April 2006 #4 - The Truth of War and our Tin Man

Play Now -->

DATE : Wed, 26 Apr 2006 21:00:00 EST
Entered in Database : 2006-04-26 22:00:00
length : 4700000
Link to the Show / Show Notes

Australia’s holiest of days, Anzac Day, has come and gone once more. Our Prime Minister once more expressed his glee that our youth are swallowing hook, line and sinker the myth of war. The valorisation of the military and the ‘glory’ of war were splashed all over our papers, TV’s and radios. War was, once more, presented as a sanitised, glorifying and somehow noble pursuit. The question that I want to pose today is, what does Anzac Day have to do with Chernobyl, Mordechai Vanunu and Mosal?The first two, Chernobyl and Vanunu, came to prominence 20 years ago in 1986. The first was the most disastrous nuclear accident involving civilian infrastructure in history. On the evening of April 25th that year the defective nuclear plant was being readied for a test that was to seal it’s fate and lead to the catastrophe that saw tens of thousands of innocent people killed or irradiated. About thirty people were killed instantly and many more died in the next few months. Thousands who were irradiated either died lingering deaths or passed on their now defective genes to their unborn children, many of whom were still born or survived with horrific deformities.Mordechai Vanunu came to prominence in 1986 when he delivered to the world definitive proof that Israel did indeed have a nuclear capability and was the first state in the Middle East to do so. Although some have argued that the photos he sold to a British newspaper were fakes and one must ask why Israel didn’t do just that, the proof of Israel’s illegal nuclear facility lies, perhaps, in that government’s response to Vanunu’s revelations. Using the charms of a woman, Vanunu was lured to Rome where he was captured, drugged and smuggled back to Israel by Mossad, the Israeli secret police. He was locked away in the most secure prison Israel has and has spent most of the last 20 years in solitary confinement. Vanunu said prior to his capture that he wanted to expose the covert nuclear facility so that Israel would have to submit to international scrutiny. Almost two decades later, Israel still denies it has the Demona facility and refuses to allow international inspectors to view it. Remember what happened to the last country to deny it had nuclear facilities? The US, Britain and Australia invaded it! It sounds like they are prepared to do the same to another Middle Eastern state. Their hypocrisy is not even thinly veiled.Mosal was until 2003 a little known town in Iraq. Some may have remembered its name from Gulf War I but for many its location and importance meant nothing. For others, it was the work of a German scientist that first alerted the world to its importance. Dr. Siegwart-Horst Gunther visited the town in 1991 and found discarded or spent bullets that were made from depleted uranium. He also noted the high number of people suffering from what he recognised as radiation sickness.Depleted Uranium or DU is a highly toxic material that is valued as a weapon as has it has particular properties unique to it. It is about 2 ½ times as dense as lead thus giving it a huge kinetic advantage. In other words it takes a lot to stop it. Second, it is pyrophoric. That is, when it hits something, a wall, a tank, a human being, it heats up as itpenetrates and as it does so it begins to burn. As it burns it releases highly toxic radioactive material. If enough force is released, for instance if it has to penetrate the armour of a tank, it will explode scattering the irradiated metal and radioactive particles as dust and fumes. Mosal, Baghdad, Basra and any other area the US and British troops have fought in will be littered with this material that will continue to cause death and injury for years to come. In fact, there are some areas in which commanders have refused to send their troops due to the concentration of spent rounds and the danger to the health of their troops it presents. Stuff the civilians who have to live there.Last Tuesday many ‘remembered’ one of our greatest military defeats. Yet we forget. Over the years the shame and anger that many felt as the truth of the Anzac Cove invasion became clearer has been spun into a political and social phenomenon that is difficult to understand. However, what is important to remember is the pointlessness of war and the slaughter that war is. Our Prime Minister and others uttered the usual platitudes about the sacrifice of young men, the way the nation was ‘forged’ in the bravery and courage of the soldiers and how we owe them a debt for dying so we can enjoy the freedoms we have today. We even allowed the then enemy to march in ‘our’ parades. Yet we heard nothing of the privations of the current war (or is it an occupation or a liberation or just a damn mess?). We heard nothing of the ex-diggers or their families who must beg and scrape at the offices of our government for compensation should they be killed or survive but be permanently incapacitated. Those stories are not to be told and not to be given the ‘air-time’ they deserve.I also know that what was not spoken about last Tuesday at the ‘official’ ceremonies are the links between Chernobyl, Mordechai Vanunu and Mosal. All three of these are linked by a thread of greed, lies and violence. Chernobyl was built “on the cheap” and despite warnings from Russian scientists the state pushed the limits of the facility and thousands died. Mordechai Vanunu wanted to pursue truth and acted as true patriot should and exposed the lies his government was propagating. In Mosal and the rest of Iraq the violence continues. Whether its being shot by a bullet, shredded by a cluster bomblet or dying from radiation poisoning, in Iraq you stand a good chance of getting dead.I’ve stated elsewhere that I am not calling for the abolition of the military as there is a place for a well trained and disciplined defence force. Equally I have argued that these men and women need to be protected as best they can from “work place” injury – and there is some irony in that statement you may agree. What I mean is that we need to ensure that the greed, lies and violent intent of the ruling classes does not dictate military procedures.With nuclear waste cycle products finding their way into the bullets and projectiles that the military uses surely our quickly rusting Steelo Man should be assuring our troops and us that our soldiers are safe from exposure to depleted uranium weapons and the effects of using them. Surely with a $24 billion surplus he could spare a few cents for the widows and families of those who he says “paid the ultimate sacrifice”. Surely he could find it somewhere in his heart to embrace the men who live with the battles they fought years ago and the ghosts that haunt them. Surely, our Tin Man could find the compassion to realise that war is not peace and that death is not life and that the only result of state sanctioned murder is death and suffering and heartache and pain.After all if he and others are to claim the diggers fought and died so that we could be free, they also have a responsibility to speak the truth and act honourably. Then again Mordechai Vanunu did just that and look what happened to him.

Play in your Iphone