We
must not ignore what we are doing in Iraq, Afghanistan and have done in
Kososvo. Our use of radio-active weaponry in these places is KILLING OUR TROOPS
AS WELL AS THE CITIZENS of these countries. Our troops are poisoned with
radio-active substances and dying from it. Their children are born with massive
defects. We have created a nuclear wasteland that will kill and kill and kill.
C'mon
folks....THIS IS SHEER INSANITY !
Raise
your voices! Write the editor! Call the talk show! March in the streets! We can
not allow this to continue!
Please
send this message far and wide.
Don
Stacey
[media
advisory on resources follows article]
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.tmsfeatures.com/tmsfeatures/subcategory.jsp?custid=67&catid=1824
March
25, 2004
SILENT GENOCIDE
By
Robert C. Koehler
Tribune
Media Services
"After
the Americans destroyed our village and killed many of us, we also lost our
houses and have nothing to eat. However, we would have endured these miseries
and even accepted them, if the Americans had not sentenced us all to death."
This
will not be easy to read, especially if you've projected evil out of your own
heart, into some cave in Afghanistan or a spider hole in Iraq, and reduced the
age-old question it inspires to this one:
How
can we bomb it off the face of the earth?
Before
the damage we inflict grows greater, before history's judgment gets worse,
before we contaminate the whole world - even before we vote in the next
election - we must stop what we're doing. We must stop now.
It's
time to listen for a moment not to defense analysts briefing officers, pols or
pundits, but to people like Jooma Khan, a grandfather who lives in a village in
Laghman Province, in northeastern Afghanistan, who is quoted above. Surely he
deserves 30 seconds of our undivided attention. "When I saw my deformed
grandson," he told an interviewer in March of 2003, "I realized that
my hopes of the future have vanished for good. (This is) different from the
hopelessness of the Russian barbarism, even though at that time I lost my older
son Shafiqullah. This time, however, I know we are part of the invisible
genocide brought on us by America, a silent death from which I know we will not
escape."
We're
waging war-plus in Afghanistan and Iraq - in effect, nuclear war, with our
widespread use of depleted-uranium-tipped shells and missiles. This is no
secret. DU, with its extraordinary penetrating power and explode-on-impact
capability, helps assure our military dominance everywhere we go. But people
like Jooma Khan and his grandson reap its toxic legacy.
So,
of course, do our own troops.
Kahn's
words are only a sliver of the damning testimony contained in the documents of
the International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan, a Japanese citizens'
initiative that recently concluded its two-year inquiry into the first phase of
the Bush Administration's war on terror. But they say everything that we cannot
hear. If we could hear Jooma Khan, and others who are sounding the alarm about
DU, such as former Livermore Labs geologist Leuren Moret, who testified at the
tribunal, there would not be mere thousands of people in the streets of
American cities demanding that we stop the war, but hundreds of thousands, or
millions - the sort of numbers that turn out in
other
parts of the world.
The
use of DU weaponry is not the extent of our criminal
irresponsibility
in Afghanistan and Iraq, which led to the tribunal's guilty verdict against
George Bush on charges of war crimes, but it's the most chilling. (You can
check out the full report at, among other places,
www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Afghanistan-Criminal-Tribunal10mar04.htm)
As
Moret testified, depleted uranium turns into a infinitesimally fine dust after
it explodes; individual particles are smaller than a virus or bacteria. And,
"It is estimated that one millionth of a gram accumulating in a person's
body would be fatal. There are no known methods of
treatment."
And
DU dust is everywhere. A minimum of 500 or 600 tons now litter Afghanistan, and
several times that amount are spread across Iraq. In terms of global
atmospheric pollution, we've already released the equivalent of 400,000
Nagasaki bombs, Moret said.
The
numbers are overwhelming, but the potential horrors only get worse. DU dust
does more than wreak havoc on the immune systems of those who breathe or touch
it; the substance also alters one's genetic code.
Thus,
birth defects are way up in Afghanistan since the invasion: children "born
with no eyes, no limbs, tumors protruding from their mouths ...deformed
genitalia," according to the tribunal report. This ghastly toll on the
unborn - on the future - has led investigators to coin the term "silent
genocide" to describe the effects of this horrific weapon.
The
Pentagon's response to such charges is denial, denial, denial. And the American
media is its moral co-conspirator.
But
blame is beside the point. Surely even those who still await "conclusive
proof" that DU is the cause, or a factor, in the mystery illnesses and
birth defects emanating from the war zones, can see the logic in halting its
use now.
Global
terrorism? Listen to Jooma Khan. Then look in
the
mirror.
-
- -
Robert
Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based
journalist,
is an editor at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer.
Tribune Media Services, Inc.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Media
Advisory - March 22, 2004
The
World Depleted Uranium/Uranium Weapons Conference, held in Hamburg, Oct 16-19,
is now available for audio download and replay/airplay at
http://www.grassrootspeace.org/depleted_uranium_hamburg03.html
You
may also pre-order the Conference Reader through this link.
More
than 200 participants represented 21 nations, including Iraq, Afghanistan,
Australia, Japan, Canada, Sweden, Ireland, France, Germany, Switzerland,
Belgium, Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Algeria, Cuba, and Malta,
UK and the US.
Over
35 speakers including scientists, medical professionals, Iraqi medical and
environmental professionals, independent researchers, international legal
experts, military professionals, a nuclear weapons lab whistleblower, a
prosecutor for the International War Crimes Tribunal for Afghanistan, veterans
and their families, civilians, NGO, and peace and anti-globalization activists
presented their most recent findings and
issues
about the effects of these illegal weapons. Iraqi scientist, Dr. Souad
Al-Azzawi, received the internationally recognized Nuclear Free Future Award
and prize of 10,000 Euros on October 12, just prior to the Conference. She
presented her findings on environmental studies of DU contamination of air,
soil and water in southern Iraq from the 1991 Gulf War. For information on the
speakers, see
http://www.uraniumweaponsconference.de/speakers.htm
The
evidence coming from the scientists, health professionals and legal experts at
this Conference is clear: "DU is causing significant health effects
worldwide, and it illegal under existing international law and
convention," concluded conference planner Marion
KŸpker,
co-coordinator of the German anti-weapons group Gewaltfreie Aktion
Atomwaffen
Abschaffen (GAAA). "Now it's up to the activist community to force rogue
governments
like the US and Britain to observe international law the same way they
preach
it to other nations."
The
Index at http://www.grassrootspeace.org/depleted_uranium_hamburg03.html
is
primarily audio, with links to 34 mp3 format files of presentations and
interviews that are downloadable. They may be copied for non-profit use,
replayed on computers, or burned to CD audio format for replay on CD players or
by radio stations. We encourage distribution to radio programs which are
free to use the material. In the few cases where audio was not available, we
have provided the text of presentations or other pertinent resources. In
addition, you will find select conference reports and a conference photo-album.
The
audio index, with related resources, was a collaborative effort of the
Conference and Traprock Peace Center.
For
information on the conference, with conference reports and resolutions,
see
http://www.uraniumweaponsconference.de/
