Article: 973 of sgi.talk.ratical From: (dave "who can do? ratmandu!" ratcliffe) Subject: WWC: PART II--Ravages of Prep. for Nuclear War Hidden by Governments Summary: description of the magnitude of planetary war-making pollution Keywords: secrecy, extreme behaviour, rationalization, lies, self-destructive Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc. Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1993 15:40:04 GMT Lines: 264 ___________________________________________________________________________ PART II THE RAVAGES OF PREPARATION FOR WAR HAVE BEEN HIDDEN BY GOVERNMENTS, ESPECIALLY BY THE UNITED STATES, GREAT BRITAIN, THE SOVIET UNION, FRANCE AND CHINA, AND MOST VICTIMS OF THIS WAR-MAKING POLLUTION HAVE BEEN ALLOWED TO SUFFER AND DIE WITHOUT EITHER ASSISTANCE OR COMPENSATION. ___________________________________________________________________________ PRIMARY VICTIMS OF RADIATION: JAPAN: 300,000 immediate casualties and ongoing medical problems including Bura Bura disease, premature aging, congenital diseases/malformations in offspring and cancers. The atomic bombs also killed some 70,000 Korean forced labourers and affected a large number of survivors who were returned to Korea with no follow up medical care or assistance. Some 1,000 Japanese-Americans caught in Japan when war broke out were exposed to the atomic bomb. Most returned to Hawaii or California after the war. They have never been acknowledged by the U. S. Government as victims or received any financial or medical assistance. Some have had as many as 45 surgeries. Japanese women were sent to the U. S. west coast hospitals where U. S. physicians developed the art of plastic surgery in the process of treating them. NEVADA: About 1,000 nuclear tests have been set off on the land of the Western Shoshone Indians. Estimates of 250,000 young military men were marched into the radioactive areas to see if they could fight in a nuclear war. Many have since died of cancer. Others survive with chronic disabilities, broken marriages and damaged children. The veterans administration has demanded secrecy of these victims, systematically lost their personal records and the records of nuclear tests, and denied their medical claims. It took until 1988 to obtain U. S. federal legislation compensating a portion of these victims. The Department of Defense in the U. S. claims no responsibility for offspring of military men even if they are damaged due to their father's exposure. About 100,000 civilians were directly downwind of the nuclear tests. Many have died and the Governor of Utah took the Federal Government to court because of their wrongful deaths. They won a landmark decision in 1984 which has since been reversed. The U. S. government is now claiming its Right of Eminent Domain justifies the deaths. Some 18 of the most polluting nuclear tests went over the Navajo and Hopi land to the south east of the test site. Most of the fallout went to the north east with heavy fallout in Minnesota, Michigan, New York, New England and Canada. Some tests resulted in heavy fallout in Los Angeles. No acknowledgment or compensation has ever been made for the deaths and disabilities caused. No study has been undertaken by the U. S. government to document these effects. Military related facilities: Hanford, Washington; Rocky Flats, Colorado; Savannah River, South Carolina; Fernald, Ohio and others have deliberately released or failed to warn of non-deliberate releases of large amounts of radioactive material including iodine 131, strontium 90, cesium 137, tritium and plutonium. The victims were not warned, compensated or given medical treatment. No documentation of their plight was undertaken. SOVIET UNION: About 161 atmospheric nuclear tests were undertaken in Kazakhstan exposing 500,000 people. It is estimated that 100,000 have died; 10,000 are now suffering various chronic illnesses and every third child is born with defects. An explosion near Chelyabinsk in 1957 contaminated another large area in the Urals, the Tesha River and Karachai Lake. According to estimates made at the U. S. weapons laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, 625 square miles of land was made uninhabitable and 14 lakes were contaminated. Information on Soviet tests in the Novaya Zemlya region is only beginning to be released. Atmospheric tests at this site affected the entire circumpolar region, contaminated the caribou and other food of indigenous people and caused deaths due to starvation, cancer and reproductive loss. The Soviets estimate that all of the indigenous people in Siberia and the Kamchatka Peninsula have had tuberculosis, probably attributable to radiation related immune system depression. OTHER MILITARY EXPOSURES: The British, Australian, Canadian, New Zealand and Fiji governments all allowed their young men to participate in nuclear tests. British documents describe in detail the deliberate experimental nature of these tests. MARSHALL ISLANDS, MICRONESIA: The 33,000 people of the Marshall Islands were subjected to a program of 68 nuclear bomb tests between 1946 and 1958. The first two tests in 1946 were conducted before the U. S. received a United Nations mandate to "protect the inhabitants against the loss of their lands and resources" and to "protect the health of the inhabitants", as a Trust Territory. Thus two tests were direct violations of a foreign country, and the remaining 66 a violation of the Trust agreement. The people of Bikini and Eniwetok have suffered forced relocation. The people of Rongelap have suffered both forced relocation and high level radiation exposure from the so-called Bravo event, a hydrogen bomb exploded at Bikini in March 1954. This bomb was 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. STANDARD SETTING: Early in the nuclear age, the physicists of the U. S., Canada and the U. K. got together and proposed maximum doses of radiation for nuclear workers and members of the public. These self-appointed "experts" established the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) which continues to be the recognized authority globally on standard setting. They admitted that their 1950 recommendations may not have been protective of health, but they believed they would allow for the growth of the nuclear industry. It is to be noted that there was only one nuclear industry at the time, the weapons industry. The attempt to find civilian uses for the technology came later. The ICRP continues to be a closed, self-perpetuating body advising nations. A description of its composition is enclosed. Because it had the appearance of a scientific body it assumed an advisory role to the World Health Organization and the United Nations. Its recommendations were considered to be the consensus of nuclear scientists until the meeting in Como, Italy in 1987. At this meeting a petition was presented to ICRP demanding that it lower the permissible dose recommendations. The petition was signed by over 800 scientists, including Nobel Prize winners. Finally, in 1990, the ICRP unanimously voted to lower the permissible dose limits (probably they are still not sufficiently protective). The permissive recommendations were used over a 40 year period to justify uranium and nuclear projects globally, minimize the predicted effects of accidents and deny compensation to damaged workers and members of the public. The ICRP "consensus" was also used to silence scientists whose research demonstrated the harm within the ICRP recommended radiation guidelines. The number of victims of medical usage, commercial nuclear facilities and clean up workers at accident sites now runs into the thousands. There are currently no plans to recognize or compensate these victims. ___________________________________________________________________________ Documents for Part II 1. "New York Times Magazine" expose on radiation injury. "America's Radiation Victims, The Hidden Files (In 1946, a nuclear accident killed one scientist and injured several others. The government response to that tragedy established a pattern of secrecy that still persists.)" by Clifford T. Honicker, "New York Times Magazine," November 1989. 2. De-classified British document on the purpose of nuclear weapon testing. 3. Testimony of a British Atomic Veteran, Mr. Kenneth McGinley. 4. Testimony of a U. S. Atomic Veteran, Bill Hodsden. 5. Testimony of a Canadian Atomic Veteran, Al Draper. "Radiation Survivor fights on," by John Kessel, "Ittawa Citizen," December 29, 1990. 6. Moscow physician's translation of a 1961 Soviet report on nuclear testing. 7. Letter from an Australian Government representative [Minister for Primary Industries and Energy John Kerin, M.P.) to an Atomic Veteran (Mr. E. Snelling). 8. Testimony of an Australian Atomic Veteran, John C. Hutton. 9. Excerpts from ICRP Documents explaining membership and structure. 10. Critique of ICRP structure and membership by Rosalie Bertell. 11. Critique of ICRP dismissal of genetic concerns by Patrick Green. 12. British Government position on genetic effects of radiation exposure. -- Humanity has been held to a limited and distorted view of itself, from its interpretation of the most intimate emotions to its grandest visions of human possibilities, by virtue of its subordination of women. Until recently, "mankind's" understandings have been the only understandings generally available to us. As other perceptions arise-- precisely those perceptions that men, because of their dominant position could not perceive--the total vision of human possibilities enlarges and is transformed. -- Jean Baker Miller, "Toward a New Psychology of Women" (1976)