SOLDIERS BEWARE
BY LOISE NEVILLE
If you are a soldier for the USA, beware; your life is in danger. No, not
from the enemy-from the U.S. army, the U.S. courts, the U.S. government.
How's that, you say? Because although war-related injuries are treated by
the veterans' hospitals, you won't get anything if they're from chemical
warfare or nuclear poisoning. The government declares it has legal immunity,
no liability for injuries of that sort.
Remember the Agent Orange we liberally sprinkled over Vietnam in the '60s
to kill the forests, crops, and-as a sideline-citizens of that country?
Well, a little of it blew back, resulting in the deaths, illness and deformed
babies of thousands of U.S. soldiers. After a long court trial, the U.S.
said, "You can't prove it and furthermore, we are not liable for military
or civilian cases of contamination involving toxic chemicals or nuclear
radiation, so forget it."
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Even nuclear injuries? But we don't use nuclear weapons, do we? Aha, but
we do!
Now some veterans of the recent Iraq war are ill, some with radiation poisoning
symptoms, others with chemical poisoning symptoms. Many months ago on KALW
Radio, San Francisco, Jesse Jackson announced that the desert where we fought
Iraq's tanks is now radioactive! "American soldiers are running all
over the area with Geiger counters to test the level of radioactivity."
This was way back last September. Now the Covert Action Quarterly (formerly
the Covert Action Information Bulletin) has picked up the story in its Winter
Issue #43.
So what weapons were "atomic"? Tank-piercing shells fired from
ours to theirs and dropped by bombers. Now the depleted uranium is depleting
U.S. soldiers, depleting the desert of Western Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait,
and any unfortunate person or camel which crosses it.
CHEMICAL WARFARE
Remember those "mystery shots" our soldiers were given in that
Iraq war? "With consent," the army declares. Now the news is out;
"consent" meant not being informed ahead of time, being sneaked
up on from behind with a needle jab, being held down by force, or being
court-marshaled for successfully refusing to take the shot.
It happens those drugs were illegal, not FDA-researched, though FDA was
"shot from behind" and forced into an OK. It happens that now
soldiers are getting sick from them. It happens that the U.S. Army is a
dangerous place to be. If the enemy doesn't get you, the army will. You'll
find the lurid details in this issue of Covert Action Quarterly and lots
of other juicy stuff you won't get anywhere else.
HORRORS FROM THE OZONE HOLE
"WE have to keep on living and hope that God will devise a solution
to this problem," the people of Chile say as blindness and cancers
strike people and animals, as crops die burned to death by the sun's rays.
In Southern Chile, children do not dare go out to play, farmers and shepherds
who must work outside suffer blindness and cancers as crops wither and sheep
wander blindly in the hills. "AIDS from the sky," they call it.
The UV Monitor, an Australian organization which monitors world ultra violet
emissions, declares that even if chemicals which harm the ozone were to
be discontinued immediately, the situation would worsen for ten years, with
possible DNA damage, physical abnormalities in both animals and humans.
The current fifteen-year plan of a slow removal of ozone-affecting chemicals,
obviously designed to prevent business losses by corporations which manufacture
these chemicals, will be a disaster, according to UV Monitor and NASA scientists
who have examined the situation. They warn that ocean plankton may die,
causing the death of the creatures of the sea who feed on it and starvation
of those which feed on plankton-eater; in turn starvation of fishermen seems
a logical conclusion.
So there you have it. Not just a horror story, a horror fact which awaits
you and me if life is not given priority over business profit.
"We're all in this together," declared Howard Anderson of NASA
on "Soundbreak," produced by Johns Hop-kins University and aired
on KAWL Radio.
Is there a light note here? Flamingoes which once wintered in Florida now
winter in Patagonia, Southern Chile, which is no longer chilly but tropically
warm. Yes, a light note until one begins to envision future blind flamingoes.
No, there is no light note in ultra violet light streaming from that hole
in our ozone!
Are we safe here in the United States as long as we wear sunscreen and UV
sunglasses? Not hardly! The hole cuts both ways; it's at the North Pole
too and the hole grows larger by the year.
WHO REMOVED THE ARISTIDE GOVERNMENT FROM HAITI?
If you've boned up on global economics, you knew immediately that the U.S.
did it. It fits the pattern. Now at last from the Santa Fe New Mexican comes
confirmation from Jerry Ortiz y Pino's column "Notary Republic."
Ortiz y Pino's daughter, a member of a team from Notre Dame University which
worked with Haitian refugees to establish qualifications for political asylum,
brought back the information.
Confirmation? Seems everyone in Haiti knows what happened, that the U.S.,
using the CIA, chucked out Aristide, partly because he was not another dictator
in the usual pattern (the Duvaliers), partly for lack of compliance with
U.S. plans for Haiti-a U.S. military base on the island for closer U.S.
control of its citizens. The "trade embargo" they said applies
only to the common people, while the rich and the generals can still get
whatever they need to supply their lifestyle, another way to lick the little
guys and give strokes to the big shots. As this has been our traditional
role in Haiti ever since we took it from the French, the story rings true.
An historical note: Apparently the French handled Haiti differently. The
American general who conquered the island is quoted as having said, "These
damn niggers are better educated than I am."
We put an end to that sort of thing.
