Saturday, February 26, 2005

DEPLETED URANIUM

I don't want to sound like an alarmist, but did you know that we're using nukes on the battlefield?
Apparently, since 1991, the US military has been using tactical nuclear bombs on the battlefield. Uranium 238, or depleted uranium is a byproduct of nuclear power plants, and DU or depleted uranium is actually a very hard metal used as ballasts in boats and planes- the problem is that once it reaches 0ver 600 degrees, DU becomes incendiary, or it burns.
it is the principle element that makes bunker busters effective for two reasons, its hardness and weight makes for an effective shell casing, and when it burns it produces a uranium oxide smoke that becomes airborne, back in the day when we were afraid the Russians were gonna kill us we called it fallout.
We used DU bomb shells in Kosovo, Serbia, Afghanistan, and in gulf war 1 and 2. Remember the whole Puerto Rico thing where those evil Puerto Ricans were protesting our base there? They were protesting because we were testing DU bombs there.
How about gulf war syndrome? There is evidence to strongly suggest that the mysterious illness that many of our troops exhibited after returning from the gulf war can be attributed to exposure to radiation. NATO troops from Italy and other nations have died of Leukemia, and have contracted other cancers after exposure to radiated bomb sites.
The DoD has issued statements that DU is no more dangerous than lead based paint, but have you seen what the lead abatement guys have to wear when they remove LBP?
http://www.nato.int/du/docu/d010523e.htm
http://deploymentlink.osd.mil/du_balkans/du_balkans_s04.htm
http://www.iacenter.org/depleted/duupdate.htm
http://www.keepmedia.com/pubs/AFP/2004/10/15/608242
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs257/en/
http://www.mapw.org.au/nuclear/du/01ippnw.html

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Fahrenheit 911

I just bought Fahrenheit 911 at blockbuster, and if you haven't watched it yet, you need to.
Michael Moore made a documentary in the 1989 called Roger and Me, about the effect that General Motors downsizing had on a small town in Michigan called Flint. He pioneered the guerilla documentary, and was a frontrunner for a new type of 'journalism' where the journalist stands outside of a company with a megaphone demanding the "truth" much like what might be found in the anti-smoking commercials of the TRUTH campaign
Later he had a show in the 90's called TV Nation doing the same type of investigations of congress, corporate America, the white house- making for some entertaining, albeit eye-opening stuff. Karen Duffy, or "Duff" from MTV was on the show as a field reporter as well.
Fast forward to now, and with the release of Fahrenheit 9-11, and he raises some very interesting questions about the Bush family's relation to Saudi families, how much money Dick Cheney's former company stands to make off of the rebuilding of Iraq, as well as many other allegations of a hidden agenda behind the Patriot Act
Michael Moore is a flaming liberal, so I have always taken what he has to say with a grain of salt, and the neat video editing tricks tend to throw you off, but this movie is one you should watch. It raises some very key questions about the motivations of our government, and what our role in the world should be.