Forwarded with Compliments of Government of the USA in Exile (GUSAE):
Free Americans Proclaiming Total Emancipation and Working Towards
Democracy. NOTE: BBC World Service Radio at about 0905 GMT Aug
2 reported about a hundred cases of "pneumonia" among US troops in
various parts of Iraq; the symptoms, though, indicate DU poisoning
rather than pneumonia; please visit <www.denniskyne.com> for texts
and photos of DU's ghastly effects. -- kl, pp
Leuren Moret Speaking on Depleted Uranium
Los Altos, California 21apr03
Nuclear Holocaust and The Politics of Radiation.
Sponsored by the Women's Solidarity Movement held at the Spangenberg
Theatre, Gunn High School, Los Altos, California.
Recorded and transcribed by Paul Goettlich.
Audio recordings of the complete lecture (about 120 minutes) by all
three of these people are available.
Contact info:
Leuren Moret President, Scientists for Indigenous People City of
Berkeley Environmental Commissioner Past President, Association for
Women Geoscientists 2233 Grant Street Apt. 1 Berkeley, CA 94703
Phone/FAX (510) 845-3139 leurenmoret@yahoo.com
Left to right: Staff Sergeant Dennis Kyne, Leuren Moret, and Major
Douglas Rokke in Los Altos CA 21apr03
And now, please welcome Environmental Commissioner of Berkeley, and
president for the Scientists of Indigenous People, Leuren Moret on
depleted uranium, the public and environmental perspective, the
impact on humans, wildlife, and public health.
Audience applauds
As-salamu-'alaikum. [Muslim greeting meaning "Peace be upon you"]
People in the audience responds... `Wa `Alaikum us-Salamu wa
Rahmatullahi [Peace and Allah's Mercy be upon you].
I'd like to welcome all of you tonight and I'm so happy that you
come to inform yourselves. We have to give you something better
than what's in the mainstream media. So, (chuckles) and getting it
straight from the horse's mouth.
I, sort of, accidentally got involved with the depleted-uranium
issue when I was invited to speak in Japan at the 2000 World
Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs. I'm a whistleblower
at the Livermore nuclear weapons lab.
Audience applauds loudly
When you work in these places, as Dennis [Kyne] said, you really
don't know what's going on. I worked five years at the Lawrence
Berkeley Lab. I'm a geologist. I was studying volcanoes. I was a
single parent, and I got a job at Livermore because I could take a
lot of time off and spend it with my daughter.
It took me about two years working on the Yucca Mountain project
and the Superfund project to realize the extent of science fraud--the
lies, the manipulation, the theft, the embezzlement. It was a very
tangled web. And the blackmail. And I finally realized the University
of California was nothing but a slumlord.
Laughter and applause from audience
So, one day I was in my office, and I just was looking out the
window, and I said, "I'm out of here." I packed everything in my
car.
I drove out the gate, [and] dropped off my badge and my beeper. But
they've been harassing every since.
You have to realize the price that Doug [Rokke] and I have paid,
and other people that speak out, who come out to inform you, the
citizens, the taxpayers, the mothers and fathers, and grandfathers
of people who are caught in this tangled web.
And indeed, Iraq is a tangled web. Afghanistan is a tangled web.
Bosnia and Kosovo. And then I'm warning you tonight, this is just
the very beginning. We have 100 years of war to go, unless we stop
it.
And if we don't stop it, not only are our pockets going to be empty,
our environment is going to be trashed--but our public health, more
than anything, and our democracy will be destroyed.
The nuclear weapons project started with the Manhattan Project and
the development of the nuclear bombs, the atomic bombs that were
dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The United States decided, at
that time, after the war was over, to expand and develop a very
large nuclear weapons program. And we created a Cold War with Russia
and that has sort of ended, but not really. We're in the next
game--what I call that is the next scam.
The waste stream--the radioactive waste streams--from that project
has poisoned the world. The Southern Hemisphere is almost completely
a nuclear-weapons-free zone. And in the end, those countries will
have much better public health than we do.
Just last week, the World Health Organization announced that cancers
around the world will increase by 50% in the next 20 years. I think
it's very interesting that this coincides with the use of huge
amounts of depleted uranium in Iraq, because radiation respects no
borders. Radiation respects no race. And radiation respects no
socioeconomic class. It's going to get all of us.
Not only for our soldiers, battling for the people of Iraq and
Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, but for our own health, and for our
future generations, we need to do something about this and stop it.
It's very interesting that Doug gave me a memo, not very long ago.
It was a memo to General Leslie Groves, dated October 30th, 1943.
[Also see: Letter from Leuren Moret to Congressman McDermott 21feb03]
I'm an environmental scientist. My Ph.D. research was on atmospheric
dusts, and how they move, and are transported around the world, how
much of our pollution now is transported in less than a week from
Asia on and with atmospheric dusts. Thirty-four percent of mercury
pollution in the United States is from Asia.
Truly, we're globally one environment. So, when you're doing things
in one country, eventually it's going to end up in your country
too, no matter how many continents or oceans separate you.
In this memo, I was just astounded to read it because it's actually
a blueprint for depleted uranium. This is in 1943, before they'd
even dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And actually, the
three physicists who wrote a memo were the top physicists on the
Manhattan Project--Conant, Urey, and Compton.
And what they recommended to General Groves was that he develop
radioactive materials, including depleted uranium, into a military
weapon that could be used on the battlefield. In the details of
their memos they described grinding it to up to 0.15 [1/10 of
micron], which is very, very fine particles. This is smaller than
bacteria. It would behave like a gas. It diffuses into the lungs
and gets into the blood. It completely contaminates the environment
and denies access to both the enemy and friendly forces without
being exposed. It also said that it goes through gas masks. It goes
through filters--air filters. It's impossible to filter it out--the
very fine particles.
And there is no protective clothing that can be designed to protect
you from exposure.
Wow! That memo really had a very profound effect on me. What I did
was contacted Karen Parker in this film [that was shown to you]. I
said I needed to write a science report for you, which you can use
at the United Nations. I found out that Congressman McDermott, a
Democrat in Washington, was offering a bill in Congress requiring
a health study on, and other studies on, depleted uranium.
The studies have all been done. From the Groves memo in 1943, they
knew everything about the use then. They were very, very competent
scientists. Then I found summaries of military research done at Los
Alamos National Labs in military laboratories. These were summaries
of research done from 1974 to 1999. And it's just a repeat of the
Groves memo.
Indeed, Karen Parker is absolutely right. They have tested all of
these weapons and they know everything about them. In summaries
they described the contamination of the testing grounds and the
battlefield. They measured the depleted uranium in the radiation
levels in ground squirrels that live there. They measured the DU
in the cut of the animals, in the fur. And this is years after the
[open-air nuclear bomb] testing. They also said they were worried
about personnel who would be handling the metal-depleted uranium-shells,
and loading them and deploying them, they would be exposed.
It's all there. It's impossible for the military to say it's not a
health and environmental hazard.
In Afghanistan, they used depleted uranium in the Gulf War I for
the first time. It broke a 46-year taboo against the use of
radiological weapons on the battlefield. I began to investigate and
wonder why.
Having worked at Livermore, and knowing nuclear weapons scientists
and so forth, I'm pretty sure--in fact, I'm very sure--that the
depleted uranium is an analog--it's a very similar weapon--to what
the military is planning to develop: fourth-generation nuclear
weapons.
They can study what those health effects and environmental effects
will have by using DU. And indeed, we've heard Bush and Rumsfeld
and Cheney saying, "Well, we're going to develop fourth-generation
nuclear weapons." We're using mini-nukes on the battlefield.
I'd just like to read something from a very, very informative article
that I just got yesterday, which appeared in the Idaho Statesman.
I love the alternative media.
"George Bush's ongoing war in Afghanistan is also a nuclear war.
Shortly after 9-11, the U.S. announced it would stockpile tactical
nuclear weapons--including small neutron bombs, nuclear mines and
shells--suited to command warfare in Afghanistan." [Idaho Statesman]
In late September in 2001...gee and never saw this... Bush and
Russian President, Vladimir Putin agreed that the U.S. would use
tactical nuclear weapons in Afghanistan while Putin would employ
nuclear weapons against the Chechens. Describing the Pentagon's
B61-11 burrowing nuke bomb, George Smith writes in the Village
Voice, "Built ram tough, with a heavy metal casing for smashing
through the earth and concrete, the B61-11 explodes with a force
of an estimated 340,000 tons of TNT. It is lots of bang for the
buck, literally two apocalypse bombs in one--a boosted plutonium
firecracker, called the primary, and a heavy hydrogen secondary for
the good old fashioned H-bomb fireball."
Drought-stricken Afghanistan's underground water supply is now
contaminated by these nuclear weapons. Experts with the Uranium
Medical Research Center report that urine samples of Afghanis show
the highest level of uranium ever recorded in a civilian population.
Afghani soldiers and civilians are reported to have died after
suffering intractable vomiting, severe respiratory problems, internal
bleeding, and other symptoms consistent with radiation poisoning.
Dead birds, still perched in trees, are found partially melted,
with blood oozing from their mouths.
Afghanistan's new president, Hamid Karzai, is a puppet installed
by Washington. Under the protection of American soldiers, Karzai's
regime is setting a new record for opium production.
Both the U.N. and the U.S. reports confirmed that the huge Afghani
opium harvest of 2002 makes Afghanistan the world's leading opium
producer. Thanks to nuclear weapons, Afghanistan is now safe for
the Bush-Cheney narcotics industry. ABC News asserts that keeping
"the peace" in Afghanistan will require decades of Allied occupation.
For years to come, peacekeepers will be eating, drinking, and
breathing that hot, carcinogenic pollution they have helped the
Pentagon inflict upon the nation for organized crime.
A hot particle... this is a brand new study by the European Parliament.
I wrote a letter recommending that the Parliament find this study--this
was released January 30th--and this is the 2003 recommendation of
the European Committee on Radiation Risk.
Health Effects of Ionizing Radiation Exposure at Low Doses for
Radiation Protection Purposes.
And this is a photograph of a hot particle--a microscopic particle
with alpha tracks coming out of it. It looks like a little ball
with toothpicks stuck in. These are alpha tracks from one
microscopic/sub-microscopic particle. [For notes on photo at right
see "Hot" or radioactive particle in lung tissue]
In one day, if a soldier is wearing a gas mask with HEPA filters--the
most efficient air filters possible--he will inhale, through those
efficient air filters 28 million of these particles. Seventy percent
of these will go into the blood.
Now, we've heard Dennis and the veteran on the news story say they
even didn't have any protective gear.
Doug and I, on our tour on the East Coast in January, in every
single event that we did, a national guardsman/guardswoman, or ROTC
student, or someone would say, "You know those gas masks they gave
us? Well, if you just put your head up, it'll flop off your face."
What kind of protection is that? And you know the government is not
paying for the best air filters for soldiers...because our soldiers
are disposable. We know from Vietnam. We know from Gulf War I. And
we know from Gulf War II. Or going to soon find that out. It's not
going to be any different.
What happens when these particles get into the blood?
After uranium metal burns--and depleted uranium is pyrophoric--it
burns when it heats to 1700 C. So, as soon as they shoot them, and
the surface of the weapon heats up to 1700 C, it starts burning.
And you can see them. They look like tracers going through the air
on the battlefield.
They are creating billions and billions and billions of superfine
particles. These did not settle out by gravity. Gravitational forces
do not pull them out of the air. They stay suspended. They act like
a radioactive gas.
And we know--I work with 8 independent scientists--we've measured
depleted uranium, which after it burns, is very very insoluble. It
forms oxides that will almost not dissolve. And because they will
not dissolve, they will not dissolve in body fluids. And so, the
body cannot excrete them through the kidneys in the urine.
These particles are like fairy dust. They go everywhere where a red
blood cell or a white blood cell will go. And they stay in the
body--millions and billions of them. These alpha particles tear
through the cell. They tear through the membrane, which damages the
immune system. They tear through the mitochondria, which is your
energy system. They tear through the DNA, causing mutations.
And then, the energy that they dump in the cell along that path,
disturbs the hormones, the molecules in the compounds, the signaling
system that helps the cells communicate with each other because
they're in a cooperative system.
I'd like to read to you why Gulf War syndrome is so complex. It's
a complex of illnesses. And it's also combined with chemical exposure
on the battlefield. And even Doug told me they had eight vaccinations
in one day at one time. That trashes your immune system. In addition,
they were exposed to biological agents. They were sprayed with
pesticides. They had an illegal anthrax vaccine with squaline in
it.
Very, very, very tiny amounts of chemicals and radiation can do
terrible damage. We're just finding that out now. And the synergistic
effects of chemicals and radiation working together...there's no
research on that. We don't even know. We just know it's really bad.
Gulf War illness symptoms [include] chronic fatigue syndrome--that's
the mitochondria; severe headaches; rashes; joint pain; muscle pain;
nerve damage; neurological damage; kidney damage;
lung damage; cardiovascular signs or symptoms; thyroid disease;
multiple cancers; autoimmune deficiencies; unusual fevers and night
sweats; fluid buildups; sleep disturbances; gastrointestinal signs
or symptoms; abnormal births and defects; menstrual problems; reduced
IQ; confusion; memory loss; blood in stools and urine; fibromyalgia;
Epstein-Barr syndrome; genetic alterations; sinus diseases;
mycoplasma fermentans incognitus; infections; unusual hair loss;
loss of smell; chemical sensitivities; asthma; vision problems.
And that is just a short list.
[Holding up a book]
This is a book that I wrote the forward to. It's called Discounted
Casualties. It's by a Japanese journalist. This is a really wonderful
book. It's on the Internet. Just do a search and read it. I'll have
some copies of the book in the back, to sell afterwards. This is a
very very informative, very easy book to read. Friends of mine have
used it in their college classes to teach war environment. It's
really a tragedy. It has all of the facets of the DU issue. But
also, when those whose husbands came back from the Gulf War have
complained [that] after intercourse, of having formal burning in
their vaginal area and losing sensation. For soldiers' semen has
depleted uranium and chemicals in it.
In a study of 251 Gulf War veterans in the state of Mississippi,
which was conducted by the Veterans Administration-I always use
their own reports on them, because how can they refuse their own
reports?
The veterans had children who were normal before they went off to
the Gulf War. When they came back, of the children conceived and
born after the Gulf War, 67% had children with severe illnesses and
deformities. And I mean, they were born without brains, without
organs, without hands, without legs, with their hands attached to
their shoulders.
There's a really wonderful live photo essay on the Internet. And
you can read about some of these children. The tragedy is that once
the veterans have these children they cannot leave the military
because it's a pre-existing condition and they will have no health
coverage [if they leave]. So, there's really very little being said
or publicized in United States about their plight. But we know from
people who have gone to Iraq. Japanese journalists have gone and
photographed in the hospitals in Iraq. The birth defects after the
Gulf War [were] maybe one a week. Now it's two or three a day because
the chronic daily 24-hour exposure of the people living in Basra,
who are down-wind from the battlefields, has continued since the
Gulf War. And they just have higher and higher levels of depleted
uranium in their bodies. It has destroyed the germ cells-the ova
and the sperm.
That was the battlefields. This time, the United States has gone
in and bombed their cities...bombed their cities to rubble,
contaminated their water supplies. And the genetic future of the
Iraqi people for the most part, is destroyed. For every genetic
defect that we can see now, in future generations there are thousands
more that will be expressed. And that's even if the exposures
stopped-if it was just one time. But the environment now is completely
radioactive.
Afghanistan, people and countries downwind, and downriver, will be
exposed.
This is a nightmare. The tragedy is that the United States--and
other countries that are weapons manufacturers--has sold DU to 29
countries. This isn't over. The United States used 340 or more tons
in Iraq. It used under 100 tons, they say, in Bosnia and Kosovo.
They used 1000 tons in Afghanistan. And they have used five times
as much as reported in the news in this war in Iraq, this time.
Our soldiers are going to come back. They going to be much sicker,
much faster. And the illnesses will be more severe. They've been
over there breathing all this stuff in the bombing-they've been on
the battlefields.
And you know what?
They don't even know. They don't even know. They're going to come
back just like the first Gulf War veterans came [back]. Some of
them knew before they left. They were going to sperm banks and
depositing their sperm before they went to Gulf War II.
Do know what Gulf War Syndrome is now?
Do you know what alpha particles do?
Well, I'm going to tell you something else about depleted uranium.
Uranium the case in four steps. The half-life of depleted uranium-uranium
238, which is more than 99% of DU-is 4.5 billion years, the age of
the earth. The uranium 238, when it decays into more radioactive
isotopes that are more radioactive by millions and billions of
times.
So, slowly over time, the areas that have been bombed will become
more and more radioactive.
I'd just like to emphasize that depleted uranium is illegal under
international law, under the Geneva Conventions, and under all
treaties. As we know from the history of the American Indian, the
United States does not keep treaties. So we cannot expect them to
keep treaties. And indeed, the United States has used illegal weapons
in World War II. I guess that we don't think it applies to us. But
we acted to apply it to everyone else. And Israel has used depleted
uranium on the Palestinians.
The four tests to determine the legality:
1 Temporal A weapon must not continue to act after the battle
is over. I think that 10 times 4.5 billion years is quite a lot
longer than after the battle is over.
2 Territorial It must not leave the battlefield. The territorial
test. Depleted uranium is carried in the winds, in the atmospheric
dust around and around and around the world. Indeed, lower orbital
space is contaminated with uranium and uranium decay products from
atmospheric testing, from nuclear batteries on spacecraft, and from
the nuclear reactors some countries have put on spacecraft.
3 Humanitarian It must not kill inhumanely. The suffering of the
civilian population and other soldiers is horrendous. I'm an activist
now because of the people I know, the people I've met who have been
exposed to radiation. I'd buy all my clothes in thrift stores. I
drive a funny old VW so that I can come and talk to people like
you, because it's the grassroots, it's us, it's you, it's you and
me, who will have to be the ones to change this.
[Audience applauds long and loudly]
And it's students with courage like Lisa [the organizer of this
event] who bring us to your communities. And we have to thank her
too.
[Audience applauds]
4 Environmental The weapons must not unduly damage the environment.
In all of the General Groves memo, in the research papers conducted
for the military, it's clear that it has a terrible, terrible
environmental impact. And it's forever.
Depleted uranium is the weapon that keeps giving and it keeps
killing.
I'd just like to say that, because I have to not say that it's all
hopeless, it's not all hopeless. We're working very hard with the
European Parliament, who have declared that depleted uranium is
illegal and should be banned forever. Congressman McDermott---a
very, very courageous congressmen-we're disappointed in most of our
leaders, but he needs our support because he's doing what we want
him to do.
He got on a plane and went to Iraq before Gulf War II started. The
Pentagon and the White House were absolutely furious. And he has
reintroduced Cynthia McKinney's bill requiring studies on DU. I
went to his office. I wrote a letter to him. It's on the Internet
on www.mindfully.org. And my friend Paul Goettlich, here in the
front row, has this wonderful web site. Click on nukes. And click
on the Letter to Congressman McDermott. The Groves memo is there.
You can read it.
We need letter-writing campaigns. We need people to call the radio
programs and talk about DU, especially at commuter times. We need
to start a buzz with every strategy that we can think of to inform
everyone we can think of. And believe me, once you here it once or
twice its sticks in your mind. And then, articles and things that
you hear and read begin to stick to you. But they have to hear it.
They have to hear something about it to put it on the radar screen.
And you're the ones who have to go out now, when you leave this
room, and write letters to Congressmen asking them to support the
bill. Write letters to newspapers. Letters to the editor...the
politicians read those. The Pentagon is reading those. A lot of
people who are paying attention and have a vested interest are
reading those because you're very dangerous when you start writing
about it.
You should also go to teach-ins. Go to your churches and organize
them. But organize, organize, organize.
You know, there are only about 25 people in the White House and the
Pentagon who have taken our Constitution and shredded it, and taken
our country and destroyed our democracy. There are sure a whole lot
more of us. And we need to do it now because I want to read to you
what's on the boilerplate.
I write articles now for common people, for the citizens, because
I think it's much more important to inform you.
But there's more on the drawing board. Donald Rumsfeld is dumping
billions and billions of dollars into the research furnaces of
federal laboratories and private universities, and public ones
too-like the University of California-across the U.S. to create
super soldiers. These are going to be your children and your
grandchildren.
The research to create drugs and electro-magnetic brain zaps is
directed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
under five-time felon, John Poindexter.
This war-fighter enhancement program will involve injecting young
men and women with hormonal, neurological, and genetic concoctions,
implanting microchips, and electrodes in their bodies to control
their internal organs and brain functions, and plying them with
drugs that deaden some of their normal human tendencies-the need
for sleep, the fear of death, the reluctance to kill their fellow
human beings.
But who are the real terrorists? -Those who want to turn U.S.
soldiers into mind-controlled, drugged-up mutants, to send off to
mindless Imperial wars. They portray themselves as patriots, noble
leaders, and Christians.
I'm telling you, the Republican Party is ruining Christianity.
[Audience applauds loudly]
And the Christian Right are the Hell's Angels of the Republican
Party.
[Audience applauds]
There are those of us who wish to honor the men and women fighting
these wars like patriots-Doug Rokke and Dennis Kyne-because we
oppose the greedy, rapacious elite, we are the traitors. The enemy
of democracy! What I like the most is that there are more and more
of us. This is war we've seen too many times.
Thank you very much.
[Audience applauds long and loudly]
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