We are Philippa Winkler and Daniel Robicheau of Desert Concerns and we live in Southwestern United States. In 1999, our small organization produced a film entitled "From Radioactive Mines to Radioactive Weapons". We collaborated with Dineh activist Anna Rondon of the Southwest Indigenous Uranium Forum, and with Sustainable Wales, based in Great Britain. This film chronicles how three large communities of people have been effected by uranium's cycle of destruction: 1) the Navajo uranium miners of the American Southwest-they mined for uranium which led to a cancer epidemic which also affected the communities. 2) the Persian Gulf War Veterans affected by uranium's by-product depleted uranium in the UK and USA, and 3) the Iraqi people and environment against whom Depleted Uranium bullets and shells were used in an experimental manner. Depleted Uranium--U238- is not depleted of its uranium-the U-235 portion is merely reduced to be used for nuclear power stations and bombs.
This subject has been covered before, but what is new here is the work of Dr. Hari Sharma, a university radiochemist from Ontario Canada who has used a new radiometric method to show continued presence of U-238 8-9 years after the war ended in the urine of war veterans from the U.S., Canada, the Uk, and Iraq. It is a 25 minute film that we are distributing to as many people as possible in Europe, the U.S. and around the world. The scientific findings are extremely important; important enough for Dr. Sharma to have been questioned by Defense Dept heads from the U.S., UK, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada at one meeting.
The nuclear industry and the U.S. military have joined forces in a dangerous and bizarre recycling program where uranium waste is used to make weapons casings because it is cheap and harder than tungsten-these radioactive weapons were used in the 1991 Gulf War, in the war in the former Yugoslavia-specifically in Kosovo and it is probable they were used in the war against Afghanistan. The technology and stockpiling of U-238 is occurring in 13 countries-and that is why there exists UN Resolution 1996/36 condemning DU weapons at the UN Commission of Human Rights in Geneva. We cover Human Rights Attorney Karen Parker's work on this resolution in the film as well.
The film is part of an international campaign effort to ban uranium mining worldwide (especially on indigenous peoples' lands and to ban the production, stockpiling and proliferation of U-238 ("depleted uranium"). For more information please check out our website @ http://www.spidel.net/frmtrw |