, which eventually led to the use of the atomic bombs jettisoned on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. The devastating and horrible results were very apparent and the world agreed: never again! We even drew up rules and laws for weapons of mass destruction and weapons used against populations.
Years ago, President Bush withdrew the United States as a signatory to the International Criminal Court’s statute, which has been ratified by all other Western democracies. The White House actually seeks to immunize U.S. leaders from war crimes prosecutions entirely. It has also demanded express immunity from ICC prosecution for American nationals.
It took 40 years before sick WWII veterans were compensated for exposure to atomic bomb radiation. So since Hiroshima we have developed a whole new arsenal of atomic, neutron, hydrogen warheads and now “atomic pocket bombs”. Some of them have been given the fun name of “bunker busters”, which sounds a bit like a tool to remove the unwanted weeds from your garden. In fact a typical bunker buster bomb contains 1.5 tonnes of depleted uranium or U-238 isotope, which makes the bombs on Hiroshima shrink to the level of a toy for a 2-year-old child!
During the losing battle of the Vietnam war, started on false flag pretexts, the great idea was to de-foliage the whole bloody country, because the enemy (and the population) were hiding under the leaves. So “agent orange” was developed and used. Even today (45 years later) the jungle does not grow back and a major part of the country is infested with high levels of dioxin, provoking a whole string of diseases.
So why are we making such a fuss about cutting teak trees in Burma, or burning down vast expanses of the tropical forests in Indonesia, Malaysia or the Amazon? What takes normal industrious humans years to burn down and replant with other plants to try to feed their family, takes the military just a couple of days to annihilate for thousands or millions of years to come.
The Pentagon took 25 years to acknowledge the problems with the corrosive defoliant Agent Orange, used in Vietnam to destroy the jungle. The dangers for us living beings are lurking around the corner and will become every day more deadly, more secretive, more painful and more impossible to clean up.
Apparently we need war, but the question is how much war is needed to destroy our planet for us to perish completely as a human race? Planet earth will happily continue without us, it really does not need us; actually it would be quite happy without the parasite human beings making a mess of everything. After we have destroyed ourselves, just a couple of 100 thousand years later, there would be no evidence that human beings have ever been around. Just like the dinosaurs.
If you want to live, you need this planet. And you need it in a state that is liveable for us. Thus do nothing and die a slow and agonizing death. Or unite, make and keep peace, and get rid of the war mongering puppet masters. In a democratic society, where countries manage to come together to make larger united nations, we should be able to get rid of the hideous dictators by locking them up and get on with building a cleaner world where everyone can live a normal life.
So if we get rid of wars, we have cleaned up at least 50% in the process. Since 1900 we have been fighting modern wars in practically every country in the world and today we still have wars in progress on every continent. We are extremely creative in creating new enemies and wars. If we do not have one, we just invent them. Like government institutions have invented ‘global terrorism’ and ‘the war on terror’. Almost all so-called ‘terrorists’ are trained operatives from CIA, MI6, Mossad or ex-KGB. And practically all other terrorists are family men trying to protect their families, house, land and village from invading foreign military forces. Some years ago this was called legitimate self-defense, now it has been brand named Terrorism.
Many Palestinians have to live from the meager income by growing olives. It takes 10 years for an olive tree to bear fruit. By building the seggregation wall, the israelians have destroyed or moved thousands of these trees. Most wars in this century have been directed to civilian populations; the largest number of casualties consist of women and children. Bombs, missiles, shells, bullets, and military fuels poison our lands, air and water with lead, nitrates, nitrites, dioxin, hydrocarbons, phosphorous, radioactive debris, corrosive and toxic heavy metals. Un-exploded ordnance lies scattered over more than 15 million US acres.
The world’s armies are responsible for as much as 10 percent of global air pollution. The 1991 Gulf War generated 80,000 tons of global-warming gases. On any given day, more than 60,000 US troops are engaged in operations or military exercises in about 100 foreign countries. The Pentagon is the world’s largest polluter, generating 750,000 tons of hazardous wastes each year. US military bases have polluted communities in Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Greenland, Iceland, Italy, Panama, the Philippines, South Korea, Spain and Turkey. There are more than 14,000 contaminated military sites in the US, many located near low-income neighbourhoods and communities of colour.
The “liberation” of Iraq by dropping 100,000 tons of bombs has destroyed villages, homes, farmland, bridges, dams, water systems, power plants, irreplaceable ancient landmarks and cultural artefacts, it killed 500,000 Iraqi children. It has left a desolate destitute country basically uninhabitable for any living being for millions of years.
To get rid of the Taliban 300,000 cluster bombs were dropped on Afghanistan, most of which still have to explode and will most probably one day where children play.
All these liberation efforts in the name of democracy have devastated whole societies in many countries such as: Afghanistan, Angola, Burundi, Chechnya, Colombia, Congo, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kosovo, Lebanon, Liberia, Mozambique, Palestine, Somalia, Sudan, Turkey, Rwanda, Yugoslavia. The danger remains that some rogue president or vice president of a nuclear nation gives an order to bomb another nation.
This nearly happened on August 30, 2007, when a B-52, with its cargo of six deadly nuclear-armed cruise missiles, was ordered by VP Cheney to attack Iran. Luckily army personnel, following the proper procedures, stopped the B-52 from starting its overseas journey. The world will still need oil for quite a long time. The option for running things on hydrogen is not a real viable option. The production of hydrogen for cars and industry would consume billions of liters of distilled water per day. That is water which we actually do not have. The world has and will have a great water shortage. Thus water will be the next commodity to fight wars for.
There are some urgent matters to clear, before it is too late. They concern: Depleted Uranium, Plutonium, rockets, bombs, mines, warships, submarines, warplanes, chemicals, … Have a closer look at our magnificent tools of destruction.
Depleted Uranium
Depleted Uranium (DU) remains a flagship tool for the US Army, which extensively used and uses such munitions during fighting in Gulf War I, Kosovo, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq. DU is a chemically toxic, radioactive element with a half-life of 4.5 billion years that damages the kidneys and lungs, causes genetic mutations of DNA and cancer, and is associated with a number of major medical problems.
The US nuclear industry has produced 1.2 billion pounds of DU waste as a by-product of nuclear energy and weapons production. This nuclear waste is being recycled into DU munitions, which were first given to Israel in the form of armor piercing shells for use in the 1973 Sinai war. Since then, DU has been tested, manufactured and sold to a number of countries by US arms manufacturers. Considered highly effective in penetrating armor and concrete walls, uranium munitions are used by the main US Abrams battle tanks, Bradley Fighting vehicles, A-10 attack aircraft and a host of other ammunition, including bunker busters.
Upon impact, DU munitions burn at 3000 to 6000 degrees Centigrade and combust into a radioactive gas of fine (nano) particles of uranium oxide dust, which remain suspended in the air and, once inhaled, become a chronic source of uranium heavy metal and contact radiation poisoning. Estimates vary on the total tonnage of DU used by the US and include: during the US bombing of Yugoslavia, 34 tons of DU; in Gulf War I, up to 375 tons; in Afghanistan in 2001, 1,000 tons; and in Gulf War II in 2003, up to 2,200 tons. An estimated total of 3.609.000 kg of radioactive waste spread over the earth! The U.S. government has produced more than 1.1 Billion pounds of DU in its uranium enrichment facilities in Ohio and Kentucky. DU is also used as military tank armour, and aircraft, ship and missile counterweight ballasts as well as to provide the massive casing for hydrogen bombs that enable them to undergo fission and give off about fifty percent greater energy "bang for the buck". The release of radioactive and chemically toxic dust and uranium fragments causes devastating medical problems.
According to Leuren Moret, an independent scientist and international radiation specialist, depleted uranium is considered a factor in Gulf War syndrome, which affects many of the 325,000 Gulf War I veterans who are on permanent medical disability. In August 2004, the VA reported that over 518,739 Persian Gulf veterans were on medical disability since 1991. Moret attributes many of these disabilities to DU exposure. Although some remain controversial, Moret compiled a list of 100 illnesses that veterans associated with DU, including brain tumours, Hodgkin lymphoma, leukaemia, rectal cancer, Parkinson's disease, respiratory problems, rashes, kidney and eye problems, and thyroid cancer. Others point to definite connections between DU and brain tumours, and Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. "Under international law, depleted uranium meets the definition of WMD and violates US military law as well as the Geneva and Hague conventions," says Moret. "There has been a cover-up by three administrations including Bush Senior, Clinton and Bush the younger because reparations, which the countries attacked are entitled to, would bankrupt the US.
" Two years ago, President Bush withdrew the United States as a signatory to the International Criminal Court’s statute, which has been ratified by all other Western democracies. The White House actually seeks to immunize U.S. leaders from war crimes prosecutions entirely. It has also demanded express immunity from ICC prosecution for American nationals. The Pentagon asserts that DU "is only mildly radioactive" and a White House website stated that reports of health problems and cancers caused by DU are propaganda, although a US Army report by Col. E. Wakayama in August 2002, confirms serious health and environmental problems. The report recommends long-term sampling of water and milk from sites heavily contaminated with DU and the removal of contaminated soil from populated areas. Vietnam and Gulf War veteran and former US Army Depleted Uranium Project director Doug Rokke charges that the Department of Defence (DOD) deliberately ignores its own orders for testing soldiers who come in contact with DU. In August, 1993, General Eric Shinseki issued an order requiring training for anyone who "may come in contact" with DU equipment, complete medical testing for solders "exposed to DU contamination," and the development of "a plan for DU contaminated equipment." Rokke cites a number of other orders including an April 2004 Surgeon General's order and US Army regulations requiring medical and environmental clean up from DU contamination.
Rokke charges government and political officials with a deliberate cover-up to limit liability and to ensure uranium munitions use during combat. He insists that DOD officials provide medical care for all DU casualties, complete environmental mediation, and complete decontamination of all DU damaged equipment, structures, and terrain as required by US regulations. He also emphasizes that documented health problems exist in many of the 55 US locations where DU is stored, processed and tested.
"Clinton and Bush totally were aware of the use of DU and made conscious choices to disregard the law," said Rokke. "The world needs to know about it: It's a horrible mess and it will continue until someone holds these people accountable for what they've done and demands compliance. The children of the world don't deserve this." DU a tremendous public health disaster for generations to come .
Experts who have studied the properties of Depleted Uranium and its deleterious effects upon human health have a great deal to tell us. Recently in a letter to Tracy Press, Marion Fulk, local resident and nuclear physical chemist retired from the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab formerly involved with the Manhattan Project, tells us a bit about the uranium that is being exploded at Livermore and its effects upon human health: "Uranium-238, sometimes called 'depleted uranium’, poses a serious health threat, especially if inhaled in finely divided particles like those created by open-air explosives testing. Because of its properties, uranium-238 is a triple threat to human health. Its properties as a heavy metal create health damage once inside the body. Its properties as a hazardous chemical catalyst cause additional health risks. And its properties as a radioactive material offer a third route to cellular and DNA damage, illness and premature death in humans and animals." Despite the fact that Uranium-238 is commonly called "Depleted", this was a label invented to get the public to think that it is a weakly radioactive material. Nothing could be further from the truth. This poison dust packs a powerful punch to the human body, as Dr. Rosalie Bertell, biometrician and environmental epidemiologist, international radiation expert, and Founder of The International Institute of Concern for Public Health explains, "Depleted uranium concentrate is almost 100 percent uranium. More than 99 percent of both natural and depleted uranium consists of the isotope U-238." In addition, the U.S. Department of Energy and the 1995 U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute admits that a small amount of additional toxic heavy metals and radioactive isotopes are also present in Depleted Uranium, such as plutonium, neptunium, and americium, Uranium-236 as well as Uranium-234 and Uranium-235. At the May, 1999 Hague Peace Conference, Dr. Rosalie Bertell stated that Depleted Uranium is "converted at high temperature into an aerosol, that is, minute insoluble particles of uranium oxide, UO2 or UO3, in a mist or fog…Uranium oxide and its aerosol form are insoluble in water. The aerosol resists gravity, and is able to travel … in air. Once on the ground, it can be resuspended when the sand is disturbed by motion or wind. Once breathed in, the very small particles of uranium oxide, those which are 2.5 microns [one micron = one millionth of a meter] or less in diameter, could reside in the lungs for years". Once in the lungs, the uranium slowly passes through the lung tissue into the blood. Uranium oxide dust has a biological half-life in the lungs of about a year. Eventually, the uranium passes through the lung tissue and then into the blood stream, which may then be broken down in body fluids. Eventually the uranium may be stored in bone, lymph, liver, kidney or other tissues. When found in urine seven or eight years after exposure, it is an indication of its long-term internal uranium contamination through storage in the body’s tissues.
Marion Fulk gives us an energetic picture of how DU creates havoc once inside the body. "It is an alpha emitter, which means that it is particularly damaging if lodged inside the body. Uranium-238 decays with an energy of 4 million electron volts per alpha particle. The energy emitted tears up surrounding cells and may initiate a whole bunch of negative health outcomes, including, but not limited to, cancers." Dr. Doug Rokke states how fast DU works once inside the body, "Alpha particle emission measurements show that the dose or exposure rate is in excess of 10000 counts per minute." DU, he says, "is a serious internal hazard". Explaining this nasty cell-busting process, Janette D. Sherman, M.D., specialist in internal medicine and toxicology, member of The Radiation and Public Health Project, and author of Life's Delicate Balance: Causes and Prevention of Breast Cancer and Chemical Exposure and Disease states that when we are exposed to Depleted Uranium, it is a serious hazard as a chemically toxic heavy metal, plus it is also radioactive. Because the uranium is so concentrated, the alpha activity is increased, and a decay process occurs. Both alpha and beta radiation are emitted into the cell tissue that surrounds the miniature DU particle, affecting other cells and disrupting cell membranes, DNA, and the cell development process. Quoting from Dr. Sherman’s book, "Aside from the radioactivity of uranium, it is a heavy metal poison and foreign body irritant with the potential to remain in the body for decades."
Uranium poisoning also involves general health impairment to the kidneys, liver, lungs, and cardiovascular, nervous and cell production systems, and cause disorders of proteins and carbohydrate metabolism. In an effort to de-mystify what is called by the US Military "Gulf War Syndrome" in veterans of wars in the Middle East, Dr. Sherman explains what many have come to call Depleted Uranium Poisoning. In "Life’s Delicate Balance", Dr. Sherman details precisely how we get sick from breathing in Uranium-238. "When DU burns, it releases fine particles of radioactive material, much of it as small as nano particles which when inhaled go deep into the lungs and from there are transported to the liver, kidneys, bone marrow, brain, skeleton, seminal fluid, and other parts of the body. DU that is swallowed from airborne particles is transported to the intestinal tract and absorbed and transported to other parts of the body, including the liver and kidneys.
" In effect, scientific evidence suggests that Uranium-238 does appear to have an adverse impact on reproduction and the destruction and mutation of genetic material, which is passed down to future descendents which can lead to birth defects in the exposed individual’s offspring. Another disorder linked to Depleted Uranium poisoning in soldiers from both Gulf Wars is asthma. A chronic lung disease characterized by persistent cough and wheeze, incidences of asthma have been steadily increasing. The most common serious chronic disease of America’s children, more than 5 percent of the U.S. population or nearly five million children younger than 18 years - are affected by this disorder. Asthma is the cause of nearly three million doctor’s visits and 200,000 hospitalizations each year. In children ages 5-14 years, the rate of death from asthma almost doubled between 1980 and 1993. The 1943 memo also stated that it could be used as radioactive warfare to make evacuated areas uninhabitable, to contaminate small critical areas, and as a radioactive poison gas to create casualties among troops, and to create casualties among civilian populations. It also mentions that "These materials may also be so disposed as to be taken into the body by ingestion instead of inhalation. Reservoirs or wells would be contaminated or food poisoned with an effect similar to that resulting from inhalation of dust or smoke, " and in the respiratory tract, "articles smaller than 1µ [micron] are more likely to be deposited in the alveoli where they will either remain indefinitely or be absorbed into the lymphatics or blood… It would seem that chemical gases could accomplish more and do it more quickly so far as the skin surfaces and lungs are concerned." In other words, the US Military has known since 1943 precisely what it was doing with regard to the life-destroying use of aerosolized uranium. In the words of award-winning Robert C. Koehler in his piece on Depleted Uranium, "Silent Genocide": "Before the damage we inflict grows greater, before history's judgment gets worse, before we contaminate the whole world -- even before we vote in the next election -- we must stop what we're doing. We must stop now. " From a February, 2006 report by Busby and Morgan, measurements were examined on air sampler filters deployed by the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) in Aldermaston, in Berkshire, UK. Examination of the air filters showed a statistically significant increase in uranium in all the filters beginning at the start of the United States bombing of Iraq in March 2003 and ending when the US "Shock and Awe" bombing campaign ended. Levels of increased uranium in the filters were found in England, up to 2,500 miles away from Baghdad. Thus we can assume that as a result of the bombings in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq practically the whole area of Europe is covered with a fine dust of nanoparticles of U-238 or DU. Radioactive Ammunition Fired in Middle East May Claim More Lives Than Hiroshima and Nagasaki by Sherwood Ross November 19, 2007. By firing radioactive ammunition, the U.S., U.K., and Israel may have triggered a nuclear holocaust in the Middle East that, over time, will prove deadlier than the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan. So much ammunition containing depleted uranium(DU) has been fired, asserts nuclear authority Leuren Moret, "The genetic future of the Iraqi people for the most part, is destroyed." "More than ten times the amount of radiation released during atmospheric testing (of nuclear bombs) has been released from depleted uranium weaponry since 1991," Moret writes, including radioactive ammunition fired by Israeli troops in Palestine. Moret is an independent U.S. scientist formerly employed for five years at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and also at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, both of California. Adds Arthur Bernklau, of Veterans For Constitutional Law, "The long-term effect of DU is a virtual death sentence. Iraq is a toxic wasteland. Anyone who is there stands a good chance of coming down with cancer and leukemia. In Iraq, the birth rate of mutations is totally out of control." Moret, a Berkeley, Calif., Environmental Commissioner and past president of the Association for Women Geoscientists, says, "For every genetic defect that we can see now, in future generations there are thousands more that will be expressed." She adds, "the (Iraq) environment now is completely radioactive." Dr. Helen Caldicott, the prominent anti-nuclear crusader, has written: "Much of the DU is in cities such as Baghdad, where half the population of 5 million people are children who played in the burned-out tanks and on the sandy, dusty ground. "Children are 10 to 20 times more susceptible to the carcinogenic effects of radiation than adults," Caldicott wrote. "My pediatric colleagues in Basra, where this ordnance was used in 1991, report a sevenfold increase in childhood cancer and a sevenfold increase in gross congenital abnormalities," she wrote in her book, "Nuclear Power is not the Answer"(The New Press). Caldicott goes on to say the two Gulf wars "have been nuclear wars because they have scattered nuclear material across the land, and people---particularly children--- are condemned to die of malignancy and congenital disease essentially for eternity." Because of the extremely long half-life of uranium 238, one of the radioactive elements in the shells fired, "the food, the air, and the water in the cradle of civilization have been forever contaminated," Caldicott explained. Uranium is a heavy metal that enters the body via inhalation into the lung or via ingestion into the GI tract. It is excreted by the kidney, where, if the dose is high enough, it can induce renal failure or kidney cancer. It also lodges in the bones where it causes bone cancer and leukemia, and it is excreted in the semen, where it mutates genes in the sperm, leading to birth deformities. Nuclear contamination is spreading around the world, Caldicott adds, with heaviest concentrations in regions within a 1,000-mile radius of Baghdad and Afghanistan. These are, notably, northern India, southern Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Tibet, Pakistan, Kuwait, the Gulf emirates, and Jordan. "Downwind from the radioactive devastation in Iraq, Israel is also suffering from large increases in breast cancer, leukemia and childhood diabetes," Moret asserts. Doug Rokke, formerly the top U.S. Army DU clean-up officer and now anti-DU crusader, says Israeli tankers fired radioactive shells during the invasion of Lebanon last year. U.S. and NATO forces also used DU ammunition in Kosovo. Rokke says he is quite ill from the effects of DU and that members of his clean-up crew have died from it. As a result of DU bombardments, Caldicott writes, "Severe birth defects have been reported in babies born to contaminated civilians in Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan and the incidence and severity of defects is increasing over time." Like symptoms have been reported among infants born to U.S. service personnel that fought in the Gulf Wars. One survey of 251 returned Gulf War veterans from Mississippi made by the Veterans Administration found 67% of children born to them suffered from "severe illnesses and deformities." Some were born without brains or vital organs or with no arms, hands, or arms, or with hands attached to their shoulders. While U.S. officials deny DU ammunition is dangerous, it is a fact Gulf War veterans were the first Americans ever to fight on a radioactive battlefield, and their children apparently are the first known to display these ghastly deformities. Soldiers who survived being hit by radioactive ammunition, as well as those who fired it, are falling ill, often showing signs of radiation sickness. Of the 700,000 U.S. veterans of the first Gulf War, more than 240,000 are on permanent medical disability and 11,000 are dead, published reports indicate. This is an astonishing toll from such a short conflict in which fewer than 400 U.S. soldiers were killed on the battlefield. Of course, "depleted uranium munitions were and remain another causative factor behind Gulf War Syndrome(GWS)," writes Francis Boyle, a leading American authority on international law in his book "Biowarfare and Terrorism," from Clarity Press Inc. "The Pentagon continues to deny that there is such a medical phenomenon categorized as GWS---even beyond the point where everyone knows that denial is pure propaganda and disinformation," Boyle writes. Boyle contends, "The Pentagon will never own up to the legal, economic, tortious, political, and criminal consequences of admitting the existence of GWS. So U.S. and U.K. veterans of Gulf War I as well as their afterborn children will continue to suffer and die. The same will prove true for U.S. and U.S. veterans of Bush Jr.’s Gulf War II as well as their afterborn children." Boyle said the use of DU is outlawed under the 1925 Geneva Convention prohibiting poison gas. Chalmers Johnson, president of the Japan Policy Research Institute, writes in his "The Sorrows of Empire"(Henry Holt and Co.) that, given the abnormal clusters of childhood cancers and deformities in Iraq as well as Kosovo, the evidence points "toward a significant role for DU." By insisting on its use, Johnson adds, "the military is deliberately flouting a 1996 United Nations resolution that classifies DU ammunition as an illegal weapon of mass destruction." Moret calls DU "the Trojan Horse of nuclear war." She describes it as "the weapon that keeps killing." Indeed, the half-life of Uranium-238 is 4.5-billion years, and as it decays it spawns other deadly radioactive by-products. Radioactive fallout from DU apparently blew far and wide. Following the initial U.S. bombardment of Iraq in 2003, DU particles traveled 2,400 miles to Great Britain in about a week, where atmospheric radiation quadrupled. But it is in the Middle East, predominantly Iraq, where the bulk of the radioactive waste has been dumped. In the early Nineties, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority warned that 50 tons of dust from DU explosions could claim a half million lives from cancer by year 2000. Not 50 tons, but an estimated two thousand radioactive tons have been fired off in the Middle East, suggesting the possibility over time of an even higher death toll. Dr. Keith Baverstock, a World Health Organization radiation advisor, informed the media, Iraq’s arid climate would increase exposure from its tiny particles as they are blown about and inhaled by the civilian population for years to come. The civilian death toll from the August, 1945, U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been put at 140,000 and 80,000, respectively. Over time, however, deaths from radiation sickness are thought to have claimed the lives of another 100,000 Japanese civilians.
#(Sherwood Ross is a Miami, Florida-based free-lance writer who covers military and political topics. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com.
Ross has worked as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News and several wire services and is a contributor to national magazines.)
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