| |
Amerikanen schieten met Uraniu ArtsTheBeatDoctor - 18.11.2004 19:35
Iemand gisteren de metro gelezen? Echt een schokkend stuk stond erin, over Irak. Eerst zat ik erg met dubbele gevoelens, ik ben tegen de drang van de Amerikanen om overal op de wereld alles te regelen zoals zei denken dat het goed is, maar van de andere kant dacht ik dat de mensen misschien wel beter af zijn zonder Saddam (voorzover ik dat van hier in kan schatten). Nou, van dat laatste beeld ben ik ondertussen wel teruggekomen. Amerikanen blijken veel van hun kogels te maken van het radioactieve (gratis!) DU (verarmd Uranium). Om het even samen te vatten... Als de oorlog daar een keer over is, en het zelfdzame geval doet zich daar voor dat er een stabiele regering is...heeft niemand er wat aan. Er kan geen voedsel worden ge-exporteerd en de kinderen die worden geboren zullen vaak een bizarre afwijking hebben. lees het hier na, pagina 12 en 13: http://www.metropoint.com/ftp/20041117_1000001.pdf Zieke zooi |
Read more about: militarisme vrijheid, repressie & mensenrechten wereldcrisis | supplements | | some supplements were deleted from this article, see policy | Ban Uranium Weapons Campaign | Henk van der Keur - 18.11.2004 21:32
Sinds oktober 2003 bestaat er een internationaal netwerk van grassroots organisaties en NGOs die ijveren voor een verbod op de productie en het militair (en civiel) gebruik van "verarmd" uranium. Meer info op: www.bandepleteduranium.org Op deze site kun je ook een online petitie tekenen. Binnenkort is op deze site ook een kort verslag te vinden van een bijeenkomst - onder het motto van "Zolang de risico's van uraniumwapens worden betwist, moet het gebruik ervan worden verboden" - die 6 november is gehouden in het T.M.C. Asser Instituut in Den Haag. Hoofdgast was dr. Keith Baverstock die van 1991 tot 2003 Hoofd was van de Stralingsbeschermingsdienst van de WHO. Zijn kritiek op het huidige onderzoek naar uraniumbesmetting was, zacht uitgedrukt, niet mals. De risicomodellen die gehanteerd worden zijn nooit getest en vertonen veel gebreken. Hij pleit dan ook voor het voorzorgsbeginsel: deze wapens niet gebruiken totdat vaststaat wat de gezondheidsrisico's zijn. Er is veel meer onderzoek nodig. Tot nu toe zijn sinds 1991 slechts een paar dozijn Golfoorlogveteranen onderzocht. Wie het uitgebreide rapport toegestuurd wil krijgen kan een mailtje sturen naar: laka@antenna.nl Henk van der Keur E-Mail: henk.vdkeur@antenna.nl Website: http://www.bandepleteduranium.org | Slechts 500 ton | socio - 18.11.2004 21:59
DU is tegenwoordig de normaalste zaak van de wereld. Vanuit militair oogpunt is het heel practisch ivm de dichtheid van het materiaal. Bij de collega's uit engeland is hier heel veel over te vinden: Dit is een interview met een generaal... Nu is het artiekel niet heel informatief, maar op zich wel grappig. Het enige opmerkelijke is dat hij het heeft over 500 ton, niet niks.. http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/05/67805.html Maar veel informatiever is deze site, zeker een aanrader: http://www.wandsworth-stopwar.org.uk/du/ | edit | socio - 18.11.2004 22:02
"grappig" is niet zo'n handige woordkeus. Niet zo bedoeld voordat mensen er over gaan vallen... | Beste schattingen: 200 ton | Henk van der Keur - 18.11.2004 23:00
Het was geen generaal, maar een kolonel. Hij beweert ook dat er "bunker busters" zijn gebruikt met een lading van verarmd uranium. Maar daarvor is geen enkel bewijs geleverd. Naast de stelselmatige bagatellisering door het Pentagon van de risico's van uraniumstof kunnen veel anti-DU activisten er ook wat van, nl: stelselmatige overdrijving van de schadelijkheid. Jack Cohen van de Nuke Resisters uit Arizona (VS) schreef daar onlangs een goed stuk over: DU Disinfo Dupes Project Censored. by Jack Cohen-Joppa The Nuke Resister =-=-=-=-=-=- It's like confusing a dime for a dollar. That's the difference between the amount of depleted uranium in weapons the U.S. is known to have used in Iraq since the invasion of March, 2003 - bad enough at almost 200 tons - and 2,000 tons, a grossly exaggerated estimate accepted as fact by some writers, and now also by Project Censored, the Sonoma State University project that each year highlights under- reported news. So what's the harm if the numbers are off by ten times? Isn't the message - that troops and civilians are being harmed by this new generation of radioactive warfare - important enough? The answer depends upon whether you'd like to see a policy change that stops the use of depleted uranium weapons. That's what I'd like to see, because the limited scientific evidence available plus common sense lead me to conclude that adding more ionizing radiation into the environment in the the form of highly refined, breathable and ingestible uranium oxides resulting from combat is a bad idea. I believe DU contamination is a factor in Gulf War Syndrome and the reported increases in birth defects, leukemia, and other diseases seen particularly in Iraq since 1991. But it's a killer sometimes lost in the crowd of many other toxins produced by modern warfare. As a long-time anti-nuclear activist, I've learned that outsiders seeking justice can only hope to change government policy by having truth on our side. Even then, it's not guaranteed. But we abandon credibility and will be dismissed in the halls of power when we present unsupported speculation as scientific fact. Beyond the issue of credibility, the case for any hazard is better made by presenting proven numbers, along with evidence of any adverse effect. If we claim it takes a dollar to do a dime's worth of damage, we're conceding a big point on dosage. Project Censored presented their own summary of the articles they cite. In it, they claim that "Four million pounds of radioactive uranium were dropped on Iraq in 2003 alone." The claim in Bob Nichols' article that it "turns out they used about 4,000,000 pounds of the stuff, give or take, according to the Pentagon and the United Nations" is simply not true. I have repeatedly asked Nichols and others making this claim, including the Uranium Medical Research Center (UMRC), to name their Pentagon or UN sources. None have. A UMRC report not cited by Project Censored offers a hint at the source. A November, 2003 UMRC paper, Abu Khasib to Al Ah'qaf: Iraq Gulf War II Field Investigations Report, notes five "published estimates of quantities of uranium munitions." The last, and by far largest estimate, is attributed to "Associated Press article, UNEP [United Nations Environmental Program] Environmental Press Release Reports... April 2003." These reports are assembled from UNEP news releases and articles collected from the world press. A review of these press release reports from UNEP reveals that a 1,000-2,200 ton estimate is credited to "independent" analysts in some of the stories, and in others, to "UN and independent" analysts, and eventually, in Nichols, "to the Pentagon and United Nations." But never is a UN document or named UN source quoted to give credence to such an estimate. Follow-up with several of the journalists revealed the not-uncommon practice of simply citing the work of other journalists without further fact-checking for themselves. And of course, no Pentagon source has ever offered such an estimate. The most comprehensive estimate to date of DU use in Iraq, based on known DU weapons systems and Pentagon and other government statements, is less than 200 tons (400,000 lbs.), or 1/10th the inflated claim endorsed by Project Censored. WHERE DID THIS INFLATED NUMBER COME FROM? To understand why this ten-fold greater number is such a popular misconception, you have to believe, as Project Censored writes, that "Most American weapons (missiles, smart bombs, bullets, tank shells, cruise missiles, etc.) contain high amounts of uranium..." The fact is, there is simply no forensic nor documentary evidence that DU is used in "high" amounts, or even at all, in "most American weapon systems." Apart from its less problematic use in armor plating and as counterweights in some fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft, the only known uses of uranium in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is in various caliber armor-piercing bullets and tank shells. The amount known to be fired from tanks and aircraft cannon just can't approach such a quantity. To believe the hyperbole, you have to believe Bob Nichols, who writes that you'll find, "...In the case of a cruise missile, as much as 800 pounds of the stuff..." This belief that cruise missiles have depleted uranium in their warheads has its genesis in the misunderstanding of a 1984 Navy memo about Tomahawk Cruise missile test flights. This misunderstanding was compounded by the work of Dai Williams, a British industrial psychologist and independent researcher. Among the stories cited by Project Censored, Stephanie Hiller's article, UMRC's reports and the Tokyo tribunal all move beyond Williams' hypothesis that many warheads on bombs and Tomahawk cruise missiles include a very dense metal penetrator. Williams concludes only that DU may be what he dubs the "mystery metal", yet these writers and others have construed his misleading conflation of facts and speculation [4] as evidence these weapons all contain massive amounts of DU. The oft-repeated Tomahawk/DU myth is refuted by several government documents that specifically deny the use of DU in conventionally- armed (i.e., non-nuclear) Tomahawk cruise missiles. To quote just one, G.A. Higgins, U.S. Navy Medical Service Corps Commander and Executive Secretary, Naval Radiation Safety Committee responded on March 29, 1999, to an FOIA request made by the Military Toxics Project (MTP). Higgins' letter reads, in part... "Responding to your second request for information under the Freedom of Information Act pertaining to the amount of depleted uranium in Navy munitions, counterweights, and specifically the Tomahawk cruise missile, as noted above, the only Navy weapons system using depleted uranium ammunition is the Phalanx CIWS. [Close-In Weapons System] Each 20 mm round contains 70 grams of depleted uranium. "Regarding the Tomahawk missile system, there is no depleted uranium used in or on the deployed version of this weapons system. An unspecified quantity of depleted uranium is used as mass for test and evaluation purposes within the United States and is owned by the Department of Energy (DOE)...." That last sentence refers to the same circumstance that is the subject of the misunderstood 1984 Navy memo: a flight test model of the nuclear-capable Tomahawk. The DU used in such tests provides a suitably heavy replacement for the intended nuclear warhead, so as to produce comparable flight dynamics. Other U.S. military documents also confirm that DU is not used in operational Tomahawk cruise missiles, Air Launched Cruise Missiles, Advanced Cruise Missiles, or Conventional Air Launched Cruise Missiles. I am not saying, nor do I believe, that one must accept all government documents as truth. But when establishing facts in dispute, more compelling evidence must be presented to refute government claims. A cornerstone of Williams's hypothesis is a handful of U.S. warhead patents that mention depleted uranium. This circumstantial piece of evidence has, for some readers, constituted further proof. But I have read these patents, and in all the cases Williams cites, DU is mentioned not as the primary material for the patented warhead shroud or penetrator, but only as another suitably dense material, after the mention of tungsten or similarly dense alloys. Following up on this, I telephoned two of the named patent holders. Both had no knowledge of any production of such warheads with DU instead of non-radioactive metals; both expressed doubt that such production would have proceeded without their knowledge and both agreed with this writer's assessment of the patent language in question: that DU is noted as an alternate material simply to protect the innovations of the patented designs, regardless of which available dense metal is used. Even the United Nations Environmental Program, which allegedly endorsed the 1,100-2,200 ton estimate, directly rebutted one of Williams' and UMRC's central claims regarding the bombardment of Iraq: "There is currently no evidence that missiles or bombs used during the war - particularly the AGM-86D CALCM hard target penetrators (153 were used) or bunker-busting bombs - contain DU." Finally, a few days after completing my first draft of this examination of the evidence, I received an unequivocal letter from the Pentagon. More than a year earlier, I had written at length to Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona (where I live), and posed a very specific question: "Have any of the laser or satellite-guided bombs, guided missiles, or Tomahawk or air-launched cruise missiles, used in Iraq since March 19, 2003, incorporated any components manufactured from depleted uranium or an alloy of any type of uranium?" The reply, addressed to Kyl, was direct to the point: "Our review of the constituent's specific question regarding the use of certain munitions in recent operations confirms that none of the guided bombs or cruise missiles that the U.S. used in Iraq and Afghanistan contained uranium of any type." There are other outrageous and unsubstantiated claims made by the authors of Project Censored's selections, too many to debunk as thoroughly as the claim of DU in cruise missiles. So here are just a few more. • The New York Daily News article reports that data collected by the UMRC shows "high" levels of uranium contamination in U.S. soldiers' urine. But the respected uranium information site maintained by the international anti-nuclear watchdog World Information Service on Energy (WISE) has reviewed the data, and concluded that where DU is present, the relative levels found are anything but "high" compared to the range of levels normally found in humans. • From the very title of Bob Nichols' article, the hyperbole endorsed by Project Censored is apparent to thoughtful students of things nuclear: "...Radiation in Iraq equals 250,000 Nagasaki Bombs." Further study about the source of this extreme comparison reveals that the unit measured is "atomicity", an intellectual construct coined by a Japanese scientist. "Atomicity" is simply the calculated number of radioactive atoms involved, with no regard for the type of radiation present, its relative biological impact, method of dispersal, etc. Such comparison is meaningless at least, misleading at worst. •The "International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan At Tokyo, The People Vs. George Bush" lays its foundation by accepting Dai Williams' hypothesis as a conclusion, and on the testimony of Leuren Moret. Moret's testimony incorporated many of the factual inaccuracies and poorly supported conclusions already discussed here. • In interviews and press releases, including an update on Project Censored's web site, UMRC's Dr. Durakovic and Tedd Weyman have declared that thousands of tons of uranium warhead bunker busters were dropped and depleted uranium missiles fired in Afghanistan and Iraq. But in a curious contrast, their published work cited by Project Censored is far from concluding that any uranium at all is used in these weapons! Weyman reveals in Afghan Field Trip #2 Report: Precision Destruction - Indiscriminate Effects the tentative nature of their public conclusions: "These results are also indicative that, if uranium is in use, the new generation of OEF [Operation Enduring Freedom] weapons produce significantly higher levels of contaminant than DU penetrators." (emphasis added). In UMRC's Preliminary Findings from Afghanistan and Operation Enduring Freedom, Weyman states "the possibility of Natural Uranium [as the source of the uranium in the samples] remains under investigation." This significant hedge remains in the more recent May, 2004 UMRC poster summary of data titled The Urinary Concentration of Uranium Isotopes in Civilians of the Bibi Mahro Region after Recent Military Operations in Eastern Afghanistan [ http://www.umrc.net/downloads/mp4.pdf]. This document concludes in part that "the explanation of our findings [of elevated uranium levels in urine samples] could be either of two possible mechanisms. 1) exposure to contaminated dust in the areas of the bombing raids by natural uranium containing weapons or 2) unusual geological and environmental excessively high uranium levels contained in the soil or drinking water." (emphasis added) This poster and the poster-reproduction of their Iraq research [ http://www.umrc.net/downloads/UMRC_HPS_2004_Poster2.pdf] also fail to demonstrate that the bomb craters contain the "significantly higher levels of [uranium] contaminant", as predicted. In Iraq, the most radioactive battle sites reported by UMRC were targets of A-10 and tank rounds made of DU, not cruise missile strikes or aerial bombing as their other claims would suggest. Furthermore, two of the scientists cited on the posters as responsible for the work - Gerdes and Parrish - have since distanced themselves from the conclusions UMRC's attributed to them without their consent. I conclude with a few questions of my own. If it were true, as UMRC claims in Afghan Field Trip #2 Report (absent any reference), that "the United States and its weapons' contractors acknowledge the development, expansion and deployment of weapons and delivery systems that use low, medium and high altitude, air-to-surface and ship-launched uranium alloyed munitions", what other evidence should exist? I can think of: * Handling protocol for ordnance specialists (such protocol exists for the A-10's DU ammo and the tank rounds); * DU licenses for production, and production records from the factories making the warheads; But significantly, no documents other than the patents already discussed have been put forward as evidence that uranium of any sort is used in such a wide spectrum of missiles and bombs. Background: In September, Project Censored picked "High Uranium Levels Found in Troops and Civilians" as the #4 most-censored story this year, citing the following articles: • URANIUM MEDICAL RESEARCH CENTER, January 2003 Title: "UMRC's Preliminary Findings from Afghanistan & Operation Enduring Freedom" and "Afghan Field Trip #2 Report: Precision Destruction- Indiscriminate Effects" Author: Tedd Weyman, UMRC Research Team • AWAKENED WOMAN, January 2004 Title: "Scientists Uncover Radioactive Trail in Afghanistan" Author: Stephanie Hiller • DISSIDENT VOICE, March 2004 Title: "There Are No Words…Radiation in Iraq Equals 250,000 Nagasaki Bombs" Author: Bob Nichols • NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, April 5,2004 Title: "Poisoned?" Author: Juan Gonzalez • INFORMATION CLEARING HOUSE, March 2004 Title: "International Criminal Tribune For Afghanistan At Tokyo, The People vs. George Bush" Author: Professor Ms Niloufer Bhagwat J.
E-Mail: henk.vdkeur@antenna.nl Website: http://www.laka.org | |
supplements | |