Omaha Independent Media Center

Omaha, NE – Members of California’s three largest Indian Tribes and allies from commercial fishing and conservation groups demonstrated today at the Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting, known as the Woodstock of Capitalism. The group is demanding the removal of four Klamath Dams owned by Berkshire subsidiary PacifiCorp. Two members of the coalition asked questions directly to Buffett and his partner Charles Munger before a crowd of 27,000 shareholders. Buffett denied there need for dams remove with an uneducated remark.

Ronnie Pellegrini, wife of a commercial salmon fisherman, traveled to the meeting with her two teenage daughters. Husband Paul was out to sea to take to advantage of limited fishing opportunities. Pellegrini explained to Buffett that her family lost 95 percent of its income last year because her husband is a salmon fisherman. Salmon fishing was banned along 700 miles of California and Oregon coastline last year due to low runs of Klamath salmon. Buffett’s dams are blamed for the declines of salmon. In describing the plight of salmon fishing families Pellegrini said, “they’re barely hanging onto their livelihoods because of the Klamath River crisis.”

Wendy George, council member of the Hoopa Valley Tribe stated, “my people are river people, our entire culture, religion and subsistence is based on the river.” George appealed to Buffett to meet with the Tribes in order to find a solution to the problem.

In response the normally polished Buffett fumbled through papers to read a written response. Instead of taking responsibility for his company’s actions, Buffett stated that regulators such as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission would decide the issue. Buffett declined to acknowledge that the Tribes are seeking a negotiated settlement with the company as is common in dam relicensing proceedings.

Leaf Hillman of the Karuk Tribe said, “I am overwhelmed with disappointment. Although Mr. Buffett stressed over and over to young investors the importance of researching your investments, he clearly has a poor understanding of Klamath issues.”

Buffett remarked to the crowd that “27 parties are involved in dam negotiations and there are 27 opinions.”

Hillman said, “there are actually 28 parties, but there are only two opinions about dam removal. PacifiCorp’s and everyone else’s. Everyone else includes Tribes, conservation groups, counties, farmers, and governments. We have a real chance to end the Klamath crisis in a way that saves Berskshire money, yet PacifiCorp refuses to work with us in good faith.”

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission as well as the California Energy Commission have reported that dam removal is cheaper than relicensing even if the energy lost is replaced by other carbon neutral energy sources.

Even the fiscally conservative Forbes Magazine opined that, “it would have been more heroic [of Buffett] to agree to meet with the people affected and to put his weight behind a fair and proper solution.” link to www.forbes.com

“Its ridiculous,” concludes Hillman. “What Mr. Buffett doesn’t know is killing us.”

Author: Klamath Riverkeeper
E-mail: klamath(at)riseup.net

Lawrence, KS is one of the many cities to hold a demonstration marking the fourth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. Community members from across the state and all over the nation join together to resist the war.

LAWRENCE, KS – At noon, over 120 community members met at Veteran’s Park at 19th & Louisiana to stand in solidarity with soldiers, students, Iraqis, and all other people resisting war. With bullhorns, banners, and gigantic puppets, members rallied at the park and then marched to the complex of military recruitment centers at 23rd & Louisiana.

“We’re here today to raise political consciousness and get others to do the same,” said Carl Webb, a black, Marxist, military deserter and member of Iraq Veterans Against the War. “We want everyone to come out, protest, and organize at a grassroots level to end war.” Webb spoke at the rally alongside Haskell Indian Nations University professor Julia Goodfox and Kansas Mutual Aid collective members Joe Carr and Jordan Ferrand-Sapsis.

The KC Iraq Task Force set up an emotional display called “Eyes Wide Open.” Army boots and sneakers were laid out across the lawn, each representing a Kansas military service person or Iraqi civilian who has died in the Iraq war. Ten black coffins, made of cardboard and marked with phrases like “this is the cost of war,” were placed behind the display.

At 12:45, a majority of the rally marched south on Louisiana street and congregated at the military recruitment centers. Belinda Penaloza, media spokesperson for the demonstration, explained why the demonstration targeted the recruitment centers. “Military recruiters in Lawrence prey upon the poor, youth, and people color and we are sick of the way new soldiers are being enlisted,” said Penaloza. “We don’t want one more person sent overseas to die in this horrible war.”

At the recruitment center, demonstrators were met with an overwhelming police presence. Around 75 officers were stationed in a variety of locations, including a prisoner transport vehicle and the chief of police who is the head of this area’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. Dozens of officers lined the property of the shopping center, many equipped with gas masks and pepper spray. Anytime a protester stepped a foot off the public easement, police immediately threatened them with arrest.

Despite police intimidation, a handful of protesters successfully blocked the entrance to the center by stacking the coffins in the road. The coffins were immediately removed by police and recruiters, who destroyed them by violently stomping and ripping them apart.

Demonstrators left the recruitment center at around 1:30pm and marched back to Veteran’s Park, where the protest was concluded. Overall, the march was perceived as a success by organizers and participants. People from across Kansas and several other states came to participate. Everyone left the march physically safe despite the overwhelming police presence.

The action was part of a long-standing campaign against military recruitment in Lawrence. These specific centers have been the target of repeated demonstrations, including two that involved arrests and successful shutdowns.

As they left today, the crowd chanted, “we’ll be back!” And they likely will.

How green is nuclear power?

By Mark Clayton | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

“Saying nuclear is carbon-free is not true,” says Uwe Fritsche, a researcher at the Oko Institut in Darmstadt, Germany, who has conducted a life-cycle analysis of the plants.

Nuclear power has more than just a little greenhouse gas attached to it, when mining uranium ore, refining and enriching fuel, building the plant, and operating it are included. A big 1,250 megawatt plant produces the equivalent of 250,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year during its life, Dr. Fritsche says.

Officials in the nuclear power industry say references to carbon-free energy in their promotions refer only to the power-plant operation – and are not intended to describe carbon emissions during the entire nuclear life cycle.

….new reactors gives two to 10 times less climate solution for the amount of coal-power displaced than if you had bought cheaper solutions with the same dollars.”

Found on the Climate Crisis Coalition website: www.climatecrisiscoalition.org

Here is entire article: www.csmonitor.com/2007/0307/p01s04-sten.html?page=1

“Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.” — Henry Kissinger, quoted in Kiss the Boys Goodbye: How the United States Betrayed Its Own POW’s in Vietnam

Vietnam was a chemical war for oil, permanently contaminating large regions and countries downriver with Agent Orange, and environmentally the most devastating war in world history. But since 1991, the U.S. has staged four nuclear wars using depleted uranium weaponry, which, like Agent Orange, meets the U.S. government definition of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Vast regions in the Middle East and Central Asia have been permanently contaminated with radiation.

And what about our soldiers? Terry Jemison of the Department of Veterans Affairs reported this week to the American Free Press that “Gulf-era veterans” now on medical disability since 1991 number 518,739, with only 7,035 reported wounded in Iraq in that same 14-year period.

This week the American Free Press dropped a “dirty bomb” on the Pentagon by reporting that eight out of 20 men who served in one unit in the 2003 U.S. military offensive in Iraq now have malignancies. That means that 40 percent of the soldiers in that unit have developed malignancies in just 16 months.

Since these soldiers were exposed to vaccines and depleted uranium (DU) only, this is strong evidence for researchers and scientists working on this issue, that DU is the definitive cause of Gulf War Syndrome. Vaccines are not known to cause cancer. One of the first published researchers on Gulf War Syndrome, who also served in 1991 in Iraq, Dr. Andras Korenyi-Both, is in agreement with Barbara Goodno from the Department of Defense’s Deployment Health Support Directorate, that in this war soldiers were not exposed to chemicals, pesticides, bioagents or other suspect causes this time to confuse the issue.

This powerful new evidence is blowing holes in the cover-up perpetrated by the Pentagon and three presidential administrations ever since DU was first used in 1991 in the Persian Gulf War. Fourteen years after the introduction of DU on the battlefield in 1991, the long-term effects have revealed that DU is a death sentence and very nasty stuff.

Scientists studying the biological effects of uranium in the 1960s reported that it targets the DNA. Marion Fulk, a nuclear physical chemist retired from the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab and formerly involved with the Manhattan Project, interprets the new and rapid malignancies in soldiers from the 2003 war as “spectacular, and a matter of concern.”

This evidence shows that of the three effects which DU has on biological systems — radiation, chemical and particulate — the particulate effect from nano-size particles is the most dominant one immediately after exposure and targets the Master Code in the DNA. This is bad news, but it explains why DU causes a myriad of diseases which are difficult to define.

In simple words, DU “trashes the body.” When asked if the main purpose for using it was for destroying things and killing people, Fulk was more specific: “I would say that it is the perfect weapon for killing lots of people.”

Soldiers developing malignancies so quickly since 2003 can be expected to develop multiple cancers from independent causes. This phenomenon has been reported by doctors in hospitals treating civilians following NATO bombing with DU in Yugoslavia in 1998-1999 and the U.S. military invasion of Iraq using DU for the first time in 1991. Medical experts report that this phenomenon of multiple malignancies from unrelated causes has been unknown until now and is a new syndrome associated with internal DU exposure.

Just 467 U.S. personnel were wounded in the three-week Persian Gulf War in 1990-1991. Out of 580,400 soldiers who served in Gulf War I, 11,000 are dead, and by 2000 there were 325,000 on permanent medical disability. This astounding number of disabled vets means that a decade later, 56 percent of those soldiers who served now have medical problems.

The number of disabled vets reported up to 2000 has been increasing by 43,000 every year. Brad Flohr of the Department of Veterans Affairs told American Free Press that he believes there are more disabled vets now than even after World War II.

They brought it home

Not only were soldiers exposed to DU on and off the battlefields, but they brought it home. DU in the semen of soldiers internally contaminated their wives, partners and girlfriends. Tragically, some women in their 20s and 30s who were sexual partners of exposed soldiers developed endometriosis and were forced to have hysterectomies because of health problems.

In a group of 251 soldiers from a study group in Mississippi who had all had normal babies before the Gulf War, 67 percent of their post-war babies were born with severe birth defects. They were born with missing legs, arms, organs or eyes or had immune system and blood diseases. In some veterans’ families now, the only normal or healthy members of the family are the children born before the war.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has stated that they do not keep records of birth defects occurring in families of veterans.

How did they hide it?

Before a new weapons system can be used, it must be fully tested. The blueprint for depleted uranium weapons is a 1943 declassified document from the Manhattan Project.

Harvard President and physicist James B. Conant, who developed poison gas in World War I, was brought into the Manhattan Project by the father of presidential candidate John Kerry. Kerry ‘s father served at a high level in the Manhattan Project and was a CIA agent.

Conant was chair of the S-1 Poison Gas Committee, which recommended developing poison gas weapons from the radioactive trash of the atomic bomb project in World War II. At that time, it was known that radioactive materials dispersed in bombs from the air, from land vehicles or on the battlefield produced very fine radioactive dust which would penetrate all protective clothing, any gas mask or filter or the skin. By contaminating the lungs and blood, it could kill or cause illness very quickly.

They also recommended it as a permanent terrain contaminant, which could be used to destroy populations by contaminating water supplies and agricultural land with the radioactive dust.

The first DU weapons system was developed for the Navy in 1968, and DU weapons were given to and used by Israel in 1973 under U.S. supervision in the Yom Kippur war against the Arabs.

The Phalanx weapons system, using DU, was tested on the USS Bigelow out of Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in 1977, and DU weapons have been sold by the U.S. to 29 countries.

Military research report summaries detail the testing of DU from 1974-1999 at military testing grounds, bombing and gunnery ranges and at civilian labs under contract. Today 42 states are contaminated with DU from manufacture, testing and deployment.

Women living around these facilities have reported increases in endometriosis, birth defects in babies, leukemia in children and cancers and other diseases in adults. Thousands of tons of DU weapons tested for decades by the Navy on four bombing and gunnery ranges around Fallon, Nevada, is no doubt the cause of the fastest growing leukemia cluster in the U.S. over the past decade. The military denies that DU is the cause.

The medical profession has been active in the cover-up — just as they were in hiding the effects from the American public – of low level radiation from atmospheric testing and nuclear power plants. A medical doctor in Northern California reported being trained by the Pentagon with other doctors, months before the 2003 war started, to diagnose and treat soldiers returning from the 2003 war for mental problems only.

Medical professionals in hospitals and facilities treating returning soldiers were threatened with $10,000 fines if they talked about the soldiers or their medical problems. They were also threatened with jail.

Reporters have also been prevented access to more than 14,000 medically evacuated soldiers flown nightly since the 2003 war in C-150s from Germany who are brought to Walter Reed Hospital near Washington, D.C.

Dr. Robert Gould, former president of the Bay Area chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), has contacted three medical doctors since February 2004, after I had been invited to speak about DU.

1. Dr. Katharine Thomasson, president of the Oregon chapter of the PSR, informed me that Dr. Gould had contacted her and tried to convince her to cancel her invitation for me to speak about DU at Portland State University on April 12. Although I was able to do a presentation, Dr. Thomasson told me I could only talk about DU in Oregon “and nothing overseas, nothing political.”

2. Dr. Gould also contacted and discouraged Dr. Ross Wilcox in Toronto, Canada, from inviting me to speak to Physicians for Global Survival (PGS), the Canadian equivalent of PSR, several months later.

3. When that didn’t work, he contacted Dr. Allan Connoly, the Canadian national president of PGS, who was able to cancel my invitation and nearly succeeded in preventing Dr. Wilcox, his own member, from showing photos and presenting details on civilians suffering from DU exposure and cancer provided to him by doctors in southern Iraq.

Dr. Janette Sherman, a former and long-standing member of PSR, reported that she finally quit some time after being invited to lunch by a new PSR executive administrator. After the woman had pumped Dr. Sherman for information all through lunch about her position on key issues, the woman informed Dr. Sherman that her last job had been with the CIA.

How was the truth about DU hidden from military personnel serving in successive DU wars? Before his tragic death, Sen. Paul Wellstone informed Joyce Riley, R.N., B.S.N., executive director of the American Gulf War Veterans Association, that 95 percent of Gulf War veterans had been recycled out of the military by 1995. Any of those continuing in military service were isolated from each other, preventing critical information being transferred to new troops. The “next DU war” had already been planned, and those planning it wanted “no skunk at the garden party.”

The US has a dirty (DU) little (CIA) secret

A new book just published at the American Free Press by Michael Collins Piper, The High Priests of War: The Secret History of How America’s Neo-Conservative Trotskyites Came to Power and Orchestrated the War Against Iraq as the First Step in Their Drive for Global Empire, details the early plans for a war against the Arab world by Henry Kissinger and the neo-cons in the late 1960s and early 1970s. That just happens to coincide with getting the DU “show on the road” and the oil crisis in the Middle East, which caused concern not only to President Nixon. The British had been plotting and scheming for control of the oil in Iraq for decades since first using poison gas on the Iraqis and Kurds in 1912.

The book details the creation of the neo-cons by their “godfather” and Trotsky lover Irving Kristol, who pushed for a “war against terrorism” long before 9/11 and was lavishly funded for years by the CIA. His son, William Kristol, is one of the most influential men in the United States.

Both are public relations men for the Israeli lobby’s neo-conservative network, with strong ties to Rupert Murdoch. Kissinger also has ties to this network and the Carlyle Group, who, one could say, have facilitated these omnicidal wars beginning from the time former President Bush took office. It would be easy to say that we are recycling World Wars I and II, with the same faces.

When I asked Vietnam Special Ops Green Beret Capt. John McCarthy, who could have devised this omnicidal plan to use DU to destroy the genetic code and genetic future of large populations of Arabs and Moslems in the Middle East and Central Asia — just coincidentally the areas where most of the world’s oil deposits are located — he replied: “It has all the handprints of Henry Kissinger.”

In Zbignew Brzezinski’s book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, the map of the Eurasian chessboard includes four regions strategic to U.S. foreign policy. The “South” region corresponds precisely to the regions now contaminated permanently with radiation from U.S. bombs, missiles and bullets made with thousands of tons of DU.

A Japanese professor, Dr. K. Yagasaki, has calculated that 800 tons of DU is the atomicity equivalent of 83,000 Nagasaki bombs. The U.S. has used more DU since 1991 than the atomicity equivalent of 400,000 Nagasaki bombs. Four nuclear wars indeed, and 10 times the amount of radiation released into the atmosphere from atmospheric testing!

No wonder our soldiers, their families and the people of the Middle East, Yugoslavia and Central Asia are sick. But as Henry Kissinger said after Vietnam when our soldiers came home ill from Agent Orange, “Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used for foreign policy.”

Unfortunately, more and more of those soldiers are men and women with brown skin. And unfortunately, the DU radioactive dust will be carried around the world and deposited in our environments just as the “smog of war” from the 1991 Gulf War was found in deposits in South America, the Himalayas and Hawaii.

In June 2003, the World Health Organization announced in a press release that global cancer rates will increase 50 percent by 2020. What else do they know that they aren’t telling us? I know that depleted uranium is a death sentence for all of us. We will all die in silent ways.

Sources used in this story that readers are encouraged to consult:
American Free Press four-part series on DU by Christopher Bollyn.
- Part I: “Depleted Uranium: U.S. Commits War Crime Against Iraq, Humanity,” 8 Aug 2004;
- Part II: “Cancer Epidemic Caused by U.S. WMD: MD Says Depleted Uranium Definitively Linked, 13 Aug 2004″
- Part III: “DU Syndrome Stricken Vets Denied Care: Pentagon Hides DU Dangers to Deny Medical Care to Vets” 21 Aug 2004,
- Part IV: “Pentagon Brass Suppresses Truth About Toxic Weapons: Poisonous Uranium Munitions Threaten World” 28 Aug 2004,
* August 2004 World Affairs Journal. Leuren Moret: “Depleted Uranium: The Trojan Horse of Nuclear War,”
* August 2004 Coastal Post Online. Carol Sterrit: “Marin Depleted Uranium Resolution Heats Up – GI’s Will Come Home To A Slow Death,”
* World Depleted Uranium Weapons Conference, Hamburg, Germany, October 16-19, 2004
* International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan. Written opinion of Judge Niloufer Baghwat
* “Discounted Casualties: The Human Cost of Nuclear War” by Akira Tashiro, foreword by Leuren Moret

Leuren Moret is a geoscientist who has worked around the world on radiation issues, educating citizens, the media, members of parliaments and Congress and other officials. She became a whistleblower in 1991 at the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab after experiencing major science fraud on the Yucca Mountain Project. An environmental commissioner in the City of Berkeley, she can be reached at leurenmoret(at)yahoo.com.

My grandfather, U.S. Army Col. Edwin Joseph McAllister, was born in Battle Creek in 1895. He does not know that his first grandchild is an international expert on depleted uranium. I have worked in two U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories, and in 1991 I became a whistleblower at the Livermore lab. Depleted uranium is very, very, very nasty stuff:

Published on Tuesday, August 9, 2005 by the Battle Creek Enquirer (Michigan)

Depleted Uranium is WMD

# Depleted uranium (DU) weaponry meets the definition of weapon of mass destruction in two out of three categories under U.S. Federal Code Title 50 Chapter 40 Section 2302.

# DU weaponry violates all international treaties and agreements, Hague and Geneva war conventions, the 1925 Geneva gas protocol, U.S. laws and U.S. military law.

# Since 1991, the U.S. has released the radioactive atomicity equivalent of at least 400,000 Nagasaki bombs into the global atmosphere. That is 10 times the amount released during atmospheric testing which was the equivalent of 40,000 Hiroshima bombs. The U.S. has permanently contaminated the global atmosphere with radioactive pollution having a half-life of 4.5 billion years.

# The U.S. has illegally conducted four nuclear wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and twice in Iraq since 1991, calling DU “conventional” weapons when in fact they are nuclear weapons.

# DU on the battlefield has three effects on living systems: it is a heavy metal “chemical” poison, a “radioactive” poison and has a “particulate” effect due to the very tiny size of the particles that are 0.1 microns and smaller.

# The blueprint for DU weaponry is a 1943 Manhattan Project memo to Gen. L. Groves that recommended development of radioactive materials as poison gas weapons – dirty bombs, dirty missiles and dirty bullets.

# DU weapons are very effective kinetic energy penetrators, but even more effective bioweapons since uranium has a strong chemical affinity for phosphate structures concentrated in DNA.

# DU is the Trojan Horse of nuclear war – it keeps giving and keeps killing. There is no way to clean it up, and no way to turn it off because it continues to decay into other radioactive isotopes in over 20 steps.

# Terry Jemison at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs stated in August 2004 that over 518,000 Gulf-era veterans (14-year period) are now on medical disability, and that 7,039 were wounded on the battlefield in that same period. Over 500,000 U.S. veterans are homeless.

# In some studies of soldiers who had normal babies before the war, 67 percent of the post-war babies are born with severe birth defects – missing brains, eyes, organs, legs and arms, and blood diseases.

# In southern Iraq, scientists are reporting five times higher levels of gamma radiation in the air, which increases the radioactive body burden daily of inhabitants. In fact, Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan are uninhabitable.

# Cancer starts with one alpha particle under the right conditions. One gram of DU is the size of a period in this sentence and releases 12,000 alpha particles per second.

Before my grandfather died, he told me that his generation had made a mess of this planet. I wonder what he would say to me now I would tell him to see “Beyond Treason” (www.beyondtreason.com), a new documentary about the history of treason by the U.S. government against our own troops: Atomic veterans, MK-Ultra, Agent Orange and DU. After Vietnam, Henry Kissinger said, “Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy…” (from Chapter 5 in the “Final Days” by Woodward and Bernstein).

Leuren Moret is an international radiation specialist, with a B.S. degree in geology from University of California at Davis, a M.A. degree in Near Eastern studies from University of California at Berkeley and has done post-graduate work in the geosciences at UC-Davis. She is environmental commissioner for the City of Berkeley, Calif.

www.commondreams.org/views05/0809-33.htm

© 2005 Battle Creek Enquirer

The idea that nuclear energy is carbon neutral goes uncontested in the media and general public. What can we make of this collective denial?

The following article was written in New Internationalist Magazine (382). It shows that the construction and decommissioning of a nuclear power station and is far more carbon intensive than coal or gas.

Is nuclear power really a solution to climate change? Nuclear power plants may not directly emit climate-damaging carbon dioxide, but if you look at the whole lifecycle of a nuclear power station its environmental credentials are pretty shaky.

The nuclear process employs energy-intensive industries dependent on vast quantities of fossil fuels. Uranium mining, enrichment and transport across the globe; the construction and decommissioning of facilities; and the processing, transport and storage of radioactive wastes. All these consume huge amounts of carbon-based energy such as oil and coal. Nuclear power simply can’t hold a candle to renewable energy technologies such as windmills and photovoltaic panels with their minimal reliance on fossil fuel use.

The Oko Institut in Germany released a 10-year study back in 1997 that found that in a full lifecycle comparison of various energy technologies, nuclear had nearly twice the carbon dioxide equivalent of wind power – even factoring-in the phenomenal difference in power output (kilowatts per hour). A more recent study factored-in the declining ratio of uranium to mined ore in rapidly dwindling uranium sources and found emissions increase as more mining, refining and transport is needed to compensate for poorer quality ore. The report concludes that overall emissions needed for nuclear power are five times higher than even the Oko Institut estimate. Every new nuclear power station creates a further demand for uranium and its attendant infrastructure, which in turn spirals energy demand upwards.

For the sake of argument, let’s look at nuclear power plants per se and ignore the lifecycle analysis (though nuclear power plants themselves release unknown quantities of greenhouse gases more powerful than carbon dioxide – such as the ozone-depleting chloro- and hydro-fluorocarbons as well as sulphur hexafluoride). How many new nuclear plants would we need to stop the worst excesses of climate change?

Renewables can meet Britain’s energy needs

Microrenewables – renewable energy technology suitable for home use – are demonstrating enormous potential for individuals literally to take power into their own hands. The New Economics Foundation reports that if a third of electricity customers installed just 2 kilowatts of microrenewables (either wind or solar), it would match the capacity of the British nuclear programme.1 Furthermore, community-owned and managed renewable energy initiatives are on the rise, with Scotland taking the lead.
http://www.newint.org/features/2005/09/01/solutions/

Simon Johnson
- e-mail: virtual3(at)mac.com

Uranium weapons are being used in Lebanon which means it is a NUCLEAR WAR! These weapons are extremely poisoness and deadly…along with being illegal by all conventions and treaties. These so-called “depleted” uranium weapons are actually not depleted, and their use constitutes a war crime.

By: Dr. Doug Rokke, PhD., former Director, U.S. Army Depleted Uranium Project

July 24, 2006

The delivery of at least 100 GBU 28 bunker busters bombs containing depleted uranium warheads by the United States to Israel for use against targets in Lebanon will result in additional radioactive and chemical toxic contamination with consequent adverse health and environmental effects throughout the middle east.

Today, U.S., British, and now Israeli military personnel are using illegal uranium munitions- America’s and England’s own “dirty bombs” while U.S. Army, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Defense, and British Ministry of Defence officials deny that there are any adverse health and environmental effects as a consequence of the manufacture, testing, and/or use of uranium munitions to avoid liability for the willful and illegal dispersal of a radioactive toxic material – depleted uranium.

The use of uranium weapons is absolutely unacceptable, and a crime against humanity. Consequently the citizens of the world and all governments must force cessation of uranium weapons use. I must demand that Israel now provide medical care to all DU casualties in Lebanon and clean up all DU contamination.

U.S. and British officials have arrogantly refused to comply with their own regulations, orders, and directives that require United States Department of Defense officials to provide prompt and effective medical care to “all” exposed individuals. Reference: Medical Management of Unusual Depleted Uranium Casualties, DOD, Pentagon, 10/14/93, Medical Management of Army personnel Exposed to Depleted Uranium (DU) Headquarters, U.S. Army Medical Command 29 April 2004, and section 2-5 of U.S. Army Regulation 700-48. Israeli officials must not do so now.

They also refuse to clean up dispersed radioactive Contamination as required by Army Regulation- AR 700-48: “Management of Equipment Contaminated With Depleted Uranium or Radioactive Commodities” (Headquarters, Department Of The Army, Washington, D.C., September 2002) and U.S. Army Technical Bulletin- TB 9-1300-278: “Guidelines For Safe Response To Handling, Storage, And Transportation Accidents Involving Army Tank Munitions Or Armor Which Contain Depleted Uranium” (Headquarters, Department Of The Army, Washington, D.C., JULY 1996). Specifically section 2-4 of United States Army Regulation-AR 700-48 dated September 16, 2002 requires that:

(1) “Military personnel “identify, segregate, isolate, secure, and label all RCE” (radiologically contaminated equipment).

(2) “Procedures to minimize the spread of radioactivity will be implemented as soon as possible.”

(3) “Radioactive material and waste will not be locally disposed of through burial, submersion, incineration, destruction in place, or abandonment” and

(4) “All equipment, to include captured or combat RCE, will be surveyed, packaged, retrograded, decontaminated and released IAW Technical Bulletin 9-1300-278, DA PAM 700-48″ (Note: Maximum exposure limits are specified in Appendix F).

The previous and current use of uranium weapons, the release of radioactive components in destroyed U.S. and foreign military equipment, and releases of industrial, medical, research facility radioactive materials have resulted in unacceptable exposures. Therefore, decontamination must be completed as required by U.S. Army Regulation 700-48 and should include releases of all radioactive materials resulting from military operations.

The extent of adverse health and environmental effects of uranium weapons contamination is not limited to combat zones but includes facilities and sites where uranium weapons were manufactured or tested including Vieques; Puerto Rico; Colonie, New York; Concord, MA; Jefferson Proving Grounds, Indiana; and Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. Therefore medical care must be provided by the United States Department of Defense officials to all individuals affected by the manufacturing, testing, and/or use of uranium munitions. Thorough environmental remediation also must be completed without further delay.

I am amazed that fifteen years after was I asked to clean up the initial DU mess from Gulf War 1 and over ten years since I finished the depleted uranium project that United States Department of Defense officials and others still attempt to justify uranium munitions use while ignoring mandatory requirements. I am dismayed that Department of Defense and Department of Energy officials and representatives continue personal attacks aimed to silence or discredit those of us who are demanding that medical care be provided to all DU casualties and that environmental remediation is completed in compliance with U.S. Army Regulation 700-48. But beyond the ignored mandatory actions the willful dispersal of tons of solid radioactive and chemically toxic waste in the form of uranium munitions is illegal ( www.traprockpeace.org/karen_parker_du_illegality.pdf ) and just does not even pass the common sense test and according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, DHS, is a dirty bomb. DHS issued “dirty bomb” response guidelines, www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/aces/fr-cont.html, on January 3, 2006 for incidents within the United States but ignore DOD use of uranium weapons and existing DOD regulations. These guidelines specifically state that: “Characteristics of RDD and IND Incidents: A radiological incident is defined as an event or series of events, deliberate or accidental, leading to the release, or potential release, into the environment of radioactive material in sufficient quantity to warrant consideration of protective actions. Use of an RDD or IND is an act of terror that produces a radiological incident.” Thus the use of uranium munitions is “an act or terror” as defined by DHS. Finally continued compliance with the infamous March 1991 Los Alamos Memorandum that was issued to ensure continued use of uranium munitions can not be justified.

In conclusion: the President of the United States- George W. Bush, the Prime Minister of Great Britain-Tony Blair, and the Prime Minister of Israel Olmert must acknowledge and accept responsibility for willful use of illegal uranium munitions- their own “dirty bombs”- resulting in adverse health and environmental effects.

President Bush, Prime Minister Blair, and Prime Minister Olmert should order:
1. medical care for all casualties,
2. thorough environmental remediation,
3. immediate cessation of retaliation against all of us who demand compliance with medical care and environmental remediation requirements,
4. and stop the already illegal the use (UN finding) of depleted uranium munitions.
References- these references are copies the actual regulations and orders and other pertinent official documents:
www.traprockpeace.org/twomemos.html
www.traprockpeace.org/rokke_du_3_ques.html
www.traprockpeace.org/du_dtic_wakayama_Aug2002.html
www.traprockpeace.org/karen_parker_du_illegality.pdf
www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/aces/fr-cont.html
cryptome.org/dhs010306.txt

More references:
FOCUS | Bush Admin. Rushing More Bombs to Israel
http://www.truth-out.org/article/bush-admin-rushing-more-bombs-israel
The Bush administration is rushing precision-guided bombs to Israel. The request for expedited delivery of the satellite and laser-guided bombs was described as an indication that Israel still had a long list of targets in Lebanon to strike. An arms-sale package approved last year allows Israel to purchase from the United States as many as 100 “bunker buster” weapons, GBU-28s developed for penetrating hardened command centers located deep underground.

Mike Malloy of Air America Radio said a few nights ago that in the ’90s Cheney used to speak of the need to establish a U.S. presence in the Middle-East. I had never heard this before, but it came as no surprise.

Mr. Malloy had Greg Pallast on a few days later – investigative reporter for the British Guardian Newspaper – who has discovered and disclosed a document of the oil companies’ written before the war which states that the goal of the occupation in Iraq would be to control oil production in accordance with what the Saudis wish. He said, essentially it called for “shutting off the spigot”…..in order to raise prices. Now things make much more sense. Things are not going badly in Iraq. Things are going just as the oil giants had planned.

I have recently been increasing my capacity for riding a bike from two blocks (hilly area) to 3 miles. I would gladly have reduced the use of my car by 50% if our Gov’t would not have illegally invaded Iraq and put our troops in this horrendous harms way. But you must, by now, understand…this administration did not illegally invade Iraq so that you and I could drive our cars as we have in the past. They invaded Iraq so that the oil companies and the industrial war complex could make ASTRONOMICAL profits…the likes of which the world has never seen! But the human costs of their mega profits are also ASTRONOMICAL…and should not be accepted.

To reap these profits they have not only put our troops in danger of bombs and snipers along the roads. They have placed them in a radiation hazard that was intense even before the “shock and awe” mission began. Of 700,000 troops that went to Iraq in the first Gulf War, over 500,000 are now on disability from what is called Gulf War Syndrome – which is a long list of painful, deadly illnesses and birth defects in offspring – but they are all caused by the exposure to the radiation poisoning from the illegal use of uranium weapons in a secret fifteen-year-long nuclear war.

San Francisco Bay View Newspaper correspondent Bob Nichols is the recipient of the Project Censored Award and has been researching and writing about these illegal radiological weapons for years. He states “The Pentagon knows it is a nuclear war. They want to hide it by insisting the Nuclear Wars all have a big boom from thermonuclear weapons.” But according to all International Conventions, these weapons are “nuclear weapons” – weapons of mass destruction – without the mushroom cloud.

In a recent email interview Mr. Nichols had this to say when asked if the troops are aware of the severe health problems awaiting them, “The Troops are told exactly, precisely NOTHING – Period! That is the way it has always been. The Los Alamos Nuclear Weapons Lab Memo of 1991 ordered all personnel to lie about depleted uranium weapons to maintain the “political viability” of uranium weapons. That is the long and short of it. The Troops do not count as much as a truck. They are truly “throw away soldiers”" in the eyes of the Brass.

It’s not only our troops that have been exposed to this “planet killer”, but so have the millions of Iraqi civilians over the past 15 years. There has been reported enormous increases in cancers and birth defects in Iraqis, as well as our troops.

What has been established in Iraq, Mr. Cheney?

Remember the figures? 700,000 of our troops sent…over 500,000 now on disability from radiation exposure after being in Iraq only a FEW MONTHS in 1991! If our troops from GW l are experiencing this kind of degradation of health, ask yourself how many people of Iraq have had children with horrible birth defects or have found out that they have cancer. Now, ask yourself how these people feel about the US occupying their country; destroying it and the citizens’ health – forever – with illegal uranium weapons. This radiation contamination has a half-life of 4.5 BILLION YEARS. The insurgency is not wanting for people who are willing to drive a car bomb to kill our troops. There are thousands upon thousands of them, and the numbers increase day by day, thanks to the inhumane, illegal use of uranium weapons by the US and UK Military. Do you see the living and ever-lasting hell that has been created in Iraq? Can you understand what we are sending our troops into?

Our government’s criminal use of illegal uranium weapons is one of the most evil things ever committed on this planet, and if you think the people of the world are not aware of it…please think again. This is a huge issue in the international press.

The American people would not stand for this if they knew the facts. But we are lied to by our corporate sponsored Government, and kept in the dark by our corporate media. They use words like “low level radiation…depleted uranium…minimal and manageable risks”. BULLSHIT! That’s complete, bloody-murder BULLSHIT! The experts tell us that the so-called “depleted uranium” retains approximately 60% of its lethal radiation but when it is used as a weapon it becomes extremely poisonous.

This is a most urgent matter! We MUST put an end to the use of these abominable, illegal, radioactive weapons.

Leuren Moret, famed scientist/whistleblower studying the fall out of illegal uranium weapons states “The use of depleted uranium weaponry by the United States, defying all international treaties, will slowly annihilate all species on earth including the human species, and yet this country continues to do so with full knowledge of its destructive potential”

She also reported “….the American Free Press dropped a “dirty bomb” on the Pentagon by reporting that eight out of 20 men who served in one unit in the 2003 U.S. military offensive in Iraq now have malignancies. That means that 40 percent of the soldiers in that unit have developed malignancies in just 16 months.” And still the government denies that these illnesses are the result of uranium weaponry.

This is a concern to every living being on this planet, as the radiation released in these battles is carried by the wind all around the globe right into our back yards. Please take a few more minutes and become informed – and inform others – about this most volatile issue. Read what the experts tell us…..but the corporate media keeps from us. Every human being on Earth should be screaming at the top of their lungs to stop the use of these hideous weapons since it looks as though a 60 % majority of the American people that are against the occupation of Iraq, are unable to end it through our so-called democratic government.

I would like to thank Mr. Bob Nichols for his help and contributions to this article.

[A portion of this text is from "Spoils of War Today - Gulf War Syndrome"]

“Depleted uranium: Dirty bombs, dirty missiles, dirty bullets. A death sentence here and abroad” – Leuren Moret
tinyurl.com/659×4

“The Queen’s Death Star” – Leuren Moret
tinyurl.com/h6sjc

“Uranium Bombing in Iraq Contaminates Europe” – Bob Nichols
indymedia.nl/nl/2006/03/34992.shtml

“Johnny Got a Gun” – Protest song by Johnny’s dad
radio.indymedia.org/news/2005/07/5801.php

The goal of this coalition is to build a base of antiwar voters that cannot be ignored by anyone running for office in the United States. We want millions of voters to sign the pledge and say no to pro-war candidates.

Daniel Ellsberg: Vietnam, Iraq and the Voters’ Pledge

According to recent opinion polls, most Iraqis don’t believe that we’re making things better or safer in their country. What does that say about the legitimacy of prolonged occupation, much less permanent American bases in Iraq? What does it mean for continued American armored patrols such as the one last November in Haditha, which, we now learn, led to the deaths of a Marine and 24 unarmed civilians?

Questions very much like these nagged at my conscience at the height of the Vietnam War, and led, eventually, to the publication of the first of the Pentagon Papers in June of 1971, 35 years ago.

As a former Marine Commander and defense analyst in 1970, I had exclusive access to highly classified defense documents for research purposes. They came to be known as the Pentagon Papers and constituted a 47-volume, top-secret Defense Department history of American involvement in Vietnam titled, “U.S. Decision-making in Vietnam, 1945-68.” The Pentagon Papers made it very clear that I, like the rest of the American public, had been misled about the origins and purposes of the war I had participated in — just as are the 85% of the troops in Iraq today who still believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11 and that he was allied with Al Qaeda.

That period had several similarities to this one. Congress was debating the withdrawal of U.S. armed forces from Indochina while President Nixon was making secret plans to expand, rather than exit from, the ongoing war in Southeast Asia — including a major air offensive against North Vietnam, possibly using nuclear weapons. Today, the Bush administration’s threats to wage war against Iran are explicit, with officials reiterating regularly that the nuclear “option” is “on the table.” Americans saw the color photographs of the My Lai massacre; now we are seeing photographs eerily similar to those from Haditha: women, children, old men and babies, all shot at short range.

What was it that prompted me to begin copying 7,000 pages of highly classified documents — an act that I fully expected would send me to prison for life? I came to the conclusion that the system I had been part of, giving my unquestioning loyalty to for 15 years, as a Marine, a Pentagon official and a State Department officer in Vietnam, was a system that lies reflexively, at every level, from sergeant to commander in chief, about murder. And I had the evidence to prove it.

The papers showed very clearly how we had become engaged in a reckless war of choice in someone else’s country — a country that had not attacked us — for our own domestic and external purposes. It became clear to me that the justifications that had been given for our involvement were false. And if the war itself was unjust, then all the victims of our firepower were being killed without justification.

That’s murder.

Today, there must be, at the very least, hundreds of civilian and military officials in the Pentagon, CIA, State Department, National Security Agency and White House who have in their safes and computers comparable documentation of intense internal debates — so far carefully concealed from Congress and the public — about prospective or actual war crimes, reckless policies and domestic crimes: the Pentagon Papers of Iraq, Iran or the ongoing war on U.S. liberties. Some of those officials, I hope, will choose to accept the personal risks of revealing the truth — earlier than I did — before more lives are lost or a new war is launched.

Haditha holds a mirror up not just to American troops in the field, but to our whole society. Not just to the liars in government but to those who believe them too easily. And to all of us in the public, in the administration, in Congress and the media who dissent so far ineffectively or who stand by as murder is being done and do nothing to stop it or expose it.

Americans must summon the civil courage to face what is being done in their name and to refuse to be accomplices. The Voters’ Pledge is one way to do this. The Voters’ Pledge is a project comprising many of the major organizations in the antiwar movement—United for Peace and Justice, Peace Action, Gold Star Families for Peace, Code Pink, and Democracy Rising—as well as groups with broader agendas like the National Organization for Women, Progressive Democrats of America, AfterDowningStreet.com, and magazines including the American Conservative and The Nation. The goal of this coalition is to build a base of antiwar voters that cannot be ignored by anyone running for office in the United States. We want millions of voters to sign the pledge and say no to pro-war candidates.

You can help right now by visiting www.VotersForPeace.US and immediately signing the Voters’ Pledge.
VotersForPeace
6930 Carroll Ave., Suite 240
Takoma Park, MD 20912
(301) 270-2355

Copyright 2006 VotersForPeace.US & Dan Ellsberg

This commentary on America today was written by U.S. Air Force Captain F. John Duresky, currently stationed in Iraq. It was published in The Washington Post on July 5, 2006.

A few days ago, as I do every day in Iraq([search]), I listened to the commander’s battle update. The briefer calmly and professionally described the day’s events. Somewhere in Iraq, on some forgotten, dusty road, an insurgent fighting an occupying army detonated an improvised explosive device (IED) under a Humvee, killing an American soldier. The briefer fielded a question from the general and moved to the next item in the update.

The day before that, in America, a 15-year-old’s incredibly rich parents planned the biggest sweet 16 party ever. They will spend more than $200,000 on an opulent event marking a single year in an otherwise unremarkable life. The soon-to-be-16 girl doesn’t know where Iraq is and doesn’t care. That same day an American soldier died in Iraq.

Two days earlier, a 35-year-old man went shopping for home entertainment equipment. He had the toughest time selecting the correct plasma screen; he could afford the biggest and best of everything. In the end, he had it installed by a specialty store. He spent about $50,000 on the whole system. He has never met anybody serving in the military nor served himself, but thinks we should “turn the whole place into a parking lot.” That day, another American soldier died in Iraq.

Three days earlier, some college students had a great kegger. There were tons of babes at the party, the music was awesome. Everybody got totally blitzed, and many missed class the next day. The young men all registered for the draft when they were 18, but even though our nation is at war, they aren’t the least bit worried about the draft. It is politically impossible to conscript young people today, we are told. That day, another American “volunteer” died in Iraq.

Four days earlier, a harried housewife looked all over town for the perfect accessory for her daughter’s upcoming recital. Her numerous chores wore her out, but she still found herself preoccupied. Her oldest son is having trouble in his first year of college, and he has been talking of enlisting in the Army. She is terrified that her child will go off to that horrible war she sees on TV. She and her husband decide to give their son more money so he doesn’t have to work part-time; maybe that will help with his studies. That day, another soldier died.

Yesterday millions of Americans celebrated Independence Day. They attended parties and barbecues. Families came together from all across the country to celebrate the big day. Millions of dollars were spent on fireworks. At public events, there were speeches honoring the people who served and those who made the ultimate sacrifice. These words mostly fell on bored ears. While the country celebrated its own greatness, other Americans were still fighting in Iraq.

Today Americans go back to their normal business. The politicians in Washington have made sure the sacrifices of the war are borne by the very smallest percentage of Americans. They won’t even change the tax rates to prevent deficits from running out of control. Future generations will pay the cost of this war.

Many Americans feel strongly about the war one way or another, but they aren’t signing up their children for service or taking the protest to the streets. What can they do? It is they whom we in the military trust to influence our leaders in Washington.

Today, as on every other day in Iraq, American servicemen are in very real danger. Our country is at war. Mothers, fathers, wives, husbands and children are worrying about their loved ones in a faraway land. They all hope he or she isn’t the one whose luck runs out today.