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When Does Drowning Mean Drowning?
"I'm drowning my brother drowning." -- Eva Paterson
A few weeks ago I finished painting a portrait of Eva Paterson, the founder of the Equal Justice Society in San Francisco. Eva's organization works to identify and correct the ongoing, pernicious legacy of racism in our culture and legal system. While we were discussing, over a period of weeks, what quote of hers to scratch into the surface of her portrait, she sent me an email that began with the quote above. I thought this was her final decision. Sheer poetry, I thought …… but what does it mean? Does it invoke the common panic of the drowning person who flails so desperately that she takes her rescuer down with her? Or, does it suggest a more sinister, malevolent intent, the one that completes the process of victimization, as in cutting off aid to the homeless, or deciding that the Iraq War, and Climate Change, and Darfur are really intractable problems, so why do anything? As in, whatever you do, you'll end up sucked into a deep and slimy bog that's already bubbling with an unnamable, toxic ooze of corruption, violence and hypocrisy. So, walk away, walk away fast, even if it means by so doing you expedite your brother's drowning.
Or, is it a cry from her heart, that no matter how hard she works for social justice, the bodies keep piling up. And, because she can't work faster and more effectively, it seems her efforts are counter productive. Promise hope, deliver death.
Well, Eva didn't mean anything like that. She had left out the punctuation. Exhausted from overwork, she meant to say, "I am drowning, my brother, drowning." Too tired, she meant, to role those giant, Sisyphean commas into place on either side of "my brother," and too tired to come up with another quote. Eva was amused at my confusion, but her original, unpunctuated line continues to unsettle me with its foreboding.
Imagine, I thought, running toward splashing and shouts for help. And then imagine, instead of following the instinct to rescue, you check out who's in trouble. Oh, it's only that immigrant whose country was ruined by your imperialism and appetite for drugs and who is always calling you hermano. And, you know, there are too many of them anyway, and, jeez, even if I help, what then? He'd probably need a place to stay, dry clothes, want to call his relatives in Cartegena, and they'd want to join him in the U.S. …. Better in the long run if I just hold him under for a bit, drown my brother drowning. Adios, hermano.
Or, imagine, I thought, how complicity has wriggled its way into every aspect of our lives. Try doing something --- anything! --- that doesn't require fossil fuels and exploitation of the earth, animals, and other people. Starting your car, pulling up your cotton underwear, turning on your kitchen light, boiling your potatoes, scribbling your thoughts on a scrap of paper, unscrewing the plastic, tamper proof lid of your Advil. Living in a culture that is 4 per cent of the world's population and uses 25 per cent of the world's resources and at the same time infects every organic molecule with DNA altering chemicals and poisonous waste is psychologically and morally untenable. It's a situation that engenders hallucinations -- like 300 million people all wielding one enormous saw to cut off the limb of the universal tree on which they live, or the steel, concrete and glass skyscrapers of every city as a mouthful of giant, jagged reptilian teeth ripping into the earth's living flesh. Megapolosaurus. Who will need to ask what caused the extinction of the Megapolosauri? No one. They ate themselves. Don't wait for the movie. You can see it right now reflected in any asphalt surface, on any Wal-Mart shelf, on any Big Mac wrapper, on the shiny mercury stored in the body of every fish, between the digital numbers on any gas pump as they flip by. And the ethereal sound track is easily heard because so few birds are singing or bees humming.
It has been the mantra of the powerful corporations to internalize the profit and externalize the cost. That means blow the tops off mountains in West Virginia, take the coal, dump the toxic waste into the valleys and into poor people's lives, and leave with the profit. It means refuse to install the expensive equipment that would remove the mercury from the smoke of the coal-fired electrical generators in Ohio, so that the cost will be assumed by the pregnant woman in Maine who eats a mercury-laced trout. The corporations have controlled the political process so that legally their only responsibility is to maximize shareholder profit while the shareholders have no responsibility for what they do. And the public pays. And the public is advised to invest, and does invest, in these same companies ( the ones that are decimating their environment and poisoning their bodies) for their retirement. Funny notion that. We all join in the profit of drowning our drowning brothers.
Another hallucination: a dark figure ( is it Dick Cheney? Rupert Murdoch? Osama? Me? All of us under one dark cloak?) is feeding human bodies and birds, trees and clouds, rivers and fields, elephants and spiders, history and ideals, hope and truth into a chipper as big as the world. The machine, roaring like only an insatiable black hole must roar, spits out the fragments in a marvelous arc, as marvelous, really, as the Milky Way. As we were once mesmerized by creation, we are mesmerized by destruction. Because, in the Cathedral of the Holy Corporation, we worship neither the God of Love, nor the God of Wrath, but the God of Appetite, whose ineffable touch reverses the spark of creation. Imagine Michelangelo's God, his hand reaching out to Adam, and Adam vacuumed back into His finger. Blip. Time's up.
I am not only drowning my brother drowning, but his children, too.
One of the first panels that Michelangelo completed on the Sistine Chapel ceiling is called the Deluge. It depicts people fleeing the flood that only Noah's family and the animals will ride out. Michelangelo painted the refugees from the rising water in all manner of behavior --- care for the frightened, support for the weak, grief for the dead, and violent self-centeredness. In the swirling gray water a man and a woman punch and club another man as he tries to climb into their boat. Further in the background, as a young man attempts to pull an old man to momentary safety on the porch of a building that is still above the water level, another man is about to strike the old man with an ax. There are two flavors of horror here. One is the event itself with all of its Katrina-like pathos: doomed men, women and children fleeing, but helping each other. The other horror compounds and subverts the first. A violent event of nature made appalling by grotesque human violence. Drowning people drowning each other.
We are now up to our necks in a culture of programmed complicity. Just as the Hutus in Rwanda made sure that all the men killed someone so all would be complicit, the corporate culture here teaches consumption rather than citizenship, isolation rather than community, teaches that predatory capitalism is democracy. If there is an answer, it must be climbing out together, giving a hand up to the weakest and most vulnerable, reinforcing our virtues, denying the culture that preaches making virtue of vice, heroism of spectacular, unsustainable greed.
Eva Paterson, when she did complete the quote for her portrait, included this sentence: "Drowning in silence, we are brothers and sisters drowning each other." We are drowning, my friends, suffocating in complicity and lies. As surely as trees give life sustaining oxygen to our atmosphere, truth and accountability, fairness and compassion provide the social oxygen for our culture. I'm sure that the epidemic of asthma in our children is attributable in equal parts to environmental and cultural causes. A culture living on lies leaves everyone gasping. The oxygen has gone out of America. The waters are rolling down, but they are not the waters of justice.
Plant a tree of truth. Robert Shetterly lives in Brooksville, Maine www.americanswhotellthetruth.org
Eva Paterson's portrait can be seen: http://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/pgs/portraits/Eva_Paterson.html
The Equal Justice Society is at www.equaljusticesociety.org
21 Comments so far
Show AllDon't fear for Mother Earth. She will ultimately reject the human parasite and heal herself over time, like she always does. World-darkening meteor strikes, nuclear winters, global atmospheric poisoning - all are just brief phases in the life of Mother Earth. Dinosaurs, with their tiny brains, lasted about 200 million years until an asteroid destroyed the Earth they knew. Man so far has been around for some 2 million years, and we're pretty close to destroying the Earth we know. Yet all of us were only passing visitors to Mother Earth, who accepted us with open arms but will not mourn our passing, as she'll have new guests to welcome. She might be forgiven a fleeting smirk, though, watching as we use her buried dinosaurs to destroy ourselves.
Here's one: Pelosi, Conyers, Reid and the press should be sent four white feathers (one each from each of US) as a galvanizing emblem of their abject cowardice in the face of these treasonous domestic enemies of We the People and our Constitutional rights, freedoms and liberty. Once we had courageous forefathers; now only callow four feathers.
I saw the quote differently. Because my brother is drowning I am too. We need to know we are all one. What happens to one happens to all. We may not feel or recognize it but it affects us and changes us. Only when we recognize this truth about ourselves can we start working together instead of trying to take from each other. Perhaps in it's own way greed is the deadliest sin of all.
Dear Robert:
I live in NH -- just next door. In two days my husband and I will head up to our camp in Errol, NH, to enjoy peace in the woods for two months. We have no electricity and use propane gas for lights, fridge and stove. Every year, I go up and down the dirt road to clean the litter left by snowmachiners and ATV riders. I pick up everything from discarded diapers to glass and plastic bottles, paper products galore, etc.
I have to wonder how these people who trash the woods and, at the same time, claim that they are enjoying Nature, participate in preserving the Planet. Do they do anything as simple as recycle? I doubt it.
I have lived 68 years -- long enough to know that your article is right on target. I probably won't be around to witness what Mother Earth will ultimately suffer to gratify her voracious children, and it makes my heart cry to wonder what my grandchildren will inherit. Will it be Her final breath?
"Try doing something — anything! — that doesn't require fossil fuels and exploitation of the earth, animals, and other people. Starting your car, pulling up your cotton underwear, turning on your kitchen light, boiling your potatoes, scribbling your thoughts on a scrap of paper, unscrewing the plastic, tamper proof lid of your Advil. Living in a culture that is 4 per cent of the world's population and uses 25 per cent of the world's resources and at the same time infects every organic molecule with DNA altering chemicals and poisonous waste is psychologically and morally untenable."
So let's include decreasing exploitation of animals as a start to a more morally tenable lifestyle. Adopt a vegan diet or at least a vegetarian one. Read Jeremy Ripkin's (Rifkin?) "Beyond Beef" or John Robbins' "Diet For A New America."
And to the commondreams herd of meat-eaters who accuse me of being off topic whenever vegetarianism is brought up, this comment is not even slightly off topic, in my humble opinion. Species-ism - the disrespect of non-human species - is just another form of rascism.
When I was growing up in West Virginia, we were told that our state was a colony of New York. That's where the coal profits went, while our grandfathers were paid in script (play money usable only at the (New York-owned) company store). I wonder if it is still the same way today? Probably not. I suppose the West Virginia government started taxing the coal leaving the state and it's probably the richest state in the union now.
I fear you are correct wcdevins. there is no question humanity is destroying the planet. It is just a matter of time, the question is, how much time? The time may much sooner than most care to believe, perhaps as soon as thirty years, (which lets me off the hook.)
Thirty years? __ No way! Here comes another Chicken Little, "The sky is falling"!!! Over the years, many people, humerous crackpots and leaders of cults have been warning us we are all going to die. "Repent, the end is near". Well this, time some may be right.
It could all end in a week if our VP starts a war with Iran, uses nuclear weapons and before we can blink it esculates in to a full blown major atomic war. A lot of real smart people have described how that could easily happen. But, that little scenerio aside, there are many other viable reasons for a thirty year time frame.
Nuclear waste: A most depressing subject and one which we tend to ignore whenever possible, the subject is not one any decent person really wishes to even think about, at least not in terms of nuclear waste is so dangerous that it could end all life on our planet. We're controlling that problem, we wish to believe we are anyway.
This is NOT a person with an axe to grind, this is a person who has spent several years studying and reading about the subject, listening to arguments from both sides of the at times somewhat complex issue. I will state some facts in laymen's terms, so I can easily understand it, and attempt to avoid those subjects which are argumentative with scientists and pundents such as myself.
Let us begin with "enriched uranium". This product is a highly radioactive, very heavy metal which is primarily used in atomic power plants; it's molded in the form of long metal rods, which are careflly lowered into a large hot tub, where the heat developed by the radioactivity heats the water to the boiling point and the resulting steam drives turbine generators. No technial word usage there. It's easy for me to comprehend.
As the radioactive rods age, they lose portions of their atoms and there is a loss of effeciency, they must be replaced by new rods. During their use deadly by-products appear, among those poisons are elements from which plutonium is developed. Great stuff plutonium. Different subject however. Now, the old used rods are still a bit radioctive, very dangerous if mis-handeled and is now named "depleted uranium" It is dangerous, has to be safely stored away for several thousand years. But wait, why spend millins of dollars storing it; how can anyone store this stuff away for thousands of years, that is not asensible thought. Indeed! So, we'll sell it, and or even give it to ammunition manufatures for use in making weapons, bullets, cannon shells, mortar rounds, even armor plating. Depleted uranium makes for super duper weapons and it is not horribly dangerous to handle it. Just don't ever lick the end of the bullet.
Wonderful, problem solved, we don't have to store this deadly stuff, Cheney will use it when he starts a war. George W. Bush didn't do it, the Devil made him do it. Some Pentagon people studied the use of depleted uraniium in weaponry and determined it was not a good idea; meanwhile, some other pentagon people decided it was a swell idea. Yes indeedy, the swell idea folks won the argument and so we began using it in weapons, even though some "very smart scientists" said it was a "horrible" idea. People in power, those like Rummy ignored their warnings. It was safe!!
As it turns out, and as some had warned, when a bullet made with depleted uranium strikes a target, it burns. The "safe" deleted uranium turns to a very fine powder, a radioactive dust. The dust is easily picked up by even a slight breeze, slight breezes in desert areas are not the norm, dust storms are.
Ours and other countries military, fired hundreds of tons of depleted uranium in Kosovo, Afgan, Iraq and here in the United States on military firing ranges. (Tons!) A rather frightening thought, when one understands that inhaling just a very few microscopic specks of it, will eventually kill the person; it is a long, painful and slow death. Depending upon the dose inhaled, the symptoms of radiation poisioning will not normally appear for from three to five years. Well that's good ___ at least one has that long to lead a normal life.
Over two thirds of the veterans, ground personnel, who served in the first Gulf War are permanently disbled from diseases caused from inhaling depleted uranium dust. That is over 300,000 people, or cannon fodder. Tch,tch, they did their duty and so what? Over population is a problem anyway and if they have kids they're idiots. Why" Becaue two thirds of the children born to those returning vets, were born with horrible deformities and or, with serious illnesses such as different types of cancer, that's why!! They should have styed home and joined the ever growing ranks of the unemployed, run for public office or gone to China to get a job.
Now in the second Gulf WAr, we used many more tons of depleted uranium, (DU.) We carefully avoided barren sandy areas whenever possible, and used it in urban areas. This helps in some ways from so much DU being blown around by the wind. That type of reasoning somehow reminds me of Robert MacNamara, remember him? One of the Agent orange fellas, an over-educated idiot who had the power.
There are now areas in Bagdad where radiation readings are almost 2,000 times normal. TWO THOUSAND TIMES NORMAL. GOD__ help us all!!!
Well, maybe it's God's plan, he flooded the joint ounce and sacked Soddom and Gamora. I know it's not spelled rite, it's readable. My keys are sticky,s besides I'm not a genius.
That's a short letter about "safe" DU, want to hear about plutonium?___ Naw, me neither. That stuff is really scary; we'll be hearing about it if a nuke war begins and ends.
Thirty years? Well, if the ocean's pytoplankton starts to die off like the rest of the life in the seas, life on this little world won't last thirty years. You know, Earth could end up just like Mars. A big ball of rocky dirt, silently orbiting it's life giving star. 70% of our oxygen is produced by those tiny little creatures which live in the oceans, the pytoplankton. Enough plutonium will kill birds, humans and little microscopic life. That's what it's all about, tiny life we never see, keeps us breathing.
Please do not take my words here as gospel, "please" check it out, go to Google and ask for depleted uranium, check it out. We think we have problems with impeachment, which nut will be our next prez? Illegal aliens, jobs, outsourcing jobs, health issues, schooling. Oh yes, all important issues. DU should be the top issue, it's the issue that can kill your kids.
Ron:
I was raised in Wheeling,WVa in the 50's.Though it was more of a steel mill town-remember the exploitation of the state well. Unfortunately there has been only marginal improvement at best[some due to senator Byrd's efforts] and the recent practice of topping off entire mountains is disgusting and heartbreaking.
Regarding your speaking out about vegetarianism-agree it's one of the most important lifestyle matters.And I don't understand strong objections to you or anyone else to getting "off topic". If one isn't spewing venom-why object? Just scroll down to the next post.
Nearly 45% still believe Saddam had "WMDs" and was behind 911. If "we" can so be easily brainwashed in spite of the mountain of facts in our faces on such a black and white question, then we need no more proof: TV is so powerful a mind manipulation machine that deprogramming by words and deeds is all but impossible.
We will instead consume ourselves to near death, and fight for the crumbs that will be left.
I write about a subject which should be of extreme care for every human on earth. But it is apparant to me that indeed few do care.
As Cicero wrote eons ago:
Caput enim esse ad beate vivendum securitatem.__An essential of a happy life is freedom of care.
I hear you Evelyn Smith and I've been concerned since the dawn of nuclear power plants. My dad is a retired electrician and helped build one in Minnesota. He swears they are the safest way to go. I have debated this waste issue with him for decades and there was a time I wouldn't talk to him for years. He's near 80 now and still can't see that's there's something wrong with it. He told me once that they sent contaminated shit in box cars and ditched them on side rails not being used. He worked for Northern States Power Company.
That is good input Nanoo. The oceans are also being used for dumping nuclear waste. Out of sight, "our ot mind". The out of mind is apropriate. Thanks, Nanoo
Evelyn Smith,
THank you for the informative post. I have been following this issue in the media, but it does often seem to take a back burner position to other issues. Perhaps it is because I have chosen, as you mentioned would be a good idea, to take a job in China, and don't have to face this stuff directly. But I wonder what you think the prospects of salvation are? Have you read any Heidegger on the question of technology? In philosophical terms he spells out exactly what you are talking about, the widespread instrumentalist-rationality that takes the natural realm as a vast storage facility of things to be used. Heidegger in his later years was rather pessimistic when he said "only a god can save us". But considering he was an atheist this doesn't seem very reassuring. Thoughts?
RadicalConfucian
I'm not entirely certain that I'm on the same track as you are. I percieve that you may be better read and more intelligent than I. I will nevertheless attempt to reply with my thoughts.
I must assume you are speaking about nuclear waste. I do not ever like to assume, but I will this time. If so, for one thng I seldom if ever, see anything about the dangers of nuclear waste on TV, nor read about it in the news papers. It is not popular subject matter, unless of course, someone of importance dies from radiation poisoning, like the recent Russian spy story. That of course is not the type of nulear waste problem I am, or all of us should be overly concerned with.
There are excellent articles found on the web, which cover the subject in great detail. Nuclear waste is bad enough, but to use depleted uranium for weapons is insanity by humanity. Hey, that rhymes.
On the religious aspect? The Holy Bible covers the times of the end. ONLY God knows when that time will arrive. Satan does not know, humanity does not know, only God knows. Is there a God? Everyone must themselves choose to believe, or to disbelieve.
Would God allow this small planet, our only known world, to be destroyed, all life eradicated? One must ask God that question. Bible scholars argue the meanings of the words in the Bible and in other religious books. Good Christian ministers will read a passage of the Bible and then say things like, "That word shouldnt be taken literally, in the Greek it means thus". Then they explain what the passage actually means. Confusing, the Bible is. That may be one reason Christ said we must have faith in his words and believe in him and accept him as our savior. He was a fine man and willingly died, to save ALL of mankind and to defeat Satan.
God gave his ONLY son to die for us, as he had to prove to all of mankind, that Satan was wrong. Satan lived the seven deadly sins and that evolved into a universal war between him and God. And God was perhaps losing the war and allowed his son to suffer and die to save all of mankind. He made it easy for all.
What about those of mankind who were dead and buried before Christ was born? How could they accept Christ and be saved? Don't seem very fair. Well, afterlife would be the answer. I believe in Christ and am not concerned about dying. I'm certainly gong to attempt to live as long as possible. I enjoy life, I enjoy company, love women, family, fun, helping others and doing things, like right now, this very minute.
Ahhh, we are delving into the mysterious, the deepest portions of the mind. It stirs our soul and opens up so many questions. But are we, humamity, destroying our planet? Absolutely! ___ The sands of time are flowwing and little is being done to reverse our mis-deeds.
You wonder, only God can save us? God may wish we saved ourselves and is waiting to see what we will do, waiting to see who is able to fufill their destiny.
I'm sorry, that is the best anwer I can give.
Thank you for the input RadicalConfucian, hope you read and learn much more about depleted uranium. ___ Kem Patrick
For all of us. If you really do care at all for your families, go to Google and ask for Leuren Moret.
When the next screen comes up, under Doctor Moret's bibliography, click on "DU The Trojan Horse of Nuclear War". Thirty years left for humanity is not far off of the mark. d
Don't believe it? Read it and weep.
Doctor Morets writing on the subject, would be a most informative article for Common Dreams. It is a far more important subject than cheney, Bush, or any other issue.
Bye, Kem Patrick
thanks evelyn smith/kem patrick, for the stuff on DU, et al. don't be discouraged if people do not respond. it is easier to grasp the problems posed by one man, dick cheney, than world-wide environmental destruction! these are not unrelated, btw, cheney being the kind of person who would shoot tons of DU across the planet, but he's still just an egregious example of much bigger issues. as gratifying as it would be to f--- cheney's s---, what would it solve? we live in a system driving us toward collective suicide.
btw, i've got a good idea how to punish these DU fuckers, cheney, bush, etc.: make them clean up the mess! when they are good, we'll give them radiation suits. have them take care of the babies of DU victims. might instill a little humanity in them if they did that for a few years.
So often, as in a number of the posts to this article, we place blame at the feet of government and business. I'm not saying that they haven't been taking advantage of us, but that's what it is; taking advantage. Certainly nuclear waste is a major concern, but it's the little things we should be doing every day that make the difference. It's the little things we choose not to do because central air and SUVs, hi-def, and all the things we "need" are more important than whales, birds, earth, and children.
A common theme of blogs these days is "We the People". When "we the people" decide we are responsible for our own lives and make choices accordingly then Walmart won't see the profits they do or if we choose to walk a mile to work or take the bus or stop watching television or eat that quarter pounder we'll all be a little healthier, a little happier, and a little more in control.
Yeah, you got it... I'm sick of everyone blaming the dems or Cheney or George "idiot boy" Bush. WE THE PEOPLE have sat on the coutch watching "reality" TV while gorging on corn syrup for so long we've forgotten that we have a responsibility to make this republic function.
When was the last time Joe Average thought about how many supreme court justices a president would appoint during their term(s)? How many people chose to re-elect a representative that didn't vote the way the majority of their constituency believed because s/he "knew the facts" and had to vote their conscience? How many people fled to the burbs because the "schools are better out there" knowing full well that if they stayed in town and contributed to their community the schools would be better "here", too.
Regardless of our individual weaknesses history has proven time and again that when we collectively take responsibility for our community, our children, and our culture the evil that has grown to oppress us will be crushed. It'd be wise of us to remember that "whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
Hjordis__ballsy__ I fully agree with both of you, except for one thing.
I was unaware until last night, there is NO way the DU we have spread can be cleaned up. It's too late. We've done it. It's on the beach time, except we'll have more time than they had in the movie. Our kids won't have much time, and I would not advise anyone to have any children anymore. It's too late.
Hjordis:
The piece you wrote at eleven am should be cast in bronze and published in every newspaper in the land, every day. You have managed to tell it in such few words. Wish we could read those words to children years from now.
Thank you for that. Kem Patrick
Reprinted by permission.
Depleted Uranium
by
Steve Osborn
Depleted Uranium, the new panacea
The Arms Maker's choice with a half-life of only 4.5 billion years.
Workers in DU must wear exposure suits and respirators
Just a creative use of atomic leftovers.
Dense, hard, it punches through armor like tissue,
Vaporizes and fragments into dust and tiny chunks.
Dust to be breathed and chunks to be imbedded
As shrapnel or become buried in earth.
Battle tested in Desert Storm and Kosovo,
Now everyone is making them, and selling them,
To armies around the globe, eager for the latest thing.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi desert and Kosovo are laden with tons.
Pay no attention to the sick and the dying.
The Government says it is anything but DU.
Agent Orange was all in the mind, too.
Birth defects and cancer are coincidence in Govspeak.
A hundred or a thousand years from now,
When Hussein and Imperial America are long forgotten,
Or are but spooky tales told around the campfire,
As a new civilization tries to grow.
Peasants, trying to coax food from the ground will stir up clouds of dust.
They, their children and their animals will slowly sicken and die,
And they will know not why.
Just collateral damage from a weapon long ago.
19 February 2003
Sadly, the evil that men do does live after them.
Ibertis, thank you for the input. Pass the word every chance you have.
Unfortunantly for the workers wearing masks, there are no filters made that can trap the microscopic specs of enriched uranium and or plutonium. They are gonna die.
I was unaware ohter countries also had the DU weapons. Oh well, the fat lady is singing.
Evelyn,
The "Merchants of Death" will sell to anyone who'll buy. If you look at recent news reports on page 23, you'll even find we are apparently supplying Al Quaeda through intermediaries.
I read an article a month or so ago about the fact that the small arms ammunition makers can't even keep up with the demand at hundreds of millions of rounds per month. And, of course, they are supplying all sides. What a way to make a living!
As to DU, to quote Winston Smith, just before the Thought Police broke into their room, "We are the dead."
Most of these cowboys who speak so blithely of nuking anything that displeases them have never seen or been exposed to nuclear weaponry. Some of us old farts have, and believe me, it is not the way to go.