Ewa Jasiewicz
Occupation Watch
Occupied Basra

DU - What is it?

Depleted Uranium is a highly toxic heavy metal derived from nuclear bomb and fuel waste. It’s heavy weight and pyrophoric qualities cause it to burn-melt like a blowtorch through steel when a DU coated/loaded penetrator, self-sharpening by nature, strikes a hard target. It’s mainly used to incinerate battle tanks, and on contact pulverizes into breathable aerosol-like dust that can travel 26 miles and remains radioactive for 4.5 billion years.

Despite the name “Depleted” Uranium, DU has 60% the radioactivity of natural uranium, which is pure uranium, and all uranium whether “natural”, “depleted” or “enriched” is a chemical and radiological toxic substance emitting alpha, beta and gamma particles, all of which have a destructive effect on the cellular make-up of the human body, ie they attack the human body at the most essential, primary and vital levels.

Ewa Jasiewicz
Occupation Watch
Occupied Basra

DU - What is it?

Depleted Uranium is a highly toxic heavy metal derived from nuclear bomb and fuel waste. It’s heavy weight and pyrophoric qualities cause it to burn-melt like a blowtorch through steel when a DU coated/loaded penetrator, self-sharpening by nature, strikes a hard target. It’s mainly used to incinerate battle tanks, and on contact pulverizes into breathable aerosol-like dust that can travel 26 miles and remains radioactive for 4.5 billion years.

Despite the name “Depleted” Uranium, DU has 60% the radioactivity of natural uranium, which is pure uranium, and all uranium whether “natural”, “depleted” or “enriched” is a chemical and radiological toxic substance emitting alpha, beta and gamma particles, all of which have a destructive effect on the cellular make-up of the human body, ie they attack the human body at the most essential, primary and vital levels.

Oriental Palace Hotel, Baghdad
January 19, 2004
by Mike Ferner

On January 19, 2004, I interviewed singer, songwriter and musician, Bruce Cockburn, at the end of his weeklong visit to Iraq hosted by the American Friends Service Committee. As I write this introduction from a Baghdad hotel, a diesel generator roars on the sidewalk below, providing power for an electrical system savaged by a decade of sanctions and two wars. The generator is drowned out only when U.S. fighter planes and helicopters roar overhead.

Cockburn’s latest release, “You’ve Never Seen Everything,” is one of over two dozen discs the Montreal artist has released, including “Breakfast in New Orleans, Dinner in Timbuktu,” “Dancing in the Dragon’s Jaws,” and “Trouble with Normal.” Cockburn had a few choice comments on some of his favorite topics and then we got down to some questions.

On what he hears from people in Iraq:

Increasingly, people will tell you that they feel one dictatorship has been replaced by another; that they have more freedom of thought now than they had before but they don’t have freedom of movement.

Jo Wilding,
Electronic Iraq,
22 January 2004

“I used to smuggle my poetry outside the country, to friends in Canada who would publish it for me. I was caught by the security police. I was in hiding and they arrested my relatives then my wife and my two-year-old son, so I was forced to go to them. Even then they did not release my family straight away. They were not tortured but while I was questioned they kept them in jail for about a month, as a form of pressure on me to answer all their questions.”

Bashir Al Majid is a poet and was a member of an Islamic organization, which opposed the former government. He was tortured for nine months in the Mukhabarat [security police] prison and transferred to Abu Ghraib under a twelve-year sentence. “I am sorry. I still cannot talk about that time.” Instead he took out a laminated card bearing his name, year of birth, 1962, the length of his sentence and the insignia of the Independent Political Prisoners’ Association, based near the National Theatre in Karrada.

by Phyllis Bennis
Institute for Policy Studies
21 January 2004

• Bush’s speech was about politics not policies, driven by electoral concerns. It reflected a far-right agenda designed to appeal to the wealthy and social conservatives with “faith-based initiatives,” gay marriage, drugs in sports, abstinence.
• Bush’s policies - both domestic and international - are STILL reckless, unsafe, unfair.
• Bush continues to rely on ratcheting up the fear factor - fear is a key component in Bush’s plan to gain support for the 2004 election.

The speech was characterized by serious omissions, denials, and lies.

WHAT’S MISSING?