Alternative Perspective
 The Ongoing Nuclear War: A Retrospective Report
Issue 45, February 19th, 2004
Compiled by Madhukar Shukla

 Alternative Perspective is an attempt to widen our awareness about issues related to business, environment, role and influence of media, geo-politics, culture, etc. It aims to share, on a regular basis, some of those pieces of news and information, which do not find place in the highly monopolised mainstream media. Please feel free to share/ forward/ distribute this newsletter to others who may be interested.

For most of us, the last Nuclear Holocaust happened in August, 1945, when US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, because, as President Truman explained in his speech that morning, the USA, "wished in this first attack to avoid, in so far as possible, the killing of civilians." Since then - we believe- barring a few tension points, the world has remained largely peaceful and free of nuclear threats. Some such tension points which have surfaced recently are, e.g., North Korea refusing to let go its nuclear program, India and Pakistan agreeing not to sign NPT, Iran showing intentions of going nuclear, nuclear technology proliferating out of Pakistan, etc.

We don't seem to realise that we are ALL already living through an ongoing Nuclear War, which is well out of our control.

[if you don;t belive it, see the last item of this Newsletter]


Note: The URLs of sources used in the text are numbered and given at the end of the Newsletter.

In This Issue:
  • The Poisonous Legacy
    Depleted Uranium (or DU)[1], a waste from the nuclear plant is a useful material for making bunker-buster bombs - it slices through the tougest material like a hot knife through butter. On contact, it bursts and the particles are dispersed in the air, which can travel over miles, and get embedded in human bodies. The unfortunate part is that even though described as "depleted", it retains about 65-70% of its radioactivity - and has a half-life of 4.5billion years!!!. Given the fact that more than 400 tonnes of DU was dropped in the last three wars (in Gulf and in Kosovo), the legacy of of radiation is here to stay, as this shockwave presentation summarises (it can be disturbing to many).
    http://www.ericblumrich.com/pl_lo.html

  • WMDs of the Slow Silent Kind
    This is a silent weapon: no mushroom clouds, no fire, no evaporated buildings. The victims would not even know that they have been hit/ contaminated, and would feel/live through the impact (malignancies, breakdown of immune system, leukemia, etc.) in the years to come. Moroever, the invisible contamination continues to live even after the victim is dead, since it seeps through the generations, and passes on in the form of deformities and death to the posterity[2].
    http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0920-06.htm

  • Discounted Casualities: Radiated in the Nuclear "Friendly Fire"
    One may call it some kind of poetic justice, or just an an example of indiscriminate killing power of DU, that it affects the victor and the vanquished in the same way. The Gulf-War Syndrome[3] applies to the both alike. If civilian population in Kosovo or Iraq were victims of DU contamination[4], so were the war veterans who fought on the ground.
    http://www.chugoku-np.co.jp/abom/uran/special/index.html

  • Of Course, They Knew!!!
    Though there is sufficient evidence[5] to see it, but the invaders/liberators have denied any link between malignancy/illnesses and DU[6]. This may be a reasonable cover-up, since Depleted Uranum is not just a military-strategic issue, but there are also commercial interests involved[7]. Morover, accepting the DU-cancer link would also mean accepting that one is using, what UN has resolved as, an "illegal" Weapon of Mass Destruction[8]... and that one is using it against "one's own people"[9]!!!
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/01/06/nuran06.xml

    Does it Really Matter???
  • Nuclear Battlefield Earth: In Our Backyards
    Living in our nice safe cacoons of personal life and narrow concerns, we are tempted to believe that all this is happening out there, far off, in the battlefields of Iraq/Afghanistan/Kosovo, with nameless, faceless people we don't even know... Often, we don;t even realise that the Nuclear Battlefield is in our backyards - affecting us through every breath that we inhale. We are all living through the holocaust. We are all getting contaminated, whether we live in Albany, New York State[10]... or in this largely unknown city of Jamshedpur in Jharkhand, India[11] (where I live).
    http://www.ratical.org/radiation/HoLLR.html


    Other Sources Quoted in the Newsletter:
    [1]: http://cbc.ca/news/indepth/background/du.html
    [2]: http://www.firethistime.org/extremedeformities.htm
    [3]: http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/7570
    [4]: http://www.motherjones.com/news/special_reports/total_coverage/kosovo/reality_check/du.html
    [5]: http://www.csmonitor.com/atcsmonitor/specials/uranium/
    [6]: http://www.nato.int/du/home.htm
    [7]: http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/DU-Patent-Blacklist20jan01.htm
    [8]: http://www.sundayherald.com/32522
    [9]: http://www.iacenter.org/depleted/mettoc.htm
    [10]: http://www.chugoku-np.co.jp/abom/uran/us2_e/000502.html
    [11]: http://www-j.rri.kyoto-u.ac.jp/NSRG/genpatu/india/J-REP4E.pdf(pdf)


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