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NEW VISION IV
War & Weapons of War |
Cyclops,
Odilon Redon, 1898
The single eye of the Cyclops reflects the belief that we, the human species, have the right to master nature and, if we so choose, use the elements of life to destroy life. Implicit in this is the idea that we are not part of nature. Yet, it becomes ever clearer that we need to grow beyond this one-eyed vision or risk self destruction.
Weapons, aggression, defence and war have traditionally been and still are the concern of men. Women have suffered, have lost their own lives and the lives of husbands, fathers, sons and daughters in war but in the past woman's voice has been inaudible. Even now, in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, it is still inaudible. At the present time, woman's voice needs to be heard as much as man's. It is as much woman's concern as man's if violence continues to escalate, until, with the immense power of our weapons and our spiritual immaturity, we risk destroying not only civilisation, but the possibility of life on this planet.
New Vision, Introductory page
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Click hereThe Great Challenge of our Time
Click hereWar and Weapons of War: Nuclear, Biological and Chemical - This Page New Perspectives in Science
Click hereEcological Concerns
Click HereNew Perspectives on the Psyche
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The Pathology of Weapons of War - by Anne Baring
The Pathology of Weapons of War
"The world establishment is firmly entrenched in the business of war: The permanent Members of the Security council of the United Nations were together responsible for 81% of world arms exports from 1996 - 2000. Indeed, the world leaders who express deep frustration at the 'irresponsibility' of anti-globalisation protesters lead the countries that make the most money in this terrible trade. The G8 countries sold 87% of the total supply of arms exported in the entire world. and the US share alone has reached almost 50% of this figure. As much as 68% of American arms manufacture goes to developing countries." Amartya Sen (Published in Resurgence Magazine May/June 2003)
"The divine and the demonic are very close together; only a thin line separates them/us. We who are indeed capable of divinity are also capable of the demonic. And the deepest of all demonic activity is the use of our divine imaginations to invent destruction."
Matthew Fox, Original BlessingWe have made great progress in the last hundred years in the realm of science and technology, in the treatment of disease and the prolongation of our lives. But at the same time, we stand at the brink of an abyss into which we may be plunged through our enslavement to military technology. Weapons that were unimaginable a hundred years ago can now obliterate all life on earth, sending us back to the beginning of evolution. The drive for omnipotent power - to reach a position of "full spectrum dominance" (a phrase used by the Pentagon) - now threatens the planet and the life it sustains. However, it seems that the sheer madness of the escalation of the power to destroy passes unnoticed by the leaders of governments.
Fortunately, the very urgency of the danger is activating an initiative on the part of millions of people in many different countries to challenge their governments' addiction to war and weapons, and to call them to account for initiating wars that are embarked on in the name of self-defence, freedom and democracy but leave a legacy of further violence and a lethal trail of human suffering in their wake.
The theme of this website is that each of us is an expression of a vast sea or field of consciousness - invisible, and as yet barely recognised by us. We are part of a great living web of life. We cannot achieve a position of dominance in relation to nature, life or each other. The belief that we can continue indefinitely to act as if nations were autonomous units, developing the power to destroy life on a colossal scale without our demonic inventions returning to us in the form of an 'enemy', armed with precisely the weapons we have developed for our own protection, is not only an illusion but a pathology - a madness. But it is a madness that is very difficult to see because the drive for omnipotence and dominance is an unconscious behaviour pattern - that is deeply rooted in the pre-human layers (limbic brain) of the modern psyche Now we are threatened with destruction by weapons that may fall into the hands of individuals who will spare no effort to encompass the destruction of a hated enemy. (see The Struggle for Primacy and Dominance and the Roots of War under the section Comment on the Home page; also seminar 9 - the Dragon).
For over fifty years the concentration on the development of these weapons - first and foremost by the United States and the Soviet Union, but also the United Kingdom, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea and now Iran - has brought into being the very situation that was most feared - the power of a nation, group, or disturbed individual to destroy life on an apocalyptic scale. The general public is not aware that at the present time 16 states either possess, are developing or are attempting to acquire nuclear weapons. 20 states possess, are attempting to acquire or are preparing a system capable of using biological weapons. 26 states are in a similar position with regard to chemical weapons.
What has been hidden from the public over the last fifty years about the manufacture and stockpiling of biological and chemical weapons is now being revealed and suggests a scenario more horrifying even than that offered by nuclear weapons. (1) The propensities for evil in the human imagination exceed most people's grasp. Few can grasp the enormity of the fact that scientists and military personnel are capable, whether in the interests of self-defence or with the intention of destroying a feared enemy, of inventing and developing weapons which could unleash an irreversible catastrophe on the world. We did not witness the dropping of the atomic bombs on the civilian population of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the way that we witnessed the horrific attack on the twin towers in New York. Yet even as we discovered what had happened in Japan, we were barely able to take in the obscenity of that act, justified at the time as necessary to shorten the war with Japan. Now we are faced with the possibility of more such atrocities but on a vastly increased scale, not only through the destructive power of nuclear weapons, but of biological, chemical and genetically targeted ones as well.
We, the inhabitants of the planet, are not fully aware of the dangers of the continued development of nuclear, biological and other weapons because weapons are selected and funds (derived from the taxes we pay) committed to their development by governments and military experts without our knowledge. We do not know that these weapons are in existence until there is mention of their being used against us or until, (as in Iraq's use of chemical weapons against the Kurds or the use of depleted uranium by the United States and Britain in Iraq and Afghanistan), we hear of the victims of such weapons, which victims include members of our armed forces. Nor have most people the time to focus on these crucially important issues and the technological expertise or the power to challenge their governments.
What makes us, as a species, capable of engendering such evil and worse, incapable of recognising and acknowledging that it is evil? Why are we still so unconscious? What is the compulsion that drives us to imagine, invent and develop ever more demonic weapons of destruction? The arrow, the battleaxe, the sword and the gun once used in hand-to-hand fighting have been replaced by nuclear bombs, missiles tipped with deadly depleted uranium, cluster-bombs that act like land mines, biological and chemical weapons - even the technology to eliminate specific ethnic groups and, incredibly, to interfere with the upper layers of the atmosphere or the magnetic field of the earth (2) - all weapons of destruction which can be targeted at the 'enemy' without involving loss of life on 'our side'. Every twenty minutes someone is either killed or maimed by a land mine somewhere in the world. We rarely hear mention of the babies and children maimed and deformed by depleted uranium.
It is probable that we are contributing to the increase of aggression by the very fact of constantly preparing for war. The military obsession with the technology of war is the factor that makes its occurrence inevitable. Once the technology is imagined and brought into being, it is almost impossible to contain. It has to be "tried out" in action. We have reached the point where the continued anticipation of the need to defend ourselves against future enemies and the drive to invent ever more sophisticated weapons has become self-defeating. The leaders of nations and the military branch of governments are currently living in a mind-set that is out of date in relation to the needs of the planet and now threatens our very survival as a species.
Survival instincts married to the imaginative capacity for evil in the human psyche bring evil into being in the form of weapons of destruction and the suffering their use engenders. The enemy is now Hitler, now Stalin, now Saddam Hussein, now Osama bin Laden and, most recently, Iran and North Korea. There will always be a greater, more powerful enemy as long as we continue to produce ever more lethal weapons and as long as we continue to demonise our enemies as being the sole perpetrators of evil. The real enemy hidden in the shadow aspect of our own nature is our inability to see the enormity of what we are prepared to do to life and to each other in continuing down this path.
Three-quarters of all scientists work for industry or the military. Colossal sums of money are spent every year on the production of weapons - over $1 trillion on military expenditure world wide. Colossal sums of money are made through the sale of arms. We produce arms and sell them to countries which may be at war with their neighbours, yet may eventually involve members of our armed forces as victims of those same weapons. War and weapons of war cause devastation, pollute earth and water, create millions of destitute refugees (currently over 50 million) who are deprived of their homes and livelihoods. Land mines destroy the lives and limbs of thousands of children yet ever more continue to be laid. All this should arouse outrage but the majority of the world's population has only a minimal grasp of what is being done or of how it might affect them. Dr. Rosalie Bertell, in her book, Planet Earth, the Latest Weapon of War, writes,Wars result in immediate deaths and destruction, but the environmental consequences can last hundreds, often thousands of years. And it is not just war itself that undermines our life support system, but also the research and development, military exercises and general preparation for battle that are carried out on a daily basis in most parts of the world. The majority of this pre-war activity takes place without the benefit of civilian scrutiny and therefore we are unaware of some of what is being done to our environment in the name of 'security'. (3)
After the Second World War, the expertise to develop nuclear, biological and chemical weapons spread from the United States and the Soviet Union all over the world (see below). Anthrax, one of the most deadly of these weapons, was recognised as "a winner" because it can wipe out the population of an entire city which will remain contaminated for generations. Iraq, Iran, North Korea, the United Kingdom, China, India and Pakistan have access to the expertise needed to make biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. Via Pakistan's nuclear expertise and scientists supportive of his cause, Osama bin Laden and his followers have access to nuclear material and the power to make some kind of bomb - perhaps a 'dirty' bomb combining nuclear waste and conventional explosives, as well as biological and chemical weapons. Pakistan's "father of the bomb," the scientist Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, has now sold the technology for developing it to Libya, Iran and North Korea (2004).
The facts given here can only give rise to the utmost revulsion that we - whether ourselves or an 'enemy' - can conceive of treating human beings in this way in the interests of our own self-defence or in the service of a religious ideology. There is hardly a country that is exempt from this catalogue of evil since each hurries to equip itself with the latest technology of war insofar as it has the financial means to do so. There is another aspect to this addiction: we could, for far less than is currently being spent on weapons and the War on Terrorism, eliminate hunger in the world and ensure that everyone was provided with the basic necessities of life. Why are we willing to spend so much more on weapons and war than on helping people to survive?
What fissure exists in the mind of a scientist working on these weapons or an individual giving the order to produce and use them that their dedication to their work, their ideology or their military agenda overrides the capacity for empathy with other human beings? What fissure exists in the mind of each one of us who accepts the furtherance and use of this technology because of the protection it seems to offer us or because we don't know what else to do. We are, in effect, by complicity, potential murderers on a massive scale. We may name this loyalty to a particular national group or a particular religion but what of a deeper loyalty to life that has brought us into being, or the possibility of life for future generations and for the planet itself?
What can be done? Since our present path is leading us to catastrophe, we have surely to look for another way. It seems almost certain that the insistence on the need for a new vision will come from individuals. Governments and politicians may be too locked into the struggle for power to heed the danger that people can clearly see. It is time that the production and proposed use of these weapons is named a crime against humanity as the Club of Budapest has done www.clubofbudapest.com. If enough individuals can find the foresight and greatness of spirit to renounce these weapons, they will eventually break the negative chain of cause and effect and help to dismantle the illusion that evil can be eradicated in an enemy before it is recognised and renounced in ourselves.
A letter to the Times (17/2/04) from the distinguished scientist, Dr. Joseph Rotblat (President Emeritus of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs) is worth quoting here (extract) because he has worked tirelessly for just such an outcome.:"Dr. Mohamed El Baradei, the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agence (IAEA) hit the nail on the head when he pointed out that the onus is on the established nuclear powers to lead the way in nuclear disarmament. As long as some states, including the most powerful ones, believe that their security demands the possession of nuclear weapons, how can we deny such security to other states which consider themselves to be vulnerable?...The elimination of nuclear weapons, and the establishment of a safeguard regime to prevent the clandestine acquisition of nuclear weapons, present extremely difficult problems, but they will never be solved unless an effort is made to tackle them. The body set up to do this, the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, is prevented from doing its job by the continued refusal by the nuclear powers to put it on its agenda. Unless this issue is given high priority it is inevitable that other nations will seek security in keeping or acquiring nuclear weapons and eventually terrorist groups too will acquire nuclear weapons."
©Anne Baring
1. see BBC Documentary July 13th and 14th, and November 19th, 1998; Channel Four Documentary October 29th, 2001, UK.
2. Rosalie Bertell, Planet Earth, the Latest Weapon of War, The Women's Press, London, 2000. See review under Booklist.
3. ibid, p. 2.
The following data on biological weapons and warfare have been gathered from television documentaries. The information is drawn from the notes I made at the time. A more complete account is given in a recently published book called Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War (see notes).
Biological weapons were developed by Japan in its war with China prior to the Second World War. (4) The Japanese military were trying to find efficient ways to kill people by methods other than conventional weapons. Biological weapons seemed a cheap and lethal weapon. Doctors and scientists were ordered to find ways of transforming disease into weapons. The Japanese developed a bomb that could carry anthrax and bubonic plague. They released plague infected fleas over the city of Ningpo in 1940. 500 people died and many more were infected. Only one survivor is alive today.
4. The atrocities in Pingfan are not the only ones that took place during this war. Iris Chang, an American woman of Chinese descent, investigated and chronicled the details of the barbaric acts inflicted by Japanese troops on the Chinese population of Nanking in 1937. Her controversial book was published in 1997. Deeply affected by the horror of what she was describing, she was hospitalised for depression. On November 9th, 2004, when she was in the midst of working on another book on the Bataan Death March, she committed suicide.
5. Professor M.S. Blackett, Military and Political Consequences of Atomic Energy, Blackwell Press, 1948.
6. Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War by Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg and William J. Broad. Publisher: Simon and Schuster, New York, 2001.
A WAKE UP CALL - General Lee Butler
The public seems to have forgotten about the dangers of nuclear weapons now that the Cold War is over. But many high-ranking military officers are sufficiently alarmed about the possibility of their accidental use to urge abolishing all nuclear weapons, including those in the U.S. arsenal.
----- One Admiral, Noel Gayler, former U.S. Commander in Chief, Pacific Command, puts it this way: "Does nuclear disarmament imperil our security? No, it enhances it."
----- Admiral Eugene Carroll, former director of U.S. military operations for all U.S. forces in Europe and the Middle East, states: "Nuclear weapons are the sole military source of our national insecurity. We, and the whole world, would be much safer if nuclear weapons were abolished."Recently, a full-page ad in The New York Times and other major newspapers called for the U.S. to take the lead in ridding the world of all nuclear weapons. Among those who signed the ad: Admiral Stansfield Turner, former Director of Central Intelligence and Commander-in-Chief, Allied Southern Forces, Europe; General Andrew Goodpaster, former Supreme Allied Commander, Europe; Admiral William J. Crowe, Jr., former Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff; General Charles Horner, former Commander, Coalition Air Forces, Desert Storm; Admiral William A. Owens, former Vice-Chair, Joint Chiefs of Staff. The ad calls for immediately de-alerting the thousands of land- and sea-based missiles now ready to launch in minutes, and deeply reducing nuclear stockpiles.
One of the first high-ranking military officers to speak out for abolishing nuclear weapons was General Lee Butler, who, as Commander-in-Chief of United States Strategic Air Command, had planning and operational responsibilities for all of America's strategic nuclear forces. Butler retired from the military in 1994, fully intending not to comment publicly on national security matters. But two and a half years later, he could no longer stay quiet about "my deepening dismay as a citizen of this planet."
----- In Waging Peace Worldwide, the journal of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Butler tells about his experiences in the military and what led him to devote his life toward the elimination of nuclear weapons.-----I get a lot of questions like, "If you had been President Truman, would you have made the decision to drop atom bombs on Japan?" "Was this a revelation, was it an epiphany, what was the catalyst for your change of view?" The questions go to the issue of when I had the responsibilities as the commander of the nuclear forces, as a nuclear advisor to the President and, perhaps most particularly, as the person who devised the nuclear war plan…
----- The evolution of my views was not an epiphany, not some road to Damascus revelation. From the very outset, the nuclear arena was superimposed with a blanket of secrecy that was virtually impenetrable. Access to the knowledge and access to the levers of power that control this arena was reserved to a very small number of people throughout its history in this country and in the Soviet Union.
----- I was commissioned as a lieutenant in June 1961. I became the commander of the nuclear forces of the United States in January 1991, almost 30 years later to the month. Until the day I assumed those responsibilities, I had never been given access to the nuclear war plan of the United States in its entirety, even though in Washington I had policy responsibilities that directed the plans. I knew nothing about the submarine operations of the strategic nuclear forces of the United States, and I had no idea how the decision process took place that would lead to a command from the President of the United States to unleash nuclear war and retaliation for a presumed strike.Deepening Doubts
Up to that point I had developed a series of reservations and doubts that progressively deepened. I had no basis for understanding whether these concerns were based on lack of information and insight or whether they were rooted in the reality of bureaucratic processes run amuck by the intrusion of the self-serving profit interests of the military-industrial complex, by the collision of cultures and turf in the Pentagon for budget dollars, or simply by the towering forces of alienation and isolation that grew out of the mutual demonization between the U.S. and the Soviet Union over a period of 45 years. I just didn't know.
----- Beginning in early 1991, I went through a process that very quickly accelerated and confirmed my worst fears and my worst concerns. What we had done in this country, what I believe happened in the Soviet Union, and what I think will inevitably happen in any country that makes the fateful decision to become a nuclear power-to acquire the capability to build and employ nuclear weapons-is this: the creation of gargantuan agencies with mammoth appetites and a sense of infallibility that consume infinite resources in pursuit of a messianic vision of a demonization.A Chilling Ballet
In those responsibilities of commander of the forces responsible for the day-to-day operational safety, security, and preparation to employ those weapons, I was increasingly appalled by the complexity of this ballet of hundreds of thousands of people managing, manipulating, controlling, and maintaining tens of thousands of warheads and extremely complex systems that flew through the air, were buried in the bowels of the land, or patrolled beneath the seas of the world.
----- The capacity for human error, human failure, mechanical failure, misunderstanding, was virtually infinite. I have seen nuclear airplanes crash under circumstances that were designed to replicate-but were inevitably far less stressful than-the actual condition of nuclear war. I have seen human error lead to the explosion of missiles in their silos. I have read the circumstances of submarines going to the bottom of the ocean laden with nuclear missiles and warheads because of failures, mechanical flaws, and human error. I read that entire history, and when I came away from it-because I was never given access to it before-I was chilled. I was chilled to the depth of my strategic soul.
----- Secondly, consider my responsibilities as a nuclear advisor. Every month of my life as a commander of the nuclear forces, I went through an exercise called the Missile Threat Conference. It would come at any moment of the day or night. For three years I was required to be within three rings of my telephone so that I could answer a call from the White House to advise the President on how to respond to nuclear attack. The question that would be put to me in these conferences, and as it would be in the event, was "General Butler, I have been advised by the Commander-in-Chief of the North American Air Defense Command that the nation is under nuclear attack. It has been characterized thusly. What is your recommendation with regard to the nature of our reply?"
----- That was my responsibility, and about half the time that call came in the middle of the night as Dorene and I lay in our bedroom. I had to be prepared to advise the President to sign the death warrant of 250 million people living in the Soviet Union. I felt that responsibility to the depth of my soul, and I never learned to reconcile my belief systems with it. Never.
----- My third responsibility was to devise the nuclear war plan of the United States. When I became the Director of Strategic Target Planning-another hat that I wore as the Commander of the Nuclear Forces-I went down to my targeting room, many floors beneath the surface. I told my planners that we were going to get to know each other very well because I wanted to understand the plan in its entirety. I think this story is the most graphic illustration of the evolution of my views and my concerns and, ultimately, my convictions. When I began to delve into that war plan, I was absolutely horrified to learn that it encompassed 12,500 targets. I made the personal commitment-because I saw it as absolutely integral to my responsibilities and the consequences of that targeting-to examine every single one of them in great detail.Ending the Madness
It took me three years to complete this analysis but only three months to be convinced that it was the most grotesque and irresponsible war plan ever devised by man, with the possible exception of its counterpart in the Soviet Union, which in truth probably mirrored it exactly. Because what that plan implied was, among other things, in the event of nuclear war between two nations, in the space of about 16 hours 20,000 thermonuclear warheads would be exploded on the face of our planet, signing the death warrant not just for 250 million Soviets, but for mankind in its entirety.
----- The second thing that I began to grasp was that neither in the Soviet Union nor in the United States did any of us ever understand those consequences, because the calculation as to the military effectiveness of that attack was based on only one criterion, and that was blast damage. It did not take into account fire; it did not take into account radiation. Can you imagine that? We never understood, probably didn't care about, and certainly would not have been able to calculate with any precision, the holistic effects of 20,000 nuclear weapons exploding virtually simultaneously on the face of the earth.
----- That was the straw that tilted my conviction with regard to the prospects of nuclear war, and ultimately to an unavoidable responsibility to end this. To end it! And by the grace of God I came to that awareness and I inherited my responsibilities at the very moment the Cold War was ending and, therefore, I had the opportunity to end the madness.
----- So in those three years I did what I could to cancel all of the strategic nuclear modernization programs in my jurisdiction, which totaled $40 billion. I canceled every single one of them. I recommended to the President that we take bombers off nuclear alert for the first time in 30 years, and we did. I recommended that we accelerate the retirement of all systems designed to be terminated in present and future arms control agreements, and we did. We accelerated the retirement of the Minuteman II force.
----- We shrank the nuclear warplanes of the United States by 75 percent. By the time I left my responsibilities, those 12,500 targets had been reduced to 3,000. If I'd had my way and I'd been there a while longer, they would have been reduced to zero. Ultimately I recommended the disestablishment of my command. I took down its flag with my own hands.Creeping Re-rationalization of Nuclear Weapons
When I retired in 1994, I was persuaded that we were on a path that was miraculous, that was irreversible, and that gave us the opportunity to actually pursue a set of initiatives, acquire a new mindset, and re-embrace a set of principles having to do with the sanctity of life and the miracle of existence that would take us on the path to zero. I was dismayed, mortified, and ultimately radicalized by the fact that within a period of a year that momentum again was slowed. A process that I have called the creeping re-rationalization of nuclear weapons was introduced by the very people who stood to lose the most by the end of the nuclear era.
----- The French re-initiated nuclear testing at the worst possible moment, as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty hung in the balance. We in the United States have re-initiated the process of demonization of "rogue nations." What a horrible, pernicious misuse of language! What an anti-intellectual dehumanizing process of reducing complex societies and human beings and histories and cultures to "rogue nations." Once you do that, you can justify the most extreme measures to include the reintroduction of nuclear weapons as legitimate and appropriate weapons of national security.A Second Chance
That was my evolution. That's how I transitioned from the coldness of the Cold War years, when I became an officer in the United States military at the height of the Cold War just prior to the Cuban Missile Crisis, to someone today who simply sees himself as a citizen of this planet and who was given an opportunity to step back from the brink of nuclear catastrophe. I left office feeling that this process, this extraordinary and unimaginable opportunity, had been delivered to us by a Creator who forgave our transgressions and who gave us a second chance. Now we seem determined to fritter it away. I can't tolerate that. This is why Dorene and I have decided to devote the balance of our lives on this planet to do our best to save it.General Butler founded the Second Chance Foundation, 12020 Shamrock Plaza, Suite 105, Omaha, NE 68154.
A QUESTION OF VALUES - By General Lee Butler
When I speak to former colleagues about nuclear abolition, they often ask three questions. One of them is, "What are you smoking?" A lot of people are just utterly mystified. They simply cannot understand why, from their perspectives, my views have changed so dramatically. Some of my mail is pretty hateful. It has absolutely no impact on my conviction or my assessment, but I've had to learn to live with the loss of relationships that I treasure.
----- The second question is, "I understand what you're saying and I kind of endorse it in principle, but why in the world do you think this is really even possible?" I got a question from my friend Warren Buffet when I discussed this with him. He said, "Lee, I agree in principle with what you are saying. I endorse it and I want to do what I can to help. But don't you think that instead of zero we ought to have just one?" That is the kind of question that I get from most people. Shouldn't we just have one? My answer is very simple. "Warren, if it's just one, how is it that we get to have it, and who gets to decide that?" And then there's a long pause, and the response is, "I've never thought of it that way."
----- The third set of questions that I get really pose a challenge. That is, "Lee you've just lost it. Nuclear weapons prevented World War III. They are all that stand between us and the forces of barbarism, the terrorists, the rogue nations. We, above all people, have the responsibility to continue to provide the barrier, the shield that shelters civilization and all that we hold dear. Nuclear weapons are the answer."
----- My response to that is really very simple. I've thought about this for a long time. It is the very core of my belief system. We cannot at once hold sacred the mystery of life and sacrosanct the capacity to destroy it utterly. They are irreconcilable. If we truly claim to the values that underlie our political system, if we truly believe in the dignity of the individual, and if we cherish freedom and the capacity to realize our potential as human beings on this planet, then we are absolutely obligated to pursue relentlessly our capacity to live together in harmony and according to the dictates of respect for that dignity, for that sanctity of life. It matters not that we continuously fall short of the mark. What matters is that we continue to strive. What is at stake here is our capacity to move ever higher the bar of civilized behavior. As long as we sanctify nuclear weapons as the ultimate arbiter of conflict, we will have forever capped our capacity to live on this planet according to a set of ideals that value human life and eschew a solution that continues to hold acceptable the shearing away of entire societies. That simply is wrong. It is morally wrong and it ultimately will be the death of humanity.These two statements by General Lee Butler and the introduction to them were published in issue 55 of the Timeline section, the Foundation for Global Community website www.globalcommunity.org. and are reproduced on this website with the permission of Kay Hays, Managing Editor, Timeline.
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation 1187 Coast Village Road, Suite 123,---
Santa Barbara, CA 93108 www.wagingpeace.org
WAR BUSINESS
By Douglas Mattern
President, Association of World CitizensWe are now in the third year of the new century and we stand bewildered by what happened to the wonderful expressions of hope and joy that were expressed in the millennium celebrations. Today the world is a mirror image of the 20th century, which was the most brutal and destructive in human history. A major factor is the war business that promotes militarism and conflict while producing enormous financial profit. A tragic indicator of the values of our civilization is that "There's no business like war business."
Just think of all the missiles, bombs, etc. that will be replaced for profit by the armament industry after the current U.S. military assault on Iraq. In the first 14 days the U.S. dropped over 8,700 bombs, including more than 3,000 cruise missiles. This includes cluster bombs, which is one of the most barbaric weapons ever created by the human mind.
Cruise missiles cost over $500,000 each. The Apache Longbow Helicopter costs about 22 million dollars each. The Bradley Fighting Vehicle costs over 1.2 million dollars. Each B-1 Stealth bomber costs over $2 billion.
Today it's Iraq on the receiving end of U.S. bombing. This country seems to have a proclivity for bombing small developing countries. Over the past several decades the list includes: Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Cuba, Indonesia, Grenada, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan, Bosnia, Afghanistan, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Panama, Congo, and Iraq the first time around.
Since 1992, the U.S. exported over $142 billion dollars worth of weapons to states around the world. This macabre world market is dominated by the U.S., which accounted for nearly half of all weapon sales in 2001, more than $12 billion dollars for U.S. manufacturers. The Center for International Policy estimates that about 80 percent of U.S. arms exports to the developing world go to non-democratic regimes.
Of the active conflicts in 1999, the U.S. supplied weapons or military training to parties in 39 of 42 conflicts. Other leading nations in this "merchants of death" business include Russia, France, Great Britain, China, Germany, and to a lesser degree, Sweden, Israel, Belgium, Belarus, Italy, North Korea, and more.
For U.S. companies, even larger profit is in the annual Pentagon budget. Over $60 billion was allocated to purchase new weapons for 2003. The Pentagon spends over $30 billion annually in research and development for new weapons.
The U.S. armament industry is the second most subsidized industry after agriculture. The administration's FY 2004 military budget is a big increase over 2003 at nearly $400 billion when including funding for nuclear weapons that is under the Department of Energy (DOE) Budget. Moreover, military spending is scheduled to increase over the coming years with projections of a $502 billion budget in FY 2009.
Steven Kosiak, director of budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, says, "We've come to the point where we're spending more money than we spent during the Cold War." This money is to pay for a new generation weapons, including the militarization of space, which is a dream of never ending profits for the weapons industry.
The top lobbyist for the 2000 elections was Lockheed Martin at $2.8 million. In 2001, Lockheed-Martin had $14 billion in sales of weapons to the U.S. and foreign buyers. Moreover, Lockheed Martin recently received a $3.5 billion contract to sell F-16 jet fighters to Poland. As a new member of NATO, Poland, along with Hungary and the Czech Republic, agreed to modernize their military and purchase new weapons. For the Lockheed sale, the U.S. Government loaned Poland $3.8 billion. The expansion of NATO is a vehicle to sell U.S. weapons, and not surprising, the weapons industry is the biggest lobbyist for NATO expansion.
The small arms trade is also a lucrative business, totaling between 4-6 billion dollars per year. The leading exporters in terms of value are the U.S. and Russia. But this business is spread around the world with over 1,000 companies in some 98 countries involved in the production of small arms and/or ammunition. Small arms kill over 500,000 people a year in conflicts.
HANDGUNS & MURDERS
The violence and obsession with armaments goes down to rifles and handguns, with the U.S. leading the parade. There are more than 65 million handguns in the U.S., and some 192 million in total firearms. In 1998 alone, dealers sold an estimated 4.4 million guns in the U.S., nearly two million of them handguns. The result was 12,102 people murdered by firearms.The nuclear weapons industry may soon get a new boost as the Bush team is threatening to resume nuclear testing at the Nevada underground site to develop new nuclear weapons, including "bunker busters" for use against hardened underground targets.
The Cold War ended over a decade ago, but the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reports the world nuclear stockpile in 2002 totaled over 30,000 warheads. In addition to deployed nuclear warheads, thousands more are held in reserve and are not counted in official declarations. Moreover, thousands of U.S. and Russian warheads are on a hair-trigger alert, ready for launch in a few minutes notice. The Center for Defense Information reports the United States spends $27 billion annually to prepare to fight a nuclear war.
Today the war business is in full swing with thousands of scientists and engineers going to work daily with the task of building or developing new weapons, including space-based weapons that would turn the heavens above into a new source of terrorism for humanity below.
At the same time, UN Secretary General Koffi Annan reminds us that half of humanity lives in poverty, existing on an average of $2 a day. The Arias Foundation reports that world military spending increased from $798 billion in 2000 to $839 billion in 2001. Half of the world's governments spend more on the military than for health care. This expenditure is a monumental waste of our wealth, resources, and intellectual talent for the means of destruction and astonishing profits for the armament companies. The war business is the world's ultimate criminal activity.
BARBARISM TODAY
We are at a pivotal point in history, thus the decision by the U.S. and Britain to wage war on Iraq, rather than working tirelessly for a civilized resolution through the United Nations, is a step backward to the barbarism of 20th century warfare. Time is crucial! It's imperative that we do all that is necessary to initiate a dramatic change to end the violence and war that now threatens the very fabric of our civilization.This requires that we pull down the curtain on the "architects of destruction" and put the war business permanently out-of-business. And it means ending the foolish quest to establish an American empire. We must put our energy and priority into strengthening and building a new United Nations. As former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali puts it, a third generation UN.
The first generation, the League of Nations, represented governments only. The current second generation UN is also comprised of governments which have the power, but it also includes a tremendous input and dependence on Non-Government Organizations (NGOs). The third generation UN must be democratic and also include the representation of the world's people and NGOs, and with some corporate responsibility. This could include a two-tier Parliament. One tier comprised of governments, and the second tier comprised of civil society.
The imperative change in the third generation UN must be the ability to resolve conflicts between nations and peoples through the framework of world law. There is no workable alternative to end the war system with all of its political, economic, and cultural elements.
"The age of nations is past, the task before us now, if we would survive, is to shake off our ancient prejudices and build the earth." - Teilhard de Chardin
Douglas Mattern is president of the Association of World Citizens (AWC); a San Francisco based international peace organization with branches in 50 countries, and with UN NGO status. The website for AWC is http://www.worldcitizens.org/"http://www.worldcitizens.org/ http://www.worldcitizens.org/
Sources for material in this article include: Center for Defense Information (CDI) Federation of American Scientists (FAS) Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIRPI) United Nations Development Program (UNDP) United Nations Department for Disarmament U.S. State Department
e-mail worldcit@best.comPlease see 'Booklist Page' for a review of Dr. Rosalie Bertell's recent book, Planet Earth - The Latest Weapon of War (The Women's Press Ltd., London, 2000).
NUCLEAR-FREE ZONE - General Lee Butler
Let me begin by simply expressing my appreciation to those of you who have laboured for so many years, understanding intuitively what took years for those of us, presumably experts in this business, to appreciate.
----- And that is, that at the heart of the matter, nuclear weapons are the enemy of humanity. Indeed, they're not weapons at all. They're some species of biological time bomb whose effects transcend time and space, poisoning the Earth and its inhabitants for generations to come.
----- It took me almost forty years to grasp the truth. It required thirty years simply to reach the point in my career where I had the responsibilities and, most importantly, the access to information and the exposure to activities and operations that profoundly deepened my grasp of what this business of nuclear capability is all about.
----- What I have come to believe is that much of what I took on faith was either wrong, enormously simplistic, extraordinarily fragile, or simply morally intolerable. What I have come to believe is that the amassing of nuclear capability, to the level of such grotesque excess as we witnessed between the United States and the Soviet Union over the period of the fifty years of the Cold War, was as much a product of fear and ignorance and greed and ego and power and turf and dollars, as it was about the seemingly elegant theories of deterrence.
----- Let me just take a moment and give you some sense of what it means to be the Commander of Strategic Nuclear Forces, the land and sea-based missiles and aircraft that would deliver nuclear warheads over great distances. First, I had the responsibility for the day-to-day operation, discipline, training, of tens of thousands of crew members, the systems that they operated and the warheads those systems were designed to deliver - some 10,000 strategic nuclear warheads. I came to appreciate in a way that I had never thought, even when I commanded individual units like B52 bombers, the enormity of the day-to-day risks that comes from multiple manipulations, maintenance and operational movement of those weapons. I read deeply into the history of the incidents and the accidents of the nuclear age as they had been recorded in the United States. I am only beginning to understand that history in the former Soviet Union, and it is more chilling than anything you can imagine. Much of that is not publicly known, although it is now publicly available.
----- Missiles that blew up in their silos and ejected their nuclear warheads outside of the confines of the silo. B52 aircraft that collided with tankers and scattered nuclear weapons across the coast and into the offshore seas of Spain. A B52 bomber with nuclear weapons aboard that crashed in North Carolina, and on investigation it was discovered that with one of those weapons, six of the seven safety devices that prevent a nuclear explosion had failed as a result of the crash. There are dozens of such incidents. Nuclear missile-laden submarines that experienced catastrophic accidents and now lie at the bottom of the ocean.
----- I was also a principal nuclear adviser to the President of the United States. What that required of me was to be prepared on a moment's notice, day or night, seven days week, 365 days a year, to be within three rings of my telephone and to respond to this question from the president: "General, the nation is under nuclear attack. I must decide in minutes how to respond. What is your recommendation with regard to the nature of our reply?"
----- In the thirty-six months that I was a principal nuclear adviser to the President, I participated every month in an exercise known as a missile threat conference. Virtually without exception, that threat conference began with a scenario which encompassed one, then several, dozens, then hundreds and finally thousands of inbound thermonuclear warheads to the United States. By the time that attack was assessed, characterized and sufficient information was available with some certainty in appreciation of the circumstance, at most he had twelve minutes to make that decision. Twelve minutes - for a decision which, coupled with that of whatever person half a world away who may have initiated such an attack, held at risk not only the survival of the antagonists, but the fate of humankind in its entirety - the prospect of some 20,000 thermonuclear warheads being exploded within a period of several hours.
----- Sad to say, the poised practitioners of the nuclear art never understood the consequences of such and attack, nor do they today.
----- I never appreciated that until I came to grips with my third responsibility, which was for the nuclear war plan of the United States.
----- In January 1991, when the Cold War had already been declared over, I went downstairs, on my first day in office, to meet my war planners in the bowels of my headquarters. Finally for the first time in thirty years, I was allowed full access to the war plan. Even having some sense of what it encompassed, I was shocked to see that in fact it was defined by 12,500 targets in the former Warsaw Pact to be attacked by some 10,000 nuclear weapons, virtually simultaneously in the worst of circumstances, which is what we always assumed.
----- I made it my business to examine in some detail every single one of those targets. I doubt that that had ever been done by anyone, because the war plan was divided up into sections and each section was the responsibility of some different group of people. My staff was aghast when I told them I intended to look at every single target individually. My rationale was very simple. If there had been only one target, surely I would have to know every conceivable detail about it, why it was selected, what kind of weapon would strike it, what the consequences would be. My point was simply this: Why should I feel in any way less responsible simply because there was a large number of targets? I wanted to look at every one. ----- At the conclusion of that exercise I finally came to understand the true meaning of MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction. With the possible exception of the Soviet nuclear war plan, this was the single most absurd and irresponsible document I had ever reviewed in my life. I was sufficiently outraged that I alerted my superiors in Washington about my concerns. The shortest version of all of that is that I came to fully appreciate the truth that now makes me seem so odd. And that is: we escaped the Cold War without a nuclear holocaust by some combination of skill, luck and divine intervention, and, I suspect, the latter in greatest proportion.
----- The saving grace was that the Cold War was ending at this very moment. I was faced with a decision of great personal consequence. Now having fully appreciated the magnitude of our nuclear capability and what it implied, when joined in an unholy alliance with its Soviet counterpart, what was I to do? Awaiting in my inbox were $40 billion of new strategic nuclear weapons modernization programmes, wanting only my signature. What should be our goals for the next rounds of arms-control negotiations? How hard should I fight to maintain the budget of strategic forces, to keep bases open? And what to do with the nuclear war plan in all of its excess? My conclusion was very simple: I of all people had the responsibility to be at the forefront of the effort to begin to close the nuclear age.
----- I withdrew my support for every single one of those $40 billion of nuclear weapons programmes and they were all cancelled. I urged the acceleration of the START 1 accords and that Minuteman 2 be taken out of the inventory at an accelerated pace. I recommended that for the first time in thirty years bombers be taken off alert. The President approved these recommendations and, on the 25th September 1991, I sat in my command centre and with my red telephone I gave the orders to my bomber troops to stand down from alert. I put twenty-four of my thirty-six bases on the closure list. I cut the number of targets in the nuclear war plan by 75%, and ultimately I recommended the dis-establishment of Strategic Air Command, which the President also approved. I took down that flag on the 1st of June 1992.
----- As you can imagine, I went into retirement exactly five years ago with a sense of profound relief and gratitude - the relief that the most acute dangers of the Cold War were coming to a close, and gratitude that I had been given the opportunity to play some small role in eliminating those dangers. You can also imagine, then, my growing dismay, alarm and finally horror that in a relatively brief period of time, this extraordinary momentum, this unprecedented opportunity began to slow down. Once again the creeping re-rationalization of nuclear weapons began. The START 2 treaty was paralysed in the US Senate for three years and now in the Duma for three more. The precious window of opportunity began to close, and now we find ourselves in the almost unbelievable circumstance in which United States nuclear weapons policy has reverted to that of 1984. That our forces with their hair-trigger postures are effectively the same as they were at the height of the Cold War.
----- What a stunning outcome. I would never have imagined this state of affairs five years ago. This is an indictment. The leaders of the nuclear weapons states today risk very much being judged by future historians as having been unworthy of their age, of not having taken advantage of opportunities so perilously won at such great sacrifice and cost of re-igniting nuclear arms races around the world, of condemning humankind to live under a cloud of perpetual anxiety.
----- This is not a legacy worthy of the human race. This is not the world that I want to bequeath to my children and my grandchildren. It's simply intolerable. This is above all a moral question and I want to reiterate to you a quote. I took this quote to heart many years ago. It is from one of my professional heroes - General Omar Bradley, who said on the occasion of his retirement, having been a principal in World War II and having witnessed the aftermath of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: "We live in an age of nuclear giants and ethical infants, in a world that has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. We have solved the mystery of the atom and forgotten the lessons of the Sermon on the Mount. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about dying than we know about living."
----- We have a priceless opportunity to elevate, to nudge higher and to learn to live on this planet with mutual respect and dignity. This is an opportunity we must not lose. My concern was such that I could not sit in silent acquiescence to the current folly…This article is taken from Resurgence Magazine, Edition 200 (May/June 2000), and is an edited text of a speech given the previous year at the Canadian Network Against Nuclear Weapons. It is reproduced here with permission from Satish Kumar, editor, Resurgence.
General Lee Butler was Commander-in-Chief of the United States Strategic
Command, Offnut Air Base, Nebraska. He retired in 1994.
THE WAR TO END WAR?
Editorial, Fourth World Review no.108, August 2001
WHEN THE HISTORY of our time comes to be written it will tell us, no doubt, of immense public concern for the ecological perils we are so impetuously promoting, of the moves being made towards economic globalisation, of concern for human rights, of the mass-motoring mania being sustained by a constantly expanding consumption of finite fuel resources, of the non-stop expansion of human numbers in an already overcrowded planet and much else besides.
----- But what will surely amaze any future historian and his readers, assuming there will be any of either category living, is the incredible degree of passivity that currently prevails over the proliferation of monster weapons of mass destruction.
----- In 1945 the USA was the only country to possess nuclear weapons and it proceeded to destroy a huge area of two Japanese cities with them. Why did it not drop them at sea or in open country to show their potential, instead of on inhabited cities? One writer has suggested that the decision had nothing to do with the Japanese war but with a US intention to intimidate the Soviet Union. Stalin appears to have been duly intimidated, enough to proceed with production of similar weapons of his own.
----- Today twenty countries, probably more, possess these awesome weapons and even these have to be seen in the context of other weapons, such as microbiological bombs capable of obliterating the human life of a continent.
----- Governments, at least some of them, are alive, if only partly so, to the dangers; hence the non-proliferation treaty. Part of the monstrous passivity with which these developments are generally viewed springs from and assumption that the consequences of using them to the users are so terrible they will never be used. Another ingredient of this passivity springs from a conviction that there is nothing the ordinary citizen can do to halt such developments. Both assumptions have, of course, no validity, which in an era dominated by mass forms of reasonlessness, does nothing to lessen the grip they may hold on the untutored mind.
----- The treaty has in any case now been repudiated by the USA. And what doctrine now governs the USA? The mightiest war machine in all human history? On this we need to look at its own most recent enunciation of its objectives:
-----"The ultimate goal of our military force is to accomplish the objectives directed by the National Command Authorities. For the joint force of the future, this goal will be achieved through full spectrum dominance - the ability of US forces, operating unilaterally or in combination with multinational and interagency partners, to defeat any adversary and control any situation across the full range of military operations.
----- 'The full range of operations includes maintaining a posture of strategic deterrence. It includes theatre engagement and presence activities. It includes conflict involving employment of strategic forces and weapons of mass destruction, major theatre wars, regional conflicts, and smaller-scale contingencies. It also includes those ambiguous situations residing between peace and war, such as peacekeeping and peace enforcement operations, as well as non-combat humanitarian relief operations and support to domestic authorities.
----- 'The label "full spectrum dominance" implies that US forces are able to conduct prompt, sustained and synchronised operations with combinations of forces tailored to specific situations and with access to and freedom to operate in all domains - space, sea, land, air, and information. Additionally, given the global nature of our interests and obligations, the United States must maintain its overseas presence forces and the ability to rapidly project power worldwide in order to achieve full spectrum dominance."'United States Department of Defence:
Joint Vision 2020. 30 May 2000.*This is not the utterance of an inebriated GI in some tavern, it is the considered view of the officials controlling the war machine! It needs to be seen against the global background of the Arab/Israeli conflict, the Indo/Pakistan conflict over Kashmir, or the confrontation of the US with China, to say nothing of the burgeoning military power of a united 'Europe'.
----- The cause of 'Europe' is being sponsored not only by business interests which seek to make a packet, but by numerous starry-eyed idealists who are convinced it will bring peace to the continent. Perhaps it will, as the US enjoys internal peace even as it becomes involved, as it has been involved, in every major war in the globe for well over 100 years. These and many other developments need to be seen against the general unpopularity of war, coupled with the prodigious expansion of what is politely called 'the arms trade'.
----- Trade? This is a trade in death. Death of countless mothers and children, to say nothing of horrible degrees of burning and maiming of millions more. So Britain sells tanks, guns, bomber planes, sophisticated devices of germ warfare, battleships, submarines, and other instruments of murder to all and sundry. After all it is all part of 'growth', it creates 'jobs' and results in a favourable balance of trade. What government seeking re-election could ask for more?
----- No doubt it is also busy exporting coffins, as well as medicines, blankets and stretchers for the injured victims, providing more 'growth', and more jobs and even better export figures. The USA does the same, so does Russia and other great powers, demonstrating that great powers can also be moral pygmies.
----- But when does 'trade' become war? 'A nation armed and prepared for war can no more help going to war than a chicken can help laying an egg'. So Russia sells arms to Arab powers, the USA sells arms to Israel. China sells arms to Pakistan and Britain sells arms to India.
----- What is happening under our noses is the creation of a global tinderbox in which madmen are wandering around with flaming torches. Madness on a gigantic global scale does not cease to be madness and this particular form of insanity cannot fail to create conditions which are unpredictable and uncontrollable and which may well result in the demise of the entire works of civilisation.
Inevitable road to war
As sure as mass motoring results in a high level of fatal crashes, so the mass development of weapons of death cannot fail to lead to war. At the dawn of a new century we have to face the brute fact that the third world war is an event waiting to happen as surely as storm clouds presage rain.
----- What do we do? A Pope doing his job would at once excommunicate every government official in sight, and Archbishop of Canterbury or of anywhere else would organise mass protests and lead them with a hunger strike, Jewish Rabbis and Muslim Imams would join forces to save the world from this commercialised infidelism, the Dalai Lama would be leading a global pilgrimage of protest and peace, accompanied no doubt by the leading dignitaries of the Sikh and Hindu communities. Perhaps the Zoroastrians and the Millennium Dome spiritualists might join them. Perhaps even the Quakers would disturb their organised silences and feel impelled to act…..
----- These people and others are the largely self-appointed moral spokesmen of mankind, but where are they? Here is the gravest moral crisis ever to have erupted in human history and collectively their impact on it has about as much effect as a damp lettuce leaf on a tornado.
----- Is there no fundamental sense of right and wrong which might prompt all of them to join forces to insist that this global march to universal death must stop? Beside the prospect of a general Armageddon what does it matter what absurd qualms people may have about the ordination of women priests, or disagreements about divorce, about family breakdown, about gay marriages, about adultery or a hundred other issues which absorb so much apparent moral fervour?
----- If morality has a function it is first to avert the all-too-human tendency for people to plunge into fratricidal forms of strife, and instead to promote peace and security; it is, secondly, to secure that base so that the way is open to the development of human nobility. On both counts all religious leaders today are betraying their own trust and that of their followers. Trade in war proceeds unchecked and governments everywhere are promoting a life-pattern which is wiping out of existence the remotest prospect of any form of human nobility. If the silence of religious leaders is not acquiescence what then is it?
----- Is there no move from any quarter anywhere that might alert all these leaders to the dangers now in train? A move which might bring them all together in a global moral crusade to halt the march to death and human degradation to which at present they are showing all the insouciant irresponsibility of professional strumpets? Perhaps enough to make them insist that their governments abandon insanity and take the path of peace? A collective voice of sanity from them would alert the peoples of the world.
----- How long, O Lord, how long?*Quoted by Ken Coates in the current issue of The Spokesman, the journal of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, obtainable from Russell house, Bulwell lane, Nottingham, NG6 OBT, England.
This editorial is reproduced from Fourth World Review,
The Close, 26 High Street, Purton, Wiltshire SN5 4AE.MARIN COUNTY'S NEWS MONTHLY - FREE PRESS (415)868-1600 - (415)868-0502(fax) - P.O. Box 31, Bolinas, CA, 94924 April, 2005 Radioactive Uranium Nano-Particles Pinpointed As Major Issue in Gulf War Syndrome By Christopher Bollyn - American Free Press
Depleted uranium weapons and the untold misery they wreak on mankind are taboo subjects in the mainstream media. There are indications, however, that the media embargo is about to be breached. Despite being a grossly under-reported subject in the mainstream media, there is intense public interest in depleted uranium (DU) and the damage it inflicts on humankind and the environment. While American Free Press is actively investigating DU weapons and how they contribute to Gulf War Syndrome, the corporate-controlled press virtually ignores the illegal use of DU and its long-lasting effects on the health of veterans and the public.
In August 2004 American Free Press published a ground-breaking four-part series on DU weapons and the long-term health risks they pose to soldiers and civilians alike. Information provided to AFP by experts and scientists, some of it published for the first time in this paper, has increased public awareness of how exposure to small particles of DU can severely affect human health.
Leuren Moret, a Berkeley-based geo-scientist with expertise in atmospheric dust, corresponds with AFP on DU issues. Recently Moret provided a copy of her correspondence to a British radiation biologist, Dr. Chris Busby, about how nanometer size particles of DU-less than one-tenth of a micron and smaller-once inhaled or absorbed into the body, can cause long-term damage to one's health. Busby is one of the founders of Green Audit, a British organization that monitors companies "whose activities might threaten the environment and health of citizens."
Moret's letter was meant to assist Busby in a legal case being heard in the High Court in London where a former defense worker, Richard David, 49, is suing Normal Air Garrett, Ltd., an aircraft parts company now owned by Honeywell Aerospace, claiming exposure to depleted uranium on the job has made his life a "living hell."
David worked as a component fitter on fighter planes and bombers but had to quit due to health problems. He says he developed a cough within weeks of starting work. Today, David suffers from a variety of symptoms like those known as Gulf War Syndrome, including respiratory and kidney problems, bowel conditions and painful joints. Medical tests reveal mutations to his DNA and damage to his chromosomes, which, he says, could only have been caused by ionizing radiation. He has also been diagnosed with a terminal lung condition.
Honeywell denies depleted uranium was ever used at the plant in Yeovil, Somerset, where David worked for 10 years until 1995. David claims that DU's existence at the plant was denied because it is an official secret. David has asked the High Court for more time to gather evidence. The hearing is due to resume in April. "I don't have any legal representation," David said, "so I am representing myself. It is a real David versus Goliath case. "I am confident I will win. I hope to set a precedent for other cases of people who have suffered from the effects of depleted uranium."
Moret's letter on the particle effect of DU is based on research done by Marion Fulk, a nuclear physical chemist and former scientist with the Manhattan Project and the National Laboratory at Livermore, California. Fulk, who has developed a "particle theory" about how DU nano-particles affect human DNA, donates his time and expertise to help bring information about DU to the public.
Asked about Fulk's particle theory, Busby said it is "quite sound." "DU is much more dangerous than they say," Busby added. "I've always said that it contributes significantly to Gulf War Syndrome."
When Moret's correspondence to Dr. Busby was posted on the Internet over the New Year's holiday under the title "How Depleted Uranium Weapons Are Killing Our Troops," some 6,000 people read the letter in the first two days. The following Monday, a producer from the BBC's Panorama program contacted Moret to arrange an interview. If the BBC follows up with an investigation on the health effects of DU, it may be hard for the US media to remain silent.
More than 500,000 "Gulf War Era" vets currently receive disability compensation, many of them for a variety of symptoms generally referred to as Gulf War Syndrome. Experts blame DU for many of these symptoms." The numbers are overwhelming, but the potential horrors only get worse," Robert C. Koehler of the Chicago-based Tribune Media Services wrote in an article about DU weapons entitled "Silent Genocide." "DU dust does more than wreak havoc on the immune systems of those who breathe it or touch it; the substance also alters one's genetic code," Koehler wrote. "The Pentagon's response to such charges is denial, denial, denial. And the American media is its moral co-conspirator."
The US government has known for at least twenty years that DU weapons produce clouds of poison gas on impact. These clouds of aerosolized DU are laden with billions of toxic sub-micron sized particles. A 1984 Dept. of Energy conference on Nuclear Airborne Waste reported that tests of DU anti-tank missiles showed that at least 31 percent of the mass of a DU penetrator is converted to nano-particles on impact. In larger bombs the percentage of aerosolized DU increases to nearly 100 percent, Fulk told AFP.
Depleted uranium is harmful in three ways, according to Fulk: "Chemical toxicity, radiological toxicity, and particle toxicity." Particles in the nano-meter (one billionth of a meter) range are a "new breed of cat," Moret wrote. Because the size of the nano-particles allows them to pass freely throughout the organism and into the nucleus of its cells, exposure to nano-particles causes different symptoms than exposure to larger particles of the same substance.
Internalized DU particles, Fulk said, act as "a non-specific catalyst" in both "nuclear and non-nuclear" ways. This means that the uranium particle can affect human DNA and RNA because of both its chemical and radiological properties. This is why internalized DU particles cause "many, many diseases," Fulk said. Asked if this is how DU causes severe birth defects, Fulk said, "Yes."
The military is aware of DU's harmful effects on the human genetic code. A 2001 study of DU's effect on DNA done by Dr. Alexandra C. Miller for the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, indicates that DU's chemical instability causes 1 million times more genetic damage than would be expected from its radiation effect alone, Moret wrote. Dr. Miller requested that questions be sent in writing and copied to a military spokesman, but did tell AFP that it should be noted that her studies showing that DU is "neoplastically transforming and genotoxic" are based on in vitro cellular research. Studies have shown that inhaled nano-particles are far more toxic than micro-sized particles of the same basic chemical composition.
British toxicopathologist Vyvyan Howard has reported that the increased toxicity of the nano-particle is due to its size. For example, when mice were exposed to virus-size particles of Teflon (0.13 microns) in a Univ. of Rochester study, there were no ill effects. But when mice were exposed to nano-particles of Teflon for 15 minutes, nearly all the mice died within 4 hours. "Exposure pathways for depleted uranium can be through the skin, by inhalation, and ingestion," Moret wrote. "Nano-particles have high mobility and can easily enter the body. Inhalation of nano-particles of depleted uranium is the most hazardous exposure, because the particles pass through the lung-blood barrier directly into the blood.
"When inhaled through the nose, nano-particles can cross the olfactory bulb directly into the brain through the blood brain barrier, where they migrate all through the brain," she wrote. "Many Gulf Era soldiers exposed to depleted uranium have been diagnosed with brain tumors, brain damage, and impaired thought processes. Uranium can interfere with the mitochondria, which provide energy for the nerve processes, and transmittal of the nerve signal across synapses in the brain. "Damage to the mitochondria, which provide all energy to the cells and nerves, can cause chronic fatigue syndrome, Lou Gehrig's disease, Parkinson's Disease, and Hodgkin's disease."
www.americanfreepress.net/html/explaining_how.html Also see: http://www.llrc.org/du/duframes.htm
Democracy Betrayed
THE HORROR OF DEPLETED URANIUM IS NOT LIMITED TO IRAQ – IT MAY WELL BE AT OUR DOORSTEPS. THE INFORMATION WHICH SOME GOVERNMENTS ARE CONCEALING IS PRESENTED HERE.
BY JAMES DENVER
©copyright James Denver 2003‘I’m horrified. The people out there – the Iraqis, the media and the troops – risk the most appalling ill health. And the radiation from depleted uranium can travel literally anywhere. It’s going to destroy the lives of thousands of children, all over the world. We all know how far radiation can travel. Radiation from Chernobyl reached Wales and in Britain you sometimes get red dust from the Sahara on your car.’
The speaker is not some alarmist doom-sayer. He is Dr Chris Busby, the British radiation expert, Fellow of the University of Liverpool in the Faculty of Medicine and UK representative on the European Committee on Radiation Risk, talking about the best kept secret of this war: the fact that, by illegally using hundreds of tons of depleted uranium (DU) against Iraq, Britain and America have gravely endangered not only the Iraqis but the whole world. For these weapons have released deadly, carcinogenic and mutagenic, radioactive particles in such abundance that – whipped up by sandstorms and carried on trade winds – there is no corner of the globe they cannot penetrate – including Britain. For the wind has no boundaries and time is on their side: the radioactivity persists for over 4,500,000,000 years and can cause cancer, leukaemia, brain damage, kidney failure, and extreme birth defects – killing millions of every age for centuries to come. A crime against humanity which may, in the eyes of historians, rank with the worst atrocities of all time.
Yet, officially, no crime has been committed. For this story is a dirty story in which the facts have been concealed from those who needed them most. It is also a story we need to know if the people of Iraq are to get the medical care they desperately need, and if our troops, returning from Iraq, are not to suffer as terribly as the veterans of other conflicts in which depleted uranium was used.A dirty Tyson
‘Depleted’ uranium is in many ways a misnomer. For ‘depleted’sounds weak.. The only weak thing about depleted uranium is its price. It is dirt cheap, toxic waste from nuclear power plants and bomb production. However, uranium is one of earth’s heaviest elements and DU packs a Tyson’s punch, smashing through tanks, buildings and bunkers with equal ease, spontaneously catching fire as it does so, and burning people alive. ‘Crispy critters’ is what US servicemen call those unfortunate enough to be close. And, when John Pilger encountered children killed at a greater distance he wrote:
‘The children’s skin had folded back like parchment, revealing veins and burnt flesh that seeped blood, while the eyes, intact stared straight ahead. I vomited..’ (Daily Mirror)The millions of radioactive uranium oxide particles released when it burns can kill just as surely, but far more terribly. They can even be so tiny they pass through a gas mask, making protection against them impossible. Yet, small is not beautiful. For these invisible killers indiscriminately attack men, women, children and even babies in the womb – and do the gravest harm of all to children and unborn babies.
A terrible legacy
Doctors in Iraq have estimated that birth defects have increased by 2 – 6 times, and 3 – 12 times as many children have developed cancer and leukaemia since 1991. Moreover, a report published in The Lancet in 1998 said that as many as 500 children a day are dying from these sequels to war and sanctions and that the death rate for Iraqi children under 5 years of age increased from 23 per 1000 in 1989 to 166 per thousand in 1993. Overall, cases of lymphoblastic leukaemia more than quadrupled with other cancers also increasing ‘at and alarming rate’. In men, lung, bladder, bronchus, skin and stomach cancers showed the highest increase. In women, the highest increase were in breast and bladder cancer, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma.1
On hearing that DU had been used in the Gulf in 1991, the UK Atomic Energy Authority sent the Ministry of Defence a special report on the potential damage to health and the environment. It said that it could cause half a million additional cancer deaths in Iraq over 10 years. In that war the authorities only admitted to using 320 tons of DU – although the Dutch charity LAKA estimates the true figure is closer to 800 tons. Many times that may have been spread across Iraq by this year’s war. The devastating damage all this DU will do to the health and fertility of the people of Iraq now, and for generations to come, is beyond imagining.
We must also count the numberless thousands of miscarried babies. Nobody knows how many Iraqis have died in the womb since DU contaminated their world. But it is suggested that troops who were only exposed to DU for the brief period of the war were still excreting uranium in their semen 8 years later and some had 100 times the so called ‘safe limit’ of uranium in their urine. The lack of government interest in the plight of veterans of the 1991 war is reflected in a lack of academic research on the impact of DU but informal research has found a high incidence of birth defects in their children and that the wives of men who served in Iraq have three times more miscarriages than the wives of servicemen who did not go there.
Since DU darkened the land Iraq has seen birth defects which would break a heart of stone; babies with terribly foreshortened limbs, with their intestines outside their bodies, with huge bulging tumours where their eyes should be, or with a single eye – like Cyclops, or without eyes, or without limbs, and even without heads. Significantly, some of the defects are almost unknown outside textbooks showing the babies born near A-bomb test sites in the Pacific. Doctors report that many women no longer say ‘Is it a girl or boy?’ but simply, ‘Is it normal, doctor?’ Moreover this terrible legacy will not end. The genes of their parents may have been damaged for ever, and the damaging DU dust is ever-present.Blue on blue
What the governments of America and Britain have done to the people of Iraq they have also done to their own soldiers, in both wars. And they have done it knowingly. For the battle-fields have been thick with DU and soldiers have had to enter areas heavily contaminated by bombing.
Moreover, their bodies have not only been assaulted by DU but also by a vaccination regime which violated normal protocols, experimental vaccines, nerve agent pills, and organophosphate pesticides in their tents, (in some cases, assorted nerve agents and sarin). Yet, though the hazards of DU were known, British and American troops were not warned of its dangers. Nor were they given thorough medical checks on their return – even though identifying it quickly might have made it possible to remove some of it from their body. Then, when a growing number became seriously ill, and should have been sent to top experts in radiation damage and neurotoxins, many were sent to a psychiatrist.
Over 200,000 US troops who returned from the 1991 war are now invalided out with ailments officially attributed to service in Iraq – that’s 1 in 3. In contrast, the British government’s failure fully to assess the health of returning troops, or to monitor their health, means no one even knows how many have died or become gravely ill since their return. However, Gulf veterans’ associations say that, of 40,000 or so fighting fit men and women who saw active service, at least 572 have died prematurely since coming home and 5000 may be ill. An alarming number are thought to have taken their own lives, unable to bear the torment of the innumerable ailments which have combined to take away their career, their sexuality, their ability to have normal children, and even their ability to breathe or walk normally. As one veteran puts it, they are ‘on DU death row, waiting to die’.
Whatever other factors there may be, some of their illnesses are strikingly similar to those of Iraqis exposed to DU dust. For example, soldiers have also fathered children without eyes. And, in a group of eight servicemen whose babies lack eyes seven are known to have been directly exposed to DU dust. They too have fathered children with stunted arms, and rare abnormalities classically associate with radiation damage. They too seem prone to cancer and leukaemia. Tellingly, so are EU soldiers who served as peacekeepers in the Balkans, where DU was also used. Indeed their leukaemia rate has been so high that several EU governments have protested at the use of DU.The vital evidence
Despite all that evidence of the harm done by DU, governments on both sides of the Atlantic have repeatedly claimed that as it emits only ‘low level’ radiation DU is harmless. Award winning scientist, Dr Rosalie Bertell who has led UN medical commissions, has studied ‘low level’ radiation for 30 years. 2 She has found that uranium oxide particles have more than enough power to harm cells, and describes their pulses of radiation as hitting surrounding cells ‘like flashes of lightning’ again and again in a single section.2 Like many scientists worldwide who have studied this type of radiation, she has found that such ‘lightning strikes’ can damage DNA and cause cell mutations which lead to cancer. Moreover, these particles can be taken up by body fluids and travel through the body, damaging more than one organ. To compound all that Dr Bertell has found that this particular type of radiation can cause the body’s communication systems to break down, leading to malfunctions in many vital organs of the body and to many medical problems. A striking fact, since many veterans of the first Gulf war suffer from innumerable, seemingly unrelated, ailments.
In addition, recent research by Eric Wright, Professor of Experimental Haematology at Dundee University, and others, have shown two ways in which such radiation can do far more damage than has been thought. The first is that a cell which seems unharmed by radiation can produce cells with diverse mutations several cell generations later. (And mutations are at the root of cancer and birth defects.) This ‘radiation induced genomic instability’ is compounded by ‘the by-stander effect’ by which cells mutate in unison with others which have been damaged by radiation – rather as birds swoop and turn in unison. Put together, these two mechanisms can greatly increase the damage done by a single source of radiation, such as a DU particle. Moreover, it is now clear that there are marked genetic differences in the way individuals respond to radiation – with some being far more likely to develop cancer than others. So the fact that some veterans of the first Gulf war seem relatively unharmed by their exposure to DU in no way proves that DU did not damage others.The price of truth
That the evidence from Iraq and from our troops, and the research findings of such experts, have been ignored may be no accident. A US report, leaked in late 1995, allegedly says, ‘The potential for health effects from DU exposure is real; however it must be viewed in perspective…the financial implications of long term disability payments and healthcare costs would be excessive.’ 3
Clearly, with hundreds of thousands gravely ill in Iraq and at least a quarter of a million UK and US troops seriously ill, huge disability claims might be made not only against the governments of Britain and America if the harm done by DU were acknowledged. There might also be huge claims against companies making DU weapons and some of their directors are said to be extremely close to the White House. How close they are to Downing Street is a matter for speculation, but arms sales makes a considerable contribution to British trade. So the massive whitewashing of DU over the past 12 years, and the way that governments have failed to test returning troops, seemed to disbelieve them, and washed their hands of them, may be purely to save money.
The possibility that financial considerations have led the governments of Britain and America cynically to avoid taking responsibility for the harm they have done not only to the people of Iraq but to their own troops may seem outlandish. Yet DU weapons weren’t used by the other side and no other explanation fits the evidence. For, in the days before Britain and America first used DU in war its hazards were no secret.4 One American study in 1990 said DU was ‘linked to cancer when exposures are internal, [and to] chemical toxicity – causing kidney damage’. While another openly warned that exposure to these particles under battlefield conditions could lead to cancers of the lung and bone, kidney damage, non-malignant lung disease, neuro-cognitive disorders, chromosomal damage and birth defects.5A culture of denial
In 1996 and 1997 UN Human Rights Tribunals condemned DU weapons for illegally breaking the Geneva Convention and classed them as ‘weapons of mass destruction’ ‘incompatible with international humanitarian and human rights law’. Since then, following leukaemia in European peacekeeping troops in the Balkans and Afghanistan (where DU was also used), the EU has twice called for DU weapons to be banned.
Yet, far from banning DU, America and Britain stepped up their denials of the harm from this radioactive dust as more and more troops from the first Gulf war and from action and peacekeeping in the Balkans and Afghanistan have become seriously ill. This is no coincidence. In 1997, while citing experiments, by others, in which 84 percent of dogs exposed to inhaled uranium died of cancer of the lungs, Dr Asaf Durakovic, then Professor of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine at Georgetown University in Washington was quoted as saying, ‘The [US government’s] Veteran Administration asked me to lie about the risks of incorporating depleted uranium in the human body.’ He concluded, ‘uranium…does cause cancer, uranium does cause mutation, and uranium does kill. If we continue with the irresponsible contamination of the biosphere, and denial of the fact that human life is endangered by the deadly isotope uranium, then we are doing disservice to ourselves, disservice to the truth, disservice to God and to all generations who follow.’ Not what the authorities wanted to hear and his research was suddenly blocked.
During 12 years of ever-growing British whitewash the authorities have abolished military hospitals, where there could have been specialized research on the effects of DU and where expertise in treating DU victims could have built up. And, not content with the insult of suggesting the gravely disabling symptoms of Gulf veterans are imaginary they have refused full pensions to many. For, despite all the evidence to the contrary, the current House of Commons briefing paper on DU hazards says ‘it is judged that any radiation effects from…possible exposures are extremely unlikely to be a contributory factor to the illnesses currently being experienced by some Gulf war veterans.’ Note how over a quarter of a million sick and dying US and UK vets are called ‘some’.
The way ahead
Britain and America not only used DU in this year’s Iraq war, they dramatically increased its use – from a minimum of 320 tons in the previous war to a minimum of 1500 tons in this one. And this time the use of DU wasn’t limited to anti-tank weapons – as it had largely been in the previous Gulf war – but was extended to the guided missiles, large bunker busters and big 2000 pound bombs used in Iraq’s cities. This means that Iraq’s cities have been blanketed in lethal particles – any one of which can cause cancer or deform a child. In addition, the use of DU in huge bombs which throw the deadly particles higher and wider in huge plumes of smoke means that billions of deadly particles have been carried high into the air – again and again and again as the bombs rained down – ready to be swept worldwide by the winds.
The Royal Society has suggested the solution is massive decontamination in Iraq. That could only scratch the surface. For decontamination is hugely expensive and, though it may reduce the risks in some of the worst areas, it cannot fully remove them. For DU is too widespread on land and water. How do you clean up every nook and cranny of a city the size of Baghdad? How can they decontaminate a whole country in which microscopic particles, which cannot be detected with a normal Geiger counter, are spread from border to border? And how can they clean up all the countries downwind of Iraq – and, indeed, the world?
Professor Major Doug Rokke, former chief officer of the Depleted Uranium Project at the Pentagon and a victim of harmful effects of DU should perhaps be given the last word:
‘What I expect is that we will again see serious health effects in the American soldiers who go there and use it. We will see health effects in all the residents of that region. We will see health effects in the Iraqi soldiers who will be the targets of direct uranium used by US forces. I must repeat and make this very clear, as the head of the project to clean up uranium munitions during the 1991 Gulf War, and as the director of the Depleted Uranium Project for the Department of Defence who did the research, and as a DU casualty, the use of uranium munitions during warfare is a crime against God, is a crime against humanity, and should be considered a war crime. You cannot take solid uranium radioactive waste, throw it in anybody’s backyard and refuse to provide medical care and complete the environmental clean-up that is required to sustain the health and safety of the citizens of the earth’
So there are only two things we can do to mitigate this crime against humanity. The first is to provide the best possible medical care for the people of Iraq, for our returning troops and for those who served in the last Gulf war and, through that, minimize their suffering. The second is to relegate war, and the production and sale of weapons, to the scrap heap of history – along with slavery and genocide. Then, and only then, will this crime against humanity be expunged, and the tragic deaths from this war truly bring freedom to the people of Iraq, and of the world.James Denver writes and broadcasts internationally on science and technology.
References
1. The Lancet volume 351, issue 9103, 28 February 1998
2. Rosalie Bertell’s book Planet Earth the Latest Weapon of War was reviewed in Caduceus issue 51, page 28
3. www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabl1.htm#TAB L_Research Report Summaries
4. www.wagingpeace.org/articles/02.01/020117moret.htm The secret official memorandum to Brigadier General L.R. Groves from Drs Conant, Compton and Urey of War department Manhattan district dated October 1943 is available at the website www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2003/Leuren-Moret-Gen-Groves21feb03.htm
5. www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_iitab11.htm#tab L_research report summariesThe Low Level Radiation Campaign hopes to be able to arrange a limited number of private urine tests for those returning from the latest Gulf war. It can be contacted at: The Knoll, Montpelier Park, Llandrindod Wells, LD1 5LW. 01597 824771. Web: www.llrc.org
DEPLETED URANIUM
Below is an editorial published in October in the Baltimore Sun, written by Dr. Helen Caldicott, Founder and President of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute, whose book The New Nuclear Danger was published in 2002.
"As the Bush administration prepares to make war on the Iraqi people -- for it is the civilian population of that country and not Saddam Hussein who will bear the brunt of the hostilities -- it is important that we recall the medical consequences of the last Persian Gulf war. It was, in effect, a nuclear war. By the end of that 1991 conflict, the United States left between 300 and 800 tons of depleted uranium 238 in anti-tank shells and other explosives on the battlefields of Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
The term "depleted" refers to the removal of the fissionable element uranium 235 through a process that ironically is called "enrichment." What remains, uranium 238, is 1.7 times more dense than lead. When incorporated into an anti-tank shell and fired, it achieves great momentum, cutting through tank armor like a hot knife through butter.
What other properties does uranium 238 possess? First, it is pyrophoric. When it hits a tank at high speed, it bursts into flames, producing aerosolized particles less than 5 microns in diameter, making them easy to inhale into the terminal air passages of the lung. Second, it is a potent radioactive carcinogen, emitting a relatively heavy alpha particle composed of two protons and two neutrons. Once inside the body -- either in the lung if it has been inhaled, in a wound if it penetrates flesh, or ingested since it concentrates in the food chain and contaminates water -- it can produce cancer in the lungs, bones, blood or kidneys. Third, it has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, meaning the areas in which this ammunition was used in Iraq and Kuwait will remain effectively radioactive for the rest of time.
Children are 10 to 20 times more sensitive to the effects of radiation than adults. My fellow pediatricians in the Iraqi city of Basra, for example, report an increase of six to 12 times in the incidence of childhood leukemia and cancer. Yet because of the sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United States and the United Nations, they have no access to antibiotics, chemotherapeutic drugs or effective radiation machines to treat their patients. The incidence of congenital malformations has doubled in the exposed populations in Iraq where these weapons were used. Among them are babies being born with only one eye and with an encephaly -- the absence of a brain.
However, the medical consequences of the use of uranium 238 almost certainly did not affect only Iraqis. Some American veterans exposed to it are reported, by at least one medical researcher, to be excreting uranium in their urine a decade later. Other reports indicate it is being excreted in their semen That nearly one-third of the American tanks used in Desert Storm were made of uranium 238 is another story, for their crews were exposed to whole body gamma radiation. What might be the long-term consequences of such exposure has not, apparently, been studied. Would these effects have surprised U.S. authorities? No, for incredible as it may seem, the American military's own studies prior to Desert Storm warned that aerosol uranium exposure under battlefield conditions could lead to cancers of the lung and bone, kidney damage, non-malignant lung disease, neurocognitive disorders, chromosomal damage and birth defects.
Do President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld understand the medical consequences of the 1991 war and the likely health effects of the next one they are planning? If they don't, their ignorance is breathtaking. Even more incredible, though, and much more likely, is that they do understand but don't care."I have added in here information posted on a website on June 19, 2006
The address of this page is : www.uruknet.info?p=24081"I have never seen... double and triple cancers in one patient... My wife has nine members of her family with cancer"-- Iraqi doctor.
When anyone makes nuclear energy or nuclear weapons, a massive amount of radioactive waste is created. In the U.S., Depleted Uranium is harnessed by the government as a component for bombs, shells and automatic weapons bullets.
Nuclear waste remains radioactive for billions of years, contaminating ground, water and air, causing cancer, birth defects and death, although DU is allegedly "safe" for humans, according to Pentagon scientists (irony being the weapons are still meant to kill).
D.U. is now everywhere in Iraq: (and much of Aghanistan) bullets made with uranium lay in the residential streets, neighborhoods in Baghdad and Fallujah have been bombed with uranium weapons... and doctors in Iraq have taken notice:
"Two strange phenomena have come about in Basra which I have never seen before.... double and triple cancers in one patient. We had one patient with 2 cancers one in his stomach and kidney. Months later...cancer was developing in his other kidneyhe had three different cancer types. The second is the clustering of cancer in families. We have 58 families here with more than one person affected by cancer. Dr Yasin, a general Surgeon here has two uncles, a sister and cousin affected with cancer. Dr Mazen, another specialist, has six family members suffering from cancer. My wife has nine members of her family with cancer.
"Children in particular are susceptible to DU poisoning. They have a much higher absorption rate as their blood is being used to build and nourish their bones and they have a lot of soft tissues. Bone cancer and leukemia used to be diseases affecting them the most, however, cancer of the lymph system which can develop anywhere on the body, and has rarely been seen before the age of 12 is now also common" -- Doctor Jawad-Al-AliWhatever is causing the cancer is probably behind the birth defects in Iraqis, which are now commonplace: babies with missing brains, sex organs, spines, tumors instead of eyes or intestines outside of the body, et cetera. Like babies born in the wake of Hiroshima & Nagasaki or near bomb-test sites.
"Did the use of Uranium weapons in Gulf War 2 result in contamination of Europe?"
"In 1979, depleted uranium particles escaped from ....National Lead Industries... near Albany, N.Y.,which was manufacturing DU weapons for the U.S military. The particles traveled 26 miles and were discovered in a laboratory filter by Dr. Leonard Dietz, a nuclear physicist. This discovery led to a shut down of the factory in 1980, for releasing morethan 0.85 pounds of DU dust into the atmosphere every month, and involved a cleanup of contaminated properties costing over 100 million dollars" -- Center for Globalization Research in Canada.
Thousands of pounds of D.U. were dropped in the bombing campaigns against Afghanistan and Iraq from 2001-2003, causing a near total incineration of the uranium and leaving its "dust" scattered.Then, British scientists Chris Busby and Saorise Morgan found:
"...the highest levels of depleted uranium ever measured in the atmosphere in Britain, were transported on air currents from the Middle East and Central Asia; of special significance were those from the Tora Bora bombing in Afghanistan in 2001, and the "Shock & Awe" bombing during Gulf War II in Iraq in 2003.
"...The British government facility (AWE) was taken over 3 years ago by Halliburton, which refused at first to release air monitoring data, as required by law, to Dr. Busby"Radioactive waste doesn't discriminate. It doesn't care about your innocence, whether you're Arab or Kurd, European or Asian, baby or insurgent, American soldier or American business contractor. D.U. doesn't dissolve in water, meaning it is never excreted from an animal's body. It is passed on into any offspring and into their offspring. It is the perfect weapon, working through postmodern society's greatest enemy--time.
ASTRO-IMPERIALISM - By Karl Grossman
The United States is seeking to "control space" and from space "dominate" the Earth below - and "control" and "dominate" are words used repeatedly in US military documents.
----- The Bush administration is gung-ho for US projection of military power in space. As a recent report of the Space Commission chaired by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld puts it: "In the coming period, the US will conduct operations to, from, in and through space in support of its national interests both on the Earth and in space."
----- Star Wars is back. But there's a difference. Star Wars first emerged under Ronald Reagan in 1983. Then it was purportedly needed to fend off what Reagan called the "evil empire" - the Soviet Union.
----- There is no Soviet Union any longer. Now a key rationale for Star Wars, as US military documents acknowledge, is the global economy - of which the US is the engine. The US would, from the "ultimate high ground" of space, "dominate" the planet below in part to keep the global economy on track.
----- The US Space Command's Vision for 2020 report (its cover depicting a laser weapon shooting a beam down from space zapping a target below) states: "The globalization of the world economy will also continue - with a widening gap between 'haves' and 'have-nots'." From space, the US would keep those 'have-nots' in line.
----- The US Space Command describes itself in this way: "US Space Command - dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect US interests and investment, integrating Space Forces into warfighting capabilities across the full spectrum of conflict."
----- Vision for 2020 compares the US effort to "control space" and Earth below to how centuries ago "nations built navies to protect and enhance their commercial interests," referring to the great empires of Europe that ruled the waves and thus the Earth to maintain their imperial economies.
----- The US Space Command seeks to become "the enforcement arm for the global economy," as Bill Sulzman, director of Citizens for Peace In Space put it.
----- The citizens are not aware of the broad military plans of the US for space because of the PR spin of the new Star Wars pitch (it's about protecting against a "Space Pearl Harbour", as the Rumsfeld Commission puts it).
----- But other nations of the world do understand. That is why, at the United Nations (UN) last November, a resolution was introduced - on which 163 nations voted 'yes' - for "Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space". It reaffirmed the basic international law on space, the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, and specifically its provision that space be set aside for "peaceful purposes". The United States abstained.
----- A country leading in the international effort to stop the US plans by strengthening the Outer Space Treaty and barring all weapons from space is Canada - no potential rival. As Marc Vidricaire, representing Canada, said at the UN last year: "It has been suggested that our proposal is not relevant because the assessment on which it rests is either premature or alarmist. In our view, it is neither. One need only look at what is happening right now…" Moreover, stressed the Canadian statement, "There is no question that the technology can be developed to place weapons in outer space. There is also no question that no state can expect to maintain a monopoly on such knowledge - or such capabilities - for all time. If one state actively pursues the weaponization of space, we can be sure others will follow."
----- But the rogue state called the United States is blocking the Canadian initiative. For the US thinks it can be - as the motto of the Air Force Space Command terms it - "Master of Space"."MASTER OF SPACE". It appears as a Space Command uniform patch and is in three-foot-high letters over the entrance of the Air Force's 50th Space Wing. It pretty well sums up the US attitude toward space.
----- Working closely with the military in achieving this goal are major aerospace corporations. Indeed, the Long Range Plan starts out by explaining how it has been "US Space Command's number one priority….investing nearly twenty years to make it a reality." And "The development and production process, by design, involved hundreds of people including about seventy-five corporations."
----- The Long Range Plan goes on to list those seventy-five corporations - beginning with Aerojet and going through Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Sparta Corp. to TRW and Vista Technologies.
----- President Dwight Eisenhower warned in his farewell address in 1959 of the influence of a "military-industrial complex". Now, the US military boasts about how giant corporations are helping in setting US military doctrine.
----- Star Wars, with its powerful backers, never, in fact, went away. Funding at $6 billion a year continued through the Clinton administration. Last December, Clinton's Department of Defence cleared the way for development of the Space Based Laser Readiness Demonstrator - a project of Lockheed Martin, Boeing and TRW - with a lifecycle budget of $20 to $30 billion.
----- It was Clinton's Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space, Keith Hall, who said: "With regard to space dominance, we have it, we like it, and we're going to keep it."
----- And things are far worse now with the Bush administration, which is intimately linked to the aerospace companies. Vice-President Cheney himself is a former member of the TRW board and his wife Lynn is a member of the Lockheed Martin board. They are tied to the ultra-right think tanks that, with the US military, have been promoting Star Wars. The Bush administration is pushing hard and fast to make space a new arena of war.
----- The report, Space Commission, seeks "superior space capabilities". It says the US President should "have the option to deploy weapons in space." It emphasizes that it is "possible to project power through and from space in response to events anywhere in the world. Unlike weapons from aircraft, land forces or ships, space missions initiated from Earth or space could be carried out with little transit, information or weather delay. Having this capability would give the US a much stronger deterrent and, in a conflict, an extraordinary military advantage."
----- It proposes that the Space Command become the nucleus of a US Space Corps, to be like the Marine Corps and possibly a fully separate Space Force or Space Department - on par with the Army, Navy and Air Force.
----- As the man whose legislation got the Rumsfeld Space Commission established, Senator Bob Smith of New Hampshire, said: "It is our manifest destiny. We went from the East Coast to the West Coast of the United States of America settling the continent and they call that manifest destiny and the next continent if you will, the next frontier, is space and it goes on forever."
----- The book, The Future of War: Power, Technology and American World Dominance in the 21st Century, by George and Meredith Friedman, concludes: "Just as by the year 1500 it was apparent that the European experience of power would be its domination of the global seas, it does not take much to see that the American experience of power will rest on the domination of space…Just as Europe expanded war and its power to the global oceans, the United States is expanding war and its power into space…Just as Europe shaped the world for half a millennium, so too the United States will shape the world for at least that length of time…For better or worse, America has seized hold of the future of war, and with it - for a time - the future of humanity."The rest of the world will not sit back and accept US world dominance from space. If the US moves ahead on its programme of astro-imperialism, and deploys weapons in space, other nations such as China and Russia will meet the US in kind. There will be an arms race and inevitably war in space.
----- As First Secretary of China's UN delegation, Wang Xiaoyu, has declared: "Outer space is the common heritage of human beings". "Space domination," he stated, "is a hegemonic concept. Its essence is monopoly of space and denial of others' access to it." If the US pushed ahead, other countries would in response launch their own space military programme, China vowed. However, China is, for now, holding off and, paralleling Canada's initiative, also seeking an international ban on weapons in space. But the US has rebuffed the Chinese initiative, too.
----- What a legacy to be left for our children and their children at the dawn of this new century! If the US makes space a new place for war, no one will profit but Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon and TRW.Karl Grossman is Professor of Journalism at the State University of New York. His books include Weapons in Space (Seven Stories Press, 2001).
The Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space can be contacted at: PO Box 90083, Gainesville, Florida 32607, USA. www.space4peace.org.
These extracts from a lecture given at the Technology Teach-In, New York, February 2001, have been reproduced from Resurgence Magazine, #208, September/October 2001 with the permission of the editor, Satish Kumar.
ARMS REDUCTION
NATO'S Military Debates Should Be About Arms Reductions
Bonn - With about two thirds of the world's military expenditure being made by NATO countries, it is ridiculous that there is a dispute within NATO on allegedly too little effort by the Europeans in military spending or within the United States on how much the Pentagon budget should grow.
----- On the contrary, there has never been a better time for NATO to take new arms control and disarmament initiatives. Despite a completely changed security environment, global military expenditures still amounted to $800 billion in 2000, and are on the increase again; the present stock of major conventional weapons is still over 422,000 pieces; 22.7 million troops still serve in regular armies and almost 8 million employees work in the arms industry worldwide.
----- After substantial reductions in arsenals during the 1990s, disarmament is at a standstill in many countries and in some there is even rearmament, with the United States setting the trend.
----- In the mid 1990s, negotiated arms control fell into a crisis at the multilateral level within the United Nations system and bilaterally between the United States and Russia. Paradoxically, governments have continued for several years to reduce their arsenals substantially, despite the gridlock in arms control negotiations.
----- The crisis of traditional arms control and the present turning point in disarmament are closely related to the major changes in international politics of the 1990s. Two major factors contributed specifically to this crisis:
----- First, with the slow but continuous disintegration of Russia's military apparatus, the United States emerged as the dominant power in international security relations. At the end of the Cold War the former antagonists saw the opportunity to make reductions since it was obvious that military arsenals were oversized. More major conventional and nuclear weapons have been decommissioned than was actually agreed upon in the treaties.
----- However, the U.S. interest in strategic stability through bilateral arms control waned as the situation in Russia continued to disintegrate. The United States has increasingly come to believe that it can control smaller states by military means. The development of a missile defense system is the clearest expression of this policy.
----- Second, many countries started to change their perceptions of military threat and, consequently, the meaning and purpose of arms control. The number of military interventions in distant regions increased in the 1990s. United Nations peacekeeping missions moved to centre stage in discussions of new and future military missions. Attention focused on regional and internal wars. The weapons used by the warring parties, including land mines, small arms and light weapons, were included on the international arms control agenda.
----- The type of classical arms control developed during the Cold War proved insufficient for dealing with this new situation. Stability between major military powers is not the main problem in post-Cold War conflicts. The emphasis is now on limiting the destructiveness of weapons and reducing costs.
----- The negotiations of the Ottawa land mine treaty represent the most prominent example of the emerging reorientation of arms control. When it became clear that it would be impossible to reach an agreement within the traditional arms control forum, the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, a coalition of the willing negotiated the Ottawa treaty successfully in a new forum.
----- There are two fundamentally contradictory approaches to military-based security. One approach is the attempt to reach military superiority - the road apparently taken now with the planned U.S. missile defense system. The second approach is based on arms control, negotiations to reduce military arsenals and confidence building. Which of the two concepts will be adopted depends on the world community's resistance against the present U.S. push for increased military dominance.Herbert Wulf is director and Michael Brzoska is director of research of the Bonn International Centre of Conversion, a non-profit organization that promotes the transfer of former military resources to civilian purposes. They contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune 8/8/01.