In early December, the 9/11 Public Discourse Project—a private group formed by 9/11 Commission members after their official term expired in 2004—chided the government for ignoring the lessons learned from the Commission’s probe of the terrorist attack. But the group’s patrician members failed to answer many questions. For example, how, precisely, did the Twin Towers fall? Why did Seven World Trade… return to article
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Reader Comments (891)pg. 4
Finally, it’s obvious that the writers have little expertise on the subject personally, which is O.K., but the aura of a research paper is pierced by the realization that this is just a rather selective report on a lot of other reports, with all conclusions seeming to want to paint DU as the prime suspect in everything, when according to a plethora of studies by folks that do have genuine expertise in the field, DU is probably the least likely factor in any rise in incidence of birth defects, anywhere.
To her credit, Rita includes reference to a large study published in the New England Journal of Medicine that found NO connection between service in the gulf war and any rise in birth defects. This study used actual military hospital and service records, whereas many others use questionnaires, which, as honest studies usually point out, are subject to “recall” bias.
....In the multivariate analysis, there was no significant association for either men or women between service in the Gulf War and the risk of any birth defect or of severe birth defects in their children. (full text available after free registration)
Rita pays short shrift to actual examples of definite DU exposure—the men that were victims of DU friendly fire during the gulf war. These men have still shown few or no ill effects, and U.S. soldiers, at least, I believe have no history of increased birth defects. This would seem to me to be of the utmost relevance in a quest for the truth about the danger posed by DU, especially the aerosol aspect. Why is this particular body of evidence ignored?
To conclude, the paper provides only partially informed speculation, not proof, that DU is responsible for a rise in birth defects anywhere, and honestly admits as much. A nice article, professionally written and probably honest in what it chooses to report about, but lacking in that it only presents a rather selective picture of the DU controversy. No mention is made of Saddam’s definite role in increased birth defects in northern Iraq, and no consideration is given to the likelihood that he duplicated some of his practices in areas that were also subject to U.S. DU “contamination”. And btw, could there possibly have been any movement of people away from areas that were unquestionably chemically attacked? (no, why in the world would they move?) Also, the vast body of professional physics and medical literature that would tend to rule out DU as a significant teratogen is not examined.
Posted by Natalie on May 10, 2006 at 4:30 AM I can only assume that reference to the study “Miscarriage, stillbirth and congenital malformation in the offspring of UK veterans of the first Gulf war” is an example of balance being exercised by luminous beauty:
Conclusion….. We found no evidence for a link between paternal deployment to the Gulf war and increased risk of stillbirth, chromosomal malformations, or congenital syndromes. Associations were found between fathers’ service in the Gulf war and increased risk of miscarriage and less well-defined malformations, but these findings need to be interpreted with caution as such outcomes are susceptible to recall bias. The finding of a possible relationship with renal anomalies requires further investigation. There was no evidence of an association between risk of miscarriage and mothers’ service in the gulf.
At any rate, there’s obviously no conclusive evidence presented here to suggest that service in the gulf war has resulted in significant reproductive problems. Not that it would be that surprising if there were, after all, troops were subjected to a lot of extraordinary substances and pollutants, not to mention all the vaccinations they received. The mistake would be to assume that DU is at the top of the list of possible causes of problems, when it should be way down toward the bottom.
Posted by Natalie on May 10, 2006 at 8:54 AM All I can say Nat is that your talent for cherry-picking only the words that support your position from an abstract, argumentum ad hominem, and post hoc ergo propter hoc are marvelously consistent.
Tell us again how Fireman Bill was supporting the fire caused collapse hypothesis of the WTC when he was explicitly criticizing it. I love that. It’s such a perfect example of irrational bias.
Posted by luminous beauty on May 10, 2006 at 1:17 PM All I can say Nat is that your talent for cherry-picking only the words that support your position from an abstract, argumentum ad hominem, and post hoc ergo propter hoc are marvelously consistent.
That’s all you can say? You don’t find it odd that a paper purporting to determine the possible role of DU in teratogenicity glosses over far more probable causes of it, and ignores the likely possibility that the Iraq data it does choose to highlight has been fudged? Or that the only example of actual human inhalation/ingestion/insertion of DU into the human body (friendly fire) is barely even addressed?
Tell us again how Fireman Bill was supporting the fire caused collapse hypothesis of the WTC when he was explicitly criticizing it. I love that. It’s such a perfect example of irrational bias.
“However, respected members of the fire protection engineering community are beginning to raise red flags, and a resonating theory has emerged: The structural damage from the planes and the explosive ignition of jet fuel in themselves were not enough to bring down the towers. Rather, theory has it, the subsequent contents fires attacking the questionably fireproofed lightweight trusses and load-bearing columns directly caused the collapses in an alarmingly short time. Of course, in light of there being no real evidence thus far produced, this could remain just unexplored theory.” ......... Bill Manning Fire Engineering January 2002
Tell us again how Fireman Bill is criticizing his own theory. And tell us why a “scholar” such as Steven Jones would deliberately leave out the above bolded sentence from his rather selective reproduction in his report of Manning’s editorial. Tell us why EVERY 911 “truth” site does.
In English, please!
Posted by Natalie on May 11, 2006 at 4:51 AM Natalie,
You say, “a paper purporting to determine the possible role of DU in teratogenicity glosses over far more probable causes of it.
This is what you call ‘glossing over’:
The issue of how to distinguish the role of DU from that of other suspected teratogens is serious and complex. The response to this challenge is built on the interface of laboratory research and population studies; its glue is the application of epidemiological principles of inference. Laboratory and animal research are proceeding apace and are suggesting plausible pathways by which internalized DU aerosols could be mutagenic and/or teratogenic. As animal studies come to provide more detail about the internal migration of inhaled ceramic DU and its decay particles, inference regarding possible teratogenic pathways for specific birth defects can be refined.
A 1994 U.S. General Accounting Office report identified 21 reproductive toxicants and teratogens, including DU, that were present in the 1991 Gulf War environment [68]. A commonality of excessive occurrence of a particular birth defect among offspring of American veterans, and offspring of Iraqi veterans and resident civilians would decrease the likelihood that certain of those 21 toxins had a causal role in the elevated rate of occurrence of that defect among American veterans’ offspring. For example, Iraqis did not receive the “medications and vaccines administered to Gulf War veterans”. Therefore, a similar or identical excess of a particular class of birth defects among offspring of DU-exposed Americans and Iraqis could not uniformly be attributed to those medications and vaccines.
It is from this vantage that the Socorro case study is of particular significance. By trans-national standards, the rate of occurrence of hydrocephalus in Basra during the years 1999 and 2000 was very high. (This, notwithstanding the need for clarification of the 1990–1998 registry data regarding occurrence.) If DU is the sole, or one of a small group of, risky exposure(s) shared by residents of the Iraqi war region and residents of the rural Socorro, New Mexico munitions testing region, then the likelihood of a causal role for DU in the genesis of hydrocephalus is increased.
Posted by luminous beauty on May 11, 2006 at 4:00 PM More generally, serious effort needs to be directed toward disentangling the role of DU from that of other potential teratogens in tandem with which DU exposure has frequently occurred. This task becomes less daunting, though more urgent, as the contexts in which DU munitions have been exploded increases. The identities of the “other potential teratogens” disbursed into the environment by the crash of an airplane carrying DU in a civilian area differ, at least somewhat, from those disbursed by DU fires in a combat zone. In response to “widespread distress” about crash-associated risk, a theoretical physics-based model of the 1992 event was developed. While that theoretical study did not include any assessment of the health status of the exposed population (and their offspring), the authors concluded that it was “improbable” that the DU that had burnt and aerosolized as a result of the crash precipitated health problems [69]. Such a purely theoretical approach seems inadequate, especially in light of the popular perception of a post-crash regional increase in malformed births [61]. Furthermore, associations documented in an unexpected context that cohere with findings of planned analyses are highly informative. Conversely, absence of observed associations in small, unexpectedly exposed populations would be less informative.
In addition to Socorro, New Mexico there are 50 other US sites where DU munitions are/have been developed, produced, tested. How many of these sites are located in areas where comprehensive birth defects registries exist? What about other countries? Could assays for DU biomarkers be done on groups of male and female parents of children with and without birth defects resident near such facilities?
For the Iraqi population the 1991 Gulf War was the prelude to various new exposures and circumstances that could be teratogenic sanctions-induced deprivations such as poverty, malnutrition and degradation of the health care infrastructure. But such circumstances, without specific chemical or radiologic exposures, do not lead to the observed pattern of increasing rates for classes of congenital malformations, notwithstanding the fact that malnutrition does contribute to certain birth defects. If a comparable birth defects registry (19902000) were available for births in a section of northern Iraq not exposed to DU bombardment, it could help distinguish between war-induced and post-war exposures.
Posted by luminous beauty on May 11, 2006 at 4:02 PM A cohort study from Kerala, India is a particularly apropos example of a well-executed investigation that was able to detect differences in the occurrence of birth defects (and other untoward pregnancy outcomes) among population groups [70]. In a genetic epidemiological and fertility survey conducted among 700,000 people in regions with normal background radiation (85 to 110 mR/yr) and high background radiation (735 – 563 mR/yr) – from thorium monazite in the soil – Padmanabham et al used personalized, direct contact with families to document a statistically significant increase in congenital malformations and other birth outcomes in the area with higher background exposure. Besides ionizing radiation, consanguinity and nearness of spouse’s birthplace were included as additional risk factors for each birth outcome. This study is a model for an investigation of the incidence of birth defects (and other pregnancy outcomes) in regions of Iraq with and without contamination by DU aerosols. Ideally the regions being compared would be as similar as possible on other criteria including distribution of occupations and religion, economic situation, culture, or would allow for “control” of differences, as in the model of the Kerala study. (Of course, this study is also informative because though the radiation exposure in the Kerala region is due to radon, the case for teratogenicity related to increased radiation exposure is made.)
The study of Abushaban et al [56] is an assessment of the impact of DU on one class of birth defects in the absence of sanctions. In Kuwait, where there was DU (and other wartime) exposure(s) but no post-war sanctions, the post-war incidence of cardiac malformations overall and of numerous specific sub-categories was elevated. Kuwaiti trend data regarding prevalence of other classes of birth defects, particularly those elevated in Iraqi and other DU-exposed databases, could be highly informative.
I hardly think your characterization is either fair or accurate.
Posted by luminous beauty on May 11, 2006 at 4:04 PM You go on, ” ... ignores the likely possibility that the Iraq data it does choose to highlight has been fudged?”
Do you have any evidence of this beyond your hand-waving and politically biased speculation? Doesn’t the corroboration of Iraqi studies by non-Iraqi doctors count for anything?
“Gunther, S-H. Uran-Geschosse: Schwergeschaedigte Soldaten, missgebildete Neugeborene, sterbende Kinder Uranium Projectiles: Severely Maimed Soldiers, Deformed Babies, Dying Children. Projetiles d’uranium: Militaires gravement mutiles, nouveau-nes defformes, enfants mourants AHRIMAN-Verlag GmbH. Freibburg, Germany; 2000.”
Or is the fact that he was in country observing automatically discredit him, in your mind, as dupe? Wouldn’t be fair to mention that if Iraqi doctors had been forced to ‘fudge’ their studies, they would now be denouncing them? Contrarily, they are pleading for help in what they say are renewed problems with birth defects since GWII, exasperated by the degradation of medical resources since the invasion, and there is evidence the US government has been instrumental in halting UN WHO teams from entering Iraq to aid and investigate. Does this not indicate some warped bias on your side.
In the second study you comment on you quote the conclusion:
Conclusion….. We found no evidence for a link between paternal deployment to the Gulf war and increased risk of stillbirth, chromosomal malformations, or congenital syndromes. Associations were found between fathers’ service in the Gulf war and increased risk of miscarriage and less well-defined malformations, but these findings need to be interpreted with caution as such outcomes are susceptible to recall bias. The finding of a possible relationship with renal anomalies requires further investigation. There was no evidence of an association between risk of miscarriage and mothers’ service in the gulf.
However if you examine the actual data, there are significant increases of <u>clinically confirmed</u> “less well defined malformations” . Very puzzling, that.
Still, they say further investigation is needed. Doesn’t this mean anything to you?
It is obvious there are many unanswered questions for which many people would like answers. You, apparently, are arguing we should just shut our traps and believe what the government is telling us, Everyone who asks questions or presents evidence, no matter their expertise or their sincerity, is in your mind ‘warped and biased’. Anyone who believes there are problems with DU are politically compromised because of association with others who believe there are problems with DU. Such is the circular reasoning you employ, yet we are to believe you are objective and the limited studies you cite are conclusive. Why?
Posted by luminous beauty on May 11, 2006 at 5:34 PM As to Fireman Bill;
Here is the entire quote from Manning in Jones:
8. I totally agree with the urgent yet reasoned assessment of expert fire-protection engineers, as boldly editorialized in the journal Fire Engineering:
Respected members of the fire protection engineering community are beginning to raise red flags, and a resonating [result] has emerged: The structural damage from the planes and the explosive ignition of jet fuel in themselves were not enough to bring down the towers.
Fire Engineering has good reason to believe that the “official investigation” blessed by FEMA… is a half-baked farce that may already have been commandeered by political forces whose primary interests, to put it mildly, lie far afield of full disclosure. Except for the marginal benefit obtained from a three-day, visual walk-through of evidence sites conducted by ASCE investigation committee members- described by one close source as a “tourist trip”-no one’s checking the evidence for anything.
Some citizens are taking to the streets to protest the investigation sellout. Sally Regenhard, for one, wants to know why and how the building fell as it did upon her unfortunate son Christian, an FDNY probationary firefighter. And so do we.
Clearly, there are burning questions that need answers. Based on the incident’s magnitude alone, a full-throttle, fully resourced, forensic investigation is imperative . More important, from a moral standpoint, [are considerations] for the… present and future generations… (Manning, 2002; emphasis added).
It should be obvious to even a casual reader that the emphasis here is not on the theory of fuel vs. content fires, but that the ” ‘official investigation’ ... is a half-baked farce”, and that “a full-throttle, fully resourced, forensic investigation is imperative.”
It is not at all clear in the entire quote from Manning’s article that he actually believes the content fire theory is tenable or not, only that it has “emerged” in light of the inadequacy the jet fuel theory. What is explicitly undeniable is that he believes, “...in light of there being no real evidence thus far produced, this could remain just unexplored theory.”
Your insistence on making the content fire theory the central point of Jones’ contention is a straw man.
Posted by luminous beauty on May 11, 2006 at 5:38 PM The content fire theory is addressed elsewhere:
But here we note from the recent NIST report that: The initial jet fuel fires themselves lasted at most a few minutes and office material fires would burn out within about 20 minutes in a given location. (NIST, 2005; p. 179, emphasis added.) Certainly jet fuel burning was not enough to raise steel to sustained temperatures above 800oC. But we continue:
Once more than half of the columns in the critical floor.. suffer buckling (stage 3), the weight of the upper part of the structure above this floor can no longer be supported, and so the upper part starts falling down onto the lower part below(Bazant and Zhou, 2002, p. 2.)
Bazant & Zhou do not explain how more than half of the columns in the critical floor [can] suffer buckling at the same time to precipitate the complete and nearly symmetrical collapse observed. There were 47 huge steel core columns in each Tower, and 24 such support columns in WTC 7 (NIST 2005; NISTb, 2005).
They do NOT explain how steel-column temperatures above 800oC were achieved near-simultaneously due to burning office materials. NIST notes that office materials in an area burn for about 15-20 minutes, then are consumed away (NIST, 2005, pp. 117, 179). This is evidently not long enough to raise steel column temperatures above 800oC as required in the Bazant & Zhou model, given the enormous heat sinks of the structures. And to have three buildings completely collapse due to this unlikely mechanism on the same day strains credulity. Moreover, the Final NIST report on the Towers admits:Of the more than 170 areas examined on 16 perimeter column panels, only three columns had evidence that the steel reached temperatures above 250C Only two core column specimens had sufficient paint remaining to make such an analysis, and their temperatures did not reach 250 C. ... Using metallographic analysis, NIST determined that there was no evidence that any of the samples had reached temperatures above 600 C. (NIST, 2005, pp. 176-177; emphasis added.)
Is there even the tiniest bit of comprehension stirring in your brain, Nat?
Posted by luminous beauty on May 11, 2006 at 5:44 PM Natalie,
You say, “a paper purporting to determine the possible role of DU in teratogenicity glosses over far more probable causes of it. This is what you call “glossing over”:Wow, you’re really obfuscating my point. However, your reproduction of all those paragraphs of the report helps to sustain it. Which is, again, not that the report doesn’t make a weak case for a remote possibility of a connection between DU exposure and some birth defects, but that far more likely causes of birth defects, specifically chemical and/or radiological agents deployed by Saddam, and other factors important to consider, are referenced nowhere in the report.
If the author was engaged in a serious effort to find the true cause(s) of birth defects in Iraq or anywhere, she would not ignore this aspect. She would not ignore the medical history of DU friendly fire victims. She would not ignore the very real and common sense possibility that medical records from Basra were created a certain way acccording to orders, or perhaps with an eye toward pleasing their benevolent leader. This leads me to suspect that she is engaging in propaganda. Her associations with obvious propagandists are additional evidence of this.
I see little more than hopeful far-reaching speculation, in the authors analysis of selected studies, that DU is somehow the “common thread” to any specific medical problems of Iraqis or US/UK veterans. Point me to the smoking gun, if there is one.
Re-reading what you pasted, I see more subtle evidence that the author is not unbiased, contrary to her claim of having no competing interests:
For the Iraqi population the 1991 Gulf War was the prelude to various new exposures and circumstances that could be teratogenic—sanctions-induced deprivations such as poverty, malnutrition and degradation of the health care infrastructure. But such circumstances, without specific chemical or radiologic exposures, do not lead to the observed pattern of increasing rates for classes of congenital malformations, notwithstanding the fact that malnutrition does contribute to certain birth defects. If a comparable birth defects registry (1990 - 2000) were available for births in a section of northern Iraq not exposed to DU bombardment, it could help distinguish between war-induced and post-war exposures.
So, we see that Rita buys into all of Saddam’s propaganda, assuming without question that all Iraq’s problems were the fault of the sanctions, and not the way Saddam prioritized what was still allowed him. Reading this paragraph you’d think you were a student in an Iraqi government school. Total whitewash of history. No chemical or radiological exposure? We don’t even raise the possibility? When speaking of Northern Iraq, it’s like she’s operating in some alternative reality, where well known cases of chemical attack simply never happened.
I hardly think your characterization is either fair or accurate.
I think I was being too charitable. The more I read the report, the more I realize that it’s a nothing more than a fancy shmancy piece of propaganda, masquerading as a valid scientific endeavor.
more later…....must go on trip for a few days.
Posted by Natalie on May 13, 2006 at 3:30 PM I’m sorry Nat, but epidemiological studies don’t work in the way that you seem to think that they should. They are primarily interested in trying to remove wheat from the chaff in the attempt to isolate a single causal factor in a given phenomenon. In the case in point, what is the effect of DU poisoning within the reported health problems that do exist. Synergistic effects of multiple causes is the topic for a different paper after some appropriate values for comparison are available from the accumulated evidence. You are putting the cart before the horse. It is obvious, your ideological blinders see propaganda where sincerely objective attempts to understand one particular part of a complex problem are at play.
The subtlety of your evidence is so subtle as to be undiscernable. I really don’t understand the meaning you give to the statements you highlight. It seems you are giving them a significance contrary to their context, which is the difficulty of making hard and fast conclusions without more discriminating data. Are you saying that sanctions related health problems didn’t exist? Is the fact that the researchers don’t make claims as to where the fault for those problems lies really evidence of bias? A very odd and intrinsically biased conclusion. You are not trying to understand what is happening so much as evading blame by trying to pin it on others who are merely pointing out the problem. A classic case of psychological projection of sub-conscious guilt.
My recollection of Baathist propaganda is that they were more concerned with minimizing the effects of sanctions. They were essentially denying the high child mortality and general health-care problems, and were more involved in the building of monumental edifices to display how strong they still were in spite of the destruction of the first Gulf War. It was NGOs who were crying in the wilderness raising concerns about the deleterious effects of sanctions on the Iraqi populace to whom Saddam was typically showing callous indifference. It is right-wing propaganda that painted such concerns as being pro-Saddam. Do you deny that your side engages in propaganda? If you have some primary sourced evidence contemporary of the period to show you are not engaging in a willful re-writing of history, I’d be willing to look at it.
Posted by luminous beauty on May 13, 2006 at 6:02 PM I’m sorry Nat, but epidemiological studies don’t work in the way that you seem to think that they should. They are primarily interested in trying to remove wheat from the chaff in the attempt to isolate a single causal factor in a given phenomenon.
Understood, however, why do the authors speculate, as if confused, as to why would all these defects would be showing up in the absence of “specific chemical or radiologic exposures”, as per my quoting of them above in my previous post. They are ignoring reports (and common sense) that there were indeed such exposures. This study is not entirely clinical in nature, it engages in much discussion as to causes. So when I suspect bias, it is because it is selective in said discussion, and that is also why I don’t rate this as a true “epidemiological study”, although it certainly gives that initial appearance. Rather, it is a selective report on a lot of other reports, and its discussion and speculation ignore extremely relevant aspects.
It is obvious, your ideological blinders see propaganda where sincerely objective attempts to understand one particular part of a complex problem are at play.
No, they are NOT objective attempts, as I have demonstrated. THEY are the ones who have the blinders on. THEY are the ones who ignore tons of authoritative information that makes their attempt to blame DU for any malady anywhere, unfounded.
Are you saying that sanctions related health problems didn’t exist? Is the fact that the researchers don’t make claims as to where the fault for those problems lies really evidence of bias? A very odd and intrinsically biased conclusion. You are not trying to understand what is happening so much as evading blame by trying to pin it on others who are merely pointing out the problem. A classic case of psychological projection of sub-conscious guilt.
What are you, some kind of shrink? :-) I have simply pointed out, that in addition to ignoring Saddam’s chemical and radiological attacks on his own people, the authors also neglect to implicate him for his role in deciding priorities during sanctions. Not conclusive by itself, but seemingly a pattern. Evading blame? Who’s really evading blame? I would say that it’s the authors of this report, on behalf of Saddam Hussein.
cont….....
Posted by Natalie on May 16, 2006 at 9:03 PM pg. 2
My recollection of Baathist propaganda is that they were more concerned with minimizing the effects of sanctions.
My recollection is different. In addition to NGOs and others whining about the effects of sanctions and of course ignoring the real culprit, Saddam’s regime was the most potent cheerleader, for it was best positioned to manufacture false propaganda. No doubt that Saddam was concerned with looking strong and defiant for his people and other Arab nations, but he was also engaged in evoking sympathy for, and falsely assigning blame for, problems HE created by putting his own power and health/wealth WAY above that of his people.
There’s getting to be quite a pattern here regarding responsibility for the events of 9/11, and for the well-being of the Iraqi people. It was not Islamic murderers that were responsible for the towers falling, it was the United States. It was not Saddam and his Baathist regime that was responsible for supposed 500,000 dead Iraqi babies, it was of course the sanctions. It was not the effects of chemical and radiological weapons used by Saddam, and the resulting extreme stress that were responsible for alleged birth defects in Iraq, it had to be the DU.
You folks don’t want to be thought of as Saddam / terrorist apologists, but you then behave in an identical manner to someone who indeed is.
If you have some primary sourced evidence contemporary of the period to show you are not engaging in a willful re-writing of history, I’d be willing to look at it.
I hope you’re willing to look at this. It is certainly primary sourced, and refers to the period in question. There wasn’t a whole lot of Internet going on in 1991, so news reports of the day will have to be found by someone with access to more expensive cataloguing services than I can afford. (LexisNexis) Or, at last resort, a library.
Doctors in Baghdad have revealed that the ‘dead baby parades’ frequently used by Saddam Hussein’s regime to embarrass the West were a cynical charade.
A staple of Saddam Hussein’s propaganda machine for a decade, the ‘parades’ involved using convoys of taxis, with the tiny coffins of dead infants strapped to their roofs - allegedly killed by United Nations sanctions - being driven through the streets of Baghdad, past crowds of women screaming anti-Western slogans.
The moving scenes were often filmed by visiting television crews and provided valuable ammunition to anti-sanctions activists such as British Labour MP George Galloway, who blamed Western governments for the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children…....
....... Dr Amer Abdul al-Jalil, the deputy resident at the hospital, said: “Sanctions did not kill these children - Saddam killed them. The internal sanctions by the regime were very effective. Those who died prematurely usually died because their mothers lived in impoverished areas neglected by the government.” (©Telegraph, London)
To not suspect that Basra birth defect records are tainted is to be downright obtuse. Rita, call your office.
Posted by Natalie on May 16, 2006 at 9:08 PM Nat,
A simple question:
If Basra records are suspicious, is the proper course to try to ascertain through diligent investigation whether they are or not reasonably accurate, or dismiss them out of hand and believe for a fact they are wildly inaccurate merely on the basis of your suspicions?
Posted by luminous beauty on May 16, 2006 at 9:37 PM luminous asked:
“If Basra records are suspicious, is the proper course to try to ascertain through diligent investigation whether they are or not reasonably accurate, or dismiss them out of hand and believe for a fact they are wildly inaccurate merely on the basis of your suspicions?”
I would be all for the UN, the W.H.O., the Royal Society, RAND, anyone who are genuine, relevant, accredited degree-holding, unbiased professionals going in and investigating the heck out of Basra, Bahgdad, or wherever. Interestingly, the W.H.O. offered to come in and determine the cause of alleged illnesses in 1998, but Saddam refused. You can choose to give him the benefit of the doubt as to his motivations for refusing, but based on his past record, I choose to not.
However there’s no reason to believe that results from investigating Iraq would be any different from those obtained in Kosovo, or those from gulf war DU victims, that is, precious little evidence will be found to link DU to anything, other than to perhaps fear.
It’s not accurate to say that I’ve stated fact based only on my suspiciouns. It is accurate that I’ve expressed substantial doubt about the reliability of information coming out of Saddam’s Iraq, especially concerning a likely avenue of exploitation, and I’ve provided independent evidence to back up my reasoning.
You have basically buoyed what has been my point from day one on this issue, with the studies you highlighted. Which is, that while there may be some small risk from exposure to DU in certain unlikely circumstances, there is no reason to believe outlandish and ghoulish claims about its connection to birth defects, cancer, or any other illness. In addition to well-established knowledge of the physical properties of both natural and depleted uranium, there have been numerous, large-scale investigations into their effects on human physiology by both government and non-government entities with similar negative results, independent of the absence of reliable data from Iraq.
To directly answer your question, yes, the preferred and proper course is diligent investigation, if and when that is possible. I would welcome it, with the hope that the real culprit behind illnesses and deaths in Iraq will become obvious and undeniable.
Posted by Natalie on May 17, 2006 at 8:17 AM Nat,
If the results of rigorous investigation show, contrary to your hopes, that inhalation of micro-sized uranium dust does contribute to serious health problems, then what will you say?
Posted by luminous beauty on May 17, 2006 at 2:21 PM Natty
always amusing to see you in “sweet reasonable” mode .In another age you would have been debating how many angels could have danced on the head of a pin, or calling for someone to be burned at the stake, but now we have you as an arch-defender of the US DoD and the mad murderer GWB.
“Diligent investigation” my arse . The DoD ain’t even thinking eventually one day perhaps ever going to do any of that. You admit that multiple vaccinations may have had something to do with subsequent problems, therefore not DU-caused, but fail to draw the consequences of your own statement. No DoD research, yet again.
Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck resigned from well-paying jobs at the UN in Iraq. Why ?
Some of my friends believe you are a paid shill, well it is either that or you are a little crazy, because your tooth and claw defence against every criticism of Bushworld is worthy of a highly paid and unscrupulous defence lawyer, or a fanatic.
Well , 29% of amerricans still think GWB is doing a good job, I’d love to know what a bad job looks like.
Posted by frog on May 18, 2006 at 2:16 AM If the results of rigorous investigation show, contrary to your hopes, that inhalation of micro-sized uranium dust does contribute to serious health problems, then what will you say?
Then I will say I am sorry and that I was wrong, obviously. Fortunately, I will be in good company. Hundreds of highly qualified professionals in the fields of radiation/health/physics/ will be sorry as well.
But I don’t expect that to be the case, and of course biased pseudo-science is not admissible.
What will it take to convince you that you might be wrong, and that you have helped contribute to a myth that has done great damage to our country? Will you be sorry that you have helped to mislead thousands of unsophisticated and easily brain-washed muslim youths, and given them one more misguided reason to kill or maim innocent people?
Will you be sorry that you have unwarrantably scared veterans into thinking that they are hopelessly poisoned by radiation and should expect to die a painful and premature death, and made them fear the consequences of having children? Will you be sorry that you have distracted sufferers of gulf war syndrome from finding what might be the *real cause of their problems?
* No sign of 2003 war syndrome
By Nic Fleming, Medical Correspondent
(Filed: 16/05/2006)The apparent lack of post-conflict symptoms in troops who served in Iraq supports the view that vaccines and anti-nerve agents were to blame for Gulf War Syndrome, scientists said yesterday.
Researchers found no significant increases in mental and physical health problems in soldiers deployed against Saddam Hussein’s forces three years ago.
In the second of two studies of the health of veterans published today Professor Simon Wessely of King’s College London examined the health of 3,600 British regular soldiers deployed in the 2003 Iraq war and 4,300 non-deployed colleagues.
Prof Wessely said: “Is there an Iraq war syndrome? The answer is no, at least not yet.”
The findings indicated that factors common to the wars against Iraq in 1991 and 2003, such as the use of depleted uranium in shells and pesticides, were unlikely to be the main cause of Gulf War Syndrome.
Posted by Natalie on May 18, 2006 at 2:36 AM Hi to all the shiny ones.
Is there enough fried Bat for a rabbit to have a small piece? Perhaps a leg or a wing?
Notice I do that Natalie still refuses to prove she isn’t Natalie Helbig.Your Daddy was on ICH spruiking for the Uranium Death again, Batty Nat. He got totally rolled of course. But then she probably knew that, they will have communicated at one of the re-education sessions they attended together. You’ve been getting new program lately haven’t you shill? Your mob of propagandists has a little trick up its sleeve about the Pentagon, and you gave the game away yourself some time ago. Too bad for you it won’t help. I’m not even commenting on the big nothing which was released after all the fanfare as if it was going to be something significant by the way. 911 was an inside job and most of the world knows it now.
The more the controlled media tries to spin and fight any truthful look at things the more people are realising 911 is a lie. Once the credibility is lost, any further attempts to crank the machine only results in more people reconsidering what they’ve bought before.
The 911 lie has finally gotten caught in a catch 22 of it’s own making.
The more they now try to prop up a disintegrating story, the more obvious it is that it needs propping up. If indeed there was any chance of the official lie gaining pre-eminence, then it would have been gaining, not losing ground. The same can be said of the deliberate coverups and lies about depleted uranium of which you are an active participant Natalie. Rabbit still mainatins the possibility is strong that Natalie is a Helbig. Did you get the email the rabbit sent the other day? If that wasn’t you dear bat, then why did Rabbit get no response? It was read I know that.
As for what sort of money you make, we wouldn’t really know, but then maybe you are actually making a subtle boast? You see there is nothing in any of the info about this person which suggests she should be making big money anyway. Hell, Rabbit has friends in Academia who have far more impressive contributions than that bureacratic twaddle being peddled by Natalie Helbig, yet they are not well paid. The interesting thing is the perfecttion of the placement. You are a shill, we know that. You have performed the duties of a shill without any deviation. You have followed the US government Shills handbook to the letter, you still do. Natalie Helbig is a Shill for government, that would certainly seem to be a fair reading of her profile.
Anyway, you must prove you are not Natalie Helbig!
Iraq had to PROVE it didn’t have WMDs, Your pig masters are demanding Iran must PROVE they are not trying to build Nukes, (why when they are so easy to buy I wonder), and Natty the weird glowing moon Bat of endless death is required forthwith to prove she isn’t Natalie Helbig. Anyway you are. AND your internet profile is not very impressive. If you are paid anything at all on the basis of that bit of dribble then you should consider yourself lucky.
The bat is a bit stringy, I think we’ve overcooked it a bit guys.
Posted by Rabbit on May 18, 2006 at 5:06 AM Natty quotes
“Those who died prematurely usually died because their mothers lived in impoverished areas neglected by the government.”
That could as truthfully be written about the USA and thus Bush given “credit” directly for the deaths of babies in the USA.
The fact remains that sanctions killed half a million or more, and this was acknowledged by the US administration and is an established fact even in the media la la land which is a result of a controlled media.
Just chewing on the fried bat here, obviously nothing too serious being contributed. Lume you are absolutely firing on all eight cyliners on these two issues and deserve more than the cravenness of our Natalie as a reward.
Rabbit salutes the excellence of the contribution to both 911 and DU, especially the context, a few savings in favorites there thanks.
If on the internet we were able to apply electric shocks to each other upon winning a debating point, and further supposing we had web cams to observe each other, then Natalie would by now be just a black crispy thing hanging from the ceiling.
Much like what happens to innocents who get caught up in the warmongering death and destruction ofr which Natalie is some sort of sick and unholy cheerleader.
Sometimes Rabbit in his spiritual empathy is able to discern for a moment the true karmic significance of the words and intentions of Natty the poisoned Bat and is left shivering in anticipation of the flames she will endure. The rude pleasure the grim satisfaction makes me feel like a rather wicked rabbit for a moment.
In truth the rabbit may watch her cooking over the flames for an hour or two before begginning to feel some sympathy when the time comes.
The gruesome photos linked to above are real, they as well as the testimony of the doctors and witnesses and victims is more than enough evidence to convince a court of law, in any jurisdiction. We may have to wait awhile but eventually the courts will convene, and when they do Natty and Co can grizzle about not being convinced all they like.The rope will not care.
I sincerly believe one of the skills all good survivalists should learn is how to make a proper hangmans noose! Should these beasts and their beast servants be allowed to escape if in the end the whole ship sinks and we are reduced in civilization and technology? NO we should be prepared to round them up in the event we can’t stop them in time, round up the ones who were responsible and hang them.
Summarily if necessary. Thjey must be eliminated, as many as possible and thus we may hope to somehow give our race a better chance the next time it manages to rise up and reach for the stars. Maybe just maybe the problem is genetic and if we are reduced in numbers anyway from their efforts, the chance of reducing their genetic heritage will be greater.
Posted by Rabbit on May 18, 2006 at 5:35 AM Natty the rhetorical Bat, would you care to list any <u>damage</u> that the majority of us who resist the use of depleted uranium weapons have caused the USA?
This crappy line has been bandied about by rightwing dickheads now for a while, but it leaves me bemused every time? How many lives have been lost? How many Cancers and how many Birth defects can be potentially even, attributed to those who oppose the use of Dirty Bombs and Bullets?
Illegal Weapons of mass and indiscrimiante destruction, that’s the definition of Depleted Uranium Weapons under International Treaties.
How many wounded are there because of our opposition to the stuff and how much of the environment has been damaged? (let alone poisoned for billions of years) How long will the effects of our opposition be experienced due to deformed births, cancers and other diseases? Just a rough figure if you like.
As for the last bit of your post. You are a complete dildo. Anyone who is trying to make the conclusion you highlight in bold is also.
Prof Wessely said: “Is there an Iraq war syndrome? The answer is no, at least not yet.â€
NOT YET is about right, and the fact that he said it so tells its own story you poxed reptile heart.Depleted Uranium Poisoning has an effective incubation period of about 4-5 years.
Therefore a study which occurs no more than three years after the latest Nuclear Holocaust in and since 2003, is of absolutely NO worth! Zilch, ZERO, Zippo. NIL dear dil.
You are either a fool or you presume to suppose we are.
More NON Rense sources, just for Natalie How many independant sources is that now? Rabbit has posted reference to at least seven hundred, maybe closer to one thousand sources in the past year or two, to you, which unanimously conclude the toxicity of Depleted Uranium weapons. No exaggeration. Want to deny it BAT? Just try, I’ll unload the lot in the next post after. Here is a start, at leasts the first six hundred. If you have any doubt that this is the shill from hell, nice Frog, dare to delv into this one.
True some of these 1000 have ALSO been referenced by the NEWS site Rense, Natty has this idea that if Rense recognises it then Rip Rense must have written it or something. She still hasn’t logged onto the realisation of independant news sources.
In the interests of serious scientific analysis, despite Natty’s protests, some more studies of Reproductive and developmental toxicity of natural and depleted uranium. Just mice of course but they are not much different to Rabbits or Bats. Oh and “look Ma, no Rense”
There is a very good reason that Natalie is able to discard all evidence and studies and reports and articles out of hand, and rabbit is surprised really that we still bother, any of us. She has long since made it clear that all our sources are completely BIASED. They are all either emphatically or implicitly ANTI-BUSH. This means they cannot possibly be truthful since their only desire in the world is to bring down BUSH> Isn’t that right Natty? They and of course we are all anti Bushites which of course means we would say anything to harm him.
Until any of us can produce a source who is positively PRO BUSH but which decries either the laughable fantasy of 911 or admit the long since predicted and now documented fdact of Deplted Uranium poisoning, we are wasting our time.
The window of opportunity for such a witness is also closing quickly. Already one would be required to search among the dwindling 25% supporters.
Not because we need any more proof that the truth is in, but as more of the studies come to light and especially noting the four to five year time period before the true effects were noticed is presented the following.
DEPLETED URANIUM AND HEALTH OF PEOPLE IN BASRAH: AN EPIDE-MIOLOGICAL EVIDENCE.
Posted by Rabbit on May 18, 2006 at 6:35 AM What does a NUKED BAT look like?
Lume has of course got the needed tools for the Bat trap? Rabbit is quite sure these studies are saved in his faves, but suspects Lume has better ones?
See you tomorrow, here it’s night. Hoping for a more tenderised piece of bat tomorrow.
Posted by Rabbit on May 18, 2006 at 11:20 AM Nat,
Very gracious of you to admit you’d be so very contrite, yet still proud of your self and your company, if found wrong. No mention of responsibility for the very real and very horrific suffering these weapons may have inflicted upon innocent populations.
On the other hand, you think if I am proven wrong (meaning, I suppose, that I believe what you apparently believe I believe, that the dangers of exposure to DU dust are already proven true, and not what I actually believe; which is that there are, from my own humble reading of a broad sampling of the available literature, serious unanswered questions, and there is, as yet not seriously rebutted by established empirical methods of falsification, credible real world evidence of the toxicity of DU dust) I should accept responsibility for some mythical damage that my mere questioning of the conventional wisdom has somehow inflicted upon the US, responsibility for the fear and uncertainty of service people seeking explanations for their as yet unexplained and often officially unacknowledged health problems, and even responsibility for giving aid and comfort to our presumed enemies. Wow! Did I mention projection? I think I did.
Actually, if ever such open, transparent, complete and reliable studies are ever done, I will feel only relief that the pursuit of truth has been honorably served, regardless of the final conclusions. Unlike you, I believe this can only be done by honestly examining all sides of every question, on the basis of empirical verification and rigorous analysis of the physical evidence, and not by acrimoniously excluding those with whom I disagree on mere political grounds, or by touting limited and inconclusive studies as being, in fact, comprehensive and conclusive. What’s with that?
It won’t mean I will admit that skepticism of opaque and marginally accountable governmental secrecy is, in this case or any other, unwarranted. I’m afraid that can only happen if all such opaque secrecy is finally and verifiably dismantled and universally abandoned. Or, perhaps, under the administration of torture or the threat of torture to those I love. I am, after all, only human.
Posted by luminous beauty on May 18, 2006 at 3:31 PM Froggy, you are overly focused on the DOD. In addition to military studies, several other government and non-government scientific organizations all over the world have all concluded that DU is not much of a danger at all.
You make an astute observation in that hey, the military blew it on vaccinations, so why trust it on DU? It’s apples and oranges, though, because uranium is a long-known quantity, and its (non) effect on humans has been studied and documented for decades. I don’t think the same could be said about the vaccinations ...... this is where anger and resources should be directed, even though it’s far less glamorous.
And yes, I know, the aerosol aspect is the current focus of those fantasizing that the world is being irradiated and mutated by blowing winds and glowing dust, but the quantities are miniscule, and the radioactivity is extremely weak.
I would wager that the resignations of Halliday and von Sponeck were not entirely for honorable reasons, given that there was a lot of money to be had for assisting Iraq in ending the sanctions. Plus, the oil for food program they helped administer was a hopelessly corrupt mess, and they probably knew it. Time to bail? What’s your take on it?
As for GWB’s approval ratings, they’re pretty much on par with most US president’s lows at some point in their terms:
Johnson: 35%
Nixon: 24%
Ford: 37%
Carter: 28%
Reagan: 35%
Bush I: 29%
Clinton: 37%I hear France’s leaders don’t rate so high these days, either. I’d be pissed too if I learned I might not be entitled to a job for life no matter what!
Posted by Natalie on May 18, 2006 at 4:45 PM lume,
Sorry if I misinterpreted your position. Perhaps we’re really not that far apart on the issue, as I’m sure you’re not blind to the consensus in the scientific community that would contrast with much of what has been put forth by those arguing against DU.
I’m not against further study, but on the other hand, there HAS been a lot of study. Don’t you think it’s somewhat of a red herring to use the fact that there has been some reluctance by the military to provide information, in order to characterize the whole “pro DU” argument as being somehow limited and inconclusive? There have been substantial studies/evaluations done by the prestigious (I gather) Royal Society, the W.H.O., RAND, the UNEP*, the National Institutes of Health/National Academy of Sciences, The European Commission, the CDC, The U.S. National Defense Research Institute, and others.
My main point, again, is that this issue and any possible debate on it has been poisoned by overblown and in many cases wholly invented claims put forth by ridiculously biased individuals that have no real motivation other than to hobble the ability of anyone to use military force for any reason anywhere anytime. The web is overflowing with their nonsense, and a lot of people fail to recognize it for the propaganda that it is.
I’m not saying that’s you, and I remember you agreeing with this in a limited way, but you seemed to welcome their antics as a mechanism to get “further study”.
The problem in my mind with these tactics, is that their toxic and, thanks to the web, prolific nature do great unwarranted PR damage, and end up inflaming emotions unjustly. Their indoctrinating style is such that even if DU is further proven relatively harmless by however much further study is done, people exposed to the propaganda will remain unmoved.
Please discuss further whether you really believe it is helpful or even wise to employ emotional scare-tactics based on untruths or exaggeration, in order to get what you want.
* A report on the UNEP’s findings:
The team, led by physical chemist Pier Roberto Danesi, former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA’s) laboratory in Siebersdorf, Austria, confirmed that some patches of soil from known impact sites in Kosovo are tainted with DU. But the amounts, the team maintains, are so tiny that the radioactivity poses virtually no cancer risk. Moreover, Danesi’s group found no evidence of elevated plutonium levels in the soil. Their findings jibe with those of other bodies, including the U.K.‘s Royal Society and the European Union, that have surveyed the DU literature. “There is a consensus now that DU does not represent a health threat”, says Danesi. The latest findings, asserts radiochemist Corrado Testa of the University of Urbino in Italy, “confirm that there is no risk from DU.”
They found that in the most contaminated places, a few milligrams of soil could contain hundreds of thousands of DU particles,—but still not a high enough concentration to elevate cancer risk, Danesi says. Plutonium levels in the Kosovo soil—about 1 becquerel per kilogram—accorded with global levels of fallout from atmospheric nuclear tests. For comparison, soil levels in the Alps, near Salzburg, are nine times as high, thanks to Chornobyl. “As far as the plutonium is concerned, you could feed this soil to someone and he’d be fine,” Danesi says. His team will elaborate on its findings in companion articles in the December [2002] issue of the Journal of Environmental Radioactivity. [M]aintains Testa, “for me this is a false problem. We could be spending money on more urgent problems”—toxic solvents, heavy metals, and organic pollutants, to name a few, he says.
Yes, many, many far more urgent problems.
Posted by Natalie on May 18, 2006 at 8:39 PM As usual give the Bat a millimeter and it sets up for a long race.
Natty the whole angle of discussion about Uranium Munitions is being falsely presented by YOU as having to do with its gamma radiation.
For the benefit of viewers at home, I will point out that the danger comes not from Gamma radiation which is admittedly minimal. The real horror of Depleted Uranium Weapons is the Alpha and Beta radiation. This would seem to be extraordinary for such radiation is stopped by even clothing, and certainly hasn’t any real danger past a few millimeters.
The answer to why the stuff is a BANNED CHEMICAL WEAPON, comes from the unique toxicity of Uranium particles. Especially in the form of Ceramic Uranium Oxide Vapours. These partciles are small enough to actually enter the body through inspiration after which they are in fact of precisely the small size necessary to enter cells. There, in direct contact with the cell, the Alpha and Beta radiation which is worst because of its low levels. If the radiation was stronger it would simply kill the cell, but unfortunately this is not what happens. The Nano sized particles emit radiation which alters the DNA of the cell, and the Uranium particle never stops emitting that radiation and it never leaves the body. The result is of course totally predictable and the studies have been referenced above which support the contention. Cancers, Leukeamias etc.
The first and most obvious cancer effects are Lung Cancer not surprisingly and these cancers have been soaring everywhere Uranium Munitions have been deployed. This cancer will be the first to be expected, other types will take longer. The worst of them will have appeared within about ten years though others will continue for the rest of the subjects lives. In fact it is unlikely the places exposed will ever see a return to previous levels of Birth defects and stillbirths as well as previous much lower rates of cancer in the population.
You are furthermore deliberately misrepresenting the doubt about what actually is causing the effects observed in Gulf War Syndrome. There is no credible way of arguing that there can be much doubt about whether or not it is the DU. The answer was given above in the quote by Lume.
The same sorts of abnormalities and disease being experienced by Gulf War Vets, there and here in Oz too by the way, are being experienced by the Iraqi population in those areas hardest hit with Uranium Munitions…..AND THEY DIDN’T GET ANY VACCINATIONS, HENCE THE VACINATIONS CAN BE RULED OUT AS BEING THE LIKELY CAUSE.
Trying to debate any sort of science with you is a complete waste of time. Either you know absolutely nothing about science, or you presume that nobody else does. Most people who completed high school should be quite capable of following the science and medicine involved, it isn’t complex. You pretend that it is, and keep on saying that, but it is simple, the stuff was known to be a deadly poison way back when they had yet to build the first Atom bombs and it is recorded in history that the Americans were intending to use Uranium as a dirty bomb at least if they failed to be able to get a Fission reaction happening. There was no doubt in 1947 that Uranium, vaporised, is a deadly weapon of mass and indiscriminate destruction.
We are in 2006, mad bat, even school kids today can explain the effects of nano sized radioactive particles on cells. They certainly can understand it.
Unlike Lume, I am not prepared to pander to you. I do understand the chemistry, and even if there was not a massive amount of solid evidence which proves the dangers beyond any doubt, I would have no problem knowing it to be true. The science is just not that complex. You pretending it is, is only degrading your own profile though exactly how you could get any lower than a known government shill for Depleted Uranium and the lies about 911 is a puzzle.
I’m sure you’ll show us how. You are the queen of duplicity for sure.
By the way, isn’t it good to know you have NEVER had a single supporter of any substance, in one, is it two years? You are not only stupid, a liar and a beast of murder, you are also the most singularly unsuccessful debater on this forum.
Ignoring the taunts of the rabbit doesn’t make them go away either you moonbat. Just shows your paucity of character.
By the way little flitter flatter Bat, funny you mention those Presidntial poll comparisons. Those were the polls which preceded the demise of each of those who are down there in the below 30’s. In Bush’s case he has still got enough time to reach the lowest of any President ever. I expect to see him in the teens eventually. Just before you get full martial law. After that, I guess we’ll be seeing reports of 100% support again eh?
Posted by Rabbit on May 19, 2006 at 2:43 AM Lume Natty thinks you and she are not too far removed in opinion about DU. Is that so?
Oh just to show what a non issue Depleted Uranium is NOT, even when it’s not being made into dirty bombs and blown about the world, consider this.
The most substantial political debate is currently underway in OZ, and it is hotting up fast. Australia is considering selling our Uranium further afield after having been very conservative about doing so in the past. Oz has major Uranium resources of course. The problem is that we are being asked to take back the Depleted Uranium. This is simply not something anybody, with a few exceptions is even prepared to consider doing. NO fucking way is the response in public and at a political level.
Now why would that be if it is so safe? This won’t even be getting vaporised over the countryside. Oh no, this depleted uranium will of course be in special storage and buried deep underground. The answer is still NO FUCKING WAY! Now why would that be if it is so safe?
The answer is there as plain as the evil in your foul soul Natalie.
I wish you a long journey to the end of a short rope one day.
The final sentence of the evil Bat, claiming other more urgent problems is a joke. What could be more serious and urgent than the creeping Nuclear Holocaust the beast men are engaging in?
Posted by Rabbit on May 19, 2006 at 2:45 AM The following is revision but should be mentioned again, since Natty seems to forget how simple is the science and what is known.
This is excerpted from <u>Contamination of Persian Gulf War Veterans and Others by Depleted Uranium</u> by Leonard A. Dietz
(last updated in 1999.)
Pathways of DU and Its Radiations into the BodyRoutes of intake or pathways of uranium particles into the body include the respiratory tract, the gastrointestinal tract and the skin, through abrasions or wounds. The International Commission on Radiation Protection (ICRP) has developed a biokinetic model that describes the behavior of uranium within the human body (Ref. 29). The model takes into account aerosol particle size, chemical form, and the excretion rates of absorbed uranium from individual vital organs and bones. Radioactive particles reach the gastrointestinal tract by ingestion and by transfer from the respiratory tract. The model shows that for an acute intake of uranium aerosol particles of uranium dioxide or U3O8, urinary excretion of the inhaled uranium can continue for years.
Exposure to gamma rays emitted from DU is another pathway into the body. Crews are exposed to the equivalent of one chest X-ray for every 20-30 hours they spend in an Abrams tank armed with DU ammunition (Ref. 30). The U.S. Army measured a gamma dose rate of 250 millirems per hour at the surface of a penetrator (Ref. 31). This dose rate is consistent with the 233 millirads per hour dose rate for an unspecified mass of DU listed on a U.S. Department of Labor Material Safety Data Sheet issued to Nuclear Metals, Inc. (Ref. 32). For gamma rays, the rad and rem dose units are equal. At body contact, the 250 millirems per hour is equivalent to a dose rate of up to approximately 50 chest X-rays per hour. Whole penetrators or large fragments of penetrators fired from tank cannon and left on a battlefield have this amount of surface radioactivity.(29) International Commission on Radiation Protection Publication 54, book, Individual Monitoring for Intakes of Radionuclides by Workers: Design and Interpretation, Pergamon Press, 1988.
(30) Bukowski, G. and Lopez, D. A., Uranium Battlefields Home & Abroad: Depleted Uranium Use by the U.S. Department of Defense , March, 1993, p. 50.
(31) Skogman, D. P., Headquarters, U.S. Army Armament, Munitions and Chemical Command, Rock Is., IL 61299, May 24, 1991, photocopy of document in Uranium Battlefields Home & Abroad: Depleted Uranium Use by the U.S. Department of Defense, by Bukowski, G. and Lopez, D. A., p. 98.
(32) Bukowski, G. and Lopez, D. A., see pp. 131-132 for photocopy of Material Safety Data Sheet, op. cit.
Posted by Rabbit on May 19, 2006 at 4:37 AM How the U.S. Military Views the Safety of DU Munitions
In a letter to Senator Sam Nunn, a representative of the U.S. Air Force stated, “...these projectiles are no more hazardous to store, transport, or employ than those composed of lead or copper” (Ref. 39). This view is echoed in the U.S. Army report to Congress that states, “The health risks associated with using DU in peacetime are minimal. This includes risks associated with transporting, storing and handling intact DU munitions and armor during peacetime” (Ref. 40). Neither the Air Force nor the Army has publicly presented an analysis of the health risks to soldiers and to others who inhale or ingest radioactive fallout particles of DU, or the health risks of living in an environment contaminated with DU after these munitions have been fired: these are the real safety issues they ignore. Furthermore, a General Accounting Office report to Congress states, “...Army officials believe that DU protective methods can be ignored during battle and other life-threatening situations because DU-related health risks are greatly outweighed by the risks of combat” (Ref. 41). The Army must know that it would be extremely difficult to provide breathing masks that can efficiently remove all of the respirable DU particles from air breathed by soldiers. Even if highly efficient air filters are used by troops, their surroundings will still be contaminated. The surface of the ground, vegetation, equipment, uniforms and other garments contaminated with DU particles will become secondary sources of airborne DU aerosols whenever they are disturbed or moved, thereby presenting an insurmountable radiological containment and decontamination problem on the battlefield. In the AEPI report, (Ref. 42) the Army judges it an acceptable risk if its personnel become exposed in an unprotected fashion to the combustion products of fired DU munitions on the battlefield or elsewhere. This report contains much technical information about DU, but many of the assertions and conclusions in the report are not supported by the technical and scientific data presented. A rebuttal to the AEPI report pointing out some major inconsistencies in the Army report has been published by the Military Toxics Project (Ref. 43).
The three references cited above clearly indicate that the U.S. military’s concern for the safety of DU munitions ends at the muzzle of the cannon. Whatever happens becomes someone else’s problem after a round is fired and its DU metal penetrator strikes armor, partially burns up and injects a huge number of chemically poisonous, radioactive DU aerosol particles into the atmosphere.
(39) Washabaugh, Lt. Col. W. M., U.S. Air Force, Congressional Inquiry Div., Office of Legislative Liaison, letter to Sen. Sam Nunn, Chm. Senate Armed Services Comm., Nov. 8, 1990.(40) Summary Report to Congress, p. 3, op. cit.
(41) Operation Desert Storm, p. 4, op. cit.
(42) “Health and Environmental Consequences of Depleted Uranium Use in the U.S. Army: Technical Report,” op. cit.
(43) “Radioactive Battlefields of the 1990s, the United States Army’s use of Depleted Uranium and Its Consequences for Human Health and the Environment,” by the Military Toxics Project’s Depleted Uranium Citizens’ Network, January 16, 1996.
(44) Summary Report to Congress, p. 2, op. cit.
(45) Helmkamp, J. C., “United States Military Casualty Comparison During the Persian Gulf War,” Journal of Occupational Medicine, Vol. 36, June 6, 1994, p. 614.
(46) Flanders, L., “Mal de Guerre,” The Nation (magazine), March 7, 1994, p. 292.
Posted by Rabbit on May 19, 2006 at 4:41 AM Exposure of U.S. Soldiers and Illnesses in Their Families
Thirty-six U.S. soldiers, including 22 with embedded fragments of DU in their bodies, have sought or reported for medical treatment (Ref. 44). They were in vehicles hit by DU munitions. Another report states there were 35 casualties and 72 wounded in crews of U.S. tanks and Bradley Fighting vehicles in so-called “friendly fire” incidents (Ref. 45). This includes the 36 above and is the total number of service personnel officially admitted to have been exposed to significant quantities of DU aerosol dust and DU fragments during the fighting.
On an NBC Dateline program, (Ref. 6) Sgt. Daryll Clark describes how he and twelve others were in an advanced position in the desert when someone radioed them that 20 Iraqi tanks were approaching his forward radar unit. He called for air support, and shortly a flight of A-10 Warthogs arrived and destroyed all of the tanks with DU-tipped 30-mm cannon rounds. Clark describes how he and the men with him were coughing and choking on smoke from the burning tanks, but mixed with it was DU aerosol dust, which he and the others breathed. He has had chronic respiratory problems since the war and his daughter Kennedy was born in September 1992 with purple welts called hemangioma covering not only her face and body, but some internal organs as well. Kennedy has serious breathing problems and was born without a thyroid. Clark stated that a geneticist told him that he could have ingested some radiation and that it could affect sperm cells. Almost three years after his exposure to DU, Clark’s urine tested positive for uranium.Army nurse 1st. Sgt. Carol Picou also is featured in the NBC documentary. She and seven other women in her medical team were in a forward position, ahead of the main U.S. forces and surrounded by burning Iraqi tanks and vehicles when they stopped and became exposed to DU from the burning destroyed Iraqi armor. Doctor Thomas Callender of Lafayette, Louisiana has examined Picou and said on the program that her outcome bears a striking similarity to other individuals who had exposures to ingested radioactive elements. Picou has been given a medical discharge.
The 7 medical personnel with Picou and the 12 soldiers with Clark probably became contaminated with DU. These 21 soldiers are not included in the official list of those recognized by the U.S. government as having been exposed to DU. Given the large tonnage of uranium penetrators in cannon rounds that were fired on the battlefields in Iraq and Kuwait, it is likely that many thousands of other soldiers also became contaminated with DU. The U.S. Army and the Veterans Administration balk at giving urinalysis tests and “in vivo” tests (whole-body counting of gamma rays) to measure the amount of DU in the lungs and other body organs of Gulf War veterans.
An astonishingly high rate of birth defects in the families of Gulf War veterans is especially troubling. For example, Laura Flanders reports that the Veterans Administration conducted a state-wide survey of 251 Gulf War veterans families in Mississippi (Ref. 46). Of their children conceived and born since the war, 67% have illnesses rated severe or have missing eyes, missing ears, blood infections, respiratory problems and fused fingers. Flanders goes on to say that the birth defects are consistent with the effects of radiation from DU and infection from sand fly bites. Others blame experimental vaccines, chemical warfare pills, the insect repellent DEET and smoke from oil well fires for causing birth defects.
Posted by Rabbit on May 19, 2006 at 4:43 AM DU has both chemical and radiological effects. As a heavy metal it is chemically toxic which poses a risk to health additional to its radioactivity. Ingested DU tends to concentrate in the bones, liver and especially the kidney. The majority of DU ingested is excreted but some may remain for life [2]. In the kidney it can increase the risk of renal damage [5, 16]. In response to a recent report by the Royal Society on health hazards of DU, one scientist wrote; the report never quite says what is clearly stated between the lines: the levels of chemical toxicity are higher than admitted by the politicians and military, who dismiss the concept of chemical toxicity by saying the non sequitur, the DU is not radioactive [17].
The US Department of Defense admits; if DU enters the body it has the potential to generate significant medical consequences [2]. While clothes and skin block the majority of radiation from DU outside the body, once inhaled or ingested, small amounts of beta and gamma radiation would be able to penetrate deep cell tissue. The IPPNW (International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War) says that even low doses of low-level radiation can cause some damage to DNA in living cells, whether enough to significantly increase the risk of cancer and other acute health effects is a matter of much debateuntil now there has been no conclusive evidence but this [is not] evidence that there are no health effects[5].
There has been a lot of publicity over cancer cases occurring soon after conflict which most sides agree are unlikely to be caused solely by DU exposure, the general period for development of cancer being between 5 and 10 years. However the IPPNW feel that this possibility cannot be ruled out [5].
Dr. Alim Yacoub* et al of Basra University conducted an epidemiological study into incidences of malignancies in children under fifteen years old, in the Basra area (an area bombed with DU during the first Gulf War). They found that in the years 1990 to 1997 there was a 120% rise in the number of general malignancies, while over the 1990 to 1999 period, there was a 242% rise. Leukaemia was seen to rise 100% in the 1990 to 1999 period with a similar steeper increase in the last 2 years [2]. They noted an abnormal increase in the incidence of cancer of the blood, lungs, digestive system, and skin as well as a notable increase in the incidence of congenital diseases and foetal anomalies. This is certainly not proof of a link, as stated above it is difficult to ascertain a particular cause of any epidemiological findings. Smoke from oil fires in the area would have released carcinogens, and any possible DU effects cannot be isolated, but it is certainly food for thought. Once ingested DU can enter the bloodstream and will pass through the placenta to an unborn child, [2]. The WTO notes that children are sometimes more likely to be exposed due to hand to mouth activities [16]. Another source quoted epidemiological research showing a three-fold increase in occurrence of cancer in Bosnia between 1995 and 1997 [18].
Posted by Rabbit on May 19, 2006 at 5:13 AM 1. www.iacenter.org/depleted/metal-leftbooks.htm
2. www.iacenter.org/depleted/du_iraq.htm
3. www.cadu.org.uk
4. www.gulflink.osd.mil/faq_17apr.htm
5. www.ippnw.org
6. www.cadu.org.uk/info/military/7_1.htm
7. www.eoslifework.co.uk/du2012.htm
8. www.iacenter.org/depleted/du_greektr.htm
9. www.umrc.net/downloads/health_consequences_of_radiological_warfare.pdf
10. www.news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/europe/2001/depleted_uranium/default/stm
11. www.iacenter.org/israel_du.htm
12. www.mod.uk/issues/depleted_uranium/middle_east_2003.htm
13. www.iacenter.org/du_warcrime.htm
14. www.chugoku_up.co.jp/abom/uran/index_e.html
15. www.pandoraproject.org
16. www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs257/en/
17. www.cadu.org.uk/info/reports/monk
18. www.rimbaud.freeserve.co.uk/iraq.htm
19. www.royalsoc.ac.uk/du/intro.htm
The conservative tone of this report belies the claim of Natty that hysteria reigns within anti-DU circles. There is not consensus on how bad the problem is, but there is consensus in all circles that there is a problem. That is how you read such language, Moonbat Nat.Basically scientists who are a notoriously conservative lot when it comes to hard claims, are saying that there is certainly problems, and they understand the exact nature and routes of the risk. They are simply saying that they are unable to put an upper limit on the total problem. The reasons are lack of overall data. The data that is in, which includes limited epidemiological studies as it happens, is all pointing in the same direction regarding the actual damage and risk of damage.
Now anyone with an ounce of common sense can look to the epidemiological studies already made, and project the likely outcomes of the wider studies which will eventually be done, have no fear. Neither you nor all the bought and paid for Shills the US corporatocracy can muster with its borrowed economy, will stop the time and tide.
Posted by Rabbit on May 19, 2006 at 5:13 AM A response to the report by the royal society. I’ve told you before that the Royal Society is a scientific brothel.
Teratogenicity of depleted uranium aerosols:A review from an epidemiological perspective I know Lume gave you this, but how about you read it again. It really is the answer to your doubts, but as has been pointed out, you don’t really understand what an epidemiological study is do you?
That is recent, Jan 2005, and includes epidemiological studies, is taken from such a perspective in fact..
Nat admit it you don’t honestly even know what half the words you use mean do you? You still mix up science and faith for example.
You are unable to navigate the precision and factual basis of scientifc language.
A Bat might say she knows the sun will rise tomorrow and base this view on faith.
A scientist would prefer to say:
Based on a long history of observations of its daily behaviour, and thereby projecting its previous course of activity into the future, it can be said with some degree of certainty that the sun will rise as expected tomorrow. It should furthermore be possible to predict this same course of Solar activity another week from now. The degree of accuracy of such a prediction would however be reduced proportionally. It would require further studies and observations to be able to increase the assurance of the sun continuing to rise, the further one attempts to predict into the future. Indeed the probability of the sun rising tomorrow can never achieve an absolute status and the probability of our predictions being completely wrong is a complete unknown. The answer as always is only that we can decrease the realm of uncertainty with wider range of data, but we cannot eliminate it entirely.The scientist is actually never going to say he knows the sun will rise tomorrow. If he does, he is not a scientist really even if he calls himself one. You cannot on the other hand claim the scientist above is saying he doubts the sun is going to rise. But that in essence is what you are doing .
Now Natalie prove that you are a two faced liar and denialist, all over again. Or just bugger off, because you are boring beyond belief. You are as ignorant a lying reptile as ever and I tire quickly of smashing your feeble efforts at shilling.
As I’ve said often, as shills go you are as ineffective as they come, but then your assignments are no-brainers anyway.
The coverup! Now lets look at what Natty is all about.
Posted by Rabbit on May 19, 2006 at 5:59 AM Gosh, for someone so boring, Rabbit, I certainly seem to have initiated quite a surge in your beta brain wave activity, not to mention that of your finger tips.
Thank you for your recent contributions, but before considering this further input from you to be at all credible, I’m going to have to insist that you provide some kind of documentation to back-up the claim contained in your prior link, which for some reason wasn’t reflected in the actual CNN transcript:
“On the March 8, 2006 edition of the CNN American Morning program with Miles O’Brien and Soledad O’Brien, they made a startling announcement. On average there are 175,000 new cases of lung cancer each year in the United States. For just the months of January and February 2006 there are 172,000 confirmed, newly diagnosed cases of lung cancer. This is not just a little spike on the charts and much worse news is coming. That is already averaging this year about 6 times the normal incidence of new lung cancer cases in a year.”
And please also, in a bewilderingly similar vein, strangely provided by you as presumably another independent source, for this one:
“In the year 2005 there were 175,000 new cases of lung cancer in the United States. The months of January and February of 2006 have already yielded 172,000 new cases of lung cancer in our nation. What has lead to this shocking new development?”
What is the source of these shocking new statistics?
Posted by Natalie on May 19, 2006 at 8:02 AM As always you attribute so much effort to such small things really. I was reading and posting as part of the learning process and out of a genuine desire to see you fail in your efforts to even feel like you help the cover up of the truth.
It is too late to go back. If you failed to keep up back there that’s your problem, the rabbit ALREADY ANSWERED your whinge about the sources and provided the links beyond CNN at May 1, 2006 at 3:05 AM. Pay attention!
Besides which you are casting your red herrings to the wind.
I do not have to prove any credibility, it isn’t Rabbit doing the epidemiological studies merely pointing them out. But there you have some studies, quite a few actually, all of which point as detailed by me above, that there is a significant problem, the exact extent of which is as yet undefineable due to uncubation periods but which is already clearly a problem of gargantuan significance., ignorant reptile mind. You have failed completely to realise the Teratogenicity of depleted uranium aerosols: A review from an epidemiological perspective source given is highly significant, and if you comprehend the language which you clearly do not, then the prognosis is grim. Didn’t those ratios and the discussion of the non targeted samplings of teratogenetic efects measured compared to the controls, mean anything to you? Of course you have not read it, I keep forgetting.
Your are a waste of time Nat but it is good to know you are such a dope, always hoping you are a highly paid shill. It would be great to know the government actually considers your efforts to be worth anything.
Crispy foolish Bat! You as always want to avoid the hard things and fiddle with the loose strands as if pulling a single thread will weaken the tapestry to any degree.
Go and do some learning yourself. You could do with the experience.
Posted by Rabbit on May 19, 2006 at 11:02 AM Rabbit asks:
Lume Natty thinks you and she are not too far removed in opinion about DU. Is that so?
In her dreams, Rabbit. The one thing we really know about Nat, besides her unremitting shilling for the government, is that we know nothing at all.
Isn’t that strange? After two years of conversation, not a clue as to her real occupation, family background, personal history, geographical home. Not a single genuine human trait about her has been revealed. Not even her gender. We know how uncertain that can be by mere inference from a name.Still, I have myself learned a lot by butting heads with Nat and her ilk.
I’ve been trying to draw her out by non-judgmental questioning with some limited success, but every time I get close to a revelation, she reverts to PR mode, like a turtle withdrawing into its shell. And her PR mode is invariably vicious. She characterizes all critics with nasty hyperbole and unsubstantiated and partisan attacks upon their credibility, and in turn accuses them of employing those same methods. It is a very, very, very pathological pattern of behavior.
In Nat’s case it is not so much the ordinary neurotic ego compensation of an individual, but her super-ego identification with the paternal figure represented by the government. Her unexamined fear of exposure of her genuine self is thus effectively shielded.
Sorry about the Freudisms, but they are more simply expressed and easily comprehended than other more modern forms of analysis, and they do provide a rough fit.
My point here is that there is a powerful socially enabled pathological stream of denial and projection that has been reinforced by decades of patriotic indoctrination within the population of the US and other westernized countries. Such pathologies are very difficult to treat even when individuals admit to the problem. There is need for caution when dealing with such individuals, for their own sakes as well as the harm they are capable of inflicting on the larger society as a cohesive group, because direct confrontation invariably drives them to reassert their conditioning. Nonetheless, consistent, patient and honest questioning that goes to the heart of their motivations is the only way to reach such persons.
The fact that this pathology has succeeded in corrupting and gaining power within the institutions of governance is nothing particularly new, but never has it been so stark in its obviousness in nominally democratic societies. Whether Natalie chooses to continue in her role as a true believer in this hubristic enterprise or come to her senses and seek healing for the terribly destructive schisms within the human community this social pathology represents is ultimately up to her. We should be encouraging her to see that she is really the victim of powerful psychological forces outside of her control, that her loyalty, while ordinarily an admirable trait, is being cruelly exploited for horrific ends, and that she really does have the capacity within her to overcome the invidious illness with which she has been so sorrowfully infected. Otherwise, we are just engaging in unresolvable alienating and oppositional rhetorical argument, since reason and science have no real effect on her thinking.
So be nice, Conejo. She knows not what she does. ;-)
Posted by luminous beauty on May 19, 2006 at 5:18 PM Right on, Luminous Beauty.
... in her role as a true believer ...
Ding ding ding! And what a role! I can almost believe that she believes .
... come to her senses and seek healing ... We should be encouraging her ...
Natalie, we love you and want to help you get well.
Posted by David in Canada on May 19, 2006 at 9:30 PM It is too late to go back. If you failed to keep up back there thats your problem, the rabbit ALREADY ANSWERED your whinge about the sources and provided the links beyond CNN at May 1, 2006 at 3:05 AM. Pay attention!
Well, no, you pay attention! Your “answer” of May 1 to my “whinge” was noted in my above post. Also evident, if you had been paying attention!, would have been the fact that in your “answer”, the exact same statistics are simply reproduced, again without substantiation. So I guess one might conclude that your “answer” was not an answer at all, but merely a repetition of what I suspect is a wholly invented claim. Again….on what do they base their statistics?
Besides which you are casting your red herrings to the wind.
No, not at all. You have provided a perfect example of the nonsense that dominates the anti-DU movement. Of course now you wish to pretend that it’s all irrelevant. If so, then why did you bother to present it in the first place?
I do not have to prove any credibility, it isnt Rabbit doing the epidemiological studies merely pointing them out.
Well, at least you’re finally pointing out something that approaches the realm of credibility. I read the teratogenicity of DU aerosol study referenced by luminous, and gave my lengthy opinion of it above, as I can only assume you are aware. You seem to think that it is some kind of iron-clad proof of DU guilt, a conclusion the authors certainly don’t come to. Perhaps you can point out the smoking gun in the study, and explain to me why the authors displayed a reluctance to discuss other far more likely causes of birth defects in Basra that might also happen to reflect poorly on someone other than the U.S.
You don’t have to prove any credibility? I guess that’s why you haven’t yet. You could start with the lung cancer rates.
Posted by Natalie on May 20, 2006 at 12:58 AM That’s a beautifully written block of psycho-babble, luminous. It’s looking like you really are a shrink.
You have a way with words, but I’m afraid they add up to not much more than a huge pile of hypocrisy.
You talk about me accusing sources of bias, and questioning their credibility on that basis, yet I remember several instances of you doing the exact same thing.
You question my mental health, but fail to recognize that I’m the one who has merely cited the consensus in the scientific and medical community regarding DU, and in the engineering community regarding the collapse of the towers—and that you are the one who has sided with what most people would classify as the kook fringe.
You allude to me being unreachable, yet you yourself have never demonstrated other than that. Never admitting that yeah, perhaps the fact that not even one structural or fire engineer believes the WTC was bombed might bring one pause, or that the huge volume of literature pointing out the relative benignity of DU, even aerosols, might just be worth considering.
Of course this is fine, it’s your position, but do you really have the right to say that me stubbornly standing by mine is somehow illegitimate, and is an indication that I need some kind of help? That’s hypocritical crazy talk, is it not??
Yes, you people who unswervingly believe in fairy tales about bombs in buildings, missiles in pentagons, six-fold increases in lung cancer in two months, hijackers and Barbara Olson still being alive, the innocence of Usama, and in the reliability of Saddam’s science are calling me stubborn and crazy. Priceless.
Thanks for your concern, Dave. I love you too. But I’m doing absolutely fine. It’s ya’all I’m worried about.
Posted by Natalie on May 20, 2006 at 1:03 AM Natalie
Damn, the first part of this long post, dealing with the logic, or rather its lack, in your style of argumentation, as well as certain details as to the specifics of this discussion, got lost. For some reason my posts are only going through on the second attempt. Maybe I’ll try to reconstruct it later.
I’m not alluding to you being unreachable, Nat, I’m alluding to the fact that you never reach out in any ordinary human and personal fashion as people in extended social situations are prone to do. I’m somewhat reserved myself, but you make me feel positively garrulous. That is one reason why Rabbit is so mean to you. It’s part of his Aries nature to see people who are unobvious about themselves as stand-offish, deceptive and arrogant, even if they are just shy and self-conscious. Something that doesn’t happen much with Aries personalities. In this case, it seems to me, as a Libra, that he might be correct. I like to keep both sides in balance, but you aren’t giving me much with which to defend you. In fact, your intransigence sometimes leaves me with little recourse but to mock. Please forgive me.
Please feel free to take this astrological analysis, as well as all ‘psycho-babble’ in which I may have indulged, with a grain of salt. It is only a framework for developing understanding and broadening relationships, not necessarily a determinative description of reality.
I don’t think you’re crazy, Nat. I think your ordinary human feelings are being manipulated and are undermining your reason and making you unnecessarily defensive. If you understand what I wrote, I’m not saying you are suffering from an individual pathology, but are the victim of a broad and invidious social pathology. One whose roots are not constrained merely by our current set of political divisions, but are deeply ingrained in human history. A struggle that is engaged in every human breast between individual freedom of conscience and submission to the given order. There are no real sides in this struggle, just a platform for the growth of wisdom. Together we can build a framework to try and develop some kind of mutual understanding, but only if you are willing.
I don’t find it as easy as David to offer unconditional love, but I am always willing to be friends, even if we don’t see eye to eye.
Posted by luminous beauty on May 20, 2006 at 4:33 PM Natalie, the errors and non-sequitors you employ are just too numerous for me with limited time to respond in the detail they justly deserve.
For a single example, consider your laughable suggestion that the Hinden, Brugge, Pannikar study relies on what you call ‘Saddam’s science’. You yourself point to a doctor in Saddam City, where support for Hussein is still widespread, who denounces propaganda uses of infant corpses during the sanctions period. How much more likely is it doctors in Basra, where Saddam was widely hated, would denounce politically manipulated research? Yet the doctors involved in the Basra studies, reaffirmed and expanded on their findings in Oct. ‘03, half a year after Saddam was removed from power. Why would they do that? Is the notoriety worth it? Do you think that the progressive deterioration of medical care and the fleeing of medical professionals because of security concerns throughout Iraq, or the US’s kybosh of WHO investigations has helped to ascertain the truth of the matter? You think?
The risibility of your suggestion turns quite grim when you consider the responsibility of the US government and particularly members of the current administration for their roles in supplying Iraq with the scientific and technological means to develop WMDs in the first place.
You keep saying there are these mountains of studies that show that Uranium is relatively harmless, yet you link to general fact sheets and press releases that explicitly or implicitly admit that there are health risks to DU, yet seek to minimize those risks, and refer to the same small group of limited studies that really don’t prove anything.
The DoD press release is an example of what they don’t reveal about their 6 million dollar study being of much more interest than the blatant propaganda in the bulk of the article. What were the ordnances used? How many in each test? What extent of penetration of the interiors of the vehicles by projectiles was achieved in the tests? Breached is a very indistinct term. Were the vehicles just static platforms or were the air circulation systems in use? What was the level of contamination on the outside of the vehicles? To what degree were real-world battle conditions simulated?
The same with the 911 attacks. You say there is a broad and loudly affirmative consensus among independent structural engineers certifying the government reports. All I hear is a profound silence.
Posted by luminous beauty on May 20, 2006 at 8:57 PM luminous,
I’m glad to see that you weren’t accusing me of being unreachable, and that you don’t think I’m crazy. And I’m glad to learn that your Freudian characterization of me as just an unknowing cog in perhaps a slightly suspicious gear in an evil machine is quite possibly “not necessarily a determinative description of reality.” (wink and a smile)
I’m certainly very happy to be your friend, as I’m sure we both have the same wishes for world peace, prosperity and security; just different opinions on how to achieve these. You are an extremely talented writer and thinker, and you never fail to put out a well reasoned rebuttal, not that it’s really that hard in my case. (I know what you’re thinking, creepy, huh?)
I’ve been very reluctant to share personal details here, I guess mainly because the treatment I get isn’t really conducive to it. My initial entry into the DU debate was I thought polite, though perhaps pointed, but apparently simply due to the fact that I dared to disagree with the apocalyptic views of certain individuals, I was quickly deemed a “govt. shill”, a vampire, a death merchant, and even laughably had Rabbit fantasizing that I was related to Roger Helbig. I chose to simply try to stick to the facts, as I saw them, and for the most part ignore the static, which I consider irrelevant to the subject at hand.
I’ll just say that I’m an oridnary nobody, with a son that I love, and a low paying job that I hate. Never graduated college, although I went for a couple years, but other things got in the way.
So….. you think I’m wrong to infer that Rita’s analysis relies on Saddam’s science. Actually, I wasn’t thinking mainly of her, but about all the references I’ve read to the guys from Basra U., and the whole lot of what was coming out of Iraq in the form of manufactured media events aimed at ending the sanctions. But fair enough. You make a case about motivations—I’ll attempt to make the opposite case.
You say that support for Hussein is still widespread in Saddam City. Although I can’t say what the situation is there currently, you must know that at the time of the invasion, and presumably at the time of the Dr’s admissions about staging dead baby parades, Saddam city was a Shia district. From my previous reference:
“We were not allowed to return the babies to their mothers for immediate burial, as is the Muslim tradition, but were told they must be kept for what became known as ‘the taxi parade,”’ said Dr Hussein al-Douri, the deputy director of the Ibn al-Baladi hospital in Saddam City, a Shia district in eastern Baghdad.
*Here is additional evidence that Saddam City wasn’t exactly a hotbed of Saddam enthusiasts:
* Marine commanders reported Iraqi artillery firing indiscriminately into Saddam City, a poor Shiite neighborhood that had erupted into a frenzy of celebration and looting Wednesday afternoon.
During the celebrations, a Shiite leader told the crowd that “the tyrant of the world is finished, thanks to the coalition. Thank God for Iraq, the victorious.”
I think it’s fair to assume that the doctors were Shia, and were happy to rid their consciences of what they were forced to do.
cont…...
Posted by Natalie on May 21, 2006 at 2:48 AM pg. 2…..
Conversely, I find a *lot that makes me suspect that the guys that put out the studies in Basra were heavily under the control of the Baath party, in fact likely Baathists themselves, although I haven’t found anything to confirm the latter.
* Thus, from 1979 onward, Basrah University had not only suffered from three wars and sanctions, but also from the central government’s intentional neglect, oppression and disrespect for higher education......
.......Professor Salman never thought he’d be in such a position of responsibility, but following the regime change a few months ago, his fellow teachers elected him Chancellor in recognition of his years of sincere dedication to research and academic life. During Saddam’s reign, however, Professor Salman had been ignored and neglected, and was not promoted in 34 years of service, because he wasn’t a Ba’athist........
........I had ranked first in our group and he had ranked second. In the second year of our studies, however, we were told that the University had made a mistake to accept us as students, because we were not party members. What followed was worse and beyond the scope of this article, but Prof. Ali suffered immensely from the regime during the 1990s….....
What’s more, their data, even assuming that it is accurate, (and even assuming the researchers aren’t Saddamites) doesn’t really look to me that remarkable. We’re talking at most about an increase of 3 or 4 defects in 100,000 in the period between 1990 and 1998. (see table 5) And certainly the authors have made no convincing argument that the increase was due to DU. They had not the equipment nor the expertise. (That’s our fault, I know!)
The DoD press release is an example of what they don’t reveal about their 6 million dollar study being of much more interest than the blatant propaganda in the bulk of the article.
Now, now, questioning the integrity of my sources? OK for you, but not for me??? ;-)
The details you rightly wonder about are layed out in the report itself. The entire report is certainly not a “general fact sheet or press release”, as you wrongly describe things like the RAND report, the Royal Society reports, the W.H.O. reports, or the UNEP reports. As well as another one that also deals with aerosols that I forgot about until looking back at that old DU thread.
As for the towers and engineers, I would encourage the good folks at Scholars for “truth” to commission a Zogby poll of engineers. With all their speaking fees, surely they could afford it. Somehow I doubt it will be forthcoming. Wouldn’t it be reasonable to assume that the scholars would have made an attempt to reach out to the structural, civil, and fire engineering communities? And if not, why not I wonder. So far, their listing of supporters is pretty vacant of certified professionals in these fields.
Posted by Natalie on May 21, 2006 at 2:52 AM Nat,
I fail to see how neglect is a motivation for researchers loyalty, even if they were Baath Party members. That is exactly the kind of internalized conflict I’m talking about. You too are caught between doing what you know is right and doing what you must to get along. We’re all in the same boat. Even those who think they are in positions of power have sublimated their own autonomy to the externalized dictates that their position requires of them. It is trivial that they represent themselves as the protectors of the powerless. It is how the illusion of leadership is maintained, whether it is Saddam Hussein or George Bush or your boss. Succumbing to the given order for the false promise of security is the losers game of sycophancy that keeps all of us from assuming the rights and responsibilities for having real input into the decisions that most directly influence our lives.
We are comparatively few that are struggling to question authority and speak truth to power. Most people are anxious to keep their heads low and not stick their necks out. To defend their position, it is encumbent on those power holders of whatever political stripe, and their sycophants, to identify those who question their authority as decievers, enemies, conspirators or unconscious dupes of shadowy evil forces that only seek to destroy and harm. Pounding a constant drumbeat, they imbue us with their own self-aggrandizing and self-enriching motivations. Even courageous little rags like In These Times are limited in their scope and their ability to articulate a true picture of the way things really are by economic realities and the relentless pressures of authoritarian conventions. If Jimmy Weinstein had not been the fortunate recipient of modest inherited wealth, ITT would not likely even exist. That our voices are heard at all over the ubiquitous blaring propaganda of the richly subsidized organs of the gate-keepers of power, which includes all the corporate owned media, even those considered putatively ‘liberal’, is an amazing testament to the tenacious human desire for genuine freedom.
Do you really think peace groups offer handsome speaking fees? I have to say, my hometown peace center has had plenty of speakers who came to us on their own dime. The usual compensation is a place to crash in the home of a member, maybe dinner at a modestly priced restaurant or more often a pot luck, and passing the hat for a full tank of gas for the trip to their next stop. Occasionally we’ve dipped in the kitty to pay for a plane ticket. Sometimes high profile personalities will come to promote fund-raisers; for our benefit, not theirs.
The idea that peace activists have huge piles of cash to throw around for research, PR or anything else is ridiculous. Most everything that gets done is done on a voluntary basis. What fund-raising we do is almost entirely committed to rent, postage and electricity. We do offer a modest scholarship for our annual essay contest, and spend a few grand for an annual outdoor retreat for kids, subsidized by a small trust fund and private donations. Our newsletter does not pay for itself from adverts and subscriptions. It is every month subsidized out of the meager retirement pay of our editor in chief. It is printed entirely gratis by a retired hobbyist on end-rolls of donated newsprint. I served as art director for a couple of years and had to supply my own media and materials, or go begging. It took several months one time to raise the money to have our donated copier fixed.
This, in a fairly wealthy community with a relatively high level of support. Where I now live, in Shasta County, things are much tougher.
Posted by luminous beauty on May 21, 2006 at 5:51 PM There is an old joke, that has long served as a cautionary tale to researchers, about the man searching for his lost wallet under a streetlight when he’d actually lost it in a darkened alleyway because the light was better. This is a simply understood explanation for the kind of cynical manipulation of data that the Sandia, WHO, UNEP, and RS reports have all relied on to present their minimalized findings.
For example, the Sandia report, which relies on the Capstone data for their theoretical calculations. (Just so you know, by citing both, you aren’t really citing different studies.) sets as its lower limit a particle size of 0.5 microns. They then use a median derived value between upper and lower limits for their calculations for atmospheric dispersal, bodily distribution and renal elimination and cancer risk. This slight of hand is almost insignificant next to the fact that particles of less than 0.5 are precisely those that are the most harmful, the most difficult for the body to eliminate, and the least prone to precipitate out of the atmosphere in real world conditions, which, once again, their theoretical model only approximates from still air indoor experimental data. It appears this was also the lower detection limit for the equipment in the Capstone tests. Therefore particles below that size are treated as if they don’t even exist.
This is one of the questions that Doug Rokke raises. His team was the operational unit that actually did the field work and suffered almost immediate sickness as a result of the protective gear they were using not being able to filter out particles of this small size. It is grossly disengenous of the DoD to say that he wasn’t in charge of the field work, but that the civilian bean-counters who were merely supervising the experiments were.
That Rokke isn’t willing to give up the names of his team is not so much a sign of dishonesty as an indication of how seriously he takes his commission. The reciprocation of loyalty is that one’s men protect their superiors in the field and officers defend their men off the field. In spite of what you might believe, most ordinary people do not want to become the object of public scrutiny and potential scorn and notoriety. From this POV, Rokke is showing some genuine honor, no matter how much we all would like to know in order to determine the truth of what he claims. I personally find the official memos he has to be quite revealing enough as to the DoD’s duplicity, when considered along-side the facts of their report as I’ve laid them out.
There is also a bunch of hand-waving to dismiss ‘hot-spot’ calculations of radiation densities to arrive at the benign cancer risk numbers they give, and similar dismissal of more current research that shows real cancer risks in mice and rats, for older out-dated petri-dish experiments that have null results. As has been pointed out above there are more recent studies that not only show elevated statistical risks for DU, but reveal determinative causal pathways and actual measured damage to DNA by micro-particles of Uranium.
Posted by luminous beauty on May 21, 2006 at 9:17 PM Brilliant Lume, your posts are absolutely spot on, and the humble hopper salutes your mind. How I wish I’d read the bit that got lost. If it was anything like what happens to me like that, then it was probably the best yet.
Natalie, Scoffing at Lume’s excellent analysis does nothing but further highlight the flaws of character, reasoning and humanity which are yours.
If it wasn’t long since obvious you are way out of your depth in every respect that counts, then it is now.
Like Lume Rabbit too has learned much from butting heads with you.
Learned more about the US government, it’s propaganda efforts and the paucity of intelligent help seemingly available to it.
Learned just how poverty stricken is the actual case for their lies. You’ve obviously done your best but have never raised the believability of the government lies, never won a single supporter and never bested anybody on a single point of substance.
Thus, best of all, I have learned that come what may, it is only a matter of time now before your snow shack of lies (No castle!) melts in the sunlight of truth.
The simple fact is you are losing support day by day.
22% support for the Shrub in New York now, that’s a big drop from 87% isn’t it?
No need to comment. We know that even another false flag attack won’t raise that by much for long. We don’t need to even hear what a complete idiot like you has to say about it. You can’t stop the tide.
Upon reflection Rabbit has not been fair to the Lung Cancer referance, I see that Doctor Howenstine only referenced the Story on CNN, which has been removed from their transcript on the net. This is a common practice for TV stations who have been contacted by “certain forces” about a story they have aired. Too late to stop the story but at least they remove it from the transcript. Such actions show more than they hide to those who are paying atention. In case you think this in anyway negates the truth of the possible effects DU in America may already be showing up in health effects, I give you the following.
Lung Cancer figures and some context. Note the last sentence. Obviously to an open mind, considering all possibilities mentioned, the most likely cause, and certainly a candidate, is Depleted Uranium. As usual the fact that the government hides information pertinent to the truth, such as how much DU is floating around America, makes itm harder to pin down, but that is why have have minds which can reason.
Scientists Study Depleted Uranium link to Gulf War Syndrome. For those who are truly attempting to understand. A few interesting tidbits in that, the weakening of the nose brain barrier by desert storms for a start.
You are out of your depth as said, deeply and horribly out of your depth.Your initial appearance on the Radiocative Wounds of War thread showed a complete lack of honesty, your claims of non-bias WERE ELIMINATED IN YOUR SECOND POST, by yourself by the amount of conviction you immediately brought to a supposedly little understood issue by yourself.
The very thread followed an article which was itself a strong testimony to the Teratological dangers of Depleted Uranium Weapons. The only people who came onto that thread after reading the article by Dave Lindorff, who were not expressing outrage, were a handful of people all of whom were positively identified as stooges for the military. You were not identified as such, but have never wavered in your stubborn faith based support for Uranium Weapons since then. Even though new studies have come out since you began to shill on the issue, you have waved them away with the same arguments and air of disdain.That itself puts the lie to all your claims of open mindedness. You showed absolutely no ability to discern and merely jumped on the bandwagon with Helbig, and never even faltered a step when he was quickly PROVEN to being a Pentagon Stooge. In fact he is infamous on the entire internet spectrum for his shilling. As always you lie and lie and lie, yet nobody believes you. Reading between the lines, Lume and even Dave are mocking you, clown. In some ways Rabbit is showing a nicer front, for he is not playing you for a complete idiot, but rather has given you credit for knowing what you are doing. Maybe as Lume is saying, (and Freud isn’t wrong, just simpler than Jung I agree) you really are just a dittohead drone?
Like I said, I wish you a long drop on a short rope, Natalie Moonbat Helbig.
May your dark and ugly soul be dropped permanently into the gruesome pit when judgement day, in whatever form comes…...................ok ok….............Unless you repent and mend your ways. ........^^...........
Posted by Rabbit on May 22, 2006 at 1:12 AM Oh Lume. When one writes a long post, often it goes missing simply because the chance for someone else to post in the meantime is increased. Instead of returning to ones too long post and thus giving one a chance to cut some of it, the post gets lost. Not sure of the technical terms but it is the fact that the page has been updated in the meantime that means your work in progress in the comment box is lost with the old page reload. If you are lucky enough that nobody else posts between your first opening the page and downloading the comment, you’ll get it back intact.
If only one could always remember to copy the text before hitting the button, then salvation is at hand.
This forum has become much more user friendly now, maybe too much. Notice one can edit posts from way back, thus allowing the dishonest to go back and change what they say. Obviously not a problem with Natty for she simply never changes what she says.
By the way, I find it hard to believe Natty has a child, or if she does then I am concerned for it. Nobody could defend the indefensible the way she has. My dislike of Nat has less to do with her witholding anything, less to do with her complete lack of honesty or decency. It is entirely based upon the fact that she is knowingly supporting the most horrible war crimes and historical lies. Maybe she is deluded about 911, but nobody who has looked at even a fraction of what she has supposedly read about DU now can support it. Even from the simple human perspective of caution at least. Thus a mother she cannot be. Mothers are always cautious. They do not weait for the proof that their child is being poisoned. If they become aware that there might even be a chance the child is in danger, they always err on the side of caution.
Being a father, or mother tends to make one much more sensitive to the plight of children everywhere. Natty has seen photographic evidence of what is happening to Children, and more than enough information to at least show Uranium Weapons are the most likely cause. Thus her refusal to even entertain the idea that she is wrong, is enough to convince me she is no mother, unless she is a psychopath.
Of course there is that old chestnut about victims of abuse who seem unable to recognise/admit when their own children are being abused, and maybe there is something in this. Perhaps Daddy Helbig used to dip her dummy in Uranium Slurry?
The ludicrous nature of Nattys claims of lack of proof, or evidence about this stuff, is evident in her complete lack of comprehension of the conclusions to the very epidemiological studies she demands. which are not new Nat, you’ve ignored them ages ago already, as always lying
It is also patently obvious that Natty has no idea what form such Proof might take, or what actually constitutes evidence in biological feedback mechanisms.
How does the stupid girl think Thalidimide or Aspartame have been proven to be as dangerous as what they were?
YOU’RE COMPLETELY OUT OF YOUR INTELLECTUAL DEPTH NATALIE!
Posted by Rabbit on May 22, 2006 at 1:51 AM News for those who want to know.
7 April 2006 Uranium’s Effect On DNA EstablishedStill no pause to think there might be more to it than our desire to support the enemies of freedom or something?
Posted by Rabbit on May 22, 2006 at 3:03 AM Hello Rabbit
I noticed the very first Nattypost was answered by jsalsman, 27aug05, with a ref to DNA changes.
That first post showed the Bat to be a lover of DDT, GMO’s, and Pesticides in general, and an enemy of the same scare-mongering unscientific kooky fringe who pointed out years ago that coaldust killed miners, and asbestos killed shipbuilders. .
Natty as War-Lover ——
”“”....My main point, again, is that this issue and any possible debate on it has been poisoned by overblown and in many cases wholly invented claims put forth by ridiculously biased individuals that have no real motivation other than to hobble the ability of anyone to use military force for any reason anywhere anytime. The web is overflowing with their nonsense, and a lot of people fail to recognize it for the propaganda that it is….”“”
Sure some of the antiDU stuff may be exaggerated, but those epidemiological studies are very difficult to do, particularly with too small samples. As with GMO’s, if you do not look, you sure won’t find.
Still, I found the Nattypost above revealing, as she shows no comprehension that it might not be a good idea to hobble war-making capabilities, even to a small extent !
Some blindness there, difficult to imagine in a genuine “loving parent”.
Posted by frog on May 22, 2006 at 4:57 PM You have it Frog, and can see why she has stunk the place up since she was first spewed forth like the results of a long weekend of relentless partying.
The DU issue rolls on regardless of the shill in the mill. Since her debut the issue has become much better supported by studies and evidence, but not a single moment’s pause have we seen, in the complete craven love of DU and yes, “WAR anywhere, anytime” she said it herself. She is nothing but a fucking evil blood sucking demon, and that is being polite. Over time many have gone from questioning the Rabbit’s vitriol towards the beast to actually questioning how Rabbit could remain so calm and polite in retrospect, while communicating with the foul monstrosity for so long. It is not easy Frog.. it is not easy, but having allies as luminous, as curious or as amphibious as ye all makes it easier to bear.
Here is a recent Zogby Poll which shows that Natty the Batty is finally, officially part of a crazy and shrinking Minority. 70 millions Americans don’t accept the official lie.
“The poll is the first scientific survey of Americans’ belief in a 9/11 cover up or the need to investigate possible US government complicity, and was commissioned to inform deliberations at the June 2~4 “9/11: Revealing the Truth, Reclaiming Our Future” conference in Chicago. Poll results indicate 42% believe there has indeed been a cover up (with 10% unsure) and 45% think “Congress or an International Tribunal should re-investigate the attacks, including whether any US government officials consciously allowed or helped facilitate their success” (with 8% unsure). The poll of American residents was conducted from Friday, May 12 through Tuesday, May 16, 2004.” ......should be 2006 <u>Error in report.</u>.........^^..........
Considering the destruction both of Natty’s cases have taken you would expect any normal, even by internet standards, debate to be over. The Bat has lost, her case is not supportable and has taken numerous fatal shots. But no as she will now obediently prove, Natty is not moved an inch.She still knows the government is 100% truthful, that Depleted Uranium Weapons are like mothers milk and even more important, and that the Evil Hate filled Muslims are the greatest threat to the safety of her imaginary child.
She still knows we are all enemies of freedom and democracy who are trying to stop “Wars everywhere and all the time”, her stated goal if I’m reading that right.
Posted by Rabbit on May 23, 2006 at 4:18 AM Hey guys. I miss you. Yet I have found that roving itch I’ve had and am scratching it on the ICH board.
Defending DU. Tsk. Tsk. Oh, yeah, you can just ‘wipe the radioactive dust off your can of Satan’s Potted Meat Product’ and it will be fine’.
The deformities in these poor accursed babies have only been found in the presence of radioactive contamination, in all of recorded medical history which goes back at least 3,000 years. The Marshall Islands. Afghanistan. Iraq. I haven’t looked it up but how could the same thing not be happening wherever DU is used in weaponry ,or nuclear bombs have been set off, or nuclear waste has been dumped, or nuclear power plants have had mishaps that led to contamination of the air, water, or earth.
It hardly gets more real than radiation. Arguing that DU is not toxic is like arguing that lead and mercury aren’t toxic. Get fucking real.
Posted by wileywitch on May 23, 2006 at 4:55 AM Hi, wiley,
Good to hear from you. Is ICH the Interagency Council on Homelessness?
Kudos for that.Nat is so unquestioningly supportive of our military leadership. Who is supporting the ordinary grunt? I’d like her to watch this VIDEO and imagine this is her son just some few years down the road. One soldier’s testimony. How many more are too confused, intimidated, ashamed or so thoroughly indoctrinated to speak up.
Posted by luminous beauty on May 23, 2006 at 5:46 PM Hey, Lumens, come to my website at wileywitch.livejournal.com.
ICH is the Information Clearinghouse. It has some issues.
Nat should enlist in the military—-the Army—-to get up close and personal. Since she is immune to the effects of radiation (which makes me suspect she’s a prion) then she will be a valuable asset in our mission to—-
Our mission to—-?
Nevermind.
Posted by wileywitch on May 23, 2006 at 6:28 PM As I read these posts, I am reminded of a quote: Small minds discuss people; average minds discuss events; great minds discuss ideas. It is not entirely accurate, as many in this forum have demonstrated remarkable insights and critical thinking to express concepts that few in this country have begun to ponder. Moreover, all minds are capable of discussing each. My goal in submitting the quote is to encourage all to elevate their minds to greatness by using the forum to discuss ideas, not people. Our Republic and our world face grave challenges, and we can help, or we can be steered by others flawed arguments into tangential, multi-layered discussions.
I would like to offer a decisive view on DU, then encourage additional thoughts and activism on the idea that our government may have been the actor behind the horrible events of 9/11.
To wit: The UN Commission on Human Rights in Spring 1996 looked at the use of DU in the Gulf War and again in the August 1996 session of the UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, now renamed the UN Sub-Commission on Promotion and Protection of Human Rights (the Sub-Commission). At the latter session, members of the Sub-Commission passed a resolution in which it found DU weaponry “incompatible” with existing humanitarian and human rights law. In 1997 it adopted a similar resolution.
As Karen Parker (http://www.webcom.com/hrin/parker.html) explains, there are 4 rules derived from the whole of humanitarian law regarding weapons:
(1) Weapons may only be used in the legal field of battle, defined as legal military targets of the enemy in the war. Weapons may not have an adverse effect off the legal field of battle. (The “territorial” test).
(2) Weapons can only be used for the duration of an armed conflict. A weapon that is used or continues to act after the war is over violates this criterion. (The “temporal” test).
(3) Weapons may not be unduly inhumane. (The “humaneness” test).
(4) Weapons may not have an unduly negative effect on the natural environment. (The “environmental” test).DU weaponry fails all 4 tests. (1) It cannot be “contained” to legal fields of battle. (2) It continues to act after hostilities are over. (3) It is inhumane because of how it can kill—by cancer, kidney disease, etc. long after the hostilities are over, and because it causes birth (genetic) defects thus effecting children (who may never be a military target) and who are born after the war is over. The use of DU weapons may be characterized as genocidal by burdening gene pools of future generations. (4) Finally, DU cannot be used without unduly damaging the natural environment.
The fundamental wrong isnt found in the details of what has been attributed to DU—the pain, the suffering, and the deaths. These compound what’s wrong. Sometimes—often—they make it much worse. But they are not the fundamental wrong. The fundamental wrong with DU is that our country uses a weapon of mass destruction that is illegal under existing human rights and humanitarian (armed conflict) law, as determined by the UN. Once we accept that DU can be used, the rest is as predictable as it is regrettable.
RE: 9/11, I encourage a re-read of my posting on April 23, and encourage critics to fill in the two columns. If the government was complicit, this certainly meet the test for a high crime. While motivation is a secondary matter, one could ask, Why Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran? Plot US military deployments in Eurasia. They go through Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Turkey, Kosovo, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan. These could control transportation routes from China, India and the Russian Federation into the Middle East.
As Sun Tzu wrote, All warfare is based on deception. There is little debate among critical thinkers that our elected officials are masters of deception.
Posted by nyvegan on May 23, 2006 at 9:00 PM Dear Nyvegan,
Your cursory glance at this discussion leads you to talk about small minds and incite us to elevate ourselves to “greatness”.
Somewhat condescending as an introduction of your goodself, but do not worry, we welcome serious allies.
Ideas are nothing without events and people . DISCUSS !
The stalwarts of this thread are wiley, rabbit, dave in canada, luminous beauty, and the Mighty Natalie who is a worthy partner and stimulant , becaus ‘she’ is an ardent supporter of the use of DU in weaponry, collaterally of GMOs and pesticides in agriculture, and naturally a believer in the Bush theory of 911.
Funny how those beliefs of hers hang so coherently together.
The rest of us have that human habit of discussing people, events , and ideas in varying proportions depending on the circumstances.
Have not yet read your link above, but the distinction between humane and inhumane weaponry begs more questions—maybe I would prefer cancer to some of the damage that 7.62mm or 5.56mm conventional ammo can do , ?
Posted by frog on May 24, 2006 at 12:42 AM The UN commission statements on human rights have been quoted before, this is but the shadow of an earlier debate on an appropriate thread, in some ways.
They are part of the evidence given to support the contention that the USA is guilty of War Crimes and crimes against humanity. It is part of the basis of my argument that Bush and the various members of the warmongering Junta are war criminals and it has further been pointed out that Natalie is complicit in these crimes by virtue of her own efforts.
The thread is actually not being used for any purpose other than as a kind of cave for the Bat to dwell in and which we can come if the urge strikes us to throw stones at it.
Rabbit could propose we travelled via the magic carpetry of the net to some forum actually alive and dedicated to DU and bring our combined efforts to bear in the name of some serious netaction? We could thus become counterbalance to Roger and Natty’s concerted shilling.
No doubt we could take our pet shill Bat with us and she will also bring something special to the cause?
How cool, we would be a true multinational taskforce too.
France, Canada, USA and Australia. No doubt we would soon be joined by a Pommie or two. There are even a few Kiwi’s about and certainly Germans, like Anarcho-Sozi will soon appear. We will be an Anti-DU Multinational Internet Taskforce.
Just as Natty always feared, we will be in her words Anti-DU Shills!
Rabbit formally proposes we form a group and call it “Anti-DU Multinational Internet Taskforce”, with the lovely acronym of ADMIT.
Organisations must have good acronyms to be successful, everyone knows that.
Posted by Rabbit on May 24, 2006 at 3:11 AM Has anyone been following the debate about the likely effects of a low flying 757 which is related to the question of what hit the Pentagon?
Like Jones and crew I am wary of what appears to be a concerted effort by government and complicit MSM to sideline any discussion about 911 to the Pentagon. Expecting like all others either some genuine footage or more likely properly doctored video of flight 77 going into the Pentagon, sooner or later.
Still at this point we can only speculate and the Jet Blast at such low altitude question stands as an interesting angle at this stage.
Posted by Rabbit on May 24, 2006 at 3:45 AM Frog -
You may remember me from several posts under the story “Meat Industrial Complex”, or earliers posts in this forum. If you recall these posts, you may also recall that I think too much of this community to give the posts only ‘cursory glances’. I prefer to remain respectful in my comments and on-topic, as suggested by this site.
My post was in response to other posts on DU, and to the digression from the topic of our governments alleged complicity in the events of 9/11. For this forum, the detail behind any individual epidemiological study on DU is secondary to the fact that DU has been declared illegal under existing human rights and humanitarian (armed conflict) law by the UN (the appropriate body for such a declaration), and our country has unilaterally chosen to ignore this. That is the fundamental wrong, as is a system that fails to distinguish between our treatment of other species and our treatment of a sofa or lawn kitcsh.
I would like to see this forum draw the 299 million Americans who don’t yet read it, rather than see it devolve into personal attacks on that relatively small population who do. Hence, the focus on ideas, not people or events, as the farmer in Des Moines or the truck driver in Phoenix may care about our writings on 9/11, but not about us as writers.
That is not to say that people don’t matter - far from it. As my other posts reveal, I try to keep the lines of communication open because change must come from people, and everyone will have an impact. The impact created by any one individual—whether they eat one less piece of bacon, write one more letter, or whether they become the tipping point for a popular movement—can help us all. Together we can solve the problems of cognition, coordination and cooperation.
I prefer that writers such as Natalie contribute, as do you, for two reasons: (1) “her” participation may indicate a willingness to listen to something other than the Bush/Fox News propaganda machine, and (2) “she” can be a catalyst for enhancing the discussion of key topics. The best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise. Groups can be remarkably intelligent with diversity, independence of opinion, and a method of aggregating information. Paradoxically, the best way for a group to be smart is for each person in it to think and act as independently as possible.
Others have shown that the more power you give a single individual in the face of complexity and uncertainty, the more likely it is that bad decisions will get made. That, one could easily argue, is a central problem of the current Administration. Bayess theorem is a way of calculating how new information about an event changes your pre-existing expectations of how likely the event was. If everyones guess has two components, information and error, the errors may cancel out and leave only the information. As a result, the “crowd” holds a nearly complete picture of the world in its collective brain. But Bush has limited his “crowd” to a handful of like-minded, power-hungry, secretive and demonstrably corrupt neocons (oops, there I go talking about people).
Regarding “humane” weaponry, I agree that it is an oxymoron of sorts. But some weaponry is clearly less humane than others. A bullet that cripples a soldier’s leg is tragic to a soldier on either side of a conflict, but a hidden danger that indiscriminately cripples all in its immediate vicinity (innocent and otherwise, adults, children and the unborn), and which will continue to do so for all eternity, is arguably less humane.
RE: Rabbit (May 23)
To all, please read my post of 4/23, then watch the video (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8260059923762628848) and make your lists.
Posted by nyvegan on May 24, 2006 at 4:44 AM ADMIT
Be a founding member of ADMIT.
THIS time they had a plan.
.....................^^........................
oh and by the way nyvegan, don’t forget Natty is a shill and is not really trying to engage in any dialogue. Her choice is to mask the truth not to seek it. As such she is useful as a foil. A contrast indeed. Trapped by her assignment from her masters she is yet bound to us in these issues, which is why the rabbit calls her our pet Bat.
Of course if by some grand miracle Natalie were actually to show she was turning away from denial and confusion, this rabbit would be the first to make kissy kissy faces at her.
From great hate can be born great love, as surely as the opposite has been claimed.
Personally though I think she is a lost soul. As an apparent spokesman for the perpetrators of these crimes, 911 and DU, she the person does actually come into it. Especially when her main means of trying to discredit any evidence or statements, or studies from anyone else invariably based on character assasination and innuendo.
Anyway, this is but a backwater, an unused room we are occupying. I propose we form ADMIT and sally forth. Thus to do some damage to the cause of criminal warmongering.
Posted by Rabbit on May 24, 2006 at 9:41 AM nyvegan
How could I forget you? There is a new film “Fast Food Nation” to complement the brilliant book by Eric Schlosser.
Your point about the importance of getting through to the other 299million is well taken.Tho I doubt they could all get onto any thread !
I see our job as defining limited objectives, such as reasoning hard with individuals who have enough honesty to read the links provided, and then each gets on with life spreading the word around them, for example. Another aim is to attempt to sort the good info from the bullshit, and then share.
A vital factor to remember is credibility. That farmer in Des Moines or Normandy will run a mile if he thinks I’m a nut. . You worked previously in wtc1, i spent years talking to fl84 wtc2 up to 1992,—- none of which proves we are correct in our suspicions, but does establish a little something in the mind of the listener….Lapin
Good idea. We don’t send the whole platoon to post everywhere together, but intel on hot debates is good, so get a scout to report in ,and others can ‘lurk’ as Musketeer canuck puts it , and do the occasional rapier-thrust., as he does. I enjoy lurking, as I learn a lot , and this process is about informing oneself to be more useful…Noticed an ICH thread today with 80posts in 2days—- like the bbc thing where u get 00’s of posts, too many bods repeat the same points, confuse the issue, and one can spend 25hrs a day just reading and not doing. A good duel is a mighty thing to learn from .
Sun out, grass drying, frog now off to mow a few lawns.
Posted by frog on May 24, 2006 at 2:15 PM lazy frog paused to open a last site before putting ute and arse into gear and found this review of CONDI BOOK.via an article here
i’d often wondered what the media-hyped “great intellectual’s” reputation was based on, (her words have never betrayed any great ability or insight), the answer is——nowt.
No surprise, but another little piece of ammo, another detail for the big picture….
PS nyvegan—took me a while to get the html right, but I got there !
Posted by frog on May 24, 2006 at 3:13 PM nyvegan , do try your hand at informationclearinghouse.info . (Sheesh, it’s been so long, I forgot the html code. Not that it takes me a long time to forget the html code). There I am talking to people about themselves, in an effort to get people to focus on the issues, instead of American bashing which is like having a foot-race with a three year old in the category of “sport”.
Somehow they don’t understand how focusing on the U.S. all the time, instead of learning about and discussing other nations and concepts is American exceptionalism, even thought they’re bashing the U.S. They are bashing the U.S. as if it were the only nation of its kind, always was, and always will be. It’s some kind of “demon seed anti-americanism” that almost always leaves our victims and our policies out of the discussion.
Many of them seem every bit as religious secular as the rightest right wing nut on the right is religiously anti-secular. America is “evil” and the world needs to destroy this “evil” so everyone can go back to living in the Edenic world that existed before the U.S. Riiiiiiiiight.
I’m also trying to get them to look at ideas that have a direct connection with reality—-ideas beyond the ones in their heads. Ideas that are having a broad impact on many people.
Posted by wileywitch on May 24, 2006 at 7:11 PM Hi everyone,
Rabbit, the ADMIT acronym is clever but I have to respond when back a page ago you wrote to Natalie :
“Reading between the lines, Lume and even Dave are mocking you”
... and I wanted to clarify something. What you say is true but it is also true that I have goodwill, also known as love, towards Natalie. And my love is unconditional love, most days anyways, as Luminous Beauty mentioned. And I applaud your hope(?) that Natalie one day may turn away from denial and confusion and allow you to make kissy faces at her.
Natalie, you are welcome and I thank you for your concern. Sincerely and mockingly at the same time if that is possible and I think it is. If anyone needs how explained please let me know.
Luminous Beauty, thanks for being here and recognizing unconditional love when you see it.
Wiley, good to see you visiting here again.
Frog, good ideas. I scout about alot these days and if I see anything interesting you can be sure I will get the word out.
Nyvegan, good points you make. I appreciate polite words too, especially for a disagreement. I am sorry that this may be hard for you to hear, but .... I ate 3 slices of bacon and an egg today : )
At least it was an organic free range egg.
Posted by David in Canada on May 24, 2006 at 10:26 PM Back to the main topic(s) and my decisive opinions.
Depleted Uranium Munitions- war crime.
9/11 - inside job.
One day, some day ... I hope my opinions will be proven and accepted as incontrovertable facts and the criminals are held accountable for their crimes.
Posted by David in Canada on May 24, 2006 at 10:27 PM I’m onto your little tricks Dave, anyone who wants to know how to be sincerely and lovingly mocking can send $29.99.
Seriously, I wish I were a better librarian, I read an article recently saying that NATO uses DU munitions, and that China and Russia are using it as well. It seems like the people on all the fast-tracks in the arms race are morons. They’re all (no offense, Dave) monkey-see, monkey do.
I hope that your opinions will be acceptable as incontrovertable facts, Dave, so long as your opinions are incontrovertably correct, which I suspect them to be.
I reject the official stories and denials as completely as most here do.
Posted by wileywitch on May 24, 2006 at 10:45 PM witch.
i read it too, there are zillions of tons of DU about, the frogs have 12000, and they are small even minute owners.
Being also a lousy librarian; some munitions makers are getting out of it, so back to conventionals.
if you hear that inhaling tungsten particles is also horrible, you saw it here first !
Posted by frog on May 24, 2006 at 11:43 PM SCREAM. Oh, Frog! Oh, Frog, why are we so stuuuuuuuuuupiddd? Tungsten isn’t radioactive though, right? It’s wicked, but only once. Like that’s noble.
I wish something would put a fire under the UN’s butt. DU, mines, tactical nukes? Insane.
You’d think that by now so-called “advanced nations” would be able to send in a team of sharp-shooters to take out the big guys if regime change is what they’re really after.
Posted by wileywitch on May 25, 2006 at 12:25 AM WITCH
I was , like you know, errrrr, ummmmm, ....joking, and being like wot I said before a lousy librarian, have lost the sauce, but somewhere there is a ‘relevant’ article on the danger of inhaling microparticles of tungsten.And so I thought I might just get in a microsecond before the Radioactive Bat, for fun .
Posted by frog on May 25, 2006 at 1:27 AM Don’t tease me. I’ve fallen for bad stories in two weeks. I don’t know what is up or down anymore. Except that bombing people and spreading radioactive waste hither and yon is a horrible thing to do to people.
Posted by wileywitch on May 25, 2006 at 4:32 AM wileywitch -
Thank you for www.informationclearinghouse.info. I quickly found this: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12980.htm, and was reminded of the death and destruction I saw while participating in animal rescue in New Orleans after Katrina. I met two cops whose full-time job was retrieving dead bodies. In just their two precincts, they had almost as many as the total “official” body count for the entire city. They also had some great insights on the Administration’s lack of preparedness (I’m referring here to post-Katrina, not the lack of preparedness after 9/11, Iraq, container shipping, infrastructure protection, energy sources, etc.). The video reminds us that the “statistics” we see in the papers have faces and suffer every day.David -
The world is, I think, quickly coming to the realization that use of DU is a war crime and 9/11 is an inside job. Last year, some people would walk away or give me odd glances when I mentioned these, but lately I’ve had new acquaintances in unrelated settings broach the topic with me.
However, I can’t resist pointing out the lies you’ve been fed with your “free-range” eggs and bacon. Please see my latest posting (along with the story and other postings) in a more directly relevant forum: http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/discuss/2525/Frog -
Thanks again for “Fast Food Nation.” I’ll return the favor: Been Brown so Long, It Looked Like Green to Me: The Politics of Nature. Now, where are the (US) investigative journalists who will expose the “inside job” and war crimes?
Posted by nyvegan on May 25, 2006 at 4:41 AM Dave no need to explain that you are a “troll lover”, Rabbit was just too polite to mention it, but since you do. Yes there is a smirk on my face, well yes, Dave does kind of love everybody even the truly ugly among us. That is why he is a Monk. That won’t save you from being judged fit for the pit should he be on the heavenly jury though you demons. Rabbit is less pleasant basically, being an Aries prick and all..
Actually the thread on ICH following the video kerfuffle is worth a few shots from ADMIT troops. Wiley and Rabbit are riding a delicately balanced see-saw from time to time, but they both love each other enough that they are yet in balance. ICH needed a bit of controversy though and it has to Rabbit’s joy brought out some game. Some right wingjobs of both higher and lesser calibre and a probable person or two on the turn have descended. One called CombatJumpStar is someone from their side who is clearly on his way to ours. Maybe not this time, this issue, but one can see the signs of progress.
What I think is valuable about this ground is that it has attracted some serious attention and much of it is MIL. They need to hear the truth above all others, and DU has been mentioned a few times already. there is plenty of informed reserves to ensure the battle will be a complete rout.
Someone on ICH is doing smilies, which I loathe. But just as with things that go whizz and bang, I like to know how to make them anyway. Tried looking at the source page but it didn’t work. ho hum.
Rabbit thinks Dan is the man though. A gentleman and a scholar, like Dave troll-loving Monkey Fish.
Sorry NYvegan, though my heart says yes, my stomach yet craves meat. In spirit I am yet a vegetarian. Having gone through ten years of Budhism before embracing my Gnostic soul, our pet rabbit has yet taught me more about the meaning of true non violence and live and let live.
I strive to emulate him in my life, he is my hero, but to achieve his ability to thrive upon and enjoy nothing but food of a vegetable origin, is beyond my achievement yet. Even so, Rabbit and family lived an Organic permaculture lifestyle for a decade and have not forgotten our lessons. Compromise can also be Karma.
Posted by Rabbit on May 25, 2006 at 7:29 AM ..................^^.....................Where’s the Bat?
Posted by Rabbit on May 25, 2006 at 7:43 AM nyvegan
thanks for the book, and also “Whiteout: the CIA, drugs and the press” by the same man..
I read the amazon reviews, and was pleased to see he appears optimistic—an attitude i share. Good stuff, lots to do ...
I eat ‘‘real’ free-range a few times a year, not yet maybe never a complete veggie, but cutting down on meat.rabbit
thanks for ICH link, good work . The Bat is recharging, will be back soon.
Dan IS a scholar , no need to enrol, already there !
Posted by frog on May 25, 2006 at 1:43 PM Yep, Rabbit has seen Frog earlier on the site. The ICH crowd are obviously a bit bemused by all the wingjobs they’ve attracted lately. Usually a site with little opposition, except internal squabbles.
I find this story of a couple finding DU from an Auction to be amusing.
Now why would the authorities treat it so seriously if the stuff was like birthday cake? Seems to me evryone involved in this are freaking out a bit. It is only a bit of solid, stable Depleted Uranium after all. Now if it was burnt and formed Ceramic vapour they might have something to worry about. The authorities mention if it was carried about it would give radiation sickness. I guess that is because they are civilians. Apparently it is safe for soldiers to handle. Isn’t it Natty?
Nat? Natty? Maybe we have made the Bat sad? Maybe she is on special assignment dealing with the hoped for fallout from the Macbeth Video. The shills seem to be working overtime trying to make something out of it.
Posted by Rabbit on May 26, 2006 at 12:46 AM http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3050317.stm
Forgot html. Has everyone seen this BBC article? A Canadian doctor is finding high levels of uranium in Afghanis. Not DU, uranium. There is speculation that the U.S. might be using new uranium weapons.
Wouldn’t be out of character, but I looked up to see if there was natural uranium in Afghanistan. I read recently that Iran has a lot of uranium ore. It is naturally occurring in Afghanistan. I don’t know enough about it to know if the deep penetrating bombing could bring up radioactive dust from natural deposits and then contaminate the air, water, land, like all other vaporized heavy metals. But it’s a thought. The earthquakes in that region, could be a result of our bombing as well.
I think these possible consequences—-intended or not—-put carpet bombing and deep earth penetrators in the WMD category.
Rabbit, the reason I’m getting on people’s cases about the guilt tripping is not because I don’t think the U.S. is guilty, but because they are turning off most of the population at a time when most of the populations distrusts the MSM and authorities. This is the time to invite people to learn, not to kick them in the teeth and tell them that they are stupid. I’ve been in American activist circles Rabbit, and they are half responsible for where we are now. Over and over, I have seen them turn away people who cared, and cling to scammers.
I am radically opposed to this administration and aggressive attacks on nations, but these people get so full-up with their damnation and insults, that I almost want to stop caring sometimes. They have no political strategy or savvy at all.
Furthermore, the sins of today are enough to pick up and carry. I have to wonder how much these people really care about our victims and the suffering in the world. They have to go back five hundred years to make the load heavy enough? Christ, one day in Baghdad is how many lives in pain? I know that history is important, yadda, yadda, but it’s NOT a priority if you don’t know what’s going on today.
Posted by wileywitch on May 26, 2006 at 1:07 AM Wiley
Most of the truly damning words against the USA are coming from foreigners, non-US as it happens. I know a few Americans do the self damning thing a bit, but mostly the heavy stuff is foreign. I’ve been paying close attention. Besides that the important point I think which has to be remembered that the majority of people who first believed in that video certainly on ICH, did so for an hour or two at most. They have been up front about that, and even though some, and that includes me, still see there as being a chance it is the real deal, we are not losing the plot.
It has been said repeatedly by many and nobody is arguing with them, that if true this does not by any means tar all US soldiers with the same brush. It neither claims to be nor can be interpreted as being representative of the whole situation. Beyond that though we must still state that it is not saying anything which was not already well documented. Frankly I feel you have read too much into Macbeth’;s words, probably because you have taken it very personally, to your credit, if not your peace of mind. Really he is but describing his (alleged) experience. So he like whistleblowers in Mai Lai is blowing the lid on something but not all things.
As for those non-americans who do attack america so strongly in words, unfortunately, being outside the US, does kind of give them every right to hate you. If American bombs and wars are happening in other countries, you cannot expect other countries citizens to observe the niceties by distinguishing between complicit Americans and the innocent Americans in all seriousness.
You are a democracy after all.
American bombs don’t see any difference between the Al-Queda leader and the innocent families also extinguished when one is dropped. It’s a bit much to expect the families to distinguish which Americans they then hate. Think of yourself as a kind of rhetorical collateral damage. The flip side of the collateral damage coin. You are innocent Wiley, but so was the collateral damage from the bomb.
It kind of goes with the territory as well coming from an allegedly democratic country.
About the Uranium. It is known that some of the Uranium being used in weapons by the pentagon is actually waste from reactors, not just “Depleted Uranium”, which is still not merely uranium ore, which is what occurs naturally. The fact that it is occurring has been established due to the presence of Plutonium (U-236) in some sampling taken of battlefields, if I remember correctly.
This is more likely what is being detected by the Canadian doctor, but I have yet to read the article.
Posted by Rabbit on May 26, 2006 at 3:28 AM I see very little chance of the video being real, what bothers me is the lack of logic. And I bet, Rabbit, if ICH put up little flags, we’d see that a lot of the bashers ARE Americans and half the rest are ex-pats.
The timing is unfortunate, with the military ready to prosecute for war crimes that have been documented.
What bothers me is not that I am being insulted, but that Americans who want to figure out what is really going on because they don’t trust the authorities and the MSM anymore are met with sheer hatefulness. Why should they continue to look for the truth about what our government is doing in the face of that?
America may be dumbed down, Rabbit, but it’s not stupid enough to subject itself to that verbal abuse, half of which is irrational, and completely uninformative. Here is a board primarily populated with people who are opposed to the administration and imperialism, so this is where people come to tell us how much they hate America? Why don’t they go to the right wing sites? Or make their own?
I’d be perfectly happy to discuss any and all current evils and confess I share some blame, but WTF is anyone supposed to do about Colombus?——and this really kills me, Rabbit——think about it! Colombus was working for the Spanish Empire! And Custer? WTF. Our asshole government justifies the lunatic guilt trips against people who are opposed to our government?
What about the Iraqis and Afghanis?
Hating Americans is clearly more important to them than caring about humanity. They can hate me all they want, they don’t know who they’re hating; but can’t they hate for events in my lifetime, and why do they so seldom talk about our victims?
And why, since they are so ostensibly well-informed is that so seldom evident. I don’t know what the moderation was about , but cutting out the irrational, hatefilled screeds that had little or nothing to do with the topic wasn’t the point.
DU, btw, has been primarily made of waste from nuclear power plants all along. They can give away or sell nuclear wastes as scrap metal. Bizarre little loophole, is it not?—-because it’s cost prohibitive to dispose of it as best we can, which isn’t good enough anyway. It has been found in concrete, paints, consumer goods, a long sad list.
The Navy discovered that a whole set of their pots and pans was made with cobalt—-radioactive medical waste.
The Plutonium is a man-made element that is a by-product in the fuel cycle——trace amounts are in the Du. Plutonium is so toxic, that one grain in your lung WILL give you lung cancer. But to make large amounts of Plutonium, I think they need more processing. Highly Enriched Uranium (which is bomb grade material) is more efficient and costs less to produce than Plutonium (which is defininetly bomb grade material) as far as fuels go. Japan is making a lot of Plutonium for some reason.
According to that article it was not-depleted uranium that they were finding in Afghanis who had symptoms like Gulf War Syndrome. It was unprocessed uranium that was somehow disseminated in such a way that it could enter bodies. I fear we are already “testing” mini-nukes. But I don’t KNOW.
The bombing is wrong regardless. The radiation is about a million years more wrong.
Posted by wileywitch on May 26, 2006 at 4:27 AM “I fear we are already testing mini-nukes. But I dont KNOW. “
Me too.
Posted by David in Canada on May 26, 2006 at 4:46 AM Rat bastards. “Tactical nukes” are not “mini”. It’s outrageous. Just the thought of it is maddening and sickening.
The people we need to open our borders to, and give land and financial and medical assistance to are the Afghanis and Iraqis. Because we ruined their land. Not just their “market” or their “job prospects”—-we ruined their land, their water, and their sky.
We’ll all get a taste of it eventually, but they received the most brutal assault and the brunt of the poisoning.
We can’t fix it.
We need to stop doing it. And just as is the case when parents neglect or abuse their children, the children go to other members of their family, and if no other family members can or will take them, they go to the state. If one member of society cannot be responsible, someone else gets stuck with the responsibility. No use in complaining, when it’s clear that the offending party will not stop without consequences or force. You don’t just stand by and watch them beat their children to death. The next in line who is aware and capable of being responsible, is responsible.
If the U.S. doesn’t stop, then our “allies” (this is really embarrassing for me to use this word in this context, but hey——they’re in NATO too) are obliged to stop us, and if our “allies” can’t, then whoever can must stop this administration and the license to murder that the U.N. and most Western States have given the U.S. and Israel for so long.
That’s not to deflect blame, just to put a little balance back into the picture. If a lot of countries, or royal familiies, and crime syndicates in those countries hadn’t benefitted from our imperialism it wouldn’t have happened. We aren’t magic. We are not exceptional people.
If it happens, it will hurt us. It will hurt me. I know that. That’s not, in the big scheme of things, unfair. I accept that. But that doesn’t mean I need to accept indiscriminate verbal abuse against my country and everybody in it from anybody who drops by and doesn’t even bother to address the topic. It is democratic—-I can talk back. And I will talk back.
Posted by wileywitch on May 26, 2006 at 5:21 AM On the Rat Bastards theme, and highly relevant to this topic, i heard this on the BBC last night. ronald maddison bbcnews—relatives of serviceman killed by UK govt scientists in 1953 finally compensated !
Also sent it to the Downing Street Memos man, who like me , remembers being propositioned for the same sort of experimentation.
Posted by frog on May 26, 2006 at 11:35 AM Wiley
Indiscriminat abuse ?
Water off a duck’s back is maybe a better response than getting worked up about it ?
As you say, very many foreign govts are to some degree complicit with the bush admin, so i just suggest to them that they do something at home rather than shooting their mouths off at “Amerika” .
“Activist Circles” are usually pretty ineffective, and can be counter-productive, I agree.
The next step on that one is obvious ?
Posted by frog on May 26, 2006 at 12:08 PM Wiley
The bombing is wrong regardless. The radiation is about a million years more wrong.
Just to be pedantic, the radiation is more like 4.5 Billion years more wrong.
It was U-236 I was thinking of before and it isn’t the same as plutonium, which you know anyway.
As for the testing of Nuclear weapons in the battle field, I wouldn’t be surprised, there has been talk of it. They’ve certainly been testing some hell spawn beam weapons.
Many of the posters on ICH are foreign Wiley, they often say things which give it away. Quite a few Aussies sometimes actually.
I am often guilty of being harsh towards the Great Satan. When I allow myself to become real mean, it is always with the intention of really getting up the nose of some moron. It is usually no more than a mirroring of the sort of invective they like to direct at their anointed enemies though. Often I have to apologise and spell out caveats for the sake of the many decent ones I know are out there.
I will be the first to admit that we are culpable. Who cares if we would be shutdown as quickly as New Zealand when they tried to ban US Nuclear Warships from their own ports. We should be making a stand. Unfortunately with a similar form of the brainwashed sheeple, the same sort of false dichotomy in politics and a corporate controlled government as well, that isn’t very likely.
The main difference is that when our dickhead leaders tried to tell us that we were in danger from some Arabs in the middle east, most Aussies reacted with amusement, “pull the other one”, was the attitude.
We are still there and we are complicit and my feeling is that if we send troops to attack Iran, I hope they all come home in body bags.
There is no overweening patriotism in Aussies. If our country has become a disgusting dag hanging off the backside of the American sheep, then fuck Australia too. Where is the flag and a box of matches.
Is that wrong to wish death to our own troops? It must sound like the ultimate blasphemy to an American. I do know that it’s wrong to attack Iran. It is so wrong and so immoral. It would be great if nobody gets killed, but that isn’t the way it works. So it is simply a matter of the bad guys hopefully losing. If somebody must die then best it is the agressor. Too bad we are the bad guys. At least if we get lots of casualties our lazy self absorbed sheeple might sit up and take notice of what our government is doing in our name.
Posted by Rabbit on May 26, 2006 at 1:41 PM wiley,
I’ve read with interest what you are trying to do at ICH. I think maybe you’re beating yourself up a little too much. It seems to me you have done well in encouraging and attracting a core of reasonable and cautious folk who are willing to sift through the inevitable chaff for the rare nuggets of illuminating fact. I have to confess my own chagrin at being taken in by Jesse McBeth’s sordid fabulations and initially ignoring the skeptical warning bells that were going on inside my head for the purely emotional response to the horrific nature of his ‘confession’. I’m glad that video was denounced and pulled so quickly, yet it needs be remembered as a cautionary note of our being too easily mislead by our all too human vulnerabilities.
That said, look out! Here comes some free advice.
It doesn’t seem likely that many people who are only expressing their feelings and reactions to events in such an anonymous medium as this are at all motivated to be discriminating and thoughtful in their posts. They are just venting their feelings after all; feelings of fear, dread, anxiety, anger, alienation and impotence, whether honest emotions or from behind a mask of sarcasm. It is the peculiarly absurd irrational side of human nature that we believe that kind venting of all the negativity we find inside ourselves will lead to some catharsis. Perhaps true to some degree if we keep it to ourselves by, say, beating on our pillow or cussing in the shower, but it is almost always a surprize when, in a social context, it leads to a vituperative and angry response. This is the very thing the ordinary troll relies on to spread flames, fury and confusion on a thread, no?
On a personal and private level, the best remedy for falling into this trap I know is the meditative method called ‘turning poison into medicine’. By imagining all the horror, pain and negativity of the world being drawn into the core of one’s being with one’s inbreath, and magically transformed into gentleness, friendliness and compassion and flowing out into the world on exhaling, it is possible for one to quickly regain one’s composure in the face of what seems to be intractable conflict. Simple, but effective.
Posted by luminous beauty on May 26, 2006 at 4:11 PM In terms of communication, one thing that I have noticed is the ubiquity of the word ‘hate’. It seems such a hard, irrevocable and unyielding word. It seems that sense is only re-inforced by its every iteration. If our goal is indeed to put an end to hatred and the violence which it engenders, we should be attempting to wean people away from its overuse, and seeking to substitute more flexible, ameliorative and generous terminology in its place. ‘Anger’ is a step in that direction, insofar as it connotes a transient emotion and not so much a fixed and inflexible state of mind, but more deeply understood that it arises out of feelings of fear, anxiety, uncertainty, hopelessness and impotence. When we begin to recognize and admit those feelings and their connotations of helplessness and weakness, then, if they don’t completely fade away like the morning dew, they at least become workable by leaving open an avenue of mutual sympathy and working together to find solutions.
It is extremely difficult to create a safe and friendly space for such insights to develop. Especially when anyone can intrude with their seeming desire to explode that sense of communal interaction by anxiety driven needs of immediate judgement and resolution. Even more so by those contrarians who rely on derision and ridicule to disrupt and derail a conversation. We should maybe see that as a challenge to re-commit ourselves and our imaginations to patient, persistent and invigorating efforts towards open and inclusive acceptance, and the opportunity to learn what is effective in drawing such persons into a dialogue in which what is really important to each and every participant can be respectfully addressed, whether by soothing words or sometimes a hard kick in the pants or just standing up to a bullying attitude with equanimity. It’s useful sometimes to remember the hardest thing to do is also often the most rewarding.
Forgive me for going on in such a didactic fashion. I hope you see these little criticisms in the light of my deep admiration and as genuine encouragement for the worthy efforts you are making. I’ve glanced at your ijournal site, and am moved by the artwork you’ve posted there. I’ve a much ignored account there. I’ll try to get around to linking up with you, but until I get some much needed work done around here, I’m trying to reduce my internet addiction by just checking my e-mail in the mornings. I feel kind of guilty for spending so much time sparring with Natalie this last several days as it is.
And Rabbit, as cynical as you sometimes sound, you may unfortunately be right. I must admit I have, at times, never realized that I believed in something until I discovered it was wrong. We never seem to miss the water till the well goes dry. Having a wee bit of foresight is priceless, though.
Posted by luminous beauty on May 26, 2006 at 4:32 PM I’ll come back and re-read these posts. Not finished with my first cup of coffee and am not ready to do justice in reply, except for where I only speak for myself.
It’s nice to see you guys.
I’m not as worked up as I appear to be, but actually, before the MaCBeth thing——if you go back on the threads you will see that the smart regulars, except for Dan (he’s bright and shiny) kept returning to the DemonSpawnofColombus theme. I’ve noticed they’ve laid off of it a little.
I don’t see it from my perspective as “an American” , except a little of the ‘hey—-your talking about my grandma (the woman’s a saint!), and my sisters and brothers’—- feelings which I dismiss before I write.
Mostly I think about those Iraqis who are sick and dying and living in constant terror. Would they be refreshed to hear that the primary topic of conversation is how much Americans suck and not what and how much Iraqis need ? Would reading anti-american graffiti make them feel better as they lie on dirty sheets without antibiotics?
Don’t you think it would be more healing to hear that Americans were talking to each other and Europeans about what we need to do, how we need to change, how helpless we feel sometimes in the face of these powers, too, and how much we want Iraqis to live in peace and be whole? Until the MacBeth thing that brought on a lot of freeper panty raids, the majority, if not all, people on most threads were opposed to the administration and imperialism.
Whether they are foreign or not, I have to wonder about the motives of people who keep turning the conversation back to the U.S. and its history. Isn’t that what Americans’ problem is? “We” only think about ourselves, and think “we’re” so exceptional?
I’m not sure why it’s hard for people to get that I am not talking about my own personal feelings. People trained to listen get it wrong. On three occassions I talked to psychiatrists about the false alarm I experienced. I said in no uncertain terms that although I knew we were targets, my own death was trivial. (There wasn’t a “me” there at the time, really.) Three years ago I seriously contemplated my own death for the first time. Until then, “death”—-unless referring to a specific dead person, meant extinction to me. I have been living with the fear of extinction for over twenty years. That’s what I wrestle with.
And on all three reports they wrote “she feared for her life”. I really feel like boxing ears sometimes. I need to remove some of the wax from my own ears as well, of course.
So when you see me respond to some jeers, keep in mind that it’s the problems and pain that isn’t being addressed, and the worthlessness of using that time to rehash American sins that bothers me. Really, who would want the American left (a generalization) to believe that most of the population is hopelessly stupid and incapable of learning? Who would benefit from that?
Posted by wileywitch on May 26, 2006 at 9:22 PM The reason I think that so many turn the conversation back on Americans and their history is simple. Those who are yet blind, who spout the bullshit as if it is untouchable, are actually spouting garbage. They are repeating a very Americanised and sanitized version of history. They are invariably doing it in oder to cash in on the past glory, as if this somehow justifies the present.
The obvious reation of many to this, is to point out that history is not exactly in agreement with their programmed view.
Telling the idiots they are wrong now is all very well. The reply is essentially that the USA is somehow special, different to the rest. The hubris is astounding, almost as extraordinary as the ignorance, nay more so. The ignorance is deliberately instilled, it is cultivated actually and we too have our version of it. We have made a profound effort to whitewash our history of abuse of the Aborigines. We are brought up with the same mickey mouse version of modern history which tries to pretend that Adolf Hitler and the Nazi’s just popped up out of the ground one day, with no previous history or motive beyond world domination. The innocent Europeans, led by Britain then held the fort until Uncle Sam was able to turn his massive attention to saving everyone’s bacon.
Then the USA unselfishly re-built the world for everyone, and showed us all how a democracy worked.Trying to tell anyone who believes that is the whole story, that the USA is not somehow special, is not the messiah, is quite impossible.
This leaves one little choice but to make them aware that the USA is not special, it was never the messiah, and has not special store of credibility to draw on. Torture by a USA which simply calls it rendition, or enhanced information gathering techniques is no less a base and evil thing than if it is simply called torture in a Soviet or Nazi dictatorship.
The idea of being called monsters, and war criminals. Of being feared and loathed. Is so novel to brainwashed Americans and pseudo-americans like us, that it takes a lot of repetition to make them realise it is real.
It is hard to imagine that a reasoned and polite argument is going to get through to people who are denying reality on a daily basis rather than face the fact that they are wrong about nearly every important fact upon which they supposedly form their opinions.
Rightly or wrongly many see a need for a national humiliation, before you as a nation are likely to be able to bring your country under humane control. As for not being anyone elses concern, the USA has made itself everybody elses concern by making a mess in everyone elses backyard. By making our business yours, you have made your business ours. If that situation is not to your liking, then it is your leaders you need to take it up with not us. (Understand I am not telling you this persanally, merely expressing the “outlander” attitude.)
The problem from here seems to be largely a national arrogance or hubris. The obvious counterforce to that in a human world, is humiliation.
Posted by Rabbit on May 27, 2006 at 2:37 AM Isnt that what Americans problem is? We only think about ourselves, and think were so exceptional.
Thinking about ourselves and feeling we are the center of the universe is forgiveably human. It is what we think about ourselves that counts when it comes to interracting with others.
The rich always think they are somehow special, entitled by virtue of birth to more, as such the USA is but a projection of the wealth which remains its God. Or of those who run her for their own profit.
Posted by Rabbit on May 27, 2006 at 2:43 AM On the Macbeth video. I think you should read the comment by Objector on This link.
Like him I cannot avoid the feeling that Macbeth is genuine. I have withdrawn my support of the fact only, but my instintive reaction is still thus.
If it is definately a hoax, then I am seriously concerned about my instinct for it has always been my guiding light. If its true, think for a moment how seriously the Pentagon would take shutting him down, and then consider the enormous right wing, and only right wing reaction to it. The left is as I maintain being very cautious, almost silent about it, despite the right wing hysteria. If its true kids, this one is going to take the roof off this circus. It is one thing for us to know atrocities are happening, it is another entirely for it to be attested to publically.
Either way, the point to be gained from all this, is to be cautious. That means not only being prepared to step back if things don’t add up, as much as maintaining an open mind even after the initial debunking. If this story does yet pan out, the tables are going to be very abruptly turned on quite a few forums. I am the same way with much of the 911 evidence. Some things are easy to be sure of, oithers are not.
Once I was mostly convinced that a 757 did hit the Pentagon, but agreed it wasn’t certain, and there were questions, anomalies. These days I have a much larger body of questions and anomalies which point away from a big airliner at least. I am much more disinclined to accept flight 77 hit the Pentagon. Yet I have never committed myself on the case and that is because there is still too many questions unanswered. To say I am sure yet would be premature.
I’d rather say I believed this once but am inclined more to believe something different now, and then have to go back to the original position when the final truth is in, than to go from saying I believe this to I now know it’s false, thereafter having to do a complete backflip when the truth takes us back to the original premise. Less embarrassing for a start. Mostly though it is my scientific objectivity, I like to think.
The story so far is: The video comes out and the guy is convincing. At least the fact of the guy’s existence and some of his story has checked out. There are a number of questions about the guy himself which may reflect on either the truthfullness or the accuracy of what we so far know. There are anomalies in his uniform and story which still do not disprove his story, especially after reading Objector’s views.
There is no proof he is lying, unless a denial by the military is considered proof. No proof either way, but it will obviously come. My money is on legit, but I won’t defend it as being so yet, too little to go on and too far out of my experience.
Posted by Rabbit on May 27, 2006 at 3:56 AM Of course, Lumens 4.5 billion. It’s too big! It’s too big!
I am worn out from news. Was in the middle of a DU article on Uruknet and had to stop.
What’s saddest of all, Rabbit, is the people who think they are so blessed to get the crumbs. I heard a southern black man use the expression “on the buggy” once, to describe somebody being let in for a while, and having a little creature comfort instead of walking. Most of Americans are “on the buggy”, and the wheels are about to fall off the buggy.
I’ve been very lucky in many ways——especially as a woman. I’ve had times when I did want ever I wanted to do from the time I got up to the time I went to bed every day. I went on long walks at three a clock in the morning and never worried about getting hurt, and was never threatened. Walked almost everywhere, was healthy, in touch with the seasons. My town was a joy.
I wish I could download some of the best times of my life into most American’s heads—-the television wasn’t there. Life can be so much richer than the American dream.
Then the Gulf War shot that to hell for me and a lot of other people. Every time we attack a country it corrodes our culture. War isn’t the only campaign either. I can’t put my finger quite on it, but there is a whole lot more being sold wholesale by the mass media than war. It’s like a big chute that steers everyone away from the real and toward the desire for the unattainable, or the poisoned apple.
Most Americans have no idea. It’s not because they’re stupid. The machine never slows down. It just keeps deforming thought, so much that people don’t give much thought to what is going on. It’s not innocence, but it’s not exactly an ignorance embraced for its own sake.
You have to be practically fringe to see it.
If shown the light, I think at least 80% of the population would at least want it.
Sorry I’m not addressing your posts and am rambling. But I need to fight the message that we’re hopeless cretins.
Posted by wileywitch on May 27, 2006 at 3:57 AM Wow, gone for a few days and you folks have boosted this puppy into nine pages. I see a lot of angst and anger directed at myself, and America’s foreign policies. That’s fine, and perhaps some of what you say is justified.
However, consider the larger picture. Upwards of 250 million people were murdered by their own goverments in the 20th century alone, and I’m afraid the US is not much of a contributer to this total. When you also consider the supreme effort we’ve put forth in the last 50-75 years to work against this kind of murderous behavoir, things hopefully start to come into perspective.
I’m really not much on history, but I know enough to understand that America is inarguably the most benevolent world power in the history of the planet. Not perfect, of course, far from it, but stop to think who would likely be ruling your particular country if not for the decisive and determined efforts of the American soldier and those who ally with him/her. And of course, America is the foremost promoter of capatilism, one of the essential building blocks to a free, prosperous society, and the most effective antidote to poverty, hunger, and imperial ambition.
If yours had been the prevailing attitute in the last seven or so decades, suffice it to say that you would likely not be enjoying the freedom to convey that attitude today, and the means to do so in such an instantaneous and affordable manner would likely not exist either.
Imagine there’s no Google
I wonder if you canNo off-topic discussions, welcome to China,
former Iraq, and IranImagine some perspective
I wonder if you canWelcome to Cuba, North Korea
and Vietnam
Posted by Natalie on May 27, 2006 at 10:05 AM A long time ago, nyvegan posted partially this:
2. Actually watch the video, and make a similar list of the things that are demonstrable, verifiable, and which are in keeping with the laws of nature (e.g., the melting point of titanium; the size of a hole in the Pentagon relative to the size of a 757. Also include those highly statistically improbable coincidences (e.g., a Pentagon planner evaluating the impact of a 757 crash into the Pentagon later becomes the pilot of a 757 plane that allegedly does precisely that; 3 skyscrapers collapsed within 7 hours of one another, when such collapses are unheard of. Another not mentioned in the video, but in the public record: building 7’s owner, Larry Silverstein, said in an interview “And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse.” Even if someone chose to demolish the building, it would take weeks to study the structure, acquire and place charges, “pull it”.) Do not dismiss the video because it disagrees with your confirmation bias - please watch it, and go to the original videos they cite and review them if you question the author’s credibility.
I’m a little confused by your list criteria, but from this it appears you are assuming that everything in the Loose Change film is true and/or relevant. It would seem to me that the first step is to verify the truthfulness and relevance of items in the film, in order to be able to use it in any kind of meaningful analysis.
I started my own point by point analysis, but got sidetracked by arguments about DU. Subsequently, it came to my attention that *someone else has already done quite a lengthy critique, rendering my efforts rather obsolete, although some of our ideas are similar. It looks like you two are both from NY, and both are not fans of the President and/or his policies.
* My name is Mark Roberts, and I’m a tour guide in New York City. My first debunking effort was at the age of five, when I tried in vain to convince the kids at the school bus stop that there was no Santa Claus. I was eventually vindicated.
Email: itmatters@mail.com
His critique is here. (5.1 mb Microsoft Word document)
Posted by Natalie on May 27, 2006 at 10:10 AM Rabbit said a while back:
Upon reflection Rabbit has not been fair to the Lung Cancer referance, I see that Doctor Howenstine only referenced the Story on CNN, which has been removed from their transcript on the net. This is a common practice for TV stations who have been contacted by certain forces about a story they have aired. Too late to stop the story but at least they remove it from the transcript. Such actions show more than they hide to those who are paying atention.
Thank you for finally kind of admitting, Rabbit, that your previous sources alluding to a six-fold increase in lung cancer rates in the U.S. basically made it up. However, I see you stlll cling to the paranoid and ridiculous notion that the CNN transcripts were somehow cleansed.
Do you really think that CNN would agree to do that, especially considering all the negative focus all the media eagerly and regularly put on the war, the military, and the Bush administration? I mean, they weren’t even talking about DU, why would some supposed censor think this was a fact that would have to be expunged from the CNN transcript? What about all the VCR’s out there? Do you really think that such momentous news would escape the attention of the general public? Did you ever stop to think why there is no mention anywhere of the mysterious disappearance of the conversation from the CNN transcripts, when at least several hundred thousand people would have seen it, recorded it, and surely they would have been rightly shocked about it and surely would have been buzzing about the fact that they had seen it, and then when they went to the transcript to verify, it wasn’t there?
I’m “out of my depth”, and you can’t even recognize obvious nonsense?
*Here’s an example of how this kind of mis or rather dis information infects the stream of information people rely upon presumably to become accurately informed.
* And CNN reported the U.S. lung cancer rate jumped six-fold for the first two months of the year.
This is both an indication of a lack of fact-checking ability or more likely desire, and how something simply made up can masquerade across the web as fact.
I wonder what else might be made up???????
Posted by Natalie on May 27, 2006 at 6:28 PM I noticed the very first Nattypost was answered by jsalsman, 27aug05, with a ref to DNA changes. That first post showed the Bat to be a lover of DDT, GMOs, and Pesticides in general, and an enemy of the same scare-mongering unscientific kooky fringe who pointed out years ago that coaldust killed miners, and asbestos killed shipbuilders.
Interesting, Frog, that you would mention James Salsman. He recognizes that there’s virtually no radiation danger associated with depleted uranium, and is not 100% comfortable with people using that as a device to discredit it. His contention is that DU vapors, oxides, fumes if you will, are the real culprit:
“The radioactivity of uranium is of essentially no consequence in relation to DNA damage compared with its chemical toxicity producing oxidative stress resulting in oxidation damage to DNA. Any discussion of U radioactivity in that context is tantamount to misdirection from the more hazardous chemical toxicity. This must be the 100th time I’ve had to explain this, and at least the 3rd or forth on this thread.”.....James Salsman pg. 2, “Radioactive” wounds of war.
” Regarding your comments, “why is the title of your article ‘RADIOACTIVE Wounds of War?’ You’re shilling for your target audience.” I feel ambivalent about this. On balance, I feel a better title would be, “Birth Defect-Inducing Wounds of War.” However, I find it hard to object to the title as it stands because I strongly feel this issue deserves more attention.”.....James Salsman pg. 2
And it would appear true that some researchers have been successful in demonstrating that certain changes can be affected in test cells or animals in the laboratory, by exposing them to these small particles. Others have not. Of course, there’s no shortage of substances that can be shown to have negative effects on cells, rats, mice, hamsters, rabbits and frogs.
The real doubt in my mind, and in that of many others, is whether these moderate laboratory results have any relevance to real world conditions. In other words, if these cells and animals were merely exposed to the miniscule amounts of these “vapors” that one might realistically encounter, even in the close proximity to a DU incident, would they show any ill-effects at all, ever?
Although the sample size is low, it is worth considering that the group of actual humans that actually inhaled what would be the largest concentration (resulting from a DU explosion) of these particles has shown few if any ill-effects after all these years from an encounter with the presumed “fumes of death”. Plus, they have DU shrapnel in their bodies to boot.
Strangely, an even smaller sample known as the members of Doug Rokke’s DU cleanup team are almost all dead and the rest are hopelessly ill. Stranger still, lung cancer rates in the U.S. are up 600% in just the last few months.
You mention DDT and GM foods in the context of caring about children. If one cares about children, does one advocate for the banning of things that have the ability to save millions of them from death? Most of us with computers and Internet connections are also lucky enough to live without the threat of catching malaria or dying of starvation. Isn’t it a little selfish and stubborn to deny others less fortunate, especially children, the ability to do so also, when claims of harm by these substances/technologies have been greatly exaggerated, and in may cases lied about?
Posted by Natalie on May 27, 2006 at 6:33 PM Surely you know you’re adored Natalie. I heard you were here, stopped by and you were gone. Though I didn’t say it directly, the angst you see in my post is yours.
I see you’re as prolific as ever, and am relieved to see that you haven’t lost your verve.
Toodles, luv. I trust you’ll have company soon.
Posted by wileywitch on May 27, 2006 at 7:44 PM NATTY, welcome back,
Last bit first—
Your first witness for the safety of DDT and GMO’s ( and nucular power) is a flack the Eco-Judas Dr Patrick Moore.
Your second witness, the site www. junkscience.com is another flack -shop for big business. Stephen J Milloyruns it.
Another article on Milloy and similar gave up this ltlle gem——In February 2000, Avery was the featured expert for an ABC “20/20” story by television reporter John Stossel which speculated that “buying organic could kill you.” Stossel’s piece made no mention of Avery’s affiliation with the Hudson Institute, let alone any mention of the institute’s corporate funding from agrichemical and agribusiness heavyweights, including Monsanto, DuPont, Dow-Elanco, Sandoz, Ciba-Geigy, ConAgra, Cargill, and Procter & Gamble. Stossel also claimed that “20/20”‘s own laboratory tests had found as many pesticide residues on organic produce as on the conventionally grown variety—a claim the network would have to retract later when its researchers admitted that no such tests had been conducted.
I found that at Sheldon Rampton’s shit-digging on the Flack industry
We can see above a clear illustration of the quality and the hidden sponsors of your sources.
Posted by frog on May 29, 2006 at 12:58 AM Frog, I love those guys. “Trust Us, We’re Experts” is a must read. I would recommend it especially to teenagers who need to rebel against something.
The Center for Democracy in Media and Spin of the Day is such a vital resource. Power to the watchdogs.
Posted by wileywitch on May 29, 2006 at 1:25 AM Thanks for your research, frog,
I’ve been loathe to comment on Nat’s loathsome choice of references, but if I must I must. I’m certain without even blinking, she’ll dismiss Rampton as just another left-wing anti-business loony. Perhaps she’ll consider this review of Milloy’s screed from The Skeptical Enquirer , a source one would think would be his natural ally, that basically rips him a new one. It’s apparent that Hines is either unaware that Milloy has a degree in Biostatistics or is too polite to say he should know better. Either way it’s obvious that Milloy is a lying corporate shill and a pure unadulterated sack of shit.
Specifically concerning DDT and the host of lies that Milloy has engendered, this smackdown of his specious dissembing over Rachel Carson stands out.:
Posted by luminous beauty on May 29, 2006 at 2:41 AM Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring is widely credited with starting the modern environmental movement. But its publication also marked the beginning of modern anti-environmentalism. In fact, the attacks on the book began even before it was published (Stauber and Rampton, chapter 9, Lear, chapters 17-19). What is remarkable is that the criticism continues even today, more than thirty five years after its publication. The latest assault comes in “100 things you should know about DDT” by J. Gordon Edwards and Steven Milloy. The authors write that:
Rachel Carson sounded the initial alarm against DDT, but represented the science of DDT erroneously in her 1962 book Silent Spring. Carson wrote “Dr. DeWitt’s now classic experiments [on quail and pheasants] have now established the fact that exposure to DDT, even when doing no observable harm to the birds, may seriously affect reproduction. Quail into whose diet DDT was introduced throughout the breeding season survived and even produced normal numbers of fertile eggs. But few of the eggs hatched.” DeWitt’s 1956 article (in Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry) actually yielded a very different conclusion. Quail were fed 200 parts per million of DDT in all of their food throughout the breeding season. DeWitt reports that 80% of their eggs hatched, compared with the “control”” birds which hatched 83.9% of their eggs. Carson also omitted mention of DeWitt’s report that “control” pheasants hatched only 57 percent of their eggs, while those that were fed high levels of DDT in all of their food for an entire year hatched more than 80% of their eggs.
But Carson (page 320) cited two papers by DeWitt. The first, published in 1955 in the same journal, very much supports Carson’s statement (page 674):
Hatchability of fertile eggs was appreciably below that of eggs from the control group, and the difference approached significance (P = 0.08). Many embryos appeared to develop normally during the early stages of incubation, but died during the hatching period. Mortality among chicks from this group was extremely high, and more than 50% died within the first 5 days after hatching.
While DeWitt’s second study (1956), which used lower amounts of pesticides in the diet, did not produce the same decrease in hatchability but it did find greatly increased mortality among quail chicks even when the chicks themselves received pesticide free diets. In the control group (table III) 83.3% survived at the end of six weeks. When the hens were fed 100 ppm of DDT year round only 7.1% were alive after six weeks. When hens received no DDT in the winter but 200 ppm in their food during the reproductive season only 12.9% were still alive after six weeks. Among the pheasants, which received lower doses of DDT than the quail, there was no increase in mortality.
Both Carson and DeWitt cite several other studies that support the claim that DDT and other pesticides are harmful to wildlife. While Carson may have been the first to bring the effects of pesticides to the public’s attention, their harmful effects were already known within the scientific community.
This is from Jim Norton’s info-pollution.com , which is an excellent anti-environmentalist de-bunking site. They have a whole page devoted to Steve Milloy. I’m not sure Nat will understand the sins of specious quote-mining exposed here, since she seems so enamored of the method herself, but here it is.I haven’t heard of Dr. Strangewhore before, but the myth that DDT is banned as an agent against malaria, rather than as a crop pesticide, even in the US, is familiar old chestnut, much embraced by Milloy and his minions.
Posted by luminous beauty on May 29, 2006 at 2:42 AM Natalie it is hard to describe my feelings for you, but I am going to try.
I just did it in a post and lost it the usual way, by forgetting my own advice and not copying before flushing.
It strikes me as pointless to bother setting the record straight about anything you write at this stage. Nobody will ever read anything you’ve written on this site except in derision anymore anyway.
Your posts bore me. Mostly the special shilling ones, long and peppered with links to pseudo scientific sources, ie; paid industry hacks, which always follow your demolition by a group and a few days absence as if you had anything more important to do. They usually involve a fair bit of self projection, in this case you go with angst I think.
Unlike many here, I don’t see any point in trying to convert all Stupid or Evil people. As an Gnostic, I tend to place as high a value on evil as I do upon good.
How can one destroy evil without becoming that which was evil? Good only exists as a contrast to evil and vice versa. Sentience always tends to expand into filling whatever space is available. By evacuating the space once held by evil, and thus losing our direction, we too easily become evil ourselves and with no perspective this happens without our knowledge. No doubt it is in this way you have become evil. In your small human perspective you probably believe you have eliminated evil from your self, you say exactly this when you defend the American policy of telling everyone else how to live. You are acting as if you even know yourselves. By pointing always to others’ evil and denying you yourselves do evil, is simply to place yourself in ignorance, it doesn’t eliminate your evil.
A society which recognises it’s own dichotomy of evil and good, would naturally be engaged in the internal struggle with this. It would be too self absorbed to try and run others’ societies. If that society once convinces itself it has mastered the one or the other, then it is on a course to destruction, for neither Good nor Evil can exist alone in perpetuity. One will always swell to occupy the space of the other and in so doing change. It is the nature of free sentience to fill up all available space. Good and Evil will always exist, just because we cease to believe in one or the other we will yet always have a choice of one or the other.
Due to this essential requisit of our existence, duality, I embrace Evil as I do Good.
That isn’t saying I don’t want to fight you. If I thought it was possible to destroy you and your kind by killing you all, without becoming like you, then I’d be enthusiastically doing just that. I don’t see how I can though, logic tells me violence is self perpetuating, and so does reading history.
I embrace the idea of fighting evil, and choose to do so. I do not however wish to destroy you totally. I’m all for hanging a bunch of you and then letting the rest go free to start all over again. Better we have enough of you around so as not to forget how ugly we could become. Lest we become like you and don’t realise it.
I do appreciate the absolutely perfect example of unbridled evil you have demostrated Natalie. I am using the word evil advisedly in your case, it is not a device.
You have been quite consistent. You support War as a constant and desirable companion and you are an enthusiastic supporter of any and all methods of inhumane behaviour or weapons available. With NO exceptions you have expressed complete support for Chemical and Nuclear weapons use, at every available opportunity. You support torture and policies which endorse this.
You are completely oblivious of the amount or type of innocence which your acts destroy, it matters not to you how many civilians are killed or maimed or poisoned by your methods, and children or women are all the same to you.
It doesn’t faze you for one second when the justifications or lies of yesterday are replaced with ever more hysterical claims, you switch as easily from denying you could ever commit such an atrocity to justifying the atrocity when it becomes impossible for even you to deny it was true.
To you one lie is as good as another, one reason to pretend you are right is no different to another if they are all lies. We already know this. You employ every tactic of dissembly, nitpicking and outright deceit as a method to keep truth from being recognised about any of it. These are the ways of evil.
You support a completely unchecked pollution of the planet and by using twisted pseudo science you dare to argue the bulk of the world’s scientific community is somehow wrong while a handful of paid industry scientists are right. You actually cheerfully defend DDT, and any poison at all from the sound of it. Most evil spawn of syphillitic dogs are content with just defending DU, and Torture, but not you Natty, you have to have it all.
After all this I have to say it is almost a relief to know that you also support every clampdown and limitation on freedom and democracy in your own country as being good and desirable things. Calling the impending greatest financial meltdown of history, the record trillions of dollars debt and the accelerating record Budget deficits good financial policy, would serve as a cherry on top of a set of attitudes which can only be called one thing. EVIL.
If it kills, maims, decieves, enslaves or pollutes, then you have the hots for it. If it hates, you love it. What you say you hate, is what you in reality are. You are what you say you hate. You are that also for most of humanity.
It is at this juncture of history that our species is finally becoming aware of a propensity which it has had for all its painful history. The awareness of what and who is wrong with our society is naturally polarising us. We are separating ourselvs from you though as yet only in word. You are in turn congregating, withdrawing into your defensive castles of ignorance and hubris. Waging war against everyone, unknown and unmet, anyone at all who is not completely down with YOUR vision of the future.
You deserve a medal for being so unfailingly and utterly an example of everything which is bad and wrong about the USA, and humanity in general.
Thankyou Natalie, I don’t think anybody else could have so effectively embraced such a bag of foul muck and made it into such a coherant picture of EVIL.
I wonder now if there is likely to be anything at all about your attitudes which are anything but the most monstrous perversion of humanity.
Posted by Rabbit on May 29, 2006 at 5:33 AM Long story short, Rabbit, she needs a makeover. This stacking five or six decks worked when most Americans were still pushing the snooze button on the 911 alarm. But not now.
What you need, Natalie, is some jingles. Shorty little ditties that will get stuck in a mo-mo’s head. Like:
DU? NO PROBLEM! NOT WHEN YOU’RE DEAD, AND ALL THOSE SYMPTOMS ARE ALL IN YOUR HEAD. DU is our friend, to the bitter, bitter end, DU, DU, DU!
Let’s sing a song about the Terminator Seed, the Terminator Seed, The Terminator Seed. Your friends at Monsanto have everything you need, so sell your soul to the firm with the goal, to control all the food and everyone who feeds! We know all your needs! Yeah, MONSANTO! We’re in control! Surrender your soul! That is our goal! Let’s sing…(start again).
Needs a little of your finesse of course, but something like that. One glance at your five hundred word posts, after most people on the internet have, in all likelihood been to five or six 9/11 websites and watched all the videos in slow motion, and those who don’t know you well enough to love you would be outta here.
O.K. Natalie? Think short and sweet.
Posted by wileywitch on May 29, 2006 at 9:22 AM <u>Depleted Uranium</u>
Uranium is great you should stick it in your date.
Give the one you love some fun while you poison her with come.
If by lucky chance you should jointly build a baby.
You can rest not till assured its neither dead nor yet deformed.
The ones who get the least of it will suffer for the longest.
While those who get the biggest dose will die too soon to notice....Must go home for dinner, but might pop back with spin for more of Natty’s loves soon.
Posted by Rabbit on May 29, 2006 at 10:59 AM From a piece by stickdog.
An excerpt—
The “9/11 Changes Everything” mantra has been successfully used to justify:
1) an insane invasion and occupation,
2) an Orwellian state of neverending warfare,
3) an all-out assault on our Bill of Rights and our Constitutional separation, balance and oversight of powers,
4) rampant and bald faced war profiteering and a huge increase in dubious mil/intel/security expenditures,
5) an insane doctrine of military pre-emption,
6) torture and rendition,
7) a culture of authoritarian secrecy,
8) the persecution of political dissent,
9) enraging the Muslim world and alienating the rest of the world,
10) etc., etc., etc.while doing little or nothing to enhance our security or address the root causes or symptoms of Islamic terror.
Our ports are no more secure than they were on 9/11, and they are being sold to an Arab government that recognized the Taliban. Our nuke plants are just as vulnerable as ever. The CAPPS II no-fly list supposedly protects us against a non-existent threat (when was the last time a US domestic flight was hijacked by a US citizen?) while actually helping any terrorist cell with the resources to do a few test runs before the big event. Finally, not one individual has been publicly held accountable for his or her failures on 9/11, and Homeland (Pork Barrel) Security proved its “worth” during the Katrina debacle.
All of this disgusting vileness and much more has gone down in the name of an official conspiracy theory—namely, that 19 Arabs acting alone at Bin Laden’s behest caused 100% of the 9/11 tragedy without any actionable foreknowledge of any government official with the power to stop them—worthy of Doctor Evil and containing quite a few gaping plot holes. Even assuming that the official conspiracy theory is 100% true, the problem of a few thousand hardcore fundamentalist Islamic terrorists would quite obviously be best addressed with a small but expertly trained team of covert infiltrators and special operations forces.
Considering this, how can one possibly find merit in actively policing and ridiculing those who rationally draw attention to dubious elements of the official 9/11 conspiracy theory—regardless of one’s personal beliefs concerning the events of that day? Considering all the heinous shit that’s been done in the name of the 9/11, why are so many inclined to censor any deviation from “conventional wisdom” of the events of that day?
Posted by frog on May 30, 2006 at 10:50 AM Isn’t that funny (strange), frog. It is evidence of our anti-thought compulsory school system that most people haven’t been saying something, like:
“Wait! That was a very dramatic, and peculiar crime. How many actual suspects can there be? I mean, how many people in the world could have pulled this off?”
If it weren’t so fantastically intricate it would have happened more often by now. If not here, then elsewhere where terrorist activity is normal.
Why is the administration, Homeland Security, and all other appropriate agencies not working with terrorist specialists and arms of governments that have infiltrated terrorist networks, instead of buying up every American consumers’ personal information? What a senseless waste of time, and invasion of our privacy.
There’s a way to shut up most of the American people, pacify that little wedge of pitifully poor thinkers that think data mining is doing something about terrorism, and keeping all agencies extremely busy NOT FINDING TERRORISTS.
What keeps them from doing a proper investigation?
Posted by wileywitch on May 30, 2006 at 7:17 PM Thanks for that amphibious one.
I might just repost that on an ICH thread since it is aprop.
It occurs lately to me as I watch the Bush support go down the toilet, that this is where i becomes obvious we have passed the point of no return.
I read some piece yesterday, which claimed that those in the USA who actually fit into that ultra privelaged bracket, which can truly say it owns the current system, or at least that it benefits entirely by it amounts to about 10% of the population. That leaves about 15% of the remaining population who are supporting something which is not to their benefit, but they are yet convinced enough that they aspire to that top bracket, to support it. That explains a bit maybe why they are supporting something which is apparently against their own interests.
Still considering the rate of decline, it seems unlikely even that 15% will be able to be fooled forever. Indeed it has long been a source of concern to me that the rising NWO state is not expending more than a token effort in winning our minds, for all the success they appear to be having. If you ask me it seems as if our consent, is not something they are including in the whole equation.
How much of a hindrance has anyone had on the ruling juntas course since it arose? When has anything? Not even all the current scandals and investigations are more than a feather past the window for them.
I do not think it is hard to imagine that if and when the remaining possible fifteen percent stop supporting the Junta, that even this 90% resistance, won’t help a bit. These people don’t care what you think anymore, whether or not you support them is of fading interest to them.
Soon it will matter not a whit, it seems easy to predict even. We are headed for an extreme end of the graph of human culture. This isn’t just another little bump in the road. This is a biologically standard experience. We are living organisms with no more idea of where we came from or why we are here than even the silly slug or beetle. Or a rabbit. We have therefore NO reason to assume we are exempt from a rule of sustainability of populations and the myriad forces which are complicated, not simplified, by another thing we have no idea of where it came, and that is our intelligence.
Anyway, without wanting to seem like a misanthrope for I am not. Good stuff. Let us embrace our destruction. Since there is no way back, then lets roll baby, let’s get this damned show on the road.
The first time the rabbit parachuted, he did not need to be pushed out of the plane. JUMP! It was the easiest order I ever got.
Posted by Rabbit on May 31, 2006 at 3:48 AM Keep in mind Rabbit, that those phone polls only phone land lines at home. Many Americans are hardly ever at home, because they’re always working. Many Americans screen their calls and don’t do political polls. I won’t do a poll unless I’m told who is running it and who is funding it.
The 15% is mostly burned out biddies who believe in the Rapture, think George W. is a man of God, and think no further. They watch Fox news every day, and televangelists all day Sunday. However bright they may have been in their youth, they no longer know shit from shinola. It’s sad that life has left them bitter and spiteful, but not as sad as if would be if they were truly influential.
They’ll all be dead before long.
Posted by wileywitch on Jun 1, 2006 at 12:11 AM Whether or not they are truly influential, no amount of citizens influence is likely to shift the course of the runaway train.
Posted by Rabbit on Jun 1, 2006 at 12:58 AM I’ve been perched on a missile for 28 years.
We’ll do our best. Or blow our brains out. Or do our worst, or some odd combination.
Don’t panic. In the midst of chaos, there are infinite possibilities that have been buried by the maintenance of the ruling order.
We might have one more renaissance, one more awakening before we go.
Don’t steel yourself, Rabbit. Always be open to the possibility of a shining path opening before you and yourn. Oh what a difference a day makes.
It could all be shit no matter once, but don’t let yourself get mesmerized by the threat of doom.
Same as it ever was.
Posted by wileywitch on Jun 1, 2006 at 5:09 AM Frog,
Thank you for pointing out the less than ethical nature of Steven Milloy. I was not familiar at all with him, his reputation, or his conflicts of interest. Not a good choice of sources, certainly. I was simply looking for an article with which to further illustrate my point, that being that DDT has been unfairly demonized, and that demonization has contributed to its use being discouraged or curtailed in areas where it could save many, many lives.
Perhaps it never occured to me to question the points raised in the Junkscience article because I had read basically the same thing so many other places. Not only from pollution loving right wingers, but also from their polar opposites. Not only from a lobbyist for Monsanto, but also from the co-founder of Greenpeace, the traitor.
“But over the years, mainstream scientific opinion has absolved DDT of many of its supposed sins. Indeed, the Stockholm Convention partially backfired because it brought to light a slew of studies and literature reviews which contradicted the conventional wisdom on DDT. Like nearly any chemical, DDT is harmful in high enough doses. But when it comes to the kinds of uses once permitted in the United States and abroad, there’s simply no solid scientific evidence that exposure to DDT causes cancer or is otherwise harmful to human beings”.
“One of my most exhilarating moments with my children came when we were backpacking together and spotted a bald eagle. It was a tragedy that we nearly allowed DDT to wipe out such magnificent birds, and we should continue to ban DDT in the U.S. But it’s also tragic that our squeamishness about DDT is killing more people in poor countries, year in and year out, than even a once-in-a-century tsunami.”
“Why does Europe impede Uganda’s fight against malaria? The standard answer starts with “Silent Spring,” the book that helped launch the environmental movement in the 1960s and that painted a scary picture of DDT’s potential impact on the food chain. But this is only half right. The book’s overblown claims led to the banning of DDT in the United States in 1972 and its disappearance from aid-funded programs thereafter. But “Silent Spring” was really about the dangers of large-scale agricultural use of DDT, not the limited spraying of houses. Today mainstream environmental groups concede that in the context of malarial countries, the certain health benefits of anti-malarial spraying may outweigh the speculative environmental risks.”
So shame on me for using a tainted source, but it would seem that my original and current stance on DDT is far from a fringe position, and certainly my comparing DDT with DU in the context of succombing to scare science was apt.
Your attack on Milloy somewhat misses the mark, however, because his article is largely based on and around work (120k pdf) by the DDT eating J. Gordon Edwards, who admittedly did die a premature death at age 84. (Some have claimed that his death was a result of DDT induced dementia, which caused him to think that he could mountain climb at 84 and not have a heart attack.)
Attack away, but keep in mind the dilemma of condemning University professors for possessing certain out-of-the-mainstream ideas, and possibly even attracting associations with like-minded people, sometimes even resulting in the exchange of money!
Posted by Natalie on Jun 1, 2006 at 5:27 AM Hey, Natalie—tra la la la la, tra la la, tra la la. Tra la tra la, la la la—-to you too.
Posted by wileywitch on Jun 1, 2006 at 5:58 AM You got it Wiley. tra la la la la, tra la la. God she’s an irritiating shill isn’t she? Not a pause now that the Teratological studies and Epidemiological studies are in, she’s still babbling the same lines.
I doubt Frog will feel much like taking any notice of her crap either. Note that the BIG thread at you know where, has evolved into a DU WAR, for all those who are loyal to ADMIT. A SHILL appears to have finally taken the bait and has begun in a remarkably similar fashion to Natty, except it appears to be claiming some science knowledge. When you read it’s first post and compare it and the next two posts with Natty’s first ever three posts, tell me the format isn’t profoundly obvious.
They all get trained at the same school for Shills I’d say. Or they get the same manual to work from. Maybe it is like a course on the back of “Wingjob” comic books or something? “Be all the shills you want to be.” ........ “Shilling for shillings”..,........ “Shilling for profit and pleasure”?.. ...“Shills keep the wheels of profit turning”.....?
Actually Wiley, I’m in a mood just now which would be hard to get much more black. Nothing I wish to discuss under the putrid gaze of a dirty shilling apologist for death of course. Just seem to be at a black Arian crossroads.
Posted by Rabbit on Jun 1, 2006 at 9:45 AM Hello Lapin and Wiley !
NATTY’S LAST LINK is in fact to Scholars for Truth, where I follwed on to a review article Encouraging.
I’m with Wiley on not getting mesmerised by EVIL More on that at the ranch/chalet, where you will point me to the BIG thread please.NATTY
That was no attack on Milloy, it was exposure of scum.. The following is from a review of Rachel Carson’s last book ‘Sense of Wonder’
In a very personal and lyrical remembrance, Rachel Carson shares her vision of the natural world and the wonder it inspires. “A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood,”
Posted by frog on Jun 1, 2006 at 11:23 AM Natty,
If you really want to inform yourself on the raging so-called DDT controversy with a little science, fact and reason to temper the distorted polemics of the right-wing editorials you cite, please play this fascinating and informative little GAME . It provides a soothing emetic to all the toxic politically charged mis-information you so eagerly gulp down like bon-bons.
Posted by luminous beauty on Jun 1, 2006 at 1:31 PM Its done he who hops.
The field of freedom and green, green grass, now has a note left by the embers of the campfire past.
Hi Lume.
Art thou related to Dan? Most excellent a Man. If there be but two like you, then your land is not completely screwed. If it’s just you chum, then as usual, well done!
Posted by Rabbit on Jun 1, 2006 at 1:58 PM Personally I have some experience with Heptachlor and Dieldrin. Having seen the effects on several generations of some families while living a decade in the country.
DDT of course is down south too, and like the other two after more than fifty years it is still so highly concentrated on even virgin farmland it is yet too high to allow an organic rating for produce grown on it.
Sprayed from planes of course. Of course nothing was ever achieved. Still mosquitoes, and White Ants (termites) infesting the whole area. (An area about the size of California and Texas combined BTW.)
Posted by Rabbit on Jun 1, 2006 at 4:13 PM Rachel Carson killed more people than HItler?
I bet I’ve had sex with more men than Hitler?
Can anyone come up with something they have done or probably have done or NOT done more or less than Hitler?
Let’s allow nothing not to be compared to Hitler. It’s so close to being worn completely out, perhaps we could give it just a few more shoves before it goes over the cliff into the abyss of the thoroughly laughable comparison that most people would be too embarrassed to make.
I’ve eaten more Big Macs than Hitler.
Posted by wileywitch on Jun 1, 2006 at 11:25 PM Natty,
If you really want to inform yourself on the raging so-called DDT controversy with a little science, fact and reason to temper the distorted polemics of the right-wing editorials you cite, please play this fascinating and informative little GAME. It provides a soothing emetic to all the toxic politically charged mis-information you so eagerly gulp down like bon-bons.
Lumey,
I was attempting to illustrate by my quotes and their authors that the same attitude about DDT emanates from the left as well as the right. As in the case of eminent domain, it would seem that there’s some fairly broad consensus from some pretty strange bedfellows on the use of DDT, and the reasons for its use having been curtailed in recent years.
It would appear that Lambert is not overly opposed to the controlled use of DDT for household mosquito control, but is mainly disturbed by the fact that greenies are being implicated in the killing and/or disabling of millions of disadvantaged poor people. I can understand his dismay at this accusation, because I’ve had those same feelings in regards to the use of DU, by a military I admire and respect, supposedly being responsible for the same thing.
Even allowing for the possibility that African nations weren’t technically or legally being prevented from using DDT for limited pest control, It would certainly appear that their decisions for discontinuing its use were based in large part on the reality, or in some cases the mere perception, that certain influential agencies and organizations were strongly opposed to their using it at all.
Another from the New York Times, by Tina Rosenberg, a fellow at the very liberal MacArthur foundation. “What the world needs now is DDT”:
Then there are chemical companies. ‘‘I get asked all the time—are you being paid by chemical companies?’’ said Thomas DeGregori, a professor of economics at the University of Houston and an advocate for DDT. The question is amusing, because the corporate interests in this issue are actually on the other side. DDT is no longer on patent, and it is known to be made only in India and China—and the price has soared since the rich-country ban put manufacturers out of business, making it harder for poor countries to buy. Janet Hemingway of the Liverpool School, who advises African governments, said that she and the officials she works with are often lobbied by chemical companies selling more expensive insecticides, telling her about DDT’s evils. ’‘Clearly, they’d like to see DDT banned—it cuts into their markets,’‘ she said.
But more important to DDT’s demise has been pressure from the international malaria establishment. Sometimes it is direct. Mexico gave up DDT, for example, because the North American Free Trade Agreement obligated it to. Donald Roberts, who was working in Belize in the early 1990’s, said that Usaid told the country to stop using DDT or it would lose foreign assistance. (Belize did, and malaria rates soared.)
In May 2001, 91 countries and the European Community signed a treaty in Stockholm on 12 persistent organic pollutants, the ‘‘dirty dozen.’’ It banned nine outright. For DDT, the treaty allowed its use in indoor spraying for public health purposes, but called for its gradual phase-out. DDT’s exemption, which had been opposed by environmental groups but supported by malariologists, did allow countries dependent on DDT to continue to use it for the present. But Stockholm’s guiding principle—phase it out—is one more factor that discourages donors from financing DDT.
cont…..
Posted by Natalie on Jun 2, 2006 at 8:54 PM part 2…..
Brian Sharp, who is leading South Africa’s house-spraying program, said that some international research agencies will not finance studies in any way associated with DDT. Roll Back Malaria sees its mosquito-control strategy as promoting bed nets, period. Its 2003 Africa report hardly mentions house spraying. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria—which uses guidelines set by W.H.O.—currently finances no DDT. Vinand Nantulya, senior adviser to the fund’s executive director, said that the fund might theoretically supply DDT to a country that requests it—but none have. This is no surprise: these countries work closely with W.H.O. and advisers from Usaid to formulate their proposals to the Global Fund, and they are unlikely to ask for things that stand a low chance of approval. Many African scientists and health officials report being told by donors, ‘‘You’ll have trouble getting money for this’’ or ‘‘Donors believe this has unacceptable environmental effects.’’ The balance of power is so tilted toward the donors in these relationships that poor countries will go quite far out of their way to not offend. DDT is controversial; better not to ask.
In 1999, the Pan American Health Organization recommended that Ecuador use DDT to control malaria in the wake of El Nino. The World Bank said no. In a document explaining its decision, the bank said, ‘‘Because of the controversial issues surrounding DDT, the World Bank’s malaria team discourages the habitual use of DDT for malaria control.’’ Renato Gusm-o of P.A.H.O. said that the bank’s environmental group told him it was fighting for the elimination of DDT and could not allow the bank to finance DDT while advocating a ban.
In many countries, decisions about DDT are made by environmental ministries, with little input from health officials. When Colombia banned DDT in the early 1990’s, for example, ‘‘people in public health found out when they read about it in the newspaper,’’ Gusm-o said. Malaria cases more than doubled. The 1980’s and 1990’s also saw the rise of environmental units within the health institutions and donors like the World Bank. These watchdog units were much needed and in general have been a crucial tool to protect the environment. But they look at only the risks, not the benefits. Walter Vergara, the World Bank official who headed the unit that dismissed DDT in Ecuador, defended the decision to me: ‘‘DDT has an awful impact on the biosystem and is being eliminated by the world community. There are alternatives. We’re not the only species on the planet.’‘
Said David Brandling-Bennett, the former deputy director: ‘‘My experience at P.A.H.O. was that the malaria community eventually gave in to heavy pressure from environmental groups, including within the organization. There was a fairly heavy debate in P.A.H.O. a few years back about whether we should use DDT where it is effective. But the overwhelming perception of DDT as the nastiest kid on the block just made it very difficult to argue for continuing. Really, the malaria community retreated.’‘
cont…..
Posted by Natalie on Jun 2, 2006 at 8:56 PM part 3…...
This is a recent editorial from a Kenyan paper, which offers evidence that DDT was indeed banned, and that at least the perceived reason for it was the influence of environmental groups:
“The insecticide was banned several years ago following pressure by environmental lobbyists, despite the fact that indoor residual spraying (IRS) with DDT eradicated malaria in the US and Europe and led to spectacular declines in the disease in other countries.”
May 8, 2006 DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - Tanzania is lifting a 2004 ban on the pesticide DDT so it can be used to fight mosquitoes carrying malaria in the east African nation.And apparently Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond tutu, certainly no man of the right, has added his name (350k pdf) , along with many other leaders and officials in African nations, to those calling for the reintroduction of DDT to Malarial control programs in Africa:
“Malaria is a devastating disease that holds back development in Africa. Many African countries desperately need cost-effective insecticides, such as DDT, to battle the deadly mosquitoes that transmit the disease. It is a human tragedy that children die largely because donors fail to support appropriate and effective solutions to this preventable disease.”
A blogger for Grist magazine, an environmentalist bible of sorts, alludes to environmental elitism being a factor in the huge malaria-induced human death toll. Some of the comments illustrate the warped thinking on the part of these zealots. And I thought religious conservatives were dangerous.
This all adds up to me to be some pretty strong evidence with which to back up my original assertion, which was: ” DDT was banned amidst vastly overblown reports of toxicity. Now millions die of malaria that might have otherwise lived.”
And the contention that my support for DDT is an indication of being “evil” is offensive, unfounded and a case of selective indignation, unless of course one wishes to also accuse Tina Rosenberg, Nicholas Kristof, Alexander Gourevitch, Desmond Tutu, Patrick Moore, and countless African health officials trying to deal with a monumental health crisis of the same!
Posted by Natalie on Jun 2, 2006 at 8:59 PM Umm hate to tell you this Natty, but the rabbit has it on good authority that nobody really even bothers with you anymore.
We are too busy sorting the real people to waste time reading your claptrap. Don’t be suprised to be ignored for a bit.
Of course we all get a bit bored from time to time, and you are at least a tiny bit more amusing than masturbation…..... but not much.
Hang about Natty Bat, someone is bound to feel like a bit of a cheap thrill soon though, you never know.
Wiley, I’ve smoked more Ganja than Hitler?...
Posted by Rabbit on Jun 3, 2006 at 6:30 AM There you go, Rabbit.
I bet you’ve made more boats than Hitler. You evil boatmaker.
I think you’re right about “Bush” being the new standard. Though he was just a lawn ornament, there is justice in his name being dragged through the mud. I don’t normally go for the “sins of the father” clap-trap, but that whole family sux.
Natalie needs to be reprogrammed. She does not have her finger on the pulse by any stretch. So many words, so little meaning. sigh.
Posted by wileywitch on Jun 3, 2006 at 6:49 AM STRAW MEN AND DEAD HORSES RISE UP FROM THEIR GRAVES, GET FLOGGED .
SPA IS CALLED.
Posted by frog on Jun 3, 2006 at 8:58 AM A horse is a horse,
Of course, of course,
Unless it’s dead as Hitler’s corpse.
That is of course, unless the horse’s
Ass is Georgie Bush.Go right to the source
And ask the horse.
He’ll give you the answer that you endorse.
“The path to peace is pre-emptive force.”
The infamous Georgie Bush.La la, la la,
La la, la la
La la la, la la la, la, la la
La ilaha illa allah
And the god of Georgie Bush.
Posted by luminous beauty on Jun 3, 2006 at 1:41 PM My last word on DDT:
When I was a small boy, California’s Central Valley was the home of the largest population of wild birds in the world. One could go out to the wetlands of the Westside in the middle of the migration season and the sky would be literally darkened by flocks of birds; egrets, herons, bitterns, ibis, cranes, pelicans, ducks, teal, mergansers, loons, mudhens, avocets, plovers, sandpipers, gulls, pheasant, quail, hawks, eagles, osprey, falcons, owls, kingfishers, doves, woodpeckers, meadowlarks, swallows, bushtits, nuthatches, blackbirds, wrens, waxwings, redwings, warblers, starlings, strikes, thrushes, tanagers,orioles, and the lovely western bluebird. From anywhere in the valley, you could see long V’s of geese from horizon to horizon , numbering in the tens of thousands. Day and night, for weeks, their honking would sound like white noise from thousands of feet overhead.
But we also had swarming mosquitoes. Bad swarming mosquitoes. I can remember as a kid, taking out the trash and coming back into the house with a hundred bites just on my forehead. So we sprayed DDT. We sprayed it from planes, we sprayed it from trucks, we sprayed it from boats. We sprayed it everywhere. We dusted it on our clothes at school. It knocked back the mosquitoes, yes, but not like the bird and fish populations collapsed. Songbirds that once took over trees in town by the hundreds with a raucous chorus, now sing sad singlets with distant brethren in a sorrowful call and response. Now the crows and magpies are the dominant species. Once the salmon runs were a spectacle, where it seemed you could walk across the rivers on the backs of the fish. I lived on the Tuolumne a few years back and one year I counted three individuals. I saw a meadowlark in eastern Oregon two years ago, and the sound of its lonely call was a nostalgic shock of when they would sound in the country mornings from every fence like an organic alarm clock. The geese now fly in small lonely groups. My cousin, who is an ex-president of Ducks Unlimited, no longer hunts because the population can no longer support it. They sighted a pair of bluebirds at the local nature preserve this spring and it was a cause for wonderment. I could go on and on.
We don’t use DDT anymore, but we have learned to control mosquitoes without it. Much better than we ever did with DDT. Eastern Africa now has the last relatively unspoiled flyway in the world. I’m proud to say, that Northern California has a team of experts in Africa, teaching the Africans how to hopefully avoid the catastrophe that we have suffered.
Posted by luminous beauty on Jun 3, 2006 at 3:24 PM Hello LUMENS ,
been looking all over for my old copy of The Pesticide Conspiracy, published 1978 . The author Robert Van Den Bosch died shortly afterwards.
Posted by frog on Jun 3, 2006 at 7:04 PM LOL on that Mr. Hitler tune, Lumens.
It seems that many African nations have had enough of the dustbowls and are moving rapidly toward green technology. Ethiopa has sworn to it at least. I’m happy to see that.
I remember the grown-ups talking about and using pesticides when I was a kid. There was a time when everyone was telling a story about how someone died because he sprayed pesticide while barefoot and absorbed the poison through his feet. I don’t know if it was always the same guy, or what.; but I do remember when people started taking poison a bit more seriously. For those who didn’t die, there very well may have been damage to their progeny that no one would connect to the pesticide use.
Accidental poisoning was the number one cause of death of children for quite some time.
Now, pesticide is the most common weapon of choice for suicide worldwide. Can you imagine killing yourself with a nerve agent and a bag over your head? Tragic. Gruesome.
I miss the liveliness that surrounded me outdoors as a child. I can’t remember the last time I saw a grasshopper.
Rachel Carson should be on the five dollar bill. She is an American hero. If it weren’t for all the environmental laws passed in the wake of her studies, we might not be here now to wonder at how we’re going ot get them all reinstated.
Posted by wileywitch on Jun 3, 2006 at 7:16 PM No need for me to draw conclusions, underline the obvious.
Just wanted to introduce him to those of you who have not yet met him.
Spending a little time with this man, or Rachel Carson, both departed, is a delight .
Both recognised the usefulness of chemical means as part of the effort to solve urgent problems, both warned of over-use, abuse.
Posted by frog on Jun 3, 2006 at 7:39 PM WILEY
Farmworkers “dipping” sheep. I did this in me school holidays from 1963-5, nobody knew about organophosphorous poisoning . Well, more precisely, WE didn’t !The government finally recognised the problem 30years later.
I have a feeling that the scandal of blackbox voting will take rather less long to be exposed .
Over to you !
Posted by frog on Jun 3, 2006 at 7:57 PM Wow, what an excellent resource, frog! I wish there were fifty hours in a day and we only slept three.
I have a feeling, that soon there is going to be a big round-up. I hope this feeling is satisfied. Too many bad guys on the loose with power.
It appears that more Americans know the elections have been shams than people from other countries.
Posted by wileywitch on Jun 3, 2006 at 8:49 PM The whole political process is conducted within the bosom of the corrupted media, and as such even if the voting wasn’t being shonked by ballot stuffing to directly inventing figures and substituting and all the rest of it, it would still not be real democracy.
By that I mean all of mostly our mangy countries too. So what if the US system is obviously openly and completely corrupted, any system driven by the false propaganda spewing media is essentially out of control.
We are all facedby the same paradox. There are no real alternatives, the majority of people have no representation. Here there and everywhere.
Good luck for 6/6/6 everyone. Hope all the Xtians being en-raptured don’t cause too many problems for anyone.
Some say if you stand on your head it should eliminate the danger because it will then be 999.
Posted by Rabbit on Jun 5, 2006 at 8:17 AM I can see while they call him Snowjob.
“That is a little too complicated for me to try to read out,” Snow said at a briefing where he was pressed to explain how al-Maliki’s remarks were supposed to have been distorted. “It becomes a little convoluted and so I don’t want to make a real clear characterization because it’s a little hazy to me,” Snow said.
Posted by Rabbit on Jun 5, 2006 at 9:12 AM Ommigawd, 6/6/6 is my first anniversary of not smoking cigarettes.
999. LOL.
Snow is getting it. That’s pretty funny. Hang onto your hats. Just remember, that when the cage doors open and people are existentially naked and upset, and so asking who is responsible for all this and really wanting to know—-that’s when you start playing the pin the crime on the jack-ass game.
I don’t know about how things are where everyone else is, but in America, actually learning something that actually rings your bells is so RARE, that when they do learn something—-they want everyone to know what interesting thing they learned.
We’re likely to screw it all up and be assholes in the process, but human beings aren’t all bad. It’s been a grand experiment, even though it’s often been gruesome and tragic. We have made some advancements that are noteworthy—-like the concept of children’s rights. Environmentalism. Yahtzee.
Posted by wileywitch on Jun 5, 2006 at 4:27 PM Pokemon…......Big Brother….......McDonalds. Yeh we’re real creative.
Well Rabbit woke up this moring and Mrs Rabbit was not on her side of the bed. Allthough she normally is up before me, to ride into work in the city, I usually notice when she gets up. I lay there for a while wondering if she had gone up in the rapture or something. Looking around on the way to work there didn’t seem to be fewer people.
Posted by Rabbit on Jun 6, 2006 at 1:05 AM I hope Mrs. Rabbit hasn’t been taken? That could be unsettling. It’s nice you think she would be taken. Sorry you might feel “left behind”. Feeling like a bad cliche is always a bitch.
(When I was married, I’d find my husband rolled into a fetal position on the farthest corner of the bed every morning. I kicked the crap out of him all night. It was nothing personal. I just had a lot of nightmares and kicked demon ass in my sleep. I never understod why he insisted on sharing a bed—-he was always bruised.)
Today, while cleaning the kitchen, I listened to a Ray Charles album, and an album of Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitgerald singing duets. We got some stuff so right—-it’s magic.
Perhaps we aren’t the greatest bicameral, bipeds, with opposable thumbs in the whole universe, but we’ve got soul sometimes. And sometimes we’re so sweet we’re adorable.
I wish I could wave a magic wand and cheer you up mein hare.
Posted by wileywitch on Jun 6, 2006 at 4:21 AM Sorry to say the rabbit is sinking still. I don’t know what it is Wiley but I’m feeling about ready to call it a day. Is there any point in sticking around to watch the downhill run when the trip so far has been a total dissapointment? Fuck. I won’t even have any good memories to enjoy in my old age.
Posted by Rabbit on Jun 7, 2006 at 3:17 AM Oh, Rabbit. I know it’s hard sometimes. You’ve been through a whole lot lately. Take it easy on yourself.
If you need to, stop looking at the news for a while. Don’t allow yourself near the world or local “news” until you’re refreshed. Look up. Literally, look up at the sky more often.
Make lists of what and who you love that is still here and be with as many of those people, places, and things as you can. Make plans for being with those you can’t connect with from where you are at a future time.
Listen to music you love. See movies you love. Read books you love. Just love for a while. When you get your strength back, you can wade gently into the pool of world affairs. They won’t go away while you take your break.
If you’ve got your love and your strength, Rabbit, you won’t be watching the downhill run, you’ll be raising the ground that you’re on.
Assume that you are needed and wanted whether you feel like it or not, and that you have just temporarily forgotten your good memories.
My “Despressions” with a big “D” that turned out to be iron deficiencies, included not being able to remember a single good thing I had ever done. I’ve done a whole slew of good things that I began to remember after one week of iron and vitamin c supplements. Get a check-up. You might need some iron or a series of b-shots. You sound physically drained—-like you’ve lost your hop. Rest too.
Through one window, the world looks like a century of yellow shit storms.
But there are millions of little windows all over the world where humans are being kind, and not wanting, and enjoying each others’ company at no ones expense. You’ve been there.
I have had the same feelings. I contemplated that on my vacation last summer. As long as I can be helpful at all, I feel it’s my duty to be here. I can’t tell you what your standards should be of course, but I’d sure hate to see a perfectly good martian rabbit call it a day.
I’m still at wileywitch@hotmail.com.
Posted by wileywitch on Jun 7, 2006 at 5:21 AM Thanks for trying Wiley.
Even rabbits have bad days. The world is wrong but the rabbit is wronger. Wrong for himself like it is wrong for itself. Maybe it will go away, but I never felt so dark to be truthful.. It is just a personal thing though. Maybe I’m about to self destruct or something. Bunny goes Bang!.
Posted by Rabbit on Jun 7, 2006 at 6:51 AM NO! NO! NO! How could you be more wrong than the world? Did you cook and eat your family? Did you eat them raw?
“A bad day” and talking about self-destruction is discombombulated. Decide which one, and then act accordingly. For “bad days” I like drop-kicking things. For feeling like one is about to self-destruct (first define “self-destruct”) act accordingly and get help.
Posted by wileywitch on Jun 7, 2006 at 4:44 PM -
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