The JvL Bi

My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient of excessive admiration and reverence from my fellow-beings, through no fault, and no merit, of my own. The cause of this may well be the desire, unattainable for many, to understand the few ideas to which I have with my feeble powers attained through ceaseless struggle. I am quite aware that it is necessary for the achievement of the objective of an organization that one man should do the thinking and directing and generally bear the responsibility. But the led must not be coerced, they must be able to choose their leader. An autocratic system of coercion, in my opinion, soon degenerates. For force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels. For this reason I have always been passionately opposed to systems such as we see in Italy and Russia today. The thing that has brought discredit upon the form of democracy as it exists in Europe today is not to be laid to the door of the democratic principle as such, but to the lack of stability of governments and to the impersonal character of the electoral system. I believe that in this respect the United States of America have found the right way. They have a President who is elected for a sufficiently long period and has sufficient powers really to exercise his responsibility. What I value, on the other hand, in the German political system is the more extensive provision that it makes for the individual in case of illness or need. The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, which the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.

This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor. That a man can take pleasure in marching in fours to the strains of a band is enough to make me despise him. He has only been given his big brain by mistake; unprotected spinal marrow was all he needed. This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence , and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism—how passionately I hate them! How vile and despicable seems war to me! I would rather be hacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business. My opinion of the human race is high enough that I believe this bogey would have disappeared long ago, had the sound sense of the peoples not been systemically corrupted by commercial and political interests acting through the schools and the Press.

………..

Let us now consider the times in which we live. How does society fare, how the individual? The population of the civilized countries is extremely dense as compared with former times; Europe today contains about three times as many people as it did a hundred years ago. But the number of leading personalities has decreased out of all proportion. Only a few people are know to the masses as individuals, through their creative achievements. Organization has to some extent taken the place of leading personalities, particularly in the technical sphere, but also to a very perceptible extent in the scientific.

The lack of outstanding figures is particularly striking in the domain of art. Painting and music have definitely degenerated and largely lost their popular appeal. In politics not only are leaders lacking, but the independence of sprit and the sense of justice of the citizen have to a great extent declined. The democratic parliamentarian regime, which is based on such independence, has in many places been shaken; dictatorships have sprung up and are tolerated, because men's sense of the dignity and the rights of the individual is not longer strong enough. In two weeks the sheep like masses of any country can be worked up by the newspapers into such a state of excited fury that men are prepared to put on uniforms and kill and be killed, for the sake of the sordid ends of a few interested parties. Compulsory military service seems to me the most disgraceful symptom of that deficiency in personal dignity from which civilized mankind is suffering today. No wonder there is no lack of prophets who prophesy the early eclipse of our civilization. I am not one of these pessimists; I believe that better times are coming. Let me briefly state my reasons for such confidence.

In my opinion, the present manifestations of decadence are explained by the fact that economic and technologic developments have highly intensified the struggle for existence, greatly to the detriment of the free development of the individual. But the development of technology means that less and less work is needed from the individual for the satisfaction of the community's needs. A planned division of labor is becoming more and more of a crying necessity, and this division will lead to the material security of the individual. This security and the spare time and energy which the individual will have at his disposal can be turned to the development of this personality. In this way the community may regain its health, and we will hope that future historians will explain the morbid symptoms of present day society as the childhood ailments of an aspiring humanity, due entirely to the excessive speed at which civilization was advancing.

2. IF LE CARRÉ COULD VOTE

JOHN LE CARRÉ

Maybe there's one good reason—just one—for reelecting George W. Bush, and that's to force him to live with the consequences of his appalling actions and answer for his own lies, rather than wish the job on a Democrat who would then get blamed for his predecessor's follies.

Probably no American president in history has been so universally hated abroad as Bush: for his bullying unilateralism, his dismissal of international treaties, his reckless indifference to the aspirations of other nations and cultures, his contempt for institutions of world government, and above all for misusing the cause of anti-terrorism in order to unleash an illegal war—and now anarchy—upon a country that like too many others around the world was suffering under a hideous dictatorship but had no hand in the events of 9/11, no weapons of mass destruction and no record of terrorism except as an ally of the United States in a dirty war against Iran.

Is your president a great war leader because he allowed himself to be manipulated by a handful of deluded ideologues? Is Tony Blair, my prime minister, a great war leader because he committed Britain's troops, foreign policy and domestic security to the same harebrained adventure?

You are voting in November. We will vote next year. Yet the outcome in both countries will in large part depend on the same question: How long can the lies last now that the truth has finally been told? The Iraq war was planned long before 9/11. Osama bin Laden provided the excuse. Iraq paid the price. American kids paid the price. British kids paid the price. Our politicians lied to us.

While Bush was waging his father's war at your expense, he was also ruining your country. He made your rich richer and your poor and unemployed more numerous. He robbed your war veterans of their due and reduced your children's access to education. And he deprived more Americans than ever before of healthcare.

Now he's busy cooking the books, burying deficits and calling in contingency funds to fight a war that his advisors promised him he could light and put out like a candle.

Meanwhile your Patriot Act has swept aside constitutional and civil liberties that took brave Americans 200 years to secure and were once the envy of a world that now looks on in horror, not just at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib but at what you are doing to yourselves.

But please don't feel isolated from the Europe you twice saved. Give us back the America we loved, and your friends will be waiting for you. Here in Britain, for as long as we have Tony Blair singing the same lies as George W. Bush, your nightmares will be ours.

3. THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION

WILLIAM BLUM

It has become conventional wisdom that it was the relentlessly tough anti-communist policies of the Reagan Administration, with its heated-up arms race, that led to the collapse and reformation of the Soviet Union and its satellites. American history books may have already begun to chisel this thesis into marble. The Tories in Great Britain say that Margaret Thatcher and her unflinching policies contributed to the miracle as well.. The East Germans were believers too. When Ronald Reagan visited East Berlin the people there cheered him and thanked him "for his role in liberating the East". Even many leftist analysts, particularly those of a conspiracy bent, are believers.

But this view is not universally held nor should it be.

Long the leading Soviet expert on the United States, Georgi Arbatov, head of the Moscow-based Institute for the Study of the U.S.A. and Canada, wrote his memoirs in 1992. A Los Angeles Times book review by Robert Scheer summed up a portion of it.

"Arbatov understood all too well the failings of Soviet totalitarianism in comparison to the economy and politics of the West. It is clear from this candid and nuanced memoir that the movement for change had been developing steadily inside the highest corridors of power ever since the death of Stalin. Arbatov not only provides considerable evidence for the controversial notion that this change would have come about without foreign pressure, he insists that the US military buildup during the Reagan years actually impeded this development."

George F. Kennan agrees. The former US ambassador to the Soviet Union, and father of the theory of "containment" of the same country, asserts that "the suggestion that any US administration had the power to influence decisively the course of a tremendous domestic political upheaval in another great country on another side of the globe is simply childish." He contends that the extreme militarisation of American policy strengthened hardliners in the Soviet Union. "Thus the general effect of Cold War extremism was to delay rather than hasten the great change that overtook the Soviet Union."

Though the arms-race spending undoubtedly damaged the fabric of the Soviet civilian economy and society even more than it did in the US, this had been going on for 40 years by the time Mikhail Gorbachev came to power without the slightest hint of impending doom. Gorbachev's close adviser, Aleksandr Yakovlev, when asked whether the Reagan administration's higher military spending combined with its "Evil Empire" rhetoric, forced the Soviet Union into a more conciliatory position, responded:

"It played no role. None. I can tell you that with the fullest responsibility. Gorbachev and I were ready for changes in our policy regardless of whether the American president was Reagan, or Kennedy, or someone even more liberal. It was clear that our military spending was enormous and we had to reduce it."

Understandably, some Russians might be reluctant to admit that they were forced to make revolutionary changes by their arch enemy, to admit that they lost the Cold War. However, on this question we don't have to rely on the opinion of any individual, Russian or American. We merely have to look at the historical facts.

From the late 1940s to around the mid-1960s, it was an American policy objective to instigate the downfall of the Soviet government as well as several Eastern European regimes. Many hundreds of Russian exiles were organized, trained and equipped by the CIA, then sneaked back into their homeland to set up espionage rings, to stir up armed political struggle, and to carry out acts of assassination and sabotage, such as derailing trains, wrecking bridges, damaging arms factories and power plants, and so on. The Soviet government, which captured many of these men, was of curse fully aware of who was behind all this.

Compared to this policy that of the Reagan administration could be categorized as one of virtual capitulation. Yet what were the fruits of this ultra-tough anti-communist policy? Repeated serious confrontations between the US and the Soviet Union in Berlin, Cuba and elsewhere, the Soviet interventions into Hungary and Czechoslovakia, creation of the Warsaw Pact (in direct reaction to NATO), no glasnost, no perestroika, only pervasive suspicion, cynicism and hostility on both sides. It turned out that the Russians were human after all – they responded to toughness with toughness. And the corollary: there was for many years a close correlation between the amicability of the US-Soviet relations and the number of Jews allowed to emigrate from the Soviet Union. Softness produced softness.

If there's anyone to attribute the changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to, both the beneficial ones and those questionable, it is of course Mikhail Gorbachev and the activists he inspired. It should be remembered that Reagan was in office for over four years before Gorbachev came to power, and Thatcher for six years, but in that period of time nothing of any significance in the way of Soviet reform took place despite Reagan's and Thatcher's unremitting malice toward the communist state.

4. DEATH AND DESTRUCTION IN GAZA

MOHAMMED OMER

Dozens of Palestinian men, women and children have been killed and hundreds wounded in the massive Israeli army attack (named "Days of Penitence" by the Israeli Defence Force) in the northern area of the Gaza Strip.

More than 130 Palestinians have died since Israel began the operation [circa 5th of October], over two weeks ago. At least 30 of the dead are children under the age of 18.

The Middle East peace quartet of the UN, the European Union, the US and Russia remained silent in face of brutal Israeli attacks on densely populated areas of Gaza!

Although the Israeli army has "withdrawn," it continues to commit war crimes against a civilian population throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

On one day, during the attacks, Israeli soldiers killed 32 Palestinians and wounded more than 102 during their incursion into northern Gaza. Three Israelis were also killed. The military attacks focused on refuge camps in northern Gaza, where the army said Qassam rockets were fired.

Whatever the reason the Israeli army is using to justify the attacks, men, women and children are paying a heavy price. Israelis have violated international law by attacking areas that resulted in civilian deaths and injuries.

It smells unbelievably bad here. To walk down any street—if you dare to—you skirt, or sometimes unavoidably walk through pools of blood. There are shreds of human flesh—some of them unrecognizable as human remains—all over, on rooftops, plastered to broken windows, on the street. The stench of rotting blood mixes with the more acrid odor of flesh burnt to black char by the rockets fired by the Israeli Army's American-made Apache helicopters.

The sky is full of black smoke, some from the rocket explosions, but even more, it sometime seems, from the endless fires of tires and other debris that people keep stoking. The smoke confuses the heat-seeking unmanned drone surveillance planes, so setting fire in any relatively open area may draw fire and let a bomb explode somewhat harmlessly.

All this smoke mixed with plaster and cement dust is a blessing and a curse. The stench of burning flesh and rotting blood masks to some extent the smell of raw sewage from broken sewer pipes and the tens of thousands of bodies unwashed for over a week now. Water to drink is a rare and precious commodity here—baths and showers have become impossible luxuries.

Your eyes inevitably tear up from al the smoke—but then , that protects you a tiny bit from some of the more harrowing sights—recognizable body parts—a piece of a leg, an obvious part of a torso, and fingers—more scattered, individual recognizable fingers than anyone should ever have to see. Volunteer crew are gathering these human fragments and bringing them to Jabalya's two hospitals but the ambulances cannot possible keep up with the flood of newly dead and injured.

Funeral processions are everywhere, and "houses of mourning"—the tents bereaved families set up in which to receive their families and friend. In fact, though every house here, those relatively intact and those partly or wholly destroyed by the IDF tanks and bulldozers, is a house of mourning.

And nothing protects you from the sounds—the tears and laments of the mothers and fathers, husbands, wives and children of the dead, the screams of the injured, the wail of ambulance sirens, sniper fire, the thud of tank shells and the too-frequent explosions as another Apache shell lands.

Time is distorted here—hours feel like days, days like weeks or months. This Jabalya Refugee Camp in the Northern Gaza Strip, one of the most crowded places on earth where 106,000 men, women, and children, the overwhelming majority of them unarmed civilians, have been under an all-out attack for over a week now.

Israel's official position is that this carnage is a "response" to Palestinian militants' firing a homemade Qassam rocket into the Israeli town of Sederot last week, a rocket which killed two children. In fact, though, the first tanks rumbled into Jabalya some hours before the rocket attack on Sderot, and we had all been watching with alarm as the Israeli forces multiplied in northern Gaza over the last few weeks—2000 fresh troops, over a hundred more tanks and bulldozers.

It is only when I sit down to write up my notes made here in the last few days that the cruelty of the IDF name for this attack—"Days of Penitence"—hits me. They are not just slaughtering unarmed civilians, but language itself. "Penitence," as I understand it, is voluntary remorse for wrong-doing. Is this massacre supposed to induce remorse in its victims? Are they supposed to mourn the deaths of four or five Israeli soldiers, and two Israeli children and accept the death of more than 60 Palestinian civilians as some kind of justice? To those of us trapped in Jabalya, it seems like Days of Revenge. It is unquestionably collective punishment, and illegal under the Geneva Conventions.

Perhaps we should not be surprised. Israel's Prime minister Ariel Sharon has announced this attack will last "as long as necessary," that is, until there is "no further danger" from the Palestinian resistance's homemade rockets. Sharon, of course, engineered the massacres of Sabra and Shatila over twenty years ago. Now, he is doing much the same, but with vastly improved weaponry.

Of course, the militant factions exist, and have been striking here and there during this last week but they are vastly outnumbered, not to mention out-gunned, by the Israelis. Hamas, on its side, has distributed leaflets in Gaza City vowing to continue the rocket attacks on the illegal Israeli settlements in Gaza and any Israeli towns and cities their home-made ordnance can reach as long as the Israeli incursions continue.

International protests have been muted, and stymied by the US support for Israel. The lone, feeble voice from the US State Department urged Israel to keep its "response" "proportional"—after, of course, the obligatory mantra, "Israel has a right to defend itself." A strongly worded resolution condemning the attack brought before the UN at the beginning of the week was defeated by the US veto.

It is hard to maintain accurate casualty figures—the most recent count seems to be 80 Palestinians killed (20 of them militants claimed by Hamas) and over 200 injured. Unquestionably, by the time this is printed, the figures will be higher. There is no refuge anywhere in Jabalya. The hospitals are chaotic, supplies are short and all medical personnel have been working around the clock for days now.

I saw Abu Nedal, the father of Nedal Al Madhown a 14 year-old boy, struggle to maintain his composure as he asked the exhausted doctors and ambulance drivers, "Was my son killed? Has he been killed?" (In fact, the boy was dead on arrival…) The majority of the dead and injured have been teens and children, obvious non-combatants.

I interviewed Dr. Mahmoud Al Asali, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, who told me he was forced to assume the Israeli Army has been deliberately targeting civilians. He said most of those injured by gun fire were wounded in the upper parts of their bodies, indicating the Israeli sharpshooters must have orders to shoot to kill. Palestinian doctors have removed many flechettes from the dead and injured, indicating the IDF are using illegal fragmentation bombs. These release razor sharp flechettes as they explode. Dr. Al Asali says these illegal fragmentation devices greatly increase the number of deaths and the number and severity of injuries, The IDF has refused comment on this.

The hospital staffs and ambulance crews are so overextended that they are using volunteers for the gruesome task of collecting sorting, and attempting to match scattered human remains to return as much as possible to bereaved families. One of these medical workers, Ahmed Abu Saall 26, from Kamal Aswan Hospital, told me, "one enormous difficulty we face is that these powerful bombs can scatter the parts of a single victim over a wide area. It is quite possible parts of a person could end up in Al Awda hospital in the east of the camp, while other parts of the same person end up with us here on the western side." Sometimes shreds of clothing can help with the matching.

The Israeli Army has frequently shot at the medical teams and journalists. So far, two ambulance drivers have been injured, and a cameraman from Ramatan News Agency has been hurt. Of course, the ambulance crews and press all wear identifying gear.

Israel has closed all borders into Gaza and has severely restricted all movement within the Gaza Strip. There are three major "zones" split off by sealed military checkpoints, but recent days have seen numerous new checkpoints, and roads closed by cement block and sand obstructions. People cannot move between cities, not even ambulances bringing patients to hospitals. Moreover, the main Israel-Gaza crossing is closed, even to International NGOs, humanitarian relief groups, and foreign journalists.

Intense as the military attack has been and continues to be, it is certainly not the only danger to the people here. Many families now have been without food and water for days. In Tal Al Zattar, the eastern part of Jabalya, I interviewed Umm Ramzi, an elderly lady who spoke to me through the gaping hole a tank shell had left in her house. "We have been appealing to the Red Cross, to save our lives and the lives of our children, but nobody has responded."

Most of the NGO workers and relief organizations have—logically enough—assumed they cannot get through the Israeli military lines that completely surround Jabalya, although they are well aware that the civilians need help. I managed to reach the International Committee of the Red Cross (CRC), spokesman Simon Schorno by phone and he told me: "I'm on my way to Gaza now. We have been talking to the IDF to get permission to bring food and water, but we were not able to get an OK for complete food distribution".

Concerning the absence of the Red Cross in the past few days when many families were in urgent need, Mr. Schorno said, "I feel terrible. We are trying to do our best to get food and water inside but the damaged streets also delay us from reaching the people."

A number of eyewitnesses among the camp residents told me the Israeli army has commandeered several high buildings as sniper posts and basically shoot anything that moves. One of the most recent victims was Islam Dweidar, 14, who took a chance during an apparent lull in firing to buy bread for her mother. However, she was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper.

In the Southern part of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli Army has increased the number of tanks and bulldozers in all parts of Khan Younis and Rafah. There has been shelling every night, with many injured and killed. This morning, I spoke by phone to Dr. Ali Mussa, director of Abu Yousif Al Najjar Hospital in Rafah who announced that 13-year-old Eman al Hums had been killed by Israeli sniper fire. He said, "the child arrived at the hospital after being riddled by twenty bullets in different parts of her body, five of them in her head."

Palestinian eyewitnesses reported that Al Hums was killed while on her way to school with two other schoolgirls. In early media reports, the IDF said she was planting a bomb; they later were forced to admit the accusation was false.

These current attacks are now far worse than the so-called "Operation Rainbow" of last May, which killed 40 in Rafah and prompted an international outcry. Now, the silence form America, in particular, seems to condone this turning the Gaza Strip into a killing field. Sharon has picked his moment well, when America is preoccupied with its presidential campaign and its invasion of Iraq, to decimate the children of Gaza. How many more must die before the world speaks out?

5. OTHER RECENT RADIOACTIVE WARS

HELEN CALDICOTT

Two other "radioactive" wars have been fought in recent times, primarily by the United States and its NATO allies, in Bosnia and Kosovo.

As of this writing, an international furor is erupting, as soldiers and peacekeepers deployed in Kosovo are developing malignancies, including leukemia. Approximately 31,000 rounds of uranium ammunition were fired in Operation Allied Force—the seventy-eight day war in Kosovo in 1999—and over 10,800 uranium shells were fired in Bosnia in 1994-95, mainly around the city of Sarajevo, where American A-10 Warthog planes fired uranium ammunition from its 30-mm Gatling guns at a rate of 3900 rounds per minute.

Initially, NATO officials were reluctant to give their member countries specific information about the use of uranium ammunitions in Kosovo or Bosnia, although in July 1999 NATO had warned those countries with armies and aid workers in the Balkans that there could be a "possible toxic threat" arising from the use of uranium weapons, and advised them to take preventive measures. (The head of the UN environment program criticized NATO for not being more forthcoming about where it had used the ammunition.)

Concern about uranium weapons began percolating among the NATO countries in December 2000, when Italy announced an investigation into thirty sick soldiers who had served in Bosnia in 1994-95 and Kosovo in 1999. Twelve have cancer and five to seven have died of leukemia. About 30,000 to 40,000 Italian soldiers served in the Balkans, and the Italian defense minister, Sergio Mattarella, said, "I must express my bitterness that the competent international organizations have waited until now to answer our request for information that is important to the Bosnian community and members of the military."

Spain will test all 32,000 of its soldiers stationed in the Balkans since 1992. Two confirmed cases of leukemia have been reported amongst the Spanish contingent. Apart from the leukemia deaths, an unknown number of soldiers who served as peacekeepers in the Balkans have an array of symptoms similar to the Gulf War syndrome, including hair loss and chronic fatigue.

Other countries concerned about the future health of their men include Kosovo, Denmark, France, Belgium, Portugal and Holland. Ireland, Latvia, and Romania will also test their troops. Five Belgian soldiers have malignancies, as have two Portuguese, two Finnish , and two Dutch soldiers. Portugal will send scientists to measure radiation levels in the affected areas. Russia is sending a team to check the zones where its people are deployed as international peace keepers and plans to test all military personnel before January 20, 2002. Portugal and Italy have accused NATO of a cover-up.

A former environment minister from Finland, Pekka Haavisto, who headed the UN inquiry into Kosovo, said after an inspection of the Kosovo Battlefields, "We found some radiation in the middle of the villages where children were playing. We were surprised to find this a year-and-a-half later [after the war]. People had collected ammunition shards as souvenirs and there were cows grazing in contaminated areas, which means the contaminated dust can get into the milk." Haavisto and his team discovered low-level beta radiation at eight of the eleven sites they sampled. They recommended that the contaminated areas be marked and fenced off, because, he said, the local people do not understand the material.

The eleven sites examined were chosen from 112 areas that NATO admitted it had targeted with radioactive munitions, although to Haavisto's anger, NATO procrastinated, taking almost a year and a half before providing the necessary geographical data to the UN team. Haavisto also expressed concern that the use of controlled explosions to clear mines, unexploded munitions, and cluster bombs would scatter the radiation and toxic materials yet again. After several weeks of European consternation and banner headlines in December 2000 and January 2001, NATO (which to a large degree is controlled by the US) was finally forced to order a full investigation into the possible effects of depleted uranium. Apart from NATO, the fifteen-member European Union ordered its own inquiry.

After months of steadfast denial about the dangers, the British ministry of defense has asked for an independent study on the possible effects of uranium weapons. The House of Commons met on January 10, 2001, to decide whether to summon ministers to explain the government's policy. Britain finally agreed that—along with the other NATO countries—it would conduct tests on its troops, 1400 of whom are said to be suffering from the Gulf War syndrome (469 of these have died; causes of death have yet to be made public).

No doubt medical tests will benefit families and soldiers, but the doctors will be unable to ascertain whether or not these people have actually inhaled or ingested uranium particles. Blood tests will reveal only whether or not the patient has leukemia at the time of testing. X-ray scans of the body will determine whether there is an advanced cancer. Urine tests will reveal if the person is excreting uranium. If positive, the patient is at risk for developing a malignancy years later. Even if the urine shows no trace of uranium, it does not mean that the uranium is not deposited in bone or in other organs. There is no way to determine whether or not there is uranium in the body, apart from placing the patient in a whole-body scanner, where a tiny specific spectrum of radiation can be detected, indicating the present of uranium or its decay products. If the whole body scanner fails to detect traces of radioactivity, this still does not exclude damage. Uranium could have been in the body previously, mutated some regulatory genes, and then excreted. The patient could still go on to develop cancer.

Medically, one would not expect the symptoms of leukemia to arise for two to ten years following exposure. So the troops who were present at Operation Desert Storm and in the 1994-95 operation in Bosnia may well be developing leukemia, but it is early for soldiers exposed in 1999 to be manifesting malignancies. The incubation period for cancer may be shorter than we have been led to believe when exposed to internal uranium deposits. We have much yet to learn. Dr. Eric Wright, a British radiobiologist, said "I am not aware of any real radiobiology research in depleted uranium."

That the soldiers and peacekeepers will be followed medically is appropriate. But there are tens of thousands—or indeed millions—of innocent civilians at risk in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Bosnia, and Kosovo, as well as the other places around the globe where radioactive weapons have been aerosolized by testing. These people must also be followed up and cared for. On January 17, 2001, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Spiez also discovered traces of uranium 236 in the weapons used in Kosovo. As Uranium 236 is made only in a nuclear reactor, these weapons are definitely contaminated with fission and transuranic products form nuclear fission. The US military and department of energy must have know about this contamination. If there is uranium 236, almost certainly there will be plutonium, together with americium, neptunium, strontium 90, and cesium 137. This situation has extremely serious medical implications for the public health of the people who have been and will be contaminated.

(Editor's note: I would very strongly recommend the book by Dr. Helen Caldicott, MD: The New Nuclear Danger.)

6. DEMOCRATS & REPUBLICANS: MILITARY SERVICE

[Editor's note: The idea that military service and patriotism are equivalent is questionable. But, since this idea has been an axiom in this election I thought it would be interesting to note the following.]