Depleted Uranium Death Spirals: the Impact of the Institutional Perfidy of Profit on the Honorable Soldier's Consciousness PART

TWO--Sorting the Sources for Comprehending and Expressing the Historical Dynamics of DU TECHNICAL OVERVIEW: Uranium makes up about three parts per million of the earth's surface; it is one of only a handful of common, naturally radioactive elements, the sole member of the periodic chart that emits radiation in all of its isotopes. It is the heaviest naturally occurring element and as such has ideal elemental qualities for applications that require density and mass. It has a long half-life in all of its isotopic forms, so it's radioactive energy level is low. This means that it only emits alpha particles, though its fission products include higher energy offshoots that result from the original Uranium. Outside the body, it only poses much risk when its ore is incorporated into building material or other enclosing surfaces, since this results in the radon gas that is a very dangerous cause of lung cancer. Inside the body, however, it has the potential to cause both radiological and toxicological harm. Alpha particles, while their penetrating power is small, can cause massive cellular damage that includes mutagenic, teratogenic, carcinogenic, and immunological consequences. Chemically, it has toxicity equal to or greater than lead, with pathological impact that includes likely death after the inhalation of relatively small masses of a gram or less--less than the letter 'o' here by a substantial spherical volume, or the ingestion of slightly greater masses of up to several grams. Depending on its form upon entry into the body, it can pass through the alimentary canal quickly or eliminate in urine or sweat, or concentrate for relatively brief periods, or for longer terms; depending on the route of entry it will concentrate in the lungs, kidneys, testicles, brain, nervous system, and bones. It binds to DNA, according to recent experimental evidence. For purposes of being effective as a weapon, on many occasions it is self-igniting, for example, whenever it comes into contact with iron with sufficient impact or friction. As a projectile, it 'self-sharpens' and sears its way through armor plate, causing high temperature combustion that can, as it burns, further aeorosolize metallic particles that are of a size which people can inhale. Opening Salvos Today's extensive narrative concerns the intersection of evidence, knowledge, and democratic action, about which the erstwhile 'founding father' James Madison famously quipped(http://www.foundersquotes.com/James_Madison/a-popular-government-withoutpopular-information-or-the-means-of-acquiring-it/), "A popular Government,

without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will

forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."
Media scholar Edward Hermann, speaking about all such issues as those posed by Depleted Uranium, summarized the present pass of duplicity and deception(http://www.zcommunications.org/neither-popular-government-nor-popularinformation-by-edward-herman). "In this way 'popular information' can be

kept at a minimum, the publics electoral choices will exclude a populist who might actually represent their interests and carry out major policy initiatives on their behalf, and the farce and tragedy can continue under the auspices of either party."
This nine part set of materials began with a nod to the underlying import of inquiry in any attempt to tell a story. Another way of phrasing the interrogatory that forms the hub of this tale is this. "Why would governments that purport to advance democracy and human rights flagrantly engage in mass murder and war crimes, and then insist on continuing such activities even when confronted about them?" The previous installment gave an overview of why such apparent anomalies might keep on keeping on. Today, this humble correspondent assures his readers that he is well aware of the pitfall of assuming the premise. He has not shown that DU is deadly. Nor has he demonstrated governments' administrative or political knowledge about such lethality. This section is quite lengthy because it addresses concerns such as these, not only for a clearer vision about Dr. Rokke's work, when the time comes to parse that in some detail, but also for the upcoming profiles of Joyce Riley, Dennis Kyne, and Leuren Moret, slated for their own many-sided presentations down the road a ways. Though depictions of cute kittens are literally thousands-times more popular, depictions of DU's impacts have begun to percolate through the popular consciousness.EMBEDDED VIDEO http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7TAKday7NY THC will be amplifying such expressions of cognizance about the arguably ecocidal industrial development of which DU's employment as a weapon is a direct descendant. Specifically, this second of nine pieces provides plentiful data--directly and by way of reference to past work, that demonstrates that DU is in fact a nightmarish substance that should never be widely dispersed, on purpose, among large numbers of people in a form that those people might easily ingest, inhale, or otherwise take into their bodies. Since America's economic, political, and technical elites, and those of other actors exploiting the proclivities of Uranium, were uniformly aware of such facts, their actions indeed arguably merit the label 'mass-murder,' if not out-and-out genocide. Such assertions suggest a massive blockbuster of a tale. If someone with such obvious handicaps as THC--a lack of resources, no particular popular base, and an uninspiring technical background, can illuminate such a scenario, then others ought also to have done so in a thorough and persuasive fashion. In piecemeal ways, this is the case too, for which THC feels profound gratitude to Doug Rokke, the hero of the present pass, and the aforementioned Leuren Moret, Joyce Riley, and Dennis Kyne, among voluminous others. As noted, this humble correspondent mentions four folks by name because their work forms much of the basis of this four-part

series about DU that has begun here. That each unit of this aggregated quartet requires five or more parts of its own points to how complicated and multilayered this subject matter is. And that brings THC to the upshot of what he is attempting to lay the groundwork for. As yet, thorough, accurate, historically grounded overviews of DU have been hard to come by. In truth, upon completion, this will be one of at most a handful of such presentations that are extant. Many useful narratives about governmental DU crimes have come to light, but at most one or two others bring to market an overarching explanation that accounts for all of the facts at hand from the inception of Uranium fission until the ever unfolding present. Truly, such a massive enterprise may be unnecessary; however, since THC believes that knowing as precisely as possible the way that the past has yielded the present, and then taking a position that explains that process, is an essential aspect of useful knowledge--which is to say knowledge that underlies political potency, he is moving this project forward in just this fashion. Thus, he began with a conceptual overview. And today, he advances a combination of literature-review and summary-of-sources, examined according to evidentiary origin in nine classes. Though already longer than many readers will tolerate, further efforts will be necessary even to describe some sorts of materials that do not 'make the cut' here. Moreover, only a tiny sliver of the worthwhile or erstwhile authoritative material in existence actually appears in this second section. The third, fourth, and fifth chapters, which follow after today's work is complete, will then expand this knowledge base into a chronological-conceptual explication. From the perspective of this humble correspondent, for people-power to have a prayer, dialogs about connecting-the-dots like this need to become standard fare. That few have told this story in anything like a full fashion has two components, probably. One would be that those writers with the resources and consciousness to accomplish the task--Harvey Wasserman, whose KIlling Our Own provides pieces of this vicious valedictory(http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CCIQFjAC&url=http %3A%2F%2Fwww.nucleardemolition.com%2FKilling_Our_Own.pdf&ei=MJDwTLy1I4X7lwfP9 9jmDA&usg=AFQjCNG9Tc9-ZKRwN-i-e3iwJnjUa8g-uw&sig2=y59D5L5TDdZ3oq4Z6SKtqQ) for monopoly capital, certainly comes to mind--have had plenty to do otherwise. The few thinkers who have at least come close to such scrupulousness--Dan Fahey, Rosalie Bertell, and Bill Mesler are wordsmiths whom one could name, and to them one would want to add the documentary collaborative around Joyce Riley--have done so at the same time that government and other official sorts have ignored their efforts. In fact, these 'established' mediators of reality have frequently decried these heroes. Thus, one might infer that the primary rationale, for not telling the tale of DU in a way that Richard Rhodes did for nuclear weapons--lionizing the death-march of the Manhattan Project(http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/arsenals-of-follyby-richard-rhodes-10943), is that SOP sources decidedly neither wanted this story articulated nor did they fear that it would turn so ugly as to require any thorough explanation. Clearly, given the horror of DU's apparent death-grip on millions of cousins(INTERLINK, DU#3), the second hope has become fantastical. Moreover, though he feels like some combination of Sisyphus, rolling his alwaysnecessary-to-push-again rock, and David, readying himself for a bout with some exponential increase of Goliath's intimidating opposition, this humble correspondent

intends to help make the longing to keep things hush-hush a moot point. In this vein, though, again, the lack of any establishment overview, of even an attempt at a thorough propagation of ruling class propaganda about the problem, is noteworthy. THC starts by suggesting that this issue--the conscious, deadly, opportunistic commoditization of DU that the U.S. government has initiated, lies at the very core of contemporary capital. Innovative genius, organizational legerdemain, engineering discipline, the capacity to project power, and a black hole for extra cash come together more fully in matters atomic than in any other sector of sociopolitical, political economic eventuality. THC has, again(INTERLINK, TVA#2) and again(INTERLINK, DU#2), provided elements of a background understanding of these questions, whether in regard to the massmurder that apologists still try to justify at Hiroshima and Nagasaki(INTERLINK), or in any of the already referenced materials on DU itself that he has published. As thoroughly as is possible under the circumstances, today's compilation further develops a broad familiarity with the bedrock data and sources that will then allow for a deeper conceptual and more comprehensive historical analysis to take place in upcoming installments. 'As thoroughly as possible,' however, will be light years from complete. To formulate something closely approximating a truly comprehensive account would require some support for THC, which, alas, has not only not been forthcoming but also, quite the contrary, has seen instead a general resistance or rejection as the median responses to efforts undertaken and produced, despite their accuracy, utility, and potential necessity. Sources That Sustain an Acute Comprehension of Depleted Uranium GROUP #1-Not that resistance and rejection have been a lonely fate, quite the opposite: in fact, as an opening to today's unfolding, THC will share examples(http://www.u-rnext.com/DUdeaths.html) of self-taught experts who are much closer to a full explication of an honest accounting of DU than are any number of either mind-numbing reports from various bureaucratic entities or condescending output of more 'scientific' and 'objective' investigators. Of course, Dr Rokke himself, whose story unfolds in upcoming sections of this initial overall installment, is one of the former advocates, a staunchly brilliant whistleblower. Uniformly, such as he have encountered vicious rejection and intractable resistance, just as has THC. Another grassroots expert group in this dogfight, florid and in violation of almost every graphical-user-interface rule in existence in its passionate depiction and exclammatory prose in defense of honesty, has arisen among Gulf War Vets themselves. While these trained fighters, infuriated and heartsick at the notion that they are 'throwaway troops,' acknowledge that they cannot dispositvely prove(http://www.gulfwarvets.com/du.htm) that Uranium has caused every single illness, death, birth defect, and so on that has afflicted soldiers from the Uranium Army, they make an overwhelming case that DU plays some part, and likely a critical role, in their medical difficulties. No systematic historical overview is available in their outpourings, however, despite the presence of helpful snippets from the past . Nor does the material attempt to proffer an analytical political-economic explanation for DU's grotesque waste of manpower, alienation of good will, etc. On the other hand, this and other sites display a courage and passion and attention to detail that make them invaluable to anyone who is on a truth seeking mission. The many other such local authorities willing to 'speak truth to power' include some

of the persistent advocates that this humble correspondent has frequently mentioned, such as Joyce Riley and this first unit's hero, Doug Rokke. For today's purposes, a final community-based organization, among scores of others, that has brought insight and analysis( http://www.apfn.org/apfn/weapons.htm) to these questions is the American Patriot Friends Network, the closest U.S. exemplar of a DU Peoples Information Network that THC has thus far encountered. The lode of information, about DU and more, that is accessible through APFN's website includes an incisive investigation by David Rose, a frequent contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Entitled "Weapons of Self-Destruction," it manages a devastating critique(http://www.apfn.org/apfn/weapons.htm) of governmental and corporate dissimulation about these issues. Rose employs once a technique that THC attempts to apply more generally in 'chapter four' of this inaugural sequence of articles. to reconstruct a historical picture by looking at different Uranium production facilities over time. Rose shows in his processing of this trick an outright lie of the U.S. authorities, that Uranium granules cannot travel far from the point where they vaporized. "Weapons of Self-Destruction" states the Department of Defense(DOD) case briefly. Chief information liaison Kilpatrick listened patiently enough to complaints. "But, he says, 'science doesn't in 2004 show that D.U. causes any cancer.'" Leaving aside that, long before 2004, this would have been a bald-faced whopper, readers ought to pay close attention to Rose's reasoning, an 'at-the-absolute-minimum' expression of the apt rejection of any usage of DU weapons. Science in '04, according to Rose, "does, however, show that (DU)

may(cause cancer and other harms). Pentagon-sponsored studies at the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute, in Bethesda, Maryland, have found that, when D.U. was embedded in animals, several genes associated with human tumors underwent 'aberrant activation,' and oncoproteins of the type found in cancer patients turned up in their blood. The animals' urine was 'mutagenic,' meaning that it could cause cells to mutate. Another institute project found that D.U. could damage the immune system by hastening the death of white blood cells and impairing their ability to attack bacteria."
DULLRAM used to be the acronym for Depleted Uranium. It stood for Depleted Uranium Low Level Radioactive Material(http://www.free-conversant.com/realtruth/2188). Dennis Kyne, who will be the third grassroots hero that this overall series profiles, stated that this was "an eloquent removal" of radioactivity from people's ideation about DU. But Doug Rokke, Dennis, Joyce Riley, Lauren Meuret and thousands of other self-taught savants of this draconian death march that the proponents of the Nuclear Fool Cycle are selling can guide those who are ready, willing, and able to follow along. Health physics and the healing arts got these folks involved. As self-taught experts, they have learned their lessons in order to survive. The rest of humankind, established 'experts' especially, would do well to pay attention. GROUP #2-Scientists have networked together(http://www.aliraqi.org/forums/archive/index.php/t-44141.html) to grasp this growing

health crisis--developments so dire that some conclude it is capable of challenging human viability. Those technically inclined individuals who remain supportive of the NFS, whether out of naivete, duplicity, self-interest, or because they consider the likes of THC to be so full of crap that his eyeballs leak, need not concern the reader here. They show up as experts, or, in THC's estimation, flacks, for the governing bodies whose texts appear below. However, experts passionate in their opposition to DU's continued utilization have been doing amazing work, some of them, like Dr. Rokke, as much self-taught as academically schooled in scientific fields. Many trained natural philosophers and grassroots experts show up in this section. They cannot replace the stakeholder groups that are on the front lines of this struggle in their own defense, nor would they suggest that they should take the place of citizen advocacy. Nonetheless, a wide variety of what THC would term people's science projects of one sort or another also proffer copious data and analysis for the diligent seeker in this area of concern. Perhaps chief among these, at least in terms of volume and organizational capacity, is the (http://www.wise-uranium.org/index.html) World Information Service on Energy(WISE) Uranium project, which includes vast quantities of material about DU, meticulously catalogued according to source and information content. WISE provides(http://www.wise-uranium.org/calc.html) various means for calculating aspects of Uranium dosages, impacts, and likely consequences of adopting one or another of the Nuclear Fool Cycle's particular possibilities. As well, it gives a substantial summary of the worldwide production process(http://www.wiseuranium.org/dfac.html#AMMFAB) regarding 'downstream' Uranium in the NFS. The visitor even garners a glimpse of comprehensive sources about battlefield use and impacts of DU(http://www.wise-uranium.org/dlit.html). WISE prides itself on being thorough and scientifically cautious. However, the notion that a thorough understanding is even plausible about such a clearly politicaleconomic and world-historical nexus of people, science, government, business, and more, without a political perspective--not to mention leaving aside a chronological framework--just strikes this humble correspondent as weird. Such would certainly be easier for the likes of WISE than for a struggling loner such as THC. Another such interlocutor, polished in his expertise and prominently on display both through WISE and similarly 'dispassionate' peoples' representatives, is Dan Fahey. His essay(http://www.wise-uranium.org/pdf/duunris.pdf), "Unresolved

Issues Regarding Depleted Uranium And the Health of U.S. Veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom," is prototypical in regard to this conceptual and contextual
deficiency, despite Fahey's occasional penetrating capacity to provide such important analytical components. Furthermore, to point out that Fahey is as often as not tame, asking "Is DoD identifying specific units for targeted DU testing?" even meek--"When will DoD provide an accounting of the quantities and locations of DU?" is merely stating the obvious. In "Lessons of the 1991 Gulf War" for DU meanwhile, at the same time that he provides some awesome historical ammunition, as it were, for indicting DOD and amping up the propaganda and public education campaign to force change on the agency, what he 'learns' is that 'you can't fight city hall,'

conceding(http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=7&ved=0CEcQFjAG&url=http %3A%2F%2Fecojustice.net%2F2006-ENVRE120%2FPDF%2F19990501-Depleted-UraniumGulfWar.pdf&ei=pT79TP3OEIaBlAeUwriaBQ&usg=AFQjCNGYton34VJf4IFQnWpUqBRnuoOOcQ &sig2=HZ2Xtu1riLcCU0E9u9H6XQ) without much sense of hope that THC can discern, "Armed forces are unlikely to be protected from exposure to depleted uranium contamination." An apparent goal of such efforts as WISE and Fahey promulgate is to convince agencies of the government, such as DOD--that Fahey's own evidence, in particular, depicts as wantonly and willfully murderous--to 'play nice,' merely on the basis of well-orchestrated policy arguments. To call this timid, not to mention naive, strikes THC as generous. Moreover, Fahey, in the estimation of this humble correspondent, in his "Science or Science Fiction?" vastly overstates his disbelief in some of the more 'passionate' proponents of veterans' and civilians' DU claims. He states outright, for instance, that the causal links are lacking, even non-existent, between GWS morbidity and mortality and DU exposure(http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=6&ved=0CEAQFjAF&url=http% 3A%2F%2Fwww.greatchange.org%2Fov-current_events-caldicott%2Cfaheymyths_and_facts.pdf&ei=cuzxTOy6JsP_lgfmgqzCDA&usg=AFQjCNFNq1eCktTMhHbgX1EJg OzVYkeoiQ&sig2=7Cxi1cH0UYfSktRvGFuB2Q). That no less redoubtable a proponent of both science and social justice than Dr. Chris Busby takes Fahey sternly, and yet collegially, to task(http://www.llrc.org/du/subtopic/fahey.htm) certainly delights THC, at the same time that THC bows in honor of the maginificence of other examples of Fahey's output(http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBMQFjAA&url=http%3A %2F%2Fdoc.danfahey.com%2FLegal.pdf&ei=PL71TJfYH4GglAepr6DLBQ&usg=AFQjCNHJfa Avn89mRYVeyOJ692DQmOhQNA&sig2=DFBb4nhhPDpnneVk0WQEsA). Dr. Busby's Low-Level Radiation Campaign(http://www.llrc.org/du/subtopic/dupage2.htm) represents an altogether more assertive sort of informative nexus that emanates from tangibly progressive scholars who insist on action and aggressive confrontation of the powers-that-be. From the perspective of this humble correspondent, such moves appear politically essential, not to mention apropos. To address these matters otherwise accepts on faith the good will and honesty of government and corporate entities that have over and over revealed their thuggish venality and opportunistically self-dealing bona fides. Despite the enthusiasm with which THC greets these interlocutors, however, for one reason or another--perhaps they do not see the importance in the same light as THC, or they have 'other fish to fry,' as it were, these incisive and capable scientific analysts have only presented historical matters in a hit-and-miss fashion, always without any sort of explanatory rationale. However, THC repeats that such organizations' achievements are absolutely essential for any comprehension overview of the sort that THC is attempting in this essay. THC has extolled the brilliance and depth of analytical acuity of Vladimir Zajic(http://www.ratical.org/radiation/vzajic/) before(INTERLINK, DU#1), and does so again. No clearer assessment of the chemistry and physics in play is available, and the politics of someone who believes in environmental justice is the frosting on a dandy intellectual confection. Inevitably, vast numbers of formidable proponents of justice and honesty will not show up in even the most extensive bibliographical record. However, Democratic

Underground's work(http://www.democraticunderground.com/searchresults.html?q=%22depleted+uranium %22&sitesearch=democraticunderground.com&sa=Search&domains=democraticundergrou nd.com&client=pub-7805397860504090&forid=1&ie=ISO-8859-1&oe=ISO-88591&cof=GALT%3A%23008000%3BGL%3A1%3BDIV%3A%23336699%3BVLC%3A663399%3BA H%3Acenter%3BBGC%3AFFFFFF%3BLBGC%3A336699%3BALC%3A0000FF%3BLC%3A000 0FF%3BT%3A000000%3BGFNT%3A0000FF%3BGIMP%3A0000FF%3BFORID%3A11&hl=en) on this subject is so extensive, garnering the better part of 3,000 documents, that any seeker would want to include a perusal of the materials available here on his or her itinerary. Science, litigation, journalism, planned action, and much more show up in rich and understandable groupings of data. Without needing to note that Leuren Moret(http://www.llrc.org/du/subtopic/moret.htm) and Doug Rokke(http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/our-planet-our-selves/594) also belong in this club(they both will have a star turn in these pages, Lord willing and the creek don't rise)their frequent comrade in conceptual combat--and yet another insider betrayed, is Dr. Asaf Durakovic. Now working for the Uranium Medical Research Center(http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CCMQFjAC&url=http%3A %2F%2Fwww.uraniumweaponsconference.de%2Fspeakers%2Fdurakovic_bio_en.pdf&ei=C PbxTJeWJMGblgegiJGYDA&usg=AFQjCNH_KcXVgaO38gEekZJXJEW0nu_ARA&sig2=UhFe EKdUfE7YatOHv1reKQ) in Canada, he was once a Colonel in the U.S. Army, sacked in similar fashion as Dr. Rokke, for insisting on sound science and probing efforts to find evidence. His status as a 'whistleblower' compounds the compelling resonance of his testimony. Another Canadian, and, bless her ancient sweet heart, a nun, Dr. Rosalie Bertell has spoken with fierce, unvarnished fervor about the hideous and insidious deadly duplicity of low level radiation for decades(http://iicph.org/our-mission). Moreover, she has brought both the empirical capacity to generate evidence and statistical argument about radioactive impacts on humans, and the conceptual creativity to explain precisely why the high-energy, whole-body measurements of 'the establishment' about such impacts were not just suspect but wrong. Since the mid-'90's Bertell's International Institute of Concern for Public Health has maintained an unswerving condemnation of the rotten political economy and moral bankruptcy(http://iicph.org/DU_Human_Rights_Tribunal) of Depleted Uranium, all the while maintaining the highest scientific standards and often being the first with the capability of pointing out the errors of the obfuscating opposition. She even remains nice while doing so, all the while proffering the closest to a thoroughgoing historical context that is presently available in the literature(http://iicph.org/du_update_1_3). In her Human Rights Tribunal offerings, Bertell patiently makes plain the science of DU's lethality. "Because the radiation dose to the person depends on the strength of the source of radiation, and the time duration of the exposure, this ceramic aerosol formation(of DU 'glassified' by its high temperature impact) is important. Ceramic (glass) is highly insoluble in the normal lung fluid, and when inhaled, this ceramic particulate will remain for a long time in the lungs and body tissue before being excreted in urine. The Rand report, which was commissioned by the US government in response to criticisms of the use of DU in weapons, failed to note this nasty form of insoluble DU which distinguishes it from the uranium dust in the mining or milling experience."

Before finishing up here, THC has to note that a ton of awesome work is emanating from England--scientific, community-based, filled with astute political-economic assessments, action-oriented. A recent summary from the International Coalition to Ban Depleted Uranium Weapons(ICBDW) offers several important updates(http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/en/a/225.html) on the science of DU, while putting this new knowledge in the political context of suppression and willful ignorance on the part of U.S. and British authorities. Truly international in scope, ICBDW originates in the efforts of activists and scientists of the United Kingdom. Dr. Christopher Busby's long standing and dogged commitment to a peoples' science orientation toward matters nuclear has shown up before(INTERLINK, DU##) in THC's reports. He was the principal investigator in the recently released epidemiological study(http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=7&ved=0CEIQFjAG&url=http%3A% 2F%2Fwww.mdpi.com%2F16604601%2F7%2F7%2F2828%2Fpdf&ei=NfT2TKv8IcTflgfVjZnCBQ&usg=AFQjCNGxzM9RKOQT XMyh_aM1PnxNGxTA4g&sig2=TSxjrcO4iiQbiivMgirXUg) that found indisputable evidence of correlation between DU exposure and horrific health consequences in Fallujah, Iraq, and suggestive indicia of causation. He has also played a critical role in the development of multiple groups that propound science-for-the people, including three organizational expressions of popular desire for healthier and more democratic science and technology policy, especially in relation to radiation and toxins. The Low Level Radiation Campaign(http://wikibin.org/articles/the-low-level-radiation-campaign.html)augurs a future in which hidden agendas and dismissive derision, by experts about possible impacts of low level radiation, are simply no longer possible. In addition, he is a founding member of Green Audit(http://www.greenaudit.org/), which among its many positive services helps to orients citizens to the critical thinking of which people are capable and the impact that this can have on democratizing governance. As well, he is the chief science advisor to the European Committee on Radiation Risk(http://www.euradcom.org/), which has found more and more institutional and governmental support in Europe for a more cautious, less secret, and more public development of science and policy regarding the risks of radioactive military and industrial substances and processes. All of Dr. Busby's work also assists those whom DU has damaged or killed. Finally, for the moment, one who wanted a from-the-ranks scientific point of view would consult Global Research, yet another instance when the most potent labors--at times the only non-stakeholder efforts--seem primarily to result across the U.S. borders and hence away from direct imperial sway. From there, Felicity Arbuthnot can speak of Dr. Durakovic's efforts to bring succor to suffering troops. U.S. citizens might listen up to 'what's happenin' here.' "Durakovic, who is also medical consultant for the Children of Chernobyl project at Hadassah University, Jerusalem, lost his job as Chief of Nuclear Medicine at the Veteran's Administration Medical Facility at Wilmington, Delaware, as a direct result of his work with Gulf war veterans contaminated with radiation, he states. Two other physicians, Dr. Burroughs and Dr. Slingerland of Boston VA, also lost their jobs when they asked for more sensitive equipment to better diagnose the soldiers referred to them by Professor Durakovic. Oddly, all the records pertaining to the sick soldiers at the Delaware VA went missing, a syndrome of another kind which has become familiar, both

sides of the Atlantic." A much larger cohort of popular outcries against Depleted Uranium is available, often in languages other than English. That they are not here does not diminish their import, nor does it do credit to THC's attempt at clarity that they are missing. In future follow-ups, this humble correspondent fully anticipates expanding this defining of the materials and organizations that exist, thereby further enriching common understanding. GROUP #3-Needless to say, of course, much more lavishly funded and extremely prolific outpourings of mild-mannered gibberish(http://www.vba.va.gov/REPORTS/gwvis/2008/Aug_2008.pdf), both brief and verbose non-sequiturs(http://www.lm.doe.gov/land/sites/oh/fernald_orig/50th/fppp.htm), deliberate misrepresentations(http://www.va.gov/Final20GWVI-TFReport.pdf), elaborate protestations of uncertainty(http://www.publichealth.va.gov/PUBLICHEALTH/exposures/gulfwar/reports/insti tuteofmedicine.asp), and very occasional gems of clarity and meaning(http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/07/military_concurrent_receipt_071508/) gush forth from the Department(http://www.energy.gov/) of Energy(DOE), the Environmental Protection(http://www.epa.gov/) Agency(EPA), the Agency for Toxic Substances(http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/) and Disease Registry(ATSDR), the DOD(http://fhp.osd.mil/du/), and a dozen or more other textual-nodes within the U.S. Government(USG). To start, THC will look at one of the gems, in that it is intelligent and intelligible, it does not dismiss or deride what is plausible, it insists on responsibility when data is not available, and it utterly rejects the notion that Gulf War Syndrome is opportunistic or psychosomatic on the part of the soldiers who are suffering its afflictions. Gulf War Illness and the Health of Gulf War Veterans is an independent assessment contracted by the Veterans Administration. Its scope is close to comprehensive; its conclusions, though they differ from those of this humble correspondent and many activists, are always conservative, reasonable, and open to new input and data. After providing an even-handed and open-minded assessment of the scientific understanding of DU exposure, a unique attribute among government resources, the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses acknowledges that reasonable basis does exist to ascribe aspects of GWS to DU exposure. Its collective inclination is to look elsewhere for primary etiological sources of the various symptoms that collectively describe GWS, but it firmly avers that DU could be a contributing, or even a primary, factor. At the very least, one would imagine that DOD, DOE, and so on would pay close attention to these recommendations: "To address priority questions concerning health effects related to DU exposures in the
Gulf War, the Committee recommends the following research: Conduct an epidemiologic investigation to evaluate health outcomes in Gulf War veterans who had the greatest exposure to DU during deployment and an unexposed comparison group. The exposed cohort should include Gulf War veterans exposed to DU via inhalation, ingestion, dermal contact, or embedded fragments as a result of friendly fire incidents, veterans who served in units tasked with processing Iraqi or Coalition vehicles struck by DU munitions, and in relation to the Camp Doha fire and subsequent cleanup activities. Evaluated health outcomes should include detailed information on symptoms, Gulf War illness, functional status, diagnosed medical conditions, and reproductiveoutcomes.

In current and future studies of Gulf War veterans, assess possible DU exposure by querying veterans in detail about experiences most likely to have resulted in DU exposures, including veterans involvement in friendly fire incidents and the extent of their exposure to vehicles destroyed by U.S. munitions. Continue monitoring cancer rates and mortality in Gulf War veterans, including assessment of cancer and mortality rates among subsets of veterans identified as being exposed to DU and veterans who served in areas where the highest concentrations of DU munitions were fired."

However, the agencies of the government, including the VA that commissioned the study, are indisputably not listening, let alone gearing up to operationalize these mandates delivered two years ago. On the contrary, continued dissimulation, misrepresentation, and even outright criminal conspiracy in regard to DU and its use in weapons has remained the institutional mainstay of the powers-that-be. As recently as a month ago, the Advisory Committee affirmed(http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBcQFjAA&url=http%3 A%2F%2Fwww1.va.gov%2FRACGWVI%2Fdocs%2FCommittee_Documents%2FRACSurveyRecs_Final110210.pdf&ei=sGb5T P3VKYK8lQey1uzIBw&usg=AFQjCNFUs1X1tVF_VcazpB09FAzruuHtXQ&sig2=OFLxMKjnUJb _Zz7_wanZrw) THC's assertions here. "Unfortunately, as currently designed, the proposed (new
VA) survey fails to collect data on the most pressing health issues related to Gulf War service, while collecting excessive information on more peripheral concerns." These failings, systematic and

ubiquitous, suggest a bureaucracy that is performing with willful viciousness, if not outright conspiratorial criminality. That THC is not being harsh in his judgments, overly strident, and so on in asserting either outright lies or inane cluelessness on the part of the overwhelming majority of government texts ought to be clear to anyone who examines the literature. In any event, here's an example, from a purportedly authoritative VA report's conclusions(http://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/depleted_uranium/index.asp#health ) in 2008. "So far no health problems associated with DU exposure have been found in Veterans exposed to DU. Researchers and clinicians continue to monitor the health of these Veterans. Go to the Department of Defense's Depleted Uranium (DU) Library* to learn about results of medical and scientific research and other DU topics." The first sentence above is either clinically insane or pathologically prevaricating. The second sentence is a combination of obfuscation and something substantially less than half-truth. The third sentence is a clear instruction to venture down a rabbit hole filled with very little that is either scientific or helpful to distressed combatants. Further particulars of VA and DOD publications appear in Major Rokke's forthcoming chapters. This humble correspondent has connected readers with examples of what he is propounding. In continuing this portion of today's second-part-of-nine, THC is putting on display a fascinating document from the ATSDR, the agency that, as readers shall see, has generated such invective from citizens associated with Vieques, Puerto Rico struggles. The Toxicological Profile for Uranium(http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp.asp?id=440&tid=77) has hundreds of pages of frightful facts to peruse. Insodoing, it fulfills a basic charge. "The ATSDR toxicological profile is intended to
characterize succinctly the toxicological and adverse health effects information for the hazardous substance being described."

In its Public Health overview, the narrative indicates that those who work with or

encounter Uranium from ordnance risk likely exposure to or intake of Uranium, declaiming that they can wear protective clothing or take other prophylactic steps to limit bioabsorption. At least no obvious attempt occurs to finesse the fact of Uranium's growing ubiquity. The manual notes, "Uranium dust may consist of small, fine particles and coarse, big particles. The big particles are caught in the nose, sinuses, and upper part of your lungs where they are blown out or pushed to the throat and swallowed. The small particles are inhaled down to the lower part of your lungs. If they do not dissolve easily, they stay there for years and cause most of the radiation dose to the lungs from uranium. They may gradually dissolve and go into your blood. If the particles do dissolve easily, they go into your blood more quickly. A small part of the uranium you swallow will also go into your blood. The blood carries uranium throughout your body. Most of it leaves in your urine in a few days, but a little stays in your kidneys and bones." This summary, while mostly correct, needs to be the basis for consistent and ongoing discussion and training, something that those organizations and institutions charged with protecting public, workers, and soldiers have decidedly not developed among at-risk populations. A dialogic model is the only way to deal honorably with such complex realities as Uranium manifests. Speaking of honor, then ATSDR advances this statement as sound science. "No human cancer of any type has ever been seen as a result of exposure to natural or depleted uranium." One way to respond to this point is that it is a stupid and vicious lie. Another response, more generous, is that it is part of a criminal propaganda campaign to undermine evidence counter to the NFS program and to work assiduously to disallow or subvert research that demonstrates the prevarication in this statement. Yet another reply is that "none are so blind as those who refuse to see." For one among thousands of thorough refutations of the ATSDR idiocy, one might examine the work of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility(http://www.ccnr.org/uranium_deadliest.html#evidence). A couple of medical sources that belie USG fabrications are from Chest(http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=8&ved=0CFkQFjAH&url=http%3A %2F%2Fchestjournal.chestpubs.org%2Fcontent%2F81%2F4%2F449.full.pdf&ei=OeXzTOOo HYP-8AbN2OyPDA&usg=AFQjCNGLoWnMomBdxoSohaaPsN9RVo8XQ&sig2=p99OPWd82iTMa7dAa01FHw), the official journal of the College of Chest Physicians, and the New England Journal of Medicine(http://journals.lww.com/joem/citation/1966/07000/radiation_as_the_cause_of_lung _cancer_among.33.aspx). As a matter of oncology, epidemiology, or general cell biology, ATSDR's POV is indefensible. It proceeds to assert that "(w)e do not know if exposure to uranium causes reproductive effects in people." As folks here in Georgia are wont to say, when they do a 'double take,' "Do what?!" Both the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation(http://books.google.com/books?id=HUxp1Etwi4oC&pg=PA333&lpg=PA333&dq=% 22Radiation+as+the+Cause+of+Lung+Cancer+among+Uranium+Miners%22&source=bl&ots =pmMyjdyeoR&sig=MzvelDhLWFoyWpyoTjUeKAW8UYs&hl=en&ei=9OjzTMT2B8L48AaRsa WlDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CEUQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=%2 2Radiation%20as%20the%20Cause%20of%20Lung%20Cancer%20among%20Uranium%20M

iners%22&f=false) volume, The Effects of Ionizing Radiation, and the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation(http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=19&ved=0CFMQFjAIOAo&url= http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ehs.washington.edu%2Frsotrain%2Fradprotectionprinciples%2Fbiolo gical_effects.pdf&ei=pO7zTNCAHcH68Abj5MTPDA&usg=AFQjCNFkGHn_zw4beAaQPTPJfb hXLCAfFg&sig2=zyQuHsWltKnexpkeSL_zww) archive, or BEIR VII, strongly suggest that, taken most optimistically, ATSDR's proposition is negligently disingenuous. Even DOD's ubiquitously 'conservative' summations, such as in "A Review of the Scientific Literature As It Pertains to Gulf War Illnesses"(http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBMQFjAA&url=http %3A%2F%2Fwww.pdhealth.mil%2Fdownloads%2FEHEffects_DU.pdf&ei=lfTzTOPNKIyr8Abc n53DCg&usg=AFQjCNHKaFZVQkF3nBeLs_5p6dMkcGvL-w&sig2=1v-_Q6XkVFdILtxCqI4ZQ), admits that Uranium genotoxic impacts exist, despite very little study of their extent-and why is that?--and that structural and developmental impacts, based on animal studies, are plausible. In regard to the Toxicological Profile, it does go on to make very clear that, as the folks in Georgia might put it, "that stuff'll kill ya son, ya hear?" Death is one of the effects from either ingestion or inhalation of a relatively small quantity, or, what the ATSDR would refer to as a massive intake. One way of looking at Uranium, whether 'depleted' or 'natural,' is that--at best--it has about the same organic impact as lead, except that it's radioactive and more difficult to cleanse from one's system to boot. Narratives at once more interesting and less noxious do flow forth from the USG and its allies. TENORM stands for Technologically Enhanced Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials. The EPA has produced not one(http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBMQFjAA&url=http%3A% 2F%2Fwww.epa.gov%2Frpdweb00%2Fdocs%2Ftenorm%2F402-r-08-005-voli%2F402-r-08005-v1.pdf&ei=ukL0TIbuMIKs8AaxlZWPDA&usg=AFQjCNFR4ogSPgPAXpsC1MY0OwgzRXOrg&sig2=HFoztE7OIv_4CX7028FbFg), but two(http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBcQFjAA&url=http%3A%2 F%2Fnepis.epa.gov%2FExe%2FZyPURL.cgi%3FDockey%3DP1001IXB.txt&ei=8UL0TL6GDsP 68AagyZHDDA&usg=AFQjCNFa9abqJSPbGiydp_N3VqU2A-9PQ&sig2=H927siUlmOYXHdfvZvJgWw), large volumes about Uranium mines and the environmental issues posed by reclamation, waste, and the necessity of avoiding contact with or dissemination of Uranium and associated radioactive or otherwise toxic materials at such sites. The Environmental Protection Agency, aware of the intricacies of Uranium chemistry and possible pathways of dispersion, clearly articulates that Uranium and its 'daughters' in the decay process can cause well-known harms to citizens who imbibe them. EPA's own materials, from at least as far back as 1983, establish a clear inference of Uranium-cancer links, meaning that ATSDR's 1999 proclamation to the contrary appears even more absurd. In any event, such materials as these, which deal with real processes and not merely assertions that range between the obvious and the insane, also provide circumstantial clues about the timing of historical knowledge of certain sorts of problems. This is not to say that these documents incisively summarize actual risk; a recently begun community-based study(http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/national/southwest/UNMstudies-uranium-exposure-in-Navajo-mothers-and-infants-103304479.html) articulates a

vision in which ATSDR's presumptive conclusions will receive real scrutiny, and EPA's hundreds of pages of vacationer-hypotheses will be replaced with how Uranium has actually affected young Navajo women who live with Uranium's ugly reminders and toxic remainder. In that context, EPA's general optimism about mine-waste impacts might also need adjustment soon. Materials such as the TENORM volumes spend inordinate pages and chapters speaking about the obvious and then assert that, based on adding obscure opportunistic exposures together, the chances of harm are miniscule The EPA's much briefer, "DU Projectiles," is also prototypical in this regard. After positing itself and the DOE as the soldier's guardians, it ponders "What you can

do to protect yourself." Though this precis thankfully holds the expansive hypothesizing to a minimum, the non-sequitur and misrepresentation remain central, while an aura of a scientific, ho-hum shrug permeates the document. "Be Informed: Although DU poses little risk when outside the body, DU has about as
much toxicity as other heavy metals, like lead. Because DU can cause kidney damage if inhaled or ingested in large amounts, it should be avoided by humans and animals."

One maddening aspect of much contemporary literature that emanates from the government is the obvious deduction that soldiers who complain about DU exposure are likely nutcases. While Glen Davidson's research about this matter shows up as part of a Continuing Medical Education announcement, it appeared via both a government document and a PubMed search. "Returning Veterans and Depleted Uranium Exposure: An Update" was a paper and workshop that he led(http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBMQFjAA&url=http%3A%2 F%2Fwww.cmellc.com%2Fpsychcongress%2Fimages%2F08pdf%2F212%2520Davidson.pdf&ei=Glf0TOXOH4G88gaQk5S1DA&usg=AFQjCNFE-P_jdrcPqAdYnU5dWt7vLAAmg&sig2=Xw8yn669UncETLFDU6u0Hg) at a U.S. Psychiatric and Mental Health Congress in New Mexico His "Learning Objectives" do not even provide a minimal mask of the dismissive discounting of Veteran beliefs about DU exposure. Their purpose and prejudice are obvious: "By participating in this session, you will be
able to: Outline intervention strategies with patients who fear radiogenic exposure; Identify symptoms reported by patients who
believe they are the victims of radiogenic exposure; Examine models of intervention which appear to be effective in assisting patients who fear contamination."

Such a chilling insertion of arrogant derision, in the guise of 'caring,' gives this humble correspondent the shivers. This is a small smattering, at least reasonably representative, of literally millions and millions of pages that the USG has generated about Uranium, with additional tens of millions concerning the Nuclear Fool Cycle more generally, almost all insisting that no real problem outside the psychosomatic is present here. As a whole, this record is horrifying-in how it does not connect knowledge from different realms; in how it ignores evidence contrary to the institutional interests it represents; in how it refuses responsibility for lack of proof that it both covers up and makes certain not to seek; in how it never makes a political or historical analysis of what it purports to study. And except as a matter of happenstance, except anecdotally and accidentally, it only rarely provides chronological guidance and never proffers political analysis or economic assessment about why these situations end up being the standard operating procedure of capitalism, especially in the belly of the beast. The Department of Energy, and the Atomic

Energy Commission before it, has once in a while paid some greater degree of attention to the annals of radiation, as it were. Even the more complete materials, however, simply seem bizarre in their vapidity. For example, "The Eight Major Processes of Nuclear Weapons Production(http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBUQFjAA&url=http %3A%2F%2Fwww.em.doe.gov%2Fpdfs%2Fpubpdfs%2Flinklegacy_int_cont.pdf&ei=FFv0TL znCYHGlQfVuMiPDQ&usg=AFQjCNFee5Nfgtutyd0pHKrblfLgVE4KrQ&sig2=Tbu57H60QtQyd VgBtZ8OPw)," Appendix B to an extensive recent DOE series entitled "Linking Legacies," looks at the H-bomb complex that the Manhattan Project seeded. In language at once clinically precise about technological development or geography or other basic information, and absolutely devoid of concern for its rationale--to address the hideous 'legacy' of cancer for which Energy Employees are now demanding statutory redress after decades of highhanded dismissiveness--the thousand pages of this multi-volume set range in tone and content from eulogy to mild anecdotal banter. It provides data for such an investigator as THC, but its inane non-sequiturs and occasionally wild inaccuracy are almost beyond belief. Speaking of an important Uranium link in the NFS chain that now is too toxic to touch, DOE glows in its praise. "The Fernald
plant produced approximately 2.2 pounds of waste for each of the 400 million pounds of uranium metal it processed."

A pound of 'waste' for every ten thousand tons of Uranium: not bad. Also psychotic, or 'pathological,' if one continues to pay attention: "Solid hazardous and low-level
wastes were disposed on site in a series of six waste pits, the Burn Pit, and the 'Clearwell.' Two fly ash piles on site also received construction rubble and ash from electrostatic precipitators used to control uranium dust emissions."

So much technology to handle a one-to-two-hundred million waste-to-production ratio? DOE continues: "Waste Pit 3 is known to have leaked into the aquifer underlying the site.
Laboratory chemicals and low-level combustible materials were disposed of in the Burn Pit beginning in 1957. The Clearwell received surface runoff from the waste pit area and, until 1987, was used as a final settling basin before runoff was discharged to the Great Miami River. After 1987, the Clearwell received only decanted water from Waste Pit 5, some of which was pumped there from Waste Pit 6. Waste Pits 2, 4, and 6 have the highest levels of uranium-238 while Pits 3 and 5 contain higher levels of thoriam-230 and mercury. The Clearwell and Pit 5 contain the highest concentrations of radium-226. The pits also contain elevated levels of aluminum, calcium, iron, magnesium, and PCBs. The Burn Pit has been found to contain high levels of silver and lead. Uranium, thorium, organic chemicals, and PCBs have migrated from the waste pits into the surrounding environment. Fernald treated liquid effluents and discharged them to the Great Miami River and Paddys Run, a stream running along the plant boundary. Processing wastes from Plant 1--(the Sampling Plant, which also reconditioned steel drums used to store and transport uranium salts, oxides and residues) containing mixed wastes including uranium, thorium, barium salts, and waste oils contaminated with lead--were stored on a concrete pad in drums beginning in 1952. By July 1990, 45,000 drums had accumulated."

Even assuming that an entire steel drum was necessary for a gram of waste, which bursts credibility asunder, this would mean an accumulation of roughly two thousand pounds of waste, or, deductively, that Fernald created roughly 400 billion pounds of enriched Uranium metal. No doubt this is off by several orders of magnitude, and one could easily conclude, as well, that each steel drum contained more than a gram of noxious toxicity. All of this leaves aside the waterborne effluent flushed away and all of the poundage put to the torch. All in all, it illustrates the fantastical world that DOE thinkers inhabit, while never

once mentioning cancer, heart disease, or workers who suffered from Uranium or other poisons present at Fernald. This humble correspondent speaks exactly here. In the ninety pages of Appendix B, "cancer" bears no mention; nor does "mortality" or "death" merit notice; nor "worker health" nor even "health." A 'linking' of 'legacies,' in other words, seems to have missed some substantial components of what DOE and the USG are accountable for. Were THC a veteran reading these documents, he would experience a fastfission burning sensation of deja vu all over again. Not all governmental output was fatuous in its falsification, or facile in its finger-wagging prescription of caveat emptor, or blithely dismissive, however. In fact, as early as 1993, the Government Accounting Office issued a blanket condemnation of both DOD's preparation for problems and its willingness to follow the paltry procedural nexus that it had put into place. The report, "Army Not Adequately Prepared to Deal with DU Contamination," decidedly does not itself proffer an 'adequate' accounting; nevertheless, it unequivocally indicts(http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBMQFjAA&url=http%3A%2 F%2Farchive.gao.gov%2Fd36t11%2F148474.pdf&ei=IWb0TPuhOoHGlQeJO3pBQ&usg=AFQjCNGVNt1A9_iNYvwx8s4iFvB5i9b1Bw&sig2=hRPNBZ7nB50ajVm5YiatFw) the efforts of the Defense Department and other government agents in regard to DU. Training was weak or nonexistent; protective gear and clear protective protocols were absent or unfollowed; decontamination showed lack of follow-up, and advance planning for safety was utterly lacking. Again and again, the General Accounting Office takes the military to task. Then, over and over as well, it makes statements like this one. "The Armys policy is to ensure that its military and civilian personnel worldwide are afforded radiation safety at least equal to the NRCS requirements. As such, the Army has regulations for its personnel both in the United States and Army commands overseas that parallel NRC standards for radiation workers and the general public." Unless the noun, "policy," the sentence subject here, means 'laughable fraud,' the GAO repeatedly shows such oft-intoned contentions to be false. One could write a book about what, this report suggests, must become mandatory--in terms of training, protection, and clean-up, and the deviation from such essential mandates that have actually transpired. Of course, this is a precis of Doug Rokke's story itself, which forms the central components of the sixth and seventh overall installments of this series. In any event, as well, for investigators who know how to read between the lines, various other sets of actors in this drama, also working for the government, offer rich source materials that hide nuggets about the emergence of this 'culture of the death wish' in the land of the free and the home of the brave. DU travesties may look like the apogee of insanity, but this humble correspondent did not come up with the Nuclear Fool Cycle by accident. Alain Enthoven, for instance, in his encomium to the death worship of Albert Wohlstetter's "strategic analysis," offers lessons to soldiers whose lives are now a polluted morass of such a plutocratic strategy mixed with Depleted Uranium. Wohlstetter, one of the "Cold War Cult" at the Rand Corporation--another stellar notion of which has been the employment of DU in Southwest Asia--led a group that envisioned not only "making a nuclear war fightable, but winnable." Their detractors, however, saw significant bottlenecks in the form of the difficulties of mining the enormous quantities of Uranium ore necessary to fuel both the weapons and the reactors that would help to sell such a doomsday priesthood. Wohlstetter was the central member of the group that envisioned the Nuclear Fool Cycle's expansion and extension to a wider and wider sphere. His critics presumed that such an NFS system was

implausible in the extreme. "However, an elementary economic operationraising the price of uraniumoffered
incentives to a great many uranium prospectors and it soon became clear that bomb stockpiles could be greatly expanded and that there were bombs enough for military targets in addition to cities and industry. As our stockpile expanded, military targets, including strategic bases, were added to our attack plans. And in a symmetrical way the Air Defense Command assumed that with expanding Russian stockpiles a massive Russian attack directed at the American industrial heartland would add on some bombs and bomb carriers directed at our nuclear force. However, in both cases these extra targets were attachments to attacks directed basically at cities and industry."

Readers will see below further eventualities and plans that exemplified construction of a political economy based on Uranium and fission and mass collective suicide. When one looks, clearly, nearly endless lists of titles that contain bits and pieces of this entire skein of meaning await a truly comprehensive integration into the overall pattern. Such a process may never transpire, but THC's librarian roots compel him to nod at the possibility. In any event, the significant hitch to Wohlstetter's scheme was not too little Uranium, but vast quantities of surplus, much of it 'depleted.' Thus, an H-bomb standoff may have ushered in half a million poisoned vets in the same opportunistic fashion that an army based on tanks necessitated an interstate highway system capable of carrying them. Like war fits with death, nuclear weapons dovetail with DU munitions from the first strangled cry to the last agonal breath. GROUP #4-Established news outlets operate in an entirely different realm from advocates and governmental agencies. Corporate media almost inevitably end up gagging on a story like DU. It becomes less and less digestible for a variety of reasons--fiscal ties, reliance on bigbusiness for advertising dollars, and rationale both more mundane and more systematic come into play, as scholars of the media like Robert McChesney(http://www.monthlyreview.org/books/problemofthemedia.php) and Edward Hermann and Noam Chomsky(http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Herman%20/Manufac_Consent_Prop_Model.ht ml) argue forcefully. Most simply, the same class interests that own big newspapers also end up being stalwart backers of DU. In any event, this humble correspondent's hometown rag, the Atlanta Constitution, the flagship print operation of mega-media mogul Cox Enterprises(http://books.google.com/books?id=AI2un7Z177YC&pg=PA5&lpg=PA5&dq=%22 cox+enterprises%22+%2B+%22atlanta+constitution%22+%2B+business+%2B+organization &source=bl&ots=7CCubkztdW&sig=G1g3U95un4W0QUudd1UETnDKak8&hl=en&ei=TNb1TM DlCcP_lge22KHGBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAw#v= onepage&q=%22cox%20enterprises%22%20%2B%20%22atlanta%20constitution%22%20%2 B%20business%20%2B%20organization&f=false), apparently has not found a basis(http://projects.ajc.com/search/?term=%22depleted+uranium%22&x=15&y=13) for reporting a single line on the issue, in spite of--or perhaps because of--the fact that Fort Benning and Fort Stewart are two of the key forwarding points for infantry bound for Iraq. A few Blog comments mention DU, most recently as its being part of a murder suspect's especial weirdness, in that he had some in his home. The Wall Street Journal would seem to typify a rousing booster of Depleted Uranium--heavily invested in reporting positively on the political economy of both war and

'nuclear renaissance' goose-step tangos. Nineteen years ago, nonetheless, Bob Davis wrote a scathing report about a DU boondoggle(http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/DUPentagon-Purchase10jun91.htm), adding $200 million of DU to America's "strategic reserve," along with 32,000 pounds of opium--dispensable in the event of nuclear war--just as Desert Storm was about to blow all sorts of toxic dust into the lives of U.S. soldiers like Doug Rokke. Since then, however, not once since New Year's 2000 has the trumpet of plutocracy run an article about this otherwise timely topic. At least, the search "Depleted Uranium," plus the date range indicated(http://online.wsj.com/search/term.html?KEYWORDS=%22depleted%20uranium%2 2) turned up only six hits, all of which concerned different matters, such items as solar businesses' tanking, Bill Gates' proclivities for micro-nukes, and other materials with nothing to do with ammunition that turns turgid toxins into poisonous flying bomblets much beloved by their makers. Nevertheless, occasionally, a journalistic 'loose cannon' or other monopoly meidia phenomenon inexplicably breaks the bonds of fealty and bows instead to honest reporting. An Associated Press article from 2006 details allegations about DU. Entitled "U.S. Soldiers Are Sick of It," the piece will cause an unprepared reader to gasp in horror(http://www.wired.com/news/wireservice/0,71585-

0.html?tw=wn_index_7). "It takes at least 10 minutes and a large glass of orange juice to wash down all the pills -- morphine, methadone, a muscle relaxant, an antidepressant, a stool softener. Viagra for sexual dysfunction. Valium for his nerves. Four hours later, Herbert Reed will swallow another 15 mg of morphine to cut the pain clenching every part of his body. He will do it twice more before the day is done. Since he left a bombedout train depot in Iraq, his gums bleed. There is more blood in his urine, and still more in his stool. Bright light hurts his eyes. A tumor has been removed from his thyroid. Rashes erupt everywhere, itching so badly they seem to live inside his skin. Migraines cleave his skull. His joints ache, grating like door hinges in need of oil. There is something massively wrong with Herbert Reed, though no one is sure what it is. He believes he knows the cause, but he cannot convince anyone caring for him that the military's new favorite weapon has made him terrifyingly sick."
This humble correspondent does not want to get too deeply into the complex matter of how U.S. corporate electronic producers have explicated this issue. In general, the work made available to viewers and listeners has constituted, looked at generously, slanted

partial truth and quietly misleading distortion in favor of the militarists and imperialists who see in DU the ideal Satanic weapon with which to advance their agendas. Instead, THC vows to follow up on this already-rambling introductory literature review with further material and analysis about broadcast media's orientation to the Nuclear Fool Cycle and Uranium killing mechanisms. One of the few instances that THC does want to touch on, however, involves a particularly inauthentic, false, and completely biased NPR component that establishes a baseline for considering such media's approach to the DU death spiral. Not everything that National Public Radio has offered has been as ludicrous and vicious as David Kestenbaum's report of January 11, 2001(http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1116909), but that an erstwhile top-of-the-line journalistic operation could countenance something so noisome has to be noteworthy. The set up that pretends 'NATO concern' for allies' DU-doubts and then front-loads dismissal by referring to the lethally toxic DU as "weakly radioactive" sets the stage for the actual report. The universality among scientists consistently asserted in the report is just a single example of advancing a big lie with confidence in order to achieve a particular publicrelations goal, in this case to keep DOD and DOE on tract with their plans to continue churning out deadly DU projectiles. A Maryland physicist, who lets his daughter handle the material for a science project spends a bit of time enthusing about how swell is DU's capacity to assassinate opponents' tanks and then, according to Kastenbaum, suggests that a DU case would take six hours to deliver a chest-X-ray's worth of radiation. That this would generally--in regard to radon and otherwise, be highly dubious is hardly the point. The complete shift of context--from an industrially prepared canister of metal to a particulate and often aerosol flotilla of deadly dust--is execrable. Kastenbaum gives a faux consideration of this. "A tenth does turn to dust," he acknowledges, his voice dripping condescension. This is another big lie, of course, since government documentation had been demonstrating that approaching 100% transformation of solids to airborne particulates was possible, if enough of a conflagration happened, for example the ignition of tank munitions, diesel fuel, and other volatile combustibles in a decimated tank pierced by the conveniently pyrophiric Uranium. He then goes on, however, to advance dangerously stupid nonsense, in the form of the idea that inhaling a gram of uranium wouldn't pose much problem. In actuality, as more recent science makes indubitable, and which many, many medical, epidemiological, and radiological authorities then suspected, a gram of inhaled DU is the LD50 dose(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18188051), the amount at which roughly half of the humans so affected would die of acute toxicity. Following up the complete idiocy propounded here that one can't easily inhale aerosolized DU dust, he therefore advances the literally homicidal claim that a whole gram would yield only a one in one hundred thousand chance of leukemia, bizarrely true perhaps, since well over half of the folks who encountered such a breathing environment would be dead within days. Such cavalier disregard for decency would shock someone not used to this sort of well-spoken nonsense from NPR. The "almost complete unanimity" asserted among health physics proponents about such a whopper of a mortal error of this sort--and calling it an 'error' is generous--either is

another huge lie, or the field of 'health physics' is itself so compromised in favor of the Nuclear Fool Cycle that its propositions on matters of human health are practically speaking worthless. Kastenbaum loads his report with references to these cocksure experts whose science and reasoning about calculus and probability may be dandy, but whose ability to speak authoritatively about public health matters would be merely laughable were the results not so deadly for so many innocents. Kastenbaum, to meet the facile requirements of 'objectivity,' gives the Military Toxics Project(http://www.stopmilitarytoxics.org/about.html) fifteen seconds or so of his five minute feature story. The organizational representative, only asking for the 'precautionary principle,' either didn't have the sense to note the bad science, negligently homicidal recklessness, and ludicrously out-of-context reasoning of Kastenbaum and his coterie of collaborators, or Mr. K. cut that portion of the interview out. He then goes on to aver that opponents to DU were hard to find, another insane lie. Dr. Jurakovic was certainly available, after DOD had fired him for blowing the whistle on the Pentagon's falsehoods. Chris Busby was already working stalwartly to advance at the least a skeptical agenda toward DU. Dan Fahey, a perfect moderate who could have spoken dispositively to Kastenbaum's foolhardy thinking, was prolific in opposition to DU. Dozens of Iraqi authorities were already reporting the horrifying results that have continued to plague Fallujah. Doug Rokke was available. And a wide variety of critics, many of whom had faced government sponsors who insisted that they should lie about results demonstrating low level radiation risk(http://www.radiation.org/about/index.html)were also widely accessible. Skepticism, as a result of National Academy of Medicine study that found no problems with DU, was reasonable, according to Kastenbaum. Had he reported honestly and accurately otherwise, and left his conclusion at this, one could merely disagree with his reasoning ability or otherwise critique his construction of the story. As put forth to its tens of millions of listeners however, David Kastanbaum's fable, generously, deserves the moniker of "irresponsible journalism." In the view of THC, it is far worse than that. A key issue is why such madness would seem defensible to the goldenthroated warbler. One possible explanation stems from his scientist buddy's bemoaning that "it is frustrating" that anyone would disagree with their fallacious and indefensible conclusions, because 'we're smart and logical and rational and those who say otherwise than supporting our preestablished agenda, the suffering people and the scientists whom we pretend don't exist, are stupid.' The Maryland health physicist can grin that such opinions are "puzzling to me" as a result of his arrogant certainty that his bad science is the only way to fly. This is the friendliest fashion to explain Kastenbaum's wrongheaded superciliousness. The 'media to blame' trope follows, again, but for the death and destruction permitted by such viciously inadequate reporting, hilarious given his status as 'media' and blameworthiness in allowing continued use of a criminal weapon. Robert Alvarez and Dan Fahey were among the 'media' with some sort of nuanced clue about this controversy that could have given Kastenbaum at least a modicum of schooling about DU. He concludes that a "focus more on the facts and less on the emotion" would be a good idea. Since his report gave no emotional perspectives a voice, and since he not only lacked data but reported falsehoods as facts, this is a non sequitur. A response might be that journalists should focus less on prejudicial conclusions already made in advance, quit distorting and making impossible to substantiate claims. In

this case, such assertions included those of scientists who clearly had an ax to grind in this matter, and not just a discounting but a denial of the existence of the vast array of expert opinion contravening these well articulated defenses of plausible criminality. Reportorial responsibility thus eludes Kastenbaum in two ways. First, he fails to challenge biased evidence. Second he evades giving other perspectives a fair chance in the dialogic process, thereby instead designing a presentation in which seemingly preordained conclusions are the only 'rational' result. As readers have already noted from various quarters, of course, this piece looks especially nauseating and stupid in retrospect. But given a slough of factors and evidence available at that time, a vastly more reasonable report might have resulted from NPR, one which still promoted the DOD and nuclear industry point of view, but that did so in a way that was intellectually honest and sophisticated rather than presenting such clearly selfserving and self-righteous nonsense as science. An entire volume of refutation of this NPR-type tune, which permeates broadcasting in slightly less noxious garb, needs to find an audience. Today, this brief diversion seemed, at the least, worthwhile, given the erstwhile credibility and popularity of National Public Radio's reputedly 'liberal' news-gathering operation. In fact, it much more often trumpets the sound-bites of empire, albeit generally in less-ludicrous fashion than Kastenbaum's indefensible DU schtick in this instance. Turning to the generally less execrable print sphere, both of Ameirca's 'papers of record,' the Times and the Post, make at least a token bow, in regard to DU, in favor of 'balanced' reporting, meaning that they give far too much credence to government lies and miscues, without any sort of analytical challenge nine times out of ten, but both papers do at least occasionally then report what veterans or their advocates have to say. Much more likely are the intrepid reporters in D.C. or New York to put pointed interrogatories to suffering soldiers than they are to hold the bureaucrats at the Pentagon to account. Times reports by Marlise Simons( http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/17/world/traces-ofuranium-isotope-found-in-us-munitions-in-kosovo.html?scp=9&sq=%22depleted%20uranium%22&st=cse) consistently display key facts and dissect some of the issues regarding DU in the Balkans. Would that Kastenbaum had seen fit to familiarize himself with such articles. The Times 'Green' blog occasionally has useful political information( http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/03/20/20greenwire-nrc-decision-on-depleteduranium-draws-rebuke--10229.html). Congressional challenges to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's lowering the handling care required of DU waste, for example, shows the best aspects of a representative democracy, at least in the context of a military industrial machine's control of administrative apparatuses. South on I-95, the Post's articles on grotesque travesty in the Uranium industry, including a series on the $10 billion lawsuit by former employees of Paducah Kentucky's Uranium Enrichment Corporation, provide powerful documentation of how 'Nuclear-FoolCycle-negligence' is the best possible characterization of the industry; Post bloggers proffer amazing anecdotal bits about veterans' experiences with DU, such as accounts of brain tumors that doctors at Walter Reed purportedly believe(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2007/08/31/AR2007083101395.html) have their origin in Uranium's documented proclivity to migrate to and affect nerve and brain cells(http://www.91outcomes.com/2010/03/immune-cells-of-brain-linked-to-gulf.html). Only a small proportion of local or regional print media have much to say about DU.

Several do, however, perform a much better informational service in relation to problems with the Nuclear Fool Cycle than transpires from the efforts of NPR, especially concerning recent Uranium developments. The Orlando Sentinel, for example, provides one of the most extensive and objective investigations(http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/keyword/gaseous-

diffusion-plant) of the Paducah, Kentucky monstrosities that have come to light

among Uranium enrichment workers and their families and communities. And substantial surprises bubble up from the ether of the internet on occasion that simply astound the researcher. The Daytona Beach News Journal's work(http://www.news-journalonline.com/special/uranium/index.htm) exemplifies the information density of a DU shell in presenting powerful images and data and links about this grotesque crime against soldiers and humanity. As has so frequently been the experience of this humble correspondent, the modest and yet magnificent Christian Science Monitor, for all its stodgy bourgeois impedimenta, proffers the best standard journalism about a complicated, highly political and highly politicized, eventuality, in this case DU and Gulf War Syndrome(GWS). Scott Peterson, the author of all but a few of the CSM articles touching on DU, and a brave soothsayer in regard to Israel, Iran, and the class-riven snake-pit that prevails throughout Southwestern Asia and most of Africa, much more deservedly merits a Nobel Peace Prize than many recipients of whom this humble correspondent is aware. He's done his job, he's written marvelous journalism that has comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable at the same time that he always 'gave the devil his due,' something that THC bridles at allowing. He single-handedly penned most of the articles that the paper pulled together for an entire issue of the Monitor at the end of April, 1999, devoted to DU weapons' use in Kosovo. The theme( http://nucnews.net/2000/du/99du/991004cs.htm) of this series, "The Trail of a Bullet," remains apt to this moment, as death and depletion follow those who relied on the alleged 'depletion' of toxicity in a lethally reactive substance that has sowed a legacy of death and diminution for only God knows how long. Peterson remained persistent on the topic too. Three years later, in "A Silver Bullet's Toxic Legacy," he acceded(http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1220/p01s04-wome.html/%28page%29/2) that, still, "American gunners love them." One out of every four of their comrades coming down with GWS notwithstanding, "This graveyard of tanks shows why. DU burns so hotly into its target that a targeted tank's own ammunition ignites, causing a blast that often rips the turret right off the top of a tank. In the process, however, the DU round aerosolizes into a lethal dust that emits alpha particles. Though alpha particles have a limited range of a quarter-inch or so, they pack a punch 20 times more powerful than beta or gamma radiation, and can lodge easily in the body if inhaled or ingested. Many US vets believe DU may also be a key factor in Gulf War syndrome, the set of symptoms for which the Veteran's Administration has already provided compensation for nearly 1 in 4 vets." Peterson is aware of the true costs of war, for which civilians have always paid a much dearer price than have the heroes lionized in song and fable. "Iraqis say DU is a major cause of the severe health problems such as cancer and birth defects that they graphically show are surging in southern Iraq, though they do not have the clinical capability to link DU to health problems."

A doctor in Southern Iraq in 1998 had a box of X-rays "depicting grotesque abnormalities." But Americans found the slaughter, and lingering toxicity to Iraqis "acceptable," according to Pentagon analysis. Jane's Air Launched Weapons President, Robert Hewson "concur(red)," according to Peterson. "'If [fallout on civilians] was a serious consideration...we would not be contemplating a major land battle in Iraq. At the levels where this stuff is being planned, no tears are being shed for those people.'" The results, predictable though they may be, ought to give anyone pause who recognizes the veracity of the old saw that 'what goes around, comes around.' "Abdulkarim Hussein Subber, a gynecologist at the Basra Maternity and Children's Hospital, has three photo albums full of images of unimaginable birth defects that he claims are six times more prevalent today than before the Gulf War. 'We have become very familiar with these cases,' Dr. Subber says, adding that numbers have leveled off since expectant mothers began using ultrasound to detect - and terminate - severe cases. The problem is [our patients] are afraid of being pregnant again, because of the fear of malformations,' Subber says. 'The problem is the pollution from the war.'" Less than a year later, Peterson once again had the guts and the reportorial perspicacity to speak honestly. In "Remains of Toxic Bullets Litter Iraq," a two part series(http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0515/p01s02-woiq.html), he shows that he doubts Pentagon promises about reduced usage by referring to rumors of a tripling of DU deployment. He lets DOD's flack, Dr. Michael Kilpatrick, drone on about putting a hankie over the mouth and washing hands to keep the dust from inside the body, and then lets the good doctor acknowledge that similar safety strictures as came to be after Gulf War One, which "have been considerably eased" anyway, are hard to enforce. Peterson speaks soberly about the extent of DU ordnance's reach in Gulf War Two. "In Iraq, DU was not just fired at armored targets. Video footage from the last days of the war shows an A-10 aircraft - a plane purpose-built around a 30-mm Gatling gun strafing the Iraqi Ministry of Planning in downtown Baghdad. A visit to the site yields dozens of spent radioactive DU rounds, and distinctive aluminum casings with two white bands, that drilled into the tile and concrete rear of the building." He and his staff took radiation monitoring equipment along for this series. "DU residue at (point of) impact clicked on the Geiger counter at a relatively low level, just 12 times background radiation levels. But the finger-sized bullets themselves - littering the ground where looters and former staff are often walking - were the 'hottest' items the Monitor measured in Iraq, at nearly 1,900 times background levels. The site is just 300 yards from where American troops guard the main entrance of the Republican Palace, home to the US and British officials tasked with rebuilding Iraq. 'Radioactive? Oh, really?' asks a former director general of the ministry, when he returned in a jacket and tie for a visit last week, and heard the contamination levels register in bursts on the Geiger counter." THC could go on. As already alluded to, the broadcast coverage of this issue by U.S. electronic media has overwhelmingly been so facile and dastardly as to require an examination separately from that which is unfolding here today. Some footage in English--notably a portion of BBC's reporting(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/362484.stm), and RussiaTimes(http://rt.com/news/poisonous-us-weapons-iraq/), and Al

Jazeera(http://english.aljazeera.net/archive/2004/03/200841013142028376.html) productions, along with scattered additional material from other Commonwealth countries--has provided excellent insight and information about these matters for viewers. Part of the reason that Americans remain overwhelmingly ignorant of the raging debate about DU is that network and cable-news coverage has ranged from the paltry to the downplayed for the most part. The balance of this journalistic sub-section will mainly give a sense of the more or less progressive, all too often merely 'liberal,' print and internet writing, with a smattering of audio and video, that is available for readers on this topic. Once again, since the more authoritarian and reactionary pundits have little or nothing to add to the government's rare enlightenment and general deception, their inclusion can await a more substantial production than this initial orientation to the field of battle, as it were. Since the reactionaries and the imperialists back the government and its distortions regardless of the human and moral consequences, in other words, THC will let them fend for themselves. A brief Harper's Magazine report in 1983(http://www.harpers.org/media/pages/1983/07/pdf/HarpersMagazine-1983-070025045.pdf) articulates in crystalline prose the tactical devastation of the DU battlefield. The article compares the modern arena of conflict to a 'low level nuclear war. "The second way
conventional war has moved toward the intensity of low-level nuclear war is through a dramatic surge in firepower. There has been a 'submunitions revolution.'" This refers to several factors, which in sum the tactician

might call the certain victorious lethality that DU warheads provide given modern range and guidance capacity. Armor no longer acts as a guarantor of borders. "Even more dramatic, the shell or bomb or
rocket may contain a clutch of explosive bomblets, or a payload of miniaturized mines. Or it may discharge a cloud of specially designed metal particles intended to kill men or destroy tanks. When designed as a tank-killer such a projectile is filled with a load of 'self-forging fragments,' so called' because they are made from depleted uranium, which reacts exothermically when it meets iron, burning itself through a tank's armor. The effect is to transform the inside of the tank' into an inferno."

This catastrophic destruction of tanks changes the strategic shape of the tactical order of war. John Keegan's fine little summation, conceived and penned nearly a decade before Kuwait, did not connect the dots as this humble correspondent was, even then, doing, and as anyone with functioning mental capacity would have been doing who was following the Uranium industry. Keegan did not see the impact of the U-238 itself, in the aftermath of the fighting. But he uttered prescient thoughts nonetheless. "(W)hat is not generally perceived is how
much the effects of conventional war now overlap with those of nuclear war. A high-intensity conventional war and a lowintensity nuclear war might inflict very much the same level of damage on any given piece of inhabited landscape."

He avers that radiation and fallout are not inherent in a 'conventional war,' and then adds, "(b)ut there is a residue of contamination nevertheless." Though he has other problems than DU dust in mind, his foresight is remarkable, and such 'peacenikical' nerds as THC saw the explicit radiological and toxicological menace of DU weapons even prior to 1983, though we mainly lacked the platform of a Kissinger or a Kennan who so extolled the virtues of the new techniques for killing efficiently. THC foresaw chunks or particles of Uranium around the sites of great battles, which would, inevitably, occasionally get inside people and pollute soil and water. Naif that he was, THC viewed DU's 'mild' radioactivity as less problematic than the heavy-metal toxicity. If he had read Fred Reed's Harper's article(http://www.harpers.org/archive/1986/02/0016061) , "Tanked," from 1986, he might have gotten a more complete clue about what was coming,

however, as even then 'aerosolized' radionuclides were a matter of concern. Reed quotes from an account about WWII as follows. "A tank that is mortally hit belches forth searing tongues of orange flame from every hatch. As ammunition explodes in the interior, the hull is
racked by violent convulsions and sparks erupt from the spout of the barrel like the fireballs of a Roman candle. Silver rivulets of molten aluminium pour from the engine like tears... When the inferno subsides, gallons of lubricating oil in the powertrain and hundreds of pounds of rubber on the tracks and bogey wheels continue to bum, spewing dense clouds of black smoke over the funeral pyre."

Was the actual result of Gulf War's "Crispy Crittters" foreseeable? Listening to Reed, which THC missed despite his subscription, would make one think so. "Open a book on
tank design at random and you are likely to find a swarm of second-order partial differential equations. Lethal details are fussed over. For example, engineers give careful attention to the best ratio of length to diameter of long-rod penetratorsthe 'arrows' fired by the main gun. X-ray flash radiographs stop the penetration in mid-act for examination. The mechanics of plastic deformation are considered with great mathematical sophistication. The engineers are quite concerned about maximizing behind-armor effects...or BAE, a technical term that encompasses burning and mutilation of the crew. Pressure transducers measure the 'overpressure' as the tank is hit to see whether the lungs of the enemy will be ruptured, a desirable effect if you can get it. The probability of flash burns and their likely severity is studied."

Of course, 'war is hell,' so whining is not exactly welcome. But the context is the inferno aforementioned, the ignition of ammo and general massive conflagration. And, along with death from the air and from infantry's anti-tank weapons, the new tank ordnance itself now utilized DU. Thus, not only was the armoring itself Depleted Uranium but the incoming killer capsules also deployed nuke waste. "The principles of tank gunnery find perfect expression in the age-old
military prescription 'Do unto others, but do it first.' The armor may help, but no one depends on it. The tank that doesn't fire first is likely to have a finned arrow of depleted uranium, moving at a mile a second, come through the turret in a burst of metallurgically complex finality." Again, reasonable foresight might have foretold what indeed

has happened and is continuing to happen, so long as enough U.S. citizens decide to remain accomplices to mass murder. The New Yorker, less likely to ponder martial theory or other killing conundrums of empire, nevertheless did in 2000 give voice to Bobbie Ann Mason's lyrical observations about the unfolding nightmare in Paducah, which had its analog hither and yon at every juncture of the 'Fool Cycle,' beginning to end, much of it--as in Paducah--involving Uranium. Enriching nuclear fuel for the Nuclear Fool Cycle since 1952, Western Kentucky was familiar with Uranium's problematic chemistry(http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=2000-0110#folio=030). Truman's Vice President, Allen Barkley, steered what was to become the Uranium Enrichment Corporation to his home town. That it was a mixed blessing from its inception does not discount how massively the plant transformed the overall economic environment for the better. Some people will still insist that such a bargain is on balance a 'good deal.' "Last Summer," wrote Mason about the lawsuit that originated in the early 1980's, "Paducah's deal with atomic energy seemed to be exposed as a bargain with the devil. The news was packaged in one explosive bundle in the Washington Post...: radioactive waste dumps, safety violations, bureaucratic lies, cancer, environmental pollution. Whistleblowers, in a sealed lawsuit...charged that former operators had defrauded the government by covering up knowledge of widespread radiation contamination without regard to the safety of workers." As "black Uranium dust" abounded, and U-238 was purposely sprinkled on food, images of children and soldiers horsing around in the off-the-charts hot-spots of Southern Iraq come easily to mind--as do the denials of toxicity, the lack of training, the refusal to research and account for things in any sort of responsible, genuine--not to mention

humane--fashion. She mentions Joe Harding, who complained of radiation sickness only to have his managers laugh at him, while cartilage growths emanated from his elbows and shoulder and the stomach cancer worsened until he died of it. She speaks of irresponsibility that could easily include the many times that the owners disregarded safety requirements and cavalierly instructed workers not to concern themselves with such things. In 1953, in 1955, in 1959, over and over and over, until the sick and the dead turned into whistleblowing litigation(http://www.thenation.com/article/du-home), Uranium worked its poison into Kentucky's people and their environs. The Department of Energy and its institutional NFS predecessors knew, or should have known, from very early on, about all of this. THC can in other cases prove that these 'experts' of how friendly would be the doom of NFS cataclysm knew of their venality and the harm that they were facilitating DU to cause. The same personnel went back and forth between DOE and DOD. Was the monumental nightmare of GWS something that our Lords and Protectors should have anticipated? For them to suggest otherwise compounds the injury with insult, makes of negligence a darker, more criminal matter. As for the New Yorker, its arch flippancy in its most recent Fool-Cycle installment, "Uranium Widows," typifies the 'balance' of organs of the liberal establishment. THC has promised to respond to the vicious disrespect( http://archives.newyorker.com/default.aspx?iid=40220&startpage=page0000045#folio=0 30) that this article shows for those exposed to the choice between the cycles of death built into Uranium's ambit(INTERLINK, DU#2) and the possibility of ongoing employment that pays enough to live on. For now, the point should suffice that this report from a few months ago demonstrates, along with thousands of other sources, the malignancy that Uranium embodies long before it has received the label of 'depletion' that launches it into the vast world weapons market. As a matter of course, journalists from just about every sort of enterprise, with levels of acuity and depth that vary from ingenious and contextualized to comatose and superficial, have had something to say about the DU fiasco, albeit ludicrous triviality garners massively greater mass media attention than this issue that cuts right to the gonads of human survival. To 'Google' "Depleted Uranium" + veteran OR soldier and find 918,000 possible links is heartening, until one searches for jail + "lindsay lohan" OR "paris hiltion" and finds 6,760,000 citations. Common sense suggests that more progressive, less reactionary--this humble correspondent would dare say socially democratic--media outlets are significantly more likely to report honestly about DU than are their more reactionary and corporate-driven counterparts, which electively ignore or distort the situation depending on the particular publication's tendencies or attitudes. Though only tangentially a print operation, Amy Goodman and Democracy Now! have been redoubtable in reporting about and competently challenging USG DU dissimulation and non-sequitur. DN! partnered with the New York Daily News both to break important elements of the story and to uncover the evidence that USG authorities had either denied or covered up. The Daily News reporter and DN! co-host, Juan Gonzalez, spearheaded sending former MP's from a New York Reserve unit to Dr. Asaf Durakovic's lab in Toronto, where he still continues to work for intellectually honest research and dialog. The DU tests, at $1000 each, were expensive, but they revealed that almost half of the squad sent for exams did

indeed have substantially elevated DU levels in their urine. Of course, DN! competes with the surface appearance of fair reporting by its megacorporate competitors, with the caveat that the likes of CNN almost always preface(http://articles.cnn.com/2001-01-09/world/lowrie.debrief_1_depleted-uraniumeuropean-union-balkans?_s=PM:WORLD) their accounts with big lies or distortions like this. "To date, there is no scientific evidence of such a link." Written in 2001, this line is, most generously, hogwash, though still less condemnable that dear David Kastenbaum's damnable lies. For all of the pillorying that Fox News takes from erstwhile progressives, its coverage of this issue is at least on a par(http://www.foxnews.com/searchresults/search?q=%22depleted+uranium%22&submit=Search)with Ted Turner's once-upona-time brainchild. As noted above, a separate story by this humble correspondent, on the mass electronic media's sophisticated snow job on DU, is forthcoming; a brief mention here merely contextualizes Amy's and DN!'s efforts. Sophisticated and fair, with more depth than in any other video source(http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&a ddress=385x489324), DN! work on this issue has more than once given Dr. Rokke a chance to speak(http://www.democracynow.org/2000/5/30/former_u_s_army_depleted_uranium), proffered an opportunity to Dr. Durakovic for a substantial interview(http://www.democracynow.org/2003/1/30/dr_asaf_durakovic_gives_a_rare), and otherwise served up both investigation and analysis that at least comports with the standards of fair debate. Among practitioners of more venerable forms of electronic journalism, only Free Speech Radio News has consistently(http://fsrn.org/content/thursday,-september-07,2006/1862) made note of DU developments. Individual stations have contributed to public dialog as well. (http://www.wbai.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&i

d=395&Itemid=42)WBAI's weekly program from New York for Pacifica Radio, for
example, "Explorations," has as its host Dr. Michio Kaku whose credits include editing Metal of Dishonor, a critical collection about DU discussed below. Among print publications, Mother Jones fulfilled its obligation to publish something about this millennial situation. At least twice in this first twenty-first century decade, the magazine has examined DU's pernicious issues. "Depleted Uranium: the Invisible Threat" points out that use in the Balkans(http://motherjones.com/politics/2001/01/depleteduranium-invisible-threat) has exposed untold tens of thousands of unwitting civilians to a guinea-pig testing lab whose results will take decades to read clearly. "Awaiting the Real Toll," published just as the second arrogant American bloodletting began, empire and economics obviously more relevant than 'terrorism,' warned that the apparent 'precision' of America's 'victory' in 1991 was misleading in the extreme. The idea that war could be "painless dentistry," drilling the enemy and anasthetizing ones own pain, according to Chalmers Johnson, failed to acknowledge "serious unintended consequences... that contradict the Pentagon's claims of low casualties -- and those consequences fall just as heavily on non-combat soldiers as on their front-line compatriots." Johnson continues in a vein that points a Uranium dusted finger. "The first Iraq War produced four classes of casualties: killed in action; wounded in action; killed in

accidents (including "friendly fire"); and injuries and illnesses that appeared only after the end of hostilities. During 1990 and 1991, some 696,778 individuals served in the Persian Gulf as elements of Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm. Of these 148 were killed in battle, 467 were wounded in action, and 145 were killed in accidents, producing a total of 760 casualties, quite a low number given the scale of the operations. However, as of May 2002, the Veterans Administration (VA) reported that an additional 8,306 soldiers had died and 159,705 were injured or ill as a result of service-connected "exposures" suffered during the war. Even more alarmingly, the VA revealed that 206,861 veterans, almost a third of General Schwarzkopf's entire army, had filed claims for medical care, compensation, and pension benefits based on injuries and illnesses caused by combat in 1991. After reviewing the cases, the agency has classified 168,011 applicants as 'disabled veterans.' In light of these deaths and disabilities, the casualty rate for the first Gulf War is actually a staggering 29.3%," some significant, perhaps major, portion of which likely stemmed from DU. As well, MJ's online presence has updated readers now and again. Generally, its reporting exemplifies straightforward, 'balanced' accounting(http://motherjones.com/politics/1999/07/outfront), meaning that most readers will see the issues with DU that the USG tries to hide. "While the Pentagon shrugs off these claims as Iraqi propaganda, groups including the World Health Organization and Physicians for Social Responsibility insist that it is premature--and irresponsible--to unilaterally reject Iraqi claims. 'The medical community takes the line that DU may be a cause, and it may not be,' says Richard Garfield, an epidemiologist at Columbia University and a specialist in the public-health effects of war." Though not as slick as its counterparts in San Francisco, Chicago's Nation magazine produced some potent reports about the likely long lasting lethal impacts of DU, both in Iraq and on the soldiers returning from battle(http://www.thenation.com/archive/lingering-sickness). Laura Flanders' article, "A Lingering Sickness," was one of the original national assertions that DU quite likely was sickening veterans years after their return home. Some of the best historical analysis on the topic, depicting the intersection between the Uranium industry experience that ended up with the United States' compensation of some uncertain one hundred thousand or so former energy workers, also stemmed from postings from the Nation. Robert Alvarez, not surprisingly given his insider background(http://www.ips-dc.org/staff/bob) as a Senate Committee researcher and as a DOE employee for six years tasked with helping to implement the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act(EEOICPA) mandate, wrote knowledgeably and at some length about these issues( http://www.thenation.com/article/du-home), examining "DU at Home" in particular. Years earlier, Bill Mesler, with support from Nation's Investigative Fund, did one of the best overall assessments, involving both historical data and some reasonable analysis, of the entire vicious imbroglio surrounding DU weapons. He describes in affecting detail the sickening symptoms of sickness with which many vets returned home. Many times, this symptomology directly followed likely DU exposure. "Before they left the gulf, Mowrer and other soldiers in the 651st Combat Support Attachment began experiencing strange flulike symptoms. He figured the symptoms would fade once he was back in the United States. They didn't. Mowrer's personal

doctor and physicians at the local Veterans Administration could find nothing wrong with him. Meanwhile, his health worsened: fatigue, memory loss, bloody noses and diarrhea. Then the single parent of two began experiencing problems with motor skills, bloody stools, bleeding gums, rashes and strange bumps on his eyelids, nose and tongue. Mowrer thinks his problems can be traced to his exposure to D.U." DOD vociferously denied any such possibility. Their energetic critique of such thinking sounds like scornful scoffing. The data and expert testimony even then existed to contend otherwise, but Mesler reported the military dissimulation at length. Then he lowered the boom, as it were. "But the Pentagon has a credibility gap. For years, it has denied that U.S. soldiers in the Persian Gulf were exposed to chemical weapons. In September Pentagon officials admitted that troops were exposed when they destroyed Iraqi stores of chemical weapons, as Congress held hearings on 'Gulf War Syndrome.' The Pentagon also argued, in its own defense, that exposure to chemical weapons could not fully explain the diverse range of illnesses that have plagued thousands of soldiers who served in the Persian Gulf. Exposure to D.U.--our own weaponry, in other words--could well be among the missing links." Credit for initiating reporting about DU and toxic effects of its employment probably goes to the Village Voice and its tenacious and extremely insightful bulldog of an investigative journalist, James Ridgeway. His "Using Nuclear Bullets" gave background info and proffered warnings about potential problems in January, 1991. To this day, New York's collection of iconoclasts, radicals, and petty bourgeois celebrants of fetish and fandango helps to spread the word that the USG's touting DU as a 'all-is-fair' miracle weapon is false, pernicious, and likely criminal. Perhaps best of the lot, among these so-called 'left wing' sources--which in context means community-oriented, skeptical, and diligent--has been the output of Z Magazine. Not only have the print pages themselves given readers varied and fairly frequent perspectives on the unfolding controversies and eventualities of DU, but the network of Znet has also extended the creation and transfer of knowledge on the topic in an ongoing dialogic(http://www.zcommunications.org/after-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-there-wasfallujah-by-william-blum) way. "After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, There Was Fallujah" primarily examines the issue of birth defects, about which USG typical deflections abound. "A spokesman for the

US military, Michael Kilpatrick, said it always took public health concerns 'very seriously', but that 'No studies to date have indicated environmental issues resulting in specific health issues.'"
Such noisome crap continues to characterize USG responses; willfully ignorant citizens might come to recognize in ways that are singularly unpleasant that they are, morally if not legally, accessories before and after the fact to these crimes. 'What goes around comes around,' as articulated already, is particularly applicable in the realm of ethics. Veterans' experience with childbirth are not nearly so ubiquitous nor half so grotesque as what the innocent civilians of Southern Mesopatamia are confronting, but the apocalyptic particularities of Fallujah amplify the anecdotal reports on the homefront. A "BBC correspondent also saw children in the city who were

suffering from paralysis or brain damage, and a photograph of one baby who was born with three heads. He added that he heard many times that officials in Fallujah had warned women that they should not have children. One doctor in the city had compared data about birth defects from before 2003 when she saw about one case every two months with the situation now, when she saw cases every day. 'I've seen footage of babies born with an eye in the middle of the forehead, the nose on the forehead,' she said."
John La Forge, meanwhile, has discussed the criminal trial acquittals of protesters against Alliant Techsystems(ATK), one of the country's largest manufacturer's of dirty ordnance deploying Uranium. He first established precisely the nature of the USG's misleading propaganda, implying what is at stake in such trials of activists who refuse to remain silently complicit with a policy of mass murder(http://www.zcommunications.org/opponents-prevail-over-dirty-bombs-by-john-mlaforge http://www.zcommunications.org/opponents-prevail-over-dirty-bombs-by-john-mlaforge). "The misnomer 'depleted' is a soothing Pentagon distraction,

since DU is 'depleted' only of uranium-235. The shells are solid radioactive waste and turn into chemically toxic and carcinogenic dust when they smash and burn through hard targets."
La Forge presents the government's own admissions as damning evidence before placing the DU dilemma in an international context. "'We(DOD) discovered some

stray elements...in depleted uranium. They consisted of plutonium, neptunium and americium.' Since then, Italy, Germany, Norway, Greece, and other NATO allies have called for a moratorium on the use of DU, hundreds of protests have taken place across Europe, and numerous civil resistance arrests have taken place at ATK and other DU manufacturers in the U.S."
A heartening sign indeed is emerging from the Twin Cities, in that juries there four times in the past 13 years have acquitted a total of over 100 defendants of trespassing charges against those who have refused to leave the premises of the manufacturers of radioactive murder devices. La Forge makes clear for readers the vast sums at stake for companies such at ATK, creating 'rounds' by the millions that sell for a minimum of $21.50. Felicity Arbuthnot joins her colleague in documenting the hideous infliction of these weapons on Balkan conflicts. An outpouring of concern( http://www.zcommunications.org/depleted-uranium-in-the-balkans-by-felicity-arbuthnot) from allies included a definitive statement from the Portugese authorities. "Antonio

Pereira, the Portugese Defense Minister, informed NATO Headquarters that he is withdrawing Portugese troops from Kosmet. They were not, he said, going to become uranium meat."

Moreover, the author suggested, in noting how widespread DU contamination was, that a transparent political economic motive for DU's utilization existed. "Last month

the Yugoslav ambassador to the Czech Republic, Djoko Stojicic, told media in Prague that K-FOR soldiers in Kosova-Metohia had long been experiencing health problems associated with DU. NATO French Air Force Commander General Joffret, said the west apparently wanted to get rid of their nuclear waste, contaminating the region."
A minimum of a score of reports peer out at readers from various 'Z-linked' sites. The anecdotal and political facts available here dwarf what most other sources put-together proffer. Akira Suemori's article, "It Is the Same Here as in Hiroshima and Nagasaki," develops a sobering narrative for such as this humble correspondent, in journaling about the mortality and dire sickness that has afflicted photo-journalists, theretofore in the bloom of good health, who have dropped dead from cardiovascular disease and cancer(http://www.zcommunications.org/it-is-the-same-here-as-in-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-by-akira-suemori) after DU exposure. One vibrant, award-winning photographer was especially bitter at his pass. "Unable to continue the job he loved, he retired at age fifty from the company where he'd worked for eighteen years. A disability pension is his only income. His senior colleague, press photographer Milorad Dobricic, died last winter from cancer of the lymph glands. He was fifty-five. Another press photographer for Tanjug is undergoing chemotherapy for cancer of the lymph glands. 'All three were in the best of health and among our best news photographers, so they photographed the war the longest.'" Suemori weaves into the foreground of his description his own experience, as a Japanese citizen fully cognizant of the annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He reports of relatively recent developments near the Southern Japanese island of Okinawa. The author places these occurrences in the context of grudging DOD admissions of likely toxicity of DU weaponry. "Nevertheless, the American press revealed in 1996 that Marine Corps aircraft

had been firing depleted uranium shells on their bombing range at Torishima Island, just off Okinawa in an important fishing ground. When Okinawans, particularly local fishermen, angrily protested over yet another act of negligence by the U.S. military that threatened their safety, welfare, and livelihood, a Marine Corps spokesman claimed that the radiation 'amounts to only about what a color television set emits.' By that time, however, Congressional hearings had reported that both veterans of the Gulf War and Iraqi civilians were suffering serious, long-term disabilities with depleted uranium as the suspected cause."
Standard fare among those who imbibe U.S. media sources are Time and its ilk. Of the three major newsweeklies, Newsweek has almost no(http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/soldiers-home/2008/11/20/an-environmentaladdendum.html) information to prescribe, uniquely dedicated to DU issues, for its readers' enlightenment. Somewhat surprisingly, to THC, the other corporate outlets-Time(http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1855948_1861760_186222 0,00.html) and its erstwhile competitors at U.S. News and Weekly Report(http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1855948_1861760_1862

220,00.html), do at least occasionally take a stab at reportage that does acknowledge the perspectives of officers and soldiers such as Doug Rokke, though these establishment denizens do not deign to mention his name. Such catalogs of event as the U.S.N.&W.R. health piece cited above do often get details completely wrong--the recent Congressional panel on Gulf War Illness definitely did not "rule out DU...as (a) cause," as the article asserts. Nevertheless, these printed expressions of what is newsworthy in general are vastly more responsible and articulate than are any number of broadcast outlets' yarns, more of which will be the subject of independent forthcoming reporting on the part of THC. Foreign media sources, unsurprisingly, vastly out-scooped their American cousins on these hidden exemplars of the hideous. Mediation from Italy, Spain, Germany, Holland, and many other places both quantitatively and qualitatively outpaces what has shown up at the DU wellspring here in North America. Above, in considering community-based and expert assessment of the Nuclear Fool Cycle's love affair with DU, readers have already seen that other English speaking peoples have, in general, been more forthright and organized in their critiques of Depleted Uranium's deployment as an instrument of destruction. Russia Times, a sophisticated multi-modal news and review and opinion formation, both on cable and on the web, has devoted much more thorough and consistent attention to depleted Uranium than has CNN, or, heaven forbid, Fox News. One of its extensive accounts(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaN5v0wQMI4) this year examined Malak Hamdan's and Chris Busby's epidemiological investigation of cancer and birth defects and infant mortality in Fallujah(http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CCUQFjAC&url=http%3 A%2F%2Fwww.mdpi.com%2F16604601%2F7%2F7%2F2828%2Fpdf&ei=YJD9TNzIKoKC8gb8ntXyBw&usg=AFQjCNGxzM9RKO QTXMyh_aM1PnxNGxTA4g&sig2=dF4lXVAtAa3yOnz77MWL8Q), "Cancer, Infant Mortality, and Birth Sex-Ration in Fallujah," frightening stuff about what our collective future may inevitably hold if nations continue to act with the criminal disregard of human rights that the USG has displayed(INTERLINK). A couple of months prior to that, RT was reporting that "Battlefields Contaminated with Uranium Bred Cancer Plague," talking to more Iraqi authorities(http://rt.com/news/iraqdepleted-uranium-cancer/) in one brief video than an average pair of New York Times or CNN pieces would see fit to include. "'The number of cancer cases among children increased by 227 per cent in the period from 2005 to 2007,' stated Doctor K. Suleiman. 'Experts at the University of Basra Research Center claim that toxic agents will continue having a harmful effect on human health for the next 50 years.'" In general, in other words, an obscure if relatively well-funded media start-up from Russia is producing a greater volume and incisiveness of material than its monumental counterparts stateside. England's Manchester Guardian may provide the best overall media coverage on earth on this topic. THC may appreciate more the ideological bent of the World Socialist Web Site(http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jul2010/fall-j23.shtml), or the greater depth and scientific bona fides present in Metal of Dishonor, briefly annotated below; THC certainly recognizes that many of the advocates and community experts have more that is potent and essential to communicate about DU than does the entire amalgam of the Guardian's material.

But that a standard exemplar of journalism has given this issue the clear analysis and ongoing focus(http://www.google.com/search?q=%22depleted+uranium%22&btnGNS=Search+guard ian.co.uk&oi=navquery_searchbox&sa=X&as_sitesearch=guardian.co.uk&hl=en&client=gm ail&rls=gm)--with 550 total articles, all that THC could survey rational and insistent on presenting grassroots viewpoints--that the Guardian has proffered is a testament to something magnificent in the human spirit. The notion of 'speaking truth to power,' of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, represents important and powerful public witness that must accompany any hope of human progress on this or other difficult passes that we collectively confront, A.L. Kennedy wrote with the slashing bitterness of stiletto sarcasm, in Summer 2003. "I'll bet you're allowing phrases like 'playing Russian roulette with other people's lives' and 'blood-soaked, greedy, Westminster scum' to creep into otherwise respectable conversations. ... So to keep us all happy and healthy, let's focus on the one real feelgood factor left in Iraq - depleted uranium. That it is left all over Iraq just shows how much we care, because DU is gorgeous stuff - gorgeous uranium-238 with a dash of gorgeous uranium-235. It's cheap, if you're subsidising nuclear power to the hilt, and frankly we have whole slag heaps of it to dump. It's almost twice as heavy as lead, so it's great for armour plating, radiation shielding, ballast in missiles and aircraft counterweights. It's splendid for shells and - better yet - it's pyrophoric. Which is to say, if you bang it into anything, it produces blasting amounts of heat. War, naturally, involves many things banging into each other. ...A few of you have heard that DU is toxic and radioactive, and maybe you're fretting about that. With so many vehicles containing DU and so much DU ammunition rattling about and the possibilities of violence being fairly high, DU could be released into the environment and come into contact with people, even British people." David Rose followed up his article for Vanity Fair, referenced above, with a substantial 2007 piece in the Guardian that revisited the Uranium facility in New York that he mentioned in his earlier investigation, catching DOD in one of its frequent little fibs about things that kill people. This humble correspondent's amazement peaked not at the repetition of the sorts of grotesque carnage and filth that are likely linked to DU, but at the source of the funds that helped Rose's report, and the studies on which it drew, come to life. One might think that, with all of its millions of pages whining about lack of evidence, the USG might have doled out some no-strings-attached funds. Instead, the all-English Natural Environment Research Council(http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/nov/18/usa.nuclear) was the sole supporter of Rose's work. Other projects that the redoubtable correspondent has developed actually received funding from MoD itself, though not, seemingly, from the U.S.'s Department of Eternal War and Doom. On the other hand, the substantive findings, about which Rose reports in "'Safe' Uranium That Left a Town Contaminated," leave any savvy witness of American depredation with a queasy horror all about the midsection. Despite a quarter century, quarter billion dollar decommissioning of the plant, meant to remove all traces of DU, the "team has found that DU contamination, which remains radioactive for millions of years, is in effect impossible to eradicate, not only from the environment but also from the bodies of humans. Twenty-three years after production ceased they tested the urine of five former

workers. All are still contaminated with DU. So were 20 per cent of people tested who had spent at least 10 years living near the factory when it was still working." Rose spells out what humanity faces, frightful devolutionary diminution that worsens every day that the plutocrats continue their reign. "(I)nside the body DU travels around the bloodstream, accumulating not only in the lungs but also in other soft tissues such as the brain and bone marrow. There, each mote becomes an alpha particle hotspot, bombarding its locality and damaging cell DNA. Research has shown that DU has the potential to cause a wide range of cancers, kidney and thyroid problems, birth defects and disorders of the immune system." Rose metaphorically shakes his head about the fate of soldiers, workers, civilians adjacent to battlefields. Any of us in a place where the wind blows might wonder about our own aches and pains, the difficulties of our own children. Few will likely find out for certain, but the collective impact of this crime against the human condition arguably overshadows anything before it in history, no matter the smiling Yankee efficiency and slick Hollywood production values accompanying it. For those with an interest, 446 additional additions to the canon remain for the interested interlocutor to peruse. Meanwhile, BBC's various channels emanate what may be an even larger volume than the Guardian of stories that in some way touch on DU. The caveat to this announcement would be that a sizable portion of British Broadcasting's comprehension of DU reads suspiciously like a press announcement of the Ministry of Defense(MoD). And while DOD outdoes MoD in terms of perfidy and misleadership, in many ways the Yanks and the Brits have been as one since before the Quebec accords in 1943, as readers shall see in the subsequent chapters. The difference between BBC's coverage, and that of NPR or PBS, however, is that, in addition to parroting what are obviously official cover-ups and misrepresentation, England's premier news organization makes a lot more room(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/europe/2001/depleted_uranium/default.stm) for clear and analytically probing critique and refutation of government packages of misinformation. That the United States still maintains even a semblance of democracy, given the horse manure that passes for informative discourse emanating from government and corporate media, might amaze an interloping political scientist from a distant galaxy. Here, in a mere slice from the BBC archives, two radiation experts weigh-in on why the evidence emanating from Iraq and elsewhere might indubitably implicate DU in cancers and other health consequences(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1114246.stm). "'It's true that DU is not very radioactive. But when you inhale it, it does go to the lymph nodes surrounding the lungs, and that means it could irradiate all the blood cells which pass through the nodes.' ... 'Many
experts say DU is more of a chemical threat than a radioactive one, and I think the chemical toxicity is an issue. The uranium atoms are chemically toxic, and they will visit every cell in the body where they may have an effect. And it would not be hard to absorb a serious dose of DU quite quickly. When it vaporises, it forms a very fine powder which can blow a long way.'" Try as one might, one would search for eternity

before finding such open and accurate summaries among American electronic media sources. As an investigator could easily anticipate, Al Jazeera(http://english.aljazeera.net/Services/Search/Default.html?q=%22depleted%20uraniu m%22 http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/insideiraq/2010/01/20101371048370420.html) has made reporting about Depleted Uranium one of its more important focal points. Not only have two overwhelmingly Muslim lands suffered the infestation of eternal

contamination, but more and more evidence has accumulated that Israel on multiple occasions has attacked its neighbors, and even erstwhile residents who happen to be Palestinian, with DU ordnance. However, with only 41 pieces on the English site, its coverage does not begin to approach that of some other sources of data. Where Al Jazeera does excel, however, is in long form video materials that make a pulpit available for both Western experts such as Dr. Busby, and for medical and scientific personnel from areas affected by DU toxicity. These interviews and fact-filled interludes(http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/insideiraq/2010/01/20101371048370420.ht ml) contain invaluable contextual understanding for the parameters of this crisis that touch tens of millions of civilians directly, and if unaddressed, absolutely guarantee social upheaval of the sort that marched humanity down the pathway to two World Wars, and in the region where that chaos was particularly prevalent in the years prior to both 1914 and 1939. One needn't believe that history operates like the film "Groundhog Day" to find plenty of impetus for cashiering those who want to continue production and deployment of DU. Plenty of ethical and human rights rationale argue for such a choice. But simple common sense about optimizing the chances for collective survival of seven billion cousins also militates that citizens stand up and demand that the lying, thieving thugs in charge stand down. Such harsh words aside, an end to DU is quite plausibly a sine qua non for Homo Sapiens continued weedy survival. Grassroots media around the planet have performed Herculean tasks in these struggles to accomplish accurate and complete reportage. More and more, in terms of both tone and explicit content, such thinkers and, in the original sense of the word, journalists, are aligning with the strident views of the likes of this humble correspondent. A full articulation of such sources would probably be beneficial, at the same time that a brief sampling will serve to launch readers toward a broader and deeper comprehension of this critical issue. Jeff Rense is more than a mensch, of that much this humble correspondent is certain. His free-wheeling site explodes with energy and all manner of input. It speaks about what journalism needs to be in a world where so much has, to put the case mildly, gone significantly awry(http://www.rense.com/). "The myriad of facts, conjecture, perspectives, viewpoints, opinions, analyses, and information... posted on this site range from cutting edge hard news and comment to extreme and unusual perspectives. We choose not to sweep uncomfortable material under the rug - where it can grow and fester. We choose not to censor skewed logic and uncomfortable rhetoric. These things reflect the world as it now is - for better and worse. ... Journalism is (or used to be) the profession of gathering and presenting a broad panorama of news about the events of our times ... to readers for their own consideration. We believe in the intelligence, judgment and wisdom of our readers to discern for themselves among the data which appears on this site that which is valid and worthy...or otherwise." Rense.com proffers access to over three hundred DU articles, including a piece by Leuren Moret, brief and bold in its unsupported assertions that THC believes might well be supportable, that DU is a probable contributing cause(http://www.rense.com/general73/deep.htm) to the acknowledged mushrooming of diabetes among the far-flung cousins on the planet. Her ascription of such decimation as

DU is inducing to Trilateralist forces of plutocracy may or may not appeal to readers, but such an assessment is a very particular accusation of the sort that THC advances, essentially that capital cannot cut off its dependence on the marketing of megadeath. Christopher Bollyn's "How Long Can the Pentagon Lie About Depleted Uranium," reposted here from American Free Press, is another must read(http://www.rense.com/general67/redb.htm), explicating as it does in clear layman terms the implications of the BEIR VII conclusions. These in turn back-up heroic scholars who risked their careers decades ago to trumpet what has turned out to be trustworthy analysis of how low-level radiation affects us. The site furthermore gathers political, ecological, legal, and multiple other ways of approaching things under one roof. Phillippa Winkler, for instance, is able to weigh in that the "U.N. Rejects U.S. Argument that DU Is a 'Legal' Weapon," detailing the work of the United Nations Subcommission on Human Rights condemning as an outlaw the government that acts in the names of 300 million American cousins. At other times, a similarly raucous, and clearly conspiracy-friendly voice may only once-in-a-while address DU. Such is the case with the work of Tom Flocco, a florid democracy advocate from Pennsylvania whose one article on the subject is bone-jarring in its intensity. His tale tells of Michael Tosto's death, two days after the sudden onset of 'pneumonia' in Iraq in June, 2003. A tanker, he was in a unit that had frequently fired DU weapons and then moved through the fiery aftermath. Flocco reports(http://www.tomflocco.com/fs/DepletedUraniumSymp.htm) the young soldier's family's and wife's reaction. "'He died so fast. Thats not pneumonia,' Michael Tostos father, Daniel, told TomFlocco.com in a phone interview. After the tankers death, the elder Tosto added that 'One of his fellow soldiers contacted Michaels wife Stephanie and revealed that 12 hours after his initial symptoms, Michael started coughing up blood, his lips turned blue-and he died just 36 hours later.' In 2000, 47 year old Gulf War I vet Michael Ingram officially died from heart disease according to the military, but the Houston, Texas natives Harris County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Joye Carter said Gulf War Syndrome was a contributing cause of death. (Houston Chronicle, 4-15-2000) His fellow disabled soldier and friend Paul Lyons revealed that 'they said he had a stroke. Ive never been able to understand it. He was coughing up blood.' Rich Fales, 44, of Silver Spring, Maryland, and a former member of a Virginia Army National Guard military police unit serving in the elder Bushs Gulf War still has trouble breathing and also coughs up blood--symptoms he attributes to his 1991 experiences inhaling thick smoke and particles from landfill fires. (Baltimore Sun, 1-13-2003) Hector Miranda, former Army supply sergeant from Huntington, Long Island, has been coughing up blood for years, even as military experts stood up [at a Gulf War I military conference] and told us it was all in our minds. And a former 1991 Gulf War tank commander, Jeffrey Rawls, 36, from Utica, New York, has central nervous system damage so severe that his brain is disintegrating, he cannot walk unassisted, vomits blood, suffers memory loss, and speaks with the slurred speech of a stroke victim. (NY Daily News, 11-11-1996)" Flocco confirms Rosalie Bertell's testimony about symptomology of victims who have inhaled DU dust. "'After 15 days to one year of exposure, symptoms [of depleted uranium] include hemorrhagic [bleeding] lungs, pulmonary edema, general

hemorrhaging, bronchial pneumonia....and vomited blood.'" Pulmonary edema, frequently associated with long standing struggles with bronchial or chest infections, was one of the official inducements of Tosto's demise. Most affecting, and damning, was the evidence that Flocco proffered from the handsome lad's bride, whom the military denied his wedding band because the authorities claimed to fear that "the cause of his death" might have contaminated the gold. Germs so powerful that they could withstand a thorough scrubbing, or anything similar, lacks all credibility as an explanation for this. Only DU, in fact, comes readily to mind as being able to resist attempts to root it out. In a similar decision, DOD sent a duplicate of his dog-tags instead of the originals, again without any credible rationale. Information Clearinghouse(http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/) is another window onto a popular consciousness that disallows further denial, despite the ongoing attempt at cavalier impunity by the powers that be and the apparently continuing ignorance of the public at large. Among a hundred odd postings that decry American official criminality in the deployment of DU, some of the materials evoke the militancy and the rhetorical casting down of a gauntlet typical of latter day Tom Paines and Thomas Jeffersons. Such avowals literally call for citizen dissociation(http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20232.htm) from U.S. rule. One of the nineteen 'causes of action' for such an extreme choice is this. "4. The Government over and over again, and still now is using illegal DU (Depleted Uranium) weapons and devices in direct opposition to signed United Nations agreements, degrading the United States of America to a renegade country, likely to have its leadership regime brought to war crimes trials and capitally punished." Other materials include cautious summaries of governmental and citizen scientific findings(http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2291.htm), which, with sweet reason, declare "U.S. government and military assertions continue to minimize or deny the environmental and health dangers of DU, but their statements are inconsistent with certain of their own reports. For example, at the same time dangers are being minimized a contradicting report reads: 'If DU enters the body, it has the potential to generate significant medical complications. The risks associated with DU in the body are both chemical and radiological...Personnel inside or near vehicles struck by DU penetrators could receive significant internal exposure' (U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute Report, 1995). Other Pentagon statements concerning the safety of DU are inconsistent with findings of non-government funded research which document that aerosolized particles are dangerous if inhaled. Once inside the lungs these particles pass through the lung-blood barrier and circulate freely throughout the body. At this point they act as a heavy-metal poison as well as cause 'low-level' cell irradiation in the bone marrow, brain, kidneys, and reproductive organs. The more immediate heavy-metal oxide damage, i.e. kidney failure, brain damage, is well documented in the scientific literature, and the potential for radioactive damage leading to carcinogenic disease is ever present (Durakovic, et al 2002)." As a contrast to this prolificity of interest among progressives at both the grassroots and professional or policy levels, one might turn to a reactionary news site such as Free Republic(http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/search?m=all;o=time;q=quick;s=%22depleted%

20uranium%22), which holds itself out as "America's exclusive site for God,

Family, Country, Life & Liberty constitutional conservative activists!"

This data-bank for Jesus and the well-heeled contains exactly zero hits about DU in its massive news section. The plight of those who put lives on the line for what these folks say they value, in other words, merits not one word. A recent start-up on the web(http://dubbs.info/ducoverage.htm) would be the sort of idea that this humble correspondent would promulgate if these intrepid innovators had not already done the job. The site's purpose, to evince "(a) public forum to discuss depleted uranium weapons," is an essential aspect of democracy. Its call: "Support free and open debate on depleted uranium," is the only way that democracy can function The material includes multiple opportunities for dialog(http://dubbs.info/bbs/index.php), additional media leads(http://dubbs.info/ducoverage.htm), and a general willingness to take all comers. Though THC would anticipate some bruising exchanges here that might in and of themselves be at best inane, as a process--exchanging views and creating a listening space--it seems like a model to support and expand. Literally scores of other list-serves, aggregators, community-news locations, political-organization windows, and general data clearinghouses bring independent and searching focus to both DU and the issues surrounding its use. War Without End(http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/the-americas/2005/02/13/radiation-in-iraq-equals-250000-nagasaki-bombs-page-38.php), for instance, places the DU situation squarely in the nuclear/imperial framework that THC has also pointed out is central. Countercurrents(http://www.countercurrents.org/bowles210310.htm), meanwhile, originates in South Asia and brings to the table both myriad scientific perspectives from the billion cousins on the sub-continent, and policy input based on a much closer exposure to contamination than American are likely so far to have experienced. Its not-quite-twohundred citations about DU contain a strong does of science that might be hard to find elsewhere and a militant condemnation of military policy that makes DU permissible. American Free Press(AFP) is a rollicking madhouse of yarns--viciously reactionary, occasionally fascist, commonly ant-semitic--that displays some of the complexity and conundrum that typifies issues such as Depleted Uranium. While Sourcewatch(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Free_Press) aptly points out the neo-nazi pedigrees behind AFP, the complicated history of Israel and Zionism is decidedly not a matter of good-guy Zionists and conspiracy-nutcase bigots. This humble correspondent, for example, is only one of thousands of credible intellectuals who has consistently challenged the interlinked foreign policies of Israel and the United States while at the same time demanding support for the rights of Jewish people in any context to live free of anti-semitic terror. More to the point in regard to DU, those who face denial or evisceration from the USG and like sources of succor, all of which speak the language of 'shut-up and take the pittance of compensatory payment,' many times seem to have nowhere to turn to speak, except in forums such as AFP. And a clever and thorough correspondent such as Christopher Bollyn, quoted above, produces work that stands any litmus test of credibility, regardless of the ideological bent of colleagues and attendant bystanders. When evaluating materials like these, 'guilt by association' simply does not wash. AFP has provided a gateway for twenty six DU articles(http://www.google.com/custom?domains=www.americanfreepress.net&q=%22deple

ted+uranium%22&sa=Search&sitesearch=www.americanfreepress.net&client=pub5329003121141183&forid=1&ie=ISO-8859-1&oe=ISO-88591&cof=GALT%3A%23008000%3BGL%3A1%3BDIV%3A%23336699%3BVLC%3A663399%3BA H%3Acenter%3BBGC%3AFFFFFF%3BLBGC%3A336699%3BALC%3A0000FF%3BLC%3A000 0FF%3BT%3A000000%3BGFNT%3A0000FF%3BGIMP%3A0000FF%3BFORID%3A1%3B&hl=e n), and THC can assure readers that they are much more likely to achieve a semblance of understanding of the key points of contention here than in the USG bookstore, Veterans Affairs output, any set of corporate broadcast or print publications, or by listening to the birds sing. Pulse Media, one of many scores of academically oriented portals to analysis(http://pulsemedia.org/?s=%22depleted+uranium%22) contains some poignant appeals in its pieces concerning DU Intoned a disgusted and overwhelmed Iraqi medical doctor concerning DOD contentions of insufficient evidence(http://pulsemedia.org/2010/09/13/iraq-the-tragic-legacy-of-depleted-uranium/), "How much proof do they want?" The work of such insightful analysts as Chalmers Johnson, reviewing monographs that skewer empire(http://pulsemedia.org/2009/05/15/chalmers-johnson-on-the-cost-of-empire/#more10798), also assist in keeping DU in the sort of wider context that THC is appealing to readers to seek. One needn't look far(http://www.swans.com/library/art10/iraq/flounders.html) to find other fine instances of such intellectual acuity, but for now, this all will suffice. Even Gather, the widespread multi-tinged 'gathering' of wordsmiths and tinkerers, has its share of little masterpieces about DU. Mugg Muggie's story asks if DU is "a Diabolical Conspiracy?" The narrative(http://repostoffavorite.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474977 723992) is historical, analytical, and scientific in its rich contextualization, even if it does lack, from the viewpoint of THC, an adequate explanatory political economic nexus to account for what it reports about the ongoing horrors of DU's deployment. Furthermore, over a thousand Gather entries(http://www.gather.com/searchResultsArticles.jsp?contentType=Articles&keywor ds=mugg+muggies+%2B+depleted+uranium&search=Searching...) intersect in one way or other with DU and its impacts--again, merely in its 'from-all-sidedness,' providing a basis for learning not apparent in a thousand-times-a-thousand government documents. In the middle of these exemplars of reportage stands an interesting character. John Hanchette(http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/bios/hanchett.htm) worked for years as a senior staffer at USA Today, a central actor in the transformation of corporate journalism at the end of the twentieth century. His resume includes a plethora of awards, many of which he received not once, but twice. In other words, he knows his way around the reporter's craft. His high-level engagement with the corporate-media monster, however, seemed to come to an end on the basis of a nasty brouhaha involving Depleted Uranium. Hanchette's brand of 'liberalism' would set THC's teeth on edge on a good day. Nonetheless, this otherwise estimable wordsmith did not deserve the cashiering that he received(http://www.fumento.com/military/hanchette.html), for the crime of being duped. His fall from grace almost exclusively resulted from hounding about one miscue in regard to a DU complainant who has all of the earmarks of an agent provocateur.

Whatever the case may be about this particular fraud, which, apparently, the PullitzerPrize winner did swallow, 'hook, line, and sinker,' Hanchette's extended background and richly resonant political economic analysis that he presented his readers is now sorely missed on the national scene, though journalism students at his alma mater(http://www.sbu.edu/About_SBU.aspx?id=11756) and readers in his old stomping grounds of Buffalo(http://www.niagarafallsreporter.com/gulfwarsuit.html) are again benefiting from his outpouring of good sense and provocative inquiry. Not only is his story compelling as such, however, but he also takes readers toward a larger vision of DU's meaning when he examines the role of organizations like Science Applications International Corporation(SAIC), a gigantic Federal contractor(http://www.saic.com/) which, THC's readers will soon see, forewarned of the DU nightmare, now polluting the human condition for the next four and a half billion years. Hanchette places tidbits like 'government contractor' in a context that is comprehensible, not to mention nearly irresistible in its 'military-industrial-complex' logic. He is acting as an interlocutor for an important Vanity Fair investigation when he points out what folks should note. "Private federal contractors now 'absorb the taxes paid by everyone in America with incomes under $100,000.' Viewed a bit differently, 'more than 90 percent of all taxpayers might as well remit everything they owe directly ... to some contractor rather than to the IRS.'" In any case, Hanchette's establishment of the parameters of DU's political economy is a service of inestimable value. Soldiers' sickening and dying otherwise seems some combination of bad luck and poor management, instead of as the systematic economics and conscious policy that it was. A penultimate note for this section results from establishing a stark contrast . Such independent outlets as this humble correspondent has just proffered so obviously both better substantiate and 'balance' their examinations that do the plethora of nonsensical and misleading half-truths that typify the 'cream' of government and attendant 'expert propositions. What a citizen ought to do in such a context becomes definitely a worrisome and uncertain matter. Malak Hamdan is Dr. Chris Busby's colleague. Their hard science, epidemiological report dispositively establishes that massive increases in cancers and other harsh, often lethal outcomes have been afflicting Southern Iraq since the deployment of DU weapons there. The report, "Cancer, Mortality, and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq, 20052009"(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaN5v0wQMI4), barely mentioned in 'established' media(INTERLINK), has received fairly full coverage from THC. Readers and viewers have choices, one of which is to listen to researcher Hamdan's impassioned imprecation. "'We plead to the public to demand," her lilting London intonation replete with emotion, that their governments 'get to the bottom of this,' as the saying goes. Finally, to make certain that one special jewel--its rarity guaranteeing its unique worth--from CNN doesn't disappear, this humble correspondent orders readers to view(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Lb4o0nxAkk), or find a way to read a transcript of Mohammed Jamjoon's phenomenal report from Fallujah. The document is the basis for science, the detection of reality that lacks any credible explanation. That CNN-central insisted on parroting DOD's "taking birth defects very seriously" but, 'golly, we just can't find any data,' is, at best execrable journalism, which the estimable Mr. Jamjoon finesses with his brilliant production. However, in all of this wealth of detail and morass of horrific incident, only on rare

occasions, such as in Bill Mesler's investigative piece for Nation, did a fairly extensive historical overview emerge. Nor did a clear linkage of history and political economic analysis show up anywhere, though again, in spotty fashion, many or even most of the grassroots and progressive expositions cited here did note important and even critical elements of such a 'getting-real' ascertainment. As THC moves from this and the next few portions of this nine part sequence of reporting and assessment, readers will find a deeper, richer, and more clearly articulated depiction of the chronology and events and underlying impetuses that have defined Depleted Uranium; more importantly, participants in this process will receive a plausible analysis about why DU has become indispensable to upper-strata American interests and what impact, especially regarding matters of consciousness and strategy, that is likely to have on citizens, soldiers, and bystanders generally. In almost all legitimate journalism regarding DU, all of the characters whom THC is profiling in this wider series make repeat appearances. One name, however, shows up as the basic imprimatur of 'been-there, done-that' authority. That is Major Doug Rokke. THC encourages readers to be patient, for that iconic patriot's tale is coming, emerging from a more fully contextualized political economic background and a more clearly expressed historical timeline. GROUP #5-Group #3, above, introduced primarily the vast intellectual product of administrative elements of the Federal government. Courts, legislatures, and other political levels also produce substantial materials concerning eventualities like those under review here today. While any deep and thorough compilation of such materials will await further attempts to gather together additional pieces of a comprehensive resource file, this humble correspondent insists on including a few such items in the here and now. Lawsuits, too, in this vein, open a window onto a landscape made noxious with Depleted Uranium. In some cases, such sources may offer a historical digging device superior to any other single sort of wellspring of data. A recent summary of this type of litigiousness, by no less an overarching prime mover in the field than the Health Physics Society, expressed the basis for this point(http://journals.lww.com/healthphysics/Abstract/2001/09000/An_Overview_of_the_Current_State_of_Radiation.5.aspx).

"Over the last three decades, radiation litigation has become a

unique field of toxic tort litigation, with many new precedent setting decisions providing guidelines establishing how cases will be litigated in the future. This article will provide a summary of the status of the issues that are being litigated in radiation cases, and suggest recommendations on how pending issues should be resolved in the future." The objective of this minimal overview here is merely to exemplify some of this wealth of evidence, on the one hand, and different ways of employing such data, on the other hand. Before embarking on such a listing, this humble correspondent intends to throw out a few 'editorial' remarks, as is his general wont. Two things seem apt to note. The first is that the lack of a toolkit similar to what this material suggests in outline inhibits both democratic dialog and incisive policy formulation in regard to intricate and delicate

matters such as DU present to citizens supposedly charged with operationalizing these technology policies in intelligent and optimal fashion. In a sense, the same sort of pattern shows up over and over and over again: a social need for intelligible data and analysis is clearly apparent; many 'stakeholders' bemoan the lack of it; nothing happens to make such materials accessible. What's up with that? Nor is this deficit the sum total of what is missing. On the contrary, the very process of litigation--fundamental as it is to smoothing the workings of modern capital--is not only generally opaque, but also is often mired in the most obtuse and baseless secrecy. Because these matters seem so frequently hidden, the extent of this pattern is difficult to determine exactly. However, even a brief perusal of this area illustrates that many filings and other aspects of legal process occur 'under seal.' Especially in regard to a controversy like DU, this should essentially almost never be the case, instead of frequently being so. While a plethora of objections and cavils about exposure to DU--as in hundreds of thousands of possible instances of such worrying and attendant requests for help--have proliferated since the first test-firings of such ordnance forty-odd years ago, one searches at length in order to uncover rare actual legal complaints. These formal filings led to lawsuits against different parties that might take responsibility for injuries that all but the clueless and the criminal now know almost certainly stemmed in some measure from Uranium's indubitable, and inexcusable, toxicity. THC can only report for certain on one such eventuality stemming from the hundreds of thousands of dead and incapacitated soldiers in Iraq; others likely do exist, awaiting explication on the basis of the necessary support for uncovering and reporting about them. The visible instance involves Herbert Reed, a New York National Guardsman, who, along with close to a dozen of his comrades, filed suit against the Army. Reed's travails form the substance of much of the Associated Press article quoted at some length in the Journalism section immediately prior to this. Many media outlets reported on this situation, although none--so far as THC's searches turn up--recount 'the rest of the story,' as Paul Harvey used to introduce his program. What happened in this case is, to say the least, not readily available. Free Speech Radio News may have scooped most other observers in the event, with. Rebecca Miles's 'Headliner(http://fsrn.org/content/thursday,-september-07,-2006/1862)' flowed forth during the September 7, 2006 broadcast.
"Ten US National Guard veterans of the war in Iraq have filed a lawsuit in a New York federal court over the use of depleted uranium. ...The federal lawsuit filed by the ten veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom seeks adequate compensation for injuries sustained from depleted uranium. The suit claims the United States Army is negligent for not advising troops of the danger of depleted uranium on the battlefield. The ten returned to

Fort Dix in 2004 with symptoms of migraines, facial swelling, and blood in the stool and urine. One of the plaintiff's is correction officer Augustine Mattos who said prior to a hearing for the lawsuit the army resisted testing them. 'We went to the medical staff who were handling our cases, they are like case workers at Fort Dix. We asked them to give us a depleted uranium test, first they said there was no test. Then they asked why we wanted a test. We said because we are having all these symptoms.' After yesterday's 2 hour hearing, District Judge John Cotterall has 30 days to rule on whether the lawsuit will proceed." The Judge's name is actually John G. Koeltl, which led this humble correspondent on a merry chase, readers may believe. This instance epitomizes one pernicious aspect of seeking knowledge these days in the U.S. In matters that are sensitive or controversial especially, follow-up is often rare, and completeness is roughly as rare as toothy chickens. Thus, the only citations from the pleadings in Reed's and his comrades-in-arms' complaint against the USG originated from the twisted sadistic mind of Roger Helbig, about whom readers will learn a bit more below. This vicious and assaultive proponent of DU misinformation, half-truths, big lies, dissimulation, and double-speak spoke of Reed's afflictions(http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2010/03/what-is-causingdeformities-in.html) mockingly. "The symptoms of a well known, very vocal and well travelled claimant Herbert Reed of NY City area read almost like a sitcom instead of as if they were real symptoms. The symptoms are laid out in the court filing that is believed to be under appeal after being dismissed with prejudice. '80. Plaintiff Reed sustained serious and permanent injuries, including but not limited to, shortness of breath, skin rashes, severe itching, body and joint aches, headaches, chronic fatigue, dizziness, diarrhea, blood in urine, blood in stool, blurrred vision, long and short term memory loss, and recurring abnormal growths requiring surgical removal, neuropathy of both hands and left leg, sleep apnea, chronic chest pains and sexual dysfunction.'" Of course, anyone not cretinous or monstrous will recognize the symptomology-plus or minus additional ailments--of Gulf War Illness and its cousins from Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Vieques, and beyond, such as among the 'energy employees' whose lives with Uranium were subject, finally, to governmental compensation, a brief discussion of which follows in a few paragraphs. Helbig's derision notwithstanding, the reason for paying attention to his ilk is that they often seem to have the bits of data otherwise missing. Not one other source that THC found reported the outcome of the case, 'dismissal with prejudice.' Helbig implies, falsely, that this demonstrates something about the lack of merit in the underlying claim. Quite likely, a combination of the Feres Doctrine(http://jonathanturley.org/2007/08/18/the-feres-doctrine-what-soldiers-really-needare-lawyers/)--essentially a carte blanche in regard to governmental abuse of soldiers-national security concerns, some aspect--despite the narrow band of instances allowed by the Federal Tort Claims Act--of sovereign immunity, or something similar sank this effort at redressing just grievances. The Democratic Underground included an excerpt(http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&addr ess=364x2398569) from an '06 news account that laid this out. "On September 7, in the first court case on Gulf War I to reach Federal Court, nine veterans from a National Guard unit argued their case before a judge in New York, claiming the Army violated its

own safety protocols by exposing them to radioactive depleted uranium and refusing to provide medical care. Representing the US Army, Assistant US Attorney John Cronan asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit immediately because courts can't decide 'sensitive military matters' and a 1950 Supreme Court decision ruled that soldiers can't sue the government for injuries caused by their military service." Justice Department barrister Cronan's reference to 'sensitive military matters' points at the toxic secrecy that inhibits research, learning, discussion, and, therefore, democracy about such issues. In such a context, examining Herbert Reed's accusation(http://www.indiadivine.org/audarya/ayurveda-health-wellbeing/1033149depleted-uranium-weapons-sickening-u-s-troops.htm), that "U.S. officials... knowingly put soldiers in contaminated areas" becomes next to impossible to prove. But the evidence that this is an accurate depiction is compelling. Rita King has written probingly about this case, though much of her work has been scrubbed from the web, She notes(http://www.gulfvetsurvey.org/BIZyCart.ASP?ACCOUNT=990&ACTION=DETAIL&CLIEN T=GWIorg&GROUP=Articles&ITEM_ID=ARTS010&NEXTPAGE=Articles.htm&THISGROUP=A rticles&THISPAGE=Contents.htm) Reed's analogy of DU to Agent Orange. "It took 30

years... before the United States government acknowledged the effects of Agent Orange. Even now... the full spectrum of that lethal chemical is still being minimized."
One can deny one voice; one can attempt to discredit a Rokke, a Durakovic, a Moret, a Kyne, a Riley, and other individuals whose testimony is credible and articulate and based on being present in the midst of toxic exposure and so on. But at some juncture, the combined witness of hundreds of thousands of cousins--soldiers and civilians, Americans and people of all lands where DU has exploded in the face of a community--becomes more than difficult to deny. It becomes criminal to overlook, all the more so when cheating on research, disallowing further study, and otherwise ignoring science and common sense are standard operating procedure. Rita King lets Herbert Reed make this point with powerful precision. "'I'm

aware of what is taking place out there,' Reed said. 'But there are thousands of soldiers who have been brainwashed that there's nothing wrong with them. The military won't take responsibility, and that's why we have this lawsuit. We want medical treatment for ourselves and our families. We want the government to admit the dangers of DU. We want them to stop using it, and we want them to clean up Iraq.'"
In a nutshell, what he wants is honor and justice. Though other DU litigation among soldiers is unlikely, because of the procedural and legal hurdles to achieving even a semblance of a fair hearing, such widespread suffering has induced varied outpourings in the courts before. Observers might anticipate more and more attempts by GI's to gain a measure of recompense for their injuries such as this recent case from

Tennessee(http://www.nashvillepost.com/news/2009/11/8/soldi ers_claim_war_zone_contractors_exposed_them_to_toxins). "'These for-profit corporations callously exposed and continue

to expose soldiers and others to toxic smoke, ash and fumes,' says the complaint filed in Nashville on Friday, which asks for damages on behalf of two Tennessee soldiers. 'These exposures are causing a host of serious diseases, increased risk of serious diseases in the future, death and increased risk of death.'"
Such actions, against the plutocrats who profit from dealings in death, might easily soon extend to DU weapons makers. These sorts of records can provide rich materials readily available in no other venue, an accompanying benefit of the whole 'legal discovery' process. A related courtroom battleground may exist, as well, in those places where the USG has been honing its use of DU ordnance. The story of Vieques will appear in some detail in the fifth little chapter of this nine-part series. The Navy has been exploding radioactive shells and bombs in that out of the way corner of paradise for forty years now. CNN recently reported of litigation(http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/02/01/vieques.illness/index.html?iref=allsearch) there by a formerly hale Marine who decided to 'draw his line in the sand' on the decimated beaches of Puerto Rico(http://current.com/news-and-politics/91192443_former-marineblames-cancer-on-military.htm). Readers who follow the links in this chain of documentation will see, again, all the signs and symptoms of death and morbidity in DU's Nuclear-Fool-Cycle wake. Hermogenes Marrero sees his effort as a stand for cousins everywhere, since his own life is forfeit from the multiple cancers that eat away at him. "Asked whether his duty on the island made him sick, Marrero

responds, 'Of course it did. ...This is American territory. The people that live here are American,' he said. 'You hurt someone, you have to take care of that person. And the government's just not doing anything about it.'" Not only are new lawsuits appearing that raise the prospect of remuneration for damages against soldiers and their families, however, but also older litigiousness proffers a wealth of data and incident that reveal the rocky, toxic landscapes that the USG has littered with DU and other poisons of the NFS. While this sampling is a mere slice, complete access to such materials would make much easier the cause of advancing knowledge about all of these DU debilitations. Three Mile Island can still cause goose bumps on those who tasted the metallic bite of radiation and yet never received compensation. IN RE TMI
LITIGATION(http://www.leagle.com/xmlResult.aspx?xmldoc=1999806193F3d613_1740 .xml&docbase=CSLWAR2-1986-2006) represents one of the final nails that Judge Rambo

drove into the coffin of those whom the release of radionuclides sickened and killed(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harvey-wasserman/people-died-at-threemile_b_179588.html) in and around Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in the years following the catastrophic accident(INTERLINK) there in 1979. Obviously, this case in no way directly involves DU; only a relatively few lawsuits deal directly with Uranium. However,several factors in the two decades of wrangling about TMI, or the occasionally even longer standing conflicts otherwise, are noteworthy in regard to legal, legislative, and epistemological approaches to dealing with radioactive bullets. For example(JLH/DK INTERLINK), record falsification, lack of dosage info, and other evidentiary difficulties beset plaintiffs at TMI. In terms of both the facts and the processes for establishing them, this exactly parallels what soldiers and civilians confront when they seek restitution for the damages wrought by DU. Moreover, these daunting data problems at TMI interacted with the standard of proof that prevails now in the legal realm in a fashion particularly toxic either to discovering the facts or to compensating victims equitably. This so-called 'Daubert Principle' acts as a bar to expert testimony(http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:7ijYfdelKpgJ:www.ausinc.com/new s/Higher_Hurdles.pdf+&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESi7AoVPUwRvLPouiDVzzSstpQW8RDuRlydgsl1tlxs27u3T4xNuwlr5vz3EOsuLN9bmuB2Yf_tEN8k1mTJj8842lIa6j6tg0Q5W8ymoDRqjqHZfgKbcJJr4PIL6uITi7t8Dui&sig=AHIEtbQp_A X6bqx5cFZB7ZnidkBSgF-5xg) that deals with contexts of uncertain or inadequate evidence. That such an approach predominates demonstrates(http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/press/2003/2003-0707-CEN-

resulted in the exclusion of critical data, thereby compromising justice. Some judges have misinterpreted Daubert; others have thrown out all the evidence when the scientific experts in the case seem to disagree."
Of critical import in the prevalence of this methodology is a purposeful practice of disingenuous ambiguity or ignorance. "The

daubert.htm) the way in which court-ordered 'standards' "have

Daubert opinion 'has resulted in a concerted campaign to manufacture uncertainty about scientific evidence,' says David M. Michaels, professor in the department of occupational and environmental health at George Washington University School of Public Health."
Finally, the plaintiffs' copious revelations, here and in many other instances, about different mechanisms by which low-level radiation can cause harm are useful to DU-afflicted parties for two reasons. The first is that such arguments create a scientific baseline for presenting DU victims' complaints. Second, such records clarify the time frame during which authorities have to acknowledge that

they had received 'notice' of possible morbidity and mortality of the sort that have afflicted both military and civilian victims of DU.
The Supreme Court's decision in Walters v. Radiation Survivors, though it turned on simple questions of representation(http://supreme.justia.com/us/473/305/case.html#F1) that veterans might obtain in their dealings with the VA, stemmed from voluminous individual actions that contain potential gold mines for accurate historical and political comprehension of such social-scientific matters as the growth of radiation in industry, the role of nuclear industry in modern capitalism, the evolution of radiation protection standards, and vast documentation of government/military/business perfidy(http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:uwBVpwsZcEYJ:www.law.ua.edu/pub s/jlp/files/issues_files/vol13/vol13art03.pdf+%22what+are+lawyers+good+for%22+%2B+selin ger&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgRfzdK_Kpod2dznZx_N4BpzoinDRFERBHyBRYIZ 6mfSD8sIG1HeeJh7A9ebyLt6Z2AHO14Qzi38aTerwXonCpf-tvJp1TNp6-Lg8u1Oh0XdzNL3w5xWHjeErzTTdYqMC6Y94G&sig=AHIEtbTYlBaXTQ5YUxA_5Mbs25geTnu7GA) in relation to honesty and fairness in matters of nuclear evidence and process. That literally thousands, or even tens-of-thousands, of such veins of factual ore are in existence in court records is basically beyond doubt. As one pro-nuclear but balanced law review correspondent stated this issue(http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBYQFjAA&url=http%3A %2F%2Flawreview.byu.edu%2Farchives%2F1989%2F4%2Fgoo.pdf&ei=nJ8CTdatMIiq8Abi16 W9DA&usg=AFQjCNETmeXShp5pG7ufTTiNH1zVp_jZVQ&sig2=nzgQ5_hvaCDyjmRP9dyVMg ) in 1989, "(y)et the law properly recognizes an action in tort for radiation injury. In recent years, actions involving thousands of plaintiffs alleging radiation injury have been brought against the United States and defense contractors." That number has multiplied by at least an order of magnitude since then, leaving altogether aside DU injuries and attendant complainants. A handful of such Federal cases, involving either the governmental weapons/energy establishment, or the 'merchants of death' themselves, are particularly noteworthy. Arguably, one key point here is the near inevitability of Uranium's returning to its martial roots at some juncture, both for physical and political economic reasons. In Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corporation v. the Natural Resources Defense Council(http://supreme.justia.com/us/435/519/), for example, while the decision and legal process undermined even the faintest prayer for democratic science and precautionary governance, the NRDC arguments focused extensively on the necessity to understand the impacts of the entire Nuclear Fool Cycle before signing off on any decision to build a nuclear electric generating station. The reasoning and documentation attendant on such investigatory nexus is both historically and conceptually apt for purposes of understanding of and action about DU problems. The entire social, economic, and political context of Karen Silkwood's untimely death, after her exposure to Plutonium on the job, in many ways parallels the experiences of Doug Rokke, Dennis Kyne, and the soldiers whom Joyce Riley has dedicated her life to helping. Thus, Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee Corporation might readily yield both factual and analytical assistance to DU's victims. Here is a mere smidgeon of what this humble correspondent means, from the closing arguments of Gerry Spence, one of Bill Silkwood's lawyer, at the close of the longest trial in Oklahoma history. These arguments are directly

analogous(http://books.google.com/books?id=RCQoVslE8zEC&pg=PA236&lpg=PA236&dq= silkwood+v.+kerrmcgee+corp&source=bl&ots=iCYuWubOER&sig=NIZFlw8ICIDTXMd92is1lQfCBX4&hl=en&ei =HM0HTebwK4H78Aah0OmcAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCEQ6 AEwATgU#v=onepage&q&f=false) to what has happened to tens, or hundreds, of thousands of U.S. soldiers, as well as to the fates of millions of civilians and other bystanders. "During the course of the trial, we petitioned the court to raise the (punitive damages) claim from ten to seventy million dollars. When we commenced this trial, we didn't know a great many things that we learned during the course of the trial. I had no idea of the things that Kerr-McGee did to living human beings who worked for them. I was never aware of the overt effort that was made by Kerr-McGee to keep from the employees the bare, clean truth about the dangers of Plutonium. I didn't realize that that was the way it was in industry all over, and that it was even almost encouraged and countenanced by those who were regulating Kerr-McGee." One can only imagine what might be available in the half-dozen or so cases that make up Karen's complicated legacy. Some of them may be 'under seal' and unavailable Thus, a tile like Compilation of 'Silkwood' Rulings and Decisions, by Eric Jakel, typifies(http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news/rpccna/pcrcna19.htm) the type of research that, if undertaken, would advance public understanding, injured parties' capacity to seek assistance, and a generally high standard of archival responsibility regarding the facts of these, to say the least, difficult circumstances. Allen v. the United States, the travesty that the USG proffered to all of the 'downwinders' who suffered from weapons test fallout(http://cases.justia.com/uscourt-of-appeals/F2/816/1417/137970/), At every appellate level, despite anywhere from some to substantial evidence of weapons-radiation's being responsible for cancer and other sickness, the courts held that since the decision to expose soldiers or civilians was not a purposeful policy, but "a discretionary function," the government was exempt from liability(http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBcQFjAA&url=http%3A %2F%2Fwww.fas.org%2Fsgp%2Fcrs%2Fmisc%2F95717.pdf&ei=VS4ITeqsKMKC8gaIoKFV&usg=AFQjCNFDBR1FbSivyJ3kXSXgnjhV05tcpA&sig2 =5mHoN0S_hmxT77ZZ7PS6kw). Nevertheless, the reasoning, data, and science available in these files could prove of immense value to vets fighting DU damage. A similar situation arose among Uranium miners, whose lung cancers medical and public health specialists had been scribing to the effects of low level radiation--especially radon gas. In Begay v. United States, Navajo miners appear as sacrificial victims to the need(http://openjurist.org/768/f2d/1059/begay-v-united-states-anderson-rn) to have atomic bombs. 'Our way of life' demands this deadly decision-making. "Suppose a high-level decision maker says, 'International pressures make open-air atomic testing
highly necessary. Time is of the essence. We know as a result of such testing some people are going to get hurt. We can't tell them they are going to get hurt. We can't even warn them what to do to minimize or prevent the hurt. In order to preserve our way of life some people unknown to them and unknown to us are going to give all for the good of all.'" This 'disposability doctrine, equally nauseating in regard

to Gulf War Vets and more, continues to apply. One might wonder, obviously, what will be left of 'the American way' after another half century of such callous disregard for human rights. Historian and public health practitioner Doug Brugge highlighted the

absurdity(http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=7&ved=0CD8QFjAG&url=http% 3A%2F%2Fajph.aphapublications.org%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F92%2F9%2F1410.pdf&ei=ljQITY qjIoH68AaolJFB&usg=AFQjCNHGJulIHjbpsBTorCsIWou695vWoA&sig2=79ORIGpRapjmgZr 5FJ6QbA) of any claim that morbidity from inhaled Uranium was just not something one could expect. "An association, long observed, between these mining activities and a lung disease, then called
Bergkrankheit, was first reported in detail in 1879. The investigators reported that 75% of all deaths among miners were due to this disease. Later follow-up reduced this extraordinary estimate by about a third, provided detailed histological descriptions of the cancers, and also discussed a high prevalence of nonmalignant lung disease."

Even the spate of cases that various parties have brought in relation to the enforcement of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act(http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/law/lwsch/journals/bcealr/28_1/05_FMS.htm), and also regarding the fiasco that transpired as a result at Yucca Mountain(http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CCcQFjAC&url=http% 3A%2F%2Fncseonline.org%2FNLE%2FCRSreports%2F10Jan%2FR40996.pdf&ei=IUAITffIPM OC8gap7rS5AQ&usg=AFQjCNETqNCrY3ampPXvLfD4Cj8avCo2Q&sig2=IyhnDeng7kf9wwi9dAPtBg), likely hide hordes of useful ideation and critical facts for those who are struggling to understand, or to advance certain claims about, the entire NFS evolution, as well as particular aspects of its unfolding. The whole basis for suits, both from utilities seeking to rid themselves of noxious offshoots of the NFS(http://nuclearstreet.com/nuclear_power_industry_news/b/nuclear_power_news/archive /2010/04/06/nuclear-utilities-sue-doe-to-halt-nuclear-waste-fees-04062.aspx) and from communities seeking to finesse location of waste repositories anywhere nearby, is the toxicity of radioactive substances. Moreover, the "unavoidable delay" promulgated as a defense by DOE further attests to the intractability of these issues. That, except for some vague simulacrum of compensation to the family of Ms. Silkwood, and the stalemate over how to deal with NFS garbage(http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=8675&type=0), all of these cases decimated plaintiff's hopes and rights, ignoring their devastating injuries and the high likelihood that radiation played a causative role in those harms, is beside the point of listing them here. They are like time capsules full of key facts for those who would understand the development and deleterious impacts of the Nuclear Fool Cycle.

Other, more recent, suits hold out a continuing chance for making good on government promises, at the same time that they, too, contain likely treasures for those seeking DU justice(http://freelancedocumentdrivennews.blogspot.com/2010/01/cdc-and-niosh-providemeans-of.html). Such facilities as the Brookhaven National Laboratory have aggregate employee cancers in the hundreds of thousands that, as one investigative correspondent reported in his web-portal, "the mainstream press does not print." In other cases, far-flung plaintiffs and a seemingly revolving cast of corporate defendants(http://ftp.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F3/200/200.F3d.33 5.98-51133.98-51073.html) have brought over a thousand plaintiffs from Texas to court complaining of radiation-induced injuries from

recent Uranium mining activities. Even though the courts generally crush these claims, the background data continues to call out for review and aggregation to demonstrate dispositively the criminal insanity of the NFS. A court-battle near Pittsburgh, revolving around the nowdefunct Nuclear Materials and Equipment Company, has arisen again and again, once more with Fortune 500 companies directly involved in enriching themselves from atomic enterprises but unwilling to pay for damages that workers and communities have incurred as a result of their activities(http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08118/876937-85.stm). The Post-Gazette journalist covering this situation writes in wonder at its volatile twists and turns. "The legal action has such a convoluted history that it's hard to keep track of it all without a flow chart. First filed in 1994, the suit has also been delayed at every turn, most recently by the seven-year Babcock & Wilcox bankruptcy case in New Orleans that itself was disrupted when Hurricane Katrina flooded the bankruptcy court. The whole thing has been further complicated by a separate proceeding in a New York state court in which American Nuclear Insurers, the insurance company for both corporations, has balked at paying damage awards."
The Infamous Karen Silkwood lawsuit's lead lawyer, Fred Baron, is also litigating this going-on-two-decade action that has roots from half a century ago. None of these effectuations of conflict resolution have delivered complete remuneration, either to those whom radiation of one kind or another had damaged, or to those who anticipated disadvantageous atomic results in the future. The vast majority of the legal holdings blasted plaintiff's hopes. The substantial value of these efforts is nevertheless indisputable, for the simple reason that the litigation process guarantees a rich record of facts and relationships that can assist the rest of us in understanding what is happening when radiation and industry and working people intersect in factories, in the natural environment, or on the battlefield. The extent of this beneficent assist shows up in many ways. A "related-cases" search on Google, for Silkwood, for instance, yielded 101 additional citations, many of which were historically or conceptually relevant, or both(http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=related:IZMy6jAya8YJ:scholar.google. com/&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=ZMcHTar1L8H88Ab4ztnyAg&sa=X&oi=science_links&ct=slrelated&resnum=9&ved=0CGQQzwIwCA) Facts on File(http://www.scribd.com/doc/24646368/library-in-a-book-nuclear-power) makes available an overall introduction to nuclear issues that includes an extensive guide to litigation in the atomic sphere. This material pointedly articulates why, when they remain accessible to citizens, such matters present opportunities for learning and exploration that are equal to any other method of discovering an accurate appraisal of the field in question, in this case specifically DU and more generally atomic issues generally

In summing up one such important case already cited above, Allen v. United States, author David Newton notes "Discovery in preparation for the trial took more than two years, and the trial itself did not begin until September 20, 1982. The trial lasted 13 weeks, producing a transcript of more than 7,000 pages in length, with exhibits covering an additional 54,000 pages. The court deliberated for 17 months before issuing a 225page opinion." As an attorney might state quietly in THC's stead, "I rest my case." International jurisdictions also present multiple instances of legal action by radiation victims, including examples directly involving the compensation of DU injuries(http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/2003December/011695.html). A single such case from England represents both a hope for legal redress that just now seems impossible in the United States, at the same time that the evidence and rationality of the courts contain further material to validate veteran and civilian assertions that DU has done them in. "A British man is suing a civilian company over radiological contamination allegedly suffered while unknowingly working with depleted uranium. Richard David was an engineer and machinist from 1985 to 1995 in an aerospace firm based in England. His job required him to fine finish metal components with a scouring pad, producing a dust resembling talcum power. David now believes this powder was an alloy which included depleted uranium - a material of which ordinary workers had no knowledge. His throat caused him immense pain even after the first few months of work, but when he eventually left for health reasons his lungs and wind-pipe had suffered irreparable damage." For several years now, progressive and foreign press reports have warned of a pending suit by Iraq against both England and America. Tens of thousands of birth defects, cancers, and various other manifestations of mortality and morbidity have flowed from battlefield deployment of DU, according to what such reports suggest that Iraqi officials will maintain(http://child.healthyflag.com/babies/fallujah-babies-born-with-birthdefects-as-a-result-of-depleted-uranium-wmd-contaminated-dust.html). According to such sources, Iraq's "Ministry for Human Rights will file a lawsuit against Britain and the US over their use of depleted uranium bombs in Iraq, an Iraqi minister says. Iraqs Minister of Human Rights, Wijdan Mikhail Salim, told Assabah newspaper that the lawsuit will be launched based on reports from the Iraqi ministries of science and the environment." Again, the reasoning and the records of such litigation hold out further verification of what DU veterans have been saying for nearly twenty years. The Congressional Record is another location full of admissions that the USG knew or should have known about the now indisputable damage wrought by DU(http://books.google.com/books?id=jP1B7zv_zbMC&pg=SL5-PA111&lpg=SL5PA111&dq=%22begay+v.+united+states%22+%2B+uranium&source=bl&ots=2QeikN1IKO&si g=xjtcrEn6i9JNa9vyIO9reO1hYp4&hl=en&ei=ljQITYqjIoH68AaolJFB&sa=X&oi=book_result& ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22begay%20v.%20united%20st ates%22%20%2B%20uranium&f=false). "The Federal Government recognized the risks of Uranium productions from the onset of the nuclear program," initiating experiments on miners as early as 1949 without informing anyone of potential harms. DOE's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE) in many ways straddles the line between litigation and hearing(http://www.hss.energy.gov/HealthSafety/ohre/roadmap/achre/dispart3.html). While

the now likely thousands-of-volumes collections of ACHRE remain set apart from the normal research pathways involving DU, almost all of this material is likely congruent with, and some of it is indubitably equivalent to, the claims that veterans are advancing as a result of their toxic taste at the back end of the Nuclear Fool Cycle. Certainly, at times, voluminous testimony(http://www.hss.energy.gov/HealthSafety/ohre/roadmap/achre/public_comment.ht ml) appears that indicts the originators of the NFS. Of course, the declassification of some documents and the admission of decades of malfeasance are laudable steps, given the morass of duplicity and impunity from which ACHRE has emerged. Chapter Twelve in the final report, "The Uranium Miners," again establishes incontrovertibly that government agents, both in industry and throughout the 'Atomic Energy' bureaucracy of death, knew of the horrific effects of Uranium toxicity. It elicits first the experience of the use of Uranium in Europe, in both the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. A large majority of Uranium workers died of occupational illnesses. "In 1879, two researchers identified the disease as intrathoracic malignancy. They reported that a
miners' life expectancy was twenty years after entering the mine, and about 75 percent of the miners died of lung cancer. By 1932, both Germany and Czechoslovakia had deemed the miners' cancers a compensable occupational disease." German doctors who had emigrated emphasized these points in the

1940's and '50's here. Thus, the Human Radiation Experiment process has evolved, looking backward, in a context of forewarning ignored, and, looking forward, in the midst of a new set of experimental victims, U.S. soldiers who have fought in imperial wars. Some combination of the tragic and bizarre and treacherous rises like a noisome miasma from these facts. Instead of any semblance of lessons learned coming to the fore, the entire project takes on much more of the texture of a public relations exercise. In this guise, the guilty bureaucrats and plutocrats exonerate themselves with selfcongratulatory tones, boasting of their willingness to delve slightly beneath the surface of past sins at the exact same moment that they are foisting off noxious ordnance on millions of victims and promoting a 'nuclear renaissance' that guarantees more of the same until a planetary lethal dose is present. Still, for the patient seeker and the diligent researcher, much may be available under the ACHRE auspices that can demonstrate the DU duplicity and venality of the agents of government and enterprise in charge of the powers that be. Hearing is a noun about which few folks are likely to ponder; yet it is a lovely word. Though this humble correspondent has not had the time or the support to dig into the many sources of hearings, he is well aware that in such materials, many a 'smoking gun' might lurk that can help to cement the civil and criminal cases against corporate and State officials who presently beat their breasts and deny culpability, preaching both certainty of harmlessness and uncertainty about harm In its "Report to the Congress," the "Presidential Commission on Catastrophic Nuclear Accidents" includes a set of bibliographic entries(http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news/rpccna/pcrcna19.htm) that include a score or more of such gatherings of data, beginning with discussions around the Atomic Energy Acts of both 1947 and 1954. In viciously stupid fashion, redolent of the heroic suffering of Julian Assange in seeking a democratization of secrecy, a fair amount of the material from these sources remains classified. Other sources also include lists() of hearings of this sort, all of which, like the lawsuits just above, are at the very minimum useful troves of data. Dan Fahey testified at a more recent instance of such a listening session, "The True

Cost of War(http://veterans.house.gov/hearings/Testimony.aspx?TID=42292&Newsid=46&Name=Mr. %20Dan%20%20Fahey)," in as fierce a fashion as such a careful scholar will ever allow himself to do. The title of this set of testaments, though it is more elliptical than the evocatively named 'Merchants of Death' investigation of Gerald Nye's forum seventy-five years ago, reaches much the same conclusions(http://www.google.com/search?q=nye+committee&hl=en&client=firefoxa&rls=org.mozilla:enUS:official&channel=s&prmd=iv&tbs=tl:1&tbo=u&ei=XI4HTdyJNYH58AbDnJzWCg&sa=X&oi =timeline_result&ct=title&resnum=11&ved=0CHQQ5wIwCg) about political economy, duplicity, and self-serving self-righteousness. "The Department of Veterans Affairs study of DU is neither structured nor functioning to provide basic information about the possible health effects of DU exposure among Gulf War veterans. There are two major flaws with the study that undermine its integrity and value. First, the DVA study is undersized. From its inception in 1993, the study included only a tiny fraction of the number of veterans with known or suspected exposures to DU. Consequently, we have no information about the possible health effects among the thousands of Gulf War veterans exposed to DU in friendly fire incidents; during the recovery, transport, and inspection of contaminated equipment; and as a result of the July 1991 munitions fire at Doha, Kuwait. Second, the DVA study has become politicized. In recent years, officials from both the Department of Defense (DoD) and DVA have repeatedly presented false and incomplete information about the existence of cancers and tumors among the few dozen veterans being studied. The deceitful statements and omissions by DoD and DVA officials undermine the integrity of the study and call to question its purpose." Congressman Dan Burton's Committee on Government Reform and Oversight issued Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses: VA, DoD Continue to Resist Strong Evidence Linking Toxic Causes to Chronic Health Effects(http://www.gulfwarvets.com/105388.htm) in 1997. As early as that, a full spectrum of dissection of DU's likely impacts, and, in particular, indictment of the execrable practice of "not listening to vets," was documenting these sorts of matters. The narrative's overview was damning. "Depleted uranium [DU] maintained a pervasive presence in the Gulf War theater. In the form of armor-piercing penetrator rounds, DU, upon reaching enemy targets, ignites and becomes a toxic agent that could poison anyone who came into contact with it, including U.S. troops. The threat might have been minimized had Gulf War servicemen and women been trained to protect themselves against such exposure, but as numerous veterans, Defense and GAO employees have attested, the military establishment did not prepare troops for the dangers they would encounter or the risks they would incur. ...(in) destroying more than 1,400 Iraqi tanks, in addition to other equipment and weapons storage facilities during the Persian Gulf War. Veteran Michael Stacy's eyewitness testimony confirms the military depended on DU as a preferred weapon of war, and used it to destroy everything from tanks to light-armored vehicles to bunkers." In addition to giving vent to such straightforward condemnation of established views and protocols, and offering analytical acuity and empirical meat to support what

veterans have been saying for decades about DU's effects, such forums often contain documentation or testimony that, as in the case of litigation and other such overlooked baskets of information, is difficult or impossible to uncover otherwise. Again, even such a teensy precis as this ought to suggest such possibilities for expansion and extraction. National legislation, dating from the dawn of the atomic age, will also provide significant support for reconstructing the historical record in regard to DU. Various acts of Congress, beginning with the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, and continuing to the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000, and beyond, proffer historical markers, conceptual underpinnings, and scientific standards that might assist in a complete comprehension of DU dilemmas. For laws prior to 2002, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's multi-volume compilation(http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=38&ved=0CEMQFjAHOB4&u rl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nrc.gov%2Freading-rm%2Fdoccollections%2Fnuregs%2Fstaff%2Fsr0980%2Fv2%2Fsr0980v2.pdf&ei=EaMKTcebEcT38Aa4 qbyfAQ&usg=AFQjCNGkpemUSekCFDORguZJgRR0x9cMEA&sig2=AVNVqoUWblRB0syUF W-roA) of atomic legislation, though not always intuitively organized, does give any researcher fairly comprehensive access to when and what, concerning such laws. Parsing and putting in context such a vast selection is daunting, but it does promise to bear fruit for those who insist that a rational disposition of nuclear questions, despite all of the perfidy and special pleading characteristic of the field, is still possible. Among the Acts of Congress especially pertinent to DU might be the Uranium Mill Tailings Act of 1978, the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Act of 1980, and the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. All of the several score laws that construct, direct, and mediate the damages of the Nuclear Fool Cycle likely embody materials and ideas that could benefit earth's human cousins damaged by DU, but these three, about the wastes that so conveniently ended up in pyrophiric ordnance, ought to garner special attention. Additionally, four other more recent legislative developments entail mandates directly applicable to the plight of veterans and their families in relation to Depleted Uranium. The Veterans Dioxin and Radiation Compensation Standards Act of 1984 and the Radiation Exposed Veterans Compensation Act of 1988 brought some minimal level of remuneration and restorative justice to the tens of thousands of Atomic Veterans, so eerily similar in many of their complaints, and in their combative connection to 'established truth' in science, to DU-exposed soldiers and non-combatants. Thereafter, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990 started out being essentially a Federal workers compensation program for underground miners, but ended up covering open-pit production, mill-workers, and some civilians who had suffered from exposure to fallout and other radioactive detritus. Both in the form of recompense and in the historical and contemporary assessment of dangers, these materials apply immediately and obviously to DU-victims. A 2005 volume from the National Academies Press(http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11279&page=17), Assessment

of

the Scientific Information for the Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program, describes the complexities of RECA
in its second chapter. Much pertinent material emerges here and elsewhere in such collections about atomic legislation, including lists of thousands of witnesses that include

above-ground miners exposed to Uranium, all of whose transcripts are available to citizens who request them. The Department of Justice, in helping to administer these claims, which threatened to become a tsunami both of litigation and social protest, speaks straightforwardly about the origins and logic of the fight against the USG. Its materials(http://www.justice.gov/civil/torts/const/reca/about.htm) are also must-reading for DU-elimination advocates. "Essential to the development of nuclear weapons was the

mining and processing of uranium ore, conducted by tens of thousands of workers. Following the cessation of the governments weapons tests, many filed class action lawsuits alleging exposure to known radiation hazards that were eventually dismissed by the appellate courts. Congress then stepped in and devised a program to make partial restitution to the individuals who developed serious illnesses after exposure to radiation released during atmospheric nuclear tests or after employment in the uranium industry. Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA or the Act), 42 U.S.C. 2210 note (2006), on October 5, 1990 and later broadened the scope of the Acts coverage on July 10, 2000. The Act offers an apology and monetary compensation to individuals who contracted certain cancers and other serious diseases following their exposure to radiation released during above-ground atmospheric nuclear weapons tests or, following their occupational exposure to radiation while employed in the uranium industry during the buildup to the Cold War. This unique statute was designed as an expedient, low-cost alternative to litigation."
A 'low-cost' method for buying off the assaulted survivors and the families of the knowingly endangered dead may seem like sound fiscal policy and responsible administration to some folks. After all, such an approach is likely preferable to the criminal misrepresentation and purposeful harm that DOE and DOD have engendered. At its best, however, such programmatic acceptance of the entire Fool Cycle nightmare is light years from ecologically sound or socially just governance. The Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program, meanwhile(http://law.justia.com/us/codes/title42/42usc7384.html), first passed in the year 2000, though its roots also date from the 1970's or before. It primarily set up a series of hoops through which a fraction of the quarter million or more damaged 'energy workers'--by which the common-sense common citizen might infer that the USG means such folks as those exposed to Uranium or its byproducts or concomitant contaminants--might seek some compensation for grotesque cancers and insidious illnesses and the deaths that had

resulted from these multiple sources of morbidity. The Atomic Heritage Foundation stated this point in as nice a manner as possible( http://www.atomicheritage.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=232 &Itemid=151). "As usual with many government programs, this legislation was enacted without fully understanding or exploring the wide variety of groups of individuals who were exposed to radioactive or toxic substances." The bravery of sick and dying people(http://www.anirrationaldomain.net/blog/openletter.htm) affected by occupational exposure parallels the bravery of sickened and discarded soldiers. Of course, the science proving their victimization, and the official repudiation of such demonstrable knowledge, as well as the bureaucratic process of diminution, derision, and deception, also mimic what has transpired in the lead-up to, and far too often, the aftermath of these supposedly restitutional administrative actions. A Uranium breast-cancer victim speaks powerfully even as she battles for her life. "I made my living as a technical writer and editor; I am a college instructor as well. I am not a physician or an attorney, but that hardly means that I am a simpleton who will accept this miscarriage of justice without question and without complaint. Neither should many others whom the government, over the past eight years, has considered ineligible for compensation even though scientific studies prove they are. Not only do ionizing radiation doses that are a fraction of my NIOSH-documented dose cause cancer, but also NIOSHs flawed dose reconstruction process severely underestimates my actual dose. Since the reconstruction is so clearly wrong in my case, there is absolutely no reason to accept NIOSHs findings for other site employees as any more reliable. As far as I am concerned, DOE is responsible for the homicide of all of those Fernald site workers who have died from cancer and/or illnesses from toxic substance exposures. DOE is further responsible for attempted homicide in my case and in the case of all those Fernald site workers who still live, but are sick and struggling for justice. ... By refusing to c * The dose reconstruction process is a sham that will be perpetuated The EEOICPA was not and was never intended to be anything besides a piece of feel good legislation that would make politicians look as if they care about dead, sick and dying site workers but is meant to accomplish nothing The US Government prefers wasting millions more dollars on top of the millions already wasted coming up with excuses for not compensating cancer-stricken Fernald victims instead of giving us justice, which would have been less expensive and time-consuming; The US Government will drag the claims process out for the survivors of dead Fernald cancer victims for so long that they will either give up or die trying; and NIOSH, HHS, DOE, DOL and indeed the entire US Government

would like nothing better than for us still-living but sick and dying Fernald site workers to just go ahead and die." Since such legislative activity as Ana Madani pillories just above turns out to play a central part in documenting both the chronology and the state of knowledge about risk concerning the Nuclear Fool Cycle, many of these eventualities will appear in more detail in coming sections of this series. For now, those who are seeking justice might recognize and remember that both in their own right, and in terms of the accompanying hearing process that attends them, such emanations of political dialog and codified action contain huge caches of data and possible insight into fighting the DU fight in a winnable way. Even international legislatures are weighing in on this situation. Canada, as one example(ftp://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/97-98/bill/asm/ab_00510100/ajr_67_cfa_19980813_090530_sen_floor.html), has Members of Parliament who are introducing legislation to ban engagement by Canadian troops wherever DU is in use. One such MP put the matter succinctly in the Summer of 2008. "'Our military does not use depleted uranium weapons and we should not be deploying our soldiers to fight with armies who do.'" He continued, "'The Canadian government must take strong and decisive action to help rid the world of this environmental and toxic health hazard. Long lasting and often deadly effects on soldiers and innocent civilians alike have been well documented.'" Various other publications(http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5258) also document this increasing national insistence to our North that DU is evil, nasty, and unsupportable as munitions. Just prior to this flurry of action, the entire European Union for the fourth time resolved to seek an international ban on DU weapons(http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+TA+P6TA-2008-0233+0+DOC+XML+V0//en) through the United Nations that would completely delegitimize their use. Noting the U.N.'s various present-moment condemnations of such killing mechanisms, the EU, following a final prefatory declaration, "E. whereas the use of depleted uranium in warfare runs counter to the basic rules and principles enshrined in written and customary international, humanitarian and environmental law," demanded good riddance to this bad, bad rubbish. Its nearly nine to one vote in favor of this measure is especially noteworthy. Even parts of the U.K coalition that, along with the U.S., remains one of the handful of adamant proponents of this DU death dance, have begun to speak vociferously against continued deployment. The utilization of Scotland for target practice(http://www.robedwards.com/2009/04/growing-campaign-to-bandepleted-uranium-weapons.html) undoubtedly plays a large role in this new movement for change. "The Scottish government is coming under mounting pressure to

back an international ban on the use of depleted uranium (DU) in weapons. MSPs from the Scottish Nationalist, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties are calling on Scottish ministers to try and stop DU from being used by the UK government in future conflicts. They also want an end to the testing of DU shells at the Dundrennan military firing range near Kirkcudbright."
The meaning of all of this, in addition to the overwhelming sense among Earth's

seven billion human cousins that DU is ecocidal criminality, is that large collections of research, data, and opinion are available that defenestrate USG contentions about the uncertainty of DU's effects, let alone providing any support to the absurd notion that DU is harmless. A complete collection of such materials would be another invaluable service in the overall struggle against DU dastardliness. At the other end of the political stepladder, many jurisdictions within the U.S. are working to unhinge the Uranium economy, 'depleted' or otherwise. The Navajos, who have confronted a legacy of death from the toxic metal that surpasses that of the military vets, recently altogether banned mining(http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/navajos_ban_uranium_mi ning/) on their lands. "'Its very simple: Uranium kills,' said Mark Maryboy of the Navajo Council Delegate. 'This legislation just chopped the legs off the uranium monster,' added Norman Brown of Din Bidziil, a coalition of 23 Navajo organizations seeking to end uranium mining on Navajo lands. While celebrating the passage of the law, the first of its kind in Indian country, the Din community vowed to oppose passage of a federal energy bill with subsidies of $30 million for uranium mining." State and even local governments have also begun to act against various stages of the NFS, all of which show a sense of Federal impunity in promulgating a Uranium-based future. Minnesota(http://www.mdva.state.mn.us/du/), the first State to order comprehensive testing for returning vets, in many ways comes closest to a progressive democratic position on this issue. In Spring, 2007, the Minneapolis Star Tribune(http://www.truthout.org/article/depleted-uranium-poisoning-our-planet) reported that "a state Senate committee OK'd a bill providing for testing veteran national guardsmen returning from Iraq to see if dust from spent-uranium munitions has harmed them." TruthOut.org and other liberal and progressive media outlets made an effort to make this a national story, alas to little avail. Nevertheless, TruthOut's Florida source, the Daytona daily paper cited in the journalism section above, did report of increasing widespread activity. "Health and environmental effects of depleted uranium are at the heart of scientific studies, a lawsuit in the New York courts and legislative bills in more than a dozen states (although not in Florida)." Colorado is among the Western states that have begun playing an increasingly hands-on role(http://coyotegulch.wordpress.com/2010/04/07/energy-policy-nuclear-hb10-1348-gets-state-house-approval-moves-on-to-the-state-senate-2/) in the so-called front end of the 'Fool Cycle,' in which Urainum ore is extracted and milled. leaving behind millennia of toxicity at the local level. In a lopsided 62-2 vote, the State's Senate earlier this year put strict limits on mining operations for the heaviest metal. " Uranium processing has left behind a dirty, dangerous legacy in Colorado,
Garrington said. Today, the Colorado House told the uranium industry that business as usual is not acceptable. This legislation is an important step to help protect Colorado s air and water from toxic, radioactive uranium pollution. " Because of what Colorado and

DU vets have experienced, more than a score of States now have, or are considering(http://www.tenorm.com/regs2.htm) protecting themselves from these hazards that the Feds so cavalierly dismiss. In an entirely different spirit, projects such as the Southern Mutual Radiation

Assistance Plan(http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=24&ved=0CCkQFjADOBQ&url=http %3A%2F%2Fwww.sseb.org%2Ffiles%2Fsmrap-2009.pdf&ei=np8KTcj9CsOB8gbOuyiAQ&usg=AFQjCNH0BrNR-3TUxfYk067-xf9KZpp0Nw&sig2=7a5dyPQJQcD100MkRHwmLA), an offshoot of the Southern States Energy Board, have formed quasi-governmental regional compacts to deal with nuclear's downside. SMRAP dates at least to 1974. Negotiations for its existence go back further. Its terms, which speak to different states' helping each other out in the event of 'radiation emergency,' once again dispose any fair-minded observer to conclude that all disingenuousness about DU's dangers are duplicitous, to say the least. As is the case with every single local jurisdiction's having eyed the miasma of Uranium and decided that a closer attention to detail would serve citizen interests, such eventualities as SMRAP create a record that brings into focus exactly what the historical, political, and scientific meaning of Uranium is, which cannot but help DU's victims to remain clear in their analysis of both the injuries to their detriment and the equities in their favor. Finally, as well, several attempts have occurred to hold 'moot-court' indictments of the United States for the crimes that it presently commits with impunity. Two of these are particularly prominent and hence useful to bookmark, as it were. The World Tribunal on Iraq(WTI), which received almost no coverage(http://web.archive.org/web/20050526101735/www.worldtribunal.org/main/?b=25) in U.S. corporate media, held a series of sessions that were in the nature of an indictment, trial, and judgment that the United States and its chief allies, in particular Britain, consistently committed war crimes in their 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Mesopotamia. This humble correspondent would nod an affirmation at such an assessment, but that is not the point of including WTI's efforts here. Instead, THC merely wants to note that DU use was among the crimes charged against the imperial domain by this popular stance for peace that took place over a two year period in Turkey and at other spots around the world between 2003 and 2005. Specifically(http://web.archive.org/web/20050707034322/http://www.worldtribunal.org/main/# ), at the very least, historical testimony from the first day of the last gathering of the tribunal's judges, on June 24, 2005, likely included documentation and witness of use to DU victims such as Doug Rokke and other American vets. And presentations and evidence from the second day, June 25, specifically revolved around DU as one of the central illegal weapons employed by the occupying powers. Moreover, Arundhati Roy, the spokesperson of the Jury of Conscience, immediately prior to noting the importance of examining the use of DU in Iraq, made an opening statement that exactly expresses underlying aspects of the crimes committed against Gulf War veterans. "The Jury of Conscience at this tribunal is not here to deliver a simple verdict of guilty or not guilty against the United States and its allies. We are here to examine a vast spectrum of evidence about the motivations and consequences of the U.S. invasion and occupation, evidence that has been deliberately marginalized or suppressed." Much of this data no longer exists online(http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.worldtribunal.org). Thus, discovering what showed up there in documentary and scientific form, as well as in eyewitness accounts, might act as a sort of sacred trust of those who need accurate and honest evaluations of many issues, among them the impacts of Depleted Uranium ordnance. That this does not

overstate the case certainly fits with the jury's ultimate findings, which included concluding that the U.S. and Britain had breached various aspects of the Geneva Accords and other elements of the laws of war in their use of DU(http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/2005/06/27_jury-of-conscience-declaration.htm). In addition, an entire gathering devoted to DU took place in Hiroshima in October, 2004(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Tribunal_on_Iraq). Witnesses included professors of genetics and nuclear chemistry, international law teachers, an atomic-bombing survivor and Iraqis who were resisting the depredations of U.S. forces in the Tigris-Euphrates delta(http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://www.geocities.jp/wti_hiros hima/&ei=rzIMTcKA4X7lwfmhLisDA&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CFUQ7gEwCDgK&prev =/search%3Fq%3Dhiroshima%2B%252B%2B%2522depleted%2Buranium%2522%2B%252B %2Boctober%2B%252B%2B2004%2B%252B%2Bmeeting%2BOR%2Bsession%2BOR%2Bin vestigation%2BOR%2Btestimony%2B%252B%2B%2522world%2Btribunal%2Bon%2Biraq%2 522%26start%3D10%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefoxa%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26prmd%3Divns). Without qualification, the sense of this collection of knowledge and witness was to scorn U.S. protestations and excoriate the use of these weapons that will keep on killing for millennia. The International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan(ICTA), equally ignored by America's 'news' outlets, took place from 2002-2004, primarily in Japan, serving as a model for WTI. Claiming "international jurisdiction" to investigate and condemn war crimes and crimes against humanity(http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Afghanistan-CriminalTribunal10mar04.htm), it too proffered many nexuses that allowed for science, witness, and analysis to occur that could serve many components of the DU victims' strategies for redress and restoration. In particular, in its final findings, one of the heroic characters who will show up in these chapters, Leuren Meuret, provided the dispositve historical basis for the USG's forewarning of the hideous poison that it was unleashing in using DU ordnance. Question Eleven(http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/2003December/011694.html) makes this appeal to Ms. Moret. "WHAT DOES THE U.S. GOVT. KNOW ABOUT DU?" On November 25, 2003, the Court continued, "(t)he US government flatly denies risk of DU officially. World Health Organization published a similar report recently. Please tell us what you think the US government really knows." From a declassified set of Manhattan Project materials, the witness produced a "Memo to General Leslie R. Groves," from October 1943, which, as Moret stated the case, provide a "Blueprint for Depleted Uranium weapons." So far as this humble correspondent can ascertain, the note does not directly mention Uranium. Many socalled experts(http://www.thedeprogrammer.com/holloway.shtml) have made much of this possible lack of direct connection to DU. However, the toxicity of the heaviest natural element was already established-fact, from sources as varied as the experience of miners and the predictions of chemists. And the memo chillingly and brutally mandates the necessity of considering the purposeful utilization of deadly radioactive poisons as weapons. Moreover, in admirable gumshoe style, Ms. Moret rises to the challenge advanced by such naysayers. She finds still surviving members of the Manhattan Project and asks, simply, if their recollection was that those who composed and considered the memo

contemplated using Uranium as well as its fission products as a lethal weapon(http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t= 59075). "I have confirmed with three Manhattan Project scientists

that DU was intended to be used in the Groves memo recommending developing radioactive materials as POISON GAS MILITARY WEAPONS in 1943. Dr. James Conant, was President of Harvard when John Kerry's father (a high level CIA agent) brought him into the Manhattan Project to develop poison gas warfare weapons. Conant had developed poison gas warfare weapons in WW I so he was already an expert on them. The three Manhattan Project scientists who confirmed to me that DU was intended to be used in the Groves memo are: Marion Fulk, a retired nuclear physical chemist who worked on the research of rainout of nuclear materials for the nuclear weapons program at Livermore (where I also formerly worked), Dr. Fred Wood, and a third one I met in Willits, Calif. while giving a talk a few months ago with Dennis Kyne on DU. In addition to those three, Dr. Ernest Sternglass--who is a world expert on ionizing radiation and convinced the Senate to sign the partial test ban treaty in 1963 at the request of Pres. Kennedy--also confirmed that DU was intended to be used in the Groves memo."
While added 'smoking guns' are available from this time period, or even before, with literally thousands coming later, all of which show the complicity, duplicity, and mendacity of the USG in using DU as a weapon, Dr. Conant's long-winded missive(http://www.realdebt-elimination.com/real_freedom/Depopulation/groves_memorandumdigital.htm), with its many-tiered hypothesizing about the potential for damage and the dangers of deployment, is akin to a brilliant monster's ruminations about how it intends to eliminate all of its enemies in the most chilling fashion. Since THC has no complete copy of the item, its specificity regarding Uranium is uncertain, but its inclination to the same sort of thuggery is ineluctably obvious. "As a gas warfare instrument the material would be ground into particles of microscopic
size to form dust and smoke and distributed by a ground-fired projectile, land vehicles, or aerial bombs. In this form it would be inhaled by personnel. The amount necessary to cause death to a person inhaling the material is extremely small. It has been estimated that one millionth of a gram accumulating in a person's body would be fatal. There are no known methods of treatment for such a casualty." This is the overview, near the beginning. Forty pages further into the

report, the principal author, Dr. James Conant, speaks calmly of a plausible new formula for mass murder. "While only fragmentary information is available, it is felt that the injury would be manifest
as bronchial irritation coming on in from a few hours to a few days, depending on the dose. It would not be immediately incapacitating except with doses in the neighborhood of 400 or more r

[roentgens] per day. The most serious effect would be permanent long damage appearing months later from the persistent irradiation of retained particles, even at low daily rates. Two factors appear to increase the effectiveness of radioactive dust or smoke as a weapon. These are: (1) It cannot be detected by the senses; (2) It can be distributed in a dust or smoke form so finely powdered that it will permeate a standard gas mask filter in quantities large enough to be extremely damaging. An off-setting factor in its effectiveness as a weapon is that in a dust or smoke form the material is so finely pulverized that it takes on the characteristic of a quickly dissipating gas and is therefore subject to all the factors (such as wind) working against maintenance of high concentrations for more than a few minutes over a given area."

Leuren Meuret's witness before the ICTA in Tokyo, in other words, was 'spot on,' as the British say. No matter how effective the spin-tactics of DOD and VA and like hired prevaricators happen to be, no matter how copious are the budgets of these taskmasters of the smear campaign and the rhetorically-charged attack, an honest accounting of the matter eventually emerges, just as it did in the worldwide publicized gatherings in Turkey and Tokyo that almost no one in the United States heard a word about. Just like in the various sections of this attempt to gather a sense of the literature of Depleted Uranium, viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs, who are akin to the clients of THC in this matter, these pair of actions only give a glancing glimpse of the vast materials of a similar nature from the past seventy years. Moreover, as the coming two chapters of this initial installment of materials will make transparent, putting to use this voluminous look at DU's narrative, the USG had multiple, repeated, thousandfold foreknowledge that, in unleashing the bullets and bombs that it did in Iraq, it was committing, or at least running a huge risk of inducing, the most horrifying sort of mass homicide. Thus, thousands of authorities can intone, along with Neil Mackay(http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0330-02.htm), that "Depleted Uranium and DU weapons are already prohibited as Weapons of Mass Destruction under existing international conventions and treaties. 'According to a August 2002 report by the UN subcommission, laws which are breached by the use of DU shells include: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the Charter of the United Nations; the Genocide Convention; the Convention Against Torture; the four Geneva Conventions of 1949; the Conventional Weapons Convention of 1980; and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, which expressly forbid employing 'poison or poisoned weapons' and 'arms, projectiles, or materials calculated to cause unnecessary suffering'. All of these laws are designed to spare civilians from unwarranted suffering in armed conflicts.'" In the main, the complicated relationship of the United Nations to DU questions, which in general has been proscriptive in its orientation, shall remain for the final piece in this nonagon, in the overall unfolding of which Doug Rokke's presence will soon play, a few chapters hence, its critical part. For now, a sufficient expression of the international position occurs in a summation of a two-year old General Assembly resolution about DU. Very recently, 141 nations called for an attitude of "multilateralism" in all utilization of DU ordnance, which would necessarily include communicating both about where DU had been employed and studies of impacts of that deployment(http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2008/ga10792.doc.htm). Only the U.S., Britain, France, and Israel opposed Draft Resolution XIV. The dozen or so abstentions included other DU-bombardment countries, like Russia, and a few nations otherwise critical of DU, such as Canada. In this vein, those citizens still inclined to support the Nuclear Fool Cycle and the

right to use weapons of mass destruction with impunity would do well to consider the stark words of the International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan. "To initiate a war of aggression .is not only an international crime ; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes, in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole;" how much worse than this worst of all acts, then, to depredate against innocents and combatants alike with lethally poisonous noxious engines that even slaughter one's own stalwart soldiers. GROUP #6-A further set of performers in this unfolding conflict include the hatchet men who have accepted the assignment of harassing, libeling, or somehow tripping up the likes of Doug Rokke, who would advocate remuneration for those damaged by DU and demand an end to this willful criminal enterprise. Over the width and breadth of the social and virtual environs in which this massive melee of murder and mayhem has devolved, many such agents of the powers that be, as well as true believers in the righteous impunity of American imperial plutocrats, have come and gone. One Uranium cancer victim put the accuracy of this statement in perspective, reflecting on her having been labeled a "pig," or worse, for the great transgression of seeking the truth(http://www.anirrationaldomain.net/blog/openletter.htm). "NIOSH, ORAU and Sanford, Cohen and Associates are nothing more than DOE employees and contractors trying to present themselves as 'health physics experts' even though they are nothing more than the perpetrators of this carnage under different names and job titles." For the purposes of this review, a mere couple of exemplars of this hit-and-run pugilism against honest seekers such as this humble correspondent will serve to orient citizens who would survey the field of battle, as it were. They range from the often barely sentient but always rudely diligent Roger Helbig to the lethally efficient and brilliant Michael Fumento(http://fumento.com/gulf/gulfpress2.html). Helbig(http://www.veteranstoday.com/2009/06/08/depleted-uranium-and-desertstorm-veterans/) typically finds his way to popular articles that seek to foment a discussion of the DU situation, much to the chagrin of established authorities. At times he merely warns against unscientific approaches. No one can argue against the reasonableness of this sort of input, even if he, like this THC, might take issue with the reasoning and evidence provided. However, if challenged, or as in the case of a recent Veterans Today article, when a mediation is obviously scientifically punctilious already, Helbig proceeds directly to the slander and invective that often mark his seemingly ubiquitous presence. "Rep McDermott was fed lies about DU by Leuren K Moret and Douglas Lind Rokke and their false claim that General Groves received a memo in 1943 proposing the war time use of DU as an area denial weapon. Unfortunately, Rep McDermott has no one on his staff that knows the difference between fact and fiction about DU." Of course, the 'claim' that General Groves received no Uranium memo itself flies in the face of the fact of the document's existence, as folks ought to check out on their own via the links above. As to casting aspersions on Congressional staffers, no bullying is easier to pull off. His libeling of honest, if definitely opinionated scientists such as Moret, and his calumny against the eyewitness testimony and hands-on experience of Doug Rokke is execrable viciousness, pure and simple.

A vast plenitude of this sort of ideation is available(http://criticaldocs.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/deadlydust/ ) for any fairminded person to notice too. "Nothing like liar talking to believer so, what, Rokke

can call me anything he wants; he is not man enough to enter a courtroom and do it because he knows he has no proof. Rokke hates me because I told him to grow up and behave like a man. He is 60 years old. Thats too old to behave like a spoiled two year old who doesnt get his way. When Rokke smeared me in 2004, I did not go away as planned; I decided to background Rokke like any good investigative reporter should have done."
This 'investigative reporter' has alleged, among other things, that the Groves document is a "forged memo...cooked up" by Doug Rokke and Leuren Moret. These are serious charges, suggesting criminal behavior by two individuals that THC lionizes. One might think that making such an indictment in the appropriate forum, a Federal Court would make sense if they are true. THC has examined two presentations of said memo; if it is a 'forgery' it certainly is a good one. On the other hand, if the memo is legitimate, then Roger Helbig is guilty of libel and slander. In England, these are criminal charges, but not here stateside. Were he to make such allegations in a publication with adequate resources to pay a judgment apropos to the bother of suing him, then going after him in civil court would make sense. As the matter stands, he is a hideous nuisance who misleads, makes mountains out of molehills, and speaks as if he has expertise that clearly he does not possess. In similar vein, and in the Ecologist commentary cited just above and elsewhere, he also refers to Dr. Asaf Durakovic as "a known-fraud." Since the good professor is a scientist, and does know of which he speaks when he converses about nuclear medicine, such diatribe may be merely hurtful and mean, but anyone willing to examine the various records--in addition to Helbig's voluminous misrepresentations and red-herrings and unkind attacks--will likely, along with this humble correspondent, draw a different conclusion from Herr Helbig about who is guilty of common fraudulent misstatement. Herr Helbig really does raise invective, misleading rhetoric, and the red herring fallacy to the level of art form. Here(http://criticaldocs.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/deadlydust/ ) is one such attack "The site is full of false information and appeared abandoned so I was not

sure my e-mail would reach anyone. It still is full of lies but the owner is clearly not educable and prefers to remain ignorant." Invective and misleading rhetoric out of the way, here comes the red herring. "Maybe some of those of you who read this are not the same. If you want to learn, go visit http://www.depletedcranium.com you can watch dinner being eaten off a DU-glazed bright orange popular Art Deco Fiesta Ware plate and learn about uranium as well; you can also explore where some of those awful photos come from. Some appear to come from over 90 year old specimen jars from a Czarist era Russian museum. None of them has a connection to DU."
People eat off aluminum, but to inhale or ingest it is exceedingly unhealthy. In fact, the harmful or deadly effects of ingesting Uranium are well-established, as is the lethal result of inhaling even less. The element's minute 'natural' presence before the atomic era that Herr Helbig apparently worships notwithstanding, the scientific basis for this assertion

is irrefutable. Inhalation of ceramic, insoluble DU particles may be the most deadly fashion for the substance to enter the body as well, which fact Herr Helbig repeatedly ignores, preferring to advance one red-herring after another instead. In this vein, perhaps some DU opponents have misused photos. Anyone who cares to be open-minded, however, will find thousands of documentary photos of the grotesque plague of birth defects in Iraq, for example around Fallujah, over the past twenty years. This does not mean DU caused these problems, but as Dr. Busby's study, cited above, indicates, such a link is highly plausible and represents a scientifically sound hypothesis worthy of immediate attention. Herr Helbig, however, would rather use a sleight-of-hand logical fallacy than seek actual knowledge. He has the temerity to condescend to Rosalie Bertell, another scientist who has impeccable credentials and a long history of explicating the deceptions and falsehoods that governments trade in, duplicity and falsification that Herr Helbig finds to his liking. An instance of his assault on a scientist who is able to demonstrate why and how DU is deadly shows up in such passages(http://conspiracyrealitytv.com/depleted-uranium-in-the-humanbody-dr-rosalie-bertell-phd/) as this. "Rosalie Bertell may have made some earlier serious study of nuclear power, but even the scholarly content of that is in doubt. She talks a good game about DU, it keeps her in the spotlight in her declining years, but she does not know what she is talking about. She just does not want to fade away and be forgotten, so she has glommed onto DU and HAARP and other things that she really knows absolutely nothing about. You can learn a lot more about DU from the short video (cited above) than you will ever learn from Rosalie Bertell. Another place to learn about DU is the link in my name, it has links to dozens of reports by scientists around the world who have actually done field and laboratory research, not just speculation. I urge you to read them first and then ask, does Bertell have a clue? One place that bills itself as "Roger Helbig's Page" shows up here, but nothing of substance accompanies it(http://globalconspiracytheories.com/profile/RogerHelbig). His Yahoo tech-group page is a rich source of 'expertise' most firmly committed to the Uranium economy, the 'Nuclear Renaissance,' and the Nuclear Fool Cycle Death Dance. This does not make them wrong, and since this is the Plutocratic establishment at its least nuanced, they are guaranteed a 'place at the table,' but anyone who proffers such a list and then pretends to have proved anything other than biased opinion is delusional. In any event, Lord willing and the creek don't rise, Herr Helbig, who accuses others of fascist inclination and proves thereby that, indeed, "projection is the most primitive form of coping strategy" has sparked THC's interest. At some point, a thorough investigation of this fellow will be forthcoming. Herr Helbig has made a particular assault on any media that attacked his petproclivities in favor of DU(http://du-blog.wildclearing.com/2008/07/28/lt-col-roger-helbigtried-to-block-contaminated-forever-festival-screening.aspx). Thus, both "Contaminated Forever," a Wild-Clearing production, and "Beyond Treason," a film resulting from the tough-minded commitment of one of this series DU-heroes, Joyce Riley, have come in for repeated assaults by Herr Helbig. A DU conference and film-showing in Eastern Tennessee, where Aerojet Ordnance manufactures DU-death pellets, apparently so enraged Herr Helbig that he promised to bring mayhem thence(http://theiolani.blogspot.com/2008/04/iolani-royal-hawk-vol-ii-nos-178179.html). The thinker who noted this has a substantial listing of Herr Helbig's 'rants' and

interventions in favor of continued DU utilization. "When a depleted uranium conference was planned in Tennessee last year, Helbig and a cohort made all kinds of threats to disrupt the event, and retired Major Doug Rokke, retired Director of the depleted uranium cleanup team for the Pentagon after the first Gulf War, had to inform local law enforcement in the town where the event was held. Helbig was warned by law enforcement that he and anyone with him would be arrested and jailed if he showed up at the event in Tennessee or any disruption occurred. They did not appear and the event went on as planned." Some readers may wonder about the equities in these matters. This is fair enough. They should do some searching on their own to determine where the chips fall in this case. In any event, Herr Helbig's omnipresence and quickness in response is certainly interesting. His pugilistic and insulting demeanor is undeniable. HIs presentation of his own biases as incontrovertible truth is demonstrable. A fine PDF file with which to start one's examination of this former Air Force officer is readily accessible(http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBMQFjAA&url=http %3A%2F%2Fdu-blog.wildclearing.com%2Ffiles%2F7156769366%2FRe__%255BNoMoreDU%255D_Re__Correspondence_on_Depleted_Uranium.pdf& ei=G7AOTcH3KMH78AbToJnZDQ&usg=AFQjCNG0hVNq93SePdJHoPhytT5xpfP1ig&sig2=qq POSSfMqNfVYhNXSrxzCw) too, as a benchmark for looking things over in this matter. A much more sophisticated assailant appears in the form of Michael Fumento. As noted above, he persisted in pursuing John Hanchette, arguably with mortal effect on Hanchette's tenure at USA Today. Fumento has no particular ax to grind in relation to DU. Instead, he is a 'pen for hire' in promulgating incisive, well-reasoned explorations of whatever important topic crosses his radar. His excellence as a writer and reporter, however, only serves to mask an ideological agenda that is unmistakable to any reader who pays attention. Of course, this humble correspondent also has an unmistakable ideological agenda. The difference is that Fumento purports only to be seeking the 'truth,' and to have no concern for any particular POV in relation to what he is reporting. That such a stance is either laughably naive, or malevolent, should be something that readers take into consideration, if they want to see through the work of such a clever wordsmith as Sir Fumento. Whether he is reporting about AIDS(http://www.fumento.com/aids/aids_day.html), the war in Iraq(http://www.fumento.com/military/ramadireturn.html), product-liability torts(http://www.fumento.com/toyota_acceleration/license_to_kill.html), a reporter who has seen fit to question the USG's established line on either DU or any other aspect of Gulf War morbidity(http://www.fumento.com/gulf/), or something else altogether, his mode of attack is nearly always uniform. Masterful distraction about some point that he can prove ineluctably, and accompanying misdirection, away from the pertinent elements of the story that he doesn't want attended, represent a patented Fumento one-two punch. At the same time that he homes in on some error, more or less trivial--or even occasionally substantial--that some proponent of progress or 'liberalism' has made, he advances highly plausible populist rationale for taking such an erroneous steps seriously. Then, voila! the point that AIDS is an important matter to study, along with malaria and TB; the fact that the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan are imperial assaults, arguably involving crimes against humanity measuring millions of murders; the truth that corporate negligence is as common as corn; or the undeniable heightened sickness and death among returning

warriors, with DU one highly likely cause; completely disappear in his pontifications about sloppy reporting, bad science, and so on. Though Fumento does not nearly so exercise THC's interest as does Herr Helbig, arguably he is a much more dangerous and insidious opponent to honest understanding and human progress. Given adequate support and enough hours, taking Sir Fumento's oeuvre on the Gulf War Illness that he suggests does not exist, showing this reportage to be, most charitably, spurious and vicious, might count as an important service to human understanding. For now, however, this humble correspondent, bereft of resources other than his own stubborn diligence and a smattering of clients who pay him to produce other sorts of materials, can only assert both that such maestros of mayhem as these two are part of a much larger set of virtual assassins and that their efforts are part of a systematic effort to undermine honest reporting, especially about scientific and technical matters that affect imperial perquisites. Their kind's ubiquity might, of course, also transpire in the event that the movement to nix Uranium weapons were a fraud. Unfortunately for the likes of Helbig and company, as this review of sources so amply illustrates, the scientific sense, acute reasoning, conceptual variety, and overwhelming volume of DU censure makes such a suggestion of inadequacy wildly implausible. This conclusion, therefore, renews THC's assertion that varied attacks--not only on the likely truth and demonstrable substance of the condemnation of DU, but also on the character and sensibilities of peoples' advocates such as Rokke, Kyne, O'Reilly, and Moret--represent some sort of systematic defense mechanism of the captains of capital, who have thrown in their lot with a Uranium economy. GROUP #7-In a different fashion, another self-defense of the powers-that-be is secrecy. One of the most potent weapons against the efficacy of cover-up, obviously, is illumination, which is a little-known specialty of the humble archivist. Fortunately, a substantial, generally university-based, compilation of the records of the patrons and events of the Nuclear Fool Cycle does exist. Though THC can only name a smattering of these, as in the other quite incomplete collections proffered in this lengthy recounting of DU's literature of doom, further development would be salubrious and something that someone, perhaps, ought to pursue. On other occasions, this humble correspondent has had occasion(INTERLINK, DK Science) to pull together various portals(INTERLINK, JM) through which interested seekers might search for scientific data, learning materials, and other sorts of sources about the history, evolution, and nature of science and technology. As he has also done before(INTERLINK, DK,TMI), THC could easily jot down for readers exemplary caches of wisdom and knowledge as those that exist at many locales, pertaining both to matters of a nuclear nature and to broader examinations of science as such: *Fordham University's general history of science gateway(http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/science/sciencesbook.html); *the Exploring and Collecting History Online(ECHO) Project at George Mason University, including excellent documentation of Three Mile Island(http://echo.gmu.edu/); *Washington and Lee University's Digital Library for Nuclear Issues(http://alsos.wlu.edu/); *the University of Pennsylvania's online nuclear resource bibliography(http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/browse?type=lcsubc&key=

Nuclear%20energy%20--%20Public%20opinion); *Penn State University's Three Mile Island collection, among others there concerning fission and power(http://www.libraries.psu.edu/tmi/); *University of Florida's Robert Hatch masterpieces about thinking scientifically(http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/ufhatch/pages/10-HisSci/links/#research); *CalTech's oral-histories-in-physics collection(http://oralhistories.library.caltech.edu/view/subjects/phy.html); *Idaho State University's Radiation Information Network(http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/), especially its "History of Radiation(http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/hist.htm)" page; *MIT's open courseware project(http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/), and history of physics window(http://web.mit.edu/redingtn/www/netadv/hist.html); *Mt. Holyoke-professor Vincent Ferarro's web pages concerning nuclear weapons and related issues(http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/nukes.htm); *the University of Delaware's internet science source guide(http://www2.lib.udel.edu/subj/hsci/internet.htm). This briefing barely scratches the surface of available locations of fascinating and critical data, both academic and otherwise, both in the U.S. and elsewhere on earth, dealing with both atomic alchemy and 'natural philosophy' more generally. In addition, different organizations and projects have sought to gather together data and documents and ideas about the nuclear age as such, all of which will include some insights and evidence about radiation, risk, and the attendant issues that inevitably inhere in a Uranium-based economy. This is again just a slice, and a comprehensive survey would be apt. As the saying goes, however, anything is better than nothing. Someone might have exited the Chicago office of the U.S. National Archives with fissile material, according to a Science Magazine article of recent vintage(http://business.highbeam.com/5345/article-1G1-14734636/doe-finds-physicsarchives-may-too-hot-handle). The files there were occasionally radioactive, according to the report, indicia of an instance when a bit more security-mindedness could have been a good idea. In any event, the USG's holdings, at far flung locations, are buried secrets awaiting, in order to see the light of day, a different sort of 'nuclear renaissance' from what DOE hopes for. Excellent basic-science archival and teaching materials often coexist in this virtual age. A dandy example of this is the "Nuclear Chemistry and the Community" website(http://www.chemcases.com/nuclear/index.html). Though its creators might generally feel that the NFS rocks, they serve the democratic purpose of knowledge development, which cannot but help in permitting a dialog on whether their assessment of the 'fuel cycle' is accurate. Cornell has manifested one more such venture(http://arxiv.org/) that approaches nuclear issues, among others, in a mathematical, conceptual, and historical manner. It contains DU materials(http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/all:+EXACT+depleted_uranium/0/1/0/all/0/1), as well as contemporary publications about energy and physics generally(http://arxiv.org/list/physics/recent). Another collection with many possibly points of entry to info useful for advocates who want to ban DU is the English Spartacus Educational forums(http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAmanhattan.htm). Much more so than the strictly science sites, Spartacus revolves around giving learners access to journalistic and

social scientific investigations of technical phenomena, a 'Science-Technology-and-Society' approach(INTERLINK, JM) that this humble correspondent has frequently propounded(INTERLINK, DK). Community archives such as MadScientist.org not only maintain a gigantic virtual index of articles and analysis about matters of interest to those pondering DU, but they also permit a call and response process that yields results about the development and use of a technology or substance(http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/199812/913049586.Ph.r.html). To such community advocates as THC, this dialogic aspect of a science-center is a sine-qua-non of its acceptability as a legitimate authority. Styling itself the "Global Science Gateway," WorldScience.org is another conglomeration that opens itself to interrogatories. It permits posing queries, as well, that are inherently useful to those wanting to make their knowledge of Uranium more complete(http://worldwidescience.org/topicpages/l/los+alamos+community.html), and their strategy-development about eliminating DU more incisive. Yet another pathway(http://www.refertus.info/Science/Physics/History.phtml), in part from Germany, has a more academic and historical bent. Many of the links lead to other extensive collections of materials, references, and thinking about science topics that necessarily must underlie a manageable understanding of the Uranium economy, the Nuclear Fool Cycle, and so on. In a different fashion, but in equally useful ways, most or all of the National Laboratories(www.lanl.gov/worldview/welcome/history.shtml) offer virtual visitors access to historical data and records; this is also true of some of the former weapons sites(http://www.hanford.gov/page.cfm/INP). Actual visits to such caches of data, and the development of relationships with librarians and scholars associated with these places, would be an excellent step toward empowering those who would develop a political strategy for transforming the Uranium economy and thereby, and otherwise, prohibiting DU weapons. Perhaps the premier popular data storehouse for the nuclear age is a brilliant project that primarily shows up online. Nuclear Files(NF) is a program of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. As early as 1994, the report of a committee chaired by none other than John D. Rockefeller IV conveyed(http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclearweapons/issues/depleted-uranium/staff-report-veterans-affairs_1994-12-08.htm) to the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee an official report with a very telling title--"Depleted Uranium: Is Military Research Hazardous to Veterans' Health? Lessons Spanning Half a Century." This publication only showed up for THC when he searched inside the NF boundaries, otherwise apparently lost in the morass of search-engine noise. This fact is suggestive of the overlap that happens constantly in this work, where despite looking specifically for Congressional Reports, as in the section-before-last's narrative, only by digging deeper do likely important and useful items appear on the radar screen. Another instance of this that NF makes accessible(http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/issues/depleteduranium/report-swrod-to-plowshares_1997-03-28.htm) is even more clearly critical to the case that DU victims are making. In it, Dan Fahey gives a damning testament to the foreknowledge of the powers-that-be about DU's dangers. "One report which contained stark warnings about the use of depleted uranium penetrators was completed by the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC)

in July 1990 for the U.S. Army. The SAIC report, entitled Kinetic Energy Penetrator Environmental and Health Consequences, forewarned that the use of DU penetrators in combat would create large amounts of depleted uranium dust, and that depleted uranium poses its greatest danger to human health when this dust in ingested or inhaled. When a DU round impacts a target, up to 70% of the penetrator rod will burn and oxidize into small particles. The SAIC report prophetically warned that 'aerosol DU exposures to soldiers on the battlefield could be significant with potential radiological and toxicological effects. Depleted uranium can be internalized as a result of breathing smoke containing DU particles, hand-to-mouth transfer as a result of contact with contaminated vehicles, inhalation or ingestion of resuspended particles, ingestion of food or water contaminated by DU, contamination of wounds by DU dust, or from wounds caused by DU shrapnel.'" NF also has significant amounts of primary documentation(http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclearenergy/history/index.htm) and numbers of leads to other archives. It stands as an unimpeachably fair-minded and thorough promulgator of science, analysis, and historical investigation that is free of any industry or financial entanglements with the Uranium economy. In addition, various other archives, a great deal of scholarly work, completely unplumbed caches of materials that remain classified after as many as seven decades, and mountains of multifarious manifestations of data in different locations, virtual and actual, not officially part of any standard archive, all tantalize the Faustus who would learn the complete story of the annals atomic. One of these, the atomic archive(http://www.atomicarchive.com/index.shtml), looks at science,, history, and political materials in equal measure. Although the overall AA approach tends to ferret out basic science and policy, many little jewels(http://www.atomicarchive.com/History/coldwar/page19.shtml) ponder such events as Three Mile Island. Moreover, it is able to place such a perspective in the context of a fairly rich contemplation of the Cold War and its seminal part in the great drama of the NFS and the planned Uranium economy. Atomic Heritage, meanwhile, specializes in historical understanding of the NFS and, especially, its origins in the Manhattan Project(http://www.atomicheritage.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=85&It emid=79). Here, readers and seekers who are willing can find monumental materials concerning the original emanation of Uranium as a mass-produced metal, finding gleanings in the process of the early indicia of what Gulf War veterans suffered many decades hence. A more stolidly academic methodology characterizes the offerings of the American Institute for Physics(http://www.aip.org/history/index.html). However, the researcher here can uncover revelations that literally might not be available anywhere else. To find a stalwart fellow-scientist repeatedly pillorying the honesty of Edward Teller, for example(INTERLINK, JM Pk OIl), is a find tantamount to coming across a chunk of gold in a field of grass, illustrating as it does the perfidy and loose attitude toward facts and accuracy among the nuclear priesthood's highest circles. As well, AIP invites those hungry for more knowledge to explore voluminous links to other sources that convey information about the history and nature of physics(http://www.aip.org/history/links.html). These interconnections are probably unsurpassed among the many other locations that make similar attempts to interrelate the

wide stream of data on these subjects that is constantly flowing back and forth all around us. Of course, many are the untrammeled backers of fission weapons and radioactive tea kettles as well. Among the well-funded nuclear energy proponents that will uniformly shout praises for downstream DU commodification is the American Nuclear Society. Its various archives include materials for waste(http://www.ans.org/pubs/magazines/rs/archive/) and the general organization publication(http://www.ans.org/pubs/magazines/nn/archive/), among others. The Nuclear Energy Institute is yet another atomic Chamber of Commerce. It also makes available multiple warehoused collections of information, among them its "fuel supply" archive(http://www.nei.org/newsandevents/conferencesandmeetings/nfsf/archives/), another grouping for its general conferences(http://www.nei.org/newsandevents/conferencesandmeetings/conferencesarchi ve/), and past and present pamphlets promoting the nuclear agenda in the form of "Nuclear Policy Outlook" statements(http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/publicationsandmedia/newslettersandrep orts/nuclearpolicyoutlook/outlookarchive). Multiple other such compilations exist, nationally and internationally and inside and outside of the government. They all will make the same point, however. No one need worry about anything; a radioactive future is foreordained; all accurate science is available through outlets under the established purview. In actuality, the most creative science, the most probing analysis--in the work of a Chris Busby, a Herbert Mancuso, or a Rosalie Bertell, among so many others--is occurring outside the nuclear sandbox, a sad commentary on the waste of talent and genius that these forums gather together. At the same time, to an extent paradoxically, in the millions of pages that such atomic champions produce, one will occasionally find pieces of the Uranium puzzle that would be hard to come by otherwise. Various universities or other libraries also house the papers of important participants in the development of the Uranium-decades that have transpired since 1940. *Princeton(http://diglib.princeton.edu/ead/getEad?eadid=MC148&kw=), for instance, has the holdings that David Lilienthal left behind, including materials from his days when TVA was providing juice for the Manhattan Project and when he headed up the first AEC. *The Library of Congress holds Robert Oppenheimer's papers(http://memory.loc.gov/service/mss/eadxmlmss/eadpdfmss/1998/ms998007.pdf), among others of import to topics concerning radioactivity and humanity. *As well, such materials as the papers of different heads of the Atomic Energy Commission(http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/rbmscl/roddis/inv/) might be viewable at centers all over the U.S., such as Duke University. *On the other side of the continent, Berkeley(http://www.oac.cdlib.org/data/13030/n2/tf0g5001n2/files/tf0g5001n2.pdf) maintains purview over Ernest Lawrence's vast correspondence and intellectual output, among the dozens of other personal papers that California's university system has gathered together. Of course, many other locations contain additional troves of just these kinds of atomic treasures. If humankind lives through the stresses and strains of the NFS, an appropriate accounting will eventually delve these presently little-touched cornucopia. Clearinghouses, bibliographies, and literature reviews, perhaps mostly less

overarching than what THC here proffers but also perhaps more expert, also direct readers and seekers to many of the multiple sources worthy of note that this humble correspondent has failed to include. Indeed, one project for developing today's effort is to move in the direction of a fully articulated annotated bibliography. In fact, this is something that one international group has, in an expanding and expandable format, been attempting. Paralleling what DOE does stateside, the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency's(IAEA's) International Nuclear Information Service(http://inisdb.iaea.org/) accomplishes a monumental task in assembling some tens of thousands of original outputs concerning the science and policy of fission and fusion and such. Moreover, it permits truly opposing exchanges of views, as in a head-to-head between Helen Caldicott and Nicholas Kristof about the desirability of nuclear energy(http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:gjcFP4IjyoYJ:www.iaea.org/Publicatio ns/Magazines/Bulletin/Bull471/nuclear_reactions.pdf+caldicott+%2B+kristof&hl=en&gl=us& pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESi2cQpvBURt7LYN7jI_XtEaCXb8bp6Tzioe-GRcbNZZqT18ohs_YV1g6OIeznzUBVOHSKcRIFfb0sDxCLW2fl8h_Bt1XqtZMHJUj3DN0GATlUJl2a7w6BQatIK6jVIp6i6vpu&sig=AHIEtbSXLq8U kmpBU2jRh00Nhl18RWlUOQ), the sort of confrontation that has never shown up when DOE or other USG 'nuclear science' originator has had any role in the product. Though heavily weighted toward favoring atomic fission as both a policy and technological choice, IAEA does provide some modicum of time and space and attention to nuclear critics. Thus, both the plethora of scientific documents and the presence of critical perspectives on such issues as radiation dangers makes this clearinghouse doubly appealing as a first stop for any basic inquiry. Definitely one of the most comprehensive generators of citations specifically about DU does originate with the USG(http://web.ead.anl.gov/uranium/news/media/index.cfm??), under the auspices of the Argonne National Laboratories. While the data here is invaluable, the massively greater bias of USG filters is obvious: a simple search for the term, 'fahey,' produces scores of references through the IAEA portal, but only two through ANL's; similarly, looking for 'durakovic' garners zilch from ANL's cache but twenty-three apt citations within the U.N. database. A last online gate that opens a magic forest full of DU data is available both in England and the U.S.(http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/2003December/011694.html). The University of Utah mirror site styles itself as "DU-WATCH." Its historical, even chronological, materials stand out as a nearly unique compilation in this all too often ahistorical sphere of concern. A 1978 Congressional Record entry by Senator Bob Dole brings this home with a resonant punch. "'Mr. President, an article appeared in the Washington Star on March 14 [1978], reporting that the Pentagon is about to start using depleteduranium to produce bullets. They seem to have chosen this material for bullets because uranium metal is dense, and because depleted uranium is cheap. Needless to say, I find this proposal shocking. On the one hand this shows a complete lack of sensitivity to the general fear of using radioactive materials. On the other hand, only a strange set of policy decisions could have made this material so cheap that anybody would consider using it for bullets.'" Indeed. The very next entry hammers on this point again, perhaps even more powerfully, considering the source, the Army's Mobility Equipment Research and Development Command. "'Not only the people in the immediate vicinity (emergency and fire

fighting personnel) but also people at distances downwind from the fire are faced with potential overexposure to airborne uranium dust.'" Formal bibliographies, because of the built in flexibility of the enlargeable virtual file folder of an INIS or anything similar, are perhaps less utilitarian in relation to seeking DU data. However. just the prospect of searching in such a fashion can unearth otherwise buried items that have immense potential to explicate important historical and analytical attributes of the DU quagmire. For instance, "Uranium Alloy Metallurgy," a Department of the Army annotated compilation(http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=AD0 774190) from 1974, almost certainly contains informational nuggets that would be impossible to manifest in any other way. Professionally oriented url's often have vast amounts of data to convey. WasteLink articulates its purposive gathering of information in the most honest and democratic fashion possible(http://www.radwaste.org/index.html). "While the primary purpose

of this site is to provide a reference source for radioactive waste management professionals, we recognize that radwaste is a hotly debated and emotional issue in today's society. Few other topics can polarize a community faster than the discussion of what to do with radioactive waste (or whether we should be generating any at all). Therefore, we strive to present all sides of the story in a non-partisan fashion."
Moreover, it specializes in aggregating bibliographic tools of all sorts. In relation to DU, it directs visitors to attend the World Information Service on Energy, cited above in section two "Military Uses of Depleted Uranium" bibliogrpahy(http://web.archive.org/web/20001210031100/www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/dlit. html), very thorough, particularly in regard to governmental technical documents. Of course, the WasteLink RadWatch window itself, along with many other such locales, can also act in this fashion(http://web.archive.org/web/20001210031100/www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/dlit.html) , serving as a search tool for all honest seekers. Sometimes, these sorts of investigatory walkabouts lead down some bizarre pathways. One commercial operation that this humble correspondent stumbled upon, an arm of a broader facility, apparently serves exclusively to offer grad students help in getting their 'Uranium' papers finished(http://www.phddissertations.com/topic/uranium_dissertation_thesis.html). "For nine years, our doctoral-level scholars on subjects related to 'Uranium' have assisted doctorate students, AS level seniors, and master graduates worldwide by providing the most comprehensive research assistance online for 'Uranium' exams and coursework." In short, a search like "depleted uranium" + "annotated bibliography" elicits 8,000plus Google hits, many of which will lead to formal lists of titles and authors and sourcematerials. A careful sifting of these materials might lead to incisive abilities among those who have experienced first hand the deleterious impacts of DU. Furthermore, just as further indicia of what might be possible, the terms "Nuclear Fuel Cycle" + "annotated bibliography" led to a further 5080 plausibly helpful hints in this complicated sphere.

Finally, even as the USG seeks out Julian Assange for his having served humanity by releasing data too often covered-up for venial or corrupt reasons, a significant portion of the documentation of the Nuclear Fool Cycle remains under wraps. Much to the shame of the boosters of the Uranium-economy and the Nuclear Fool Cycle, much information about the past and present which ought to be public record languishes in hidden bureaucratic caverns. In this realm perhaps more so than any other, nothing reveals greater toxicity than secrecy. This subject, exclusively in relation to nukes and Uranium, is worthy of a worldwide campaign to remove all covers from the hidden data. Alas, that sort of airing of reality must await a different political climate from that pertaining to the captains of plutocracy currently in command. This lit-review will not even really begin to delve into this matter. Instead, it will merely note the extent of the potential fascination of the subject, provide a single example of an area of noisome seclusion, and give one more specific instance of how such clandestine efforts work out in practice. The search, nuclear + classified + "top secret" OR restricted + data OR information, corrals nearly three million hits. This herd of citations no doubt includes much that is irrelevant to THC's assertions here. No doubt, many people would shudder to think of Saddam Hussein--'oh, my!'-- or Kim Jung-il--'oh, my!!--with easy access to deep dark secrets of the Fool Cycle. The truth is that to folks with means, or spies, no such secrets exist. The secrecy is to stop the prying eye of public scrutiny, and its continuation is idiotic, unless the intention is to prohibit rational public discourse about a suicidal direction toward doom. That's a mere puff of windy words in the form of THC's opinion, obviously. His response to this would be, "well and good, then, let us debate this fully, beginning with funding a grassroots capacity to learn the extent of, justification for, and overall parameters of what is hidden about the NFS." That things which are out of sight include ridiculously 'classified' materials, in other words items from long ago that have long since made their way into the wider awareness of world citizens, especially those of a technical mindset, one need only turn to the dear old DOE itself, the mistress of such nuclear-secrecy overkill(http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/doe/sakwd.htm). Thousands of such indicia exist, for instance, in relation to keeping a tight lid on the actions and findings of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which in particular--as the most direct representative of citizens--should most especially come into view. "However, the Department of Energy (DOE) has found that

many documents with classified nuclear information (particularly historical documents) are not marked to indicate that they contain RD (restricted data) or FRD (formerly restricted data). Consequently, DOE is concerned that these documents may not receive proper safeguarding and might be improperly declassified and released." This attitude, frankly, combines lethality with an unconscionable
dissimulation about the reality of the USG and scientific-policy orientation to these matters. Everybody knows, and everybody knows that the USG knows that they know, at

least if they're of the sort who might want to know. The only ones still in ignorance are the citizens, who thereby find themselves disenfranchised from even joining the discussion. This humble correspondent, in a fashion that corresponds to the nature of this work, again tripped over one such exhibition of the many ways that these inhibitions on discursive expression and knowledge manifest themselves. Following a thread down a wormhole in search of more indicia of USG cognizance of the Uranium hazards inherent in the NFS, he came upon one of hundreds of little publicized suggestions that a massive amplification of the Uranium economy is forthcoming. Much of it, according to many of these announcements, will stem from one form or another of 'recycling,' of DU and other substances now part of the so-called 'Fuel Cycle' waste-stream. The link in question(http://worldwidescience.org/topicpages/s/steel+beneficial+reuse.html) held those chilling initials, SRS, and therefore about the Savannah-River-Site's hideous and insidious nastiness, of which THC had for decades made himself aware. Though the title was innocuous enough, "SRS stainless steel beneficial reuse program," THC dived in, pondering what a rational response would be to the likely flogging by bureaucrats of used scrap contaminated with radiation and toxic residue. The abstract proved to be even more tantalizing. "The US Department of Energy`s (DOE) Savannah River Site (SRS) has thousands of tons of stainless steel radioactive scrap metal (RSNI). Much of the metal is volumetrically contaminated. There is no {open_quotes}de minimis{close_quotes} free release level for volumetric material, and therefore no way to recycle the metal into the normal commercial market. If declared waste, the metal would qualify as low level radioactive waste (LLW) and ultimately be dispositioned through shallow land buri(al) at a cost of millions of dollars. The metal however could be recycled in a {open_quotes}controlled release{close_quote} manner, in the form of containers to hold other types of radioactive waste. This form of recycle is generally referred to as {open_quotes}Beneficial Reuse{close_quotes}. Beneficial reuse reduces the amount of disposal space needed and reduces the need for virgin containers which would themselves become contaminated. Stainless steel is particularly suited for long term storage because of its resistance to corrosion. To assess the practicality of stainless steel RSM recycle the SRS Benficial Reuse Program began a demonstration in 1994, funded by the DOE Office of Science and Technology. This paper discusses the experiences gained in this program." The government, using (open quote) public tax dollars (close quote), had been studying with interest a possible method for (open quote) killing two birds with one stone (close quote), and the notion seemed reasonable that citizens such as THC ought to have access to these research results and compiled reports. Instead, when I followed the link(https://www.etde.org/etdeweb/welcome.jsp?nextURL=https://www.etde.org/etd eweb/details.jsp?query_id%3D1%26page%3D0%26osti_id%3D457173), THC discovered another layer of opacity separating the facts from any easy capacity for public observation. The Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDE) holds itself out as an exclusive, elite, little known road to just the data that cognoscenti and the anointed need. ETDE was the home for where this humble correspondent found himself in chasing after the SRS rabbit.

The originating directive from SRS took THC to a come-on promising to"Lead the Way to Worldwide Energy Technology Discoveries," where he encountered a 'gated community's' virtual guardhouse. Practically speaking, this portal gloats about excluding the common citizen and permitting entry to those with means or clearance. "You have linked to ETDEWEB, ETDE's World Energy Base.

ETDEWEB has over 4,407,000 literature references, with direct access to the full text for 390,000 reports not typically available through conventional sources (over 1 million pages). Many thousands more link to sites worldwide where the documents cited can be obtained. Access to ETDEWEB is open to well over 60 countries, and is based on country membership in ETDE, developing country status, or Executive Committee decision."
At first blush, the organization promises its cornucopia as an exemplar of information democracy. "As a programme of the International Energy Agency

(IEA), ETDE offers membership to countries and/or entities wishing to participate in a reciprocal exchange of scientific and technical energy research and technology information."
A deeper look is dispiriting, however. Even after expanding its membership in 2003, very restrictive terms apply for gaining an invitation to play. "Instead of only

permitting governments to be involved, the guidelines are more flexible, now defining the following types of organizations as being eligible: Governmental or energy technology entities representing governments; Research institutes and universities; and Energy technology companies."
In other words, except inasmuch as some vetted organization vouchsafes entry, THC, Doug Rokke, or any citizens group that is contributing more actual knowledge than entire agencies of the Department of Defense has no clear-cut roadway to getting at this data. For all practical purposes, it remains secret in its exclusivity. Harvard's nuclear winter archive(http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~env00007) highlights the folly of such elitist approaches. Whether an atomic denouement arrives with a fusion bang or a DU whimper will matter little in the long silence that could easily emanate from present cavalier attitudes toward these dangers. Whether human beings elect to advance or avert an irradiated future, hidden agendas and duplicity--and incalculable death and political damage--will ineluctably accompany all attempts to squirrel away the information on these issues that people need in order to make up their minds intelligently. If 'secrecy equals perdition,' what exactly are we waiting for in creating a drive for openness, dialog, and the salubrious intercourse of democracy? Even to imagine perusing a teensy fraction of what has shown up in this sub-section alone is equivalent to many lifetimes of effort. On the other hand, no doubt can possibly survive that such investigation would be fruitless, in terms of more fully understanding the matter at hand, which is the DU exposure of millions, perhaps tens of millions, of human cousins, with likely but so far not dispositively demonstrable clinically devastating

consequences. Equally apt, from the POV of THC, is that a sociopolitical and historical understanding of DU and the entire NFS is likely only possible by such a coordinated focus. GROUG #8-Multiple monographs are a final ocean of textual droplets with which the seeker of DU knowledge might bathe in hopes of finding a clean grip on this grotesque subject. Tens of thousands of such tomes are likely available, ranging from history of science to history of nuclear weapons or nuclear power, to popular accounts of the personalities and policy battles around nuclear issues while they were unfolding, to biographies of the scientists and engineers and businessmen who have made the Nuclear Fool Cycle tick, to engineering and health physics 'how-to' guides, to economic and business wrangling about the costs and benefits, to citizen outcries against the irrefutable depredations that the NFS has already manifested with such impunity. As so often above, this humble correspondent would affirm the beneficence of seeking a comprehensive enumeration eventually. However, for purposes of this effort, only a fraction of those volumes specifically dealing with Uranium, and a tiny tranche of other treatises, will appear here. Metal of Dishonor ought to obtain pride-of-place in any citizens' compendium on this topic. Clearly biased in a way that this humble correspondent extols, it is scrupulously factual, fair-minded, and forthright in advocating an end to mass-murder-as-policy. It may lack historical and analytical aspects that THC prefers and is attempting to provide, but it is a foundation for citizen participation and ought to be a top-ten reading assignment for every cousin coming of age in these times. And all of this is true in spite of the nearly fourteen years that have passed since the publication of the first edition. Its original preface( http://www.iacenter.org/depleted/prefdu.htm) seems both prophetic and more than a tad tragic in speaking about what was hypothetical, on the one hand, and plausible to develop on the other. "Scientific papers, scholarly briefs, and forceful arguments

some based on talks given at the September 12 meetingmake up the articles in this book. Scientists, medical and legal experts, political analysts and community activists wrote them. This heterogeneous collection of articles, most published here for the first time, makes a strong case that depleted-uranium weapons are not only lethal to their intended targets, they are dangerous for the humans who handle them and for the present and future environment of the planet. They also show there is potential for building a movement to end this danger."
Ot the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of texts that examine nuclear or 'fuelcycle' issues for popular or social scientific purposes, this humble correspondent has collected well over a thousand titles in either electronic or paper form, or both. Some of those titles appear above. In this penultimate section of this extended aggregation of information, only a single additional such title shows up, albeit, THC does make a few additional materials of a technical or otherwise unusual or specific nature a part of the

ongoing list. Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock that Shaped the World(http://books.google.com/books?id=XM67WMGwugYC&pg=PT263&lpg=PT263&dq=%2 2new+yorker%22+%2B+uranium+%2B+mining+%2B+2010+%2B+%22new+mexico%22&sour ce=bl&ots=rafWFZ3QT6&sig=M0ozNktCXGxArosstHYW6G5vNA4&hl=en&ei=njr1TNa2JIKr8A bDmKDhBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBkQ6AEwATgK#v=onepa ge&q&f=false), Tom Zoelner's take on the status of Uranium in contemporary reality, adheres very neatly to the standard view of the Nuclear Fool cycle. He begins with the industrial legerdemain of the Manhattan project, presented as a magnificent triumph of the American way, and ends with a chapter entitled "Renaissance" that to say the least accepts a Uranium future as a given. The gatekeepers at the Times very much damned it with faint praise as primarily exemplary of facile, 'pop' history(http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/books/review/Bennett-t.html). Nonetheless, his book is very much in keeping structurally with what THC would prefer, in that it is relentlessly chronological. Moreover, his bibliographic sections at the end offer a glimpse of some of what THC has proffered in these scrolling paragraphs. As a recent and overarching examination, in any event, it serves as a step toward a serviceable understanding of what the powers-that-be have in mind for the society that supposedly will sustain all of us. At the very least a score or more additional texts, generally in the vein of scientific tomes, are available directly on the DU topic from the National Academies Press(NAP). Although for reasons already enumerated, these collections and studies are replete with bias and tend to exclude valid and critical testimony that does not emanate from vetted sources, they still do shine a lamp on the basic science and technology of the last natural element on the periodic chart and thereby serve as guideposts for the aspiring pupil to take into consideration. The multi-volume series, Gulf War and Health, exemplifies this richness, even as it also confirms how the pages of each book lean in the direction of the VA's and DOD's preordained conclusions. From the first words of Volume One's subtitle(http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=9953), "Depleted Uranium," DU maintains a primary spot in contemplating what the series continually regards with wonder-that so many veterans are sick, and many seem to be dying. Because DU assumes this key part in the National Academies' ideation about the matter of veteran health, the entire series is important to note, in particular Volumes One, Four, and Eight. The fourth in the series(http://books.google.com/books?id=p7ODWDOQwnoC&pg=PA105&lpg=PA105&dq=fili ppova+%2B+uranium&source=bl&ots=Ux6N6FWMW&sig=zcrNYl8K_wVvO2Rax2Wis7mVcMo&hl=en&ei=euXuTPWjMYX7lweWuCZDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CDcQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=fi lippova%20%2B%20uranium&f=false) contains literally hundreds of pre-Gulf-War citations-from both animal and human studies, in both lab experiments and epidemiological surveys-of morbidity and mortality as a result of Uranium exposure. An offshoot of NAP, the National Research Council, conducted a review of the Army's DU-exculpating Capstone Report and the literature of DU exposure in its relatively brief monograph(http://books.google.com/books?id=iNOztEBTwoUC&printsec=frontcover#v=one page&q&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=iNOztEBTwoUC&pg=PA60&lpg=PA60&dq=filippova+%2 B+uranium&source=bl&ots=Qbyv4MFFzm&sig=KuDAuIqM7bQk8KH2AyOkIoeI0M&hl=en&ei=euXuTPWjMYX7lweWuCZDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBsQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=fi lippova%20%2B%20uranium&f=false), Review of the Toxicologic and Radiologic Risks to Military Personnel from Exposure to Depleted Uranium Before and After Combat. As one might anticipate after examining scores and scores of such contextualizations of these questions, this work also tilts toward the Army and its minions. Once more, however, the fashion in which the text lays out a research agenda and compiles various otherwise difficult-to-gather sources renders a monumental service to those who want to follow these matters to a rational end. Such a collecting task force as this could go on and on and on. In regard to DU directly, one further title deserves mention. In part, this recognition is due because the anthology's chief editor, a heroine of the international manifestation of a movement to end DU weaponization, died tragically at the age of forty-four, of an unexplained 'seizure,' shortly after the publication date. Avril MacDonald was a forceful and passionate critic of the inherently criminal nature of DU munitions; moreover, she fiercely advocated women's rights, Palestinian's rights, and generally advanced the notion that a Court of International Justice with actual jurisdictional powers was more than just a fanciful theory. Her colleagues, Jann Kleffner and Brigit Toebes helped to bring to fruition this volume that contains so many compelling contentions in favor of those who have, in all likelihood, suffered from DU morbidity. Depleted Uranium Weapons and International Law: a Precautionary Approach(http://catalogue.ppl.nl/DB=1/SET=1/TTL=7/CLK?IKT=12&TRM=309563607&REC=* ), which applies the precautionary principle to the choice to scatter essentially eternal toxins on every battlefield from now until when the process unhinges the human prospect, puts forward a powerful counter-argument to the at-best coy point that 'we just can't be sure that DU is that bad.' Whether this lack of knowledge is true or false, precaution-principle dictates require that we hold off on further use until the data necessary to demonstrate a definitive case exists, and scientists have achieved something like a consensus about all of this. "This book provides an in-depth analysis of the international legal aspects of the use of depleted uranium (DU) ammunition and armour. The military use of DU has been surrounded by considerable controversy, mainly as regards the health and environmental risks that such use entails. The debate about DU has thus far been highly polarised, with one end of the spectrum rejecting any risk whatsoever and the other end suggesting that the use of DU leads to severe health and environmental consequences, including Gulf-War syndrome, whenever it is used. Rather than settling these controversies, the book takes as a starting point a precautionary approach in light of the considerable remaining scientific uncertainties. It examines various principles and rules of international law, which would be at play if the health and environmental concerns regarding the use of DU were to materialise." This set of volumes, barely a flake of bark from the tree of knowledge, hardly provides even a start either to the background literature concerning the Nuclear Fool Cycle or to the contemporary consideration of DU in particular. But the longest journey must

begin somewhere, and for purposes of getting a grip on the monographic literature of DU, these books will do. Literally thousands, or more, additional titles lay the foundation for a general overview of our nuclear epoch. Atomic Audit: the Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons since 1940, edited by Steven Schwartz (http://books.google.com/books?id=safduT80AHMC&pg=PA372&lpg=PA372&dq=%22wall+s treet+journal%22+%2B+%22depleted+uranium%22&source=bl&ots=fznotEVQm5&sig=WovyJI83bmGNxC7FFov2bjYLDQ&hl=en&ei=_9b1TJrRE4HGlQeEs_D3BQ&sa=X&oi=book_result &ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CEMQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=%22wall%20street%20journal% 22%20%2B%20%22depleted%20uranium%22&f=false), brilliantly explores the nuclear balance sheet since the formation of the Uranium Committee under FDR. It creates this political-economic framework, moreover, in a strictly historical fashion, concluding, unsurprisingly to one such as THC who has followed this noisome nightmare lo these many decades. Frustratingly, however, after garnering such powerful evidence for the centrality of the Uranium-road to capitalism, it ascribes all of the criminality, misrepresentation, and utter waste of human life and common treasure to bad management and 'mistakes.' It calls for the same superstructure to manage the devastation as created the disaster in the first place. It wants to embrace the administrative and institutional apparatus and apparatchik that have yielded this Nuclear Fool Cycle Depleted Uranium Death Dance, hoping somehow that a different result will emanate from slight shifts in tone and personnel transitions of one sort or another. This humble correspondent stands in awe of the research in such a work; he stands in stupefaction before such inane conclusions. Again, that is the basis for this effort, in no small degree. Adopting a decidedly different approach, a key book, possibly, for strategic purposes, is a combination journalistic and anthropological account of the Hanford Reservation and the men and women who worked there. To a degree, these were the pioneers of the Age-of-Uranium. What the rest of us make of their stories might help determine whether that young epoch now needs a 'renaissance' or a rapid burial.

Nuclear Culture: Living and Working in the

World's Largest Atomic Complex(http://books.google.com/books?id=NJ8fAQAAIAAJ&q=%22atomic+city%22+
%2B+hanford+%2B+nuclear&dq=%22atomic+city%22+%2B+hanford+%2B+nuclear&hl=en& ei=D2oVTYL7D4Ss8AbP4eTPDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCcQ6 AEwATgU), by Paul Loeb, somehow finesses passing judgment on a colossus of death. His book, which delves deeply into the lives of the workers themselves and, by analogy to their dual attitudes toward their own vocations, shows how the wider culture might both find horrific and humdrum embarking on the nuclear highway that leaders now want to convince us is on the verge of a 'renaissance.' A quarter-century old review in Peace Magazine shows with crystalline transparency the connection(http://www.peacemagazine.org/archive/v03n4p34.htm) between a town like Richland and a phenomenon like the Hanford complex and a soldier like Doug Rokke and the eventuality of murder by way of Uranium weapons. Folks might

ponder these words carefully. "(Loeb) found, as expected, a society that had much in common

with any American community based largely on a single industry... .not surprising that anti-nuclear dissent is rare and socially unacceptable, and that the local people lobbied in Washington (successfully) against a cut in the nuclear budget for the area. It is also predictable, but alarming, that safety regulations and procedures are seen by staff as time-wasting harassments, and are often omitted. Occasional accidents have resulted. Even at Hanford, contractors and construction workers cut corners when they can get away with it. So has management: a big leak in a radioactive waste storage tank is a troublesome item in an official report, and expensive to fix. It was cheaper and easier to get rid of the inspector who insisted on reporting it, and to emasculate his report."
Many, many other volumes that barely wrinkled the public consciousness ought to be mandatory scripts for cognition(http://books.google.com/books?id=uKp3ridsHrYC&pg=PA483&lpg=PA483&dq=% 22allen+v.+united+states%22+%2B+atomic&source=bl&ots=tkasl0hr3u&sig=y28iVSJD4Vx6 AJsaRySfTkzc8cU&hl=en&ei=lN8HTdiaBIP58Aa2g73nBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result& resnum=3&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22allen%20v.%20united%20states%22%2 0%2B%20atomic&f=false) of modern history. Barton Hacker's Elements of Controversy: The Atomic Energy Commission and Radiation Safety in Nuclear Weapons Testing, 1947-74, should undoubtedly be a prime candidate for such a listing. In keeping with the thought-processes of this humble correspondent, Hacker avers that "(a) striking feature of the third and current wave of public concern(about radiation safety) has been its historical orientation. ...The case control method lately gaining emphasis in epidemiological studies of fallout and health effects was specifically devised to look systematically backward from the present. ...a growing body of explicitly historical writing based on declassified Federal records, starting with those published in the 1978 and 1979 Congressional hearings." THC can only fantasize that, at some juncture, the capacity to produce a more thorough listing of the variety of narratives that are extant will be forthcoming. In undigested, unannotated form, a single example will suffice to demonstrate what sorts of caches of research and narrative need appropriate digestion and annotation. The Alsos Digital Library of the Nuclear Age, in its "Medical and Biological Effects of Radiation" section(http://alsos.wlu.edu/qsearch.aspx?browse=science/Medical+and+Biological+Effects +of+Radiation&related=true), directs readers to over three hundred titles, a substantial number of which are a volume or more in length. America, citizens learn from increasingly uncritical media and complacent politicos and bureaucrats, has already embarked down the broad, bright highway to a 'Nuclear Renaissance.' Atomic veterans, so-called 'energy workers,' downwinders from the nuclear testing program, Uranium-weapons factory workers, and tens of millions of other citizens from far-flung corners of the globe--from communities indigenous to the areas of Dakota Uranium mines to Fallujah mothers facing maternal cancers and the grotesque

malformation of their children--attest that this well-lighted path may in fact have a deadly toxic glow. Gulf War veterans are merely the latest group to imbibe the poison promulgated as panacea in the Nuclear Fool Cycle. While inquiring minds might wonder how long citizens will tolerate such outrages, one factor that militates against action is ignorance. That is the basis for the this in-depth textualization of this literature of doom and depredation. GROUP #9-The heroes of this humble correspondent's work, though their presence has appeared like a consistent thread throughout this laborious review of atomic information, have yet to make their own case. Readers may trust that the quartet who have led the way toward a grassroots upsurgence against DU will have plenty of space to make clear their own torturous experience of this toxic nightmare. For now, we may consider that all of these lions of human rights have, perhaps especially in the case of Major Rokke, their own informational gateways that open onto evidence and the potential for knowledge and action. Traprock Peace has become Grassroots Peace(http://www.grassrootspeace.org/), which has an essential archive of peace activism, especially that involving veterans such as Major Rokke. That he shows up here, and routes many of his efforts to bring clarity and honesty to this discussion from here bears stark witness to the path that this soldier has followed, from a warrior's road to the former fighter's recognition that warfare is ecocide. For multiple purposes dealing with DU, these virtual locales whip up similar collections and proffer similar assessments as those of this humble correspondent. However, much of what a reader will find here is not there, just as much of what a reader garners there is lacking here. Most particularly, as this section has pointed out, and as following sections develop in narrative fashion before Doug Rokke's personal account appears, the historical record of nuclear weapons, waste, energy, and culture are non-existent or very rudimentary at what was once Traprock. One can search the site for "Joint Commission on Atomic Energy," for the "Uranium Committee," for "Vannevar Bush," all of which are likely important or even critical components of understanding the plight of DU combatant casualties, but no citations include these key blasts from the past. The "Joint Commission on Atomic Energy" shows up once, and only peripherally. A similar lack of political economic context is apparent, inasmuch as the Uranium Enrichment infrastructure that has opportunistically necessitated DU penetrators makes no appearance through the site. These elements of both understanding and strategy are the purpose for which THC has undertaken this work. Leuren Moret's "The Trojan Horse of Nuclear War" describes the 'omnicidal' effects(http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/DU-Trojan-Horse1jul04.htm) of DU. She has originated substantial historical research, as well as either acting as a clearinghouse or as an originator of important scientific dialog and findings. Of course, for her troubles, she has encountered calumny and diatribe from both the pair of establishment-guardians noted a couple of sections ago. As well, she has elicited the special attention of Robert Holloway, another health physicist who apparently values the job opportunities of his profession more than he does honesty or fair-minded debate(http://www.vvacalsc.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5&start=15). The title of his most widespread propaganda(http://www.ntanet.net/traprock.html),

"Leuren

Moret and Doug Rokke Mislead Public on Depleted Uranium," is true to the extent that some small pieces of what these heartfelt seekers

of honest engagement pronounce turns out to be wrong. Every story, every book, unless God is the author, contains such minor errors. But then Holloway and other of his cohorts go further: they assert that Moret and Rokke are lying or stupid about the Groves memo, which purportedly did not concern Uranium in any shape, form, or fashion. And both in terms of reason and as a matter of research, this is both false and absurd, which the culmination of Section 5, above, dispositively proved. As an offshoot of this present long-form, truly book-length--or even multi-volume-effort, this humble correspondent is planning on producing at least a long article that goes into much greater depth about the misleading tactics and subtle (and sometimes blatant) falsehoods of these fattened cattle who wolf down their payoffs so fulsomely at the feedtroughs of the Nuclear Fool Cycle. Until then, Ms. Moret sticks up for herself quite potently. "This terrible truth(of DU's demonstrable, undeniable, and

deadly toxicity) and global tragedy is what Holloway and the other prostitutes for the nuclear establishment are hiding by lying about the intended purpose of the Groves memo. Holloway himself worked for the EPA in Nevada. The EPA had a secret dairy on the Nevada test site during atmospheric testing and underground testing until 1982. Horrible experiments were done on animals at this dairy, and tissue and bone samples were sent to the Livermore Lab, Lawrence Berkeley Lab and the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard secret radiation lab in San Francisco."
For his part, THC wants to point out another sort of lie that is as regular as rain among these slick sleight-of-hand artists of established points of view. This is the supposed universality of opinion in favor of their positions. Holloway states, "The best

expert opinion, including a report of the United Nations Scientific Committee on Effects of Radiation, is that 'radiation exposure has never been demonstrated to cause hereditary effects in human populations.'"
Anyone who has focused in reading these pages, or who examines at this juncture the work of Chris Busby, Rosalie Bertell, and many other sources more established will see that this statement is, at best, empty formalism about the impossibility of certain sorts of truth in the context of no studies' having ever taken place extensive enough to provide complete proof. At worst, it is a malicious misrepresentation. As easily present in multiple sources(http://www.stripes.com/news/study-depleteduranium-could-damage-dna-1.47714) and already demonstrated several times in this collection, the mutagenicity and teratogenicity of both DU and other radioactive materials is indisputable. Once again as well, recent science suggests(http://www.allforums.net/showthread.php?t=17535) that Uranium, in its interactions with cells, acts as a constricting snake to its prey in relation to DNA.

If this were the only absurd prevarication in Holloway's writings, one might merely shrug; unfortunately, he repeatedly contends, with no merit in his position on any occasion of substantive disagreement with such as Rokke and Moret, that all, or "almost all," expert opinion agrees totally with his position. In general, of course, such incautious universal dismissiveness is almost always antithetical to science. Even inside the heavily biased realm of Health Physics, such as these are likely dubious allegations. Taking into account the beliefs and research of public health, medicine, epidemiology, among other fields, any stance that purports what Holloway and others do would be laughable were it not so murderous. Joyce Riley, while she doesn't devote much attention to her own presence and so does not appear to have a clearinghouse of her own, is ubiquitous behind many of the positive efforts that this humble correspondent's narrative here has presented. Most recently, she appeared extensively on radio(http://geraldcelentechannel.blogspot.com/2010/12/dr-stan-monteith-joyce-rileydepleted.html) to promote the notion that a complete lack of culpability about and coverage of this issue is omnipresent. This remains the case even as a magazine like Army Times admits(http://www.militarytimes.com/news/2010/12/military-heavy-metals-dust-kuwait-iraq120710w/)--without any major media recognition--that "DU could in fact be causing problems." She also cites a Military Times report on a simple sampling study that shows neurological conditions(http://search.armytimes.com/sp?&skin=&keywords=%22december+13%2C+2010 %22&aff=1132&start=11) are up 200%, birth defects and complications are up 50% or more, and other disorders show similar upsurges since twenty years of DU and death in the Gulf of Arabia. "Exactly what we have been talking about all these years," she says, with evident emotion--referring to herself and Doug Rokke--"is turning out to be 100% true." Captain, and Air Force nurse, Riley is a marvelously articulate mediator of these important communiques. In her "Power Hour With Joyce Riley," she explicitly sticks up for(http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/07/13/the-power-hour-with-joyce-riley-wednesdayjuly-14th/) what corporate media almost universally fail to deliver. Of course, her seminal role in developing the documentary, "Beyond Treason(http://www.beyondtreason.com/)" is another instance of brilliant, though ignored and lied about, attempts to contribute to the cultural dialog on these critical questions, something that this humble correspondent has seen fit to review(INTERLINK). As is the case with all of these DU heroes, an extensive review of her life and work is forthcoming. Dennis Kyne, meanwhile, the stalwart activist who has committed himself to organize and stand up against Uranium weapons at the cost of his liberty, over and over and over again, shows up at various points on the web(http://www.criticalconcern.com/dennis_kyne.htm), often speaking eloquently(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mcpjan6kZ4E) against official DU dissimulation and fraud. In general, however, little comes to the fore here of a either a background historical or an overarching and explanatory political-economic nature, which, as noted above repeatedly, is how this humble correspondent envisions his task. He notes that he "likes to localize his presentation." He argues that "a continuous and perpetual denial exists in this subtle indoctrination that the government couldn't hurt you." He sees the horrors of Hanford speaking in Washington, "and there are horrors everywhere." This warrior, from a line of disciplined warriors, extricated himself from

militarism, partially as a result of his injuries, but primarily as a result of the betrayal that he has experienced, the constant litany of lies about his testimony. In any event, time and again, the people's beliefs about DU have proven right, just as Joyce Riley has spoken so clearly. To use the words of Dennis Kyne's book, the point has been to "Support the Truth." Time and again, the protestations of governments--and of their coteries of expertise and cocksurdenesss--have proven wrong; these so-called 'democratic representatives' and their 'scholars' of 'rationality and science' have panned out to be liars; still worse schemes--of fraud, double-dealing, and cover-up of high crimes and misdemeanors--have, time and again, shown themselves to be in play. Finally, prior to a few overall ideas to exit, this humble correspondent realizes that such efforts at aggregating information as the world wide web makes possible really are at times magnificent. Here(http://www.betterworldlinks.org/index.php?cat=2557), for example, the intrepid seeker can find several hundred pathways that contain detailed and critical information on almost every issue and area of modern life. Hundreds, or very probably 100's times 100's, of such resource caches are available to seekers about these matters of DU-death-dances and more. Nevertheless, despite both the inescapable fact that history's signatures are everywhere in this story and the unavoidable conclusion that political economic comprehension is central to learning and doing anything about these matters, no thorough and clear manifestation of the annals and the political-economic analysis of DU is available anywhere. In going through the taxing moves of pulling this restatement of literature and research and potential portals of knowledge together, this humble correspondent intends to address these missing components of a powerful remediation of the Nuclear Fool Cycle Depleted Uranium carnage. One cannot provide coordinates for the present except by reference to the past--put another way, knowing the present requires being able to see how one has arrived at the present juncture. Obviously, also, one cannot chart a course, if one doesn't know one's current locale. That history is essential ought to e as clear as a frosty cloudless night which shows the stars like a spill of milk across a moonless sky. Equally apt to note, any course of action that has a better than random chance at making a positive difference has to analyze correctly how the pieces of the political, social, and economic puzzle at hand fit together. These plausibly utilitarian components of a DU narrative are the primary point of THC's work, a few finishing notes about which will complete this long, long road that readers have wended today. A Concluding Flurry H. G. Wells' prognosticating, atomic novel, The World Set Free, aptly compounds the mixture of genius and madness that has long come to mirror the social and politicaleconomic hegemony of the ubermensch and the technical marvels that have always marked such societies made concrete. He starts, in his "Sun-Snarers" prelude, by bemusing on power: "The history of mankind is the history of the attainment of external power." Despite the puerile limitation of this trope, if accepted as any sort of whole cloth of the human fabric, it remains all-too-popular to the juncture when readers take up Wells this very moment. "Man is the tool using, fire making animal. From the outset of his terrestrial career, we find him supplementing the natural strength and bodily weapons of a beast by the heat of burning and the rough implement of stone. So he passed beyond the ape. From that he expands." Atomic power, and the bombs that it makes possible, not only formulate a new and

better technique, but a new and better humanity. Though such mechanistic ruminations, at best nonsensical, lead down dangerous alleyways, Wells wittingly or not stumbles upon much of merit in considering this grand new age of Uranium that in many ways the plutocrats are struggling to bring into being. And, whether by design or moral dharma, he shows us a leader dying of cancer, in a magnificent clinic where the clinicians promise times soon to come when such 'mistakes' as malignancies will hardly matter. "How encumbered the world had become! It was ailing as I am ailing with a growth of unmeaning things. It was entangled, feverished, confused. It was in sore need of release, and I suppose that nothing less than the violence of those bombs could have released it, and made it a healthy world again. I suppose they were necessary." This lethal encomium continues, Wells as unaware of the absurdity of his inversions of reality as is the triumphant bull in making its irresistible charge into the snares of the matador's killing thrust. The 'evil' of the world, inherent in all except 'science,' tortures and distorts the pure beauties that scientific creativity proffer. The leading "they," somehow magically exclusive of men like Vannevar Bush and Leslie Groves and so forth, will "not suffer open speech" or otherwise effectuate mass education that is objective and empowering. "You who are younger cannot imagine the mixture of desperate hope and protesting despair in which we who could believe in the possibilities of science lived in the years before atomic energy came." The majority of forefathers, in Wells' view, both feared and worshipped science, terrified of self-knowledge but in awe of the capacity attendant on general comprehension. "'(D)o tricks for us. Limited little tricks. Give us cheap lighting. And cure us of certain disagreeable things--cure us of cancer, cure us of consumption, cure our colds and relieve us after repletion.'" Incredibly, fantasy no more advanced than the twelve year old's tight-lipped assurance of glory if only all the adults would disappear, the author of this and War of the Worlds, among other titles, continues. "Science is no longer our servant. We know it as something greater than our little individual selves. It is the awakening mind of the race." Dying of the cancer that 'science' has been causing instead of 'curing,' paradigmatic inanity resplendent, the soon-to-expire hero announces the good news which sounds like a prophecy of today's doom unless folks "straighten up and fly right," as this humble correspondent's mama used to say. "While I lie here, they are clearing up what is left of the bombs in London... .Then they are going to repair the ruins and make it all as like as possible to its former condition before the bombs fell." Yet he sees the toxicity of the 'former condition' that all paradoxically still want restored, even as he fails to detect the seeds of destruction in the new ways, so long as they continue to accrue from the material relationships and social ties that maintained before. Then, "(t)hey were ill. They were sick with confusion. Everybody was anxious about money, and everybody was doing uncongenial things. ...One sees how ill they were by their advertisements. ...London... plastered with advertisements of pills. Everybody must have been taking pills. ...The pill carrying age followed the weapon carrying age." Leading thinkers uniformly embraced Bismarck's 'blood and iron.' Chillingly, to anyone paying attention--searingly, to anyone suffering from DU deposits in his organs or DU burning into her bones--he predicts an end to this. "The monstrous worship of the old fool's 'blood and iron' passed all around the earth. Until the atomic bombs burned our way to freedom again..." Wells' ellipses nauseate with their presumption at just such a touchy

point as this, immediately prior to conceiving that humanity's growth-phase will somehow include the elimination of eros and sexual need. These fantasies, ludicrous and lucid intermixed, soundbites about the future as viewed from 1914, appear at times too astute to bear. Of course, they are also characteristically fantastical and foolish in retrospect. Nevertheless, these capsules of ruling ideation display an essential shape--that 'free' or 'painless' solutions to life's enigmatic struggles are available; that technology will save us from social suffering; that nothing fundamentally responsible need occur; that business as usual will therefore remain possible without an utter gutting of human welfare and democracy--that now appears in the form of film and television, almost universally similar to what now transpires as the social norm, albeit with vampires and zombies to manage in the bargain. Whether mad, or merely childish, such notions can only sow devolution rather than evolutionary possibility. Readers should have no illusions. THC does not promise 'answers.' No grand conspiracy emerges here that will allow 'people of good faith' to aver, "Aha! There's the bad guy; get 'em!' All that THC produces is, more or less, intelligible propaganda that socially democratic action must occur for people in general to have a prayer that anything decent might happen. But THC believes in political democracy(INTERLINK, ?) and intentional community(INTERLINK, WB) with equal fervor as he backs communal ownership of capital and a generally positive attitude toward sharing. This long and difficult digest-review of a vast literature, which needs expansion in both depth and breadth even more than it needs a tightening of focus, attempts to lay a foundation from which to build the capacity for popular action about Depleted Uranium. Some would doubt the necessity for such long-winded expostulation. Certainly, though, many thinkers massively more gifted than THC conclude that these matters of media and meaning are of critical import. In ending this missive to those who would end DU devastation and heal those who have suffered as a consequence of DU's deployment, THC propounds a bevy of arguably key points to consider by way of conclusion. The importance of focused attention, of admitting ignorance and rectifying any willful acceptance of such a state, ranks number one. Like a potentially super-critical configuration of enriched Uranium, it demands that people address its presence. The Village Voice sought to knock this into people's skulls as the invasion of Iraq unfolded in carnage and Depleted Uranium(http://www.villagevoice.com/2003-0415/news/leaving-a-mess-in-mesopotamia/2/). "A short attention span may be as limiting as shallow pockets. In 1991, UNEP recommended creation of an international plan to rehabilitate the environment, a sort of Marshall Plan to deal with the environmental disaster in the Middle East caused by the first Gulf War. The plan never materialized, and much of the damage remains. When asked why, Nick Nuttall, UNEP's head of communications, said there was no particular reason. 'After a war. there's lots of goodwill and good ideas,' he said. 'And then the world moves on.'" The decisive role of support for grassroots capacity in such a sally ought to be transparent: otherwise, all attempts at attentive engagement will collapse, necessarily, in the teeth of the clever strategies and ongoing attention of the technocrats who draw handsome salaries from established institutions. This need for knowledge upgrades is something that THC has frequently noted(INTERLINK), and that is close to

omnipresent(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/civic-education/) among progressive cogniscenti as well(http://www.infed.org/biblio/b-dem.htm). A collection(http://www.idrc.ca/openebooks/784-1/) of materials about Latin America and the Caribbean might have been inscribed for those who would resist DU. "People

were creating grassroots organizations that, for the first time in 200 years, seemed to have the potential of turning common people into the shapers of their own destinies. ...In its specifics this was the story of one country. But it is a story told in different ways, with different voices, in different chapters, throughout much of the world. It is a story of a search for forms of democracy that allow people in their communities and workplaces to control their lives and livelihoods. It is a tale of empowerment, of grasping the tools of political action, of group discipline, of economic and social will."
The corrupted nature of present media, however, all but eviscerates the likelihood of both the attention and the learning curve that are both indispensable. Many social democratic, radical, or otherwise non-corporate critics denote this process(http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Corporate_Media/CorpMedia_ThreatDemocracy. html). "Third World Traveler" quotes an after dinner speech of John Swinton, a late nineteenth century editor of the New York Tribune, in this regard.

are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping-jacks; they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.'"
Edward Bernays, the paterfamilias of Public Relations and its close sibling,

"'We

conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.'"
He might have been anticipating such forms as 'Project Mockingbird,' the notorious, perhaps infamous, infiltration of media by CIA and other government agents. An iconic outlet for 'news' such as the Times might view this as limited in scope and application(http://washington.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/project-mockingbird/). On the other hand, credible sources also view the pattern as prototypical of the intersection between Federal governance and corporate mediation(http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmockingbird.htm). Literally thousands of interlocutors would implicate such skullduggery in the present DU management scheme(http://thetruthnews.info/wordpress/?tag=depleted-uranium-munitions).

governmental propaganda, stated the matter more subtly. "'The

Project Mockingbird may or may not have planted moles who have dealt with DU; such hackers as Roger Helbig may or may not have any connection with such machinations. But they do propound a plausibly core piece of a framework for comprehending the tortuous, byzantine complexity that THC is seeking to unravel with these efforts at explication and analysis. Having created an evidentiary grid, perhaps now readers will be better able to examine issues of political economy and history with more acumen. In any event, from such labors, in the estimation of THC, will come the capacity to act to which the life and travails of Doug Rokke and others call open-hearted and compassionate cousins. The crippling influence of secrecy in any attempt to deal honestly and honorably with such issues ought to be obvious. In any event, seeking a narrative that gave readers a big picture of this point, specifically concerning DU, Marylyn Hoff(http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/07/30/the-other-side-of-the-du-issue/) extends the following analysis. "Atomic secrecy has corrupted American democracy. The rationale for this corroding secrecy has always been national security, the need to keep powerful information from falling into the hands of the current U.S. enemy. Nuclear scientists even today regard the level Q top secret security clearance as a badge of honor, even while it signifies a determination not to spill the truth. But now secrecy has mutated into an instrument of self-preservation, not for the security of the nation but for the profits of the nuclear industry. The hoarding of secrets has evolved into the telling of lies. And the deception is being perpetrated not on the enemies of the U.S. but on its tax-paying citizens, whose contributions finance U.S. atomic atrocities and line the coffers of nuclear profiteers. The reason for this secrecy and deception has also changed. The nuclear industrys greatest fear is no longer of an enemy. It fears instead that the truth about the environmental and health effects of radiation, if fully conveyed to the American people, will result in the collapse of the nuclear industry with its obscene profits. It especially fears what will happen when the American public learns the truth about depleted uranium (DU) munitions." Myths that people tell themselves about the nature of American democracy, vis-a-vis actual democracy, utterly undermine the potential for popular power. How can people obtain what they fail to understand that they do not already have? The instances of this are so widespread that many lifetimes might only scratch the surface of this tough and everpresent veneer of American consciousness. In this vein, the words of an Appeals Court Judge, speaking of his rejection of a clear claim for damages by Atomic-Bomb-test victims, ought to prod any citizen worth the name into reflection and action about what has happened since Einstein's letter and the Uranium Committee instituted the nuclear age, a recent invidious chapter of which has been Depleted Uranium depredations. "'It undoubtedly will come as a surprise to many that two hundred years after we threw out King George III, the rule that the king can do no wrong still prevails at the federal level in all but the most trivial of matters.' But, he went on to say, thats the way it is, and courts have continued to give the government wide latitude of action in tort cases brought against it." This false awareness about how democratic we are in turn inhibits, likely prohibits, the development of social equality. One would pray that most citizens would be cognizant

of the fundamental truism that measurable social progress without some strong backing for social equality will always, quite likely, remain chimerical. Certainly, those whom folks generally consider champions of democracy have long acknowledged this key idea. Abraham Lincoln said in 1854, while making beaucoup bucks as a railroad lawyer, "Most

governments have been based, practically, on the denial of equal rights of men . . . ours began by affirming those rights. They said, some men are too ignorant, and vicious, to share in government. Possibly so, said we; and, by your system, you would always keep them ignorant and vicious. We proposed to give all a chance; and we expected the weak to grow stronger, the ignorant, wiser; and all better, and happier together. . . . As labor is the common burden of our race, so the effort of some to shift their share of the burden onto the shoulders of others is the great durable curse of the race."

The material reality of ecological principles ineffably underpins such condemnation of class oppression. Nature's balances, and the evening propensities of social combination and conflict in cultural evolution, everywhere testify to the unsustainability of long term vast inequalities and inequities. John La Forge, speaking to the Dutch Parliament about recent dismissals of objections to DU and Plutonium restrictions(http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=8&ved=0CE4QFjAH&url=http %3A%2F%2Fwww.nukewatch.com%2Fquarterly%2F2008summer%2Fpage2.pdf&ei=gcALTd KkOYGs8Abux5SwDg&usg=AFQjCNHz8pBf9SF9pzt8sIucizTWQHI7Hg&sig2=IprIwIPAyiUwWmLFdx8Ow), put this concept bluntly. "Any NATO or Pentagon official who can blandly
trivialize the health impact of plutonium exposure should be invited by parliaments and veterans the world over to voluntarily ingest a few 'mere traces.' Their answer to the invitation would be more informative than their lullabies."

This humble correspondent has many more than a few times proffered deeper cultural(INTERLINK, DH#1) and historical(INTERLINK, Peak Oil) stories to make a similar eco-social perspective. A recent testimony to such an insight spoke explicitly about any choice to induce a Uranium economy((http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/navajos_ban_uranium_ mining/)). "'Water is life is not just a political slogan its a description of some of the fundamental principles we live by every day. 'Water is used in our religious ceremonies, just like it is used in the ceremonies of the Christian, Hindu, Jewish and Muslim faiths. It is essential to our survival in an arid climate, Capitan explained to a United Nations Conference this past September. Echoing those words, Richard Abitz, geo-chemist and

environmental scientist, said, 'Water is needed for life. Uranium is not needed for life. We can get by without uranium. We can not get by without water.'" Humankind is of the earth: no 'natural scheme' that proceeds from different premises from those of Gaia are likely to seed our succor. The plutocratic paradigm foisted on people as a 'renaissance' stands light-years outside of Gaia's boundaries. Those cousins here who care about the viability of great-grandchildren--not to mention their own friends and relations now--had better consider carefully the need to learn more, to participate, to question the inculcation by rulers--occasionally venal, occasionally wellmeaning, generally merely opportunistic and self-serving--of prospects that leave no room for most people to survive, let alone thrive. Doug Rokke and other heroes who have sacrificed fame and fortune, not to mention their health, to the depredations of Depleted Uranium, call for us to pay heed. The route that this humble correspondent follows is long, but the guidance of such stalwart citizens as Rokke will emerge in the process.