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How Far Will the Crash Go and What Do we Do Now?

Monday, August 20th, 2007

The “Crash of 2007-8” is underway

The immediate triggers are being described quite well: the collapse of the U.S. subprime mortgage market; the vulnerability of the rest of the economy to the subprime undertow, due to the “efficiency” of the markets in spreading risk; the worldwide overextension of cheap credit; the failure of large institutional investors and Wall Street brokerages to behave responsibly; and the long-term effects of the U.S. trade and fiscal deficits which are now coming home to roost.

Amazingly, some commentators have been asking “if the monetary crisis will affect the producing economy,” and whether a recession lies ahead. In reality, the U.S. producing economy has been in a recession for the last year. This is shown most clearly by the decline in M1, the portion of the money supply immediately available to people for making purchases.

The causes of the M1 decline are two-fold. One is the weak purchasing power of American consumers, at least half of whose decently-paying manufacturing jobs have been eliminated by the outsourcing, mergers, and productivity improvements during the past two decades. The other is that while many of the U.S. corporations not connected to housing have been doing all right, their success has been tied to overseas investments and sales, such as GE and GM who are heavily invested in China.

This type of business activity props up the stock prices of these global corporations but does little for the working American. The presumption that overflow earnings from stockholders will benefit the rest of our domestic economy is the essence of “trickle-down,” supply-side economics and is part of the justification for the system that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer.

But as Barron’s reported earlier this year, much of the profits from the global corporations are being held as retained earnings for future growth, rather than being passed on to stockholders as dividends. Because of the heavy debt load corporations carry today, they are all in a grow-or-die mode. Again, the result is deficient purchasing power which works to negate the already dubious trickle-down effect.

The recession has been masked by four factors: 1) the government’s phony GDP numbers, where the “churning” of financial transactions masquerade as production; 2) the froth on the stock market that took the Dow Jones Average (DJA) from a little over 11,000 to a record-breaking 14,000 during a one-year period that ended with the decline that began in mid-July; 2) the propensity of the American consumer, which is now ending, to continue to buy goods and services on credit, including necessities of life like health care; and 3) modest growth in low-paying service economy jobs, which also may be coming to an end.

These lesser bubbles have mirrored the big ones that are bursting as lenders lose confidence in the ability of borrowers to repay. These are the housing bubble, affecting consumers; the acquisition bubble, affecting equity funds; and the speculation bubble, affecting hedge funds.

As the house of cards comes tumbling down, the leading question on financial websites and blogs is how deep will the decline go. Will it stop at the level of the recessions of previous decades, including 2000-2002, with a decline that is reflected in the DJA of somewhere around thirty-five percent from its peak? Or will it be the “Armageddon” scenario which would take us to depression-level conditions? Of course there are multiple possibilities based on a decline somewhere between a recession and a depression that would share some of the characteristics of each.

Muddying the waters is the fact that the DJA is much less reliable as a measure of economic health today than in the past. This is because today the vast majority of financial transactions now take place within the furtive secrecy of the equity, hedge, and derivative markets. No one really knows what is going on, except that on any given day an announcement is made that another fund or company has been wiped out.

Neither the Federal Reserve nor the U.S. government believes they have an obligation to gather or publish data that will help the public gauge the effects of these crises on their homes or jobs. Some might call this negligence a crime against democracy. In fact the Federal Reserve made tracking even more difficult by ceasing to report the M3 macro-currency numbers, but researchers have shown that growth in M3 is soaring while M1 goes down.

What appears to be happening right now is that the Federal Reserve, which oversees the U.S. economy on behalf of the financial, corporate, and government elites, is deliberately trying to squeeze as much debt out of the economy as it can. It is doing this with interest rates that are high relative to actual conditions, while trying to avoid the Armageddon scenario.

The Fed is carrying out its “soft-landing” policy by holding credit tight while introducing “liquidity” into the markets on a day-by-day basis through use of overnight “repos” and by cutting the discount rate for bank borrowing. Conservative columnists like George Will and Bob Novak watch and shake their pom-poms from the sidelines.

But “liquidity” is just a fancy name for more loans. The one thing we can be certain of is that every loan bears interest charges which someday, somehow, will have to be paid by a person who works for a living.

And if you wondered where the Fed got the $34 billion in liquidity it pumped into the markets on Friday, August 10, you weren’t the only one. The answer is that the Fed has a secret room upstairs where it keeps a large “printing press.” It’s legalized counterfeiting, but as with any counterfeit money, if people accept it in trade it acts just like the real stuff—for a while.

The danger, which many commentators are pointing to, is that the Fed will ignite a hyperinflation, which may be what is happening and may actually be intentional because it devalues debt. It’s what happens when debt is used to pay off debt and is in fact an invisible tax. Such inflation is difficult to discern, again because of the government’s rigged statistics. The most important indicator to watch is the price of oil, which doesn’t show up in “core inflation.”

But there are signs that the “soft landing” is working, such as a modest increase in U.S. exports. Reflecting the weak dollar, China is now charging more for its own exports, which will stimulate our industry here at home. And the Fed’s discount rate cut last Friday sparked a modest stock market rally.

Meanwhile, there is a debate over whether quasi-public agencies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be used to spread the housing market losses across the entire taxpaying population. While society as a whole is made poorer, many individuals who might have lost their homes or jobs are spared some pain. So it’s hard to argue against it. But this type of bail-out would benefit individual homeowners more than the big banks, so the conservative politicians and commentators oppose it.

But there’s a bigger picture. The strategy of the Fed is likely to allow the recession to proceed but it does want to get the economy moving again before the downturn goes too far. In fact they probably plan to do it in time for the 2008 presidential election.

The Fed wants to see a recovery in place by then so the American public will go back to sleep and elect another politician who will steadfastly protect the privileges and powers of the magnates who, through the Fed, rule the world. Even if a new president has some progressive ideas, he or she won’t be able to alter much if a recovery has started.

The “soft landing” is a political power play.

It’s what they did in 1984, when Ronald Reagan was reelected on a campaign theme of “It’s morning in America,” after the Fed let up following the twenty percent-plus rates it used to trash the producing economy from 1979-83. The Fed did the same with the housing bubble to get George W. Bush reelected in 2004.

The financiers’ worst fear is that if things get too bad the American people might elect a reformer in 2008. So far the corporate press has kept two such reformers—Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich—in the shadows. Now that Hillary Clinton is starting to sound more progressive, they’ll attack her overtly since she is too big a player to be ignored. The Washington Post has already begun.

So we’ll see if the Fed’s plan succeeds as well over the next couple of years as it has in the past. In the meantime, what remains firmly in place is the monetarist regime through which the financiers and the Fed have ruled America for the past thirty-six years, since President Richard Nixon closed the gold window for international exchange in 1971.

During this period, we have seen several interlocking phenomena:

1) interest rates that on the whole have been much higher than the previous period of the New Deal and its aftermath, lasting into the 1960s;

2) inflation that has eroded eighty percent of the value of the dollar;

3) replacement of our producing industrial economy with a service economy dominated by high finance;

4) almost continuous warfare with a clear objective of world domination whose purpose is to shore up the dollar as the world’s reserve currency;

5) ever-deepening public, private, and household debt;

6) the ever-widening gap between rich and poor, with increasing numbers of the poor, homeless, and hungry who are left out of the nation’s economic life;

7) a crisis in the nation’s crumbling infrastructure; and

8) the constant whipsawing of over 200 million ordinary people.

It’s our citizens who are batted around like ping pong balls between alternating conditions of boom and bust as every few years many of them watch the overnight disappearance of their homes, pensions, savings, health insurance, and jobs. Added to this is the stress that has eroded the health and even life expectancy of the U.S. population.

It’s a horrible picture created by a filthy system. It’s why religious leaders for thousands of years have characterized usury, and a culture ruled by usury, as a crime against God and humanity. The monetarist rule of the Federal Reserve is legal, institutionalized usury. Over the years they have mastered all the tools of the trade, the objective of which is to continually allow the financial superstructure to skim the cream off the producing economy. Come to think of it, isn’t that how the Mafia used to work with its protection and loan-sharking rackets?

And can anything be done about it? Of course.

In previous articles on the Global Research website and elsewhere, this writer has offered a list of reforms—mostly monetary—that can and should be made. They all involve the recognition of credit as a public utility, part of the societal commons, not the private playground of the financiers, with the Fed as their facilitator.

Low-cost credit overseen by the federal government was the basic building block of the New Deal. It was done by strong people with an ideal of public service, though in many respects they didn’t go far enough and relied too much on World War II and armaments to attain a full-employment economy. We now need a New Deal for the 21^st century that would correct the flaws of the last one, resolve the present crisis, and carry us into a future that will benefit everyone, not just the privileged few.

Richard C. Cook is a retired federal analyst, whose career included service with the U.S. Civil Service Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Carter White House, and NASA, followed by twenty-one years with the U.S. Treasury Department. His articles on monetary reform, economics, and space policy have appeared on Global Research, Economy in Crisis, Dissident Voice, Atlantic Free Press, and elsewhere. He is the author of “Challenger Revealed: An Insider’s Account of How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age.” His website is at www.richardccook.com.

Richard C. Cook is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Richard C. Cook

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Deadly New York Scraper Fire Near Twin Towers Site but no collapse

Monday, August 20th, 2007

By Ann Baker

Nearly six years after the tragedy of 9/11 and two New York City firefighters have died in a blaze inside a skyscraper abandoned after the World Trade Center attacks.

The fire broke out on Saturday at the former Deutsche Bank building, sending smoke across Manhattan. The building was in the process of being taken down.

Five other firefighters were injured battling Saturday’s flames next to the Twin Towers site. The cause of the blaze that started on the 14th and 15th floors, wasn’t known Sunday morning.

On September 11, 2001, more than 300 firefighters lost their lives when the World Trade Center towers collapsed shortly after bring struck by commercial airplanes piloted by terrorists later linked to Al Queda.

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Only ‘virtual protests’ allowed at North American summit

Monday, August 20th, 2007

Agence France-Presse

Protesters will be “seen and heard” when North American leaders meet next week in Montebello, near Ottawa, but only virtually — via an audio-video feed set up by organizers.

And the heads of the United States, Canada and Mexico may opt to change the channel.

The arrangement is “in compliance with (a Canadian) court’s decision that protesters have a right to be ’seen and heard,’” said Sandra Buckler, a spokeswoman for host Stephen Harper, the prime minister of Canada.

However, the novel plan to give protesters a voice, while maintaining strict security for the talks, has riled protesters being kept out by a fence, three meters (10 feet) high and 2.5-kilometers (1.5 miles) around the meeting place.

“It’s a travesty of democracy,” Sophie Shoen of People’s Global Action told Agence France-Presse. “We must be allowed to directly confront political leaders where and when we choose, not virtually.”

The hundreds of demonstrators expected to try to disrupt the summit “must be able to make their protests heard by the leaders they are addressing,” echoed Grace Pastine, of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, in a statement.

“They must be allowed to protest in Montebello,” a luxury log-cabin hotel nestled in a lush forest between Ottawa and Montreal, she said.

In defiance, several anti-globalization groups said they planned to try to get as close to the meeting site as possible, refusing to be “caged” in a forest clearing set up for them by summit organizers.

A parallel counter-summit uniting academics and opposition MPs is also planned in Ottawa.

A senior Canadian government official said at a briefing: “Protesters have a right to protest and make their view known … (but) it remains our view that what they don’t have a right to do is to preclude leaders from meeting.

“We will take the steps necessary to ensure that leaders can meet and that protesters will have an opportunity to protest,” she said.

During the two-day summit, held annually since 2005, Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper, US President George W. Bush and Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon are expected to discuss current market turmoil, trade and security, and strategies to stem pandemics.

As well, they may confer on product safety, following recent recalls of toys, dog food and toothpaste, and growing worries about defective “made in China” goods, imported into North America.

“The (US) president is going to Canada to talk to our North American neighbors about making the continent safer and more prosperous,” said White House national security spokesman Gordon Johndroe.

Bilateral Bush-Harper talks would also touch on climate change, unrest in Afghanistan, and competing Arctic claims by Canada, the United States, Russia, Denmark and Norway, officials said.

The Arctic “has been very much in the news over the last few weeks and it’s an issue that’s very important to Canada,” a senior Canadian official said. “It would surprise me if the leaders did not spend (some) time talking about (it).

“They may want to explore what lies beyond the symbolic act on the part of the Russians,” she said, after Moscow planted a flag on the sea floor at the North Pole in early August to bolster its Arctic grab.

Calderon, meanwhile, is likely to ask for more US aid to curb drug trafficking, and propose a hike in the number of temporary worker visas issued by Canada to Mexican seasonal workers, now at 12,000 annually.

Activists, labor groups, academics and opposition politicians are decrying the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), a framework for greater trade and security integration of Canada, the United States and Mexico.

It was launched at the first “Three Amigos” summit in Waco, Texas, in March 2005, but seems to have stalled.

A Canadian official commented: “I don’t think there is any intent to look for deeper integration (of North America)” at these talks.

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Bush rocked as another key aide resigns

Monday, August 20th, 2007

By Sarah Baxter

THE White House press secretary Tony Snow has announced that he will be leaving his job before the end of President George W Bush’s term in office “for financial reasons”.

Snow, 52, has three children and is suffering from colon cancer. He earns $168,000 (about £84,000) a year and took a large pay cut from his position as a talk show host to become Bush’s most articulate defender.

“I’m going to stay as long as I can,” he said. News of his impending departure surprised White House colleagues and will further the impression of a lame duck president, who is limping to the end of his term in 2008.

Karl Rove, hailed as the “architect” of George W Bush’s two election victories, announced his resignation as a White House aide last week. One senior Republican strategist said: “Republicans in Congress were ready to mutiny if he hadn’t left. They have had enough of the politics of division.”

But Snow’s departure will add to gloom surrounding the Republicans, who feel Bush is inadequately defending his policies. Even Snow said the president’s domestic policy was “listless” before he went to work for him in April 2006.

“I will not be able to make it to the end of this administration, just financially,” Snow said. “This job has been such a pleasant surprise in how much I like it. I love it.” He had his last scheduled chemotherapy treatment on Friday and will have a CT scan on Monday.

Despite Snow’s best efforts at presentation, a Gallup poll on Friday revealed that only 29% of voters currently identify themselves as Republicans, compared with 37% as independents and 33% as Democrats. A majority, 56%, said they had an unfavourable view of the Republican party, its worst rating for 15 years.

It was a shattering verdict on Rove’s attempt to build a lasting Republican majority. The master electoral tactician, known as “Bush’s brain”, was lionised by conservatives until the Republicans lost control of Congress in the 2006 midterm elections.

Rove’s role will be partly filled by Ed Gillespie, a former lobbyist and chairman of the Republican national committee, who is already serving as counsellor to Bush in the White House.

Rove’s gifts for probing his enemy’s weaknesses were in evidence last week when gave a farewell interview to Rush Limbaugh, the arch-conservative radio talk show host, and laid into Hillary Clinton as a “fatally flawed” candidate.

Limbaugh told him he had a bunch of e-mails from listeners “who wanted me to pass on to you that they love you”.

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SILENT WMDs EFFECTS OF DEPLETED URANIUM

Monday, August 20th, 2007

By Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat
Former Chief of the Naval Staff, India

Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot ..that it do singe yourself.
- William Shakespeare

This brief presentation is aimed at conveying to the primarily Indian participants of the Conference the fateful and disastrous consequences of the indiscriminate use of depleted and non DU munitions on the people of the west, central and south Asian regions, women, children , men , animals, plant and animal life now and in the future, in gross violation of international law, the Hague convention and domestic US military law.

Official Gamma Ray damage caused studies have been deficient in a number of respects..internal contamination, internal dose to individual cells, omissions of diseases other than cancer, mutagenic, long term degeneration , oncogenesis, effects of the killer isotopes in particular. The case studies of the years 1945-50 were ignored. A recent European Parliament Report ECRR 2003 (European Committee on
Radiation Risk ) concludes that A Bomb studies underestimate the radiation risk by more than 1000 times and failed to consider the internal exposure and diseases caused by Alpha and Beta rays. They did not consider the Manhattan Project classified memo that, in case the Project objective of producing Plutonium fission and theA Bomb did not succeed , Depleted Uranium munitions would be deployed towards the attainment of the same objective (encl. 1).

DU weapons emit Alpha particle dose to a single cell from U-238 which is 50 times the annual dose level. Cancer is initiated with one alpha particle, its daughter isotopes effect generations as the isotopes bio-concentrate in plants and animals, and travel up the food chain. It is a nuclear weapon because the energy is derived from the nucleus of the atom. They enter the body through the lungs, the digestive system or breaks in the skin. One gram of DU releases more than 12,000 particles per second. The radiation slowly kills the cells that make life possible. The Gulf War syndrome of 1991 did just that ( reported by Dr Asaf Durakovic, Prof. of Medicine , Georgetown University, and discoverer of the Gulf War Syndrome.)

We are well aware that the radiation fall-out map Under the Cloud: Decades of Nuclear Testing has demonstrated the effects of 1200 nuclear weapon tests conducted at the Nevada Test Site; and the US Government admitted in Nov. 2002, that every living person in the US between 1958-63 was exposed to this fall out resulting in cancer, gene mutation, heart disease, autism, diabetes, Parkinsons, ALS, asthma, chronic fatigue syndrome , hypothyroidism in new-borns, obesity and learning disabilities. One out of twelve children in the US is disabled. The fall out did not stop at the US borders. It travelled around the world, as atmospheric dust and remains even in the biosphere/ sub-orbital space today. High breast cancer rates have been co-located in the proximity of nuclear power plants in the west and more so in the east coast areas of the US (The Breast cancer map from The Enemy Within: the high cost of living near nuclear reactors, quotes US Govt. Disease Control Centers.

The Radiation & Public health Report (RPHP), rendered by a group of independent scientists collected 4000 baby teeth and by measuring Strontium 90 levels in the baby teeth ( a built in dosi-meter ) they have been able to co-relate with radiation related diseases in children living near the nuclear power plants; the main path ways being dairy products and drinking water.

The induction of DU weapons in 1991 in Iraq, the radio-active trash from nuclear plants broke a 46 year taboo. This Trojan Horse of nuclear war, an omnicidal weapon has since then continued to be used more and more. DU remains radioactive longer than the age of the earth ( estimated at 4.5 billion years. )

The long-term effects from over a decade of DU exposures are emerging in Southern Iraq. They are devastating. The increased quantities of radio-active material ( including non-depleted uranium), used in Afghanistan are 3 to 5 times greater than Iraq 199. In Iraq 2003 they are already estimated to be 6 to 10 times 1991 and will travel through a larger area and affect many more people, babies and unborn. Countries within a 1000 mile radius of Baghdad and Kabul are being affected by radiation poisoning , that includes the Capital, New
Delhi, where the ruling elite lives. The reported coming of an AIDS epidemic last year in India , down wind, may have a relationship to DU bombing in Afghanistan. If we think cancer is a problem now wait until more DU is released in wars against terror and for regime change, on mistaken Intelligence reports.

More than 500 tons of DU munitions have been dispensed in Afghanistan. Professor Yagasaki calculated that 800 tons of DU is the atomicity equivalent to 83,000 Nagasaki bombs in a paper presented at the World Uranium Weapons Conference in Hamburg in October 2003 ( 5 months ago ). The amount of DU used in Iraq in 2003 is equivalent to nearly 250,000 Nagasaki bombs ( Busby and Leuren Moret have calculated that 1900 tons of DU is equivalent to 60 TBq of Alfa and Beta particulate activity).

We need not ennumerate the DU munition types used in Iraq 199, Kosovo 1999, Afghanistan 2001-04 and Iraq 2003. They have been dispensed by all air / ground and sea systems on innocent civilians. DU burns intensely and is very hard. It releases Uranium Oxide. The aerosol contains particles of 0.5-5 microns in size, once they are in the air or dust they are inhaled or ingested, including from contaminated soil. Once in the lungs one such particle is equivalent to having one XRay per hour, for life. Because it is impossible to remove, the victim is gradually irradiated. Still births, birth defects, leukemia, damaged central nervous systems and other cancers have been common in children born since 1991. Child leukemia has risen 600 % in areas of Iraq as reported by the Netherland Visie Foundation. Beyond just the health
consequences, DU munitions are in fact, weapons of Silent Mass Destruction in so far as the consequences of their usage are vast, indiscriminate and violate all Human Rights Conventions . Tora Bora , Kabu , Paktia , Karises or underwater supply tunnels have been contaminated forever. All this has been documented in a comprehensive paper Uranium wars : The Pentagon steps up its use of Radio-active Munitions, by Marc W. Herold to whom this paper owes sincere acknowledgement.

In another paper Dr Mohammed Daud Miraki, Director Afghan DU Recovery Fund, quotes George W Bush , we will smoke them out, condemning the unborn, the living and the future generations of Afghans and the neighbouring people to a pre-determined, death sentence. After the destruction of our village, I realised that the Americans had sentenced us all to death. When I saw my deformed
grandson I realised my hopes for the future have vanished This time we are part of the invisible genocide brought on by America a silent death from which we will not escape ( Jooma Khan of Laghman province..March 2003.) Similar stories are repeated from Paktita province of Jelly Babies. Pregnant women are afraid of giving birthThis is the legacy of US ushered liberation, freedom and democracy. DU is cheap for the US, utilising nuclear waste, cheaper than titanium and tungsten, not for the liberated (non-DU is still cheaper as it is the uranium feedstock, pre-enrichment).

The Uranium Medical Research Center (UMRC), Washington DC, and the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (1991) - Steve Fetter and Frank Von Hippel have reported on extensive research by Field teams of the UMRC in Afghanistan. Testimonies of fathers and mothers are horrifying What else do the Americans want ? They killed us , they turned our new-borns into horrific deformations, and they turned our farm lands into grave-yards, and destroyed our homes. On top of all this their planes fly over and spray us with bullets.. we have nothing to lose ..we
will fight them the same way we fought the previous invaders (Sayed Gharib at Tora Bora).

Radiological dispensing devices or warfare is the latest of the weapons of the new millenium, but it singes even those who use it , as shown in the after effects of the tests at home ground in the US, where evidence of cognitive damage during early infancy have been compiled. For us in Eurasia, Pakistan and India we have a new health epidemic to drain our scarce resources.

As world citizens we need to focus on a new scourge, the reality of the PNAC - Rebuilding Americas Defenses, Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century.

The Report notes that , Much has been written in recent years about the need to transform the conventional armed forces of the United States to take advantage of the Revolution in Military Affairs. Our military requires a dramatic transformation , lest we lose our ability to fight the future unconventional wars .. some may be fought in cyberspace, others under water or in outer space . And some even within our bodies.

Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol and others are some of the men representing contemporary power centers, who define US policy. History indicates that the men who define US military policy from the shadows , are worthy of our attention.

GENETIC BOMBS

When creating genetic-bombs or weapons to target specific groups; genetic profiles are subtler and more accurate than the coarse pseudo category called race. The group with ADHD ( the Edison Gene) uniquely share common inherited variations in their dopamine regulating genes regardless of race, geography or ethnicity. Thus anybody whos part of a group with a shared genetic profile may be at risk in the future.

A virus or bacteria may attack only a particular type of person, killing, disabling or sterilising only those of a particular gene profile.
Threatening a particular type would be sufficient political black-mail.

Wolfowitz, Kristol and their colleagues suggested that the Pentagon should be thinking about not just germ warfare of which they have plenty of capabilities, but gene warfare.

Genetic terra-forming could replace diplomacy, or it could change the face of politics if an organism got loose that killed all the people of a particular minority community who tend to vote for a particular political party.

According to the PNAC, Genetically targeted weapons could change world politics for ever, and the report notes, advanced forms of biological warfare that can target specific geno-types may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool

To conclude 4th generation micro-nukes, with their war-head composition, were deliberated upon and decided at the US Airforce Strategic Command Headquarters at the Offutt Airforce Base, Nebraska, between the top Corporates /weapon manufacturers and the US military brass. The former not only have prior knowledge of numbers and types of all types of nuclear weapons, but the locations of the planned and approved targets, globally.

This meeting took place on Hiroshima Day, 6th August, 2003, and to reiterate, the aim was to define a new generation of nuclear weapons to be used on a pre-emptive basis against rogue enemies and terrorist organisations. (mini-nukes have an explosive capacity between one-third and six times a Hiroshima bomb).

In this Strangelovian logic, nuclear weapons are now viewed as a means to ensuring peace and security against non-existent WMDs.

AT A GLANCE:

1. In the 2003 war, the IraqiS were subjected to the Pentagons radioactive arsenal, mainly in the urban centers, unlike in the deserts in 1991. The aggregate effects of illnesses and long term disabilities and genetic birth defects will be apparent only 2008 onwards.

2. By now, half of all the 697,000 US soldiers involved in the 1991 war have reported serious illnesses. According the American Gulf War Veterans Association, more than 30% of these soldiers are chronically ill, and receiving disability benefits from the Veterans Administration.

3. The number of disabled veterans is shockingly high . They are in their mid-thirties and should have been in the prime of health.

4. Near the Republican Palace where US troops stood guard and over 1000 employees walked in and out, the radiation readings were the hottest in Iraq, at nearly 1900 times background radiation levels.

5. At a roadside stand, selling fresh bunches of parsley, mint, and onions, children played on a burnt out Iraqi tank just outside Baghdad, the Geiger counter registered 1000 times normal background radiation.

6. The Pentagon and the United Nations estimate that the US and Britain used 1,100 to 2,200 tons of armor piercing shells made of DU during attacks in March-April 2003, far more than the 1991 Gulf War (this does not include air dispensed DU munitions and missiles), wrote the Post Intelligencer.

7. An otherwise useless by-product of the uranium enrichment process, DU is attractive to military contractors because it is so cheap and often offered for free by the Government.

8. The long term effects, as Dr Asaf Durakovic elaborates, after the early neurological symptoms are cancer, and related radiation illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome, joint and muscle pain, neurological and/or nerve damage, mood disturbances, auto-immuno deficiciencies, lung and kidney damage, vision problems, skin rupture, increase in miscarriages, maternal mortality and genetic birth defects/deformation.

9. For years the US government described the Gulf War Syndrome as a post traumatic stress disorder. It was labelled as a psychological problem or simply as mysterious unrelated ailments much in the same way as health problems of Vietnam veterans suffering from Agent Orange poisoning.
( With acknowledgements to Sara Flounders, for 1-9 above, Coordinator of the DU education program ).

I also gratefully acknowledge the facts learnt from evidence led by scientists/papers presented and accepted by the International Criminal Tribunal on Afghanistan, at Tokyo on 13-16 Decembe, 2003 and earlier at the World Depleted Uranium Weapons Conference, Hamburg 16-19 October, 2003, by Leuren Moret, whose continuing contribution to this cause against Silent Wepons of Mass Destruction (SWMD), in defense of humanity, deserves our support.

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