Depleted Uranium Dust - Public Health Disaster For The People Of Iraq and Afghanistan
by Doug Westerman
Global Research, May 3, 2006
Vital Truths and Information Clearing House
Depleted Uranium - Far Worse Than 9/11
In 1979, depleted uranium (DU) particles escaped from the National Lead Industries factory 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.
Imagine a far worse scenario. Terrorists acquire a million pounds of the deadly dust and scatter it in populated areas throughout the U.S. Hundreds of children report symptoms. Many acquire cancer and leukemia, suffering an early and painful death. Huge increases in severe birth defects are reported. Oncologists are overwhelmed. Soccer fields, sand lots and parks, traditional play areas for kids, are no longer safe. People lose their most basic freedom, the ability to go outside and safely breathe. Sounds worse than 9/11? Welcome to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Dr. Jawad Al-Ali (55), director of the Oncology Center at the largest hospital in Basra, Iraq stated, at a recent ( 2003) conference in Japan:
"Two strange phenomena have come about in Basra which I have never seen before. The first is double and triple cancers in one patient. For example, leukemia and cancer of the stomach. We had one patient with 2 cancers - one in his stomach and kidney. Months later, primary cancer was developing in his other kidney--he 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.",
"We were accused of spreading propaganda for Saddam before the war. When I have gone to do talks I have had people accuse me of being pro-Saddam. Sometimes I feel afraid to even talk. Regime people have been stealing my data and calling it their own, and using it for their own agendas. The Kuwaitis banned me from entering Kuwait - we were accused of being Saddam supporters."
John Hanchette, a journalism professor at St. Bonaventure University, and one of the founding editors of USA TODAY related the following to DU researcher Leuren Moret. He stated that he had prepared news breaking stories about the effects of DU on Gulf War soldiers and Iraqi citizens, but that each time he was ready to publish, he received a phone call from the Pentagon asking him not to print the story. He has since been replaced as editor of USA TODAY.
Dr. Keith Baverstock, The World Health Organization's chief expert on radiation and health for 11 years and author of an unpublished study has charged that his report " on the cancer risk to civilians in Iraq from breathing uranium contaminated dust " was also deliberately suppressed.
The information released by the U.S. Dept. of Defense is not reliable, according to some sources even within the military.
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] Veterans Administration asked me to lie about the risks of incorporating depleted uranium in the human body."
At that time Dr. Durakovic was a colonel in the U.S. Army. He has since left the military, to found the Uranium Medical Research Center, a privately funded organization with headquarters in Canada.
PFC Stuart Grainger of 23 Army Division, 34th Platoon. (Names and numbers have been changed) was diagnosed with cancer several after returning from Iraq. Seven other men in the Platoon also have malignancies.
Doug Rokke, U.S. Army contractor who headed a clean-up of depleted uranium after the first Gulf War states:,
"Depleted uranium is a crime against God and humanity."
Rokke's own crew, a hundred employees, was devastated by exposure to the fine dust. He stated:
"When we went to the Gulf, we were all really healthy,"
After performing clean-up operations in the desert (mistakenly without protective gear), 30 members of his staff died, and most others"including Rokke himself"developed serious health problems. Rokke now has reactive airway disease, neurological damage, cataracts, and kidney problems.
"We warned the Department of Defense in 1991 after the Gulf War. Their arrogance is beyond comprehension.
Yet the D.O.D still insists such ingestion is "not sufficient to make troops seriously ill in most cases."
Then why did it make the clean up crew seriously or terminally ill in nearly all cases?
Marion Falk, a retired chemical physicist who built nuclear bombs for more than 20 years at Lawrence Livermore Lab, was asked if he thought that DU weapons operate in a similar manner as a dirty bomb.
"That's exactly what they are. They fit the description of a dirty bomb in every way."
According to Falk, more than 30 percent of the DU fired from the cannons of U.S. tanks is reduced to particles one-tenth of a micron (one millionth of a meter) in size or smaller on impact. "The larger the bang" the greater the amount of DU that is dispersed into the atmosphere, Falk said. With the larger missiles and bombs, nearly 100 percent of the DU is reduced to radioactive dust particles of the "micron size" or smaller, he said.
When asked if the main purpose for using it was for destroying things and killing people, Falk was more specific:
"I would say that it is the perfect weapon for killing lots of people."
When a DU round or bomb strikes a hard target, most of its kinetic energy is converted to heat " sufficient heat to ignite the DU. From 40% to 70% of the DU is converted to extremely fine dust particles of ceramic uranium oxide (primarily dioxide, though other formulations also occur). Over 60% of these particles are smaller than 5 microns in diameter, about the same size as the cigarette ash particles in cigarette smoke and therefore respirable.
Because conditions are so chaotic in Iraq, the medical infrastructure has been greatly compromised. In terms of both cancer and birth defects due to DU, only a small fraction of the cases are being reported.
Doctors in southern Iraq are making comparisons to the birth defects that followed the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WWII. They have numerous photos of infants born without brains, with their internal organs outside their bodies, without sexual organs, without spines, and the list of deformities goes on an on. Such birth defects were extremely rare in Iraq prior to the large scale use of DU. Weapons. Now they are commonplace. In hospitals across Iraq, the mothers are no longer asking, "Doctor, is it a boy or girl?" but rather, "Doctor, is it normal?" The photos are horrendous, they can be viewed on the following website
Ross B. Mirkarimi, a spokesman at The Arms Control Research Centre stated:
"Unborn children of the region are being asked to pay the highest price, the integrity of their DNA."
Prior to her death from leukemia in Sept. 2004, Nuha Al Radi , an accomplished Iraqi artist and author of the "Baghdad Diaries" wrote:
"Everyone seems to be dying of cancer. Every day one hears about another acquaintance or friend of a friend dying. How many more die in hospitals that one does not know? Apparently, over thirty percent of Iraqis have cancer, and there are lots of kids with leukemia."
"The depleted uranium left by the U.S. bombing campaign has turned Iraq into a cancer-infested country. For hundreds of years to come, the effects of the uranium will continue to wreak havoc on Iraq and its surrounding areas."
This excerpt in her diary was written in 1993, after Gulf War I (Approximately 300 tons of DU ordinance, mostly in desert areas) but before Operation Iraqi Freedom, (Est. 1,700 tons with much more near major population centers). So, it's 5-6 times worse now than it was when she wrote than diary entry!! Estimates of the percentage of D.U. which was 'aerosolized' into fine uranium oxide dust are approximately 30-40%. That works out to over one million pounds of dust scattered throughout Iraq.
As a special advisor to the World Health Organization, the United Nations, and the Iraqi Ministry of Health, Dr. Ahmad Hardan has documented the effects of DU in Iraq between 1991 and 2002.
"American forces admit to using over 300 tons of DU weapons in 1991. The actual figure is closer to 800. This has caused a health crisis that has affected almost a third of a million people. As if that was not enough, America went on and used 200 tons more in Bagdad alone during the recent invasion.
I don"t know about other parts of Iraq, it will take me years to document that.
"In Basra, it took us two years to obtain conclusive proof of what DU does, but we now know what to look for and the results are terrifying."
By far the most devastating effect is on unborn children. Nothing can prepare anyone for the sight of hundreds of preserved fetuses " scarcely human in appearance. Iraq is now seeing babies with terribly foreshortened limbs, with their intestines outside their bodies, with huge bulging tumors 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.
Dr. Hardan also states:
"I arranged for a delegation from Japan's Hiroshima Hospital to come and share their expertise in the radiological diseases we
Are likely to face over time. The delegation told me the Americans had objected and they decided not to come. Similarly, a world famous German cancer specialist agreed to come, only to be told later that he would not be given permission to enter Iraq."
Not only are we poisoning the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, but we are making a concerted effort to keep out specialists from other countries who can help. The U.S. Military doesn"t want the rest of the world to find out what we have done.
Such relatively swift development of cancers has been reported by doctors in hospitals treating civilians following NATO bombing with DU in Yugoslavia in 1998-1999 and the US military invasion of Iraq using DU for the first time in 1991. Medical experts report that this phenomenon of multiple malignancies from unrelated causes has been unknown until now and is a new syndrome associated with internal DU exposure.
Just 467 US personnel were wounded in the three-week Persian Gulf War in 1990-1991. Out of 580,400 soldiers who served in Gulf War I, 11,000 are dead, and by 2000 there were 325,000 on permanent medical disability. This astounding number of disabled vets means that a decade later, 56 percent of those soldiers who served in the first Gulf War now have medical problems.
Although not reported in the mainstream American press, a recent Tokyo tribunal, guided by the principles of International Criminal Law and International Humanitarian Law, found President George W. Bush guilty of war crimes. On March 14, 2004, Nao Shimoyachi, reported in The Japan Times that President Bush was found guilty "for attacking civilians with indiscriminate weapons and other arms,"and the "tribunal also issued recommendations for banning Depleted Uranium shells and other weapons that indiscriminately harm people." Although this was a "Citizen's Court" having no legal authority, the participants were sincere in their determination that international laws have been violated and a war crimes conviction is warranted.
Troops involved in actual combat are not the only servicemen reporting symptoms. Four soldiers from a New York Army National Guard company serving in Iraq are among several members of the same company, the 442nd Military Police, who say they have been battling persistent physical ailments that began last summer in the Iraqi town of Samawah.
"I got sick instantly in June," said Staff Sgt. Ray Ramos, a Brooklyn housing cop. "My health kept going downhill with daily headaches, constant numbness in my hands and rashes on my stomach."
Dr. Asaf Durakovic, UMRC founder, and nuclear medicine expert examined and tested nine soldiers from the company says that four "almost certainly" inhaled radioactive dust from exploded American shells manufactured with depleted uranium. Laboratory tests revealed traces of two manmade forms of uranium in urine samples from four of the soldiers.
If so, the men - Sgt. Hector Vega, Sgt. Ray Ramos, Sgt. Agustin Matos and Cpl. Anthony Yonnone - are the first confirmed cases of inhaled depleted uranium exposure from the current Iraq conflict.
The 442nd, made up for the most part of New York cops, firefighters and correction officers, is based in Orangeburg, Rockland County. Dispatched to Iraq in Easter of 2003, the unit's members had been providing guard duty for convoys, running jails and training Iraqi police. The entire company is due to return home later this month.
"These are amazing results, especially since these soldiers were military police not exposed to the heat of battle," said Dr. Asaf Duracovic, who examined the G.I.s and performed the testing.
In a group of eight U.S. led Coalition servicemen whose babies were born without eyes, seven are known to have been directly exposed to DU dust. In a much group (250 soldiers) exposed during the first Gulf war, 67% of the children conceived after the war had birth defects.
Dr. Durakovic's UMRC research team also conducted a three-week field trip to Iraq in October of 2003. It collected about 100 samples of substances such as soil, civilian urine and the tissue from the corpses of Iraqi soldiers in 10 cities, including Baghdad, Basra and Najaf. Durakovic said preliminary tests show that the air, soil and water samples contained "hundreds to thousands of times" the normal levels of radiation.
"This high level of contamination is because much more depleted uranium was used this year than in (the Gulf War of) 1991," Durakovic told The Japan Times.
"They are hampering efforts to prove the connection between Depleted Uranium and the illness," Durakovic said
"They do not want to admit that they committed war crimes" by using weapons that kill indiscriminately, which are banned under international law."
(NOTE ABOUT DR. DURAKOVIC; First, he was warned to stop his work, then he was fired from his position, then his house was ransacked, and he has also reported receiving death threats. Evidently the U.S. D.O.D is very keen on censoring DU whistle-blowers!)
Dr. Durakovic, UMRC research associates Patricia Horan and Leonard Dietz, published a unique study in the August 2002 issue of Military Medicine Medical Journal. The study is believed to be the first to look at inhaled DU among Gulf War veterans, using the ultrasensitive technique of thermal ionization mass spectrometry, which enabled them to easily distinguish between natural uranium and DU. The study, which examined British, Canadian and U.S. veterans, all suffering typical Gulf War Syndrome ailments, found that, nine years after the war, 14 of 27 veterans studied had DU in their urine. DU also was found in the lung and bone of a deceased Gulf War veteran. That no governmental study has been done on inhaled DU "amounts to a massive malpractice," Dietz said in an interview.
The Japanese began studying DU effects in the southern Iraq in the summer of 2003. They had a Geiger counter which they watched go off the scale on many occasions. During their visit,a local hospital was treating upwards of 600 children per day, many of which suffered symptoms of internal poisoning by radiation. 600 children per day? How many of these children will get cancer and suffer and early and painful death?
"Ingested DU particles can cause up to 1,000 times the damage of an X-ray", said Mary Olson, a nuclear waste specialist and biologist at the Nuclear Information and Resource Service in Washington D.C.
It is this difference in particle size as well as the dust's crystalline structure that make the presence of DU dust in the environment such an extreme hazard, and which differentiates its properties from that of the natural uranium dust that is ubiquitous and to which we all are exposed every day, which seldom reaches such a small size. This point is being stressed, as comparing DU particles to much larger natural ones is misleading.
The U.S. Military and its supporters regularly quote a Rand Corp. Study which uses the natural uranium inhaled by miners.
Particles smaller than 10 microns can access the innermost recesses of lung tissue where they become permanently lodged. Furthermore, if the substance is relatively insoluble, such as the ceramic DU-oxide dust produced from burning DU, it will remain in place for decades, dissolving very slowly into the bloodstream and lymphatic fluids through the course of time. Studies have identified DU in the urine of Gulf War veterans nine years after that conflict, testifying to the permanence of ceramic DU-oxide in the lungs. Thus the effects are far different from natural uranium dust, whose coarse particles are almost entirely excreted by the body within 24 hours.
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, Md., indicates that DU's chemical instability causes 1 million times more genetic damage than would be expected from its radiation effect alone.
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 University 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," writes Lauren Moret, another DU researcher. "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.
Based on dissolution and excretion rate data, it is possible to approximate the amount of DU initially inhaled by these veterans. For the handful of veterans studied, this amount averaged 0.34 milligrams. Knowing the specific activity (radiation rate) for DU allows one to determine that the total radiation (alpha, beta and gamma) occurring from DU and its radioactive decay products within their bodies comes to about 26 radiation events every second, or 800 million events each year. At .34 milligrams per dose, there are over 10 trillion doses floating around Iraq and Afghanistan.
How many additional deaths are we talking about? In the aftermath of the first Gulf War, the UK Atomic Energy Authority came up with estimates for the potential effects of the DU contamination left by the conflict. It calculated that "this could cause "500,000 potential deaths". This was "a theoretical figure", it stressed, that indicated "a significant problem".
The AEA's calculation was made in a confidential memo to the privatized munitions company, Royal Ordnance, dated 30 April 1991. The high number of potential deaths was dismissed as "very far from realistic" by a British defense minister, Lord Gilbert. "Since the rounds were fired in the desert, many miles from the nearest village, it is highly unlikely that the local population would have been exposed to any significant amount of respirable oxide," he said. These remarks were made prior to the more recent invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq, where DU munitions were used on a larger scale in and near many of the most populated areas. If the amount of DU ordinance used in the first Gulf War was sufficient to cause 500,000 potential deaths, (had it been used near the populated areas), then what of the nearly six times that amount used in operation Iraqi Freedom, which was used in and near the major towns and cities? Extrapolating the U.K. AEA estimate with this amount gives a figure of potentially 3 million extra deaths from inhaling DU dust in Iraq alone, not including Afghanistan. This is about 11% of Iraq's total population of 27 million. Dan Bishop, Ph.d chemist for IDUST feels that this estimate may be low, if the long life of DU dust is considered. In Afghanistan, the concentration in some areas is greater than Iraq.
What can an otherwise healthy person expect when inhaling the deadly dust? Captain Terry Riordon was a member of the Canadian Armed Forces serving in Gulf War I. He passed away in April 1999 at age 45. Terry left Canada a very fit man who did cross-country skiing and ran in marathons. On his return only two months later he could barely walk.
He returned to Canada in February 1991 with documented loss of motor control, chronic fatigue, respiratory difficulties, chest pain, difficulty breathing, sleep problems, short-term memory loss, testicle pain, body pains, aching bones, diarrhea, and depression. After his death, depleted uranium contamination was discovered in his lungs and bones. For eight years he suffered his innumerable ailments and struggled with the military bureaucracy and the system to get proper diagnosis and treatment. He had arranged, upon his death, to bequeath his body to the UMRC. Through his gift, the UMRC was able to obtain conclusive evidence that inhaling fine particles of depleted uranium dust completely destroyed his heath. How many Terry Riordans are out there among the troops being exposed, not to mention Iraqi and Afghan civilians?
Inhaling the dust will not kill large numbers of Iraqi and Afghan civilians right away, any more than it did Captain Riordan. Rather, what we will see is vast numbers of people who are chronically and severely ill, having their life spans drastically shortened, many with multiple cancers.
Melissa Sterry, another sick veteran, served for six months at a supply base in Kuwait during the winter of 1991-92. Part of her job with the National Guard's Combat Equipment Company "A" was to clean out tanks and other armored vehicles that had been used during the war, preparing them for storage.
She said she swept out the armored vehicles, cleaning up dust, sand and debris, sometimes being ordered to help bury contaminated parts. In a telephone interview, she stated that after researching depleted uranium she chose not to take the military's test because she could not trust the results. It is alarming that Melissa was stationed in Kuwait, not Iraq. Cleaning out tanks with DU dust was enough to make her ill.
In, 2003, the Christian Science Monitor sent reporters to Iraq to investigate long-term effects of depleted uranium. Staff writer Scott Peterson saw children playing on top of a burnt-out tank near a vegetable stand on the outskirts of Baghdad, a tank that had been destroyed by armor-piercing shells coated with depleted uranium. Wearing his mask and protective clothing, he pointed his Geiger counter toward the tank. It registered 1,000 times the normal background radiation. If the troops were on a mission of mercy to bring democracy to Iraq, wouldn"t keeping children away from such dangers be the top priority?
The laws of war prohibit the use of weapons that have deadly and inhumane effects beyond the field of battle. Nor can weapons be legally deployed in war when they are known to remain active, or cause harm after the war concludes. It is no surprise that the Japanese Court found President Bush guilty of war crimes.
Dr. Alim Yacoub of Basra University conducted an epidemiological study into incidences of malignancies in children under fifteen years old, in the Basra area (an area bombed with DU during the first Gulf War). They found over the 1990 to 1999 period, there was a 242% rise. That was before the recent invasion.
In Kosovo, similar spikes in cancer and birth defects were noticed by numerous international experts, although the quantity of DU weapons used was only a small fraction of what was used in Iraq.
FIELD STUDY RESULTS FROM AFGHANISTAN
Verifiable statistics for Iraq will remain elusive for some time, but widespread field studies in Afghanistan point to the existence of a large scale public health disaster. In May of 2002, the UMRC (Uranium Medical Research Center) sent a field team to interview and examine residents and internally displaced people in Afghanistan. The UMRC field team began by first identifying several hundred people suffering from illnesses and medical conditions displaying clinical symptoms which are considered to be characteristic of radiation exposure. To investigate the possibility that the symptoms were due to radiation sickness, the UMRC team collected urine specimens and soil samples, transporting them to an independent research lab in England.
UMRC's Field Team found Afghan civilians with acute symptoms of radiation poisoning, along with chronic symptoms of internal uranium contamination, including congenital problems in newborns. Local civilians reported large, dense dust clouds and smoke plumes rising from the point of impact, an acrid smell, followed by burning of the nasal passages, throat and upper respiratory tract. Subjects in all locations presented identical symptom profiles and chronologies. The victims reported symptoms including pain in the cervical column, upper shoulders and basal area of the skull, lower back/kidney pain, joint and muscle weakness, sleeping difficulties, headaches, memory problems and disorientation.
Two additional scientific study teams were sent to Afghanistan. The first arrived in June 2002, concentrating on the Jalalabad region. The second arrived four months later, broadening the study to include the capital Kabul, which has a population of nearly 3.5 million people. The city itself contains the highest recorded number of fixed targets during Operation Enduring Freedom. For the study's purposes, the vicinity of three major bomb sites were examined. It was predicted that signatures of depleted or enriched uranium would be found in the urine and soil samples taken during the research. The team was unprepared for the shock of its findings, which indicated in both Jalalabad and Kabul, DU was causing the high levels of illness. Tests taken from a number of Jalalabad subjects showed concentrations 400% to 2000% above that for normal populations, amounts which have not been recorded in civilian studies before.
Those in Kabul who were directly exposed to US-British precision bombing showed extreme signs of contamination, consistent with uranium exposure. These included pains in joints, back/kidney pain, muscle weakness, memory problems and confusion and disorientation. Those exposed to the bombing report symptoms of flu-type illnesses, bleeding, runny noses and blood-stained mucous. How many of these people will suffer a painful and early death from cancer? Even the study team itself complained of similar symptoms during their stay. Most of these symptoms last for days or months.
In August of 2002, UMRC completed its preliminary analysis of the results from Nangarhar. Without exception, every person donating urine specimens tested positive for uranium contamination. The specific results indicated an astoundingly high level of contamination; concentrations were 100 to 400 times greater than those of the Gulf War Veterans tested in 1999. A researcher reported. "We took both soil and biological samples, and found considerable presence in urine samples of radioactivity; the heavy concentration astonished us. They were beyond our wildest imagination."
In the fall of 2002, the UMRC field team went back to Afghanistan for a broader survey, and revealed a potentially larger exposure than initially anticipated. Approximately 30% of those interviewed in the affected areas displayed symptoms of radiation sickness. New born babies were among those displaying symptoms, with village elders reporting that over 25% of the infants were inexplicably ill.
How widespread and extensive is the exposure? A quote from the UMRC field report reads:
"The UMRC field team was shocked by the breadth of public health impacts coincident with the bombing. Without exception, at every bombsite investigated, people are ill. A significant portion of the civilian population presents symptoms consistent with internal contamination by uranium."
In Afghanistan, unlike Iraq, UMRC lab results indicated high concentrations of NON-DEPLETED URANIUM, with the concentrations being much higher than in DU victims from Iraq. Afghanistan was used as a testing ground for a new generation of "bunker buster" bombs containing high concentrations of other uranium alloys.
"A significant portion of the civilian population"? It appears that by going after a handful of terrorists in Afghanistan we have poisoned a huge number of innocent civilians, with a disproportionate number of them being children.
The military has found depleted uranium in the urine of some soldiers but contends it was not enough to make them seriously ill in most cases. Critics have asked for more sensitive, more expensive testing.
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According to an October 2004 Dispatch from the Italian Military Health Observatory, a total of 109 Italian soldiers have died thus far due to exposure to depleted uranium. A spokesman at the Military Health Observatory, Domenico Leggiero, states "The total of 109 casualties exceeds the total number of persons dying as a consequence of road accidents. Anyone denying the significance of such data is purely acting out of ill faith, and the truth is that our soldiers are dying out there due to a lack of adequate protection against depleted uranium". Members of the Observatory have petitioned for an urgent hearing "in order to study effective prevention and safeguard measures aimed at reducing the death-toll amongst our serving soldiers".
There were only 3,000 Italian soldiers sent to Iraq, and they were there for a short time. The number of 109 represents about 3.6% of the total. If the same percentage of Iraqis get a similar exposure, that would amount to 936,000. As Iraqis are permanently living in the same contaminated environment, their percentage will be higher.
The Pentagon/DoD have interfered with UMRC's ability to have its studies published by managing, a progressive and persistent misinformation program in the press against UMRC, and through the use of its control of science research grants to refute UMRC's scientific findings and destroy the reputation of UMRC's scientific staff, physicians and laboratories. UMRC is the first independent research organization to find Depleted Uranium in the bodies of US, UK and Canadian Gulf War I veterans and has subsequently, following Operation Iraqi Freedom, found Depleted Uranium in the water, soils and atmosphere of Iraq as well as biological samples donated by Iraqi civilians. Yet the first thing that comes up on Internet searches are these supposed "studies repeatedly showing DU to be harmless." The technique is to approach the story as a debate between government and independent experts in which public interest is stimulated by polarizing the issues rather than telling the scientific and medical truth. The issues are systematically confused and misinformed by government, UN regulatory agencies (WHO, UNEP, IAEA, CDC, DOE, etc) and defense sector (military and the weapons developers and manufacturers).
Dr. Yuko Fujita, an assistant professor at Keio University, Japan who examined the effects of radioactivity in Iraq from May to June, 2003, said : "I doubt that Iraq is fabricating data because in fact there are many children suffering from leukemia in hospitals," Fujita said. "As a result of the Iraq war, the situation will be desperate in some five to 10 years."
The March 14, 2004 Tokyo Citizen's Tribunal that "convicted" President Bush gave the following summation regarding DU weapons: (This court was a citizen's court with no binding legal authority)
1. Their use has indiscriminate effects;
2. Their use is out of proportion with the pursuit of military objectives;
3. Their use adversely affects the environment in a widespread, long term and severe manner;
4. Their use causes superfluous injury and unnecessary suffering.
Two years ago, President Bush withdrew the United States as a signatory to the International Criminal Court's statute, which has been ratified by all other Western democracies. The White House actually seeks to immunize U.S. leaders from war crimes prosecutions entirely. It has also demanded express immunity from ICC prosecution for American nationals.
CONCLUSIONS:
If terrorists succeeded in spreading something throughout the U.S. that ended up causing hundreds of thousands of cancer cases and birth defects over a period of many years, they would be guilty of a crime against humanity that far surpasses the Sept. 11th attacks in scope and severity. Although not deliberate, with our military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, we have done just that. If the physical environment is so unsafe and unhealthy that one cannot safely breath, then the outer trappings of democracy have little meaning. At least under Saddam, the Iraqi people could stay healthy and conceive normal children. Few Americans are aware that in getting rid of Saddam, we left something much worse in his place.
Global Research Articles by Doug Westerman
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=2374
Monday, November 30, 2009
Depleted Uranium, The Emerging Radiation Crisis in Iraq and US Students
For OpEdNews: Don Lieber - Writer
November 24, 2009
Depleted Uranium, The Emerging Radiation Crisis in Iraq and US Students: Vermont Takes Lead with Divestment
On Oct 24, The Board of Trustees at the University of Vermont adopted a resolution, without fanfare, to divest the University's investment funds from companies involved in the production of depleted uranium weapons (DU), citing the weapon's "indescriminate use" and "broad adverse effects to human health and the environment" 1)
This appears to be the first large University system in the United States to take this step, as reports are increasing out of Iraq suggesting an emerging radiation crisis in areas where these highly radioactive weapons have been used.
Many health professionals and scientists, including a former director of the Army's "Depleted Uranium Project" in Iraq, are documenting a dramatic rise in birth defects, cancers, genetic mutations and other conditions consistant with severe radiation exposure from Fallujah and Basra - where major battles included the use of DU weapons by US forces. Disturbing photos show grotesque malformations including huge hydroencephaly (enlarged heads), webbed fingers and eyelids, and severe organ protrusions (photos available at cited reference) 2)
DU weapons have been the subject of ongoing concern from experts and activists who have warned about the serious health risks posed from the highly radiactive materials used in their manufacture. Military analysts acknowledge their effective battlefiled applications - particularly as armour and concrete penetrating 'bunker busters', and the government has consistantly refuted the health concerns.
The University did not not identify publically the names of the manufactures involved nor their investors, but said the divestment would focuson the known "three main producers" and their financers. The three largest producers of DU weapons in the United States, are General Dynamics, ATK Alliance Systems, and Aerojet Ordnance Tennessee. Their US financers include Bank of America, US Bank, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and many more, according to several DU watchdog groups. 3)
Two of the areas in Iraq reporting significant radiation exposure are Fallujah and Basar, sites of major battles where DU weapons were used.
Saud Al-Azzawi, an environmental engineer who has been involved in several epidemiological research studies in the Basra region, said "A few years after exposure to (DU) contamination, multifold increase of malignancies, congenital malformations, miscarriages, children leukemia, and sterility cases have been registered in suburb areas of Basra and other surrounding areas". 4)
The Army has repeatedly denied any link between Depleted Uranium and high rates of cancer or other conditions in Iraq. "There is not really any danger, at least that we know about, for the people of Iraq," said Lt. Col. Michael Sigmon, deputy surgeon for the US Army's V Corps. 5), 6)
Individual experts from the military, however, have contradicted the official denial.
Dr Alexandra C. Miller of the Armed Forces Radiological Research Institute reported that DU has significant carcinogenic potential, is mutagenic and genotoxic. Another expert, Dr. Doug Rokke, who was the director of the Army's Depleted Uranium Project in Iraq in 2003 (charged to study how to safegaurd U.S. troops from DU and properly dispose of DU material) - has become a leading advocate for a total ban on their use. 7,8).
A brief search of Army practice suggests further contradictions to its own public denial of health risks:
Army and Defense Department regulations prohibit the use of DU munitions during training. 9)
U.S. troops are instructed to avoid any sites where DU weapons have been used — destroyed tanks, exploded bunkers, etc.—and to wear masks if they do have to approach. 10)
The U.S. removed over 6,000 tons of DU contaminated soil from Kuwait after the 1991 Gulf war. The contaminated material was brought back to the US for disposal to a radioactive waste managment company, the American Ecology Corporation, based in Bosie. Army trucks hit by 'friendly' DU fire in Iraq also had to be brought back to radioactive waste disposal facilities in the U.S. 11)
And - perhaps the striking example - the Army has built a new, state-of the art hospital in Basra specializing in advanced pediactric cancer treatment.
It is the first hospital of its kind in Iraq - a multi-million dollar, 90-bed unit - built to serve an area known for significant DU weapon use by US forces.
The Department of Defense website, in touting the Army's humanitarian efforts, cites the high cancer rates in the region without making reference to any potential causes. 12)
Fallujah - another area where US forces used considerable DU munitions during the battles in 2004 - now is also reporting an observable rise in birth defects and other radiation-related conditions. A report sent to the UN General Assembly on October 12, 2009, by Dr Nawal Majeed Al-Sammarai, Iraq's Minister of Women's Affairs, stated that 24% of the babies born in Fallujah General Hospital in September 2009 died within their first week of life. Of the remainder of the babies who survived beyond the first week of life, a full 75% were reported born with deformaties.
Statistics from the same hospital in 2002 - six months prior to start of the 'shock and awe' attacks of 2003 (which included DU weapons) - recorded 530 live births with only six dying in the first week and only one deformity. 13)
An important detail of DU risk to humans is that the most dangerous form of exposure is inhalation (rather than contact). This happens when DU weapons 'aerosolize' upon impact. A single particle of inhaled DU can expose the surrounding tissue to radiation 800 times the annual dosage considered safe by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for the entire body. (Authors Note: The US Army has no established protocols for diagnosing, nor treating soldiers with suspected inhaled DU). 14)
Several sources place the amount of DU used in US weapons since 2003 at over 1,600 tonnes: this amount would create a staggering, uncountable amount of particles to be dispersed in the soil, water and air. 15) This corresponds to studies now showing local soil, water and air which now show radiation levels 'hundreds to thousands of times' above what occurs naturally. An American reporter from the Christian Science Moniter described that radiation meters which his crew brought to the region went "off the scale" in some areas. 16)
The emerging reports out of Iraq have been virtually absent in the United States media, with scant attention in European media - two recent reports in the Guardian (UK) being notable exceptions. 17)
Largely out of the US press, however, some governments and humanitarian organizations are reacting.
The government of Belgium in 2007 became the first nation to ban "all weapons" which contain Depleted Uranium. In 2008 the European Parliament adapted a resolution for both a moratorium and an international treaty to ban them . The International Coalition to Ban UraniumWeapons, based in Manchester, is seeking an international ban modeled after the Ottawa Landmine-Ban Treaty and has called upon the United Nations to do so.
And at least one U.S. University has voted to cease doing business with producers of a weapon which one former nuclear expert from the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory described as a "a dirty bomb...in every way". 18)
So what led the students in Vermont to ask the University to divest - on an issue relatively unknown in the United States - at a time when any number of pressing issues could well have merited more publicized attention?
"At UVM social and political activism are both things that are taken very seriously" said Hillary Walton, the student journalist who first wrote about the divestment vote in the campus newspaper The Vermont Cynic. The University's culture indeed appears to welcome student social activism, perhaps more than most US universities: It previously created a Socially Responsible Investing Work Group which is composed of students, faculty, administration, and staff: all have equal vote in deciding which issues to bring before the Trustees. Previous divestment resolutions have passed regarding tobbaco and the human rights in Sudan. 19)
Whether other US Universities follow Vermont's lead on DU weapons and the emerging radiation crisis in Iraq remains to be seen.
In their October 22 divestment resolution, the University Trustees said "... The University's policy of fiscal prudence shall not preclude the consideration of moral, ethical and social criteria in determining which companies to invest." 20)
It appears that the CEOs and Board of Directors at General Dynamics, ATK Alliance Sytems, and Aerojet Ordnance Tennessee - along with their their US Banking partners and Army contractors - have it the other way around.
Don Lieber is an independent journalist whose previous works have been published with the Associated Press, the United Nations, The Willamette Week (Portland Ore.), The International Campaign to Ban Landmines, and others.
FOOTNOTES
1) Budget, Finance and Investment Minutes, Board of Trustees Meeting, University of Vermont, October 22-24, 2009. click here
2) click here
Explicit and disturbing photos of children displaying severe symptoms associated with radition exposure as collected by Iraq hospital officials, and health researchers, can be seen at:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~stgvisie/VISIE/extremedeformities.html
3) International Coalition to Ban Depleted Uranium. http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/en/docs/32.pdf
According to the ICBDU, the three main producers of DU weapons are:
General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems,
Michael S. Wilson President,
11399 16th Court North, Suite 200
St. Petersburg, FL 33716
Main Number: (727) 578-8100 (727) 578-8100
Fax Number: (727) 578-8119
Web Site:http://www.gd-ots.com/
ATK Armament Systems
Amanda Covington, Director of Communications
Clearfield, Utah
Phone: 801-779-4625 801-779-4625
ATK Alliance Systems - Corporate Headquarters
7480 Flying Cloud Drive,Minneapolis, MN 55344
Phone: 952-351-3000 952-351-3000
atk.corporate@atk.com
Aerojet Ordnance Tennessee, Inc.
Jonesborough, Tennessee.
1367 Old State Route 34,
Jonesborough, TN 37659
(423) 753-1200 (423) 753-1200
(423) 753-8645 (FAX)
4) Remarks given by Souadd Al-Azzawi, Associate Professor of engineering, Kuala Lumpur International Conference to Criminalise War, Putra World Trade Centre, 28-31 October 2009
5) Remains of Toxic Bullets Litter Iraq.
Scott Peterson, The Christian Science Monitor, May 15, 2003.
6 ) The government's denial also applies to thousands of returning US soldiers also exposed to DU fallout in Iraq. For a detailed account of this, see: Paul Zimmerman, Depleted Uranium and the Mismanagement of Gulf War Veterans, as published November 20, 2009, in TruthOut,org http://www.truthout.org/1120097.
Authors note: The Army has "no code" (i.e., established protocols) for the testing, diagnosing, or treatment suspected exposure from inhalation of DU - despite the awareness that this is most dangerous form of DU exposure (unlike 'contact' exposure, such as shrapnel, for which the Army has extensive diagnosing and treatment protocols).
See: Memorandum for Commanders,
26 June 2007,
Subject: Medical Management of Army Personnel Exposed to Depleted Uranium,
Department of the Army, Headquarters, US Army Medical Command. click here
7) Alexandra C. Miller, Mike Stewart, Rafael Rivas, Robert Marlot, and Paul Lison, Depleted Uranium internal contamination: Carcinogenisis and Leukeinogenisis in Vivo. Proc. American Association of Cancer Research. Volume 46, 2005.
8)The War Against Ourselves: Interview with Dr. Doug Rokke, Yes!Magazine, March 31, 2003. Dr. Rokke's public speeches on DU are available on YouTube. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-VkpR-wka8.
9) Army Installation Management Command, Pacific Region Information Booklet "Depleted Uranium in Hawaii"
10) Peterson, Remains of Toxic Bullets, Christian Science Monitor, as cited.
11) Peterson, Remains of Toxic Bullets, and Al-Azzawi, Remarks, as cited.
12) U.S. Department of Defense News Website, http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=54623
13). http://www.unobserver.com/layout5.php?id=6744&blz
14) Rosali Bertell, Depleted Uranium: All the questions about DU and Gulf War Syndrome are not yet answered. International Journal of Health Service 36(3), 503-520, 2006, and Memorandum for Commanders, 26 June 2007, Subject: Medical Management of Army Personnel Exposed to Depleted Uranium, Department of the Army, Headquarters, US Army Medical Command. click here)
As described in Bertell et.al, DU weapons, when they combust upon impact, create clouds of highly toxic, microscopic particles of radioactive uranium oxide which can be inhaled. The particles enter the lungs, cross the lung-blood barrier and gain entrance to tissue cells. Once in the cells, DU - a heavy metal - disrupts DNA and RNA functions, among other functions linked to the development of chronic diseases, tumors and cancer. Scientific details on the biology and epidimiology of DU exposure is reviewed in Depleted Uranium Contamination: Iraq: An overview, August 31, 2006. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=3116, and multiple other sources as cited in this article.
15) Memorandum for Commanders, 26 June 2007, Subject: Medical Management of Army Personnel Exposed to Depleted Uranium, Department of the Army, Headquarters, US Army Medical Command. click here
16) http://www.janes.com/defence/news/jid/jid040402.
For a detailed account of DU use in Iraq, see Depleted Uranium Contamination: Iraq: An overview, August 31, 2006 http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=3116
17) Depleted Uranium Dust - Public Health Disaster For The People Of Iraq and Afghanistan
by Doug Westerman, Global Research.ca, May 3, 2006 and multiple sources.
18) Marion Falk, a former physicist who worked on nuclear weapons at the government's Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, told Agence France Press that DU weapons operate in a similar manner as a dirty bomb. "That's exactly what they are," Falk said "They fit the description of a dirty bomb in every way." click here
19) Board Votes to Divest from Cluster Ammunitions
By Hillary Walton
The Vermont Cynic, November 16, 2009
20) Budget, Finance and Investment Minutes, Board of Trustees Meeting, University of Vermont, October 22-24, 2009. click here
Don Lieber is an independent journalist. His works have been published by the Associated Press, the United Nations, the International Campaign to Ban the Use of Landmines, Willamette Week (Portland Oregon), the Coalition to Ban the Use of Child (more...)
http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/Depleted-Uranium-The-Emer-by-Don-Lieber-091124-39.html
November 24, 2009
Depleted Uranium, The Emerging Radiation Crisis in Iraq and US Students: Vermont Takes Lead with Divestment
On Oct 24, The Board of Trustees at the University of Vermont adopted a resolution, without fanfare, to divest the University's investment funds from companies involved in the production of depleted uranium weapons (DU), citing the weapon's "indescriminate use" and "broad adverse effects to human health and the environment" 1)
This appears to be the first large University system in the United States to take this step, as reports are increasing out of Iraq suggesting an emerging radiation crisis in areas where these highly radioactive weapons have been used.
Many health professionals and scientists, including a former director of the Army's "Depleted Uranium Project" in Iraq, are documenting a dramatic rise in birth defects, cancers, genetic mutations and other conditions consistant with severe radiation exposure from Fallujah and Basra - where major battles included the use of DU weapons by US forces. Disturbing photos show grotesque malformations including huge hydroencephaly (enlarged heads), webbed fingers and eyelids, and severe organ protrusions (photos available at cited reference) 2)
DU weapons have been the subject of ongoing concern from experts and activists who have warned about the serious health risks posed from the highly radiactive materials used in their manufacture. Military analysts acknowledge their effective battlefiled applications - particularly as armour and concrete penetrating 'bunker busters', and the government has consistantly refuted the health concerns.
The University did not not identify publically the names of the manufactures involved nor their investors, but said the divestment would focuson the known "three main producers" and their financers. The three largest producers of DU weapons in the United States, are General Dynamics, ATK Alliance Systems, and Aerojet Ordnance Tennessee. Their US financers include Bank of America, US Bank, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and many more, according to several DU watchdog groups. 3)
Two of the areas in Iraq reporting significant radiation exposure are Fallujah and Basar, sites of major battles where DU weapons were used.
Saud Al-Azzawi, an environmental engineer who has been involved in several epidemiological research studies in the Basra region, said "A few years after exposure to (DU) contamination, multifold increase of malignancies, congenital malformations, miscarriages, children leukemia, and sterility cases have been registered in suburb areas of Basra and other surrounding areas". 4)
The Army has repeatedly denied any link between Depleted Uranium and high rates of cancer or other conditions in Iraq. "There is not really any danger, at least that we know about, for the people of Iraq," said Lt. Col. Michael Sigmon, deputy surgeon for the US Army's V Corps. 5), 6)
Individual experts from the military, however, have contradicted the official denial.
Dr Alexandra C. Miller of the Armed Forces Radiological Research Institute reported that DU has significant carcinogenic potential, is mutagenic and genotoxic. Another expert, Dr. Doug Rokke, who was the director of the Army's Depleted Uranium Project in Iraq in 2003 (charged to study how to safegaurd U.S. troops from DU and properly dispose of DU material) - has become a leading advocate for a total ban on their use. 7,8).
A brief search of Army practice suggests further contradictions to its own public denial of health risks:
Army and Defense Department regulations prohibit the use of DU munitions during training. 9)
U.S. troops are instructed to avoid any sites where DU weapons have been used — destroyed tanks, exploded bunkers, etc.—and to wear masks if they do have to approach. 10)
The U.S. removed over 6,000 tons of DU contaminated soil from Kuwait after the 1991 Gulf war. The contaminated material was brought back to the US for disposal to a radioactive waste managment company, the American Ecology Corporation, based in Bosie. Army trucks hit by 'friendly' DU fire in Iraq also had to be brought back to radioactive waste disposal facilities in the U.S. 11)
And - perhaps the striking example - the Army has built a new, state-of the art hospital in Basra specializing in advanced pediactric cancer treatment.
It is the first hospital of its kind in Iraq - a multi-million dollar, 90-bed unit - built to serve an area known for significant DU weapon use by US forces.
The Department of Defense website, in touting the Army's humanitarian efforts, cites the high cancer rates in the region without making reference to any potential causes. 12)
Fallujah - another area where US forces used considerable DU munitions during the battles in 2004 - now is also reporting an observable rise in birth defects and other radiation-related conditions. A report sent to the UN General Assembly on October 12, 2009, by Dr Nawal Majeed Al-Sammarai, Iraq's Minister of Women's Affairs, stated that 24% of the babies born in Fallujah General Hospital in September 2009 died within their first week of life. Of the remainder of the babies who survived beyond the first week of life, a full 75% were reported born with deformaties.
Statistics from the same hospital in 2002 - six months prior to start of the 'shock and awe' attacks of 2003 (which included DU weapons) - recorded 530 live births with only six dying in the first week and only one deformity. 13)
An important detail of DU risk to humans is that the most dangerous form of exposure is inhalation (rather than contact). This happens when DU weapons 'aerosolize' upon impact. A single particle of inhaled DU can expose the surrounding tissue to radiation 800 times the annual dosage considered safe by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for the entire body. (Authors Note: The US Army has no established protocols for diagnosing, nor treating soldiers with suspected inhaled DU). 14)
Several sources place the amount of DU used in US weapons since 2003 at over 1,600 tonnes: this amount would create a staggering, uncountable amount of particles to be dispersed in the soil, water and air. 15) This corresponds to studies now showing local soil, water and air which now show radiation levels 'hundreds to thousands of times' above what occurs naturally. An American reporter from the Christian Science Moniter described that radiation meters which his crew brought to the region went "off the scale" in some areas. 16)
The emerging reports out of Iraq have been virtually absent in the United States media, with scant attention in European media - two recent reports in the Guardian (UK) being notable exceptions. 17)
Largely out of the US press, however, some governments and humanitarian organizations are reacting.
The government of Belgium in 2007 became the first nation to ban "all weapons" which contain Depleted Uranium. In 2008 the European Parliament adapted a resolution for both a moratorium and an international treaty to ban them . The International Coalition to Ban UraniumWeapons, based in Manchester, is seeking an international ban modeled after the Ottawa Landmine-Ban Treaty and has called upon the United Nations to do so.
And at least one U.S. University has voted to cease doing business with producers of a weapon which one former nuclear expert from the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory described as a "a dirty bomb...in every way". 18)
So what led the students in Vermont to ask the University to divest - on an issue relatively unknown in the United States - at a time when any number of pressing issues could well have merited more publicized attention?
"At UVM social and political activism are both things that are taken very seriously" said Hillary Walton, the student journalist who first wrote about the divestment vote in the campus newspaper The Vermont Cynic. The University's culture indeed appears to welcome student social activism, perhaps more than most US universities: It previously created a Socially Responsible Investing Work Group which is composed of students, faculty, administration, and staff: all have equal vote in deciding which issues to bring before the Trustees. Previous divestment resolutions have passed regarding tobbaco and the human rights in Sudan. 19)
Whether other US Universities follow Vermont's lead on DU weapons and the emerging radiation crisis in Iraq remains to be seen.
In their October 22 divestment resolution, the University Trustees said "... The University's policy of fiscal prudence shall not preclude the consideration of moral, ethical and social criteria in determining which companies to invest." 20)
It appears that the CEOs and Board of Directors at General Dynamics, ATK Alliance Sytems, and Aerojet Ordnance Tennessee - along with their their US Banking partners and Army contractors - have it the other way around.
Don Lieber is an independent journalist whose previous works have been published with the Associated Press, the United Nations, The Willamette Week (Portland Ore.), The International Campaign to Ban Landmines, and others.
FOOTNOTES
1) Budget, Finance and Investment Minutes, Board of Trustees Meeting, University of Vermont, October 22-24, 2009. click here
2) click here
Explicit and disturbing photos of children displaying severe symptoms associated with radition exposure as collected by Iraq hospital officials, and health researchers, can be seen at:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~stgvisie/VISIE/extremedeformities.html
3) International Coalition to Ban Depleted Uranium. http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/en/docs/32.pdf
According to the ICBDU, the three main producers of DU weapons are:
General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems,
Michael S. Wilson President,
11399 16th Court North, Suite 200
St. Petersburg, FL 33716
Main Number: (727) 578-8100 (727) 578-8100
Fax Number: (727) 578-8119
Web Site:http://www.gd-ots.com/
ATK Armament Systems
Amanda Covington, Director of Communications
Clearfield, Utah
Phone: 801-779-4625 801-779-4625
ATK Alliance Systems - Corporate Headquarters
7480 Flying Cloud Drive,Minneapolis, MN 55344
Phone: 952-351-3000 952-351-3000
atk.corporate@atk.com
Aerojet Ordnance Tennessee, Inc.
Jonesborough, Tennessee.
1367 Old State Route 34,
Jonesborough, TN 37659
(423) 753-1200 (423) 753-1200
(423) 753-8645 (FAX)
4) Remarks given by Souadd Al-Azzawi, Associate Professor of engineering, Kuala Lumpur International Conference to Criminalise War, Putra World Trade Centre, 28-31 October 2009
5) Remains of Toxic Bullets Litter Iraq.
Scott Peterson, The Christian Science Monitor, May 15, 2003.
6 ) The government's denial also applies to thousands of returning US soldiers also exposed to DU fallout in Iraq. For a detailed account of this, see: Paul Zimmerman, Depleted Uranium and the Mismanagement of Gulf War Veterans, as published November 20, 2009, in TruthOut,org http://www.truthout.org/1120097.
Authors note: The Army has "no code" (i.e., established protocols) for the testing, diagnosing, or treatment suspected exposure from inhalation of DU - despite the awareness that this is most dangerous form of DU exposure (unlike 'contact' exposure, such as shrapnel, for which the Army has extensive diagnosing and treatment protocols).
See: Memorandum for Commanders,
26 June 2007,
Subject: Medical Management of Army Personnel Exposed to Depleted Uranium,
Department of the Army, Headquarters, US Army Medical Command. click here
7) Alexandra C. Miller, Mike Stewart, Rafael Rivas, Robert Marlot, and Paul Lison, Depleted Uranium internal contamination: Carcinogenisis and Leukeinogenisis in Vivo. Proc. American Association of Cancer Research. Volume 46, 2005.
8)The War Against Ourselves: Interview with Dr. Doug Rokke, Yes!Magazine, March 31, 2003. Dr. Rokke's public speeches on DU are available on YouTube. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-VkpR-wka8.
9) Army Installation Management Command, Pacific Region Information Booklet "Depleted Uranium in Hawaii"
10) Peterson, Remains of Toxic Bullets, Christian Science Monitor, as cited.
11) Peterson, Remains of Toxic Bullets, and Al-Azzawi, Remarks, as cited.
12) U.S. Department of Defense News Website, http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=54623
13). http://www.unobserver.com/layout5.php?id=6744&blz
14) Rosali Bertell, Depleted Uranium: All the questions about DU and Gulf War Syndrome are not yet answered. International Journal of Health Service 36(3), 503-520, 2006, and Memorandum for Commanders, 26 June 2007, Subject: Medical Management of Army Personnel Exposed to Depleted Uranium, Department of the Army, Headquarters, US Army Medical Command. click here)
As described in Bertell et.al, DU weapons, when they combust upon impact, create clouds of highly toxic, microscopic particles of radioactive uranium oxide which can be inhaled. The particles enter the lungs, cross the lung-blood barrier and gain entrance to tissue cells. Once in the cells, DU - a heavy metal - disrupts DNA and RNA functions, among other functions linked to the development of chronic diseases, tumors and cancer. Scientific details on the biology and epidimiology of DU exposure is reviewed in Depleted Uranium Contamination: Iraq: An overview, August 31, 2006. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=3116, and multiple other sources as cited in this article.
15) Memorandum for Commanders, 26 June 2007, Subject: Medical Management of Army Personnel Exposed to Depleted Uranium, Department of the Army, Headquarters, US Army Medical Command. click here
16) http://www.janes.com/defence/news/jid/jid040402.
For a detailed account of DU use in Iraq, see Depleted Uranium Contamination: Iraq: An overview, August 31, 2006 http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=3116
17) Depleted Uranium Dust - Public Health Disaster For The People Of Iraq and Afghanistan
by Doug Westerman, Global Research.ca, May 3, 2006 and multiple sources.
18) Marion Falk, a former physicist who worked on nuclear weapons at the government's Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, told Agence France Press that DU weapons operate in a similar manner as a dirty bomb. "That's exactly what they are," Falk said "They fit the description of a dirty bomb in every way." click here
19) Board Votes to Divest from Cluster Ammunitions
By Hillary Walton
The Vermont Cynic, November 16, 2009
20) Budget, Finance and Investment Minutes, Board of Trustees Meeting, University of Vermont, October 22-24, 2009. click here
Don Lieber is an independent journalist. His works have been published by the Associated Press, the United Nations, the International Campaign to Ban the Use of Landmines, Willamette Week (Portland Oregon), the Coalition to Ban the Use of Child (more...)
http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/Depleted-Uranium-The-Emer-by-Don-Lieber-091124-39.html
Pittsburgh, PA Chemtrails 11.29.09
Thanks to: Safety Joe
http://www.myspace.com/safetyjoebackup
http://www.youtube.com/user/wearechangepgh
On 11.29.2009 I documented a few hours worth of Chemtrails that littered the Pittsburgh skyline. Earlier in the day, the skies were blue, around noon the Chemtrails started to appear. Was able to start video recording @ 2:30 pm.
http://www.myspace.com/safetyjoebackup
http://www.youtube.com/user/wearechangepgh
On 11.29.2009 I documented a few hours worth of Chemtrails that littered the Pittsburgh skyline. Earlier in the day, the skies were blue, around noon the Chemtrails started to appear. Was able to start video recording @ 2:30 pm.
I Still Care - But My Give A Shit Meter Is On Empty
From: Blaine (86495574)
Date: 11/30/2009 9:09:46 AM
I Still Care - But My Give A Shit Meter Is On Empty
By: Neal Ross
November 30th, 2009
Albert Einstein once said, "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." Even if Einstein had never discovered the Theory of Relativity, that statement alone shows that he was wise beyond his years.
Putting aside those who were born with learning disorders, I see a lot of stupid people running around in this country. I am sure that statement is not going to make me many friends, but after I am finished, I hope you will at least understand why I said it.
The reason I say I see a lot of stupid people can be best explained by a quote I read in Wikipedia, “Stupidity is distinct from irrationality because stupidity denotes an incapability or [an] unwillingness to properly consider the relevant information.” In other words, stupidity can be defined as willful ignorance.
However bad willful ignorance may be, there is something that I despise even more, that being apathy. I can understand how people might be unwilling to consider relevant information which contradicts their personal beliefs. But to be apathetic, to not care at all is the trait which I find the most despicable, and I see just as many apathetic people as I do those who refuse to listen to a differing viewpoint. Helen Keller once said, “Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all &... the apathy of human beings.”
If people were merely ignorant, [uninformed], it would be a simple matter to provide them with information to educate them. However, when people don’t care to learn, or refuse to accept the facts, then we end up with a society filled with people who are easily manipulated, and controlled, by their government.
Thomas Jefferson once said, “The tax which will be paid for the purpose of education is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.”
Not enough people in this country understand the concept of a limited government and individual liberty. To them the idea that government does not exist to solve all the nations problems is completely foreign to them. The same goes for the idea that under our system of government, people were to be free to do as they please, as long as their actions did not deny others the ability to do the same.
There is a flip side to having that amount of freedom. Along with it comes the responsibility of accepting the consequences of your actions. So, if you decide to drink yourself into a stupor every night, that is perfectly fine. But when your drinking causes you to lose your job, or your liver fails and you end up in the hospital, you have no right to blame society, or expect them to accept the responsibility for your poor choices.
That is why, as George Bernard Shaw once said, “Liberty means responsibility... That is why most men dread it.”
“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.” H. L. Mencken.
Our nation was to be a nation based on law. There was to be a certain hierarchy among these laws; with local laws being at the bottom, which was to be superseded by state law, followed by federal law, all of which could only be enacted according to what was contained within the Constitution.
It is important to remember that the very purpose of government was not to give, but to protect our God-given rights. That is the purpose for the Bill of Rights, certain rights our founders believed were of such great importance that they be protected by Constitutional Amendments.
As former Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson once said, “The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.”
It is because of the ignorance, and the apathy, of so many Americans that our system of government has gone from being one of limited powers with respect for individual rights, to one of overreaching powers and continued infringements upon our rights.
For example, the Second Amendment states that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. According to the principles of natural law, as long as you, in the exercise of a right, do not infringe upon others ability to freely exercise their rights, you are free to exercise that right as you wish.
Since the Second Amendment states the right to not only keep, but bear arms, why must we ask permission from the government to exercise what was considered to be a right? Does the fact that we have to ask mean that it is no longer considered a right, but a privilege?
As it stands now, laws have been passed which makes it extremely difficult for us to legally defend ourselves, our families, and our property. We have become dependent upon the police to do what was to be our right, and our responsibility to do ourselves.
I could go into other aspects of the Second Amendment, but I think you get the picture.
How about our right to free speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment? Our court system has passed ruling upon ruling banning any kind of religious display from public places, especially in our schools.
However, Thomas Jefferson once said, “One of the amendments to the Constitution &... expressly declares that &... Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,' thereby guarding in the same sentence and under the same words, the freedom of religion, of speech, and of the press; insomuch that whatever violates either throws down the sanctuary which covers the others.”
One needs to remember that according to the principle of natural rights, a person is free to exercise their right as long as they do not prohibit someone else from doing the same.
No one is forcing anyone to pray in school, or to believe in God. But when you use the courts to impose your belief, which prohibits others from freely practicing their beliefs, you are infringing upon their natural right.
Okay, lets take a moment to look at one other instance of governmental abuse of powers.
Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution outlines the specific powers granted to Congress. One of these powers is, “To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures.”
In 1792 the Congress passed an act establishing a mint, and regulating the Coins of the United States, known as the Coinage Act of 1792. This act established a U.S. Mint and the corresponding values of coins to be used as currency in the United States.
In 1873 Congress passed the fourth Coinage Act, which de-monetized silver, placing us upon the gold standard. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, the gold standard was a monetary standard under which the basic unit of currency is defined by a stated quantity of gold.
Paper money was introduced to be used as an alternative to heavy bulky coins. However, they were always redeemable in the corresponding amount of gold or silver.
If you look, for example, at a 1928 $100 bill you will see that it states, “Redeemable in gold on demand at the United States Treasury or in gold or lawful money at any Federal Reserve Bank.”
In 1913 Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act, which gave its power to coin our nations money to a group of bankers. Although the President nominates the Chairman of the FED, the banks themselves are not beholden to Congress, they have never been audited, and they, of their own admission, were responsible for the crash of 1929 which led to the Great Depression.
One of the heads of these banking dynasties which control the Federal Reserve Bank was Mayer Amschel Rothschild. Rothschild once said, “Give me control of a nations money supply, and I care not who makes it's laws.”
These bankers knew that if they controlled a nations money supply, they controlled the nation. H. L. Birum Sr. once said, “The Federal Reserve Bank is nothing but a banking fraud and an unlawful crime against civilization. Why? Because they "create" the money made out of nothing, and our Uncle Sap Government issues their "Federal Reserve Notes" and stamps our Government approval with NO obligation whatever from these Federal Reserve Banks, Individual Banks or National Banks, etc.”
However, as long as our nations currency was tied to gold, the FED could only print as much money as we had in gold to back it up. If you look over the course of our nation’s history, there were few periods of sustained inflation. These usually followed periods of war, but our country returned to normal after a short time afterwards.
However, when FDR took us off the gold standard that gave the FED the green light to print as much money as they wish. It also gave Congress the ability to ask for unlimited amounts of money to fund projects, as they could borrow now, pay later with no regards as to how much gold there was to back up their spending.
Since then inflation has been on the rise, the price of gold has quadrupled, and the buying power of the dollar has steadily diminished.
Even Alan Greenspan had this to say about the gold standard, “In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. &#... This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard.”
Our government spends, and spends, and spends, all of which is spent by borrowed money, created out of thin air, by the banks. All this debt is passed on to us, the people by way of our taxes, which do not even begin to pay the interest upon our national debt.
The banks want us in debt, they want our country in debt. That is how they earn money, from the interest they make off of loans. Allow me to prove my point.
I moved into my home in 1992, prior to the housing bubble. I took out a 6.5% loan upon $87,500. Now, if you add six and a half percent to the initial balance of $87,500, you come up with $93.,187.
My loan was a 30 year loan, and my payment was roughly $800 a month. Now, let’s do some math. Eight hundred times twelve equals $9,600 per year. Now multiply that by the period of the loan and you get, $288,000.
Now subtract the money I borrowed, and you end up with $200,500 in interest payments. I understand why they put up such a fight when I wanted to pay off my home after only 5 years of interest payments. That is a lot of cash for them to lose out on.
Well, that is the scheme employed by the people who print, regulate, and control our nations currency. Now we are expecting these same people to solve our nation’s monetary problems when they are the ones who created them in the first place?
Like I said in the beginning, there are a lot of stupid people running around in this country. It may sound trite, and old fashioned, but there are three things that I owe my allegiance to. First of all I owe my allegiance to my God, secondly, to my country, and lastly to my family. Everything else is trivial, including what others think of me.
So, if you choose to remain uneducated as to what is going on in this country, if you choose to disregard the facts because they contradict what you believe in, fine, so be it. My priorities have already been explained. I still give a shit, just not about you. But as Anton La Vey once said, “It‘s too bad that stupidity isn‘t painful.”
Live your life in such a way that when your feet hit the floor in the morning, Satan shudders and says "OH SHIT!!... HE'S AWAKE!!"
“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?“
~ The Author ~
Neal Ross can be reached for comments at bonsai@syix.com. Visit Neal’s Blog at http://www.zombie-slayer.com/neal
http://www.federalobserver.com/2009/11/30/i-still-care-but-my-give-a-shit-meter-is-on-empty/
Date: 11/30/2009 9:09:46 AM
I Still Care - But My Give A Shit Meter Is On Empty
By: Neal Ross
November 30th, 2009
Albert Einstein once said, "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." Even if Einstein had never discovered the Theory of Relativity, that statement alone shows that he was wise beyond his years.
Putting aside those who were born with learning disorders, I see a lot of stupid people running around in this country. I am sure that statement is not going to make me many friends, but after I am finished, I hope you will at least understand why I said it.
The reason I say I see a lot of stupid people can be best explained by a quote I read in Wikipedia, “Stupidity is distinct from irrationality because stupidity denotes an incapability or [an] unwillingness to properly consider the relevant information.” In other words, stupidity can be defined as willful ignorance.
However bad willful ignorance may be, there is something that I despise even more, that being apathy. I can understand how people might be unwilling to consider relevant information which contradicts their personal beliefs. But to be apathetic, to not care at all is the trait which I find the most despicable, and I see just as many apathetic people as I do those who refuse to listen to a differing viewpoint. Helen Keller once said, “Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all &... the apathy of human beings.”
If people were merely ignorant, [uninformed], it would be a simple matter to provide them with information to educate them. However, when people don’t care to learn, or refuse to accept the facts, then we end up with a society filled with people who are easily manipulated, and controlled, by their government.
Thomas Jefferson once said, “The tax which will be paid for the purpose of education is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.”
Not enough people in this country understand the concept of a limited government and individual liberty. To them the idea that government does not exist to solve all the nations problems is completely foreign to them. The same goes for the idea that under our system of government, people were to be free to do as they please, as long as their actions did not deny others the ability to do the same.
There is a flip side to having that amount of freedom. Along with it comes the responsibility of accepting the consequences of your actions. So, if you decide to drink yourself into a stupor every night, that is perfectly fine. But when your drinking causes you to lose your job, or your liver fails and you end up in the hospital, you have no right to blame society, or expect them to accept the responsibility for your poor choices.
That is why, as George Bernard Shaw once said, “Liberty means responsibility... That is why most men dread it.”
“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.” H. L. Mencken.
Our nation was to be a nation based on law. There was to be a certain hierarchy among these laws; with local laws being at the bottom, which was to be superseded by state law, followed by federal law, all of which could only be enacted according to what was contained within the Constitution.
It is important to remember that the very purpose of government was not to give, but to protect our God-given rights. That is the purpose for the Bill of Rights, certain rights our founders believed were of such great importance that they be protected by Constitutional Amendments.
As former Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson once said, “The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.”
It is because of the ignorance, and the apathy, of so many Americans that our system of government has gone from being one of limited powers with respect for individual rights, to one of overreaching powers and continued infringements upon our rights.
For example, the Second Amendment states that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. According to the principles of natural law, as long as you, in the exercise of a right, do not infringe upon others ability to freely exercise their rights, you are free to exercise that right as you wish.
Since the Second Amendment states the right to not only keep, but bear arms, why must we ask permission from the government to exercise what was considered to be a right? Does the fact that we have to ask mean that it is no longer considered a right, but a privilege?
As it stands now, laws have been passed which makes it extremely difficult for us to legally defend ourselves, our families, and our property. We have become dependent upon the police to do what was to be our right, and our responsibility to do ourselves.
I could go into other aspects of the Second Amendment, but I think you get the picture.
How about our right to free speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment? Our court system has passed ruling upon ruling banning any kind of religious display from public places, especially in our schools.
However, Thomas Jefferson once said, “One of the amendments to the Constitution &... expressly declares that &... Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,' thereby guarding in the same sentence and under the same words, the freedom of religion, of speech, and of the press; insomuch that whatever violates either throws down the sanctuary which covers the others.”
One needs to remember that according to the principle of natural rights, a person is free to exercise their right as long as they do not prohibit someone else from doing the same.
No one is forcing anyone to pray in school, or to believe in God. But when you use the courts to impose your belief, which prohibits others from freely practicing their beliefs, you are infringing upon their natural right.
Okay, lets take a moment to look at one other instance of governmental abuse of powers.
Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution outlines the specific powers granted to Congress. One of these powers is, “To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures.”
In 1792 the Congress passed an act establishing a mint, and regulating the Coins of the United States, known as the Coinage Act of 1792. This act established a U.S. Mint and the corresponding values of coins to be used as currency in the United States.
In 1873 Congress passed the fourth Coinage Act, which de-monetized silver, placing us upon the gold standard. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, the gold standard was a monetary standard under which the basic unit of currency is defined by a stated quantity of gold.
Paper money was introduced to be used as an alternative to heavy bulky coins. However, they were always redeemable in the corresponding amount of gold or silver.
If you look, for example, at a 1928 $100 bill you will see that it states, “Redeemable in gold on demand at the United States Treasury or in gold or lawful money at any Federal Reserve Bank.”
In 1913 Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act, which gave its power to coin our nations money to a group of bankers. Although the President nominates the Chairman of the FED, the banks themselves are not beholden to Congress, they have never been audited, and they, of their own admission, were responsible for the crash of 1929 which led to the Great Depression.
One of the heads of these banking dynasties which control the Federal Reserve Bank was Mayer Amschel Rothschild. Rothschild once said, “Give me control of a nations money supply, and I care not who makes it's laws.”
These bankers knew that if they controlled a nations money supply, they controlled the nation. H. L. Birum Sr. once said, “The Federal Reserve Bank is nothing but a banking fraud and an unlawful crime against civilization. Why? Because they "create" the money made out of nothing, and our Uncle Sap Government issues their "Federal Reserve Notes" and stamps our Government approval with NO obligation whatever from these Federal Reserve Banks, Individual Banks or National Banks, etc.”
However, as long as our nations currency was tied to gold, the FED could only print as much money as we had in gold to back it up. If you look over the course of our nation’s history, there were few periods of sustained inflation. These usually followed periods of war, but our country returned to normal after a short time afterwards.
However, when FDR took us off the gold standard that gave the FED the green light to print as much money as they wish. It also gave Congress the ability to ask for unlimited amounts of money to fund projects, as they could borrow now, pay later with no regards as to how much gold there was to back up their spending.
Since then inflation has been on the rise, the price of gold has quadrupled, and the buying power of the dollar has steadily diminished.
Even Alan Greenspan had this to say about the gold standard, “In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. &#... This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard.”
Our government spends, and spends, and spends, all of which is spent by borrowed money, created out of thin air, by the banks. All this debt is passed on to us, the people by way of our taxes, which do not even begin to pay the interest upon our national debt.
The banks want us in debt, they want our country in debt. That is how they earn money, from the interest they make off of loans. Allow me to prove my point.
I moved into my home in 1992, prior to the housing bubble. I took out a 6.5% loan upon $87,500. Now, if you add six and a half percent to the initial balance of $87,500, you come up with $93.,187.
My loan was a 30 year loan, and my payment was roughly $800 a month. Now, let’s do some math. Eight hundred times twelve equals $9,600 per year. Now multiply that by the period of the loan and you get, $288,000.
Now subtract the money I borrowed, and you end up with $200,500 in interest payments. I understand why they put up such a fight when I wanted to pay off my home after only 5 years of interest payments. That is a lot of cash for them to lose out on.
Well, that is the scheme employed by the people who print, regulate, and control our nations currency. Now we are expecting these same people to solve our nation’s monetary problems when they are the ones who created them in the first place?
Like I said in the beginning, there are a lot of stupid people running around in this country. It may sound trite, and old fashioned, but there are three things that I owe my allegiance to. First of all I owe my allegiance to my God, secondly, to my country, and lastly to my family. Everything else is trivial, including what others think of me.
So, if you choose to remain uneducated as to what is going on in this country, if you choose to disregard the facts because they contradict what you believe in, fine, so be it. My priorities have already been explained. I still give a shit, just not about you. But as Anton La Vey once said, “It‘s too bad that stupidity isn‘t painful.”
Live your life in such a way that when your feet hit the floor in the morning, Satan shudders and says "OH SHIT!!... HE'S AWAKE!!"
“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?“
~ The Author ~
Neal Ross can be reached for comments at bonsai@syix.com. Visit Neal’s Blog at http://www.zombie-slayer.com/neal
http://www.federalobserver.com/2009/11/30/i-still-care-but-my-give-a-shit-meter-is-on-empty/
Free Energy Inventor Found VeriChip On Body - Caused Cancer
From: Zag (25404748)
From: The 99th Monkey (84833021)
From: Eddie NWO Censored (268579829)
Free energy inventor discovers mystery Verichip tracking implant in shoulder, caused cancer
Aftermath News
November 29, 2009
Bob Boyce, who has invented a super-efficient electrolysis method, as well as a self-looping electrical circuit capable of charging batteries, discovered a microchip implant in his shoulder when having a tumor removed from that spot, which metastasized. It turns out the chip was made by VeriChip.
Pure Energy Systems News Nov 28, 2009
Inventor’s terminal cancer courtesy of Verichip?
by Sterling D. Allan
Bob Boyce is a famous inventor in the world of ultra-efficient electrolysis and hydroxy research. The chip found in his shoulder at the point of tumor formation turns out to be manufactured by VeriChip.
On Nov. 12, we reported that a South African experimenter has modified an electrolysis circuit developed by Bob Boyce so that now it recharges his daughter’s electric vehicle riding toy. We said that what makes this remarkable is that the energy is not drawn from the wall but from the environment somehow; and that he’s done this around 35 times now and knows of three replications of the effect by others. We created a feature page and a discussion list to facilitate additional replications and development of the technology
We also reported in the same story that we had become aware the day before that Bob Boyce has “terminal” cancer, and that his days are numbered if some kind of remedy isn’t found.
On Nov. 12, Bob wrote:
The cancer that I have developed was not directly due to my research, as many have suggested. Having said that, it did occur under suspicious circumstances. When I was in Florida earlier this year, I noticed a small, hard lump had appeared under the skin of my right shoulder. I wondered where it came from, of course, but did not give it much thought. Over time, the skin over and around the lump turned reddish and became sore.
A few months ago, while working with an EMF meter on the bench in my lab, I noticed that I was picking up a weak signal. Nothing else was running at the time, so I tried locating the source, and traced it to the lump in my shoulder! I made arrangements with my doctor to have it removed, and he suspected a common skin cancer.
The object itself was tiny, about the size of a dry grain of rice, surrounded by a white fibrous shell. It had numerous nerves attached to it.
Once it had been removed, it ceased sending out a signal, as verified by my portable EMF detector.
I wanted to keep it and analyze it myself, but my doctor convinced me to let him send it off to the lab. My doctor sent it and the surrounding tissue off for pathology. Not surprisingly, there was absolutely no mention of the object itself in the pathology report.
The surrounding tissue turned out to be this rare form of cancer that has been linked to excessive x-ray exposure in x-ray technicians. The surgery had disturbed the cancer and sent cancer cells throughout my blood stream. The margins were not clear, indicating that the cancer was still present at the incision site, as well as clear indications now that the cancer has spread. I can’t blame the doctor really, as at the time we did not know that it was not a simple skin cancer.
What I really want to know is, what was this object, and how in the heck did it get imbedded in the skin of my shoulder without me knowing about it?
Many of you have sent us emails and made phone calls suggesting various possible cures. We are hopeful that with the information that has come Bob’s way that he will be able to secure a complete cure from his cancer.
Meanwhile, on Thanksgiving evening Bob called and left a voice message in which he informed me that it turns out that the chip that was implanted in his shoulder was made by VeriChip, a company that makes implantable microchips.
According to the VeriChip VeriMed page:
About the size of a grain of rice, the microchip is inserted just under the skin and contains only a unique, 16-digit identifier. The microchip itself does not contain any other data other than this unique electronic ID, nor does it contain any Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking capabilities. And unlike conventional forms of identification, the Health Link cannot be lost, stolen, misplaced, or counterfeited. It is safe, secure, reversible, and always with you.
Close-up of a VeriChip implant device, the size of a small grain of rice.
Another page on their site describes the RFID technology, which is an essential component of their chips, and the proximity required for reading different kinds of chips, such as those used in automated toll collection.
In his message to me, Bob referred me to a website, AntiChips.com, which documents the link between embedded RFID microchips and tumor formation. It cites a paper, Microchip-Induced Tumors in Laboratory Rodents and Dogs: A Review of the Literature 1990–2006, and summarizes it as follows:
CASPIAN’s new report … is a definitive review of research showing a causal link between implanted radio-frequency (RFID) microchip transponders and cancer in laboratory rodents and dogs. It was written in part to correct industry misstatements and misinformation circulating about the studies.
The report evaluates eleven articles previously published in toxicology and pathology journals. In six of the articles, between 0.8% and 10.2% of laboratory mice and rats developed malignant tumors around or adjacent to the microchips. Two additional articles reported microchip-related cancer in dogs.
In almost all cases, the malignant tumors, typically sarcomas, arose at the site of the implants and grew to surround and fully encase the devices. These fast-growing, malignant tumors often led to the death of the afflicted animals. In many cases, the tumors metastasized or spread to other parts of the animals. The implants were unequivocally identified as the cause of the cancers.
This is one story you will want to pass on to your networks to get the word out about the kinds of nefarious deeds going on to suppress new energy technology that could truly empower people to break free of the powers that be.
I’ve got a few questions for Bob the next time I talk to him.
* How did you find out the chip was made by VeriChip?
* Is your source willing to go on record?
* Are you planning legal action?
* Is it okay for Watkykjy1 to disclose to the B-Hex group the full details of how he built his charging device?
I’ll probably append his responses here.
I also tried to contact VeriChip for a comment, but being a holiday weekend, I haven’t heard back yet.
Full Story
http://pesn.com/2009/11/28/9501591_Bob_Boyce_cancer_by_Verichip/
_________
Related
Toronto Star: ‘One generation is all they need’
One day we will all happily be implanted with microchips, and our every move will be monitored. The technology exists; the only barrier is society’s resistance to the loss of privacy
Eddie NWO Censored
Click Here To Read Eddie NOW Censored Bulletins
From: The 99th Monkey (84833021)
From: Eddie NWO Censored (268579829)
Free energy inventor discovers mystery Verichip tracking implant in shoulder, caused cancer
Aftermath News
November 29, 2009
Bob Boyce, who has invented a super-efficient electrolysis method, as well as a self-looping electrical circuit capable of charging batteries, discovered a microchip implant in his shoulder when having a tumor removed from that spot, which metastasized. It turns out the chip was made by VeriChip.
Pure Energy Systems News Nov 28, 2009
Inventor’s terminal cancer courtesy of Verichip?
by Sterling D. Allan
Bob Boyce is a famous inventor in the world of ultra-efficient electrolysis and hydroxy research. The chip found in his shoulder at the point of tumor formation turns out to be manufactured by VeriChip.
On Nov. 12, we reported that a South African experimenter has modified an electrolysis circuit developed by Bob Boyce so that now it recharges his daughter’s electric vehicle riding toy. We said that what makes this remarkable is that the energy is not drawn from the wall but from the environment somehow; and that he’s done this around 35 times now and knows of three replications of the effect by others. We created a feature page and a discussion list to facilitate additional replications and development of the technology
We also reported in the same story that we had become aware the day before that Bob Boyce has “terminal” cancer, and that his days are numbered if some kind of remedy isn’t found.
On Nov. 12, Bob wrote:
The cancer that I have developed was not directly due to my research, as many have suggested. Having said that, it did occur under suspicious circumstances. When I was in Florida earlier this year, I noticed a small, hard lump had appeared under the skin of my right shoulder. I wondered where it came from, of course, but did not give it much thought. Over time, the skin over and around the lump turned reddish and became sore.
A few months ago, while working with an EMF meter on the bench in my lab, I noticed that I was picking up a weak signal. Nothing else was running at the time, so I tried locating the source, and traced it to the lump in my shoulder! I made arrangements with my doctor to have it removed, and he suspected a common skin cancer.
The object itself was tiny, about the size of a dry grain of rice, surrounded by a white fibrous shell. It had numerous nerves attached to it.
Once it had been removed, it ceased sending out a signal, as verified by my portable EMF detector.
I wanted to keep it and analyze it myself, but my doctor convinced me to let him send it off to the lab. My doctor sent it and the surrounding tissue off for pathology. Not surprisingly, there was absolutely no mention of the object itself in the pathology report.
The surrounding tissue turned out to be this rare form of cancer that has been linked to excessive x-ray exposure in x-ray technicians. The surgery had disturbed the cancer and sent cancer cells throughout my blood stream. The margins were not clear, indicating that the cancer was still present at the incision site, as well as clear indications now that the cancer has spread. I can’t blame the doctor really, as at the time we did not know that it was not a simple skin cancer.
What I really want to know is, what was this object, and how in the heck did it get imbedded in the skin of my shoulder without me knowing about it?
Many of you have sent us emails and made phone calls suggesting various possible cures. We are hopeful that with the information that has come Bob’s way that he will be able to secure a complete cure from his cancer.
Meanwhile, on Thanksgiving evening Bob called and left a voice message in which he informed me that it turns out that the chip that was implanted in his shoulder was made by VeriChip, a company that makes implantable microchips.
According to the VeriChip VeriMed page:
About the size of a grain of rice, the microchip is inserted just under the skin and contains only a unique, 16-digit identifier. The microchip itself does not contain any other data other than this unique electronic ID, nor does it contain any Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking capabilities. And unlike conventional forms of identification, the Health Link cannot be lost, stolen, misplaced, or counterfeited. It is safe, secure, reversible, and always with you.
Close-up of a VeriChip implant device, the size of a small grain of rice.
Another page on their site describes the RFID technology, which is an essential component of their chips, and the proximity required for reading different kinds of chips, such as those used in automated toll collection.
In his message to me, Bob referred me to a website, AntiChips.com, which documents the link between embedded RFID microchips and tumor formation. It cites a paper, Microchip-Induced Tumors in Laboratory Rodents and Dogs: A Review of the Literature 1990–2006, and summarizes it as follows:
CASPIAN’s new report … is a definitive review of research showing a causal link between implanted radio-frequency (RFID) microchip transponders and cancer in laboratory rodents and dogs. It was written in part to correct industry misstatements and misinformation circulating about the studies.
The report evaluates eleven articles previously published in toxicology and pathology journals. In six of the articles, between 0.8% and 10.2% of laboratory mice and rats developed malignant tumors around or adjacent to the microchips. Two additional articles reported microchip-related cancer in dogs.
In almost all cases, the malignant tumors, typically sarcomas, arose at the site of the implants and grew to surround and fully encase the devices. These fast-growing, malignant tumors often led to the death of the afflicted animals. In many cases, the tumors metastasized or spread to other parts of the animals. The implants were unequivocally identified as the cause of the cancers.
This is one story you will want to pass on to your networks to get the word out about the kinds of nefarious deeds going on to suppress new energy technology that could truly empower people to break free of the powers that be.
I’ve got a few questions for Bob the next time I talk to him.
* How did you find out the chip was made by VeriChip?
* Is your source willing to go on record?
* Are you planning legal action?
* Is it okay for Watkykjy1 to disclose to the B-Hex group the full details of how he built his charging device?
I’ll probably append his responses here.
I also tried to contact VeriChip for a comment, but being a holiday weekend, I haven’t heard back yet.
Full Story
http://pesn.com/2009/11/28/9501591_Bob_Boyce_cancer_by_Verichip/
_________
Related
Toronto Star: ‘One generation is all they need’
One day we will all happily be implanted with microchips, and our every move will be monitored. The technology exists; the only barrier is society’s resistance to the loss of privacy
Eddie NWO Censored
Click Here To Read Eddie NOW Censored Bulletins
Sunday, November 29, 2009
The Sword of My Tongue (unfinished poem) Excellent
By: todd alan smith
November 29, 2009
The Sword of My Tongue (unfinished poem)
That's right. You're a dangerous animal; surrounded by socially acceptable criminals...corporate-military-pharmaceutical chemicals. You're fed...bio-hazardous waste and genetically modified pork-barrell animals. Gotta complaint? Stand in line. Get processed, destroy your mind. The television reeks with beautiful super-models. Jet setters on the backs of commoners. Win a trip to the virgin islands, raped and pillaged by the husbands of whores and their sons and daughters. It's all subliminal. Epididymal. You've been busting your balls for the godless sinners. Toss some dollars to the church and feel like a winner. What would Jesus buy on black friday? Blood diamonds on a wedding ring? We're all waiting for the sword of his tongue to slaughter our enemies, rip them limb from limb. let them burn for eternity. But all we see are pop-up videos, fashion statements in a flag dripping studio. Got time for a game? It's well past the eleventh hour. Just around midnight you will hear the town crier. He weeps for all that is lost, all that is won at such a terrible cost. Well I can't wait, and so can you. The sword of my tongue is a weapon for you to. Let it cut through the bullshit and indescriminate lies. Let it ring with the truth, let it ring till you die.
Comment:
LisaMarie:
Wow Todd, Alot of Passion there.
ahh, I see a New Word to learn: Epididymal
My dictionary only has: epididymis -->lol
(µp"¹-d¹d"…-m¹s) n., pl. ep·i·did·y·mi·des (-m¹-d¶z"). Anatomy. A long, narrow convoluted tube, part of the spermatic duct system, that lies on the posterior aspect of each testicle, connecting it to the vas deferens. [Greek epididumis : epi-, epi- + didumoi, twins, testicles, pl. of didumos, double; see dwo- below.] --ep"i·did"y·mal adj.
Online Thesaurus for Epididymal
Noun 1. epididymis - a convoluted tubule in each testis; carries sperm to vas deferens
duct, epithelial duct, canal, channel - a bodily passage or tube lined with epithelial cells and conveying a secretion or other substance; "the tear duct was obstructed"; "the alimentary canal"; "poison is released through a channel in the snake's fangs"
ballock, bollock, testicle, testis, orchis, egg, ball, nut - one of the two male reproductive glands that produce spermatozoa and secrete androgens; "she kicked him in the balls and got away"
vasa efferentia - the several highly convoluted tubules that lead from the rete testis to the vas deferens and form the head of the epididymis
seminal duct - the efferent duct of the testis in man
So Yes, It is what They are! and Screwing us all over Royally
(Evil Bloodline reference intended)
Good Stuff Hon, Really Excellent!
Hugs, Lisa ;-)
November 29, 2009
The Sword of My Tongue (unfinished poem)
That's right. You're a dangerous animal; surrounded by socially acceptable criminals...corporate-military-pharmaceutical chemicals. You're fed...bio-hazardous waste and genetically modified pork-barrell animals. Gotta complaint? Stand in line. Get processed, destroy your mind. The television reeks with beautiful super-models. Jet setters on the backs of commoners. Win a trip to the virgin islands, raped and pillaged by the husbands of whores and their sons and daughters. It's all subliminal. Epididymal. You've been busting your balls for the godless sinners. Toss some dollars to the church and feel like a winner. What would Jesus buy on black friday? Blood diamonds on a wedding ring? We're all waiting for the sword of his tongue to slaughter our enemies, rip them limb from limb. let them burn for eternity. But all we see are pop-up videos, fashion statements in a flag dripping studio. Got time for a game? It's well past the eleventh hour. Just around midnight you will hear the town crier. He weeps for all that is lost, all that is won at such a terrible cost. Well I can't wait, and so can you. The sword of my tongue is a weapon for you to. Let it cut through the bullshit and indescriminate lies. Let it ring with the truth, let it ring till you die.
Comment:
LisaMarie:
Wow Todd, Alot of Passion there.
ahh, I see a New Word to learn: Epididymal
My dictionary only has: epididymis -->lol
(µp"¹-d¹d"…-m¹s) n., pl. ep·i·did·y·mi·des (-m¹-d¶z"). Anatomy. A long, narrow convoluted tube, part of the spermatic duct system, that lies on the posterior aspect of each testicle, connecting it to the vas deferens. [Greek epididumis : epi-, epi- + didumoi, twins, testicles, pl. of didumos, double; see dwo- below.] --ep"i·did"y·mal adj.
Online Thesaurus for Epididymal
Noun 1. epididymis - a convoluted tubule in each testis; carries sperm to vas deferens
duct, epithelial duct, canal, channel - a bodily passage or tube lined with epithelial cells and conveying a secretion or other substance; "the tear duct was obstructed"; "the alimentary canal"; "poison is released through a channel in the snake's fangs"
ballock, bollock, testicle, testis, orchis, egg, ball, nut - one of the two male reproductive glands that produce spermatozoa and secrete androgens; "she kicked him in the balls and got away"
vasa efferentia - the several highly convoluted tubules that lead from the rete testis to the vas deferens and form the head of the epididymis
seminal duct - the efferent duct of the testis in man
So Yes, It is what They are! and Screwing us all over Royally
(Evil Bloodline reference intended)
Good Stuff Hon, Really Excellent!
Hugs, Lisa ;-)
Columbus and the Beginning of Genocide in the "New World"
Thanks to: Star Wisdom OM (Omfalon Murado) (157206876)
History Not Taught is History Forgot:
Columbus' Legacy of Genocide
Excerpted from the book Indians are Us
(Common Courage Press, 1994)
by Ward Churchill
Columbus and the Beginning of Genocide in the "New World"
History Not Taught is History Forgot:
Columbus' Legacy of Genocide
Excerpted from the book Indians are Us
(Common Courage Press, 1994)
by Ward Churchill
Columbus and the Beginning of Genocide in the "New World"
Ward Churchill
It has been contended by those who would celebrate Columbus that
accusations concerning his perpetration of genocide are distortive
"revisions" of history.
Whatever the process unleashed by his
"discovery" of the "New World," it is said, the discoverer
himself cannot be blamed. Whatever his defects and offenses, they are
surpassed by the luster of his achievements; however "tragic" or
"unfortunate" certain dimensions of his legacy may be, they are
more than offset by the benefits even for the victims of the resulting
blossoming of a "superior civilization" in the Americas.
Essentially the same arguments might be advanced with regard
to Adolf Hitler: Hitler caused the Volkswagen to be created, after
all, and the autobahn. His leadership of Germany led to jet
propulsion, significant advances in rocket telemetry, laid the
foundation for genetic engineering. Why not celebrate his bona fide
accomplishments on behalf of humanity rather than "dwelling" so
persistently on the genocidal by-products of his policies?
To be fair, Columbus was never a head of state. Comparisons of
him to Nazi SS leader Heinrich Himmler, rather than Hitler, are
therefore more accurate and appropriate. It is time to delve into the
substance of the defendants' assertion that Columbus and Himmler, Nazi
Lebensraumpolitik (conquest of "living space" in eastern Europe) and
the "settlement of the New World" bear more than casual
resemblance to one another. This has nothing to do with the Columbian
"discovery," not that this in itself is completely irrelevant.
Columbus did not sally forth upon the Atlantic for reasons
of "neutral science" or altruism. He went, as his own diaries,
reports, and letters make clear, fully expecting to encounter wealth
belonging to others. It was his stated purpose to seize this wealth,
by whatever means necessary and available, in order to enrich both his
sponsors and himself. Plainly, he pre-figured, both in design and by
intent, what came next. To this extent, he not only symbolizes the
process of conquest and genocide which eventually consumed the
indigenous peoples of America, but bears the personal responsibility
of having participated in it. Still, if this were all there was to it,
the defendants would be inclined to dismiss him as a mere thug along
the lines of Al Capone rather than viewing him as a counterpart to
Himmler.
The 1492 "voyage of discovery" is, however, hardly all that is
at issue. In 1493 Columbus returned with an invasion force of
seventeen ships, appointed at his own request by the Spanish Crown to
install himself as "viceroy and governor of [the Caribbean islands]
and the mainland" of America, a position he held until
1500. Setting up shop on the large island he called Espa–ola (today
Haiti and the Dominican Republic), he promptly instituted policies of
slavery (encomiendo) and systematic extermination against the native
Taino population.
Columbus's programs reduced Taino numbers from as
many as eight million at the outset of his regime to about three
million in 1496. Perhaps 100,000 were left by the time of the
governor's departure. His policies, however, remained, with the
result that by 1514 the Spanish census of the island showed barely
22,000 Indians remaining alive. In 1542, only two hundred were
recorded. Thereafter, they were considered extinct, as were Indians
throughout the Caribbean Basin, an aggregate population which totaled
more than fifteen million at the point of first contact with the
Admiral of the Ocean Sea, as Columbus was known.
This, to be sure, constitutes an attrition of population in
real numbers every bit as great as the toll of twelve to fifteen
million about half of them Jewish most commonly attributed to
Himmler's slaughter mills. Moreover, the proportion of indigenous
Caribbean population destroyed by the Spanish in a single generation
is, no matter how the figures are twisted, far greater than the
seventy-five percent of European Jews usually said to have been
exterminated by the Nazis. Worst of all, these data apply only to the
Caribbean Basin; the process of genocide in the Americas was only just
beginning at the point such statistics become operant, not ending, as
they did upon the fall of the Third Reich. All told, it is probable
that more than one hundred million native people were "eliminated" in
the course of Europe's ongoing "civilization" of the Western
Hemisphere.
It has long been asserted by "responsible scholars" that this
decimation of American Indians which accompanied the European invasion
resulted primarily from disease rather than direct killing or
conscious policy. There is a certain truth to this, although
starvation may have proven just as lethal in the end. It must be borne
in mind when considering such facts that a considerable portion of
those who perished in the Nazi death camps died, not as the victims of
bullets and gas, but from starvation, as well as epidemics of typhus,
dysentery, and the like. Their keepers, who could not be said to have
killed these people directly, were nonetheless found to have been
culpable in their deaths by way of deliberately imposing the
conditions which led to the proliferation of starvation and disease
among them. Certainly, the same can be said of Columbus's regime,
under which the original residents were, as a first order of business,
permanently dispossessed of their abundant cultivated fields while
being converted into chattel, ultimately to be worked to death for the
wealth and "glory" of Spain.
Nor should more direct means of extermination be relegated to
incidental status. As the matter is put by Kirkpatrick Sale in his
recent book, Conquest of Paradise,
The tribute system, instituted by the Governor sometime in 1495, was a
simple and brutal way of fulfilling the Spanish lust for gold while
acknowledging the Spanish distaste for labor. Every Taino over the age
of fourteen had to supply the rulers with a hawk's bell of gold every
three months (or in gold-deficient areas, twenty-five pounds of spun
cotton); those who did were given a token to wear around their necks
as proof that they had made their payment; those who did not were, as
[Columbus's brother, Fernando] says discreetly "punished"-by having
their hands cut off, as [the priest, BartolomŽ de] las Casas says
less discreetly, and left to bleed to death.
It is entirely likely that upwards of 10,000 Indians were
killed in this fashion alone, on Espa–ola alone, as a matter of
policy, during Columbus's tenure as governor. Las Casas'
Brev’sima relaci—n, among other contemporaneous sources, is also
replete with accounts of Spanish colonists (hidalgos) hanging Tainos
en masse, roasting them on spits or burning them at the stake (often a
dozen or more at a time), hacking their children into pieces to be
used as dog feed and so forth, all of it to instill in the natives a
"proper attitude of respect" toward their Spanish "superiors."
[The Spaniards] made bets as to who would slit a man in two, or cut
off his head at one blow; or they opened up his bowels. They tore the
babes from their mother's breast by their feet and dashed their heads
against the rocks...They spitted the bodies of other babes, together
with their mothers and all who were before them, on their swords.
No SS trooper could be expected to comport himself with a more
unrelenting viciousness. And there is more. All of this was coupled to
wholesale and persistent massacres:
A Spaniard...suddenly drew his sword. Then the whole hundred drew
theirs and began to rip open the bellies, to cut and kill [a group of
Tainos assembled for this purpose] men, women, children and old folk,
all of whom were seated, off guard and frightened...And within two
credos, not a man of them there remains alive. The Spaniards enter the
large house nearby, for this was happening at its door, and in the
same way, with cuts and stabs, began to kill as many as were found
there, so that a stream of blood was running, as if a great number of
cows had perished.
Elsewhere, las Casas went on to recount how
in this time, the greatest outrages and slaughterings of people were
perpetrated, whole villages being depopulated...The Indians saw that
without any offense on their part they were despoiled of their
kingdoms, their lands and liberties and of their lives, their wives,
and homes. As they saw themselves each day perishing by the cruel and
inhuman treatment of the Spaniards, crushed to earth by the horses,
cut in pieces by swords, eaten and torn by dogs, many buried alive and
suffering all kinds of exquisite tortures... [many surrendered to
their fate, while the survivors] fled to the mountains [to starve].
Such descriptions correspond almost perfectly to those of
systematic Nazi atrocities in the western USSR offered by William
Shirer in Chapter 27 of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. But,
unlike the Nazi extermination campaigns of World War II the Columbian
butchery on Espa–ola continued until there were no Tainos left to
butcher.
Evolution of the Columbian Legacy
Nor was this by any means the end of it. The genocidal model
for conquest and colonization established by Columbus was to a large
extent replicated by others such as Cortez (in Mexico) a Pizarro (in
Peru) during the following half-century. During the same period,
expeditions such as those of Ponce de Leon in 1513, Coronado in 1540,
and de Soto during the same year were launched with an eye towards
effecting the same pattern on the North American continent proper. In
the latter sphere the Spanish example was followed and in certain ways
intensified by the British, beginning at Roanoake in 1607 and Plymouth
in 1620. Overall the process of English colonization along the
Atlantic Coast was marked by a series of massacres of native people as
relentless and devastating as any perpetrated by the Spaniards. One of
the best known illustrations drawn from among hundreds was the
slaughter of some 800 Pequots at present-day Mystic, Connecticut, on
the night of May 26, 1637.
During the latter portion of the seventeenth century, and
throughout most of the eighteenth, Great Britain battled France for
colonial primacy in North America. The resulting sequence of four
"French and Indian Wars" greatly accelerated the liquidation of
indigenous people as far west as the Ohio River Valley. During the
last of these, concluded in 1763 history's first documentable case of
biological warfare occurred against Pontiac's Algonkian
Confederacy, a powerful military alliance aligned with the French.
Sir Jeffrey Amherst, commander-in-chief of the British forces...wrote
in a postscript of a letter to Bouquet [a subordinate] that smallpox
be sent among the disaffected tribes. Bouquet replied, also in a
postscript, "I will try to [contaminate] them...with some blankets
that may fall into their hands, and take care not to get the disease
myself."...To Bouquet's postscript Amherst replied, "You will do
well to [infect] the Indians by means of blankets as well as to try
every other method that can serve to extirpate this execrable
race." On June 24, Captain Ecuyer, of the Royal Americans, noted in
his journal: "...we gave them two blankets and a handkerchief out
of the smallpox hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect."
It did. Over the next few months, the disease spread like
wildfire among the Mingo, Delaware, Shawnee, and other Ohio River
nations, killing perhaps 100,000 people. The example of Amherst's
action does much to dispel the myth that the post contact attrition of
Indian people through disease; introduced by Europeans was necessarily
unintentional and unavoidable. There are a number earlier instances in
which native people felt disease, had been deliberately inculcated
among them.
For example, the so-called "King Philip's War" of1675-76
was fought largely because the Wampanoag and Narragansett
nations believed English traders had consciously contaminated certain
of their villages with smallpox. Such tactics were also continued by
the United States after the American Revolution. At Fort Clark on the
upper Missouri River, for instance, the U.S. Army distributed
smallpox-laden blankets as gifts among the Mandan. The blankets had
been gathered from a military infirmary in St. Louis where troops
infected with the disease were quarantined. Although the medical
practice of the day required the precise opposite procedure, army
doctors ordered the Mandans to disperse once they exhibited symptoms
of infection. The result was a pandemic among the Plains Indian
nations who claimed at least 125,000 lives, and may have reached a
toll several times that number.
Contemporaneously with the events at Fort Clark, the U.S. was
also engaged in a policy of wholesale "removal" of indigenous nations
east of the Mississippi River, "clearing" the land of its native
population so that it might be "settled" by "racially
superior" Anglo-Saxon "pioneers." This resulted in a series
of extended forced marches some more than a thousand miles in length
in which entire peoples were walked at bayonet-point to locations west
of the Mississippi. Rations and medical attention were poor, shelter
at times all but nonexistent. Attrition among the victims was
correspondingly high. As many as fifty-five percent of all Cherokees,
for example, are known to have died during or as an immediate result
of that people's "Trail of Tears." The Creeks and Seminoles also
lost about half their existing populations as a direct consequence of
being "removed." It was the example of nineteenth-century
U.S. Indian Removal policy upon which Adolf Hitler relied for a
practical model when articulating and implementing his
Lebensraumpolitik during the 1930s and '40s.
By the 1850s, U.S. policymakers had adopted a popular
philosophy called "Manifest Destiny" by which they imagined themselves
enjoying a divinely ordained right to possess all native property,
including everything west of the Mississippi. This was coupled to what
has been termed a "rhetoric of extermination" by which
governmental and corporate leaders sought to shape public sentiment to
embrace the eradication of American Indians. The professed goal of
this physical reduction of "inferior" indigenous populations was
to open up land for "superior" Euro-American "pioneers."
One outcome of this dual articulation was a series of general
massacres perpetrated by the United States military.
A bare sampling of some of the worst must include the 1854 massacre of
perhaps 150 Lakotas at Blue River (Nebraska), the 1863 Bear River
(Idaho) Massacre of some 500 Western Shoshones, the 1864 Sand Creek
(Colorado) Massacre of as many as 250 Cheyennes and Arapahoes, the
1868 massacre of another 300 Cheyennes at the Washita River
(Oklahoma), the 1875 massacre of about 75 Cheyennes along the Sappa
Creek (Kansas), the 1878 massacre of still another 100 Cheyennes at
Camp Robinson (Nebraska), and the 1890 massacre of more than 300
Lakotas at Wounded Knee (South Dakota).
Related phenomena included the army's internment of the bulk
of all Navajos for four years (1864-68) under abysmal conditions at
the Bosque Redondo, during which upwards of a third of the population
of this nation is known to have perished of starvation and
disease. Even worse in some ways was the unleashing of Euro-American
civilians to kill Indians at whim, and sometimes for profit. In Texas,
for example, an official bounty on native scalps any native scalps was
maintained until well into the 1870s. The result was that the
indigenous population of this state, once the densest in all of North
America, had been reduced to near zero by 1880. As it has been put
elsewhere, "The facts of history are plain: Most Texas Indians were
exterminated or brought to the brink of oblivion by [civilians] who
often had no more regard for the life of an Indian than they had for
that of a dog, sometimes less." Similarly, in California, "the
enormous decrease [in indigenous population] from about a
quarter-million [in 1800] to less than 20,000 is due chiefly to the
cruelties and wholesale massacres perpetrated by miners and early
settlers."
Much of the killing in California and southern Oregon Territory
resulted, directly and indirectly, from the discovery of gold in 1849
and the subsequent influx of miners and settlers. Newspaper accounts
document the atrocities, as do oral histories of the California
Indians today. It was not uncommon for small groups or villages to be
attacked by immigrants...and virtually wiped out overnight.
All told, the North American Indian population within the area
of the forty-eight contiguous states of the United States, an
aggregate group which had probably numbered in excess of twelve
million in the year 1500, was reduced by official estimates to barely
more than 237,000 four centuries later. This vast genocide
historically paralleled in its magnitude and degree only by that which
occurred in the Caribbean Basin is the most sustained on
record. Corresponding almost perfectly with this
upper-ninetieth-percentile erosion of indigenous population by 1900
was the expropriation of about 97.5 percent of native land by
1920. The situation in Canada was/is entirely comparable. Plainly, the
Nazi-esque dynamics set in motion by Columbus in 1492 continued, and
were not ultimately consummated until the present century.
The Columbian Legacy in the United States
While it is arguable that the worst of the genocidal programs
directed against Native North America had ended by the twentieth
century, it seems undeniable that several continue into the
present. One obvious illustration is the massive compulsory transfer
of American Indian children from their families, communities, and
societies to Euro-American families and institutions, a policy which
is quite blatant in its disregard for Article l(e) of the 1948
Convention. Effected through such mechanisms as the U.S. Bureau of
Indian Affairs (BIA) boarding school system, and a pervasive policy of
placing Indian children for adoption (including "blind" adoption) with
non-Indians, such circumstances have been visited upon more than
three-quarters of indigenous youth in some generations after 1900. The
stated goal of such policies has been to bring about the
"assimilation" of native people into the value orientations and
belief system of their conquerors. Rephrased, the objective has been
to bring about the disappearance of indigenous societies as such, a
patent violation of the terms, provisions, and intent of the Genocide
Convention (Article I(c)).
An even clearer example is a program of involuntary
sterilization of American Indian women by the BIA's Indian Health
Service (IHS) during the 1970s. The federal government announced that
the program had been terminated, and acknowledged having performed
several thousand such sterilizations. Independent researchers have
concluded that as many as forty-two percent of all native women of
childbearing age in the United States had been sterilized by that
point. That the program represents a rather stark¾and very
recent¾violation of Article I(d) of the 1948 Convention seems
beyond all reasonable doubt.
More broadly, implications of genocide are quite apparent in
the federal government's self-assigned exercise of "plenary power" and
concomitant "trust" prerogatives over the residual Indian land
base pursuant to the Lonewolf v. Hitchcock case (187
U.S. 553(1903)).
This has worked, with rather predictable results, to
systematically deny native people the benefit of their remaining
material assets. At present, the approximately 1.6 million Indians
recognized by the government as residing within the U.S., when divided
into the fifty-million-odd acres nominally reserved for their use and
occupancy, remain the continent's largest landholders on a per
capita basis. Moreover, the reservation lands have proven to be
extraordinarily resource rich, holding an estimated two-thirds of all
U.S. "domestic" uranium reserves, about a quarter of the readily
accessible low-sulfur coal, as much as a fifth of the oil and natural
gas, as well as substantial deposits of copper, iron, gold, and
zeolites. By any rational definition, the U.S. Indian population
should thus be one of the wealthiest if not the richest population
sectors in North America.
Instead, by the federal government's own statistics, they
comprise far and away the poorest. As of 1980, American Indians
experienced, by a decided margin, the lowest annual and lifetime
incomes on a per capita basis of any ethnic or racial group on the
continent. Correlated to this are all the standard indices of extreme
poverty: the highest rates of infant mortality, death by exposure and
malnutrition, incidence of tuberculosis and other plague
disease. Indians experience the highest level of unemployment, year
after year, and the lowest level of educational attainment. The
overall quality of life is so dismal that alcoholism and other forms
of substance abuse are endemic; the rate of teen suicide is also
several times that of the nation as a whole. The average life
expectancy of a reservation-based Native American male is less than 45
years; that of a reservation-based female less than three years
longer.
It's not that reservation resources are not being exploited,
or profits accrued. To the contrary, virtually all uranium mining and
milling occurred on or immediately adjacent to reservation land during
the life of the Atomic Energy Commission's ore-buying program,
1952-81. The largest remaining enclave of traditional Indians in North
America is currently undergoing forced relocation in order that coal
may be mined on the Navajo Reservation. Alaska native peoples are
being converted into landless "village corporations" in order that the
oil under their territories can be tapped; and so on. Rather, the BIA
has utilized its plenary and trust capacities to negotiate contracts
with major mining corporations "in behalf of" its "Indian
wards" which pay pennies on the dollar of the conventional mineral
royalty rates. Further, the BIA has typically exempted such
corporations from an obligation to reclaim whatever reservation lands
have been mined, or even to perform basic environmental cleanup of
nuclear and other forms of waste. One outcome has been that the
National Institute for Science has recommended that the two locales
within the U.S. most heavily populated by native people¾the Four
Corners Region and the Black Hills Region¾be designated as
"National Sacrifice Areas." Indians have responded that this
would mean their being converted into "national sacrifice
peoples"
Even such seemingly innocuous federal policies as those
concerning Indian identification criteria carry with them an evident
genocidal potential. In clinging insistently to a variation of a
eugenics formulation dubbed "blood-quantum" ushered in by the 1887
General Allotment Act, while implementing such policies as the Federal
Indian Relocation Program (1956-1982), the government has set the
stage for a "statistical extermination" of the indigenous
population within its borders. As the noted western historian,
Patricia Nelson Limerick, has observed: "Set the blood-quantum at
one-quarter, hold to it as a rigid definition of Indians, let
intermarriage proceed...and eventually Indians will be defined out of
existence. When that happens, the federal government will finally be
freed from its persistent 'Indian problem'." Ultimately, there is
precious little difference, other than matters of style, between this
and what was once called the "Final Solution of the Jewish
Problem."
The above article is an excerpt of a legal brief from Ward Churchill's
book Indians Are Us? Culture and Genocide in Native North America
(Common Courage Press, 1994). The defendants in the brief are leaders
of the American Indian Movement, who were charged for stopping a
Columbus Day celebratory parade near the Colorado State Capitol
Building in Denver, Colorado on October 12, 1991.
http://www.mit.edu/~thistle/v9/9.11/1columbus.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchill
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