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01/21/2006:

"Depleted Uranium - A Hidden Looming Worldwide Calamity"

Forget about Avian (bird) flu. The threat of it becoming a pandemic is more a political scare tactic and potential bonanza for drug company profits and its major shareholders' net worth (including Gilead Sciences, the developer of the Tamiflu drug and its former Chairman and major shareholder Donald Rumsfeld) than a likely public health crisis - unless you live around infected chickens or take an unproven safe immunization shot. There are much more other likely killer bacterial and viral threats than Avian that get little attention. Don't worry about possible or unlikely threats. Worry about real ones. Bacteria and viruses untreatable by anti-biotics are good examples. So is global warming and many others. But, there's possibly one threat that tops all others both in gravity and because it's been deliberately concealed from the public - never discussed, explained or had any action taken to remediate it. It's the global threat from the toxic effects of depleted uranium (DU), and like global warming, DU has the potential to destroy all planetary life. How can something so potentially destructive be hidden and ignored and why?

THE ARROGANCE OF DOMINANCE

There's little dispute that the U.S. today is the preeminent world power and unlike any that ever preceded it. It now admits to being an empire. In fact, it's the first ever world global empire. To expand its reach and influence, it now spends nearly as much on its military as all other nations combined and has built and maintains a military capacity no other nation dare challenge. It also reserves for itself the sole right to develop and use the most dangerous and destructive weapons, even those banned from use by international law or custom. Some of those now in charge at the highest levels believe they have a divine right to use them, even a duty. George Bush may be one of them. A self-proclaimed and so-called born-again Christian, he says he gets his direction from the Almighty. That's real arrogance, the supreme kind only an unchallengeable power and its leaders dare arrogate to itself.

Up to now, the U.S. has effectively used its power to dominate other nations either by persuasion, economic isolation or conquest. We claim to be a model democracy, but our policies and actions prove otherwise. At home we're a democracy for the few - the privileged and powerful. It's they who govern and run our institutions including the most dominant one of all - the giant transnational corporations whose interests all administrations serve including waging war for their benefit. Wars are good for business - as long as they're easily winnable, the public supports them, and they don't cause undo economic stresses that may disrupt the economy, in which case they're bad for business.

There's a striking term often used in the plural and in a business context that's also appropriate more broadly. The term is "externalities." In business it refers to the unfortunate side effects or consequences of a company's action that may have a detrimental affect on others. A typical example is an industrial plant that produces a dangerous substance as an unsalable byproduct from its production process. To avoid the cost of disposal, storage or treatment, the plant dumps it into waterways, unused land areas or through smokestacks. In so doing it harms the environment. Wars also have "externalities" - with far greater consequences. Overall, death, disease and destruction are the best examples. But so are the dangerous residues and their side effects from the use of weapons like toxic chemicals, biological agents and all types of nuclear munitions. We're all aware of the danger from the first two categories, although when used they only affect small areas and are not "weapons of mass destruction." We've also seen the destructive capability of a nuclear bomb and have heard of DU. But, the public has little or no knowledge about the real danger and threat from the use of any nuclear device or substance. That information has been willfully and deliberately suppressed because the potential harm is so great and irreversible. Even when there's clear evidence of widespread problems as there was in the case of the Agent Orange effects on Vietnam veterans and "Gulf war syndrome" on the military from that conflict, our government has denied any connection and stonewalled efforts to help those in need - until they no longer could hide the truth and had to act.
globalresearch.ca