April 10th, 2003
Dear Readers,
For the past 24 hours we all have been mesmerized by the sloppy toppling of one of Saddam's statues. Every few minutes it was replayed. And indeed, it looked great -- cheering Iraqi civilians (well, cheering Iraqi men and boys, anyway) and U.S. Marines all happy together.
But elsewhere, the war -- and its radioactive dusting of Iraq -- continues. The three items below have a common theme -- namely, that Low Level Radiation Kills.
Sincerely,
Russell Hoffman
Senior Dust Control Specialist
Planet Earth
HQ: Carlsbad, CA, USA
1) WHAT WE DON'T KNOW ABOUT THIS WAR
2) NEW WHO REPORT ON CANCER
3) NUKES VIA DRINKING WATER CAUSE CHILDHOOD CANCERS
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Previous correspondence in this series: Dusting Iraq (part 1):
http://animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/2003/DustingIraq.htm
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1) WHAT WE DON'T KNOW ABOUT THIS WAR
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Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2003 14:31:13 +0900
Subject: WHAT WE DON'T KNOW ABOUT THIS WAR
From: Richard Wilcox <rwilcox@interlink.or.jp>
To: "Russell D. Hoffman" <rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com>
>
>
> WHAT WE DON'T KNOW ABOUT THIS WAR --
> by JON RAPPOPORT
>
>
> ---an open letter to Christopher Hitchens, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Sean
> Penn, Susan Sarandon, Martin Sheen, the VFW, Ted Turner, David Hackworth,
> Madonna, Michael Moore, Robert Byrd, Rush Limbaugh, Dan Rather, Richard
> Perle, Ariel Sharon, the Pope, David Rockefeller, Amnesty International, and
> the King of Siam---
>
>
> April 7. Yesterday, in an attempt to find out more about the death of NBC
> reporter, David Bloom, I spoke with the former head of the Pentagon Depleted
> Uranium Investigation Team, Dr. Doug Rokke.
>
> Rokke was the man who went to Iraq a decade ago on a mission to report on
> depleted uranium (DU). What he found was so horrifying the Pentagon scuttled
> his work and tried to make him an invisible man.
>
> Rokke suffered uranium poisoning himself. But his medical records, and those
> of who knows how many thousands of other soldiers, do not reflect that.
> History has been suppressed, has been re-written.
>
> Our conversation began with me asking Rokke if he thought that the announced
> cause of David Bloom's death, pulmonary embolism, could have resulted from DU.
>
> But Rokke stopped me short. He said, "This was the diagnosis they
> immediately gave out? I don't see how. You can't diagnose that from the
> battlefield. You really need an autopsy to discover whether that's the cause
> .."
>
> Which opened up new questions.
>
> Rokke began to talk about conditions in the Gulf now.
>
> He said that the PR about the US limiting civilian casualties is absurd,
> because, for example, the Pentagon admits to losing 700 cruise missiles that
> have been fired at Baghdad in the current campaign. In other words, those
> missiles strayed off course and no one really knows where they landed and
> exploded. "700 missiles, each one loaded with DU, is 700,000 pounds of
> explosives," he said.
>
> 700,000 pounds of explosives going off, spreading cancer-causing uranium in
> all directions.
>
> Rokke then informed me that, since 1990, and up to the beginning of Gulf War
> 2, some 260,000 US soldiers have been granted disability. 10,000 have died.
>
> I'm relaying these facts to you in a sober way, but of course I was
> staggered as Rokke talked. He painted a picture of the Iraqi landscape as a
> toxic soup. DU, yes. But also many other toxins, because as he explained,
> when bombs and missiles rip up ANY material that is composite or synthetic,
> like plastics, you get all sorts of poisonous byproducts.
>
> And that, for example, is what happened at the WTC on 9/11. Rokke said, "I
> trained a lot of those first health responders. They're dead now."
>
> Rokke, over the years, together with colleagues, has issued report after
> report describing what, in essence, are the inevitable consequences of
> modern warfare as it is carried out. A lingering toxic landscape that kills
> over time.
>
> When Rokke was in the Gulf a decade ago, one of his fears was confirmed: the
> masks worn to protect against DU don't work. They can't filter out the
> smallest and deadliest particles of uranium. "We could taste the stuff
> [uranium]," he said.
>
> Rokke states that the Pentagon is completely aware of the dangers to US
> solders and combatants, and just doesn't care.
>
> I asked him why DU is used in projectile shells and missiles. He told me it
> was because uranium is so dense the weight of impact on a target causes a
> lot more damage. And, he said, these shells are not merely coated or tipped
> with uranium, as some Pentagon people have stated. They are packed with it.
> Rokke likened the situation to having uranium rods in your backyard.
>
> He went on to explain that the PB pills US soldiers have been taking, as
> protection against nerve gas, are themselves nerve agents. If taken
> immediately before a nerve-gas attack---and then followed up with two other
> medicines---the soldier might get protection from nerve gas. But the PB
> pills are being swallowed long in advance of any possible contact with nerve
> gas. In essence, soldiers are getting "nerve gas" attacks FROM THE POISON
> PILLS.
>
> Rokke mentioned a number of sites around the world---Afghanistan and the
> former Yugoslavia, and places in the US---where DU is a major problem right
> now.
>
> By this point in our conversation, Rokke was piecing together an emerging
> picture of modern war as both murder and suicide.
>
> He predicted the consequences of the Iraq war are going to be worse than
> Gulf War 1.
>
> Worse, in terms of damage and death to US troops and the Iraqi people.
>
> I hung up the phone stunned. I can only ask that you get this information
> out to as many people as possible.
>
> To give the widest possible benefit of the doubt to mainstream news
> reporters, THEY JUST DON'T KNOW. They have no idea what they are
> supporting when they allow the picture of this war to be painted as a careful
> and controlled campaign. All those maps and arrows and targets---they need
> to be enveloped in a cloud of MULTIPLE POISONS. Then we would have some
> concept of what is really going on---and what is going to happen when it's over.
>
> Rokke mentioned that, between Gulf War 1 and the start of Gulf 2, the Iraqis
> tried to build new water treatment facilities in Basra. To clean up their
> horrible, illness-causing contaminated water. Each time they tried, he said,
> those emerging facilities were destroyed...
>
> What is happening in the Gulf is not merely the result of ignorance. It is
> not only depraved indifference. It is a plan to depopulate and destroy. US
> soldiers will be sacrificed, in huge numbers, to forward the larger goal.
> The depopulation and debilitation of Iraq.
>
> Yet, the news networks still display that graphic: OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM.
> And DOD spokesmen keep saying the protection of the Iraqi oil fields is
> being done to preserve "the future wealth of the Iraqi people." That sick
> joke takes on a new and very ominous meaning.
>
> If 260,000 US vets now on disability from Gulf 1 can be hidden from the
> stupefied American people, what else can be hidden, here and in Iraq, in the
> coming months and years? How many cases of cancer? How many birth defects?
> How many kidney and liver failures? How many immune-system destructions? How
> many American families who support their children now doing time in the Gulf
> will later watch those sons and daughters waste away, while the Pentagon
> claims it's all post-traumatic stress?
>
> How far do all the toxic clouds drift? How many cases of illness are being
> misdiagnosed as the result of germs?
>
> We are in a time of madness. I can't fault prayer or the distractions of
> television or even the desperate accoutrements of so-called patriotism. But
> somehow we have to live beyond cliches and summon up the outrage equal to
> the destruction. Equal to the moment.
>
> The wretched hairless generals are striding through the Pentagon thinking
> they are on a course of victory, thinking whatever they have to think to
> avoid the truth that is chasing them like a snake.
>
> Let the cardboard floors of lies give way and collapse. Let the voices of
> the intelligent pro-war advocates incorporate this news. Let them, finally,
> arrive at a further shore of conscience that compels them to take a stand.
> They are viewing old images, they are seeing a fantasy of war, they are
> imagining situations that no longer exist.
>
> War is now different. It is a sword you always fall on.
>
> WAKE UP.
>
> WAKE UP.
>
> JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com
>
>
>
> http://www.nomorefakenews.com
>
> ------- End of forwarded message -------
> ----------------
> News alternatives to US war propaganda:
> http://www1.iraqwar.ru/?userlang=en
> http://www.truthout.org/
> http://www.aljazeerah.info/
> http://www.overthrow.com/
> http://globalfire.tv/nj/03en/politics/content.htm
>
>
> ------------------------
>
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2) NEW WHO REPORT ON CANCER
================================================
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2003 21:56:16 +0900
Subject: NEW WHO REPORT ON CANCER
From: Richard Wilcox <rwilcox@interlink.or.jp>
To: "Russell D. Hoffman" <rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com>
http://www.nomorefakenews.com/
NEW WHO REPORT ON CANCER
April 8. The timing is interesting. WHO has just released its World Cancer
Report.
It predicts an astonishing 50-percent rise in cases of cancer in the next 20
years, as Iraq is turning into a cloud of uranium dust.
However, the WHO report lists the following reasons for the projected rise
in cases:
Steadily aging populations, smoking, and the Western lifestyle (fatty foods,
no exercise).
Not a word about spreading radiation.
This is a cover story. Blame everything on the above factors.
Am I saying that people can do nothing to reduce their own chances of
getting cancer? NO.
That is another subject. I am saying that the medical cartel is
particularly sensitive to military issues, which means a cover-up will be
foisted at every available opportunity, in order to conceal, for example,
the fact that the US, right now, is massively creating cancer in Iraq.
And the official solution to that problem is the same as it has been since
1945. Minimize and obscure the dangers of radiation.
If the dangers are not minimized, then modern war as the Pentagon wants to
fight it is impossible. The enemy becomes any human being who sucks in a
dose of radiation.
JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com
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3) NUKES VIA DRINKING WATER CAUSE CHILDHOOD CANCERS:
================================================
At 06:20 AM 4/10/2003 , JerseyShoreNuclearWatch@yahoogroups.com wrote:
Re: [JerseyShoreNuclearWatch] Tooth Fairy Project- Nukes via drinking water cause childhood cancers
Press Release Contact: Lisa Palley, (305) 642-3132
April 9, 2003, 11:00 A.M. Jerry Brown, Ph.D., (305) 321-5612 (cell)
For Immediate Release Ernest Sternglass, Ph.D., (305) 321-5612
Childhood Cancer in South Florida
Study Finds Cause in Nuclear Plant Radiation Emissions
Drinking Water Most Likely Source
Miami, Florida A South Florida Baby Teeth and Cancer Case Study, that
was officially released today, finds that infants and children are
especially vulnerable to cancer caused by federally-permitted radiation
releases from nuclear reactors, such as the Turkey Point and St. Lucie
nuclear power plants, located in southeast Florida.
The five-year baby teeth study, also known as the Tooth Fairy Project,
found a 37% rise in the average levels of radioactive Strontium-90
(Sr-90) in southeast Florida baby teeth from the mid-1980s to the
mid-1990s. When compared with baby teeth collected from 18 Florida
counties, the highest levels of Sr-90 were found in the six southeast
Florida counties closest to the Turkey Point and St. Lucie nuclear
reactors: Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Martin, St. Lucie and Indian
River.
The current rise of radiation levels in baby teeth in Florida and in the
U.S. as a whole reverses a long-term downward trend in Sr-90 levels
since the 1960s, after President Kennedy banned aboveground testing of
nuclear weapons 1963, due to concerns about increasing childhood cancer
and leukemia rates from fallout.
Radioactive Sr-90 is a known carcinogen, which is only produced by
fission reactions in nuclear weapons or reactors. It enters the body
along with chemically similar calcium, and is stored in bone and teeth,
where it can be measured years later using well-established laboratory
techniques.
Significantly, the study documented that the average levels of Sr-90
found in the teeth of children diagnosed with cancer were nearly twice
as high as those found in the teeth of children without cancer.
Dr. Ernest Sternglass, Professor Emeritus of Radiation Physics at the
University of Pittsburgh Medical School and co-author of the study said
that although radioactive emissions can enter the air, soil and diet,
the most significant source of Sr-90 in southeast Florida childrens
teeth is groundwater, the primary source of southeast Floridas public
drinking supply. This is due to the areas high rainfall and shallow
aquifer.
The study found the highest levels of radioactivity in samples of
drinking water found within 20 miles of the Turkey Point (located south
of Miami) and St. Lucie (located north of West Palm Beach) nuclear power
plants, while levels of radioactivity were significantly lower in water
samples further away from the reactors.
The rise in Sr-90 levels in both drinking water and baby teeth parallels
a 32.5% rise in cancer rates in children under 10 in the southeast
Florida counties, which are closest to the nuclear power plants. This
compares with a average 10.8% rise in national childhood cancer rates
from the early 1980s to the late 1990s.
The baby teeth study conclusions are consistent with the recent U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency admission that children age 2 and
younger are 10 times more susceptible than adults to the cancer causing
effects of toxic chemicals and radioactivity. According to the National
Cancer Institutes SEER Cancer Statistics Review, from early 1970s to
late 1990s, U.S. childhood cancer overall has increased by 26%, brain
cancer by 50%, leukemia by 45% and bone cancer by 40%.
There is now substantial evidence that exposure to federally-permitted
radiation releases from nuclear reactors is a significant cause of
increasing childhood cancer rates in southeast Florida, as well as a
risk factor for cancer in Americans of all ages, said Dr. Jerry Brown,
the studys co-author and Founding Professor, Florida International
University in Miami. Dr. Brown noted that, the recent 2003
Recommendations of the European Committee on Radiation Risk found that
the world-wide health effects of very low levels of radioactivity have
been vastly underestimated.
In a Statement on Baby Teeth Study, Samuel Epstein, M.D., wrote, Given
prior evidence of the relationship between childhood cancer and
radioactive emissions from 103 aging nuclear power plants in the U.S.,
and the well established biological risks of radioactive Strontium-90,
it is now critical to recognize that radioactive emissions from
commercial nuclear power plants pose a grave threat to public health in
southeast Florida and throughout the nation. Dr. Epstein is Professor
Emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Medicine, University of
Illinois at Chicago, School of Public Health, and Chairman, Cancer
Prevention Coalition.
The study was conducted by the Radiation and Public Health Project
(RPHP) and funded by the Health Foundation of South Florida. The
Radiation and Pubic Health Project is an independent not-for-profit
research organization, established by scientists and physicians to
investigate the links between environmental radiation, cancer and public
health.
The Health Foundation of South Florida, a not-for-profit grantmaking
foundation, is dedicated to expanding access to affordable, quality
health care and providing funding that directly benefits the health and
well being of underserved individuals in Broward, Miami-Dade and Monroe
Counties. Since its inception in 1993, the Foundation has awarded more
than $42 million in grants and direct program support.
================================================
Available for Interview at Press Conference
- Dr. Ernest Sternglass, Chief Scientist, RPHP; Professor Emeritus,
Radiation Physics, University of Pittsburgh Medical School; co-Principal
Investigator of the Report.
- Dr. Jerry Brown, Research Associate, RPHP; Founding Professor, Florida
International University; co-Principal Investigator of the Report.
(English and Spanish)
- Lilyana and Bill Sager (Lilly), Miami, Florida, daughter diagnosed
with cancer submitted tooth to study. Ms. Sanger will discuss why she
supports the baby teeth study, her reactions to findings, and her
concerns over increasing cancer in the Cutler Ridge area of South
Miami-Dade County (English and Spanish)
- Lee Klein, CEO, Children's Cancer Caring Center, founder of
organization that provides free medical care to needy families of
children with cancer in South Florida and throughout Latin America.
- Steven Marcus, President and CEO, and Peter Wood, Chief Program
Officer, Health Foundation of South Florida, an independent not for
profit organization benefiting community healthcare and education. The
Health Foundation funded the South Florida Baby Teeth and Cancer Case
Study.
- Barbara Garrett, Senior Vice President, Applica Inc., a Miami
Lakes-company that has supported the national baby teeth study.
Available for interviews by phone:
- Samuel S. Epstein, M.D., Professor Emeritus of Environmental and
Occupational Medicine, University of Illinois at Chicago, School of
Public Health and Chairman, Cancer Prevention Coalition. Dr. Epstein has
reviewed the Research Report and provided a written Statement on Baby
Teeth Study
- Dr. Hari Sharma, President, Radiological and Environmental Measurement
Systems, Waterloo, Canada. Dr. Sharma is an international expert in
radiological measurements and manages the independent lab that tests the
baby teeth.
- Debi Santoro, mother whos infant has nerve cancer and who has
submitted tooth to study and had her water tested.
- Audra Malone-Schmidt, mother of child with cancer who submitted tooth
to study.
- Dava Michaelson, mother and breast cancer survivor, who has submitted
daughters tooth to the study.
--
Coalition for Peace and Justice and the UNPLUG Salem Campaign; 321 Barr Ave., Linwood, NJ 08221; 609-601-8583 or 609-601-8537; ncohen12@comcast.net UNPLUG SALEM WEBSITE: http://www.unplugsalem.org/ COALITION FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE WEBSITE: http://www.coalitionforpeaceandjustice.org The Coalition for Peace and Justice is a chapter of Peace Action.
"First they ignore you; Then they laugh at you; Then they fight you; Then you win. (Gandhi) "Why walk when you can fly?" (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
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