Tuesday, October 12, 2010

The Price of Freedom

....

“This is an extraordinary and alarming result,” said Busby, a professor of molecular biosciences at the University of Ulster and director of scientific research for Green Audit, an independent environmental research group. “To produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the attacks happened. We need urgently to find out what the agent was. Although many suspect uranium, we cannot be certain without further research and independent analysis of samples from the area.”
Busby told an Italian television news station, RAI 24, that the “extraordinary” increase in radiation-related maladies in Fallujah is higher than that found in the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the US atomic strikes of 1945. “My guess is that this was caused by depleted uranium,” he said. “They must be connected.”

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

a little while back an SBS documentary (Dateline?) covered the extraordinarily high number of children being diagnosed with cancer and the oncologist's firm belief that the alarming increase was directly related to 'components or materials' used in various weaponry. good to see this being followed through.

Steve Edney said...

I know this was just a report on a study, but you have got to wonder about the accuracy of the reporting when they include this sort of stuff.

The assault on Fallujah, a city located 43 miles west of Baghdad, was one of the most horrific war crimes of our time. After the population resisted the US-led occupation of Iraq—a war of neo-colonial plunder launched on the basis of lies—Washington determined to make an example of the largely Sunni city. This is called “exemplary” or “collective” punishment and is, according to the laws of war, illegal.

Steve Edney said...

I also think it strange that the article uses its base line for comparison not, pre-2004 Fallujah, nor other parts or Iraq, but Egypt and Jordan. These are countries with GDP/capita (and services etc) much greater that Iraq in general and Fallujah in particular.

I'll note that the researcher seems to be heavily involved in an organization called Green Audit
http://www.greenaudit.org/about_green_audit.htm

which states
"The problems of the pollution of the planet are inextricably related to the market-driven industrial system." and then follows this with a photo relating to Chernobyl!

John said...

Thanks for the heads up Steve, your observations do call for more caution in reading this news article.

Using other countries as a control may have been done on the presumption that within Iraq the widespread use of depleted uranium invalidated using Iraqi populations for control purposes.

The problems of the planet pollution arise from mostly from ignorance, in Asia wood burning is a major cause of air pollution."

What people like the Greens tend to forget is that industruialists also have children