Fifteen Years After: A critical review of World War Four
So, exactly sixty years ago, before I was writing this, there were tons of people in Nagasaki wondering, "Whatthefuck!!!" because Hiroshima had just been obliterated. By the time you are reading this, exactly sixty years earlier their faces had already been burnt into the bottoms of their breakfast rice bowls by a flash brighter than the sun. Happy August 8th. Maybe we should recognise this as the International Day of Suspense.
Maybe I'm thinking about this because I ran into two separate Japanese friends today. Sixty years ago, they were "THEY", the Yellow Horde.
Whenever one is dealing with "They", it should be borne in mind that "They" are the sneakiest fucks around, and "They" will resort to chicanery, deceit, murder and mayhem in pursuit of "Their" heinous ends. So we have to fight fire with fire. We gotta get heinous on "Their" asses before "They" do it to "Us".
Except, of course, that there is no "they" and "us" when it comes to radioactive fallout; we all have measurable decay products left in our bones from atmospheric testing, all those years ago.
This "kick they asses!" philosophy, however, was the spirit of the times six decades ago, when the newspapers proclaimed that the "Military Target" at Hiroshima had been destroyed. The same thing had happened to the "military targets" in Dresden, of course, and at the world's largest massacre, the Tokyo fire bombings in the spring of 1945, significant horrors which have become erased from the collective historical and moral consciousness under the shadow of a mushroom cloud. You don't need nukes to do very bad things. They just help a lot.
Still, it's incumbent upon the user of nukes to prove to his public that a device which can burn the skin off half a human from three miles away is actually a Force of Good. That's where the "military target" moniker comes in handy, if one is justifying the atomic slaughter of Japanese civilians. Which, as history is starting to demonstrate, was more of a means for Truman to kick-start the Cold War than a way of ending the Pacific War. Japan was fucked; they were distilling trees as fuel. After Midway, it was game over. But that's just a series of entries in Truman's war cabinet record, and not a grounds for debate (anymore), so let's move on. And "terrorism" is just the new peril, same as the old peril...so...
Kosovo. Iraq. Afghanistan. Iraq. Yes, that's Iraq twice. If you conduct a water cooler pool tomorrow, on "Nagasaki Day", you probably won't get the exact, correct response to the question:
"How, exactly, are these places like Japan in August, 1945?"
You'll probably hear, "They've all been fucked with bombs and guns and the other joys of war, courtesy of the U.S. and her allies", seeing as how Japan isn't and has never been high on the list of countries with Muslim populations. All these others are heavily Muslim, however. But that's not it.
Yes, that's right; they've all been "military targets" over the last little while. Yes, that's getting "hotter".
But noooo...that's not quite it yet. It's not just the "war" or "military target" things. Go check the levels of background radiation in these places for a little revisit to the balmy, glowing Pacific shores of yore, sixty years ago. Or, just google the phrase "depleted uranium" for over 600,000 pages of information...or...if you're into a more esoteric nightmare on the Web, google for, "Uranium Oxide" and "Battlefield", together, to get the real rap. Just in case you hadn't noticed.
What you'll find is some real grist for the chatter mill of that water cooler in the period between Nagasaki Day and September second, the day Japan actually formally surrendered. I suggest we call it "Nuclear Month", out of nostalgia. Here's the gist: the United States and her allies has found that "Depleted" Uranium is the primo tool for the omnicidal clearing of political, economic and military "hotspots". Like Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. And "hot" they are, to use an expression that's fallen out of use for the effects of radioactive decay.
Uranium, as we learned from CNN back in the good ol' First Gulf War, makes great, heavy-duty tank shielding, and as it turns out, it's a groovy death substance when used in missile warheads and other toys of mayhem. In Kosovo 34 tons of Uranium-238 munitions were used, as admitted by the U.S.; in 1991 in the Gulf War, between 325 to 900 tons (depending on whether you're listening to the Pentagon or not, respectively); and, in Gulf War Part II, an estimated 2200 tons of U-238. Afghanistan is another recent beneficiary of this improved Nuclear Age.The sources for this highly flaky, conspiritorially-minded data, should anyone ask you, comes from the 2003 reports by the U.N. Environmental Program on Yugoslavia and similar NGO publications over the last ten years or so. Kill your T.V. and mainline Google, instead. Anyway....
That's four nuclear wars that have gone completely unnoticed in the international media. In 1990 the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) estimated that if 50 tonnes of DU were to be used in the Gulf it would cause an extra 500,000 cancer deaths. Using this UKAEA estimate in conjunction with the supposed amounts of U-238 released into the biosphere by military actions, as per the figures above, it can be estimated that around 25,250,000 deaths should result. That's around the population of Iraq. The test group for this Peak Oil depopulation programme was the legion of 700,000 American soldiers (and their allies) in Gulf War One who fought for mere weeks, but amongst whom more than 240,000 are on permanent medical disability. Over 11,000 are dead. That's a matter of public record. And, that's the tip of the iceberg: the grisly catalogue of birth defects, cancers, et al can be found, yet again, with a little intelligent googling.
Have you noticed in the mainstream media this week that "everyone" is unhappy with "They", over in Iran and North Korea, because "They" want to develop nuclear power for ostensibly peaceful purposes? "They" are lying, we're told, and should probably be "pre-emptively" nuked with small yield tactical hardware. U-238 provides options. That's one of the charms of DU, isn't it? As neither a fission nor fusion atomic armament, it slips through the cracks of definition, and blurs the line between 'conventional' and 'nuclear' warfare. You don't need a towering mushroom cloud to apply WMD diplomacy anymore; you just need to spray a curtain of ceramic uranium oxide death from a few A-10s. Political power proceeds from the glowing of a barrel of nuclear waste...apologies to Mao Tse-Tung.
Maybe we should have International Nuclear Hypocrisy Month, instead.
The Turning of the Worms
Maybe I'm thinking about this because I ran into two separate Japanese friends today. Sixty years ago, they were "THEY", the Yellow Horde.
Whenever one is dealing with "They", it should be borne in mind that "They" are the sneakiest fucks around, and "They" will resort to chicanery, deceit, murder and mayhem in pursuit of "Their" heinous ends. So we have to fight fire with fire. We gotta get heinous on "Their" asses before "They" do it to "Us".
Except, of course, that there is no "they" and "us" when it comes to radioactive fallout; we all have measurable decay products left in our bones from atmospheric testing, all those years ago.
This "kick they asses!" philosophy, however, was the spirit of the times six decades ago, when the newspapers proclaimed that the "Military Target" at Hiroshima had been destroyed. The same thing had happened to the "military targets" in Dresden, of course, and at the world's largest massacre, the Tokyo fire bombings in the spring of 1945, significant horrors which have become erased from the collective historical and moral consciousness under the shadow of a mushroom cloud. You don't need nukes to do very bad things. They just help a lot.
Still, it's incumbent upon the user of nukes to prove to his public that a device which can burn the skin off half a human from three miles away is actually a Force of Good. That's where the "military target" moniker comes in handy, if one is justifying the atomic slaughter of Japanese civilians. Which, as history is starting to demonstrate, was more of a means for Truman to kick-start the Cold War than a way of ending the Pacific War. Japan was fucked; they were distilling trees as fuel. After Midway, it was game over. But that's just a series of entries in Truman's war cabinet record, and not a grounds for debate (anymore), so let's move on. And "terrorism" is just the new peril, same as the old peril...so...
Kosovo. Iraq. Afghanistan. Iraq. Yes, that's Iraq twice. If you conduct a water cooler pool tomorrow, on "Nagasaki Day", you probably won't get the exact, correct response to the question:
"How, exactly, are these places like Japan in August, 1945?"
You'll probably hear, "They've all been fucked with bombs and guns and the other joys of war, courtesy of the U.S. and her allies", seeing as how Japan isn't and has never been high on the list of countries with Muslim populations. All these others are heavily Muslim, however. But that's not it.
Yes, that's right; they've all been "military targets" over the last little while. Yes, that's getting "hotter".
But noooo...that's not quite it yet. It's not just the "war" or "military target" things. Go check the levels of background radiation in these places for a little revisit to the balmy, glowing Pacific shores of yore, sixty years ago. Or, just google the phrase "depleted uranium" for over 600,000 pages of information...or...if you're into a more esoteric nightmare on the Web, google for, "Uranium Oxide" and "Battlefield", together, to get the real rap. Just in case you hadn't noticed.
What you'll find is some real grist for the chatter mill of that water cooler in the period between Nagasaki Day and September second, the day Japan actually formally surrendered. I suggest we call it "Nuclear Month", out of nostalgia. Here's the gist: the United States and her allies has found that "Depleted" Uranium is the primo tool for the omnicidal clearing of political, economic and military "hotspots". Like Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. And "hot" they are, to use an expression that's fallen out of use for the effects of radioactive decay.
Uranium, as we learned from CNN back in the good ol' First Gulf War, makes great, heavy-duty tank shielding, and as it turns out, it's a groovy death substance when used in missile warheads and other toys of mayhem. In Kosovo 34 tons of Uranium-238 munitions were used, as admitted by the U.S.; in 1991 in the Gulf War, between 325 to 900 tons (depending on whether you're listening to the Pentagon or not, respectively); and, in Gulf War Part II, an estimated 2200 tons of U-238. Afghanistan is another recent beneficiary of this improved Nuclear Age.The sources for this highly flaky, conspiritorially-minded data, should anyone ask you, comes from the 2003 reports by the U.N. Environmental Program on Yugoslavia and similar NGO publications over the last ten years or so. Kill your T.V. and mainline Google, instead. Anyway....
That's four nuclear wars that have gone completely unnoticed in the international media. In 1990 the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) estimated that if 50 tonnes of DU were to be used in the Gulf it would cause an extra 500,000 cancer deaths. Using this UKAEA estimate in conjunction with the supposed amounts of U-238 released into the biosphere by military actions, as per the figures above, it can be estimated that around 25,250,000 deaths should result. That's around the population of Iraq. The test group for this Peak Oil depopulation programme was the legion of 700,000 American soldiers (and their allies) in Gulf War One who fought for mere weeks, but amongst whom more than 240,000 are on permanent medical disability. Over 11,000 are dead. That's a matter of public record. And, that's the tip of the iceberg: the grisly catalogue of birth defects, cancers, et al can be found, yet again, with a little intelligent googling.
Have you noticed in the mainstream media this week that "everyone" is unhappy with "They", over in Iran and North Korea, because "They" want to develop nuclear power for ostensibly peaceful purposes? "They" are lying, we're told, and should probably be "pre-emptively" nuked with small yield tactical hardware. U-238 provides options. That's one of the charms of DU, isn't it? As neither a fission nor fusion atomic armament, it slips through the cracks of definition, and blurs the line between 'conventional' and 'nuclear' warfare. You don't need a towering mushroom cloud to apply WMD diplomacy anymore; you just need to spray a curtain of ceramic uranium oxide death from a few A-10s. Political power proceeds from the glowing of a barrel of nuclear waste...apologies to Mao Tse-Tung.
Maybe we should have International Nuclear Hypocrisy Month, instead.
The Turning of the Worms
posted by peeler at 7:52 PM
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