Nuclear and Radiological Terrorism
Sven | 09.11.2010 16:22
“From this basic power of the universe,
there is no protection.”
Albert Einstein
The picture is of soil and debris samples being collected from the
bombing site by the Uranium Medical Research Center’s
(UMRC) field team during the second field trip outside Bibi
Mahro district, Afghanistan, 2002.
Of course this adds to yet one more danger to be endured by all who are their be it soldier or local.
The other week I wrote to my MP. It was a Steve Williams, apparently someone thrust upon me when the last ‘local’ MP Kerry ‘criminal’ McCarthy did a runner from my patch after the electoral boundaries were juggled around just before that last election; (one in which her party deliberately ignored court rulings and demonstrated another breach of people’s human rights by not allowing prison inmates to vote.)
Anyway back to my letter to Williams.
I wrote asking him to support and sign ‘Early Day Motion’ (EDM) 825.
This is what it said:
That this House notes that the British Army maintains depleted uranium
(DU) munitions within its arsenal and that 1.9 tonnes of DU rounds were
fired by UK forces during Operation Telic in Iraq; recognises the
continuing news stories emerging of higher rates of childhood leukaemia
and birth defects in Iraqi cities since the conflict began;
acknowledges that the Ministry of Defence has released to the United
Nations Environment Programme the coordinates where UK forces fired DU;
is aware that US armed forces expended at least 404 tonnes of DU
ammunition in the 1991 and 2003 Iraq conflicts but have yet to release
the firing coordinates to the UN; appreciates that without full
transparency it will remain impossible properly to monitor and
decontaminate which in turn will lead to avoidable civilian exposures;
and calls on the Government to support the resolution to be put before
the UN General Assembly this autumn calling on states to provide
quantitative and geographical data on DU munitions use to the relevant
authorities of the affected states.
Without the firing coordinates, it will remain impossible for effective
clean-up operations to take place where DU has been fired. Iraq is a
good example of where hundreds of tonnes of DU have been expended, but
without the US releasing the information required, radioactive and
toxic contamination can persist for generations. In the cities where DU
has been used, local hospitals report cancer and birth defect
epidemics.
Now it seems he voted in support – I think –‘cause I never heard back.
Thing is what now? Is anybody about to take any notice and do anything?
A good start would be to immediately put a halt on any further use. For example – Afghanistan.
Read about Depleted Uranium here:
Sven
Original article on IMC Bristol:
http://bristol.indymedia.org/article/698320