Leuren Moret Speaking on Depleted Uranium

[Guest guest]

M

Mon, 30 May 2005 04:54:22 -0400

Leuren Moret Speaking on Depleted Uranium

 

 

 

http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2003/DU-Leuren-Moret21apr03.htm

 

Leuren Moret Speaking on Depleted Uranium

 

Los Altos, California 21apr03

 

Nuclear Holocaust and The Politics of Radiation.

Sponsored by the Women's Solidarity Movement held at the Spangenberg

Theatre, Gunn High School, Los Altos, California.

 

 

And now, please welcome Environmental Commissioner of Berkeley, and

president for the Scientists of Indigenous People, Laurent Moret on

depleted uranium, the public and environmental perspective, the impact

on humans, wildlife, and public health.

 

As-salamu-'alaikum. [Muslim greeting meaning " Peace be upon you " ]

 

People in the audience responds... `Wa `Alaikum us-Salamu wa

Rahmatullahi [Peace and Allah's Mercy be upon you].

 

I'd like to welcome all of you tonight and I'm so happy that you come

to inform yourselves. We have to give you something better than what's

into the mainstream media. So, (chuckles) and getting it straight from

the horses mouth.

 

I, sort of, accidentally got involved with the depleted uranium issue

when I was invited to speak in Japan after 2000 World Conference

against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs. I'm a whistleblower at the

Livermore nuclear weapons lab.

 

 

When you work in these places, as Dennis [Kyne] said, you really don't

know what's going on. I worked five years at the Lawrence Berkeley

Lab. I'm a geologist. I was studying volcanoes. I was a single parent,

and I got a job that Livermore because I could take a lot of time off

and spend it with my daughter.

 

It took me about two years working onto Yucca Mountain project and the

Superfund project to realize the extent of science fraud-the lies, the

manipulation, the theft, the embezzlement. It was a very tangled web.

And the blackmail. And I finally realized the University of California

was nothing but as slumlord.

 

So, one day I was in my office, and I just was looking out the window,

and I said, " I'm out of here. " I packed everything in my car. I drove

out the gate, [and] dropped off my badge and my beeper. But they've

been harassing every since.

 

 

You have to realize the price that Doug [Rokke] and I have paid, and

other people that speak out, who come out to inform you, assistance,

the taxpayers, the mothers and fathers, and grandfathers of people who

are caught in this tangled web.

 

And indeed, Iraq is a tangled web. Afghanistan is a tangled web.

Bosnia and Kosovo. And then awarding you tonight, this is just the

very beginning. We have 100 years of war to go, unless we stop it. And

if we don't stop it, not only are our pockets going to be empty, our

environment is going to be trashed, but our public health, more than

anything, and our democracy will be destroyed.

 

The nuclear weapons project is what I call-started with the Manhattan

Project and the development of the nuclear bombs, the atomic bombs

that were dropped Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The United States decided,

at that time, after the war was over, to expand and development a very

large nuclear weapons program. And we created a Cold War with Russia

and that is sort of ended, but not really. Were in the next game-what

I call that is the next scam.

 

The waste streams-the radioactive waste streams-from that project has

poisoned the world. The Southern Hemisphere is almost completely a

nuclear weapons-free zone. And in the end, those countries will have

much better public health that we do.

 

Just last week, the World Health Organization announced that cancers

around the world will increase by 50% in the next 20 years. I think

it's very interesting that this coincides with the use of huge amounts

of depleted uranium in Iraq, because radiation respects no borders.

Radiation respects no race. And radiation respects no socioeconomic

class. It's going to get all of us.

 

Not only for our soldiers, battling for the people of Iraq and

Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, but for our own health, and for our future

generations, we need to do something about this and stop it.

 

It's very interesting that Doug gave me a memo, not very long ago. It

was a memo to General Leslie Groves, dated October 30th, 1943.

 

[Also see: Letter from Leuren Moret to Congressman McDermott

21feb03]

 

I'm an environmental scientist. My Ph.D. research was on atmospheric

dusts, and how they move, and are transported around the world, how

much of our pollution now is transported in less than a week from Asia

on and with atmospheric dusts. Thirty-four percent of mercury

pollution in the United States is from Asia.

 

Truly, we're globally one environment. So, when you're doing things in

one country, eventually it's going to end up in your country too, no

matter how many continents or oceans separate you.

 

In this memo, I was just astounded to read it because it's actually a

blueprint for depleted uranium. This is in 1943, before they'd even

dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And actually, the three

physicists who wrote a memo where the top physicists on the Manhattan

Project-Conant, Urey, and Compton.

 

And what they recommended to General Groves was that he develop

radioactive materials, including depleted uranium, into a military

weapon that could be used on the battlefield. In the details of their

memos they described grinding it to up to 0.1µ [1/10 of micron], which

is very, very fine particles. This is smaller than bacteria. It would

behave like a gas. It diffuses into the lungs and gets into the blood.

It completely contaminates the environment and denies access to both

the enemy and friendly forces without being exposed. It also said that

it goes through gas masks. It goes through filters-air filters. It's

impossible to filtered out-the very fine particles. And there is no

protective clothing that can be designed to protect you from exposure.

 

Wow! That memo really had a very profound effect on me. What I did was

contacted Karen Parker in this film [that was shown to you]. I said I

needed to write a science report for you, which you can use at the

United Nations. I found out that Congressman McDermott, a Democrat in

Washington, was offering a bill in Congress requiring a health study

on, and other studies on depleted uranium.

 

The studies have all been done. From the Groves, memo in 1943, they

knew everything about the use then. They were very, very competent

scientist. Then I found summaries of military research done at Los

Alamos National Labs in military laboratories. These were summaries of

research done from 1974 to 1999. And it's just a repeat of the Groves

memo.

 

Indeed, Karen Parker is absolutely right. They have tested all of

these weapons and they know everything about them. In summaries they

described the contamination of the testing grounds and the

battlefield. They measured the depleted uranium in the radiation

levels in ground squirrels that live there. They measured the DU in

the cut of the animals, in the fur. And this is years after the

[open-air nuclear bomb] testing. They also said they were worried

about personnel who would be handling the metal-depleted

uranium-shells, and loading them and deploying them, they would be

exposed.

 

It's all there. It's impossible for the military to say it's not a

health and environmental hazard.

 

In Afghanistan, they used depleted uranium in the Gulf War I for the

first time. It broke a 46-year taboo against the use of radiological

weapons on the battlefield. I began to investigate and wonder why.

Having worked at Livermore, and knowing nuclear weapons scientists and

so forth, I'm pretty sure, in fact, I'm very sure that the depleted

uranium is an analog-it's a very similar weapon-to what the military

is planning to develop fourth-generation nuclear weapons.

 

They can study with those health effects and environmental effects

will have by using DU. And indeed, we've heard Bush and Rumsfeld and

Chaney saying, " Well, we're going to develop fourth-generation nuclear

weapons. " Were using mini-nukes on the battlefield.

 

I'd just like to read something from a very, very informative article

that I just got yesterday, which appeared in the Idaho Statesman. I

love the alternative media.

 

" George Bush's ongoing war and Afghanistan is also a nuclear war.

Shortly after 9-11, the U.S. announced it would stockpile tactical

nuclear weapons, including small neutron bombs, nuclear mines and

shells suited to command a warfare and Afghanistan. " [idaho Statesman]

 

In late September in 2001...gee and never saw this... Bush and Russian

President, Vladimir Putin agreed that the U.S. would use tactical

nuclear weapons in Afghanistan while Putin would employ nuclear

weapons against the Chechens. Describing the Pentagon's B61-11

borrowing nuke bomb, George Smith writes in the Village Voice, " Built

ram tough, with a heavy metal casing for smashing through the earth

and concrete, the B61-11 explodes with a force of an estimated 340,000

tons of TNT. It is lots of bang for the buck, literally two apocalypse

bombs in one-a boosted plutonium firecracker, call the primary, and a

heavy hydrogen secondary for the good old fashioned H-bomb fireball. "

 

Drab-stricken Afghanistan's underground water supply is now

contaminated by these nuclear weapons. Experts with the Uranium

Medical Research Center reports that urine samples of Afghanis show

the highest level of uranium ever recorded in a civilian population.

 

Afghani soldiers and civilians are reported to have died after

suffering intractable vomiting, severe respiratory problems, internal

bleeding, and other symptoms consistent with radiation poisoned.

 

Dead birds, still perched in trees, are found partially melted, with

blood oozing from their mouths.

 

Afghanistan's new president, Hamig Corsi (SP?), is a puppet installed

by Washington. Under the protection of American soldiers, Corsi's

(SP?) regime is setting a new record for opium production.

 

Both the U.N. and the U.S. reports confirmed that the huge Afghani

opium harvest of 2002 makes Afghanistan the world's leading opium

producer. Thanks to nuclear weapons, Afghanistan is now safe for

Bush-Cheney narcotics industry. ABC News asserts that keeping " the

peace " in Afghanistan will require decades of Allied occupation. For

years to come, peacekeepers will be eating, drinking, and breathing

for hot, carcinogenic pollution they have helped the Pentagon conflict

upon detonation for organized crime.

 

A hot particle... this is a brand new study by the European

Parliament. I wrote a letter recommending that the Parliament find

this study-this was released January 30th-and this is the 2003

recommendation of the European Committee on Radiation Risk.

 

Health Effects of Ionizing Radiation Exposure at Low Doses for

Radiation Protection Purposes.

 

And this is a photograph of a hot particle-a microscopic particle with

alpha tracks coming out of it. It looks like a little ball with

toothpicks stuck in. These are alpha tracks from one microscopic/sub

microscopic particle. [For notes on photo at right see " Hot " or

radioactive particle in lung tissue]

 

In one day, if a soldier is wearing a gas mask with HEPA filters-the

most efficient air filters possible-he will inhale, through those

efficient air filters 28 million of these particles. Seventy percent

of these will go into the blood.

 

Now, we've heard Dennis and the veteran on the news story say they

even didn't have any protective gear.

 

Doug and I, on our tour on the East Coast in January, in every single

event that we did, a national guardsman/guardswoman, or ROTC student,

or someone would say, " You no those gas masks they gave us? Well, if

you just put your head up in a flop off your face. "

 

What kind of protection is that? And you know the government is not

paying for the best air filters for soldiers...because our soldiers

are disposable. We know from Vietnam. We know from Gulf War I. And we

know from Gulf War II. Or going to soon find that out. It's not going

to be any different.

 

What happens when these particles get into the blood?

 

After uranium metal burns...and depleted uranium is pyrophoric-the

burns when it heats to 170° C. So, as soon as they shoot them, and the

surface of the weapon heats up to 170° C, it starts burning. And you

can see them. They look like tracers going through the air on the

battlefield.

 

They are creating billions and billions and billions of superfine

particles. These did not settle out by gravity. Gravitational forces

do not pull them out of the air. They stay suspended. They act like a

radioactive gas.

 

And we know-I work with 8 independent scientists-we've measured

depleted uranium, which after it burns, is very very insoluble. It

forms oxides that will almost not dissolve. And because they will not

dissolve, they will not dissolve and body fluids. And so, the body

cannot excrete them through the kidneys in the urine.

 

These particles are like fairy dust. They go everywhere that are red

blood cell or a white blood cell will go. And they stay in the

body-millions and billions of them. These alpha particles tear through

the cell. They tear through the membrane, which damages the immune

system. They tear through the mitochondria, which is your energy

system. They tear through the DNA, causing mutations.

 

And then, the energy that they dump in the cell along that path,

disturbs the hormones, the molecules in the compounds, the signaling

system that helps the cells communicate with each other because

they're in a cooperative system.

 

I'd like to read to you why Gulf War syndrome is so complex. It's a

complex of illnesses. And it's also combined with chemical exposure on

the battlefield. And even Doug told me they had eight vaccinations in

one day at one time. That trashes your immune system. In addition,

they were exposed to biological agents. They were sprayed with

pesticides. They had an illegal anthrax vaccine with squaline in it.

 

Very, very, very tiny amounts of chemicals and radiation can do

terrible damage. We're just finding that out now. And the synergistic

effects of chemicals and radiation working together...there's no

research on that. We don't even know. We just know it's really bad.

 

Gulf War illness symptoms [include] chronic fatigue

syndrome-that's the mitochondria; severe headaches; rashes; joint

pain; muscle pain; nerve damage; neurological damage; kidney damage;

long damage; cardiovascular signs or symptoms; thyroid disease;

multiple cancers; autoimmune deficiencies; unusual fevers and night

sweats; fluid buildups; sleep disturbances; gastrointestinal signs or

symptoms; abnormal births and defects; menstrual problems; reduced IQ;

confusion; memory loss; blood in stools and urine; fibromyalgia;

Epstein-Barr syndrome; genetic alterations; sinus diseases; mycoplasma

fermentans incognitus; infections; unusual hair loss; loss of smell;

chemical sensitivities; asthma; vision problems.

 

And that is just a short list.

 

[Holding up a book]

 

This is a book that I wrote the forward to. It's called Discounted

Casualties. It's by a Japanese journalist. This is a really wonderful

book. It's on the Internet. Just to a search and read it. I'll have

some copies of the book in the back, to sell afterwards. This is a

very very informative, very easy book to read. Friends of mine have

used it in their college classes to teach war environment. It's really

a tragedy. It has all of the faces of the DU issue. But also, when

whose husbands came back from the Gulf War have complained [that]

after intercourse, of having formal burning in their vaginal area and

losing sensation. For soldier's seamen has depleted uranium and

chemicals and it.

 

In a study of 251 Gulf War veterans in the state of Mississippi, which

was conducted by the Veterans Administration—I always use their own

reports on them, because how can they refuse their own reports? The

veterans had children who were normal before they went off to the Gulf

War. When they came back, of the children conceived and born after the

Gulf War, 67% had children with severe illnesses and deformities. And

I mean, they were born without brains, without organs, without hands,

without legs, with the hands attached to the shoulders.

 

There's a really wonderful live photo essay on the Internet. And you

can read about some of his children. The tragedy is that once the

veterans have these children they cannot leave the military because

it's a pre-existing condition and they will have no health coverage

[if they leave]. So, there's really very little being said or

publicized in United States about their plight. But we know from

people who have gone to Iraq. Japanese journalists have gone and

photographed in the hospitals in Iraq. The birth defects after the

Gulf War [were] may be one a week. Now it's two or three a day because

the chronic daily 24-hour exposure of the people living in Bozrah, who

are down-winders from the battlefields, has continued since the Gulf

War. And they just have higher and higher levels of depleted uranium

in their bodies. It has destroyed the germ cells—to ova and the sperm.

 

That was the battlefields. This time, the United States has gone in

and bombed their cities...bombed their cities to rubble, contaminated

their water supplies. And the genetic future of the Iraqi people for

the most part, is destroyed. For every genetic defect that we can see

now, and future generations there are thousands more that will be

expressed. And that's even if the exposures stopped—if it was just one

time. But the environment now is completely radioactive. Afghanistan,

people and country's downwind, and downriver will be exposed.

 

This is a nightmare. The tragedy is that the United States, and other

countries that are weapons manufacturers, has sold DU to 29 countries.

This isn't over. The United States used 340 or more tons in Iraq. It

used under 100 tons, they say, in Bosnia and Kosovo. They used 1000

tons in Afghanistan. And they have used five times as much as reported

in the news in this war in Iraq, this time.

 

Our soldiers are going to come back. They going to be much sicker,

much faster. And the illnesses will be more severe. They've been over

their breathing all this stuff in the bombing—they've been on the

battlefields.

 

And you know what?

 

They don't even know. They don't even know. They're going to come back

just like the first Gulf War veterans came [back]. Some of the date

know before they left. They were going to sperm banks and depositing

their sperm before they went to Gulf War II.

 

Do know what Gulf War syndrome is now?

 

Do you know what alpha particles do?

 

Well, I'm going to tell you something else about depleted uranium.

 

Uranium the case in four steps. The half-life of depleted

uranium—uranium 238, which is more than 99% of DU—is 4.5 billion

years, the age of the earth. The uranium 238, when it decays into more

radioactive isotopes that are more radioactive by millions and

billions of times.

 

So, slowly over time, the areas that have been bombed will become more

and more radioactive.

 

I'd just like to emphasize that depleted uranium is illegal under

international law, under the Geneva Conventions, and under all

treaties. As we know from the history of the American Indian, the

United States does not keep treaties. So we cannot expect them to keep

treaties. And indeed, the United States has used illegal weapons in

World War II. I guess that we don't think it applies to us. But we

acted to apply to everyone else. And Israel has used depleted uranium

on the Palestinians.

 

The four tests to determine the legality:

 

1 Temporal

A weapons must not continue to act after the battle is over. I think

that 10 times 4.5 billion years is quite a lot longer than after the

battle is over.

 

2 Territorial

It must not leave the battlefield. The territorial test. Depleted

uranium is carried in the winds, in the atmospheric dust around and

around and around the world. Indeed, lower orbital space is

contaminated with uranium and uranium decay products from atmospheric

testing, from nuclear batteries on spacecraft, and from the nuclear

reactors some countries have put on spacecraft.

 

3 Humanitarian

It must not kill inhumanely. The suffering of the civilian population

and other soldiers is horrendous. I'm an activist now because of the

people I know, the people I've met who have been exposed to radiation.

I'd buy all my clothes in thrift stores. I drive a funny old VW so

that I can come and talk to people like you, because it's the

grassroots, it's us, it's you, it's you and me, who will have to be

the ones to change this.

 

[Audience applauds long and loudly]

 

And its students with courage like Lisa [the organizer of this event]

who bring us to your communities. And we have to thank her too.

 

[Audience applauds]

 

4 Environmental

The weapons must not unduly damaged the environment. In all of the

General Groves memo, in the research papers conducted for the

military, it's clear that it has a terrible, terrible environmental

impact. And it's forever.

 

Depleted uranium is the weapons that keeps giving into keeps killing.

 

I'd just like to say that, because I have to not say that it's all

hopeless, it's not all hopeless. We're working very hard with the

European Parliament, who have declared that depleted uranium is

illegal and should be banned for ever. Congressman McDermott, a very,

very courageous congressmen—we're disappointed in most of our leaders,

but he needs our support because he's doing what we want him to do.

 

He got on a plane and went to Iraq before Gulf War II started. The

Pentagon and the White House were absolutely furious. And he has

reintroduced Cynthia McKinney's bill requiring studies on DU. I went

to his office. I wrote a letter to him. It's on the Internet on

www.mindfully.org. And my friend Paul Goettlich, here in the front

row, has this wonderful web site. Click on nukes. And click on the

Letter to Congressman McDermott. The Groves memo is there. You can

read it.

 

We need letter-writing campaigns. We need people to call the radio

programs and talk about DU, especially at commuter times. We need to

start a buzz with every strategy that we can think of to inform

everyone we can think of. And believe me, once you here it once or

twice its sticks in your mind. And then, articles and things that you

hear and read begin to stick to you. But they have to here it. They

have to here something about it to put it on the radar screen. And

you're the ones who have to go out now, when you leave this room, and

write letters to congressmen asking them to support the bill. Write

letters to newspapers. Letters to the editor...the politicians read

those. The Pentagon is reading those. A lot of people who are paying

attention and had a vested interest are reading those because you're

very dangerous when you start writing about it.

 

You should also to teach-ins. Go to your churches and organize them.

But organize, organize, organize.

 

You know, there are only about 25 people in the White House and the

Pentagon who have taken our Constitution and shredded it, and taken

our country and destroyed our democracy. There are sure a whole lot

more of us. And we need to do it now because I want to read to you

what's on the boilerplate.

 

I write articles now for common people, for the citizens, because I

think it's much more important to inform you.

 

But there's more on the drawing board. Donald Rumsfeld is dumping

billions and billions of dollars into the research furnaces of federal

laboratories and private universities, and public wants too—like the

University of California—across the U.S. to create super soldiers.

These are going to be your children and your grandchildren. The

research to create drugs and electro-magnetic brain zaps is directed

by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under

five-time felon, John Poindexter.

 

This war-fighter enhancement program will involve injecting young men

and women with hormonal, neurological, and genetic concoctions,

implanting microchips, and electrodes and their bodies to control

their internal organs and brain functions, and plying them with drugs

that deaden some of their normal human tendencies—the need for sleep,

the fear of death, the reluctance to kill their fellow human beings.

 

But who are the real terrorists? —Those who want to turn U.S. soldiers

into mind-controlled, drugged-up mutants, the send off to mindless

Imperial wars. Portray themselves as patriots, noble leaders, and

Christian.

 

I'm telling you, the Republican Party is ruining Christianity.

 

[Audience applauds loudly]

 

And Christian right are the Hells Angels of the Republican Party.

 

[Audience applauds]

 

There are those of us who wish to honor the men and women fighting

these wars like patriots—Doug Rokke and Dennis Kyne—because we oppose

the greedy, rapacious elite, we are the traitors. The enemy of

democracy! What I like the most is that there are more and more of us.

This is war we've seen too many times.

 

Thank you very much.

 

[Audience applauds long and loudly]