BEWARE:
Depleted uranium in use!
by Mayumi Oda
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Mother help us grow out
of
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Green Gulch
Tara
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Once upon a time the Balkan region was a land of Goddesses. Figurines of the great goddess of life, death and regeneration were found throughout the Middle Danubian basin. The Mother Goddess guided the matrilineal communities for thousands of years before any European culture existed. The Danube River, originating in the Black Forest and flowing 1,750 miles Eastward to the Black Sea, has been a primary source of European life.
Today the Danube is completely contaminated by military bombing. NATO used "Depleted Uranium" in the nose cones of Tomahawk missiles, Cruise missiles and ammunition shells used by the A10 Warthog attack helicopter in Yugoslavia and Kosovo. The ecological catastrophe enveloping the Balkan region is compounded by vast pollution of the water, resulting from the fiery demolition of oil refineries, fuel and gasoline storage tanks, and the destruction of all chemical and insecticide factories along the Danube.
What is Depleted Uranium?
The word "depleted" gives us the impression that it is quite safe to use, but depleted Uranium is what is left when enriched Uranium is separated from natural Uranium. It has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. Dr. Rosalie Bertell, an internationally renowned epidemiologist, concluded in her recent report that "D.U. is one of the largest categories of radioactive waste produced for nuclear weapons and the nuclear reactor industry. It is highly toxic to humans, both chemically as a heavy metal and radiologically, as an alpha article emitter, which is very dangerous when taken internally."
In the 1991 Gulf War, Allied forces used Depleted Uranium (D.U.) as armor-piercing bullets and tank armor for the first time, firing more than 300 tons of Depleted Uranium. As a substitute for lead, bullets made of D.U. can cut through tanks like butter.
Depleted Uranium weapons are listed by a sub-commission of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, as weapons of mass and indiscriminate destruction.
The use of Depleted Uranium is certainly a cheap way of making deadly weapons and at the same time, it is a very convenient way of getting rid of nuclear waste.
How dare you throw bombs that are made out of nuclear waste, killing two birds with one stone? This is indeed a small scale nuclear war!
The San Francisco Examiner reported that "nearly eight years after the war, the Pentagon unveiled a map of the Gulf War battlefield giving veterans what they consider the strongest evidence yet that hundreds of thousands of soldiers had been exposed to radioactive and toxic debris." After Operation Desert Storm, many thousands of Gulf War veterans have been suffering from "Gulf War Syndrome" of cancer related illnesses and kidney and lung defects. There has been an epidemic of congenital deformities in children born after 1991 in Iraq and Kuwait. Because of economic sanctions, these children are getting almost no medical support.
Now Kosovans and Albanians are going back to their devastated homeland. Is it safe to go back to their country? Has anybody checked the radioactivity of the bombed area? Are people, including NATO soldiers, carrying gieger-counters and taking iodine pills? These are essential precautions!
Depleted Uranium weapons are openly available on the world arms market and are likely to become commonly used in land warfare.
Clearly, the Military-Industrial Complex must not care about their own soldiers any more. They must only be interested in their profits. The U.S. Government has spent over 4 trillion dollars on the research and development of nuclear weapons. This astronomical figure is hard to grasp, but it translates into 9 million dollars per hour for over 50 years. Our resources for childrens' education, healthcare and welfare were spent for so-called "nuclear security," which will leave our future generations a heavy environmental debt.
We must ban the use of Depleted Uranium right now. Please do whatever you can to stop this nuclear madness.
It is our duty to uncover the full extent of NATO's use of Depleted Uranium in Yugoslavia. Let us find out who is responsible for the decision to use D.U. Who is making the D.U. ammunition and who is selling it? Who is making money, risking our children's future?
The ancient Mother Goddess was not only the giver of life, but at the same time she was the wielder of the destructive power of nature. May our Mother teach us to outgrow the madness of Nuclear Patriarchy! May many frogs come back to the Danube.
Mayumi Oda Founder, Plutonium Free Future [Mayumi Oda is known for her marvellous, robust and vibrant goddesses, like the image of Tara shown above. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.]>>>next
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