8-29-07 - DREAM - I was in a place where there was a lot of people,
like an outdoor meeting place.
I heard a sound that sounded to me like a rip in the time-space
continuum.
(To explain this sound take several pieces of crispy thick paper
between two hands and tear it completely in half really fast.)
When I looked up, I saw 5 of what looked like myself pinned to a
wall, each one a different color with huge colored wings like we think of
angels having. But they were flat - 1 dimensional figures - like
photos pinned to the wall.
I didn't understand what that was all about and I continued to help
the others get ready for a meeting.
There were round tables set up with chairs around them for 6 people
at each table.
Before the meeting, I was given many - at least 12
purple tobacco
plants which had fresh green shoots on them on the edges and I determined
that they should be taken to Tennessee to be grown.
I took these plants to my table and saw that my husband was already
seated there.
As I set the tobacco plants down, he said to me, "What are you
doing, trying to make a profit?"
I said in return, "If you aren't, then what are you doing here?"
During this same week, each day for 3 days, we found
a plate (they were identical plates) broken exactly in half for no
reason. These were plates we had used for 10 years almost every day, and
someone else used them for at least that long or longer before us.
To have each plate break in half all by itself with no one touching it was
stunning.
Today - 9-7-07, I spoke with a friend who said that
yesterday (9-6-07) she went to get an unbreakable bowl out of her cabinet
to use, and 3 graduated size bowls all came out of the cabinet and
shattered. All three of them.
While the bowls were shattering, she heard the words,
"The Matrix is shattering now!"
The coincidence of this happening is incredible.
When I was typing the words, "The Matrix is
shattering now!" the date December 2002 appeared half way down into
the next space below it. It is not on the other side of the page.
Where did that date come from. Joe Mason said, "You have to read
between the lines." Perhaps we do.
I found this same date farther down the page as part
of this statement.
Gregg Braden says: But
now, we know that the poles are actually moving. We're living it right
now. We don't know
exactly what that means, because even though it's happened fourteen times
in the last four and
a half million years, it's never happened with six billion people on the
earth.
Gregg: It's common knowledge to people that need to know these things. For
example, FAA regulations say that when the poles move beyond five or eight
degrees, the runways at the airports have to be renumbered to correlate
with the magnetic headings that the pilots are seeing. The first airport
in the United States to comply with this mandate was Minneapolis/St. Paul,
where they spent something on the order of eighty-five thousand dollars to
go through and renumber the runway headings.
But what happened in the May-June-July time frame
of 2002 is that journals such as Nature, Science, Scientific
American, and New Scientist released reports saying that we are
definitely in the process
of a magnetic reversal, and the AP wires picked it up.
BILL DEAGLE REPORTS -
AUDIO • Dr
Bill Deagle (24
September 2008) From Project Avalon Click here to download
Scientists have no idea what the impact is going to be to electronic and
electromagnetic power grids. But even more, they don't know what it means
to human immune systems. Alternative healing modalities have shown a
connection between magnetics and the immune system, which also would imply
that our immune systems could very well be keyed into the magnetic fields
of the earth.
We know that birds and animals migrate along the lines of these magnetic
fields. So there is speculation that the changes taking place in the
magnetic field are responsible for the changing migratory patterns in
birds that have been recorded in Asia and North America.
The change in the fields also may explain why whales are beaching
themselves. The lines of navigation that the whales have always followed
have shifted and now lead them onto a beach. When we take them back
out into the water and set them free, they continue to align themselves
with the same magnetic lines, and in following them, they end up on the
beach again.
So, yes, it's common knowledge now. The most respected scientific
journals say that we're in this shift. And even though we don't know
precisely what that means, it's significant that it is being acknowledged
in peer-review kinds of literature, and not just in speculative or
pseudo-scientific magazines.
Editor's Note: I have
been tracking the solstice sunrises for 10 years, and personal evidence,
which I have marked on my east window, shows that the sun is coming up 3
days later for the solstice than the calendar is telling us.
THERE IS A REASON FOR ALL
THIS. THE ANSWER MAY LIE BELOW:
From
MSN
comes news of a spinning black hole in the constellation Scorpius that has
created a stable dent in the fabric of space-time.
Scientists say the dent is the sort of thing predicted by Albert
Einstein’s theory of general relativity. It affects the movement of matter
falling into the black hole.
An e-mail received 7-7-03 - at 8:53 p.m. PST
Recall if you will that
AL BIELEK has said hundreds of times
that something important will happen on AUGUST 12 2003. This is because of
a rip in the SPACE TIME CONTINUUM that occurred during the
PHILADELPHIA
EXPERIMENT that occurred on AUGUST 12 1943.
Then there are harmonic rifts that will occur right up
until 2013..
Perhaps something might happen on August 12 2003 that
we may not be aware of . At least immediately. Then again we might be very
aware of it.
According to BIELEK there was another
TIMEWAVE EVENT that
occurred on August 12 1983. I believe that was the date that he and his
brother were catapulted to in time. Where Dr.Von Neuman was waiting for
them. According to Bielek that
Dr.Von Neuman
didn't die in 1958 as the puppet press has said.
I have all of Bielek's video tapes. Recall that he said
in 1996 that WORLD WAR III would start in 2003. And it would go NUCLEAR in
2004. Bielek was given this information by some FUTURIONS that he
encountered in the year 2127. It's interesting that in 1996 he said that
WORLD WAR THREE would start in the year 2003. And go ATOMIC in the year
2004.
No doubt it will be very interesting to see if BIELEK'S
predictions come true.
I don't think there is any doubt that WORLD WAR THREE
has started. It most definitely has. It's Just that the POOR SHEEPLE
haven't found out as yet.
[Nexus Magazine Dec97-Jan98 edition N.B. published version
slightly re-written and re-edited]
Earthquake Inducing Electromagnetic Weapons
Earthquake Inducing Electromagnetic Weapons Used at Kobe?
On 17 January 1995, the Japanese city of Kobe was struck by a
massive earthquake that devastated much of the city, killing over 5,500
people and injuring many thousands more. Shoko Asahara, the leader of
the Japanese Aum Supreme Truth (Aum Shinrikyo) sect, had surprisingly
predicted, in a Tokyo radio broadcast on 8 January 1995, that a major
quake would soon occur at Kobe. Asahara went even further and stated
that this quake would be initiated by a "a foreign power" utilising an
electromagnetic (EM) weapons system.
Aum's Science Minister Hideo Murai later stated at the Foreign
Press Correspondents' Club in Tokyo on 7 April 1995 that, "There is a
possibility that the great Hanshin [Kobe] earthquake was activated by
electromagnetic power or some device that exerts energy into the
ground." Although Asahara would undoubtedly have preferred his great
predictive powers to be thought of as due to a highly developed and
superior spiritual ability to examine the future time-track (thus
attracting more gullible followers after this quake event), it is far
more likely that he was fed warning intelligence re Kobe by Aum's
Science Minister Murai, and/or Japanese Intelligence operatives who
themselves were forewarned by Russian KGB officials.
In his pre-Aum days, Hideo Murai had worked on highly advanced
microwave and gamma/cosmic-ray physics applications for cold moulding of
steel at the Kobe Steel laboratories. This laboratory complex was
located at the near-exact epicentre of the great Kobe earthquake.
Japanese investigative journalists believe that this Kobe laboratory was
one of several research facilities (located at Osaka, Tsukuba and Tokyo
universities) engaged in top-secret research and development of EM
weapons technology under the cover of Kobe Steel industrial research
and/or environmental "desert-greening" studies.
The Aum's deputy leader, Kiyohide Hayakawa, in his pre-Aum days
studied at Osaka University in the Landscape Engineering section of the
Environmental Engineering department. His thesis is highly confidential
and not available to the public, but allegedly contains only "landscape
gardening" studies. There is some suggestion that his area of study
included the use of advanced EM weapons technology in Weather
Engineering. Japanese scientists from their EM weapon research
university departments are today conducting extensive field observations
of Eastern Goldfields weather patterns and the factors required to
"green" our Australian deserts - on behalf of the Japanese Environmental
Ministry and our Western Australian Government.
Certain public observations on exotic cloud formations, new
weather patterns, and unusually wet weather suggest to this author that
experiments in weather engineering involving EM weapons technology
transmissions have been underway in Western Australia over the past 4-5
years, with the apparent aim to green our central semi-deserts and
create a series of huge forests - for commercial gain and to act as a
CO2 sink.
A large group of Japanese scientists including military personnel
(some 50 people) were observed east of Perth last Easter 96
photographing with telescopic tripod mounted cameras and observing by
telescope such exotic weather tests.
Weather patterns observed on several occasions, including Easter
96, consisted of several perfectly symetrical and exactly similar
circular cloud multi-ring complexes - each complex touching the next
along the outer cloud ring - each complex consisting of one cloud ring
inside the next - like a "Russian Doll" - creating five concentric
"smoke rings" - each cloud ring being tube like in x-sectional form -
each complex having a diameter of some 30km - the group of cloud ring
complexes formed as a line over some 100km offshore of our western
coast. Such totally symetrical cloud formations and the associated
events have never been observed in previous W.A. history.
The individual cloud ring complexes formed as one ring puff
followed by another each expanding until the entire cloud system was
established over a few hours in the late morning. Heavy weather formed
up to seaward of these cloud complexes by late afternoon and then swept
inland in the early evening. These events always involved evening power
outages caused by overvoltage generation in our Darling Ranges power
line system - just prior to the eastward movement of the previously
static storm systems. Persons sensitive to EM fields were in physical
agony all day as the cloud system and heavy weather formed up. Such
weather events have been seen several times in the 1995/96 time period
and correlated well with cyclonic storms turning south off of our
northern shores and rushing inland to connect up with the eastwards
moving heavy weather fronts - the combination of two enormous storm
systems then proceeding to dump highly anomalous rainfall into central
and south-eastern Western Australia.
Note the recent press (Washington Post/Asia Wall Street
Journal/Malaysian Star 14/13-11-97 ) re Malaysia's intention to engage
the services of a Russian State company and it's secret orbital
satellite technology to create large cyclones (hurricanes to you Yanks)
in order to blow away the smoke and haze from the recent massive
environmental disaster created by the huge Indonesian and Borneo Jungle
Fires. This Russian company now provides weather to order - anywhere on
the planet - at a multi-million dollar price.
To say that they have not used this system in the bad old days of
the "Cold War", or in the more recent past in weather warfare, or at
someone's very specific bequest would be at best na_ve. For instance the
huge storm cell generated in the Bay of Biscay that hit the UK in
October 1987 in a historically unknown manner, whilst the world stock
market was crashing. The cyclonic winds destroyed entire areas of forest
and knocked out significant sections of southern England's telephone
system, and therefore locked many persons into a collapsing market -
unable to sell. Someone made a lot of money out of that - by getting out
first in New York - and bashed the British financial system at the same
time. Of course it was a natural event - an act of God - but what if
someone was playing at being God ???
There have been many other examples of very odd high power storm
cells hitting many areas of the USA, Australia, Asia, and Europe over
the past decade or so - all creating m,assive damage and significant
loss of life - some creating very special economic pressure - eg. Lloyds
great collapse was due to huge unprecedented insurance claims
originating in damage from storms of this type over several years - how
many of these storms were created by a Russian EM system (or a US system
?)- and with what economic intention ??? There is ample evidence of
steered storms hitting special targets - eg the case a few years ago of
a hurricane that hit southern Florida and appeared to specifically alter
course to attack an isolated nuclear power station right on the nose.
In future insurance claims will have to include next to "Acts of
God", a clause about "Acts of Fabians/old KGB etc.". Real estate in the
central Australian semi-deserts could suddenly become very valuable -
gives the MABO Native Title Rights a whole new meaning !!!
Coming to grips with the "new" Tesla EM field world will involve
some high powered reality adjustment by many human mushrooms.
The existence of such an EM technology capable of weather
engineering has been denied by Western Government, "scientists", and
news media for many years - inspite of ground breaking observation by US
scientists such as Tom Bearden and others - who were usually sneared at
as "nutters or loony tunes". Now either the Malaysian Environment
ministry has stuffed up big time by running this press release - when it
should have been kept under wraps - or perhaps the news release
announces in a subtle way that the Russians have come to the aid of
Malaysia in her recent currency hammering by George Souros and the US
Treasury - the message is "back off" or face a blast from our EM
weapons.
Either way the Weather Engineering Technology doubters and ivory
tower experts have now got a lot of explaining to do.
The EM technology for creating weather engineering, earthquakes,
city busting explosions, or zapping space craft and/or UFO's is
basically the same system - they just differ by the amount of energy per
micro second per square meter poured into your target.
We are told that greenhouse gases are our worst enemy and are
creating El Nino effects and massive weather changes across the planet.
We are told we MUST all rally together to combat this CO2 plague by
creating yet more pressure on jobs, and we MUST stop the great
flurocarbon release that is hitting the Ozone layer for six.
I am all in favour of sound ecological management of our planet -
but the recent Kyoto Vaudeville show could do with a new scientific
perspective - now that there is US Newspaper "proof" of the existence of
weather engineering technology, and a complimentary suggestion of my own
that Ozone destruction could be due to the use of massive Tesla EM field
transmission power (of both Russian and US sources) - concentrating via
geomagnetic electron flow lines down to the South Pole where it effects
the destruction of ever so unstable Ozone - rather than the effects of
fluorocarbon molecules.
I am afraid that we are being conned yet again with the new
environmental bogie replacing the Hitler clone type hate/fear spin
doctor ikon - all in the name of covert control of the human mushroom
population of our planet..............
A far better game would be to spur us all onto the discovery of a
clean "Free Energy Source" - to replace oil, coal, and uranium fuel
systems. But meanwhile back at Kobe ................
For several days prior to the great Kobe earthquake there were
reports of glowing orange-red and pink lights and spherical forms
hovering over and along the Kobe fault line. Such Earth stress lights
have been observed over major quakes in many parts of the globe since
the 19th century, but the number and intensity of those that developed
in the January 1995 pre-Kobe quake days appear to be highly anomalous.
The existence of geophysical weapons capable of creating or
triggering earthquakes in highly stressed crustal regions has been
discussed privately by geophysicists for a decade or more. Rumours have
abounded over certain huge earthquakes of the 1970s and 1980s in the
Central Asian republics of the former USSR. Some writers have suggested
that these were caused by Israeli, French or American EM weapons systems
used in retaliation for Soviet EM weapon strikes on the West.
US scientist Tom Bearden contends that the Soviets brought into
service an intercontinental-range Tesla EM weapon in 1963 during the
Khrushchev era.
The evidence that Kobe was not a natural earthquake is slender and
is based primarily upon Asahara's prediction that was later proved so
horrifyingly correct. There would appear to be some supporting evidence
of an indirect nature involving political considerations and other more
recent world events. Taking into consideration the entire Kobe and Aum
Tokyo scenarios together with the earlier, possibly Aum-related,
fireball-explosion-earthquake events of 28 May 1993 at Banjawarn,
Western Australia, one is left with a very strong impression of a
serious "EM fire" underlying the visible "dark plume of smoke" that rose
over Kobe - (See Bright Skies Parts 1 to 4 for further evidence re the
existence of EM Earthquake, City Buster, and Beam weapon systems).
But what motive could there possibly be for such a major city-
busting weapon strike? Why choose an exotic EM weapon system?
It is quite possible that the EM strike was directed at the secret
Kobe Steel EM weapons research laboratory and that the motive was in
part to destroy this facility and cause such a resounding blow to the
civilian population, similar in scale to the nuclear bombings of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that the Japanese oligarchic powers behind the
scenes would think long and hard before attempting to continue their EM
weapons project. Only the big boys on the block were going to have the
modern magical equivalent of Merlin's staff - all the second order gangs
should think again ???
If the USA (or a covert international power group based therein)
were the belligerent party that struck down Kobe, then the motive would
most likely have included a 'big stick' warning to the Japanese powers
to do what they were told with regard to the New World (economic) Order,
or face the consequences.
It would appear from subsequent events that the Japanese oligarchy
did not grovel under this attack but in fact, after some further
provocation, went on the offensive with its own (or a friend's) EM
weapon system.
Description: At the time this photo was made,
smoke billowed 20,000 feet above Hiroshima while smoke from the
burst of the first atomic bomb had spread over 10,000 feet on the
target at the base of the rising column. Six planes of the 509th
Composite Group, participated in this mission; one to carry the
bomb
Enola Gay, one to take scientific measurements of the blast
The Great Artiste, the third to take photographs
Necessary Evil the others flew approximately an hour ahead to
act as weather scouts, 08/06/1945. Bad weather would disqualify a
target as the scientists insisted on a visual delivery, the
primary target was
Hiroshima, secondary was
Kokura, and tertiary was
Nagasaki.
The picture was taken from one of the B-29
Superfortresses used in the attack. Picture taken of the atomic
bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.
Transferred from
en:Image:Nagasakibomb.jpg. Original history:
22:02, 1 Mar 2004 . .
Raul654 (116768 bytes)
12:49, 20 Jul 2002 . . (Automated conversion) (93195 bytes)
Generally, materials produced by Federal agencies are in
the public domain and may be reproduced without permission. However,
not all materials appearing on this website are in the public
domain. Some materials have been donated or obtained from
individuals or organizations and may be subject to restrictions on
use.[1]
Radiation burns on the back of Kiyoshi Kitsukawa,
a Hiroshima tram conductor who was standing with his back to the blast
about 1000 yards from the centre of the explosion.
The
United States Department of Energy estimates that, at
Hiroshima, the death toll from the immediate blast was roughly
70,000, with additional deaths occuring in the time soon after the
explosion and in the decades that followed.[1][2][3][4]
The figures for Nagasaki are slightly less.[5]
Other estimates vary widely,[6][7][8]
and are as low as 74,000 for Nagasaki.[9]
In both cities, the overwhelming majority of the deaths were
civilians.
The role of the bombings in
Japan's surrender, as well as the effects and justification of
them, has been subject to much debate.
He was a small old man and he sat alone in the tram. It
was late July and very warm and the tram was making its way
through the southern suburbs of Hiroshima to the ferry
terminal for the sacred island of Miyajima. The old man wore
a large, floppy-brimmed canvas hat and a beige safari suit.
He cradled in his lap a small bag. He had been watching me
since I boarded near the A-Bomb Dome and sat on a bench
opposite him.
As the tram emptied stop by stop
along route two, he continued staring through his pair of
enormous, thick-lensed spectacles. On occasion, I glanced at
his kind, worn face and realised there was something not
quite right with it - his features were curiously out of
alignment. His left eye was smaller than his right, the
difference exacerbated by the thick spectacle lenses. The
cheekbone below the pinched eye was flat, in defiance of the
other, which was round and full. It looked, to me, like a
face that had suffered an accident a long time ago, and the
imperfections were far away, on the horizon of a long life.
At one point, it was just me and the old man in the tram,
and this was when he rose slowly and sat beside me. "Where
are you from?" he asked. His voice was thin and his English
heavily accented but clear. "Australia," I said, turning to
him.
He stared down at the carry bag in his hands. "Are you
a soldier?" he asked.
I laughed at the unusual question. "No," I said.
"I remember the Australian soldiers in 1945," he said,
"with the hats." He folded up one side of his canvas brim,
making an impromptu slouch hat. "Very nice," he said,
smiling.
Australian soldiers had taught him to speak English at
a school in Hiroshima after the war. He had been born in
1928 and had been a "ship man" when he was younger. He
gripped an imaginary ship's wheel with his old hands and
motioned to steer from left to right. Then he said,
unexpectedly: "I am of the atom bomb."
He rummaged in his carry bag and I noticed that the
texture of the skin on his left hand was very smooth, an
oddity consistent with his eye and his cheekbone. He was an
old man divided into two sides. Eventually he produced a
thick blue booklet the size of a passport. I had read of
these books carried by A-bomb survivors. They were medical
record books. "I am going to the hospital," he said, holding
up the book. "Every week I go to the hospital." He tapped
his knee with the book before returning it to his bag.
"I was visiting Hiroshima on that day," he said,
recalling August 6, 1945. "The atom bomb. Wooosh." He raised
a bunched fist and flicked his hand open to indicate the
explosion. He looked at me with that crooked face and smiled
again.
"I am of the atom bomb," he said.
I had come to
Japan to retrace the steps of legendary Australian
journalist Wilfred Burchett. As a young reporter, and in
that early grappling for mentors and models, I had known of
Burchett for a singular achievement - he was the first
Western journalist into Hiroshima after the dropping of the
atom bomb. In the 60 years since Burchett filed his report,
"The Atomic Plague", for London's Daily Express, it has
probably remained the greatest individual newspaper "scoop"
of the 20th century and into the millennium. It's impossible
to know now to what degree Burchett was writing for history,
but you get the feeling, from the opening line, that the
young Victorian reporter had an eye to posterity: "I write
this as a warning to the world."
Burchett was almost 34 years old when he made his solo
journey from Tokyo to Hiroshima to bring the facts of the
bomb's devastation to the world, as he put it. At tremendous
risk to his safety, he took the long train journey south,
travelling in that delicate period between the dropping of
the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Japan's official
surrender. It struck me, as a journalist and a novelist,
that one day I would write a novel about this chapter in
Burchett's life. The story had everything - war, flight,
danger, heroism and, at the centre of it all, one of the
defining moments in human history. I made some cursory
notes.
Years later, I was browsing through a book stall at a
Gold Coast flea market when I came across an extremely
battered copy of one of the prolific Burchett's polemic
books, This Monstrous War. The book dealt with the
Korean conflict. By now I knew more about his life, his
evolution into a "radical" journalist and his ability to
polarise readers, colleagues, even governments. He was
accused of being a communist spy, a traitor, a fabricator.
His own country, for a time, refused to grant him a passport
and re-entry into Australia. Since Hiroshima, his reputation
had wobbled and stumbled.
I developed a theory, too, that the impact of what
Burchett saw in Hiroshima, and the scoop itself, changed
something inside him: that the dropping of the A-bomb was a
schismatic moment for mankind, and also for Burchett's
psychology. The theory had no basis in fact. It was the
fancy of the novelist, trying to find a way into the head of
an undeveloped character. I was already knitting a person
called Burchett with the grand, subterranean themes of an
unwritten novel. The A-bomb divided the 20th century. So,
too, would atoms split in the mind of my Mr Burchett,
altering his view of the world, perhaps sending a hairline
fracture through his soul.
When the Iraq conflict broke out in the wake of September
11, 2001, and the world witnessed the manipulation of the
media by America, and truth, as they say, became a casualty
itself, I kept thinking of Burchett and Hiroshima. In that
instance, his purpose was the pursuit of truth. That purpose
may have been tangled up with notions of future fame and
accolades, of promotion and financial reward, of changing
the world.
It is the dichotomy of reporting: at
some points in your career you write for the public, but you
also write for other journalists. "This is what I got,"
you're saying, "and you didn't." It was a dangerous,
renegade act (often the prerequisite for defining moments)
for which Burchett was later vilified by US government
officials, who claimed he had fallen victim to Japanese
propaganda. In some ways, it went to the very definition of
reporting.
In the context of the contemporary world, with
television and print journalists "embedded" with US troops
invading Iraq (the word itself, embedded, so quickly
redefined and attached to the media), I thought of Burchett
and that warm September in 1945 when he walked through the
ruins of Hiroshima with his notebook. I felt that something
had been lost. That we had mislaid something very important
about, or within, ourselves. That in modern times the media
was like sediment, layer after layer of it, rolled out over
feeling and empathy and rage and all those human responses
to things that happen in the world. That everything would
set like sandstone, and one day, beneath the many strata, a
little fossilised truth would be found, embedded, fragile as
a mosquito.
I'd bought Burchett's book This Monstrous War
for $1, but didn't realise until I got home that it had been
inscribed by the author. His best wishes and signature were
scratched onto the title page in blue ink some time in the
1950s. When you begin a writing project you accept, beyond
logic or reason, all manner of superstitions, totems,
coincidences and signs. You believe they will help guide the
arrow.
Clifford Ferns was serving in Iwakuni, 15 miles outside Hiroshima,
around six months after the bombings. On a day trip to the city,
he purchased a second-hand camera. Inside was undeveloped film
with photos taken within hours of the blast.
The camera's original owner, according to the Japanese
shopkeeper, had succumbed to radiation poisoning soon after taking
the shots. There are 11 ghostly photographs.
Here is the fragility of human life. See the bodies,
shrivelled, cooked; the slumped woman too tired or too sick to
move herself from among the corpses; the blackened child suckling
at his mother's breast (was the milk, by then, toxic?).
See, too, the moments of unexpected beauty. The arch of a
temple seemingly untouched, like a rainbow shooting from the
rubble. A woman and child, defiant, hungry, alive.
"I don't think I understood as a child about the
photographs. I gathered there was something horrible in the
albums, but my father was never one to talk about the war," said
Mr Ferns . "When he died in 2000, I inherited the album."
Sixty years ago today, at 8:15am, an American B-29 Bomber
called Enola Gay dropped a 10,000lb uranium bomb on Hiroshima.
Dubbed "Little Boy" by its designers but called "the gimmick" by
the Enola Gay's unsuspecting crew, the bomb exploded about 600
metres above the city, setting off a surge of heat reaching 4,000
degrees Celsius across a radius of nearly 3 miles. Around 140,000
people were killed instantly or died within a few months. The 60th
anniversary of the bombing today is expected to draw 50,000 people
to Hiroshima. In the last week, the city has been the focal point
for the international peace movement. In the largest
pre-anniversary event, about 8,000 people from over 30 countries
attended the World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs,
which concludes today.
In the decades following the Japanese surrender, the
mushroom cloud that blew over the city remained the most enduring
image of the bombing. This was partly due to the devastation;
relatively few people survived on the ground to document the
event.
But Clifford Ferns' photographs provide rare ground views of
the devastation. The photographs are meticulously preserved,
labelled and explained in handwritten captions. One caption reads:
"More casualties: At left is a Japanese 'red cross' worker. Very
little could be done for the injured. A large percentage of Drs
perished - as did most medical supplies, bandages, etc."
Another states: "During my 3-week stay not a night passed
but more victims of the A-bomb died and [were] cremated. Mostly 6
to 8 a night, although early [on] it was mass cremation, by the
hundreds, daily."
Historians and scientists are already lining up to copy,
study and ensure the preservation of the pictures. Yesterday, the
US National Academy of Sciences in Washington DC contacted The
Scotsman in an effort to obtain the photographs. And the Radiation
Protection Division of the Health Protection Agency has expressed
interest in seeing them as part of its continuing effort to
document radiation exposure.
Oxford professor of Modern Japanese History, Ann Waswo,
said: "My sense is that these photographs will add to a finite
number of photos that exist. They will become part of a very
poignant and important record."
Meanwhile, Mr Ferns has put the photographs in a
safety-deposit box at a local bank. He does not know what he
intends to do with them.
But he believes the ghosts have an important story to tell.
He said: "When you see the likes of children dead and
bloated it makes you wonder why they are still producing bombs.
The photographs show such horror and suffering. It's time for them
to be seen."
This article: http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1747472005
Smithsonian downplayed the casualties, saying only that the
bombs "caused many tens of thousands of deaths" and that Hiroshima
was "a definite military target."
Americans were also told that use of the bombs "led to the
immediate surrender of Japan and made unnecessary the planned
invasion of the Japanese home islands." But it's not that
straightforward. As Tsuyoshi Hasegawa has shown definitively in
his new book, "Racing the Enemy" - and many other historians have
long argued - it was the Soviet Union's entry into the Pacific war
on Aug. 8, two days after the Hiroshima bombing, that provided the
final "shock" that led to Japan's capitulation.
The Enola Gay exhibit also repeated such outright lies as
the assertion that "special leaflets were dropped on Japanese
cities" warning civilians to evacuate. The fact is that atomic
bomb warning leaflets were dropped on Japanese cities, but only
after Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been destroyed.
The hard truth is that the atomic bombings were
unnecessary. A million lives were not saved. Indeed, McGeorge
Bundy, the man who first popularized this figure, later confessed
that he had pulled it out of thin air in order to justify the
bombings in a 1947 Harper's magazine essay he had ghostwritten for
Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson.
The bomb was dropped, as J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific
director of the Manhattan Project, said in November 1945, on "an
essentially defeated enemy." President Truman and his closest
advisor, Secretary of State James Byrnes, quite plainly used it
primarily to prevent the Soviets from sharing in the occupation of
Japan. And they used it on Aug. 6 even though they had agreed
among themselves as they returned home from the Potsdam Conference
on Aug. 3 that the Japanese were looking for peace.
These unpleasant historical facts were censored from the
1995 Smithsonian exhibit, an action that should trouble every
American. When a government substitutes an officially sanctioned
view for publicly debated history, democracy is diminished.
Today, in the post-9/11 era, it is critically important
that the US face the truth about the atomic bomb. For one thing,
the myths surrounding Hiroshima have made it possible for our
defense establishment to argue that atomic bombs are legitimate
weapons that belong in a democracy's arsenal. But if, as
Oppenheimer said, "they are weapons of aggression, of surprise and
of terror," how can a democracy rely on such weapons?
Oppenheimer understood very soon after Hiroshima that these
weapons would ultimately threaten our very survival.
Presciently, he even warned us against what is now our
worst national nightmare - and Osama bin Laden's frequently voiced
dream - an atomic suitcase bomb smuggled into an American city:
"Of course it could be done," Oppenheimer told a Senate committee,
"and people could destroy New York."
Ironically, Hiroshima's myths are now motivating our
enemies to attack us with the very weapon we invented. Bin Laden
repeatedly refers to Hiroshima in his rambling speeches. It was,
he believes, the atomic bombings that shocked the Japanese
imperial government into an early surrender - and, he says, he is
planning an atomic attack on the US that will similarly shock us
into retreating from the Mideast.
Finally, Hiroshima's myths have gradually given rise to an
American unilateralism born of atomic arrogance.
Oppenheimer warned against this "sleazy sense of
omnipotence." He observed that "if you approach the problem and
say, 'We know what is right and we would like to use the atomic
bomb to persuade you to agree with us,' then you are in a very
weak position and you will not succeed.... You will find
yourselves attempting by force of arms to prevent a disaster."
Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin are coauthors of
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert
Oppenheimer, published earlier this year by Knopf.
Hiroshima - It was said that the souls of
the nuclear bomb victims at the end of World War 2 haunt the area. voices,
pleading for help, crying and screaming can be heard around twilight. It
was also said that some of those souls sometimes lurk in the shadows of
the living.
THE NUCLEAR TESTS
From Hiroshima to Pokhran
A three-member Japanese delegation visited Pokhran as part of
a 10-day tour of India and Pakistan aimed at raising public
awareness about the devastating effects of nuclear war.
JEAN DREZE
"I WONDER for what purpose she came into this world," said
Hiroshima survivor Yasuhiko Taketa, referring to his elder sister
who died in agony at the age of 16. She was 1.4 km away from "ground
zero" when a nuclear bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6,
1945. She was brought home, 7 km from ground zero, the next evening.
"Her arrival is," said Taketa, "a very sad memory for me." "She was
lying on a cart, severely burnt. Her clothes were glued to her skin.
We wanted to spread oil on her skin, but we could not remove her
clothes. So we had to cut the clothes away from the skin with
scissors, causing her horrendous pain. She died on August 9, crying
'Mother, help me, mother help me'. There was nothing we could do to
help her. There were no medicines, no doctors." Thus spoke Yasuhiko
Taketa in Pokhran on June 17, 1998. Also present were two other
Japanese citizens: Masa Takubo, international consultant of Japan's
Gensuikin (Congress Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs) and Ken
Sakamoto, secretary-general of Gensuikin's Hiroshima branch.
The team's visit to Pokhran was part of a 10-day tour of India
and Pakistan aimed at raising public awareness about the devastating
effects of nuclear war.
The people of Pokhran gave a warm reception to the Japanese
delegation. When the visitors arrived around 9.30 p.m., accompanied
by a small group of concerned Indian citizens, hundreds of local
people were waiting for them at Gandhi Chowk. They listened
patiently until close to midnight, despite the frustration of double
translation (from Japanese to English and then to Hindi). The
audience was deeply moved by the delegation's testimonies, which
included an exhibition of photographs from Hiroshima and a short
film. Taketa's closing plea for a world-wide abolition of nuclear
weapons and nuclear tests was greeted with loud applause.
Taketa spoke with calm and dignity, despite the obvious emotions
stirred by memories of the dreadful events that followed the
explosion:
"My name is Yasuhiko Taketa. I come from Hiroshima, where an
atomic bomb was dropped on August 6, 1945, for the first time in
history. I was 12 years old at that time, and a first grader in
junior high school. We received a militaristic education and were
told that we should give up our lives for the Emperor and for the
country. Japan was losing its power day by day. By early 1945, it
had lost control of the sea as well as of the sky.
"My home town was outside Hiroshima, but my school was in
Hiroshima. On August 6, 1945, we had been given a day off. In the
morning, I was asked to deliver some food to my elder sister's
house. A little after 8 a.m., I was waiting for the train at the
railway station. Suddenly, there was an intense flash. Everything
looked bluish white. Then there was a thunder-like sound. I felt as
if my stomach had been cut open and my intestines were coming out.
Then I felt extreme heat on my cheek. Looking in the direction from
where the heat was coming, I saw a white spot, which became yellow
and then red, and turned into a huge fireball, seemingly coming
towards me. It was a horrendous sight. I felt like choking. I was
looking at this 7 km away from ground zero.
"Later, I learnt that Enola Gay had released the bomb at a height
of 9,000 metres, and that the bomb had exploded at a height of 600
metres. The surface temperature at ground zero rose to 6,000 oC. The
diameter of the fireball was 200 metres. Under the fireball, those
who had not been killed instantly were running around, trying to
escape. After a while, we saw people fleeing Hiroshima towards our
town. They looked like ghosts. Many were burnt, almost naked, with
swollen faces, or had their skin peeled by the heat. Some were
holding their intestines.
"Two days after the explosion, I walked into Hiroshima with some
friends. The city was totally destroyed. There were dead bodies
everywhere. Our school was devastated. The second graders who were
at school that day were killed, all 183 of them. All around us,
people were still dying. Some were crying, 'Give me water, give me
water'. I saw a child groping for his mother's breast, but she was
already dead. There were no facilities for cremation, so people dug
holes and threw the bodies in them and then burnt them. There was a
smell of charred bodies everywhere.
"At that time, Hiroshima's population was 400,000, of which
140,000 died by the end of 1945, 90 per cent of them within a week
of the explosion. Of the city's 76,000 buildings, 70,000 were
completely destroyed or burnt down.
"People continue to die even today, from the after-effects of
radiation. The dreadfulness of nuclear war is that even if you
survive the bombing, you can suffer much later. As of last year,
there were 202,118 registered deaths due to the Hiroshima bombing.
Survivors are faced with suffering and the fear of death every day.
I would like you to remember this.
"Today's bombs are far more powerful than the bomb that fell on
Hiroshima. Imagine what would happen in the event of a nuclear war
between India and Pakistan. Governments talk of nuclear deterrence,
but nuclear weapons cannot bring security. In a nuclear war, there
are no winners. Security comes from peaceful relations between
nations.
"I don't know how long I will live, but however long I live, I
want to continue working for peace. I also call on the people of
India and Pakistan to work together for peace. That is my dream. As
the Japanese philosopher Ichiro Moritaki said, 'We have to stop the
chain reaction of atoms through the chain reaction of human beings'.
Let us work together for peace, so that we may leave a peaceful
world behind us for our children and grandchildren. That is my plea,
and the message I have brought from Hiroshima."
EARLY the next morning, the delegation proceeded to Khetolai
village near the test site. The reception they received there was
overwhelming. The villagers had erected a large shamiana and had
prepared a colourful welcome ceremony. In his opening remarks, the
deputy sarpanch reminded the audience that at the time of the
creation of the test site in 1965, the village had signed a petition
against it. While greeting the Japanese visitors, he said that he
wished they had come earlier, implying that the recent tests may
have been averted.
The villagers watched the exhibition of photographs from
Hiroshima with solemn interest. Already concerned about the possible
side-effects of nuclear tests in the area, they were in total
sympathy with the team's mission. Many of them were quick to point
out that the Government should spend its money on schools and health
centres, rather than on nuclear weapons. They felt even more
strongly about it after Taketa's speech. As in Pokhran, his call for
world peace and the elimination of nuclear weapons was received with
roaring applause.
At the end of the programme, a local resident drafted a
resolution, calling for universal nuclear disarmament and an
immediate end to all nuclear tests. The resolution also demanded
that the Government inform and consult citizens before any use of
nuclear energy. The resolution was unanimously endorsed by a show of
hands, and signatures from those who could sign in the rush that
followed.
THE Khetolai declaration and the gatherings that preceded it
raise interesting questions about the popular attitude towards the
development of nuclear weapons. According to a much-cited "opinion
survey" that was published in The Times of India on May 13,
90 per cent of the population approved of the recent tests. This
survey was, however, conducted by telephone in eight major cities
and is therefore confined to the privileged urban classes. The fact
that the responses of telephone owners in the major cities were used
to represent the views of the entire population speaks volumes about
the political marginalisation of the underprivileged majority. It
may be argued that ordinary people are not sufficiently aware of the
facts to have an informed view on these issues. This is correct, but
the solution to this is to inform them, rather than to rely on
others to represent their views. The Pokhran and Khetolai gatherings
show that when people are adequately informed, their views on
nuclear weapons are far less enthusiastic than what the survey
suggests.
That the people of Khetolai should turn out to be strong critics
of nuclear weapons and nuclear testing is not surprising, given
their concern about the possible effects of radiation in the area.
More interesting is the public response in Pokhran, a BJP
stronghold, where, according to earlier press reports, the nuclear
tests were greeted with jubilation. The warm reception given to the
Japanese delegation in Pokhran is not inconsistent with the
possibility that many local residents consider the recent tests as
being justified. However, the Pokhran gathering brings out another
aspect of the public mood: when presented with the facts, most
people strongly support universal nuclear disarmament and an
immediate end to all nuclear tests. It remains to be seen whether
the Government's nuclear strategy will do justice to this
overwhelming popular concern.
Pacific Ocean:
Bikini's Nuclear Ghosts; The Oceans; Scientific American
Presents; by Zorpette;
I am at ground zero of the most powerful explosion ever created
by the U.S. Forty-six meters (150 feet) underwater near the edge
of Bikini Lagoon in the central Pacific, I am kneeling in the sand
with a 27-year-old Majorcan divemaster at my side. At this moment,
he's laughing into his scuba regulator at the sight of an array of
big, five-pointed starfish on the seafloor, which evokes for him
an American flag.
The divemaster, Antonio Ramon-Le-Blanc, and I have come to a
place where very few have ever ventured: a submerged crater formed
shortly before dawn on March 1, 1954, when the U.S. military
detonated a thermonuclear bomb on a spit of sand jutting out from
Nam Island, in the northwest corner of Bikini Atoll. The experts
anticipated that this nuclear test, codenamed Bravo, would have an
explosive yield equivalent to somewhere between three and six
megatons of TNT. Instead they got 15 megatons, a crater 2,000
meters wide and a fireball that swelled far beyond expectations,
terrifying the nine technicians left as observers in a concrete
bunker 32 kilometers away.
WHAT IF HIROSHIMA HAD NEVER HAPPENED?
August 6, 1970
If such temptations have been resisted, it may be because
Hiroshima and Nagasaki have assumed the proportions of
myth—needed and useful myth. This fact does not justify the
toll of dead and wounded, nor lay their ghosts in the
national conscience. Yet it gives them meaning. Horrifying
as the ghosts of those victims are, there is no comparable
meaning in the 135,000 ghosts of Dresden, that totally
vengeful, ultimately useless crime of conventional warfare.
But Dresden was a massive effort, involving 2,750 bombers.
The essential terror of the nuclear bomb is that it is so
small, so sudden and so simple to deliver—with the touch of
a button.
Two Thousand Hiroshimas
Given this myth, we now measure nuclear and
thermonuclear weapons in Hiroshimas. "Thirty megatons" means
nothing. Two thousand Hiroshimas—its explosive
equivalent—does. We multiply mentally: the dead, the maimed,
the burned, the merely (and mercifully) vaporized. The
ever-growing sophistication of weapons appalls: a Bomb with
the explosive force of Little Boy can now be conveniently
carried in a bowling bag and left on a park bench. It is now
a fortunate commonplace that nuclear war simply cannot be a
rational instrument of international policy.
Once, the U.S. tried to make it so. The alternative
was an invitation missed—an invitation to moral heroism and
political imagination—and an opportunity forever lost. Yet
tragic errors can be the beginnings of new maturity. It may
be no coincidence that since Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
Americans seem to have discerned a dimension of tragedy in
their lives, have been more willing to admit their faults,
more able to examine the darker side of their actions.
Nations are still invited by the Bomb to heroic virtue
and creative politics, but now the stakes are higher, not
100,000 lives but perhaps as many as 100 million.
Imagination may demand boldness and risk: such adventurous
human gambles, perhaps, as graduated gestures of
disarmament, to encourage the larger success of strategic
arms limitation agreements and other rational attempts
toward mutual reduction of terror among nuclear powers. Such
options, for a free nation as for a free man, still remain
open. Even with Hiroshima and Nagasaki burned forever in the
memory, there persists the hope for new opportunities and
fresh choices.
Millions of dead and wounded on one hand. A
single Bomb on the other, a Bomb that still
had done nothing to justify three years of
intensive work and a cost of more than $2
billion. Save one, spend the other. On the
face of it, it was a simple choice. After all,
even the Los Alamos laboratory chief himself,
J. Robert Oppenheimer, had estimated that a
reasonably sheltered population would suffer
"only" 20,000 dead. Four times that number had
died in a single night of fire raids in Tokyo.
More B-29 incendiary raids might have caused
havoc even greater than Hiroshima and
Nagasaki.
At the end of May, six weeks before the
critical test at Alamogordo, the Interim
Committee, charged with advising the President
on the Bomb and atomic energy, met in a
two-day session. The committee —chaired by War
Secretary Henry Stimson and including
Scientists Vannevar Bush, Karl T. Compton and
James B. Conant—recommended that the Bomb
should be used against Japan as soon as
possible. The objective, they also
recommended, should be a "dual target," a
military or industrial site surrounded by more
lightly constructed buildings. The attack
should come by surprise. The argument was that
the U.S. must exhibit its new power
spectacularly and decisively. "This
deliberate, premeditated destruction," wrote
Henry Stimson with sad conviction after the
war, "was our least abhorrent choice. [It] put
an end to the Japanese war. It stopped the
fire raids, and the strangling blockade; it
ended the ghastly specter of a clash of great
land armies."
In reality, the choices were hardly so
narrow. Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of
Staff, resolutely opposed invasion since Japan
was "already thoroughly defeated." The Interim
Committee itself was not fully convinced that
the surprise bombing of a major target was the
only way to use the Bomb: it asked its
scientific panel to consider other
alternatives. The panel ultimately endorsed
the committee's decision, but others did not.
From the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago,
the cover name for the atomic research center
there, came the outspoken Franck Report,
formulated by Physicists James Franck and Leo
Szilard and Chemist Eugene Rabinowitch.
Dropping the atom bomb on Japan, the report
suggested, might unleash a nuclear arms race
and a period of international distrust that
would far outweigh any temporary advantage the
U.S. might gain.
The report was the beginning of a wave
of dissent that spread among many scientists
in the atomic laboratories and executives in
the Government after the Alamogordo test on
July 16 demonstrated what the Bomb could do.
Some dissenters demanded that the enemy be
warned; critics of this course objected that
Allied prisoners might be placed in the target
area. Still others proposed demonstrations of
various kinds—perhaps before an international
inspection group, or as Physicist Edward
Teller seems to have suggested offhandedly, a
highly visible burst right on the Emperor's
front porch, in Tokyo Bay.
Might such a demonstration have worked?
Historians are divided. It is true that the
one-two punch on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
propelled the Japanese war party into an
untenable position, gave the Emperor a
convenient pretext for intervening in the
crisis, and made it appear that the U.S. had
Bombs to spare (in fact, there were no more
immediately available). But the Nagasaki
attack seems to have been lamentably
premature. Hiroshima was 400 miles from Tokyo,
far from the eyes of those who made national
war policy. On the day Fat Man exploded, the
Supreme Council was just getting the first
fully detailed reports of damage at Hiroshima.
Teller's pyrotechnical display over nighttime
Tokyo, or a purely military raid on a nearby
installation, might have made as much
impression on the decision makers at little or
no cost to civilian life.
It was not the twin bombings alone,
moreover, that influenced the mode and speed
of the Japanese surrender. Other factors were
involved, some of them impossible to measure.
The Russian entry into the war on Aug. 9
surely played a role, most importantly in
convincing the Japanese that they could no
longer expect mediation through Moscow.
Failure of imagination on the U.S. side had
prolonged the war. Old Japan hands like Joseph
Grew had encouraged the U.S. to declare
forthrightly that Japan could keep its
Emperor, but his advice was heeded only in the
final days of the war. Less reliance on the
Bomb might well have produced more creative
diplomacy, making a mere demonstration of the
Bomb more than enough to tip the balance.
If it had, and Japan had forthwith
surrendered, how different would have been the
shape and mood of the postwar world? The
framers of the Franck Report argued that
international control of nuclear
armaments—such as later suggested in the
Baruch Plan before the U.N. in 1946—would have
been much easier to achieve, and the argument
seems tenable. A humane precedent would have
been set, and the U.S. would have established
a standard of trustworthiness even among those
who had no will to give it trust, just as
later, with the Marshall Plan, it would earn a
reputation for generosity even among the most
cynical. The nation would be free of the guilt
that has nagged at its conscience ever since.
Traumatic Terror
Most important, the new atomic
generation might have grown up confident that
man was the master rather than the victim of
nuclear discoveries, seeing the power of the
atom more as opportunity than threat—and
making that opportunity flower. Quite probably
Japan, for instance, freed of its traumatic
terror of atomic energy, would have been among
the pioneers in peaceful nuclear research.
Instead, an entire generation of children, all
around the globe, has reached adulthood with a
constant sense of lurking terror that has all
too often surfaced in nightmares, or more
maturely, in peace demonstrations.
Perhaps more than many other wartime
decisions, dropping the Bomb was a consciously
moral decision, wrought mostly by good men,
mostly for good reasons—or at least for such
good reasons as can be perceived under the
pressures of war. But the evidence argues that
it was a mistake, simply a choice of a lesser
evil over a greater one, not so much moral
wisdom as moral despair. Historian Gabriel
Kolko suggests a political deficiency, calling
the use of the Bomb and reliance on Russian
intervention "a triumph of conservatism and
mechanism" in U.S. policy. Whether the failing
be moral or political, however, it remains the
same—a lack of imagination, an unwillingness
to risk a new tactic even in a new situation.
Edward Teller, one of the inventors of
the hydrogen bomb and a champion of
thermonuclear deterrent, complains that atomic
experience has made Americans Bomb-shy, afraid
to consider any rational use of nuclear
weapons—worse yet, so fatalistic about nuclear
warfare that they cannot bring themselves to
build an adequate civilian defense system. It
is a questionable complaint; U.S. deaths in a
massive nuclear exchange, even in a
well-sheltered nation, could approach 40
million—an unfathomable catastrophe for any
society. But, in another sense—a sense Teller
undoubtedly does not intend—the fatalistic
terror about nuclear warfare may indeed be a
vice. Because the Bomb is so much more inhuman
than conventional arms, we are hypnotized by
it and tend to overlook the inhumanity of many
lesser weapons, such as the napalm and cluster
bombs used in Southeast Asia.
Revisionist historians have found the
bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki sinister in
another—and less persuasive—way. They see them
not so much as the closing acts of the Pacific
war but the opening acts of the cold
war—intended primarily to impress Stalin.
There was a time, indeed, Louis Halle observes
in The Cold War as History, when the U.S. had
an atomic monopoly and might theoretically
have challenged Soviet expansion by
interposing a threat of nuclear bombing.
Stalin, of course, might have chosen to
respond by dispatching the giant Red Army to
overrun a then poorly defended Europe. But
Halle suggests a broader pragmatism in
American restraint: the U.S. could not and did
not attempt any such nuclear blackmail because
it might have threatened "the whole fabric of
world order."
With or without the heritage of threat
and distrust from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a
cold war of some kind seems to have been
virtually unavoidable, s In fact—and this is
one of the few advantages of the Bomb's fatal
use—it seems to have helped prevent the cold
war from turning hot. Without Hiroshima's
brutal demonstration of the Bomb's power,
might not one or another of the contestants
have been tempted to test it during a military
action such as Korea? Perhaps on the U.N.
forces streaming toward the Yalu, or the
Chinese forces massed at that border river?
Map locates Erwin,
Tenn., site of nuclear pollution since 2005
August 22, 2007
Three years ago, a nuclear power plant near the
Tennessee/North Carolina border apparently spilled
uranium all over the place, and the event was
hushed up in the name of national security. From
the Houston Chronicle:
A three-year veil of secrecy in the name
of national security was used to keep the public
in the dark about the handling of highly
enriched uranium at a nuclear fuel processing
plant — including a leak that could have caused
a deadly, uncontrolled nuclear reaction.
The leak turned out to be one of nine violations
or test failures since 2005 at privately owned
Nuclear Fuel Services Inc., a longtime supplier
of fuel to the U.S. Navy's nuclear fleet.
The public was never told about the problems
when they happened. The Nuclear Regulatory
Commission revealed them for the first time last
month when it released an order demanding
improvements at the company, but no fine.
Some 35 liters,
or just over 9
gallons, of highly
enriched uranium
solution leaked from a
transfer line into a
protected glovebox and
spilled onto the
floor. The leak was
discovered when a
supervisor saw a
yellow liquid "running
into a hallway" from
under a door,
according to one
document.
The commission said
there were two areas,
the glovebox and an
old elevator shaft,
where the solution
potentially could have
collected in such a
way to cause an
uncontrolled nuclear
reaction.
"It is likely that at
least one worker would
have received an
exposure high enough
to cause acute health
effects or death," the
agency wrote.
"We don't want any
security information
out there that's going
to help a terrorist,"
agency Commissioner
Edward McGaffigan Jr.
said in a newly
released transcript
from a closed
commission meeting May
30. But "that's
entirely separate"
from dealing with an
event that could have
killed a worker at the
plant.
"The pendulum maybe
swung too far," agreed
Luis Reyes, the
commission's executive
director for
operations. "We want
to make sure we don't
go the other way, but
we need to come back
to some reasonable
middle point."
In 2004, the government became so
concerned about releasing nuclear
secrets that the commission removed
more than 1,740 documents from its
public archive - even some that
apparently involved basic safety
violations at the company, which
operates a 65-acre gated complex in
tiny Erwin, about 120 miles north of
Knoxville.
Congressmen and environmental
groups have criticized the policy, and
now the commission staff is drafting
recommendations that may ease its
restrictions.
But environmental activists are
still suspicious of the belated
revelations and may challenge the
commission's decision not to fine
Nuclear Fuel Services for the safety
violations.
"That party is not over - the
full story of what is going on up
there," said Ann Harris, a member of
the Sierra Club's national nuclear
task force.
Nuclear Fuel Services has been
supplying fuel to the Navy since the
1960s. More recently, it has also been
converting the government's stockpile
of weapons-grade uranium into
commercial reactor fuel.
While reviewing the commission's
public Web page in 2004, the
Department of Energy's Office of Naval
Reactors found what it considered
protected information about Nuclear
Fuel Service's work for the Navy.
The commission responded by
sealing every document related to
Nuclear Fuel Services and BWX
Technologies in Lynchburg, Va., the
only two companies licensed by the
agency to manufacture, possess and
store highly enriched uranium.
BWX Technologies has not
experienced any problems as serious as
the uranium spill at Nuclear Fuel
Services, commission spokesman David
McIntyre said. But its operations were
included in the order to seal
documents because it produces nuclear
fuel for the Navy, too.
Under the policy, all the
documents were stamped "Official Use
Only," including papers about the
policy itself and more than 1,740
documents from the commission's public
archive.
The Associated Press first
reported the policy in May after the
commission briefly mentioned in its
annual report to Congress a March 6,
2006, uranium leak at Nuclear Fuel
Services. The leak was one of three
"abnormal occurrences" of license
holders cited during the year.
Agency commissioners, apparently
struck by the significance of the
event, took a special vote to skirt
the "Official Use Only" rule so that
Nuclear Fuel Services would be
identified in the report as the site
of the uranium leak.
Some 35 liters, or just over 9
gallons, of highly enriched uranium
solution leaked from a transfer line
into a protected glovebox and spilled
onto the floor. The leak was
discovered when a supervisor saw a
yellow liquid "running into a hallway"
from under a door, according to one
document.
The commission said there were
two areas, the glovebox and an old
elevator shaft, where the solution
potentially could have collected in
such a way to cause an uncontrolled
nuclear reaction.
"It is likely that at least one
worker would have received an exposure
high enough to cause acute health
effects or death," the agency wrote.
"We don't want any security
information out there that's going to
help a terrorist," agency Commissioner
Edward McGaffigan Jr. said in a newly
released transcript from a closed
commission meeting May 30. But "that's
entirely separate" from dealing with
an event that could have killed a
worker at the plant.
"The pendulum maybe swung too
far," agreed Luis Reyes, the
commission's executive director for
operations. "We want to make sure we
don't go the other way, but we need to
come back to some reasonable middle
point."
Agency spokesman David McIntyre
said it may be difficult to separate
Nuclear Fuel Service's secret work for
the Navy from its public work
converting bomb-grade uranium to
commercial reactor fuel. The leak
happened on the commercial reactor
side.
In a stinging letter to the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman
in July, two Democratic congressman
from Michigan also blasted the policy.
"We agree that NRC should
withhold from public view any
sensitive security information of this
nature. However, NRC went far beyond
this narrow objective," read the
letter from John Dingell, chairman of
the House Energy and Commerce
Committee, and Bart Stupak, chairman
of the Oversight and Investigations
Subcommittee.
McIntyre defended the
commission's decision not to fine
Nuclear Fuel Services, even though the
agency rated the uranium leak last
year as its second most-serious
violation.
Instead, the agency ordered
Nuclear Fuel Services to conduct a
full review of its "safety culture"
and make changes using outside
experts.
"If we can get long-term
permanent changes and improvements in
their process it is better than
slapping them with a fine every time
something goes wrong," McIntyre said.
Nuclear Fuel Services Executive
Vice President Timothy Lindstrom, a
Navy veteran who joined the company in
September, said the company had
already made "significant progress."
"I think it is important that
the public recognize that we do have a
very robust safety program at NFS. We
live in this community and take our
stewardship very seriously," he said.
"I think if we were to have an
event like this again, we would push
to make it public," he added. "Clearly
it would have been better to have this
discussion 18 months ago than it is to
have it now."
Meanwhile, NFS told its 700
employees this past week it will be
"exploring the possibility of a sale"
over the next 12 months - not because
of the commission's disclosure, but
because of the company's increasing
value to a booming nuclear power
industry.
"We are in a position of
strength," company spokesman Tony
Treadway said.
Federal regulators are reviewing a
policy that has kept details on an East
Tennessee nuclear facility — including a
potentially deadly spill of highly
enriched uranium last year — hidden from
the public.
Since August 2004, the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission has designated most
correspondence with Nuclear Fuel Services
Inc. as “official use only,” which has
prevented inspection reports and other
materials on the nuclear fuel producer
from being publicly released.
That policy kept a March 2006
uranium spill at the company’s Erwin,
Tenn., plant out of public view for more
than a year, until the incident was
disclosed in May in a required annual
report to Congress. Local authorities
weren’t even informed of the spill.
The disclosure drew attention from a
Congressional committee, prompting the NRC
to re-examine the “official use only” tag,
an administrative designation that allows
the commission to withhold sensitive
documents without technically classifying
them.
NRC spokesman Roger Hannah said
commission staffers were reviewing the
designation for documents on Nuclear Fuel
Services, and possibly other licensees as
well.
“I would assume that’s something
they’re looking at across the board,”
Hannah said.
The March 2006 incident prompted a
change to the company’s Special Nuclear
Materials License, but the February order
detailing the change was kept from the
public, which would have had a right to
request a hearing on the changes. Hannah
said the NRC has decided to reissue the
order publicly, possibly within the week.
“The changes were an affirmation
that NFS should establish a program to
create a more robust safety culture within
the plant among its employees and
supervisors,” said Nuclear Fuel Services
spokesman Tony Treadway.
The spill last year involved about
35 liters of highly enriched uranium
solution that leaked into a protected
glovebox, then onto the floor in a
facility where highly enriched uranium is
“downblended” to a lower enrichment for
use in commercial reactors, including
TVA’s Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant in
Alabama.
According to the NRC’s report, there
were two chances for a “criticality”
accident, where a nuclear chain reaction
releases radiation. If such an incident
occurred, “it is likely that at least one
worker would have received an exposure
high enough to cause acute health effects
or death,” according to the report.
More information on the event came
to light last week in a letter sent to the
NRC by the House Committee on Energy and
Commerce. The NRC had provided the
committee with inspection reports on the
Erwin facility, which have not been
publicly released.
“NRC inspection reports suggest that
it was merely a matter of luck that a
criticality accident did not occur,” reads
the letter, signed by U.S. Reps. John
Dingell, the committee’s chair, and Bart
Stupak, a subcommittee chair, both
Michigan Democrats.
The letter revealed that the NRC
implemented its “official use only” policy
in August 2004 after a request from the
Department of Energy’s Office of Naval
Reactors, which was concerned that
sensitive national security information
could be found on the NRC’s public records
system. The memo that established the
policy was itself kept from the public.
“Thus, the public and Congress have
been kept in the dark regarding NRC’s
decision to withhold all documents
regarding the NFS plant from public view,”
the congressmen wrote.
The policy was supposed to cover
only documents related to Nuclear Fuel
Services’ and another contractor’s program
to make nuclear fuel for Navy submarines.
Treadway said last year’s spill was not
related to the company’s production of
naval fuel.
The NRC’s Hannah said he did not
know why the spill was kept secret given
the limited scope of the “official use
only” policy.
“Unfortunately, we’re in a position
in this case where it seems the public has
been denied the right to know what’s going
on there,” said Linda Modica, a
Jonesborough resident who chairs the
Sierra Club’s national radiation
committee.
Modica said she lives downwind of
the Erwin facility and drinks groundwater
from the same watershed.
“We have no idea what, if anything,
was released to the air or water at the
time of that spill,” she said.
Yet the NRC has to walk a “delicate
line” between giving citizens information
about nuclear accidents and preventing
terrorists from learning too much about
bomb-grade materials, U.S. Rep David Davis
said.
Davis, a Republican who hails from
Unicoi County, said he has a personal
stake in making sure his constituents are
safe — his mother-in-law lives a half-mile
from the Erwin facility.
“I want to make sure we use common
sense on this issue,” Davis said. “We
don’t want too much information out, but
we don’t want to withhold information
either.”
With about 715 employees, Nuclear
Fuel Services, which celebrates its 50th
anniversary this year, is the largest
employer in Unicoi County. The private
company has a history of fines and
enforcement actions by the NRC, which
regulates commercial reactors and other
uses of nuclear materials.
Erwin Mayor Don Lewis worked at the
Nuclear Fuel Services plant for 43 years
before retiring in 2002.
Lewis said he had “heard rumors”
about the spill but ultimately learned
about it through media reports, the same
way as the general public. But he said he
had no concerns about the incident or the
fact that local authorities were not
notified after it happened.
“I didn’t have any complaint
whatsoever with the way it was handled,”
Lewis said. “We can always ‘what if’ this,
or ‘what if’ that, but really you got to
look at the facts about the thing.”
Treadway said the spill did not
injure anyone or cause harm to the
environment. He said Nuclear Fuel Services
reported the incident promptly to the
NRC’s two resident inspectors at the Erwin
facility. The NRC later notified the state
of the spill, but not local authorities.
“We would have gone against (NRC)
regulations should we have shared it with
the public,” Treadway said.
For Modica, that’s precisely the
problem.
“How can you trust that your
government is duking it out for the public
with respect to these polluters if they
don’t tell you what they’re doing?” Modica
asked.
Children's disabilities blamed on Tennessee nuclear site
P. Casey Daley / The Nashville Tennessean
Photo: Susie and Scott Woods, above, wonder if the Oak
Ridge nuclear reservation caused their son Alex, 3, to have the body and
mind of a youth half his age.
By Susan Thomas, Laura Frank and Anne Paine /
The Nashville Tennessean
OAK RIDGE,
Tenn. -- The number of children's mental, physical and learning
disabilities are mushrooming downstream
from the federal
government's giant Oak Ridge nuclear reservation.
While nobody has found a direct connection between the escalating
number of disabilities and the huge Oak Ridge complex, nobody has
seriously looked for one either.
But people who live nearby and see the disabilities have their suspicions
about poisons leaked into the environment from Oak Ridge, where nuclear
weapons parts were manufactured for the last quarter century.
In nearby Roane County, the school population has changed little since
1990, but an analysis of state records shows:
The number of kids with learning disabilities more than doubled
from the 1990 to 1996 school years.
The number of kids with health-related disabilities jumped from
eight to 123.
These disabilities range from leukemia to attention deficit
disorder.
The number of kids with mental retardation rose at a rate four
times that of the state.
"There just seems to be a tremendous increase in minimal brain
dysfunction," says Robert J. McCracken, Roane County's director of special
education until 1995.
He does not know why. The numbers alone do not suggest a cause. And
experts say the numbers should be viewed with caution. But in the streets
and stores of Roane County communities, there is a sense something is
wrong with too many kids.
"As a parent, I am very concerned that the contamination coming from the
government plants could be causing the disabilities and other problems the
children are having," says Marcella Russell, 33, who volunteers as a
teacher's aide at Oliver Springs Elementary School, which her two children
attend. "I mean, you constantly hear about more and more children who live
around here who are having unexplained problems, so you can't help but
wonder if the plants may be hurting them."
The U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge reservation is a toxic
tapestry of some of the worst, longest-lasting poisons known.
In 1991, an incinerator on the reservation began burning
radioactive, toxic waste laced with cancer-causing PCBs, once widely used
for electrical insulation. A group of sick reservation workers complained
the emissions may be causing or contributing to their illnesses.
The Energy Department says the incinerator is safe. At the same
time, some people here wonder if the growing number of kids' disabilities
could reflect a more complex problem.
In addition, Roane County is downstream from two private companies
that began burning nuclear waste about the same time as the Oak Ridge
incinerator.
For decades, several companies in Roane and neighboring Anderson
County have released toxic metals and chemicals. The Tennessee Valley
Authority's coal-burning power plants in each county, like other
coal-fired plants, also have emitted arsenic, mercury and radioactive
particles for years.
Like the Energy Department, these facilities' operators say they
emit nothing at harmful levels. But some wonder if the poisons from the
reservation and these other sources are combining and accumulating in ways
now proving harmful.
"What if we're dealing with multiple toxic substances here?" asks
McCracken, recently named Anderson County High School principal. He
recalls sitting in his old office at the Roane County schools
administration building in Kingston, overlooking the Clinch River
downstream from these sources: "I used to sit at my window and look at the
stacks from the TVA plant, and wonder where all these things are going?
Who knows what happens when you sprinkle in a little mercury and a little
radiation? Nobody knows."
A
guard mans a gate at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn.,
Sept. 11, 2001.
Guards cheated in a mock terrorist drill at the plant last
summer, and apparently have been
doing so since the 1980s,
the Energy
Department's inspector general says in a report released
Monday, Jan. 26,
2004. Investigators found security personnel learned in advance which
walls
would be breached and which buildings would be targeted, and planned
accordingly. Then they
used improperly inserted batteries, mud or Vaseline
to befuddled the body sensors
that simulate fatal gunshots.
(Photo/Wade
Payne)
Y-12 Test 'Unreliable'
Inspector General Report: Some Oak Ridge Plant Guards Were
Tipped Off to Security Exercise by Frank
Munger
OAK RIDGE - A security test last summer at the Y-12 nuclear weapons
plant may have been "compromised" because some plant police had
advance information on the exercise, according to a federal report
released Monday.
The Oak Ridge test results were "tainted and unreliable," the U.S.
Department of Energy's Inspector General concluded.
Furthermore, investigators said they interviewed "several
current and former protective force personnel" who
detailed improprieties in Y-12's security tests dating
back to the mid-1980s. Guards were told, in some
instances, what buildings were to be attacked during mock
incursions and whether there would be diversionary tactics
used in an exercise.
The IG report is the latest blow to the image of Oak
Ridge security, coming on the heels of a scathing
assessment by a government watchdog group. The Project On
Government Oversight said that Y-12 security forces failed
to protect the plant's nuclear assets during a December
exercise - raising grave questions about their ability to
counter a terrorist attack.
BWXT Y-12, which manages the plant for the federal
government, last week named a new security director. The
National Nuclear Security Administration, a DOE sub-unit
that oversees the weapons operation, also changed security
directors in Oak Ridge. Neither BWXT nor NNSA would say
whether the leadership changes were results of the
security problems.
Steven Wyatt, a spokesman in DOE's Oak Ridge office,
declined comment Monday on the IG report. However, the
document said that federal officials concurred with
findings and were taking corrective actions.
Bill Brumley, the Oak Ridge chief of the NNSA, last
year told the News Sentinel that the results of the summer
exercise were considered too good to be true, and that he
asked the Inspector General to look into the matter.
Eyebrows were raised when the Y-12 protective force won
all four of the test exercises in the June security
review. Computer simulations conducted before that review
had predicted Y-12 police "would decisively lose two of
the four scenarios."
While some guards interviewed by the IG said they did
not have advance information on the security tests,
investigators concluded there was enough evidence to taint
the results.
"We found that shortly before the test, two
participating protective force personnel were permitted to
view the computer simulations of the four scenarios," the
IG report said. "We concluded that this action was
improper, since it had the potential to adversely impact
the realism of the performance test and outcome. In short,
the test results were tainted and should not, in our
judgment, be relied upon."
During the Oak Ridge inspection, the team interviewed
more than 30 current or former security police officers.
Investigators said they received information on a "pattern
of actions" over an extended period of time that may have
skewed the realism of Y-12 security exercises and affected
the performance results.
"We found their assertions to be credible and
compelling," investigators said in the report.
The Inspector General report also heard allegations
that Y-12 guards tampered with laser-based systems used to
identify guards disabled during the simulated terrorist
exercise. Investigators said some guards obstructed the
sensors by applying tape, mud or petroleum jelly to the
surface.
Among other allegations:
Managers identified the best-prepared guards and then
substituted them for others scheduled to participate in an
exercise.
A member of the Y-12 protective force would be
assigned to "tail" the competing team during a preliminary
tour of the plant while preparing for the exercise. This
reportedly gave the defenders an advantage.
Based on advance information, responders would place
trucks or other equipment at strategic sites to help
conceal Y-12 guards or provide additional obstacles for
the aggressors.
Glenn Podonsky, who heads the DOE office that conducts
security reviews at nuclear facilities, said test
protocols do not allow for guards to receive advance
information. He said recent experience showed that
security personnel "do not attempt to deliberately
compromise performance tests during inspections." If
documented, however, such efforts would indicate there's a
"significant weakness" in security management, Podonsky
said.
Publication Date: 01-MAY-02
Publication Title:
Sojourners Format: Online
Company: Oak Ridge
Author: Berger, Rose Marie ; Hochstedler, Jodi
Nuclear weapons plant starts design for $3.5B
production areaAssociated Press
- August 23, 2007
OAK RIDGE, Tenn. (AP)
- The Department of
Energy has approved
designing a new uranium
processing center at the
Y-12 nuclear weapons
plant in Tennessee.
It will cost as
much as $3.5 billion.
It potentially is
the largest construction
project at the weapons
plant in decades and the
most significant step
yet in upgrading an
installation dating back
to World War II's
Manhattan Project.
The project will
have to pass several
more review hurdles
before it can be built
and may not be ready
until 2018.
The facility would
replace the heart of the
Y-12 manufacturing
complex, consolidating
operations from
60-year-old facilities
with outdated equipment
into a new structure.
The 4,600-employee
Y-12 installation is the
nation's primary
storehouse for
weapons-grade uranium
and the key producer of
uranium parts used in
every nuclear weapon in
the U.S. arsenal.
Copyright 2007 The
Associated Press. All
rights reserved.
Inform your elected officials of your support
for safe, renewable energy
sources and of your
concerns about:
1. the need to stop generating more radioactive wastes until, if ever, the wastes accumulated over
the past
sixty years can be permanently isolated
from the environment;
2. the dangers of transporting radioactive
wastes from place to place, such as the threat
of accidents, and
terrorist attack;
3. the need to halt the proposed licensing and
construction of the Yucca Mountain repository;
4. the public health risks of manufacturing
nuclear
power and weapons wastes into
consumer products;
5. the dangers of commingling
nuclear
power and
nuclear weapons production which
could lead to weapons
proliferation and
acts of terrorism.
You can continue to be informed about nuclear
issues by becoming a
member of the Nuclear
Information & Resource Ser- vice. Please send your contribution to
NIRS
at 1424 16th St., NW,
Suite 404,
Washington,
DC 20036.
1. To find your home along the nearest likely route to the proposed Yucca Mountain repository,
type your address into www.mapscience.org and click on “Get Map.”
2. Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, Forevermore:
NuclearWaste in America. New York: W. W. Nor-
ton, 1985.
3. Kenneth D. Bergeron. Tritium on Ice: TheDangerous New Alliance of
Nuclear Weapons
and Nuclear
Power.
Cambridge, MA: MITPress, 2002.
4. Rosalie Bertell. No Immediate Danger?–
Prognosis for a Radioactive Earth. Toronto: Wom-
en’s Educational Press,1985.
5. Catherine Caufield: Multiple Exposures: Chronicles of the Radiation Age. New York: Harper & Row, 1989.
6. Luis F. Fajardo, Morgan Berthrong and Robert E. Anderson. Radiation Pathology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
7. John Gofman. Radiation and Human Health: A Comprehensive Investigation of the Evidence Relating Low-Level Radiation to Cancer
and Other Diseases. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1981.
8. Ed Smeloff and Peter Asmus. Reinventing Electric Utilities:
Competition, Citizen Action, and Clean Power. Washington, DC: Island Press, 1997.
World Information Service on Energy
Amsterdam
www.antenna.nl/wise
“The fission reactor produces both energy and radioactive waste;
we want to use the energy now and leave the radioactive waste for our children and grandchildren to take care of. This is against the
ecological imperative: Thou shalt not leave a polluted and poisoned world to future generations.”
Hannes Alfven, 1970 Nobel Laureate in Physics
“Governments continue to promote the use of nuclear
power without having any sure
knowledge that a solution to this haunting problem of nuclear
waste is near, or indeed that the problem can be solved at all. The deadly
residue of the nuclear
age that [Enrico] Fermi inaugurated may be our civilization’s longest-lasting legacy.” Worldwatch Paper 106.
The government is planning to build a deep geologic
repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, to store irradiated fuel rods.
This site, however, is known to be geologically unsuitable and seismically unstable. Earthquakes have fractured the rock, creating
pathways for radioactivity to percolate
to the groundwater below — a source of water for drinking and irrigation.
President Bush chose
the
Yucca Mountain site in 2002 to be the first national high-level waste repository, but it has not yet been approved
by the US
Nuclear
Regulatory Commission.
The Nevada location would mean transporting
high-level wastes nationwide on highways, rail-
ways and rivers—
through population centers and farmland — through some communities as often as every day.
We should stop generating more waste
until,
if ever
, a safe disposal solution can be found.
The federal government has had a long-standing policy of keeping
nuclear weapons
separate from civilian
nuclear power. Currently,
however,
the US Department of Energy plans to generate tritium
for bombs at
Tennessee
nuclear power plants and to use plutonium
(from dismantled
weapons) in commercial
nuclear reactor fuel.
Increasing the
amount of weapons-grade materials at power plants makes these facilities even more attractive to terrorists, and more
vulnerable.
Then and Now “Low-level”
nuclear power and weapons wastes have accumulated all over the country, creating an expensive and
dangerous
storage problem. It is a problem so out of control that the federal government is actually proposing to sell radioactively
contaminated
metals on
the commercial market that could be used in the manufacture of pots and pans, prostheses, coins, toys, zippers,
and other
consumer goods.
Nuclear
power plants cannot operate without regular, deliberate releases of radioactive
liquids, gases and particles into the environment
during
their routine, everyday operation. It does not take an accident.
Why does the government allow releases of radioactivity?
Starting in the 1950s, commercial
nuclear power plants began to produce electricity and tremendous amounts of radioactive waste. At
every
stage of the uranium fuel cycle —
where uranium has been mined, milled, chemically converted, enriched, fabricated into fuel rods, fissioned
in reactors and reprocessed
—wastes are generated. At nuclear
power plants the wastes include:
irradiated fuel rods removed from the
reactor
vessel after fissioning for about six years;
filters, resins, and evaporator sludges saturated with radioactive contaminants removed
from
the liquid and gaseous effluents that are released to the environment;
radioactive, corroded and embrittled pipes,
pumps, and other
components
that have been discarded;
entire
nuclear power plants — after
decommissioning. A typical 1,000-megawatt reactor building
may contain over
13,000 tons of contaminated concrete and over 1,400 tons of contaminated steel reinforcing bars in the floor alone.
No permanent, safe technology or loca-
tion has been found to isolate any of the sixty-year accumulation of radioactive waste from the
human
biosphere for the requi-
site millennia. And yet we keep generating more and more.
On December 2, 1942, scientists created the
world’s first
self-sustaining nuclear chain
reaction at the Fermi reactor in Chicago. They proved they could harness the energy of the
atom.
The Atomic Age was born — and so was nuclear
waste.
Nuclear
power plants generate high-level and so-called “low-level” wastes.
High-level wastes are the irradiated fuel rods; “low-level” refers to
everything else. Much “low-level” waste must be handled by remote-
controlled equipment because contact with it could give a worker a lethal dose. ∞
∞
Science and common sense dictate that radioactive
wastes must be kept isolated from people and other living things; from water, soil and air;
and from terrorists.
∞
Moving tens of thousands
of shipments through 45 states and Washington, DC, for more than thirty years would not solve the problem. As long as
nuclear
plants
keep
operating, they will keep generating waste. During the time the fuel rods currently stored at
nuclear power
plants (in fuel pools
and dry-storage
casks) are being shipped to Yucca Mountain, roughly the same amount of new
nuclear
waste will have been generated.
(There would be about
as much waste stored on site at nuclear
power plants after Yucca Mountain is full as there is at those plants
today.)
Engelhardt in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Reprinted
with permission.
ʻJust Keep Driving Around – We May Come Up With A Solution Yet
Already every
nuclear power
reactor generates plutonium; a 1000-megawatt reactor generates enough to make 40
nuclear bombs a
year.
As long as nuclear power
plants operate, plutonium and other long-lived radioactive wastes will continue to be generated, endangering
the
environment and human health. No economically feasible technology exists to filter out some of the wastes — for example,
radioactive
hydrogen (tritium) and noble gases (like krypton and xenon that decay into biologically harmful radioactive strontium and
cesium).
The federal government, therefore, does not require that these materials be filtered. Any releases that do not exceed the government’s
permissible contaminant levels are allowed to be discharged — into our air and into our water, unmonitored and unreported. “Permissible”
does not mean safe.
Many radioactive waste products are dangerous virtually forever.
They continue giving off radioactive particles and
rays for at least ten times each isotope’s “half-life.” Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years. Xenon-135 decays into cesium-135,
an
isotope with a 2.3-million-year half-life. Uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.5 billion years.
Every radioisotope decays at its own rate,
regardless of temperature, pressure or chemical environment. No process has been found to speed up the radioactive decay. It occurs
only with the
passage of time.
Exposure to radiation increases the risk of damage to tissues, cells, DNA, and other vital
and Forever
“I don’t think the present controversy is over whether or not there is a safe level. I think all agree that we have no reason to
assume
that any level of radiation is utterly safe.” Arthur C. Upton, MD,1979, former director, National Cancer Institute.
“
[Scientists and researchers] know that
radiation causes leukemia and almost every type of cancer, and that it will shorten a person’s life
span by months,
years, or decades. They know that it will cause cataracts and weaken bodily defenses. They know that, if ingested or
inhaled, some radioactive substances will be more harmful to certain body organs than to others . . . .
The tiniest amount of radiation to the reproductive cells will cause mutations. And as the National Academy of Sciences once put it,
‘the
more radiation, the more mutations. The harm is cumulative.’ . . . More important, the cancer estimates deal with only one part of the
problem. The other involves a greater unknown —
the genetic damage to future generations.”
(Barlett and Steele, 1985, pp. 298, 302)
Inform your elected officials of your support
for safe, renewable energy
sources and of your
concerns about:
1. the need to stop generating more radioactive wastes until, if ever, the wastes accumulated over
the
past sixty years can be permanently isolated
from the environment;
2. the dangers of transporting radioactive wastes from place to place, such as the threat
of accidents, and terrorist attack;
3. the need to halt the proposed licensingand
construction of the Yucca Mountain repository;
4. the public health risks of manufacturing nuclear
power and weapons wastes into
consumer products;
5. the dangers of commingling
nuclear
You can continue to be informed about
nuclear
issues by becoming a member of the
Nuclear
Information & Resource Service. Please send your contribution to NIRS
at 1424 16th St., NW, Suite 404, Washington,
DC 20036. www.nirs.org
What You Can Do
Some references:
1. To find your home along the nearest likely route
to the proposed Yucca Mountain repository,
type
your address into www.mapscience.org
and click on “Get Map.”
2. Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, Forevermore:
Nuclear
Waste in America. New York: W. W. Norton, 1985.
3. Kenneth D. Bergeron. Tritium on Ice: TheDangerous New Alliance of
Nuclear Weapons
and
Nuclear
Power.
Cambridge, MA: MITPress, 2002.
4. Rosalie Bertell. No Immediate Danger?–Prognosis for a Radioactive Earth. Toronto: Women’s Educational Press,1985.
5. Catherine Caufield: Multiple Exposures:
Chronicles of the Radiation Age. New York:
Harper & Row, 1989.
6. Luis F. Fajardo, Morgan Berthrong and Robert E. Anderson. Radiation Pathology.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
7. John Gofman.
Radiation and Human Health:
A Comprehensive Investigation of the Evidence
Relating Low-Level Radiation to Cancer and
Other Diseases. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1981.
“The fission reactor produces both energy and radioactive waste; we want to use
the energy now and leave the
radioactive waste for our children and grandchildren to take care of. This is against the ecological imperative:
Thou shalt not leave a polluted and poisoned world to future generations.”
The government is planning to build a deep geologic
repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, to store
irradiated fuel
rods. This site, however, is known to be geologically unsuitable and seismically unstable. Earthquakes have fractured
the rock,
creating pathways for radioactivity to percolate
to the groundwater below — a source of water for
drinking
and irrigation.
President Bush chose the Yucca Mountain site
in 2002 to be the first national high-level waste
repository, but it has
not yet been approved
by the US
Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The Nevada location would mean transporting
high-level wastes nationwide on highways, rail-
ways and rivers—through population centers and
farmland —
through some communities as
often as every day.
We should stop generating more waste until, if ever
, a safe
disposal solution can be found.
The federal government has had a long-standing
policy of keeping
nuclear weapons
separate from
civilian
nuclearpower.
Currently, however, the
US Department of Energy plans to generate tritium
for bombs
at
Tennesseenuclear power plants and
to use plutonium (from dismantled weapons)
commercial
nuclear reactor fuel.
Increasing the
amount of weapons-grade materials at power
plants makes these facilities even more attractive to
terrorists, and more vulnerable.
Then and Now
“Low-level”
nuclear power and weapons wastes
have accumulated
all over the country, creating an
expensive and dangerous storage problem.
It is a problem so out of control that
the federal
government is actually proposing to sell radioactively
contaminated metals on the commercial market
that could be used in the manufacture
of pots and pans, prostheses, coins, toys,
zippers, and other consumer goods.
Nuclear
power plants cannot operate without
regular, deliberate releases of radioactive
liquids, gases and particles
into the environment
during their routine, everyday operation.
It does not take an accident.
Why does the government allow releases of radioactivity?
Starting in the 1950s, commercial
nuclear
power plants
began to produce electricity and
tremendous amounts of radioactive waste.
At every stage of the uranium fuel cycle
—
where uranium has been mined, milled,
chemically converted, enriched, fabricated into
fuel rods, fissioned in
reactors and reprocessed
—wastes are generated.
At nuclear
power plants the wastes include:
irradiated fuel rods
removed from the reactor
vessel after fissioning for about six years;
filters, resins, and evaporator sludges
saturated
with radioactive contaminants removed
from the liquid and gaseous effluents that are
released to the environment;
radioactive, corroded and embrittled pipes,
pumps, and other components that have been
discarded;
entire
nuclear
power plants — after
decommissioning. A typical 1,000-megawatt
reactor building may contain over 13,000 tons
of
contaminated concrete and over 1,400 tons of
contaminated steel reinforcing bars in the
floor alone.
No permanent, safe technology or location has been found to isolate any of the sixty-year accumulation of radioactive
waste from the human biosphere for the requi-
site millennia. And yet we keep generating more and more.
Just Keep Driving Around – We May Come Up With A Solution Yet
Already every
nuclear power
reactor generates plutonium; a 1000-megawatt reactor
generates enough to make
40
nuclear bombs a
year. As long as
nuclear power
plants operate,
plutonium and other long-lived radioactive
wastes will continue to be generated, endangering
the environment and human health.
No economically feasible
technology exists
to filter out some of the wastes — for example,
radioactive hydrogen (tritium) and noble gases
(like krypton and xenon that decay into
biologically harmful radioactive strontium and
cesium). The federal
government, therefore, does
not require that these materials be filtered.
Any releases that do not exceed the
government’s permissible contaminant lev
are allowed to be discharged — into our air and
into our water,
unmonitored and unreported. “Permissible” does not mean safe.
Many radioactive waste products are dangerous
virtually forever.
They continue giving
off radioactive particles and rays for at
least ten times each isotope’s “half-life.”
Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years.
Xenon-135 decays into cesium-135, an isotope
with a 2.3-million-
year half-life. Uranium-238
has a half-life of 4.5 billion years.
Every radioisotope decays at its own rate,
regardless
of temperature, pressure or chemical
environment. No process has been found to speed
up the radioactive decay.
It occurs only with the
passage of time.
Exposure to radiation increases the risk of damage to tissues, cells, DNA,
and other vital molecules — potentially causing programmed cell death (apoptosis), genetic mutations, cancers,
leukemias, birth defects, and reproductive, immune, cardiovascular, and endocrine system disorders.
and Forever
“I don’t think the present controversy is over whether or not
there is a safe level.
I think
all agree that we have
no reason to assume
that any level of radiation is utterly safe.” Arthur C. Upton, MD,1979, former director,
National Cancer Institute.
“[Scientists and researchers] know that radiation causes leukemia and almost every
type of cancer, and that it will shorten aore harmful to certain body organs than to others . . . .
The tiniest amount of radiation to the reproductive cells will cause mutations. And as the National Academy of
Sciences once put it, ‘the more radiation, the more mutations.
The harm is cumulative.’ . . .
More
important, the cancer estimates deal
with only one part of the problem.
The other involves a greater unknown
—
the genetic damage to future generations.”
(Barlett and Steele, 1985, pp. 298, 302)
The launching of an outright war using nuclear warheads
against Iran is now in the final planning stages.
Coalition partners, which include
the US, Israel and Turkey are in "an advanced stage of
readiness".
Various military exercises have
been conducted, starting in early 2005. In turn, the
Iranian Armed Forces have also conducted large scale
military maneuvers in the Persian Gulf in December in
anticipation of a US sponsored attack.
Since early 2005, there has been
intense shuttle diplomacy between Washington, Tel Aviv,
Ankara and NATO headquarters in Brussels.
In recent developments, CIA
Director Porter Goss on a mission to Ankara, requested
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan "to provide
political and logistic support for air strikes against
Iranian
nuclear and military targets." Goss reportedly
asked " for special cooperation from Turkish
intelligence to help prepare and monitor the operation."
(DDP, 30 December 2005).
In turn, Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon has given the green light to the Israeli Armed
Forces to launch the attacks by the end of March:
All top Israeli officials have
pronounced the end of March, 2006, as the deadline for
launching a military assault on Iran.... The end of
March date also coincides with the IAEA report to the
UN on Iran's nuclear energy program. Israeli
policymakers believe that their threats may influence
the report, or at least force the kind of ambiguities,
which can be exploited by its overseas supporters to
promote Security Council sanctions or justify Israeli
military action.
The US sponsored military plan has
been endorsed by NATO, although it is unclear, at this
stage, as to the nature of NATO's involvement in the
planned aerial attacks.
"Shock and Awe"
The various components of the
military operation are firmly under US Command,
coordinated by the Pentagon and US Strategic Command
Headquarters (USSTRATCOM) at the
Offutt Air Force base in Nebraska.
The actions announced by Israel
would be carried out in close coordination with the
Pentagon. The command structure of the operation is
centralized and ultimately Washington will decide when
to launch the military operation.
US military sources have confirmed
that an aerial attack on Iran would involve a large
scale deployment comparable to the US "shock and awe"
bombing raids on Iraq in March 2003:
American air strikes on Iran
would vastly exceed the scope of the 1981 Israeli
attack on the Osiraq nuclear center in Iraq, and would
more resemble the opening days of the 2003 air
campaign against Iraq. Using the full force of
operational B-2 stealth bombers, staging from Diego
Garcia or flying direct from the United States,
possibly supplemented by F-117 stealth fighters
staging from al Udeid in Qatar or some other location
in theater, the two-dozen suspect nuclear sites would
be targeted.
Military planners could tailor
their target list to reflect the preferences of the
Administration by having limited air strikes that
would target only the most crucial facilities ... or
the United States could opt for a far more
comprehensive set of strikes against a comprehensive
range of WMD related targets, as well as conventional
and unconventional forces that might be used to
counterattack against US forces in Iraq
In November, US Strategic Command
conducted a major exercise of a "global strike plan"
entitled "Global Lightening". The latter involved a
simulated attack using both conventional and nuclear
weapons against a "fictitious enemy".
Following the "Global Lightening"
exercise, US Strategic Command declared an advanced
state of readiness (See our analysis below)
While Asian press reports stated
that the "fictitious enemy" in the Global Lightening
exercise was North Korea, the timing of the exercises,
suggests that they were conducted in anticipation of a
planned attack on Iran.
Consensus for Nuclear War
No dissenting political voices
have emerged from within the European Union.
There are ongoing consultations
between Washington, Paris and Berlin. Contrary to the
invasion of Iraq, which was opposed at the diplomatic
level by France and Germany, Washington has been
building "a consensus" both within the Atlantic Alliance
and the UN Security Council. This consensus pertains to
the conduct of a nuclear war, which could potentially
affect a large part of the Middle East Central Asian
region.
Moreover, a number of frontline
Arab states are now tacit partners in the US/ Israeli
military project. A year ago in November 2004, Israel's
top military brass met at NATO headquarters in Brussels
with their counterparts from six members of the
Mediterranean basin nations, including Egypt, Jordan,
Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania. A NATO-Israel
protocol was signed. Following these meetings, joint
military exercises were held off the coast of Syria
involving the US, Israel and Turkey. and in February
2005, Israel participated in military exercises and
"anti-terror maneuvers" together with several Arab
countries.
The media in chorus has
unequivocally pointed to Iran as a "threat to World
Peace".
The antiwar movement has swallowed
the media lies. The fact that the US and Israel are
planning a Middle East nuclear holocaust is not part of
the antiwar/ anti- globalization agenda.
The "surgical strikes" are
presented to world public opinion as a means to
preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
We are told that this is not a war
but a military peace-keeping operation, in the form of
aerial attacks directed against Iran's nuclear
facilities.
Mini-nukes: "Safe for Civilians"
The press reports, while revealing
certain features of the military agenda, largely serve
to distort the broader nature of the military operation,
which contemplates the preemptive use of tactical
nuclear weapons.
The war agenda is based on the
Bush administration's doctrine of "preemptive" nuclear
war under the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review.
Media disinformation has been used
extensively to conceal the devastating consequences of
military action involving nuclear warheads against Iran.
The fact that these surgical strikes would be carried
out using both conventional and nuclear weapons is not
an object of debate.
According to a 2003 Senate
decision, the new generation of tactical nuclear weapons
or "low yield" "mini-nukes", with an explosive capacity
of up to 6 times a Hiroshima bomb, are now considered
"safe for civilians" because the explosion is
underground.
Through a propaganda campaign
which has enlisted the support of "authoritative"
nuclear scientists, the mini-nukes are being presented
as an instrument of peace rather than war. The
low-yield nukes have now been cleared for "battlefield
use", they are slated to be used in the next stage of
America's "war on Terrorism" alongside conventional
weapons:
Administration officials argue
that low-yield nuclear weapons are needed as a
credible deterrent against rogue states.[Iran, North
Korea] Their logic is that existing nuclear weapons
are too destructive to be used except in a full-scale
nuclear war. Potential enemies realize this, thus they
do not consider the threat of nuclear retaliation to
be credible. However, low-yield nuclear weapons are
less destructive, thus might conceivably be used. That
would make them more effective as a deterrent. (
Opponents Surprised By Elimination of Nuke Research
Funds Defense News November 29, 2004)
In an utterly twisted logic,
nuclear weapons are presented as a means to building
peace and preventing "collateral damage". The Pentagon
has intimated, in this regard, that the ‘mini-nukes’
(with a yield of less than 5000 tons) are harmless to
civilians because the explosions ‘take place under
ground’. Each of these ‘mini-nukes’, nonetheless,
constitutes – in terms of explosion and potential
radioactive fallout – a significant fraction of the atom
bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Estimates of yield
for Nagasaki and Hiroshima indicate that they were
respectively of 21000 and 15000 tons (
http://www.warbirdforum.com/hiroshim.htm
In other words, the low yielding
mini-nukes have an explosive capacity of one third of a
Hiroshima bomb.
TEXT BOX
Mini-Nukes
The earth-penetrating capability of
the [nuclear] B61-11 is fairly limited, however.
Tests show it penetrates only 20 feet or so into
dry earth when dropped from an altitude of 40,000
feet. Even so, by burying itself into the ground
before detonation, a much higher proportion of the
explosion energy is transferred to ground shock
compared to a surface bursts. Any attempt to use
it in an urban environment, however, would result
in massive civilian casualties. Even at the low
end of its 0.3-300 kiloton yield range, the
nuclear blast will simply blow out a huge crater
of radioactive material, creating a lethal
gamma-radiation field over a large area.
The new definition of a nuclear
warhead has blurred the distinction between conventional
and nuclear weapons:
'It's a package (of nuclear and
conventional weapons). The implication of this
obviously is that nuclear weapons are being brought
down from a special category of being a last resort,
or sort of the ultimate weapon, to being just another
tool in the toolbox,' said Kristensen. (Japan Economic
News Wire, op cit)
We are a dangerous crossroads:
military planners believe their own propaganda.
The military manuals state that
this new generation of nuclear weapons are "safe" for
use in the battlefield. They are no longer a weapon of
last resort. There are no impediments or political
obstacles to their use. In this context, Senator Edward
Kennedy has accused the Bush Administration for having
developed "a generation of more useable nuclear
weapons."
The international community has
endorsed nuclear war in the name of World Peace.
"Making the World safer" is the
justification for launching a military operation which
could potentially result in a nuclear holocaust.
But nuclear holocausts are not
front page news! In the words of Mordechai Vanunu,
The Israeli government is
preparing to use nuclear weapons in its next war with
the Islamic world. Here where I live, people often
talk of the Holocaust. But each and every nuclear bomb
is a Holocaust in itself. It can kill, devastate
cities, destroy entire peoples. (See
interview with Mordechai Vanunu, December 2005).
Space and Earth Attack Command
Unit
A preemptive nuclear attack using
tactical nuclear weapons would be coordinated out of US
Strategic Command Headquarters at the Offutt Air Force
base in Nebraska, in liaison with US and coalition
command units in the Persian Gulf, the Diego Garcia
military base, Israel and Turkey.
Under its new mandate, USSTRATCOM
has a responsibility for "overseeing a global strike
plan" consisting of both conventional and nuclear
weapons. In military jargon, it is slated to play the
role of "a global integrator charged with the missions
of Space Operations; Information Operations; Integrated
Missile Defense; Global Command & Control; Intelligence,
Surveillance and Reconnaissance; Global Strike; and
Strategic Deterrence.... "
In January 2005, at the outset of
the military build-up directed against Iran, USSTRATCOM
was identified as "the lead Combatant Command for
integration and synchronization of DoD-wide efforts in
combating weapons of mass destruction."
JFCCSGS has the mandate to oversee
the launching of a nuclear attack in accordance with the
2002 Nuclear Posture Review, approved by the US Congress
in 2002. The NPR underscores the pre-emptive use of
nuclear warheads not only against "rogue states" but
also against China and Russia.
Since November, JFCCSGS is said
to be in "an advance state of readiness" following the
conduct of relevant military exercises. The
announcement was made in early December by U.S.
Strategic Command to the effect that the command unit
had achieved "an operational capability for rapidly
striking targets around the globe using nuclear or
conventional weapons." The exercises conducted in
November used "a fictional country believed to represent
North Korea" (see
David Ruppe, 2 December 2005):
"The new unit [JFCCSGS] has 'met
requirements necessary to declare an initial
operational capability' as of Nov. 18. A week before
this announcement, the unit finished a command-post
exercise, dubbed Global Lightening, which was linked
with another exercise, called Vigilant Shield,
conducted by the North American Aerospace Defend
Command, or NORAD, in charge of missile defense for
North America.
'After assuming several new
missions in 2002, U.S. Strategic Command was
reorganized to create better cooperation and
cross-functional awareness,' said Navy Capt. James
Graybeal, a chief spokesperson for STRATCOM. 'By May
of this year, the JFCCSGS has published a concept of
operations and began to develop its day-to-day
operational requirements and integrated planning
process.'
'The command's performance
during Global Lightning demonstrated its preparedness
to execute its mission of proving integrated space and
global strike capabilities to deter and dissuade
aggressors and when directed, defeat adversaries
through decisive joint global effects in support of
STRATCOM,' he added without elaborating about 'new
missions' of the new command unit that has around 250
personnel.
Nuclear specialists and
governmental sources pointed out that one of its main
missions would be to implement the 2001 nuclear
strategy that includes an option of preemptive nuclear
attacks on 'rogue states' with WMDs. (Japanese
Economic Newswire, 30 December 2005)
CONCEPT PLAN (CONPLAN) 8022
JFCCSGS is in an advanced state of
readiness to trigger nuclear attacks directed against
Iran or North Korea.
The operational implementation of
the Global Strike is called CONCEPT PLAN (CONPLAN) 8022.
The latter is described as "an actual plan that the Navy
and the Air Force translate into strike package for
their submarines and bombers,' (Ibid).
CONPLAN 8022 is 'the overall
umbrella plan for sort of the pre-planned strategic
scenarios involving nuclear weapons.'
'It's specifically focused on
these new types of threats -- Iran, North Korea --
proliferators and potentially terrorists too,' he
said. 'There's nothing that says that they can't use
CONPLAN 8022 in limited scenarios against Russian and
Chinese targets.'(According to Hans Kristensen, of the
Nuclear Information Project, quoted in Japanese
economic News Wire, op cit)
The mission of JFCCSGS is to
implement CONPLAN 8022, in other words to trigger a
nuclear war with Iran.
The Commander in Chief, namely
George W. Bush would instruct the Secretary of Defense,
who would then instruct the Joint Chiefs of staff to
activate CONPLAN 8022.
CONPLAN is distinct from other
military operations. it does not contemplate the
deployment of ground troops.
CONPLAN 8022 is different from
other war plans in that it posits a small-scale
operation and no "boots on the ground." The typical
war plan encompasses an amalgam of forces -- air,
ground, sea -- and takes into account the logistics
and political dimensions needed to sustain those
forces in protracted operations.... The global strike
plan is offensive, triggered by the perception of an
imminent threat and carried out by presidential
order.) (William
Arkin, Washington Post, May 2005)
The Role of Israel
Since late 2004, Israel has been
stockpiling US made conventional and nuclear weapons
systems in anticipation of an attack on Iran. This
stockpiling which is financed by US military aid was
largely completed in June 2005. Israel has taken
delivery from the US of several thousand "smart air
launched weapons" including some 500 'bunker-buster
bombs, which can also be used to deliver tactical
nuclear bombs.
Moreover, reported in late 2003,
Israeli Dolphin-class submarines equipped with US
Harpoon missiles armed with nuclear warheads are now
aimed at Iran. (See Gordon Thomas,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/THO311A.html
TEXT BOX
Late April 2005. Sale of deadly military hardware
to Israel. GBU-28 Buster Bunker Bombs:
Coinciding with Putin's visit to
Israel, the
US Defence Security Cooperation Agency
(Department of Defense) announced the sale of an
additional 100 bunker-buster bombs produced by
Lockheed Martin to Israel. This decision was
viewed by the US media as "a warning to Iran
about its nuclear ambitions."
The sale
pertains to the larger and more sophisticated
"Guided Bomb Unit-28 (GBU-28)
BLU-113 Penetrator"
(including the WGU-36A/B guidance control unit and
support equipment). The GBU-28 is described as "a
special weapon for penetrating hardened command
centers located deep underground. The fact of the
matter is that the GBU-28 is among the World's
most deadly "conventional" weapons used in the
2003 invasion of Iraq, capable of causing
thousands of civilian deaths through massive
explosions.
The Israeli
Air Force are slated to use the GBU-28s on their
F-15 aircraft.
Tehran has confirmed that it will
retaliate if attacked, in the form of ballistic missile
strikes directed against Israel (CNN, 8 Feb 2005). These
attacks, could also target US military facilities
in Iraq and Persian Gulf, which would immediately lead
us into a scenario of military escalation and all out
war.
At present there are three
distinct war theaters: Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine.
The air strikes against Iran could contribute to
unleashing a war in the broader Middle East Central
Asian region.
Moreover, the planned attack on
Iran should also be understood in relation to the timely
withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, which has
opened up a new space, for the deployment of Israeli
forces. The participation of Turkey in the US-Israeli
military operation is also a factor, following last
year's agreement reached between Ankara and Tel Aviv.
More recently, Tehran has beefed
up its air defenses through the acquisition of Russian
29 Tor M-1 anti-missile systems. In October, with
Moscow`s collaboration, "a Russian rocket lifted an
Iranian spy satellite, the Sinah-1, into orbit." (see
Chris Floyd)
The Sinah-1 is just the first of
several Iranian satellites set for Russian launches in
the coming months.
Thus the Iranians will soon have
a satellite network in place to give them early
warning of an Israeli attack, although it will still
be a pale echo of the far more powerful Israeli and
American space spies that can track the slightest
movement of a Tehran mullah’s beard. What’s more, late
last month Russia signed a $1 billion contract to sell
Iran an advanced defense system that can destroy
guided missiles and laser-guided bombs, the Sunday
Times reports. This too will be ready in the next few
months. (op.cit.)
Ground War
While a ground war is not
envisaged under CONPLAN, the aerial bombings could lead
through the process of escalation into a ground war.
Iranian troops could cross the
Iran-Iraq border and confront coalition forces inside
Iraq. Israeli troops and/or Special Forces could enter
into Lebanon and Syria.
In recent developments, Israel
plans to conduct military exercises as well as deploy
Special Forces in the mountainous areas of Turkey
bordering Iran and Syria with the collaboration of the
Ankara government:
Ankara and Tel Aviv have come to
an agreement on allowing the Israeli army to carry out
military exercises in the mountainous areas [in
Turkey] that border Iran.
[According to] ... a UAE
newspaper ..., according to the agreement reached by
the Joint Chief of Staff of the Israeli army, Dan
Halutz, and Turkish officials, Israel is to carry out
various military manoeuvres in the areas that border
Iran and Syria. [Punctuation as published here and
throughout.] [Dan Halutz] had gone to Turkey a few
days earlier.
Citing certain sources without
naming them, the UAE daily goes on to stress: The
Israeli side made the request to carry out the
manoeuvres because of the difficulty of passage in the
mountain terrains close to Iran's borders in winter.
The two Hakari [phonetic; not
traced] and Bulo [phonetic; not traced] units are to
take part in the manoeuvres that have not been
scheduled yet. The units are the most important of
Israel's special military units and are charged with
fighting terrorism and carrying out guerrilla warfare.
Earlier Turkey had agreed to
Israeli pilots being trained in the area bordering
Iran. The news [of the agreement] is released at a
time when Turkish officials are trying to evade the
accusation of cooperating with America in espionage
operations against its neighbouring countries Syria
and Iran. Since last week the Arab press has been
publishing various reports about Ankara's readiness
or, at least, agreement in principle to carry out
negotiations about its soil and air space being used
for action against Iran.
(E'temad website, Tehran, in
Persian 28 Dec 05, BBC Monitoring Services
Translation)
Concluding remarks
The implications are
overwhelming.
The so-called international
community has accepted the eventuality of a nuclear
holocaust.
Those who decide have swallowed
their own war propaganda.
A political consensus has
developed in Western Europe and North America regarding
the aerial attacks using tactical nuclear weapons,
without considering their devastating implications.
This profit driven military
adventure ultimately threatens the future of humanity.
What is needed in the months ahead
is a major thrust, nationally and internationally which
breaks the conspiracy of silence, which acknowledges
the dangers, which brings this war project to the
forefront of political debate and media attentiion, at
all levels, which confronts and requires political and
military leaders to take a firm stance against the US
sponsored nuclear war.
Ultimately what is required are
extensive international sanctions directed against the
United States of America and Israel.
Michel Chossudovsky is the author of the
international best seller "The Globalization of Poverty
" published in eleven languages. He is Professor of
Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of
the Center for Research on Globalization, at www.globalresearch.ca
. He is also a contributor to the Encyclopaedia
Britannica. His most recent book is entitled: America’s "War on Terrorism", Global
Research, 2005.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are
the sole responsibility of the author and do not
necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on
Globalization.
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Research articles on community internet sites as long as
the text & title are not modified. The source and the
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The Unthinkable: The US- Israeli Nuclear War on Iran
Selected Global Research Articles
by Michel Chossudovsky
january 21, 2007
The World is at the
crossroads of the most serious crisis in modern history.
The US has embarked on a military adventure, "a long
war", which threatens the future of humanity.
At no point since the first atomic bomb was dropped on
Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945, has humanity been closer
to the unthinkable, a nuclear holocaust which could
potentially spread, in terms of radioactive fallout,
over a large part of the Middle East. There is mounting evidence that the Bush
Administration in liaison with Israel and NATO is
planning the launching of a nuclear war against Iran,
ironically, in retaliation for its nonexistent nuclear
weapons program. The US-Israeli military operation
is said to be in "an advanced state of readiness".
If such a
plan were to be launched, the war would escalate and
eventually engulf the entire Middle-East Central Asian
region.
The war could extend beyond the region, as some
analysts have suggested, ultimately leading us into a
World War III scenario.
In this regard, the structure of military alliances is
crucial. China and Russia have entered into farreaching
military cooperation agreements with Iran. The latter
have a direct bearing on the conflict. Iran possesses an
advanced air defense system as well as capabilities to
target US and allied positions in Iraq and the Gulf
States, as demonstrated in recent military exercises.
The
militarization of the Eastern Mediterranean is broadly
under the jurisdiction of NATO in liaison with Israel.
Directed against Syria, it is conducted under the façade
of a UN peace-keeping mission. In this context, the war
on Lebanon last Summer must be viewed as a stage of the
broader US sponsored military road-map.
The naval
armada in the Persian Gulf is largely under US command,
with the participation of Canada.
The naval
buildup is coordinated with the air attacks. The
planning of aerial bombings of Iran started in mid-2004,
pursuant to the formulation of CONPLAN 8022 in early
2004. In May 2004, National Security Presidential
Directive NSPD 35 entitled Nuclear Weapons Deployment
Authorization was issued. While its contents remain
classified, the presumption is that NSPD 35 pertains to
the stockpiling and deployment of tactical nuclear
weapons in the Middle East war theater in compliance
with CONPLAN 8022.
Despite
Pentagon statements which describe tactical nuclear
weapons as "safe for the surrounding civilian
population", the use of nukes in a conventional war
theater would trigger a nuclear holocaust.The resulting
radioactive contamination, which threatens future
generations, would by no means be limited to the Middle
East.
In 2005, Vice President Dick Cheney is reported to have
instructed USSTRATCOM to draw up a contingency plan "to
be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist
attack on the United States". The presumption was that
if such a 9/11 type event were to take place, Iran
would, according to Cheney, be behind it, thereby
providing a pretext for punitive bombings, much in the
same way as the US sponsored attacks on Afghanistan in
October 2001, allegedly in retribution for the alleged
support of the Taliban government to the 9/11 terrorists
More recently, several analysts have focussed on the
creation of
a "Gulf of Tonkin incident", which would be used by
the Bush administration as a pretext to wage war on
Iran.
We bring to the attention of our readers a selection of
Global Research articles, which document various aspects
of US-Israeli war preparations.
It is essential that this information reaches the
broader public. We invite our subscribers and readers to
distribute and forward these articles far and wide.
To reverse the tide of war requires a massive
campaign of networking and outreach to inform people
across the land, nationally and internationally, in
neighborhoods, workplaces, parishes, schools,
universities, municipalities, on the dangers of a US
sponsored war which contemplates the use of nuclear
weapons. The message should be loud and clear: It is not
Iran which is a threat to global security but the United
States of America and Israel.
Debate and
discussion must also take place within the Military and
Intelligence community, particularly with regard to the
use of tactical nuclear weapons, within the corridors of
the US Congress, in municipalities and at all levels of
government. Ultimately, the legitimacy of the political
and military actors in high office must be challenged.
There seems to be a reluctance by members of Congress to
exercise their powers under the US Constitution, with a
view to preventing the unthinkable: the onslaught of a
US sponsored nuclear war. The consequences of this
inaction could be devastating. Once the decision is
taken at the political level, it will be very difficult
to turn the clock backwards.
Moreover, the antiwar movement has not addressed the US
sponsored nuclear threat on Iran in a consistent way,
in part due to divisions within its ranks, in part due
to lack of information. Moreover, a significant sector
of the antiwar movement considers that the "threat of
Islamic terrorism" is real. "We are against the war, but
we support the war on terrorism." This ambivalent
stance ultimately serves to reinforce the legitimacy of
the US national security doctrine which is predicated on
waging the "Global War on Terrorism" (GWOT).
At this juncture, with the popularity of the Bush-Cheney
regime at an all time low, a real opportunity exists to
initiate an impeachment process, which could
contribute to temporarily stalling the military agenda.
The
corporate media also bear a heavy responsibility for the
cover-up of US sponsored war crimes. Until recently
these war preparations involving the use of nuclear
weapons have been scarcely covered by the corporate
media. The latter must also be forcefully challenged for
their biased coverage of the Middle East war.
What is
needed is to break the conspiracy of silence, expose the
media lies and distortions, confront the criminal nature
of the US Administration and of those governments which
support it, its war agenda as well as its so-called
"Homeland Security agenda" which has already defined the
contours of a police State.
It is
essential to bring the US-Israeli war project to the
forefront of political debate, particularly in North
America, Western Europe and Israel. Political and
military leaders who are opposed to the war must take a
firm stance, from within their respective institutions.
Citizens must take a stance individually and
collectively against war.
Michel
Chossudovsky, Global Research, 20 January 2007
Selected Articles on the Proposed US-Israeli
Nuclear War on Iran
The new nuclear doctrine turns concepts &
realities upside down. It states that nuclear
weapons are "safe" and their use will ensure
"minimal collateral damage".
If Bush and Cheney are not
stopped immediately by means of impeachment, they
could readily set off World War III in the
volatile Middle East and Central Asia.
The pieces are moving.
They’ll be in place by the end of February. The
media will begin to release stories to sell a
strike against Iran. Watch for the outrage stuff.
Muslim countries possess
three quarters of the World's oil reserves. In
contrast, the United States of America has barely
2 percent of total oil reserves.
The Russian, Chinese and
Iran war exercises conducted since August are part
of a carefully coordinated endeavor, in response
to the US-NATO military build-up
The Pentagon has blurred
the distinction between conventional battlefield
weapons & nuclear bombs. The nuclear bunker buster
bomb is presented as an instrument of peace-making
& regime change, which will enhance global
security.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are
the sole responsibility of the author and do not
necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on
Globalization.
The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global
Research articles on community internet sites as long as
the text & title are not modified. The source and the
author's copyright must be displayed. For publication of
Global Research articles in print or other forms
including commercial internet sites, contact:
crgeditor@yahoo.com
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of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better
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The material on this site is distributed without profit
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receiving it for research and educational purposes. If
you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other
than "fair use" you must request permission from the
copyright owner.
Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot that it do
singe yourself.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
The use of depleted uranium weaponry by the United
States, defying all international treaties, will slowly annihilate all
species on earth including the human species, and yet this country
continues to do so with full knowledge of its destructive potential.
LEUREN MORET
Since 1991, the United States has staged four
wars using depleted uranium weaponry, illegal under all international
treaties, conventions and agreements, as well as under the US military
law. The continued use of this illegal radioactive weaponry, which has
already contaminated vast regions with low level radiation and will
contaminate other parts of the world over time, is indeed a world
affair and an international issue. The deeper purpose is revealed by
comparing regions now contaminated with depleted uranium — from Egypt,
the Middle East, Central Asia and the northern half of India — to the
US geostrategic imperatives described in Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 1997
book The Grand Chessboard.
Fig. 1: Brzezinski’s map of the Eurasian
Chessboard
SOUTH REGION: “This huge
region, torn by volatile hatreds and surrounded by competing
powerful neighbors, is likely to be a major battlefield, both
for wars among nation-states and, more likely, for protracted
ethnic and religious violence. Whether India acts as a
restraint or whether it takes advantage of some opportunity to
impose its will on Pakistan will greatly affect the regional
scope of the likely conflicts. The internal strains within
Turkey and Iran are likely not only to get worse but to greatly
reduce the stabilizing role these states are capable of playing
within this volcanic region. Such developments will in turn
make it more difficult to assimilate the new Central Asian
states into the international community, while also adversely
affecting the American-dominated security of the Persian Gulf
region. In any case, both America and the international
community may be faced here with a challenge that will dwarf the
recent crisis in the former Yugoslavia.” Brzezinski
The fact is that the United States and its
military partners have staged four nuclear wars, "slipping nukes under
the wire" by using dirty bombs and dirty weapons in countries the US
needs to control. Depleted uranium aerosols will permanently
contaminate vast regions and slowly destroy the genetic future of
populations living in those regions, where there are resources which
the US must control, in order to establish and maintain American
primacy.
Described as the Trojan Horse of nuclear war,
depleted uranium is the weapon that keeps killing. The half-life of
Uranium-238 is 4.5 billion years, the age of the earth. And, as
Uranium-238 decays into daughter radioactive products, in four steps
before turning into lead, it continues to release more radiation at
each step. There is no way to turn it off, and there is no way to
clean it up. It meets the US Government’s own definition of Weapons of
Mass Destruction.
After forming microscopic and submicroscopic
insoluble Uranium oxide particles on the battlefield, they remain
suspended in air and travel around the earth as a radioactive
component of atmospheric dust, contaminating the environment,
indiscriminately killing, maiming and causing disease in all living
things where rain, snow and moisture remove it from the atmosphere.
Global radioactive contamination from atmospheric testing was the
equivalent of 40,000 Hiroshima bombs, and still contaminates the
atmosphere and lower orbital space today. The amount of low level
radioactive pollution from depleted uranium released since 1991, is
many times more (deposited internally in the body), than was released
from atmospheric testing fallout.
A 2003 independent report for the European
Parliament by the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR), reports
that based on Chernobyl studies, low level radiation risk is 100 to
1000 times greater than the International Committee for Radiation
Protection models estimate which are based on the flawed Atomic and
Hydrogen Bomb Studies conducted by the US Government. Referring to the
extreme killing effects of radiation on biological systems, Dr.
Rosalie Bertell, one of the 46 international radiation expert authors
of the ECRR report, describes it as:
"The concept of species annihilation means a
relatively swift, deliberately induced end to history, culture,
science, biological reproduction and memory. It is the ultimate
human rejection of the gift of life, an act which requires a new
word to describe it: omnicide."
1943 MANHATTAN PROJECT BLUEPRINT FOR DEPLETED
URANIUM
In a declassified memo to General Leslie R.
Groves, dated October 30, 1943, three of the top physicists in the
Manhattan Project, Dr James B Conant, A H Compton, and H C Urey, made
their recommendation, as members of the Subcommittee of the S-1
Executive Committee, on the ‘Use of Radioactive Materials as a
Military Weapon’:
"As a gas warfare instrument the material
would be ground into particles of microscopic size to form dust and
smoke and distributed by a ground-fired projectile, land vehicles,
or aerial bombs. In this form it would be inhaled by personnel. The
amount necessary to cause death to a person inhaling the material is
extremely small … There are no known methods of treatment for such a
casualty … it will permeate a standard gas mask filter in quantities
large enough to be extremely damaging."
As a Terrain Contaminant:
"To be used in this manner, the radioactive
materials would be spread on the ground either from the air or from
the ground if in enemy controlled territory. In order to deny
terrain to either side except at the expense of exposing personnel
to harmful radiations … Areas so contaminated by radioactive
material would be dangerous until the slow natural decay of the
material took place … for average terrain no decontaminating methods
are known. No effective protective clothing for personnel seems
possible of development. … Reservoirs or wells would be contaminated
or food poisoned with an effect similar to that resulting from
inhalation of dust or smoke."
Internal Exposure:
"… Particles smaller than 1µ [micron] are more
likely to be deposited in the alveoli where they will either remain
indefinitely or be absorbed into the lymphatics or blood. … could
get into the gastro-intestinal tract from polluted water, or food,
or air. … may be absorbed from the lungs or G-I tract into the blood
and so distributed throughout the body."
Both the fission products and depleted uranium
waste from the Atomic Bomb Project were to be utilised under this
plan. The pyrophoric nature of depleted uranium, which causes it to
begin to burn at very low temperatures from friction in the gun
barrel, made it an ideal radioactive gas weapon then and now. Also it
was more available because the amount of depleted uranium produced was
much greater than the amount of fission products produced in 1943.
Britain had thoughts of using poisoned gas on
Iraq long before 1991:
"I am strongly in favour of using poisoned
gas against uncivilized tribes. The moral effect should be good...
and it would spread a lively terror..." (Winston Churchill
commenting on the British use of poison gas against the Iraqis
after the First World War).
GUIDED WEAPONS SYSTEMS
Depleted uranium weapons were first given by the
US to Israel for use under US supervision in the 1973 Sinai war
against the Arabs. Since then the US has tested, manufactured, and
sold depleted uranium weapons systems to 29 countries. An
international taboo prevented their use until 1991, when the US broke
the taboo and used them for the first time, on the battlefields of
Iraq and Kuwait.
The US military admitted using depleted uranium
projectiles in tanks and planes, but warheads in missiles and bombs
are classified or referred to as a ‘dense’ or ‘mystery metal’. Dai
Williams, a researcher at the 2003 World Depleted Uranium Weapons
Conference, reported finding 11 US patents for guided weapons systems
with the term ‘depleted uranium’ or ‘dense metal’, which from the
density can only be depleted uranium or tungsten, in order to fit the
dimensions of the warhead.
Figure 2 - Hard target guided weapons in 2002: smart bombs &
cruise missiles with "dense metal" warheads (updated September 2002)
source: Depleted
Uranium weapons in 2001-2002: Occupational, public and
environmental health issues - Mystery Metal Nightmare in
Afghanistan? Collected studies and public domain sources compiled
by Dai Williams, first edition 31 January 2002
Extensive carpet bombing, grid bombing, and the
frequent use of missiles and depleted uranium bullets on buildings in
densely populated areas has occurred in Iraq, Yugoslavia, and
Afghanistan. The discovery that bomb craters in Yugoslavia in 1999
were radioactive, and that an unexploded missile in 1999 contained a
depleted uranium warhead, implies that the total amount of depleted
uranium used since 1991 has been greatly underestimated. Of even
greater concern, is that 100 per cent of the depleted uranium in bombs
and missiles is aerosolized upon impact and immediately released into
the atmosphere. This amount can be as much as 1.5 tons in the large
bombs. In bullets and cannon shells, the amount aerosolized is 40-70
per cent, leaving pieces and unexploded shells in the environment, to
provide new sources of radioactive dust and contamination of the
groundwater from dissolved depleted uranium metal long after the
battles are over, as reported in a 2003 report by the UN Environmental
Program on Yugoslavia. Considering that the US has admitted using 34
tons of depleted uranium from bullets and cannon shells in Yugoslavia,
and the fact that 35,000 NATO bombing missions occurred there in 1999,
potentially the amount of depleted uranium contaminating Yugoslavia
and transboundary drift into surrounding countries is staggering.
Because of mysterious illnesses and post-war
birth defects reported among Gulf War veterans and civilians in
southern Iraq, and radiation related illnesses in UN Peacekeepers
serving in Yugoslavia, growing concerns about radiation effects and
environmental damage has stirred up international outrage about the
use of radioactive weapons by the US after 1991. At the 2003 meeting
of parties to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, discussing the U.S.
desire to maintain its nuclear weapons stockpile, the Hiroshima Mayor
Tadatoshi AKIBA stated,
"It is incumbent upon the rest of the world
... to stand up now and tell all of our military leaders that we
refuse to be threatened or protected by nuclear weapons. We refuse
to live in a world of continually recycled fear and hatred".
ILLEGAL UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW
Four reasons why using depleted uranium weapons
violates the UN Convention on Human Rights:
LEGALITY TEST FOR WEAPONS UNDER INTERNATIONAL
LAW
TEMPORAL TEST – Weapons must not continue to
act after the battle is over.
ENVIRONMENTAL TEST – Weapons must not be unduly
harmful to the environment.
TERRITORIAL TEST – Weapons must not act off of
the battlefield.
HUMANENESS TEST – Weapons must not kill or
wound inhumanly.
International Human Rights and humanitarian lawyer,
Karen Parker, determined that depleted uranium weaponry fails the four
tests for legal weapons under international law, and that it is also
illegal under the definition of a ‘poison’ weapon. Through Karen
Parker’s continued efforts, a sub-commission of the UN Human Rights
Commission determined in 1996 that depleted uranium is a weapon of
mass destruction that should not be used:
RESOLUTION 1996/16 ON STOPPING THE USE OF
DEPLETED URANIUM - DU
The military use of DU violates current
international humanitarian law, including the principle that there
is no unlimited right to choose the means and methods of warfare
(Art. 22 Hague Convention VI (HCIV); Art. 35 of the Additional
Protocol to the Geneva (GP1); the ban on causing unnecessary
suffering and superfluous injury (Art. 23 §le HCIV; Art. 35 §2
GP1), indiscriminate warfare (Art. 51 §4c and 5b GP1) as well as
the use of poison or poisoned weapons.
The deployment and use of DU violate the
principles of international environmental and human rights
protection. They contradict the right to life established by the
Resolution 1996/16 of the UN Subcommittee on Human Rights.
FOUR NUCLEAR WARS
"Military Men Are Just Dumb,
Stupid, Animals To Be Used
As Pawns In Foreign Policy"
—
Henry Kissinger
Although restricted to battlefields in Iraq and
Kuwait, the 1991 Gulf War was one of the most toxic and
environmentally devastating wars in world history. Oil well fires, the
bombing of oil tankers and oil wells which released millions of
gallons of oil into the Gulf of Arabia and desert, and the devastation
from tanks and heavy equipment destroyed the desert ecosystem. The
long term and far reaching effects, and dispersal of at least 340 tons
of depleted uranium weapons, had a global environmental effect. Smoke
from the oil fires was later found in deposits in South America, the
Himalayas and Hawaii. Large annual dust storms originating in North
Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia will quickly spread the
radioactive contamination around the world, and weathering of old
depleted uranium munitions on battlefields and other areas will
provide new sources of radioactive contamination in future years.
Downwind from the radioactive devastation in Iraq, Israel is also
suffering from large increases in breast cancer, leukemia and
childhood diabetes.
RADIATION RESPECTS NO BORDERS, NO SOCIOECONOMIC
CLASS, AND NO RELIGION
The expendability of the sanctity of life to
achieve US political ends was described by US soldiers on the ground,
and from the air, along the Highway of Death in Iraq in 1991:
"Iraqi soldiers [whether they] be young boys
or old men. They were a sad sight, with absolutely no fight left in
them. Their leaders had cut their Achilles’ tendons so they couldn’t
run away and then left them. What weapons they had were in bad
repair and little ammunition was on hand. They were hungry, cold,
and scared. The hate I had for any Iraqi dissipated. These people
had no business being on a battlefield."
(S
Hersh, New Yorker, May 22, 2000)
American pilots bombing and strafing, with
depleted uranium weapons, helpless retreating Iraqi soldiers who had
already surrendered, exclaimed:
"We toasted him…. we hit the jackpot….a turkey
shoot….shooting fish in a barrel….basically just sitting ducks…
There’s just nothing like it. It’s the biggest Fourth of July show
you’ve ever seen, and to see those tanks just ‘boom’, and more stuff
just keeps spewing out of them… they just become white hot. It’s
wonderful."
(L A Times and Washington Post, both February 27,
1991)
Nearly 700,000 American Gulf War Veterans returned
to the US from a war that lasted just a few weeks. Today more than
240,000 of those soldiers are on permanent medical disability, and
over 11,000 are dead. In a US Government study on post-Gulf War babies
born to 251 veterans, 67 per cent of the babies were reported to have
serious illnesses or serious birth defects. They were born without
eyes, ears, had missing organs, fused fingers, thyroid or other
malfunctions. Depleted uranium in the semen of the soldiers internally
contaminated their wives. Severe birth defects have been reported in
babies born to contaminated civilians in Iraq, Yugoslavia, and
Afghanistan and the incidence and severity of defects is increasing
over time. Women in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq are afraid now to
have babies, and when they do give birth, instead of asking if it is a
girl or a boy, they ask ‘is it normal?’.
KNOWN ILLNESSES INFLICTED BY INTERNALIZATION OF
DEPLETED URANIUM PARTICLES
Table 1: Compiled by Leuren Moret from Interviews with
Gulf War Vets and their families
GENERAL
abnormal births and birth defects
abnormal metabolism of semen: contains
amine & ammonium alkaline
acute autoimmune symptoms
(lung-, liver-, kidney failure)
acute myeloid leukemia
(deadly within days or weeks)
acute immune depression
acute respiratory failure
asthma
auto-immune deficiencies
Balkan-syndrome
blood in stools and urine
body function control loss
bone cancer
brain damage
brain tumors
burning semen
burning sensations
calcium loss in body
cardiovascular signs or symptoms
chemical sensitivities
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
chronic kidney and liver disorders
chronic myeloid leukemia
chronic respiratory infections
colon cancer
confusion
diarrhea
digestive problems
dizziness
Epstein Barr Syndrome
fluid buildup
fibromyalgia
gastrointestinal signs/symptoms
general fatigue
genetic alterations
glandular carcinoma
Gulf war-syndrome
headaches (severe)
heart attack/disease
high blood pressure
high frequency of micturition
Hodgkin lymphoma
immune system deficiency
infections
insomnia
involuntary movements
joint/muscle/leg pain
kidney failure/damage
leukemia
liver carcinoma
loss of feeling in fingers
Lou Gehrigs Disease -ALS
low blood oxygen saturation
( low HbO2)
low lung volume
lung damage
lung cancer
lymph cancer
lymphoma
melanoma
memory loss
metallic taste
Microplasma fermentans/
incognitis infections
mood swings – violence
homicide/suicide
multiple cancers
multiple myeloma
myeloma
muscle pain
nerve damage
neuro-muscular degenerative
disease
non-Hodgkin lymphoma
other malignancies
pancreas carcinoma
Parkinsons disease
petit & grand mal fits
rashes
reactive airway disease
reduced IQ
respiratory ailments
shortness of breath
sinus diseases
skin cancer
skin damage: sweat glands
with trapped du-particles
skin infections
skin spotting
smell, loss of
sleep disturbances
stiffening of fingers
teeth crumbling
thyroid cancer
thyroid disease
unable to walk
unusual fevers/night sweats
unusual hair loss
vision problems
weight loss
CHILDREN
alimentary disorders
asthma
bladder & sphincter paralysis
blindness
complete range of known and
unknown Congenital Defects
deafness
dyspraxia
headache
kidney disease
leukemia
lymphoma
malformations of legs, arms,
toes & fingers
respiratory disorders
stillbirth
neural tube defects
FEMALE
abdominal pain
breast cancer
breast cancer at very young
age (20)
cervix cancer
endometriosis
headaches
incontinence
joint pain
lung cancer at age 20 and
non-smoker
menstrual problems
miscarriages
nausea
ovarian cancer
paralysis of digestive system
thyroid problems
uterine cancer
MALE
(acute) headache
acute myeloid leukemia
arthritis
avoiding people
breathing problems
(stridor)
chemical sensitivity
chronic myeloid leukemia
endometriosis in partners
gastrointestinal disorder
hip and leg pain
joint pain
lung cancer at young age
lymphoma
skin cancer
skin eruptions
stomach pain
suicide
testicular cancer
unable to walk
Soldiers who served in Bradley fighting vehicles,
where it was common to sit on ammunition boxes where depleted uranium
ammunition was stored, are now reporting that many have rectal cancer.
For the first time, medical doctors in Yugoslavia
and Iraq have reported multiple in situ unrelated cancers developing
in patients, and even in families who are living in highly
contaminated areas. Even stranger, they report that cancer was unknown
in previous generations. Very rare and unusual cancers and birth
defects have also been reported to be increasing above normal levels
prior to 1991, not only in war torn countries, but in neighbouring
countries from transboundary contamination.
Dr. Keith Baverstock, a senior radiation advisor
who was on the staff of the World Health Organization, co-authored a
report in November 2001, warning that the long-term health effects
of depleted uranium would endanger Iraq’s civilian population, and
that the dry climate would increase exposure from the tiny particles
blowing around and be inhaled for years to come. The WHO refused to
give him permission to publish the study, bowing to pressure from the
IAEA. Dr. Baverstock released the damning report to
the media in February 2004. Pekka Haavisto, Chairman of the UN
Environment Program’s Post-Conflict Assessment Unit in Geneva, shares
Baverstock’s anxiety about depleted uranium but UNEP experts have not
been allowed into Iraq to assess the pollution.
"DEPLETED URANIUM SCARE" - Claimed by President
George W. Bush on the official White House website:
"During the Gulf War, coalition forces used
armor-piercing ammunition made from depleted uranium, which is
ideal for the purpose because of its great density. In recent
years, the Iraqi regime has made substantial efforts to promote
the false claim that the depleted uranium rounds fired by
coalition forces have caused cancers and birth defects in Iraq.
Iraq has distributed horrifying pictures of children with birth
defects and linked them to depleted uranium. The campaign has two
major propaganda assets:"
"Uranium is a name that has frightening
associations in the mind of the average person, which makes the
lie relatively easy to sell; and Iraq could take advantage of an
established international network of antinuclear activists who had
already launched their own campaign against depleted uranium."
"But scientists working for the World Health
Organization, the UN Environmental Programme, and the European
Union could find no health effects linked to exposure to depleted
uranium."
The US war in Afghanistan made it clear that this
was not a war IN the third world, but a war AGAINST the third world.
In Afghanistan where 800 to 1000 tons of depleted uranium was
estimated to have been used in 2001, even uneducated Afghanis
understand the impact these weapons have had on their children and on
future generations:
"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.
When I saw my deformed grandson, I realized that my hopes of the
future have vanished for good, 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."
(Jooma Khan of Laghman province, March 2003)
In 1990, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA)
wrote a report warning about the potential health and environmental
catastrophe from the use of depleted uranium weapons. The health
effects had been known for a long time. The report sent to the UK
government warned "in their estimation, if 50 tonnes of residual DU
dust remained ‘in the region’ there could be half a million extra
cancers by the end of the century [2000]." Estimates of depleted
uranium weapons used in 1991, now range from the Pentagon’s admitted
325 tons, to other scientific bodies who put the figure as high as 900
tons. That would make the number of estimated cancers as high as
9,000,000, depending on the amount used in the 1991 Gulf War. In the
2003 Gulf War, estimates of 2200 tons have been given — causing about
22,000,000 new cancer cases. Altogether the total number of cancer
patients estimated using the UKAEA data would be 25,250,000. In July
of 1998, the CIA estimated the population of Iraq to be approximately
24,683,313.
Ironically, the UN Resolution 661 calling for
sanctions against Iraq, was signed on Hiroshima Day, August 6, 1990.
THE PARALLELS
War can really cause no economic boom, at least
not directly, since an increase in wealth never does result from
destruction of goods.
– Ludwig von Mises
The parallels between Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan
are startlingly similar. The weapons used, the unfair treaties offered
by the US, and the bombing and destruction of the environment and
entire infrastructure. In every city of Iraq and Yugoslavia, the
television and radio stations were bombed.
Educational centres were targeted, and stores where
educational materials were sold were destroyed on nearly the same day.
Under UN sanctions, Iraq was not even allowed pencils for
schoolchildren. Cultural antiquities and historical treasures were
targeted and destroyed in all three countries, a kind of cultural and
historical cleansing, a collective national psychic trauma.
The permanent radioactive contamination and
environmental devastation of all three countries is unprecedented,
resulting in huge increases in cancer and birth defects following the
attacks. These will increase over time from unknown effects due to
chronic exposure, increasing internal levels of radiation from
depleted uranium dust, and permanent genetic effects passed on to
future generations. Clearly, this has been a genocidal plan from the
start.
Fig. 3: Map of regions within a 1000 mile radius
of Baghdad and Afghanistan which have been contaminated with
depleted uranium since 1991. Depleted uranium dust will be
repeatedly recycled throughout this dry region, and also carried
around the world. More than ten times the amount of radiation,
released during atmospheric testing, has been released from depleted
uranium weaponry since 1991. In 2002 the US government admitted that
every person living in the US between 1957 and 1963 was internally
contaminated with radiation. Note that the contaminated region
corresponds with the "South" region on the Eurasian chessboard in
Fig. 1.
What has happened to Human Rights, to the Rights of
the Child, to civil society, and to common humanity?
It is up to the citizens of the world to stop the
depleted uranium wars, and future nuclear wars, causing irreversible
devastation. There are just a few generations left before the collapse
of our environment, and then it will be too late. We can be no
healthier than the health of the environment — we breathe the same
air, drink the same water, eat food from the same soil.
"Our collective gene pool of life, evolving for
hundreds of millions of years has been seriously damaged in less
than the past fifty. The time remaining to reverse this culture of
‘lemming death’ is on the wane. In the future, what will you tell
our grandchildren about what you did in the prime of your life to
turn around this death process?" (Rosalie Bertell, 1982)
THE DEEPER PURPOSE: G*O*D* [Gold, Oil, and Drugs]
"We must become the owners, or at any rate the
controllers at the source, of at least a proportion of the oil
which we require."
(British Royal Commission, agreeing with Winston Churchill's
policy towards Iraq 1913).
"It is clear our nation is reliant upon big
foreign oil. More and more of our imports come from overseas."
(US President George W. Bush, Beaverton, Oregon, Sep. 25, 2000).
"If they turn on the radars we're going to blow
up their goddamn SAMs (surface-to-air missiles). They know we own
their country. We own their airspace... We dictate the way they
live and talk. And that's what's great about America right now.
It's a good thing, especially when there's a lot of oil out there
we need."
(US Brig. General William Looney in 1999, referring to Iraq).
Millions of years ago, before India crashed into
the Eurasian continent and uplifted the Himalayas, the ancient shallow
Tethys sea stretched from the Atlantic across what is now the
Mediterranean, Black, Caspian and Aral seas. Rich oil deposits are now
located where ancient life accumulated and ‘cooked’ under just the
right conditions to form large oil deposits in the ancient sediments.
Long before 1991, Unocal in Afghanistan, Amoco in Yugoslavia, and
various oil companies interested in Iraq oil deposits, had conducted
extensive exploration and characterisation of oil deposits in the
Middle East and Central Asian regions, including the northern half of
India.
Britain has maintained an interest in Middle Eastern
oil deposits for a century, and has been the staunchest military
partner of the US since the first depleted uranium war in 1991 in
Iraq. Germany, another military partner in Yugoslavia with forces now
in Afghanistan, was one of the major economic beneficiaries of the
breakup of Yugoslavia and the colonisation of the Balkans. US interest
in Yugoslavia had much to do with building pipelines from Central Asia
to the Mediterranean warm water ports in Yugoslavia. A silent and
hidden partnership between the US and Japan provided large amounts of
cash from Japan to finance the 1991 Iraq and 1995/1999 Yugoslavian
wars, with additional help in Afghanistan by providing not only cash,
but fuel for the war, from Aegis warships of the Japanese Self Defense
Forces in the Indian Ocean. Nippon Steel, Mitsubishi, and Halliburton
are now partners in a Central Asian oil pipeline project. In 2004,
despite much citizen opposition in Japan, the Japanese government has
sent Self Defense Forces to Iraq for ‘reconstruction’. This action
taken by the Japanese government, of placing troops on the ground in a
war zone, will lead to rescinding Article 9 of the Japanese
Constitution, which forever prohibits military aggression by Japan.
THE IRON TRIANGLE (all under one roof): MILITARY, BIG
BUSINESS, POLITICS
The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the
people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it
becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its
essence, is Fascism -- ownership of government by an individual,
by a group, or any controlling private power.
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
But what do oil, military partners, depleted
uranium wars, and US foreign policy have to do with nuclear weapons?
The answer came to me in 1991 when I became a whistleblower at the
Livermore Nuclear Weapons Laboratory near San Francisco, California.
Richard Berta, the Western Regional Inspector for the Department of
Energy, told me "The Pentagon exists for the oil companies… and the
nuclear weapons labs exist for the Pentagon."
Depleted uranium was used beginning in 1991 for
three reasons:
To test the radiobiological effects of 4th generation
nuclear weapons, which are still under development
To blur and break down the distinction between conventional and
nuclear weapons
To make it easier to reintroduce nuclear weapons into the US
military arsenal
Today, the US is number one in 4th
generation nuclear weapons research and development, followed by Japan
and Germany tied for number two, and Russia and other countries
follow.
Figure 4: Depleted uranium and 4th
generation nuclear weapons
Map by Mika TSUTSUMI 12/12/03
The Carlyle Group, a private massive equity firm,
the 12th largest defense business with an obscenely high
profit margin, is a business "arrangement" between the Bush and Bin
Laden families, wealthy Saudis, former British Prime Minister John
Major, James Baker III, Afsaneh Masheyekhi, Frank Carlucci, Colin
Powell, other former US Government administrators, and Madeleine
Albright’s daughter. The Carlyle Group is the ‘gatekeeper’ to the
Saudi investment community. It owns 70 percent of Lockheed Martin
Marietta, the largest military contractor in the US, and because
Carlyle is privately owned, has no scrutiny or accountability
whatsoever. A journalist who calls himself ‘a skunk at the garden
party’ described investigating the Carlyle Group, he said ‘it’s like
shadow boxing with a ghost’. The Group hires as lobbyists the best
known politicians from around the world, in order to influence the
politics of war, and privately profit from their previous public
policies. The conflict of interest is obvious: President George W.
Bush is creating wars as his father, former President George Bush, is
globally peddling weapons and "protection". Lockheed Martin Marietta
now owns Sandia Laboratories, a private contractor that makes the
trigger for nuclear weapons, with a Sandia laboratory facility across
the street from Los Alamos and Livermore National Laboratories, where
the nuclear bombs are made.
At the May 2003 University of California Regents
meeting which I attended, Admiral Linton Brooks was present and newly
in charge of the nuclear weapons programme under the Department of
Energy. Admiral Brooks informed California Lt. Governor Cruz
Bustamante and the UC Regents that the management contract for the
nuclear weapons laboratories, held unchallenged by the University of
California for over 60 years, will be put up for competitive bid in
2005. The favoured institution, with a faculty member on the ‘blue
ribbon committee’ making the contract award, is the University of
Texas. This privatisation and management contract transfer of the US
nuclear weapons programme will put control of the US nuclear weapons
programme close to the Carlyle Group. The incestuous relationship
between the US government, private companies, and the Bush and Bin
Laden families in a way answers many of the lingering questions in
everyone’s minds about many of the ill fated decisions and policies
that have been implemented.
But who is
Osama bin Laden really?
Let me rephrase that. What is Osama bin Laden?
He’s America’s
family secret. He is the American President’s dark
doppelganger. The savage twin of all that purports to be
beautiful and civilised. He has been sculpted from the spare
rib of a world laid to waste by America’s foreign policy; its
gunboat diplomacy, its nuclear arsenal, its vulgarly stated
policy of "full spectrum dominance," its chilling disregard for
non-American lives, its barbarous military interventions, its
support for despotic and dictatorial regimes, its merciless
economic agenda that has munched through the economies of poor
countries like a cloud of locusts. Its marauding multinationals
who are taking over the air we breathe, the ground we stand on,
the water we drink, the thoughts we think.
Arundhati Roy The Algebra of Infinite
Justice
Leuren Moret has worked at two US nuclear weapons
laboratories as a geoscientist. In 1991 she became a whistleblower at
the Livermore nuclear weapons lab, and since then has worked as an
independent citizen scientist and radiation specialist in communities
around the world, and contributed to the UN subcommission
investigating depleted uranium. Her research on the environmental and
public health effects of low level radiation from atmospheric testing
fallout, nuclear power plants, and depleted uranium weaponry, is
available on the internet and at http://www.mindfully.org. In 2003,
she testified at the International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan
held in Japan, and presented at the World Depleted Uranium Weapons
Conference in Hamburg, Germany, and at the World Court of Women at the
World Social Forum in Bombay, India in January 2004. She is a
Contributing Editor to GLOBAL OUTLOOK, a City of Berkeley
Environmental Commissioner, and the Past President of the Association
for Women Geoscientists.
"A comparison of delayed radiobiological effects of
depleted-uranium munitions versus fourth-generation nuclear weapons"
by A. Gsponer, J.-P. Hurni, and B. Vitale, 4th
International Conference of the Yugoslav Nuclear Society, Belgrade,
September 30-October 4, 2002.
http://arXiv.org/abs/physics/0210071
"Fourth Generation Nuclear Weapons: The Physical
Principles Of Thermonuclear Explosives, Inertial Confinement Fusion,
And The Quest For Fourth Generation Nuclear Weapons" by Andre
Gsponer and Jean-Pierre Hurni
http://www.inesap.org/publ_tech01.htm
Overview of documentary -
Interactive
Flash Animation - with links to biographies and articles
(Dutch) and specific sections of video.
English translation
of Dutch introduction Translation of the first one minute forty
seven seconds of this program.
The war in Iraq
is over.
The rubble is still smoking While the first dozers are already
entering the country.
After the coalition forces destroyed Baghdad it is now primarily
American companies who are to rebuild Iraq.
An interesting point is that these companies usually have people
on the payroll who have been politicians. Is this a conflict of
interests or a new (global) way of doing business?
One of the corporations that work this way is the Carlyle Group.
On their payroll are people like : George Bush (Sr.), James
Baker III and old premier John Major.
The Carlyle Group is a private investment bank which doesn't
come to the publics attention very often but it is one of the
biggest American (ed: USA) investors of the defense industry,
telecom, property and financial services.
What is the Carlyle Group? Who are the people behind the name?
And how much power does Carlyle have?
----- Original Message -----
From: "Leuren Moret" <leurenmoret@yahoo.com>
To: < [US Army Col Special Ops Green Beret] >
Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2004 12:56 AM
Subject: Re: Treachery And Treason
Hi John - Here is an article coming out in July in World Affairs
Journal. Can you please tell me what you think and whose decision it
could have been to use DU on the Arab world? It looks to me like it
was in the 1970s.
Leuren
-------- Response ---------
From: < [US Army Col Special Ops Green Beret] >
To: "Leuren Moret" <leurenmoret@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Treachery And Treason
Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2004 11:10:01 -0700
Hi Leuren,
Your report is very comprehensive and compelling.
It begs the question WHO and WHY re the responsibility for the
decision to create an area of deniability that covers the Arab
world.
It seems credible that the decision to isolate the Arab occupied
areas of the world was and is intentional for the express purpose of
controlling the flow of oil from Russia, through the mid-east
countries of Afghanistan and Iraq (with eventual expansion to Syria
and Iran and North Africa, and Saudi Arabia) while simultaneously
destroying the current population to preclude resistance.
Deaths in the contested area as a direct result of DU is, in my
opinion, the covert means by which CONTROL over these lands will be
accomplished.
Systems must be in development to eventually provide automated
CONTROL of the oil production mechanisms with minimum human exposure
for maintenance. High altitude observation will CONTROL the threat
of sabotage in ways perfected to secure Area 51 in Nevada.
Whose Idea was this scenario? Henry Kissinger's fingerprints are all
over this project. The Carlyle Group is in perfect position to carry
out Henry's design.
Take for example the exposure of Kissinger's genocidal action by
configuring over 3000 secret B-52 strikes (using multiple aircraft)
on Cambodia (1969-72) as written in the book "Side Show". B-52's
would take off from Guam with assigned targets in North and South
Vietnam only to receive in-flight changes of the coordinates to
targets in Cambodia. Only the Command Pilot and the Navigator were
aware of the changes, by design, to keep the bombing of Cambodia
compartmentalized from other crew members to minimize compromising
the illegal acts of war on a neutral country. This dovetails with
the covert DU attack on the Arab World. It also provides the reason
the US. Air Force ran out of 750 bombs during the Vietnam War. This
also provides insight as to the diversion of the war on terrorism
which began in Afghanistan only to be shifted, without
justification, to Iraq, thereby cutting off the available resources
to go after bin Laden and al Qaeda strongholds in Afghanistan. It is
now apparent that the United States only wanted the appearance of
going after bin Laden since he is an integral part of the Carlyle
Group. These are the "sources and methods" which must be kept
compartmented from the clueless.
Henry's other quote re military is; "they are mindless cattle". But,
then again, the military leadership excepts it's existence as
"expendable assets".
He would have made a wonderful Nazi. Right up there with Goebbels,
Eichmann, Erlichman, Haldeman, und Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.
We have definitely become the Aggressor Nation. I fear we will pay
dearly for the criminal greed of those responsible.
I will wait until your material is published before passing it on to
interested parties.
Strangely enough, the Trojan Horse inside a shield was the Green
Beret emblem of the 10th Special Forces Group in Germany in the
fifties and sixties....that was my first exposure to diabolical
thinking and the "sources and methods" of the Agency.
Best,
John
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