Reaction Engines

Quote: "Reaction Engines Ltd ('REL') is a privately held company located in the United Kingdom and was formed in 1989 to develop the technologies needed for an advanced combined cycle air-breathing rocket engine class called SABRE that will enable aircraft to operate easily at speeds of up to five times the speed of sound or fly directly into Earth orbit.
We have achieved a breakthrough in aerospace engine technology by developing ultra-lightweight heat exchangers 100 times lighter than existing technologies that allow the cooling of very hot airstreams from over 1,000 °C to minus 150 °C in less than 1/100th of a second.
Reaction Engines' technology has undergone extensive independent technical assessments, undertaken by the European Space Agency at the request of the UK Government, which have confirmed the viability of the engine technology and its vehicle applications.

"ESA are confident that a ground test of a sub-scale [SABRE] engine can be successfully performed to demonstrate the flight regime and cycle and will be a critical milestone in the development of this program and a major breakthrough in propulsion worldwide."

European Space Agency Report to the UK Space Agency, 2011

This integrated air-breathing and rocket propulsion technology enables the following vehicle applications:

Mach 5 high altitude cruise:

• Fly anywhere in the world in 4 hours
• Efficient sub-sonic and hypersonic cruise modes

Low-cost reusable space access:

• Aircraft-like access to space
• Operates from runway to orbit and back
• Order of magnitude reduction in cost vs. existing technology
• 400 x improved reliability
• Responsive access to space

Technology:

Two decades of research work has resulted in technological leadership in the areas of:

• Ultra-lightweight heat exchangers
• Advanced rocket nozzles
• Combustion chamber design
• Contra–rotating turbines
• Lightweight airframe structures
• Robust lightweight thermal protection systems
• Engine and vehicles analysis software tools

Our headquarters, engineering centre, assembly and engine test facilities are located at the Culham Science Centre near Abingdon in Oxfordshire, UK.
Reaction Engines also owns the following subsidiaries:

Brite Precision

Brite Precision is a high precision machining facility dealing in most metals and plastics, and specialises in high precision machining and assemblies of scientific and research equipment." Go to: http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/

Edits necessary in order to restore balance (re: major threads)

re: "Particle Beam Physics/Weapons an Intelligence Black Hole?" (go to:
http://medialens.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3012 )

Viktor Schauberger

"Viktor Schauberger (1885-1958) made an extraordinary contribution to knowledge of the natural world.

He intuited what we now recognise as the quantum or subtle energy effects of water. His understanding was built up from shamanic and experiential observation of Nature in the untamed Alpine wilderness. His motto: "Observe and Copy Nature".

He was critical of textbook theory and the arrogance and lack of imagination of 'experts' and refused to go to college, believing that he would lose his intuitive gifts.

Schauberger was also gifted with engineering skills which are apparent in his environment-friendly technology and implosive energy devices designed to release people from enslavement to destructive sources of energy.

He is celebrated for his discoveries in the water sciences, in agricultural techniques and in the energy domain – which energies enhance and which harm life.

Schauberger provides us with a comprehensive and holistic approach to understanding Nature. His insights form the foundations of what might be called a 'science of Nature'.

He found two forms of motion in Nature: outward, expanding flow that is used to break down, and inward-spiralling which Nature uses to build up and energise. We use the first to generate energy, which is why it is destructive to the environment.

Minute changes in temperature affect the outcome of an energetic process. The balance between the attraction and repulsion of polarised atoms is the engine of creation.

Viktor Schauberger vividly described how our disdain for Nature's ways will bring only environmental catastrophe.

His vision - humanity working within Nature's laws - is the path we must rediscover, if we are to survive."

Shades of Nobel? (go to:
http://www.schauberger.co.uk/home.html )


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nBubMGCAVg


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M81_FRbTLc


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2giFGsGLft4&feature=related


Feature Length "NAZI Secret Weapons" documentary..... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWocwLfJjoc&feature=related


re: "For Welfare to Work?" (go to:
http://medialens.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3067 )

Sir William Beveridge

"The Second World War helped to create a remarkable unity among the British people. Most people felt that the only way to defeat Nazi Germany was to stand firmly together. The unity was most clearly expressed in their readiness to accept the war sacrifices imposed by Winston Churchill and his coalition government. Between 1940 and 1945 the British government contained members of all three major political groupings: the Conservative Party, Labour Party and the Liberal Party.

There was a strong feeling that the British people should be rewarded for their sacrifice and resolution. To encourage the British people to continue their fight against the axis powers, the government promised reforms that would create a more equal society. The first of these was the 1944 Education Act. This measure raised the school leaving age to 15 and provided free secondary education for all children.

The British government also asked Sir William Beveridge to write a report on the best ways of helping people on low incomes. In December 1942 Beveridge published a report that proposed that all people of working age should pay a weekly contribution. In return, benefits would be paid to people who were sick, unemployed, retired or widowed. Beveridge argued that this system would provide a minimum standard of living "below which no one should be allowed to fall". These measures were eventually introduced by the Labour Government that was elected in 1945.

Sir William Beveridge, a member of the Liberal Party, was elected to the House of Commons in 1944. The following year the new Labour Government began the process of implementing Beveridge's proposals that provided the basis of the modern welfare state." (go to: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWbeveridgereport.htm )

"For Welfare to Work?"

A national discussion concerning the nature of the philosophy which informs social welfare provision in Britain is well past time, I mean to begin to address this "lack of provision" with this thread, please feel free to post your own comments.
I will begin by asking you to consider one notion with regard to the issue, that of Duress...

...In Judaism Sheol is the pit in which the dead gather prior to judgement, it is also where those on welfare benefits in this country have been condemned to by the press, politicians and the spiritual institutions because it follows that in a "free market" (so-called "laissez faire") economy those that must be provided for have failed!
Now in our "Post-Friedmanion/Crass-Keynesian" state we are preparing to employ 19th/20th century Whig and Tory notions of social justice to the welfare provision for the very communities that suffered most under Monetarism, if the result of this is not social chaos and civil unrest I will (frankly) be more than somewhat shocked!*
The basic problem of social welfare provision is that it is more often than not merely public philanthropy**. This was of-course realised (at-first) with the notion of public health-care and education being "free at point of use", however to carry that principle over into the welfare debate has always required a "leap-of-faith" few have been prepared to make (not that "we" support it now anyway re:student loans etc.).***

*See edit 17/01/11 (below).

**Which like "Public Happiness" does not appear in the American constitution anymore than it actually exists anywhere ("public-philanthropy" like "unsustainable-economy" being an oxymoron).

***I find it genuinely unsettling to ponder the link between The British Labour Party and the trade union movement (the politicisation of which ruined the path of social reform in Britain in the latter half of the twentieth century), however (and considering my "liberal fence sitting" carefully), the monetary link between capitalist enterprise and The British Conservative Party was just as damaging.

I have found that those on state disablement benefits almost universally express a wish to contribute (in some meaningful way) to the society they live in. This has also been my experience of those receiving "Job Seekers' Allowance". It would appear to be only the traumatised that must rely on others fully until the "crisis" has passed.
What does this say about our approach to social welfare provision? It means that we must not separate the notions of public health and public welfare, they are one and the same.

It is a Monetarist myth that "expansion = health", a market may choose* simply to improve it's own efficiency (and avoid the possibility of a cancerous "Crass-Keynesian" demise).

* Edit: 30/01/11 May it? This gets very interesting if one is sympathetic to the notion of the possible existence of consciousness which is not exclusively homosapienic.
Clearly if it is possible to transform our global market place "organically" such that our economic philosophy becomes one of sustainability in "dynamic harmony" with the environment which supports it (which Gaian philosophy maintains is a state of consciousness*), we may be able to attribute sentience to it; however if we do so is it really a "market" anymore or has it changed it's nature completely during the transition from Thanatos to Eros?

*I also refer the reader to the work of Theilard de Chardin and his pre-Lovelockian/Schumachian notions of "planetary consciousness". Go to http://medialens.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3015

One can see the transformation of economic relationships entailed as the emergence* of life from death (much like the Yew tree seeds itself in it's own rotting bark).
*"Emergence Theory"..go to http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~sfoster/

It is perhaps easier to understand this process by considering the resource base, an "unsustainable economy" is clearly an oxymoronic concept; in other words by consuming itself it partakes only of Thanatos and is (essentially) dead.

One of the effects of Monetarism has also been to shrink our collective "World View" (re: "Noosphere" Teilhard De Chardin), by convincing us of it's dominance; religion, sex, sexuality, art, music, literature, politics, ethnicity, community, livelihoods and family relationships have been subsumed by the market. Infact the dominant philosophy of Monetarism (that of untrammelled speculation -the so-called "free market"-), has resulted in the occlusion of the processes of exchange themselves.

My condolences to the family and friends of Micheal Foot, one of our great British statesmen.

Micheal would have understood and I think even Neil still does but the modern Labour Party come on we'd have more socialisation under Hitler!

Coincidentally? -

Now this is urgent...... http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rgg31

Recent YouTube discussion with "Astrotometery" Quote..

"to astrotometry

astrotometry Urgent HADRON Urgent HADRON
"Hi Bro!
Nice to know I'm not completely persona non-grata round here.
Look the (observe me well) "Dark Flow" = "Thanotic Energy" (or aspect of?)."......

..."reponse astrotometry

astrotometry Re: Urgent HADRON Re: Urgent HADRON
"I'm sure it's not what they say it is, nor what they think it is, but what exactly it is?

I can't say."

to astrotometry

"astrotometry Re: Urgent HADRON Re: Urgent HADRON
"May I posit that we are witnessing the evidence of what one might term a "Teslic Cascade" (I believe that if we touch the "halo" or "event horizon" of this gravitational influence we may well be unable to control the resulting acceleration)?""

..also go to.. http://medialens.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=10298#10298[/i]

Resolution..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolution

References; music, law, logic, meter and optical and other instruments, also note reference to "resolution" re: Brethonic spiritual/cultural beliefs/practices on thread..."What's that Coming Over the Hill?"

"That which inflates must deflate!"

Yeats was right... (..."fifth rate demonologist"?!)

"THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre,
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its low thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

From... http://www.magickalmind.com/dorian/Yeats.html

"What "rough beast" indeed?"... http://www.israellycool.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/Baby-Jesus-Stig-from-Top-Gear.jpg

"Crowley studied at Trinity College at Cambridge, devoting his time to poetry and occultism. He joined in 1898 The Hermetic order of the Golden Dawn, which had also poet W.B. Yeats as its member. Other illustrious names included Algernon Blackwood, the creator of the occult detective John Silence, and Arthur Machen. Its ceremonies were strongly influenced by cabalism and spiritualism. During the next few years Crowley became a member of the group's inner conclave, but after quarrels of the control of the group, he was expelled from it. He founded his own less prominent order, the A A or Argentium Astrum. The Golden Dawn, which was a white magical order, became divided and never regained its former popularity. Crowley accused later that Yeats had used black magic against him, but he managed to defeat the spell. There was one side effect - Crowley lost his mistress Althea Gyles to Leonard Smithers, a publisher, who was specialized in pornography."

From.... http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/crowley.htm

The quality of the usual circumlocution, circumscription and obfuscation concerning the issue of social-welfare provision which we are currently receiving from our "Post Friedmanion" politicians has been thrown into sharp relief by "The Credit Crunch". What one asks will The Empire do when the populace discover that their beloved leader is "in-the-buff"?

(NB. I will update my links to "Astrotometry" regularly on my thread "Particle Beam Physics/Weapons an Intelligence Black Hole?" as I believe that this information belongs to everyone and I encourage others to make their friends, family, colleagues -and enemies?- aware of his work.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYZbZQvY9DM&playnext_from=TL&videos=-P0gbQ0AbI4
..so for regular "Seismic Updates" please view thread http://medialens.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=10298#10298 )

"The Clegg-Cameron" (sequel to "The Coming of Television-Head")

Are we to be convinced by the mellifluous perfumes of "The Clegg-Cameron"?
I think not, I think not.
"Sorry is as sorry does", says my friend the wife of the local Unitarian Minister Emeritus, I wish the apologists for Monetarism would stop apologising and do something. It is utterly asinine for national governments to continue to treat their populaces like unheeding cash-cows. We might ask ourselves, "How did we ever let it go so far?" but that doesn't solve the problem. We are heading for a socio-political spasm which will shake the foundations of the global socio-political system, the result of which one dare not predict.

"Charity Begins at Home"

Qu:To whom are we as a nation now charitable?
Ans:The financial institutions.

The remainder of the population to whom the charitable principle should be applied have been ignored.
The principles of Aneurin Bevan's*, Sir William Beveridge's** (and others) "Welfare State" have not just been subverted by "The Monetarist Elite" but actually inverted by that same elite's use of "the rod of nihilism" on our communities.
Quote...
""I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it. 'I have a problem, I'll get a grant.' 'I'm homeless, the government must house me.' They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation**."

Prime minister Margaret Thatcher, talking to Women's Own magazine, October 31 1987"

From http://briandeer.com/social/thatcher-society.htm

*Go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/southeast/halloffame/public_life/aneurin_bevan.shtml

**Go to:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWbeveridgereport.htm

**Under-score mine. How is an infant or paraplegic obligated to contribute to the monetarist upstream? The notion of obligation is pure Social Darwinism (note how the paradigm collapses under close examination).

For those who question my grasp of economics here I draw the readers attention to the motion of the cycles of public and private finance in our economy. Our Welfare State and the entire Public Service Sector have been being vampirised with increasing success (mainly by the interference of private financial institutions in the movement of capital) over recent decades*, if this process is allowed to continue all we will be left with is a corpse (or worse). This has occurred because our so-called "Public Guardians" (including the media) have either actively encouraged or colluded in the process. I do not believe that it is any coincidence that the integrity of our parliamentary representatives (as a whole) was both under greater scrutiny and in greater question than at any other time in living memory prior to our last "election".

*By subtle methods (such as investment control and collateral "log-jamming") and others not so subtle (such as the blunt-instrument of the "Private Finance Initiative", international purchase control forcing credit use -not so prevalent now of-course-, or the simple expedient of investing in the phone company that your customer uses and then forcing them to climb your phone-tree ad nauseum* and/or making the retrieval of funds and self-management of their account as difficult as possible). These same games are also played with private/personal finance by the financially powerful cabals in order to maintain "minimum aperture" on the valve of the monetarist upstream.

*Or at least it feels that way (I suppose ""Thugee" is as "Thugee" does" as well though). You can also try explaining the notion of benefit entitlement to someone who still believes in the caste system (before they manage to..........), "but seriously folks" time is money (which is why we need The Post Office and Post Offices)!

Free The Weed

Go to http://www.drugdevelopment-technology.com/projects/sativex/ http://www.sativex.co.uk/press

I mean what nonsense?! How can you tell people marijuana causes psychosis (and criminalise it) at the same time as prescribing it? It may be true that badly bred marijuana causes psychosis, this is not a reason to ban it, it is a reason to improve and increase research into this amazing plant; as what we are discovering about marjuana's remarkable "reflective capabilities" (clumsy phraseology I know and probably better expressed in many other languages, languages which have -unfortunately- been ground under the Anglo-Saxon jackboot), is far more valuable to society than are the social consequences of what is basically a paranoid and hypocritical attitude towards the plant.
Just think, how many of The World's economic, political, environmental and social problems would be solved if we legalised the recreational and medicinal use of; opium, coca (in it's natural state) and marijuana and re-assessed our attitude towards entheogenic ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entheogen -Edit 30/12/10-) medicine* generally?

*"Bunkum!" You say? Not as "Bunkum" as saying "Homeopathy?! Vibrational Medicine?! Impossible! Why? Of-course it's impossible we don't know how it can happen! In any case there is no evidence that such processes as "the memory of water" exist!"* go to http://www.hado.net/ .

*I paraphrase only slightly remarks made by a Swiss doctor on "The Radio5 Live Breakfast Show" some years ago.

In recent years The British Army has burnt it's largest ever single haul of Afghani hashish (some 250 tons -approx-).
16 Ounces per Pound, 2240 Pounds per Ton 250 times is 8,960,000 Ounces. If sold on the street at a very reasonable £100/ounce one can see that the total value of the haul is Eight Hundred and Ninety-Six Million Pounds.*
The U.K government then paid the Afghani farmers for the pleasure of burning it all in one go. This harvest could provide revenue both to us and to them (if we can prove capable of doing business like human beings and not like imperialist aggressors). People are dying in Afghanistan, for what? So that corrupt politicians, doctors, lawyers and others can perpetuate the myth that by keeping many entheogens, herbs, fungi and other non-synthetic substances illegal we are somehow battling social evils (a "society" which on other occasions our "lassiez-faire" administration claims doesn't exist -see above-**), instead of revealing what the pursuance of such a policy really means to them in financial terms?

*£896,000,000 is the basic market value, the secondary and tertiary financial benefits to the economy would obviously be considerable.

**If "The Clegg-Cameron" is to be believed it is possible to go from "no society" to "Big Society" in one "giant leap", is this Expansion Theory gone mad?

Of Self and State

If we cannot discriminate between self and state we cannot act (which is the real problem with Monetarism it cannot differentiate, partakes only of Thanatos and is therefore incapable of real action). In a state of implosion since it's manifestation (by which I mean when the "laissez faire ice-berg" -the tip of which is Monetarist economic theory-, became apparent ), the philosophy of Monetarism is singular in that we are able to actually visibly witness* it's demise. Based on no base (in other words unsustainable), Monetarist economics was the philosophy of negation, manifesting simply in order to indicate the necessity for change.

*With our "new eyes" re: Nikola Tesla and "Photonic Vibration Theory".

New Welfare Initiative

Goodness knows we need some initiative to be taken with regard to welfare provision in the U.K., no one I know thinks that "The Under-Class" doesn't need to be empowered in this country but yet again having two heads results in half-measures!

What could be more transparently Thanotic than this little morsel... http://www.netmums.com/coffeehouse/general-coffeehouse-chat-514/news-current-affairs-topical-discussion-12/457439-hundreds-playground-schemes-mothballed.html http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/aug/11/playground-plans-frozen-spending-cuts ?

I wonder how many playgrounds have been cancelled in the private education system.

NB (Ed's Note 17/01/11): In my opening paragraphs I say "preparing to employ "Whig" and "Tory" notions of social justice", I am forced to amend this comment in the light of the many recent attacks on what remains of our Welfare State and National Health Service. Much of the recently passed economic legislation to which I refer resembles not so much the application of "Whig" and "Tory" notions of social justice as the ravenings of untrammelled Monetarism. This however does not detract from the far more important realisation that the "Monetarist Beast" rages because it has forseen it's own end. I crave indulgence for my former ("liberal"), notion that such could ever have been otherwise.

"Eros and Chaos" (For those who wish to explore the lore of The Greek Pantheon further)

" Primeval Chaos, which some have called a void and others have equalled with disorder, appears sometimes as a being capable of intercourse and procreation." From www.maicar.com
Also....
"Aristophanes, for example, says that Chaos exists from the beginning together with Nyx, Erebus and Tartarus. An egg laid by Nyx in Erebus gave birth to Eros, who, mingling in Tartarus with murky Chaos begot … the race of birds."

"Unsustainable Economy", another way of expressing zero?

Also see: "A "Coalition of the Willing" ?" Go to:  http://gkhales.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/i-say-again-this-is-no-parliament.html
 
"Arbeit Macht Frei!"

Quote: "Government Set to Strip Disabled People's Basic Human Rights

The government’s ill-thought through plans to scrap the Independent Living Fund (ILF) from 2015 will not only wreck disabled people’s lives but potentially push them into residential institutions rather than being able to live in the community. This is in spite of these rights being guaranteed by the ratification of a United Nations Convention." Go to http://carerwatch.wordpress.com/2012/02/06/condem-government-set-to-strip-disabled-peoples-basic-human-rights/

Quote: "This is not wartime Nazi Germany and Cameron's attacks on the vulnerable and needy must be stopped

As a result of Cameron's spurious recent behaviour in pushing through crippling, quite literally for some, amendments to disability benefits, it has become clear that the attached issues are even more heinous that the blueprint of the Welfare Reform Bill, itself.

And it is this: disabled people will now face the prospect of unlimited unpaid work or they will be subject to cuts in their benefits. For millions that is nothing more than a line on a page but for many terrified and suicidal others, it is anything but." For full article go to
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2102484/This-wartime-Nazi-Germany-Camerons-attacks-vulnerable-needy-stopped.html (Also see "comments").

Quote: "U.N Disabilities Convention Issues Unequivocal Warning to U.K Government

Disability Rights UK warmly welcomes the report by the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) on the implementation of the right of disabled people to independent living in the context of the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities.

Liz Sayce OBE, Disability Rights UK Chief Executive, says:
“The JCHR firmly asserts the status of the UN Disabilities Convention in our domestic policy and law. They have issued an unequivocal warning to the Government that their reform puts disabled people’s lives at risk. The Government must conduct a full assessment of the cumulative impact of current reforms on disabled people and ensure disabled people are involved fully and timely in developing policies which affect them. We welcome the Committee’s recommendation to assess the need for a freestanding right to independent living. We urge the Government to take real steps to ensure that disabled people have the same level of choice and control and freedom in their daily lives as other non-disabled people.”

Sue Bott, Director of Empowerment and Development, says:
“Support for disabled people is like a house of cards. Remove one, and the house will collapse. Without it, disabled people will not be able to participate equally in society, as full citizens. The JCHR rightly recognises that much of the support is determined locally. We hope that local authorities and others will respond to the report’s recommendations and work with disabled people’s organisations to ensure that disabled people can fully exercise their right to independent living.” Go to http://www.radar.org.uk/news/news-release-disabled-people-must-be-given-right-to-support-says-disability-rights-uk/

The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project

 

"A "Strange-Love" Indeed?"

Does it not seem both cruel and unusual that at a time when the rights of the disabled (and other-wise disadvantaged), in Britain and Europe are being challenged and eroded ,in ways which we have not seen being employed to accomplish the task since The Second World War, that the British can be seen (ostensibly), celebrating the degree of inclusion within their society and diversity of their culture? The "benefit scroungers" who claim Disability Living Allowance and Incapacity Benefit are being told "work will make you free" by a society that has received the gift of sight from the Olympic/Paralympic flame that has been burning so brightly above our capital city, it is surely no coincidence, however, that this Hitlerite symbol has obscured rather than illuminated the true nature of the regime that now attempts to control the thoughts and actions of the sheepish masses. "Tell a big lie and keep on telling it" was Goebbels's creed, a creed expounded in order that the wider beliefs of the eugenicist group of people of which he was a member should both come to ascendancy and achieve the dominance that was their raison d'etre. Should it come as a surprise that the (again ostensibly), polarised debate about the true nature of evolution that so characterised the wars and conflicts (both national and international), of the twentieth century has lost it's definition at the beginning of the twenty first? One feels that one should pose the question to our social science students (if they can find the time whilst avoiding the herds of pachyderms which now populate -through no fault of their own-, our academic institutions); "Did The Third Reich Continue or the Fourth Reich Commence? (discuss) . Is not the current "drive to inclusion" really nothing more than another expression of the eugenicist nature of our society? "It's o.k they're like us really, look there's one balancing a ball on it's nose!" is not the comment of one truly comfortable with their surroundings. It is surely only by reassuring ourselves by giving air-time to the patronising and condescending assertions of Dr. Goebbels that we can be "comfortable" with an economic system that allows an increasingly more privileged minority to continue to prosper at the expense of the most vulnerable. There are some that would claim that I am merely proselytising for a regime that would rather those with disabilities be kept "out of sight and out of mind", but such could not be further from the truth for I believe that instead of the myopic, self-congratulatory and conceited attitudes we currently see displayed as "inclusive" and promoting of "diversity" (I like to play ultimate Frisbee difficult in a wheel-chair but far from impossible on prosthetic legs -as long as you keep them a fair length! -), both the disabled and able-bodied in our society should be subject to greater scrutiny, should we do so we may become aware of the serendipity that identifies the coincidence of the pitiful "apology" offered to the victims of Thalidomide treatment occurring during the good doctor's Paralympic spectacle.

 The privileged elite are prepared to allow the disabled to look like them they are not so prepared that the disabled should be like them. Opportunity and independence are not rights to be earned but gifts to be protected, no-one should have the right to say; "you are not free until you work for me", that way leads to the gas-chambers and whilst the populace is distracted by this "bread" and these "circuses" one should perhaps recall just what it was that happened once Dr.Strangelove had declared; "mien Fuhrer I can walk!"

Video...

Toxic Clean-ups, Radiation and "Project Abaris"

Quote: "The Mainichi Daily News, November 11, 2011:

“A research team here has succeeded in developing a method of removing radioactive cesium from sludge using bacteria” [...]

They “collected sludge from a swimming pool at a public school in the Fukushima Prefecture capital of Fukushima and ran experiments there in September.”

“The researchers mixed 90 grams of photosynthetic bacteria with alginic acid and other chemicals” [...]

“Radiation levels ranging from 12.04 to 14.54 microsieverts per hour at the start of the experiment were found to have dropped to between 2.6 and 4.1 microsieverts per hour by the end of the third day.” [...]

“Through dehydration and incineration, the volume of the used bacteria mixture can be reduced to a seventy-fifth of its original volume, and weight to a hundredth.” [...]

It’s reminiscent of the controversial ‘magic microbe‘ method used by during last year’s massive blowout in the Gulf of Mexico: “There’s a new form of microbiology that is… is attacking this plume and using it as a food source” -BP official Mike Utsler." Go to http://enenews.com/mainichi-photosynthetic-bacteria-used-in-fukushima-city-to-reduce-radioactive-cesium-levels

Project Abaris
Put simply we cannot afford to allow long-term storage of radioactive waste on Earth (NB. the above microbes are still radioactive, as would be any medium of "organic capture"), safe disposal can only mean The Sun, the human race has been living on borrowed time since it developed the hubris neccesary in order to attempt to exploit it's imagined dominance of the atom, the consumption of the resulting waste within the fusion fires of The Sun is the only possible solution (it would be perhaps advisable however to ensure that those responsible for dropping the last two environmental monitoring satellites into The Pacific not be given responsibilty for the project). 
  The "rocket-Sun" method achieves Super-Symmentry in "Hyper-Time" (when performed correctly). re: "Astrotometry" (go to:  https://www.youtube.com/user/astrotometry )

"Nuclear Scum" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1LtmqbTC48

"Could "Wikileaks" Sink the Ship?"

"Squeak!" one might squeal...However Mr. Assange seems ("Rushdie-like"), to have attracted a "Waspish Fatwa" and one suspects that he may also have suffered from being "Vanunued"..( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordechai_Vanunu ).
One senses that Mr.Assange's "hunt for the truth" would have benefited from a wider demographic. Like Rushdie he seems to think that one achieves more by dramatic martyrdom than considered action, again there is a sense that he is "preaching to the choir".
Could we lose the ability to disseminate vital information about the planet's welfare because certain so-called "Whistle Blowers" have poisoned the well of public confidence in the quest for ever more "sensational" revelations about the major powers?
Where is the information on Kashiwazaki-Kariwa (go to http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/features/earthquake-fire-and-nuclear-l/ -Edited 11/12/10-)? What really happened to Vesta's off-shore wind-farm contracts? Where did A.I.D.S come from? What is the real cost of depleted uranium usage? How do you make a cow "mad"? Is fluoride really dangerous? Does genetic modification represent a "Frankenstein's Monster"? Will your mobile phone, "Bluetooth" or "Wifi" rot your brain? What is the truth about the incineration industry or the CO2 profile of the nuclear industry? These are the vital questions.
Whilst "Wikileaks" and Mr.Assange attract all the attention to themselves do not their actions also serve to further obscure the already occluded reality of our planetary environment's current state? Will it be necessary for more campaigning environmentalists to be murdered before their work is taken seriously, whilst others congratulate themselves about "what clever boys and girls they are" for pulling one more soft fruit from the already over-stuffed international pie?

"I would rather burn Capitalism over a slow fire than make a "St.Bartholemew's Night" of it's perpetrators." Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Having said all this of-course the prospect of being forced to observe the beast he has roused then consumming poor Mr.Assange is extremely unedifying.
Clearly the true extent of corruption within our national governments, international corporations and organisations has reached crisis level (but we knew that didn't we?), however over-concentration on the political and military aspects of this infection will surely prove counter-productive and may result simply in a strengthening of the security posture of all national administrations.
One hesitates to fully support Assange because knowing "The Game" of international espionage assures one that one requires more than revolutionary zeal to justify one's actions lest disclosure of state security secrets (esp. military), by such "revolutionaries" to foreign powers, attracts the ire of the original states population and hardens their opinion against other "Whistle Blowers" who are "tarred-with-the-same-brush". One must be able to demonstrate that is in the public's interest that such revelations be made or (as I have said), one risks a "tightening-of-the-grip" by the security services of the state (or international financial cabal), concerned which now feels that that it is mandated to persue such a course.


follow @Williamtheb

Credit where credit is due however.... http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/wikileaks-us-engineers-ways-to-force-feed-eur/blog/31989
Comment... http://voices.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2010/12/wikileaks_no_threat_top_german.html

Regardless of whether we support Mr. Assange in all his ways or not where freedom of speech and information are genuinely compromised we must respond, currently of primary concern to all those "hacks" making copy out of the deluge must be the welfare of Pfc (Private First Class) Bradley Manning, who is currently paying the price for "Wikileaks'" success..... http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-12-17/bradley-manning-wikileaks-alleged-sources-life-in-prison/?cid=hp:mainpromo5 Letter to Commanding Officer, US MCB Quantico Brig: http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/bradleymanning?source=tw


This is a thought provoking piece... http://www.politicususa.com/en/transparency-hypocrisy-assange?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+politicususa%2FfJAl+%28Politicus+USA+%29&utm_content=Twitter I ask why it is that two women who claim to have been raped have been exposed to such attention?

Other "Voices of Dissent"

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-net-delusion-how-not-to-liberate-the-world-by-evgeny-morozov-2177713.html#Scene_1

Although I ask would not legislation passed barring internet companies from breaching a recognised and internationally sanctioned code of data protection better achieve Morozov's aims than the; "Encryption and security protocols"..which (according to "The Independent"),..."are high on his list"?

"Democracy Now!" http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/1/14/part_iiicelandic_parliamentarian_calls_us_subpoena_of_her_twitter_account_over_wikileaks_involvement_disturbing Also see "Former Banker Hands Offshore Account Data to WikiLeaks" http://www.democracynow.org/2011/1/18/headlines.

However...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8180528/Wikileaks-new-diplomatic-cables-contain-UFO-details-says-Julian-Assange.html

Depleted Uranium "The Progressive Review"

Deserving of it's own thread follows; "Stories From the Archives of "The "Progressive Review" concerning the use of Depleted Uranium (I draw the readers special attention to the stories concerning the failure of Italian and German efforts to instigate a moratorium on the use of d.u munitions by The European Union).


Quote: "MORE DAMAGE FROM DEPLETED URANIUM FOUND

GUARDIAN, UK - Depleted uranium, which is used in armor-piercing ammunition, causes widespread damage to DNA which could lead to lung cancer, according to a study of the metal's effects on human lung cells. The study adds to growing evidence that DU causes health problems on battlefields long after hostilities have ceased.0508 05 1DU is a byproduct of uranium refinement for nuclear power. It is much less radioactive than other uranium isotopes, and its high density - twice that of lead - makes it useful for armor and armor piercing shells. It has been used in conflicts including Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq and there have been increasing concerns about the health effects of DU dust left on the battlefield. In November, the Ministry of Defense was forced to counteract claims that apparent increases in cancers and birth defects among Iraqis in southern Iraq were due to DU in weapons.

Now researchers at the University of Southern Maine have shown that DU damages DNA in human lung cells. The team, led by John Pierce Wise, exposed cultures of the cells to uranium compounds at different concentrations. The compounds caused breaks in the chromosomes within cells and stopped them from growing and dividing healthily. "These data suggest that exposure to particulate DU may pose a significant [DNA damage] risk and could possibly result in lung cancer," the team wrote in the journal Chemical Research in Toxicology. . . Prof Wise said it is too early to say whether DU causes lung cancer in people exposed on the battlefield because the disease takes several decades to develop.
"Our data suggest that it should be monitored as the potential risk is there," he said.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/08/1059/

DEPLETED URANIUM BACK IN THE NEWS

AUDREY PARENTE, DAYTONA BEACH HERALD, FL - Lori Brim cradled her son in her arms for three months before he died at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. Dustin Brim, a 22-year-old Army specialist had collapsed three years ago in Iraq from a very aggressive cancer that attacked his kidney, caused a mass to grow over his esophagus and collapsed a lung. The problems she saw during her time at Walter Reed, including her son screaming in pain while doctors argued over medications, had nothing to do with mold and shabby conditions documented in recent news reports. What this mother saw was an unexplainable illness consuming her son.

And what she has learned since her son's death is that his was not an isolated case. Lori Brim has joined other parents, hundreds of other sick soldiers, legislators, research scientists and environmental activists who say the cause of their problems results from exposure to depleted uranium, a radioactive metal used in the manufacture of U.S. tank armor and weapon casings.

Health and environmental effects of depleted uranium are at the heart of scientific studies, a lawsuit in the New York courts and legislative bills in more than a dozen states (although not in Florida). . .

Despite a 1996 U.N. resolution opposing its use because of discovery of health problems after the first Gulf War, the military studies have concluded there was no evidence that exposure to the metal caused illnesses. . .

To the military, the effectiveness of weapons and armor made with depleted uranium outweighs any residual effects. Their bottom line: Depleted uranium saves soldiers' lives in combat. . .

But Brim and others think there will not be enough known until soldiers are tested for exposure. They compare the debate over depleted uranium to the controversy surrounding Agent Orange, the toxic herbicide used to defoliate the jungles of Vietnam. Speculation over its effects continued for more than two decades before the Defense Department agreed to compensate veterans who suffered from ailments linked to its use. . .

http://www.news-journalonline.com/special/uranium/DUFOLO041507.htm

CANADIAN REPORT: U.S. USE OF DEPLETED URANIUM RAISED RADIOACTIVITY 300 TIMES

MNA - Canadian research centers have reported that during the war against Iraq the U.S. military used depleted uranium weapons which caused the radiation level to rise at least 300 times above normal, and the weapons caused similar effects in Afghanistan.

U.S. troops have recently begun removing contaminated topsoil in Iraq, taking it to an unknown location. Scientists believe the next generation of children of citizens of both countries exposed to DU will suffer from higher rates of birth defects and cancer.

The Uranium Medical Research Center issued a report based on a 13-day survey throughout the primary conflict zones in urban and rural areas of central and southern Iraq on October 2003, according to Risq News. . .

The most disturbing circumstance was observed in the U.S. occupied base in southwestern Baghdad in the Auweirj district. It is close to the international airport and hosts one of the largest coalition bases around Baghdad, occupying the operational headquarters of the Iraqi Special Republican Guard. . . Departing the coalition-occupied base was a long, a steady stream of tandem-axle dump trucks carrying full loads of sand, heading south away from the city. Returning from the south was a second stream of fully loaded dump trucks waiting to enter the base. As the team passed the base's main entrance, the gates were opened to reveal bulldozers spreading soil while front-end loaders were filling the trucks that had just emptied their loads of soil (silt and sand). The arriving trucks were delivering loads of sand into the base while the departing trucks were hauling away the base's topsoil.

DEPLETED URANIUM FOUND IN TROOPS

JUAN GONZALEZ, NY DAILY NEWS - Four soldiers from a New York Army National Guard company serving in Iraq are contaminated with radiation likely caused by dust from depleted uranium shells fired by U.S. troops, a Daily News investigation has found. They are among several members of the same company, the 442nd Military Police, who say they have been battling persistent physical ailments that began last summer in the Iraqi town of Samawah. . . A nuclear medicine expert who examined and tested nine soldiers from the company says that four "almost certainly" inhaled radioactive dust from exploded American shells manufactured with depleted uranium. Laboratory tests conducted at the request of The News revealed traces of two manmade forms of uranium in urine samples from four of the soldiers.


CARD GIVEN BRITISH TROOPS IN IRAQ



NOTE: THE MINISTRY OF DEFENSE WEB PAGE HAS BEEN TAKEN DOWN


BRITISH ISSUE DEPLETED URANIUM WARNING CARDS TO ITS TROOPS IN IRAQ

WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION SUPPRESSED STUDY ON DEPLETED URANIUM

ROB EDWARDS, SUNDAY HERALD, UK - An expert report warning that the long-term health of Iraq's civilian population would be endangered by British and US depleted uranium weapons has been kept secret. The study by three leading radiation scientists cautioned that children and adults could contract cancer after breathing in dust containing DU, which is radioactive and chemically toxic. But it was blocked from publication by the World Health Organisation, which employed the main author, Dr Keith Baverstock, as a senior radiation advisor. He alleges that it was deliberately suppressed, though this is denied by WHO.

Baverstock also believes that if the study had been published when it was completed in 2001, there would have been more pressure on the US and UK to limit their use of DU weapons in last year's war, and to clean up afterwards. Hundreds of thousands of DU shells were fired by coalition tanks and planes during the conflict, and there has been no comprehensive decontamination. Experts from the United Nations Environment Program have so far not been allowed into Iraq to assess the pollution.

U.S. LEFT 75 TONS OF DEPLETED URANIUM TO POLLUTE IRAQ

U.S. FORCES UNLEASHED at least 75 tons of toxic depleted uranium on Iraq during the war, reports the Christian Science Monitor. An unnamed U.S. Central Command spokesman disclosed to the Monitor last week that coalition forces fired 300,000 bullets coated with armored-piercing depleted uranium during the war. "The normal combat mix for these 30-mm rounds is five DU bullets to 1 -- a mix that would have left about 75 tons of DU in Iraq," wrote correspondent Scott Peterson. Peterson measured four sites around Baghdad struck with depleted uranium munitions and found high levels of radioactive contamination, but few warnings to this effect issued among the populace at large. While the Pentagon maintains that spent weapons coated with the low-level, radioactive nuclear-waste are relatively harmless, Peterson notes that U.S. soldiers have taken it among themselves to print leaflets or post signs warning of DU contamination. "After we shoot something with DU, we're not supposed to go around it, due to the fact that it could cause cancer," said one sergeant requesting anonymity.

DEPLETED URANIUM

PAUL KRASSNER, NY METRO - The officer came around a row of missiles, and Ethan asked him the question he had for him about his TAD request, and then asked him, "What the hell kind of missiles are these?"

"Those aren't missiles; they're cobalt jackets."

"What are they for?"

"Well, this is 'need to know,' so keep your mouth shut, but they are designed to slide on over most of our conventional ordinance. They're made out of radioactive cobalt, and when the bomb they're wrapped around detonates, they contaminate everything in the blast zone and quite a bit beyond."

"So they turn regular ordinance into nukes?"

"No, not exactly. The cobalt doesn't detonate itself. It just scatters everywhere."

"Well, what? Does the radiation kill people?"

"Not immediately. Cobalt jackets will not likely ever be used. They're for a situation where the U.S. government is crumbling during a time of war, and foreign takeover is imminent. We won't capitulate. We basically have a scorched earth policy. If we are going to lose, we arm everything with cobalt ­ and I mean everything; we have jackets at nearly every missile magazine in the world, on land or at sea ­ and contaminate the world. If we can't have it, nobody can. . .

I emailed the anecdote to no-nukes activist Harvey Wasserman, author of The Last Energy War and co-author of The Superpower of Peace. I asked him to comment in a couple of hundred words:

"This nightmare has now essentially come true with the use of depleted uranium on anti-tank and other shells in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq. The military rationale is that the super-hard depleted uranium helps shells penetrate tanks and other hard structures. But the long-term effect is that the uranium vaporizes upon explosion and contaminates everything for hundreds of yards, if not miles."

STUDY FINDS DEPLETED URANIUM USED IN AFGHANISTAN

IRAQI CITIES HOT WITH DEPLETED URANIUM

SARA FLOUNDERS, COASTAL POST, CA - In hot spots in downtown Baghdad, reporters have measured radiation levels that are 1,000 to 1,900 times higher than normal background radiation levels. It has also opened a debate in the Netherlands parliament and media as 1,100 Dutch troops in Kuwait prepare to enter Iraq as part of the U.S./British-led occupation forces. The Dutch are concerned about the danger of radioactive poisoning and radiation sickness in Iraq. Washington has assured the Dutch government that it used no DU weapons near Al-Samawah, the town where Dutch troops will be stationed. But Dutch journalists and anti-war forces have already found holes in the U.S. stories, according to an article on the Radio Free Europe website. . .

In this year's war on Iraq, the Pentagon used its radioactive arsenal mainly in the urban centers, rather than in desert battlefields as in 1991. Many hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people and U.S. soldiers, along with British, Polish, Japanese and Dutch soldiers sent to join the occupation, will suffer the consequences. The real extent of injuries, chronic illness, long-term disabilities and genetic birth defects won't be apparent for five to 10 years.

By now, half of all the 697,000 U.S. soldiers involved in the 1991 war have reported serious illnesses. According to the American Gulf War Veterans Association, more than 30 percent of these soldiers are chronically ill and are receiving disability benefits from the Veterans Administration. Such a high occurrence of various symptoms has led to the illnesses being named Gulf War Syndrome.

DEPLETED URANIUM: DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL

JAY SHAFT, COALITION FOR FREE THOUGHT IN MEDIA - In three separate interviews a U.S. Special Operations Command Colonel admitted that the U.S. and Great Britain fired 500 tons of DU munitions into Iraq. He has also informed me that the GBU-28 BLU 113 Penetrator Bunker Buster 5000 pound bomb contains DU in the warhead. Until now, as far as I know, the materials used to make the warhead of the GBU-28 have remained shrouded in mystery. He admitted that privately the Pentagon has acknowledged the health hazards of DU for years. . .

J.S.: What about the cities? Did you deliberately use DU on them?

U.S.C.: Let's just say that we didn't do anything to avoid using DU in cities or heavily populated areas. I know that I selected some DU bunker busters because of the fact that they have a high penetration factor. I used DU weapons exclusively on some targets so as to ensure maximum damage on those targets. You don't want to just halfway destroy some targets, you want maximum damage. . .

J.S.: What about the health risks that are associated with DU? Or do you deny there are any?

U.S.C.: You are determined to get me to make a statement about the health risks aren't you?

J.S.: If you will, I want to see what the behind the scenes view of DU is in the Pentagon.

U.S.C.: Well. . . (long pause, followed by heavy profanity). . . Okay, I'll give you some dirt if that's what you're looking for. The Pentagon knows there are huge health risks associated with DU They know from years of monitoring our own test ranges and manufacturing facilities.

There were parts of Iraq designated as high contamination areas before we ever placed any troops on the ground. The areas around Basra, Jalibah, Talil, most of the southern desert, and various other hot spots were all identified as contaminated before the war. Some of the areas in the southern desert region along the Kuwaiti border are especially radioactive on scans and tests.
One of our test ranges in Saudi Arabia shows over 1000 times the normal background level for radiation. We have test ranges in the U.S. that are extremely contaminated; hell, they have been since the 80's and nothing is ever said publicly. Don't ask don't tell is not only applied to gays, it is applied to this matter very heavily.

I know at one time the theory was developed that any soldier exposed to DU shells should have to wear full MOP gear (the chemical protective suit). But they realized that just wouldn't be practical and it was never openly discussed again.

J.S.: So the stories that they know DU is harmful are true?

U.S.C.: Yes, there is no doubt that most high level commanders who were around during the 80's know about it.

J.S.: So how do you feel about the fact that you exposed your own men to DU?

U.S.C.: F...k you!! What do you know about my job? I did what I had to do to take out the targets I was given. If it was necessary to use DU, than I put it in my target analysis reports. I didn't actually fire the rounds myself; I work in a remote office.

J.S.: So you'll never have to worry about being exposed to DU huh? Very brave.

U.S.C.: (lot's of profanity) this interview is over with (more profanity, followed by the phone slamming down)

U.S. TO USE DEPLETED URANIUM AGAIN

BBC - A United States defense official has said moves to ban depleted uranium ammunition are just an attempt by America's enemies to blunt its military might. Colonel James Naughton of US Army Materiel Command said Iraqi complaints about depleted uranium shells had no medical basis. "They want it to go away because we kicked the crap out of them," he told a Pentagon briefing.

If war starts, tons of depleted uranium weapons are likely to be used by British and American tanks and by ground attack aircraft. Some believe people are still suffering ill health from ammunition used in the Gulf War 12 years ago, and other conflicts. In the House of Commons in London on Monday, Labor MP Joan Ruddock said a test of the UK Government's pledge to keep civilian casualties to a minimum in an attack on Iraq would include not using depleted uranium weapons.

Apparently anticipating complaints, the US defense department briefed journalists about DU - making it plain it would continue to be used. . .

Cancer surgeons in the southern Iraqi port of Basra report a marked increase in cancers which they suspect were caused by DU contamination from tank battles on the farmland to the west of the city. . . Depleted uranium is mildly radioactive but the main health concern is that it is a heavy metal, potentially poisonous. The likelihood of absorbing it is increased significantly if a weapon has struck a target and exploded because the DU vaporizes into a fine dust and can be inhaled. . .

A 1995 report from the US Army Environmental Policy Institute, for example, said: "If DU enters the body, it has the potential to generate significant medical consequences."

UN AGENCY FINDS DEPLETED URANIUM IN BOSNIA AREA BOMBED BY U.S.

RADIATION DETECTED IN BOSNIA WHERE DEPLETED URANIUM WAS USED

ANDY KERSHAW, COUNTERPUNCH, DECEMBER 1, 2001 - I nearly lost my breakfast last week at the Basrah Maternity and Children's Hospital in southern Iraq. Dr Amer, the hospital's director, had invited me into a room in which were displayed color photographs of what, in cold medical language, are called "congenital anomalies," but what you and I would better understand as horrific birth deformities. The images of these babies were head-spinningly grotesque. . . At one point I had to grab hold of the back of a chair to support my legs. . .

During the Gulf war, Britain and the United States pounded the city and its surroundings with 96,000 depleted-uranium shells. The wretched creatures in the photographs--for they were scarcely human--are the result, Dr Amer said. He guided me past pictures of children born without eyes, without brains. Another had arrived in the world with only half a head, nothing above the eyes. Then there was a head with legs, babies without genitalia, a little girl born with her brain outside her skull and the whatever-it-was whose eyes were below the level of its nose. Then the chair-grabbing moment--a photograph of what I can only describe (inadequately) as a pair of buttocks with a face and two amphibian arms. Mercifully, none of these babies survived for long.

Depleted uranium has an incubation period in humans of five years. In the four years from 1991 (the end of the Gulf war) until 1994, the Basrah Maternity Hospital saw 11 congenital anomalies. Last year there were 221. Then there is the alarming increase in cases of leukemia among Basrah babies lucky enough to have been born with the full complement of limbs and features in the right place. The hospital treated 15 children with leukemia in 1993. In 2000 it was 60. By the end of this year that figure again will be topped. And so it will go on. Forever. Depleted uranium has a half-life of 4.1 billion years. Total disintegration occurs after 25 billion years, the age of the earth

RAMZI KYSIA, COUNTERPUNCH, DECEMBER 28, 2001 - According to [a] study, malignancies and leukemia's among children under the age of 15 have more than tripled since 1990. Whereas in 1990 young children accounted for only 13 per cent of cancer cases, today over 56 per cent of all cancer in Iraq occurs among children under the age of 5.

Navy & Marines stop using it

USA TODAY: Thousands more people than anticipated face health and pollution threats from plutonium and other highly radioactive elements that fouled vast amounts of uranium recycled by the U.S. nuclear weapons program over the past 50 years . . . New federal studies reviewed by USA Today show that the program yielded 250,000 tons of tainted uranium -- roughly double the estimates of two years ago. The material was handled at about 10 times the number of sites revealed previously, reaching more than 100 federal plants, private manufacturers and universities. The studies suggest that thousands more workers than expected might have unwittingly faced radiation risks beyond those associated with normal uranium, increasing their odds of developing cancer and other ailments. That places an unexpected burden on a soon-to-begin federal program to compensate sick nuclear weapons workers . . . Amid all the controversy, the Navy and Marines have decided to abandon use of the depleted-uranium munitions. Both have switched to tungsten, a non-radioactive, high-density metal. "We're not considering depleted uranium anymore because of the environmental problems associated with it, be them real or perceived," says Col. Clayton Nans, head of the Marines' Advanced Amphibious Assault Vehicle program and former chief of the service's firepower division. "We don't want to be in a position of having someone say, 'You can't bring your armor piercing rounds on the battlefield.' " MORE

FEBRUARY 2001

MATTHEW CHAPMAN, BBC: The residents of a Caribbean island used as a bombing range are claiming more than $100m in damages from the US Navy over claims that ammunition including depleted uranium shells have caused an epidemic of cancers there. More than a third of the 9,000 inhabitants of Vieques have been found to be suffering from a range of serious illnesses and cancers, which doctors have linked to decades of bombing by the US and the military of other countries including the British Royal Navy. According to official Puerto Rican figures, cancer rates on the island are soaring, with the numbers of people suffering from cancer of the breast, cervix and uterus up by 300% over the past 20 years. The court case brought by the islanders will be closely watched by the governments of NATO countries which sent troops to Kosovo and the Gulf War where the use of DU shells has been linked with leukemia cases . . . Campaigners on the island made an order through the Freedom of Information Act to force the Navy to publicly admit it had fired DU shells onto a range on the eastern tip of the island in 1999 . . . Scientists, however, who have conducted soil samples on the ranges say they have found evidence of systematic bombing with DU shells going back at least a decade. BBC

JANUARY 2001

JOHN LICHFIELD, INDEPENDENT, LONDON: Some shells fired in the Gulf and Balkan wars contained a type of recycled nuclear waste that is much more hazardous than depleted uranium, according to a book to be published in France . The book, "Depleted Uranium: The Invisible War," could change the debate on whether weapons used by the United States and NATO caused widespread sickness among war veterans and civilians. The authors, a Frenchman, a Belgian and an American, produce evidence that the US government knew six years ago that its stocks of "safe" depleted uranium had been contaminated by spent nuclear fuels. Whether this recycled material was mixed up with the "classic" depleted uranium accidentally or deliberately remains unclear . . . In other words, the entire DU debate has been based on false premises. The findings of Martin Meissonnier, Frederic Loore and Roger Trilling have been independently confirmed in the past few days by researchers at a Swiss government laboratory, which analyzed spent US munitions from Kosovo. The lab found that the shells contained traces of an isotope of uranium ­ uranium 236 ­ which occurs only in nuclear waste. INDEPENDENT

[From a Janes Defense Weekly FAQ]

It is alleged that DU causes leukemia?

Leukemia is caused by:
- Ionizing radiation - x-rays, for example
- Derivatives of benzene (hydraulic fluid, lubricating oil, fuel oil, ceramic armor and other products found in modern armored vehicles)
- Viruses

What happens when a DU round hits a tank?

The DU penetrator hits the tank armor, both the penetrator and armor partially liquefying under pressure. Once the armor has been perforated, that part of the penetrator which has not melted, together with the molten armor and fragments that break away from the interior, ricochet inside the vehicle. This usually causes a fire. Studies in the USA, UK and France show that when an armored vehicle burns at about 10,000 degrees C, the resulting oxidization of the materials aboard, including benzene products and depleted uranium, can create particulates that are harmful to the human body; ingested they can affect the lungs and kidneys. JANES

SUNDAY HERALD, SCOTLAND: Forty-eight hours after the Gulf war ended, an Iraqi Republican Guard tank division was making for its base outside Basra along a narrow causeway over Lake Hamar. It was one of five agreed exit routes for the defeated army to take in its retreat. The ground war had lasted just 100 hours and there had been 79 American deaths, eight of them among the 24th Division, commanded by General Barry McCaffrey, whose armor and ordnance was lying about three miles away from the causeway. Suddenly, and over-riding a warning from the division operations officer, McCaffrey ordered an assault on the column. Later he would claim that his troops had been fired on by the retreating Iraqis, which is hotly denied by the Republican Guard commander. Apache attack helicopters, Bradley fighting vehicles and artillery units pummeled the helpless column for hours. It was, as McCaffrey later commented, "one of the most astounding scenes of destruction I have ever participated in." . . . Six months ago, when I visited the site of what has become known as the Battle of Rumaila, with a scientist carrying a Geiger counter, the needle threatened to burst out of its casing as he repeatedly ran it over sand and wreckage, gun barrels, tank parts and spent DU detritus. SUNDAY HERALD

ENS In his final report before the change of administration, the Defense Department's special assistant for Gulf War Illnesses, Dr. Bernard Rostker, told reporters that pesticides, but not exposure to depleted uranium (DU), may be "among the potential contributing agents" to illnesses among Gulf War veterans . . . A study by the Rand Corporation commissioned by the Department of Defense, "did not find a plausible link" between depleted uranium and health problems, Dr. Rostker said at a special Pentagon briefing. The Institutes of Medicine, charged by Congress to review the possible causes of Gulf War illnesses, "reported on their first four potential risk factors, one of them being depleted uranium," Dr. Rostker said. "In their review of uranium and soldiers who have been involved with depleted uranium, we do not see a health risk," he said. The Institutes of Medicine reviewed the potential risk factors of depleted uranium, low levels of the nerve agent sarin, pyridostigmine bromide (PB) pills used to guard against nerve agents, and vaccinations against biological weapons. The only thing the Institutes of Medicine were prepared to rule out was the impact of depleted uranium on lung cancers and on renal disease from heavy metal toxicity, Dr. Rostker said . . . Researchers identified 64 different pesticide products containing 35 active ingredients that were used during the Gulf War. ENS | REVIEW DU ARCHIVES

AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE: Residents of Iraq's second largest city are filled with dread at the growing debate over depleted uranium munitions and suspected links to cancer, as Iraq marks the 10th anniversary of the Gulf War. "Leukemia and radioactive pollution are now the number one topic of conversation among the people here in Basra," said student Saleh Neema. Basra, located near the Kuwaiti and Iranian borders, bears the scars of both the conflict over Kuwait and the 1980-1988 war against Iran. Most walls are still pockmarked by bullets or by shrapnel from exploding shells. "People are worried and living in fear of contracting cancerous diseases because of the pollution" from DU bullets fired by the US-led allies during the six-week war that broke out on January 17, 1991, said merchant Abdullah Hamid. Awad Badran, a retired civil servant from Basra, which together with its outskirts has a population of around one million, said the widespread fear was having a social impact. "Things are so bad in Basra that quite a number of people thinking of getting married are hesitant for fear of having children with deformities," he told AFP . . . As many as 940,000 rounds of DU were used. That, together with the explosion of two allied military vehicles loaded with DU arms, "polluted the environment and caused great damage to the public's health," he said. Al-Jumhuriya, an official daily, has blamed DU for the deaths of 50,000 Iraqi children in 1991 alone and said it was behind a dramatic increase in cancer rates over the past decade, citing a report from Iraqi experts

GUARDIAN, LONDON: Depleted uranium shells fired by Britain in the Gulf war and the US in Kosovo contained traces of plutonium and other highly radioactive particles, the Ministry of Defense and the US department of energy admitted. The fact that DU rounds used by British and US forces contain far more radioactive isotopes than uranium, which are more likely to cause cancer, is bound to fuel the controversy over Gulf war syndrome. But the additional risk to British and US servicemen was minimal because the amounts of contaminants were so small, a MoD spokeswoman in London said, echoing a NATO statement issued in Brussels.
The International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna was not so sure that the dangers of uranium containing even traces of plutonium were small, saying there was no data on what happened to contaminated depleted uranium when released into the atmosphere. David Kyd, spokesman for the agency, said: "The science simply can't provide the answers in terms of the long-term consequences. It is definitely worth investigating further, not only in the Balkans but also in Iraq." GUARDIAN


INDEPENDENT, LONDON: The Yugoslav President, Vojislav Kostunica, announced that he would meet the chief prosecutor of the UN war crimes tribunal to discuss NATO's use of depleted uranium shells as a war crime against civilians. Mr. Kostunica explained that his change of mind about meeting the UN prosecutor Carla del Ponte was prompted by the depleted uranium issue. "Finally the lies on the use of DU became public and that was the first reason why I changed my mind about seeing Ms del Ponte. This is a serious case for The Hague tribunal," he said. The president shares the view of many Serbs that NATO's use of depleted uranium-capped shells in its 1999 conflict with Belgrade over Kosovo should be investigated as a war crime. He had until now refused to meet Ms Del Ponte, who is to travel to Belgrade next week to discuss prosecuting indicted war criminals, including the former president, Slobodan Milosevic. INDEPENDENT

JONATHON CARR-BROWN, SUNDAY TIMES, LONDON: Shells fired in the Gulf war and Kosovo were made out of material contaminated by a potentially lethal cocktail of nuclear waste, according to a book published this week. The claim, supported by American army and government documents, suggests that the military in Kosovo and Iraq used depleted uranium shells containing traces of elements that indicate the probable presence of plutonium and other highly toxic nuclear by-products . . . Martin Messonnier, Frederick Loore and Roger Trilling, the authors of the book, are convinced that the Pentagon has misled the world with claims that its DU is safe. Until now, the Pentagon has maintained that DU shells are safe because they contain only mildly radioactive uranium. But the authors claim the shells were made with uranium contaminated with more toxic elements. SUNDAY TIMES

FAIR: Since the new year, stories about the depleted uranium controversy have been running almost daily in every major British newspaper, with the Guardian and Independent each running editorials calling for a NATO investigation into DU's health effects. Altogether, the London Independent has run 14 original articles; the London Times has run 12; the Daily Telegraph has run 10; and the Guardian and its Sunday paper, the Observer, have run eight. Meanwhile, in the US-- the country most responsible by far for DU contamination-- newspapers have relegated most of their coverage to news briefs and short wire stories. The only US newspaper in the Nexis media database to have run an editorial on the current controversy is the Seattle Times. Big picture questions about the extensive use of DU since the Gulf War, its lasting impact on civilian populations and the record of official deception around DU have been largely ignored in both print and broadcast reports . . . Television coverage has also been limited. CNN has aired two reports on DU, while the three networks' evening news broadcasts each did one story. Only three of the mainstream US media reports about the current controversy have referred in any detail to the parallels between Balkans War Syndrome and the illnesses alleged to have resulted from use of DU during the Gulf War . . . Nor was the larger question about DU raised: Is it legal? In a December 18 draft recommendation that went largely unremarked, the Environment Committee of the Council of Europe found that during the Kosovo war, NATO countries violated provisions of the Geneva Conventions intended to limit environmental damage. Among other things, the committee cited "the use of depleted uranium in warheads" as a violation that had "dramatically worsened" Yugoslavia's environment "with long-lasting effects on the health and quality of life for future generations." The committee further found that this damage "can be presumed to have been deliberate."

FAIR
MILITARY TOXICS PROJECT
NATIONAL GULF WAR RESOURCES CENTER

GULF VETERANS LEFT IN COLD

RICHARD NORTON-TAYLOR AND ANDREW OSBORN, GUARDIAN, LONDON: The government bowed to intense domestic and international pressure by agreeing to screen Balkans veterans for signs of contamination from depleted uranium used in US anti-tank shells. But the announcement infuriated Gulf war veterans, whose supporters labeled the refusal to offer the tests to troops in previous conflicts a "vicious injustice . . . At NATO headquarters in Brussels, Britain and the US joined forces to kill off an Italian proposal, backed by Germany, for the alliance's 19 member countries to stop using depleted uranium ammunition until further notice . . . Malcolm Hooper, emeritus professor of medicinal chemistry at Sunderland University, described the Ministry of Defense move as a "cynical betrayal" and "vicious injustice." The MoD, he said, was testing for high-level exposure to soluble material, rather than long-term, low-level, exposure to radiation inside the body. It was indulging in "Mickey Mouse science". GUARDIAN

RICHARD NORTON-TAYLOR, GUARDIAN, LONDON: Army doctors warned four years ago that exposure to depleted uranium, which is used in US and British anti-tanks shells, increased the risk of developing lung, lymph and brain cancer. The warnings, in an internal MoD document, are in marked contrast to persistent public assurances - repeated by the armed forces minister, John Spellar, to the Commons - playing down the risk from DU . . . In a devastating passage under the heading "Risk assessment relating to Gulf war uranium exposure", it warns: "First and foremost, the risk of occupational exposure by inhalation must be reduced." It goes on to say: "All personnel... should be aware that uranium dust inhalation carries a long-term risk... [the dust] has been shown to increase the risks of developing lung, lymph and brain cancers." It adds: "Working inside a DU dust-contaminated vehicle without adequate respiratory protection will expose the worker to up to eight times the OES [the occupational exposure standard or accepted exposure level]." GUARDIAN

MIKE RUPPERT, FROM THE WILDERNESS: As the scandal regarding the 1999 US use of depleted uranium rounds in Kosovo spreads and re-ignites controversy about the Gulf War Syndrome that has damaged the health of thousands of veterans, "From The Wilderness" has obtained a copy of a 1984 FAA advisory circular - still in effect - that shows that DU has been in use as a component in aircraft manufacture for years and that the US government has always treated DU as a hazardous material in full awareness of health risks it presents . . . FAA Advisory Circular 20-123, dated 12/20/84 is entitled "Avoiding or Minimizing Encounters With Aircraft Equipped With Depleted Uranium Balance Weights During Accident Investigations." The two-page memo was written to warn FAA crash site investigators that, as a result of an air crash, DU weights in various parts of the aircraft might have had their cadmium plating removed. The memorandum states, "While the depleted uranium normally poses no danger, it is to be handled with caution. The main hazard associated with depleted uranium is the harmful effect the material could have if it enters the body. If particles are inhaled or digested, they can be chemically toxic and cause a significant and long-lasting irradiation of internal tissue." FROM THE WILDERNESS

REUTERS: Russian defense officials accused NATO of using Serbia as a dumping ground for depleted uranium ammunition it needed to get rid of and called on the alliance to pay for any cleanup. Russia's air force chief General Anatoly Kornukov denounced the Western military alliance for penny-pinching, saying NATO had used its 1999 air raids to dispose of depleted uranium munitions rather than dispose of them properly. "It is clear to me they dropped the (munitions) they needed to destroy, as purely destroying them would have been several times more expensive than dropping them during bombing", he said in televised remarks. "Of course there is an (environmental) effect, there's no question about that. But at least we do not have these (munitions). We got out of this a long time ago and this is a totally incorrect approach," he said. RUSSIA TODAY


AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE: The director of the main hospital in the northern, Serb-majority part of Kosovo, blamed depleted uranium NATO munitions for what he said was a huge increase in cancer cases in his region. Milan Ivanovic, himself a Kosovo Serb, told AFP that cancer cases referred to the Serb hospital in Kosovksa Mitrovica had shot up by 200 percent since NATO's 1999 air campaign against Yugoslavia. "I think the main reason for the sizable increase in cancer cases, which numbered 160 last year, could only be due to NATO's bombardment with depleted uranium," Ivanovic said at the hospital CENTRAL EUROPE TODAY

FAIR: Since the new year, stories about the depleted uranium controversy have been running almost daily in every major British newspaper, with the Guardian and Independent each running editorials calling for a NATO investigation into DU's health effects. Altogether, the London Independent has run 14 original articles; the London Times has run 12; the Daily Telegraph has run 10; and the Guardian and its Sunday paper, the Observer, have run eight. Meanwhile, in the US-- the country most responsible by far for DU contamination-- newspapers have relegated most of their coverage to news briefs and short wire stories. The only US newspaper in the Nexis media database to have run an editorial on the current controversy is the Seattle Times. Big picture questions about the extensive use of DU since the Gulf War, its lasting impact on civilian populations and the record of official deception around DU have been largely ignored in both print and broadcast reports . . . Television coverage has also been limited. CNN has aired two reports on DU, while the three networks' evening news broadcasts each did one story. Only three of the mainstream US media reports about the current controversy have referred in any detail to the parallels between Balkans War Syndrome and the illnesses alleged to have resulted from use of DU during the Gulf War . . . Nor was the larger question about DU raised: Is it legal? In a December 18 draft recommendation that went largely unremarked, the Environment Committee of the Council of Europe found that during the Kosovo war, NATO countries violated provisions of the Geneva Conventions intended to limit environmental damage. Among other things, the committee cited "the use of depleted uranium in warheads" as a violation that had "dramatically worsened" Yugoslavia's environment "with long-lasting effects on the health and quality of life for future generations." The committee further found that this damage "can be presumed to have been deliberate."

RICHARD NORTON-TAYLOR, GUARDIAN, LONDON: Army doctors warned four years ago that exposure to depleted uranium, which is used in US and British anti-tanks shells, increased the risk of developing lung, lymph and brain cancer. The warnings, in an internal MoD document, are in marked contrast to persistent public assurances - repeated by the armed forces minister, John Spellar, to the Commons - playing down the risk from DU . . . In a devastating passage under the heading "Risk assessment relating to Gulf war uranium exposure", it warns: "First and foremost, the risk of occupational exposure by inhalation must be reduced." It goes on to say: "All personnel... should be aware that uranium dust inhalation carries a long-term risk... [the dust] has been shown to increase the risks of developing lung, lymph and brain cancers." It adds: "Working inside a DU dust-contaminated vehicle without adequate respiratory protection will expose the worker to up to eight times the OES [the occupational exposure standard or accepted exposure level]." GUARDIAN

NY TIMES CLAIMS DU DEATHS SCIENTIFICALLY IMPOSSIBLE

URANIUM PANIC HITS NATO

DECEMBER 2000

REUTERS: Italy has urged NATO to investigate claims that six Italians who died after serving in the Balkans were killed by exposure to depleted uranium, Prime Minister Giuliano Amato said in an interview. Amato told La Repubblica newspaper that alarm in Italy over the so-called "Balkan syndrome" was "more than legitimate." . . . SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: Thousands of European soldiers who served in NATO forces in Kosovo are to be tested for radiation after claims that they developed cancer through exposure to allied munitions. Portugal and Spain will join the Italians, French and Belgians this week in carrying out a systematic review of the health of the troops they sent to the region to discover whether they were exposed to dangerous levels of depleted uranium in ammunition used by American forces . . . REUTERS Belgium called for European Union defense ministers to discuss health problems suffered by peace keepers in the former Yugoslavia, dubbed the "Balkans Syndrome." The call by Belgian Defense Minister Andre Flahaut came amid rising concern in Europe over mysterious illnesses among veterans of Balkan peacekeeping missions.

ENS: The manufacture of consumer products out of radioactively contaminated materials discarded from commercial nuclear power plants and government bomb factories could become a fact of American life. In an extraordinary move, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission today asked the National Academy of Sciences to sanction the controversial practice. Dr. Richard Meserve, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, made the request during the public portion of a special National Academy of Sciences committee meeting in Washington. Meserve asked the National Academy of Sciences panel to examine the practice of releasing radioactively contaminated solid waste materials into everyday commerce. He said this type of recycling is necessary to insure the continued viability of the commercial nuclear power plant industry and the Cold War decommissioning activities of the US Department of Energy.

AUGUST 2000

SARA FLOUNDERS, INTERNATIONAL ACTION CENTER: Claiming they were concerned about controlling air pollution, some 3,000 NATO soldiers stormed a lead smelting plant in Zvecan at 4:30 in the morning of Aug. 14. The plant was the only functioning industry in the vast Trepca mining complex in northern Kosovo, a few miles from the city of Mitrovica. At 6:30 a.m., in a further attack that had nothing to do with air pollution, NATO soldiers closed down and confiscated the equipment of Zvecan's Radio S--the only station that dared to report information critical of NATO. The northern part of Mitrovica is the only remaining multi-ethnic part of Kosovo. Thousands of Serbs, Romani people, Slavic Muslims, other nationalities and peoples of mixed backgrounds have been driven out of other areas by Kosovo Liberation Army vigilante groups . . . The mines, with their smelting, refining and power centers, once constituted one of Yugoslavia's leading export industries and a main source of hard currency. It was the major source of jobs in the region. Defending the pre-dawn attack, Bernard Kouchner, the head of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo, said, "As a doctor and chief administrator of Kosovo I would be derelict if I allowed a threat to the health of children and pregnant women to continue for one more day." UNMIK is the police force set up by NATO to administer Kosovo. Kouchner has never had a word of criticism for the environmental havoc NATO created throughout the entire region with the use of depleted uranium weapons, the bombing of chemical plants and the use of cluster bombs. INTERNATIONAL ACTION CENTER

JUNE 2000

THE NEW ECONOMY I

[If you're in the market for some depleted uranium, check out Starmet. Sorry, we can't help you on the half-life or toxicity of the stuff; all they told us was this]

Depleted Uranium is a low cost material that is readily available. DU's high density properties (65% denser than lead) provide useful solutions in radiation shielding and aircraft counterweights. DU is also a highly effective material for military armor and anti-armor applications. Customer needs for uranium and related materials are served by utilizing our patented technologies. Aircraft counterweights control surfaces (elevators and ailerons) on wide body aircraft require a heavy counterbalance weight, yet have insufficient surface clearance for lighter materials. Our DU products are an ideal material choice for this application where volume constraints prohibit the use of less dense metals. Starmet has the only Federal Aviation Administration approved facility for the repair and refurbishing of DU aircraft counterweights . . . Military Ordnance Starmet's low cost DU manufacturing capabilities make it one of the leading suppliers of low cost ammunition for US government weapons systems. Our anti-armor tank penetrator munitions helped bring a quick conclusion to the Desert Storm conflict.

MAY 2000

ECO BAD GUYS: Basic question in the Los Alamos fire is whether and to what extent depleted uranium strewn about the Los Alamos National Laboratory site has been sucked up into the plume by the fire. In addition, whether the following materials-also known to be on the site-are in the smoke plume: lead, beryllium, arsenic, thorium, uranium, plutonium, PCBs, barium, high explosives. Other questions: are the firefighters themselves being monitored for contamination. There is no real protection for fire fighters working in such a volatile situation. And is the government monitoring fall out from plume as it passes across Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas? Below are several links to help keep tabs on the fire taken from STAND(Serious Texans Against Nuclear Dumping)

ECO BAD GUYS

SEPTEMBER 1999

INDEPENDENT, LONDON: After insisting throughout its air bombardment of Yugoslavia that its use of depleted uranium munitions against Serb forces posed no hazard to human health, NATO officers in Kosovo now admit that particles from their shells may have contaminated soil near targets in Yugoslavia and could cause "inhalation" problems, especially for children. .... In the eight years since, hundreds of Iraqis living near the battlefields have died from mysterious cancers and grossly deformed children have been born to Iraqi soldiers who fought in the war. British and American veterans suffering from Gulf war syndrome suspect that the use of DU weapons caused their own sickness and cancers. In briefings to international aid workers in Pristina, one K-For officer has warned his audience of "contaminated dust" at the scene of DU munitions explosions and urged aid officials to stay 150 feet away from targets hit in NATO air strikes. But non-governmental organizations have been amazed to hear that NATO cannot - or will not - say where it used DU ordnance against Serb forces. "There is no releasable information about where it was used and when," a K-For spokesman told The Independent. He would give no reason for NATO's refusal to provide these details. INDEPENDENT

AUGUST 1999

BBC: In mid-June scientists at Kozani in northern Greece were reporting that radiation levels were 25% above normal whenever the wind blew from the direction of Kosovo. And Bulgarian researchers reported finding levels eight times higher than usual within Bulgaria itself, and up to 30 times higher in Yugoslavia. DU is a by-product of the enrichment of uranium for making nuclear weapons and reactor fuel. It is 1.7 times heavier than lead, and is used for making armor-piercing rounds.

JULY 1999

GUARDIAN, LONDON: Up to 50,000 K-For troops could be struck by a "Kosovo syndrome" similar to the illness which blighted veterans in the Gulf war, a senior environmentalist warned. Kent Cassels, head of training and education at the World Conservation Monitoring Center in Cambridge, will visit the Balkans next month to assess the environmental damage caused by the crisis, on behalf of the UN Balkans taskforce. He said the use of depleted uranium in NATO cruise missiles, shells and bombs could pose a threat to the peace force .... Last year an American nuclear physicist said up to 90,000 British services personnel in the area might have been poisoned by DU.

MAY 1999

FROM GREEN CROSS INTERNATIONAL: The massive destruction of oil refineries, petrochemical plants chemical and fertilizer factories, pharmaceutical plants, and other environmentally hazardous enterprises puts both the population and natural environment in the Balkans under clear threat. The destruction of Pancevo petrochemical plant, attacks against targets in the municipality of Grocka in close vicinity of the Vinca nuclear reactor, as well as in the municipality of Baric, where a large complex for the production of chloride is located, demonstrate that irreversible environmental catastrophe can happen any time. There are also some reports that depleted uranium weapons, blamed for spiraling numbers of cancer and birth's defects in Iraq, are being used by NATO forces.

Acute air pollution represents immediate danger. Release of toxic and carcinogenic substances, and particulate matters would seriously affect health of the people. ~~ Another matter of serious concern is a significant emission of sulfur and nitrogen oxides, which could cause acid rains thus affecting agriculture and forestry in the region.

In the short and medium term, heavy pollution of surface waters may be a serious danger. Contamination of rivers would have negative consequences on the quality of drinking water, and badly damage fresh water ecosystems. Transboundary pollution of the river Danube is not excluded.

One of most dangerous consequences is pollution of underground waters. The region is rich with underground water resources. These waters, lying at different depths, may easily spread oil, oil products, fuel, and chemical pollution to other countries in the region.

THE LIST
Collateral Damage Report

[The following comes from data by Michel Chossudovsky, professor of economics at the University of Ottawa.]

--Cruise missiles use depleted uranium highly toxic to humans, both chemically as a heavy metal and radiologically as an alpha particle emitter. Since the Gulf War, depleted uranium has been a substitute for lead in bullets and missiles. According to scientists it is most likely a major contributor to the Gulf War Syndrome experienced both by the veterans and the people of Iraq. According radiobiologist Dr. Rosalie Bertell, president of the International Institute of Concern for Public Health:

"When used in war, the depleted uranium (DU) bursts into flame [and] releasing a deadly radioactive aerosol of uranium, unlike anything seen before. It can kill everyone in a tank. This ceramic aerosol is much lighter than uranium dust. It can travel in air tens of kilometers from the point of release, or be stirred up in dust and resuspended in air with wind or human movement. It is very small and can be breathed in by anyone: a baby, pregnant woman, the elderly, the sick. This radioactive ceramic can stay deep in the lungs for years, irradiating the tissue with powerful alpha particles within about a 30 micron sphere, causing emphysema and/or fibrosis. The ceramic can also be swallowed and do damage to the gastro-intestinal tract. In time, it penetrates the lung tissue and enters into the blood stream. ...It can also initiate cancer or promote cancers which have been initiated by other carcinogens."

--According to Paul Sullivan, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center: "In Yugoslavia, it's expected that depleted uranium will be fired in agricultural areas, places where livestock graze and where crops are grown, thereby introducing the specter of possible contamination of the food chain." MICHEL CHOSSUDOVSKY

The Environmental News Service reports that all the ecological groups of the warring Balkan countries have joined in signing a Declaration against NATO bombing and pollution in the region. At the initiative of the Macedonian environmental movement, the document was sent around for everyone to sign. It has now been signed by Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria, Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The Declaration asks that NATO stop the bombing immediately for the safety of the world. Among other things, the declaration attacks the use depleted uranium -- which the Pentagon has admitted is in aircraft shells fired in the Balkans - a highly dangerous substance believed by some to be a major cause of civilian deaths in Iraq. ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS SERVICE"
Go to http://www.prorev.com/du.htm

Thank you to David Swanson (follow@davidcnswanson Profile:"Author of War Is A Lie and Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union http://davidswanson.org"), for his "tweet".