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Article: 827 of sgi.talk.ratical
From: (dave "who can do? ratmandu!" ratcliffe)
Subject: The Health of the Oceans -- military waste accumulates
Summary: contaminate you bed and you will one night suffocate in your own waste
Keywords: man-made toxic military waste, radioactive materials, eco-imbalance
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Date: Wed, 23 Sep 1992 16:22:04 GMT
Lines: 585


The following article, although written over eight years ago, describes the peril to the oceans--the greatest recycling system of all--in the form of pollutants created and generated by military activities, in a manner that still, over eight years later, is getting virtually no press at all! Space programs, nuclear powered ships and nuclear and missle testing all cause grave toxification and lethal danger to ocean and human life. How many of are aware that "Such innocent items as styrofoam cups are made from the packaging material designed to separate the fission and fusion components of a thermonuclear device"? Most people understand that a great deal of the technologies we take for granted in our daily lives originated in military R&D. Yet most people are still not sufficiently aware of the grave pernicious environmental costs of such technologies:
          Our ultimate legacy to the future is the billions of tons of pollutants already released to the oceans, as well as further billions of tons now temporarily isolated through toxic waste management programs or injected into the stratosphere, thus requiring more time to settle on the earth and work their way into the food web. The United Nations estimates that 150.9 megatons of long-lived nuclear fission products are in the stratosphere of the Northern hemisphere, and 17.6 megatons of nuclear fission products are in the Southern hemisphere's stratosphere. We know of no way of preventing the gradual entry of this highly dangerous radioactive material into food, air and water, and eventually all living organisms. . . .
          International security and the rights of future generations demand an immediate and total termination of all seriously polluting military and commercial activities, packaging with engineered storage for toxic wastes, and a reduction in the production of wastes. Until we accurately measure the future impact of the waste that is already beyond human control, even if not yet distributed in the food chain, we cannot sensibly act to preserve the irreplaceable human habitat, with its exquisite self-regulating air, land and ocean systems.
          The variables undermining this system need to be quantified and publicly disclosed. We must take a fearless stand against the global self-destruction that is taking place on a scale never witnessed in previous civilizations. Unless scientists now act courageously, the earth will gradually become radically altered and severely depleted. Our earth will then offer less food and more disease, even without suffering global nuclear war.
Do you value--do you cherish the lives of your great-grandchildren's great-grandchildren? Do you strive in your daily life to confront the crimes against their humanity-yet-unborn that are being perpetrated and perpetuated by the "national security addicts"? You should. This dying breed of "control addicts" are attempting to preserve a "rule of the club"/"might makes right" kind of world, where the weak are oppressed while those possessing strong military capabilities promulgate dominance hierarchies to benefit their own concentration of material wealth and control over all the rest. These control freaks are a dying breed. If those of us who understand that there can be a more just and compassionate world do not act consistently and continuously in our daily lives to oppose and challenge this dying breed of "us vs. them" beings, then we will surely witness the activities of this non-adaptive, incapable-of-evolving dying breed pull ALL life on Mother Earth along with them over the abyss and into oblivion. Perhaps there is still time to avert this potential future. But any alternative future can only be created by all who treasure their descendants yet-unborn, through consistent and perservering efforts to alter the course of global toxification being practiced today.

--ratitor


*   *   *   *   *   *   *

BREAKTHROUGH: GLOBAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATES NEWSLETTER
Vol. 5, No. 4   Summer, 1984
Celebrating Hope & Uncommon Efforts In Working Toward A More Human World Order


The Health of the Oceans
by Rosalie Bertell


          This paper was presented by Rosalie Bertell at the Pacem in Maribus Conference in Stockholm, May 11-14, 1984. Pacem in Maribus XIII was co-sponsored by the International Ocean Institute and the Myrdal Foundation. This conference addressed the following issues:

  1. The nuclear arms race at sea;

  2. Current status of the law of the sea and of disarmament or arms control agreements in existence;

  3. The interrelations between the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea and the Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons and other Weapons of Mass Destruction from the Seabed, the Ocean Floor and the Subsoil Thereof.
          Outcomes and proceedings of the Conference are being sent to the U.N. Law of the Sea Commission.

Military Waste Accumulates

          The ultimate receptacle of earth's pollution, whether of the air, land or water, is the oceans. Toxic non-biodegradable plastics and other chemicals, herbicides, pesticides and radioactive material have been heedlessly generated by human military activities since 1945. It is slowly beginning to accumulate in the oceans.
          On January 31, 1982, after 60 years of active duty in the U.S. Navy, Admiral Hyman Rickover gave testimony before a Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress. At a point in his life when he might have tried to justify his major part in building the U.S. nuclear navy, he made the following statement:
"I am not proud of the part I played in it. I did it because it was necessary for the safety of this country."[1]

          Similar arguments have been made to try to excuse the nuclear weapon build-up and testing, with its need for uranium mining, enrichment plants, nuclear power plants, reprocessing plants and other support industries, each with their radioactive "permissible" effluence and waste. Development of defoliants for the Vietnam War and other such perceived military needs have caused research and development of other highly toxic non-biodegradable chemical compounds.
          Unfortunately, in order to reduce economic costs, the military frequently invents a commercial spin-off of their products. Such innocent items as styrofoam cups are made from the packaging material designed to separate the fission and fusion components of a thermonuclear device. All of this military debris justified under the umbrella of "national" security is causing global ecological disaster.
          The oceans comprise about 71% of the surface of the earth. They have an average depth of 1500 meters (or about 4500 feet), although in some places the depth is 10,000 meters (about 30,000 feet). The phytoplankton and algae which require sunlight, and which produce about 50% of the world's oxygen, are at a depth of 50 to 100 meters (or 150 to 300 feet.) Phytoplankton and algae feed on dead
          zooplankton and the minerals of the sea.
          It is well known that kelp, a form of seaweed, is unusually good at concentrating nuclear fission products in its cells. It was used in Nagasaki to help rid the bodies of atomic bomb survivors of ingested radioactive materials. Plankton also have the property of absorbing, assimilating and concentrating insecticides and toxic hydrocarbons. This phytoplankton is the base of the food web which sustains all life on earth. If we poison it, it will in turn poison the fish and drastically reduce the protein available to sustain mammalian life. If we kill it, we reduce to less than half the oxygen now available to humans and animals.
          About 90% of marine life is found in the shallow coastal areas generally referred to as the Continental shelves. This area represents only 8% of the oceans, and it is the most polluted from land wash out, inland water runoffs, harbor activities, and deliberate waste dumping.

Radioactive Material Will Escape

          It should be noted that all present methods of retention of toxic chemical and radioactive chemical waste, whether military or commercial, are temporary. In a paper by B. Lindell, et al., on "International Radiation Protection Recommendations,"[2] it is stated:
"It should be recognized that, in the very distant future, any remaining radioactive material will eventually escape containment and reach the biosphere."

          Our earth system functions to recycle all materials, toxic as well as benign. Waste "disposal" methods slow down this process by a factor proportionate to our concern for future generations.
          Our ultimate legacy to the future is the billions of tons of pollutants already released to the oceans, as well as further billions of tons now temporarily isolated through toxic waste management programs or injected into the stratosphere, thus requiring more time to settle on the earth and work their way into the food web. The United Nations estimates that 150.9 megatons of long-lived nuclear fission products are in the stratosphere of the Northern hemisphere, and 17.6 megatons of nuclear fission products are in the Southern hemisphere's stratosphere. We know of no way of preventing the gradual entry of this highly dangerous radioactive material into food, air and water, and eventually all living organisms.
          I would like to speak in favor of engineered above ground retrievable storage for all toxic waste in the future. This would allow for re-packaging, to assure isolation from the biosphere, by each future generation. Unfortunately, toxic waste management may be the job opportunity with the greatest future potential!
          In addition to the toxic waste already released or under some human control, we have more waste being produced daily and directly injected into air, water or land. Frequently these same activities cause thermal and mechanical damage to the biosphere. Reduction of this damaging activity would at the same time reduce the volume of toxic waste which needs to be isolated. I will address only a few not-so- well-known global problems, in order to focus greater international concern on them. They are by no means an exhaustive list. The broad headings include:

  1. The Space Programs

  2. Nuclear Powered Ships

  3. Underwater and underground nuclear testing

  4. Missile testing in the Pacific Region


The Space Programs

          The Solar Power System (SPS) is expected to have impacts on air pollution, water pollution, water resources, solid waste and land requirements. It is basically a military program, with a commercial high technology solar energy and special environment manufacturing space component. There has been little dialogue internationally on the significance of this major U.S. military venture to construct 60 manned space platforms.
          The rocket propellants for SPS require liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen, monomethyl-hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide. The liquid hydrogen can ignite with release in air, and the liquid oxygen causes damage because of its extreme cold temperature. The hydrazines are highly toxic petrochemical products. Nitrogen tetroxide is a forerunner of acid rain. They are transported to launch sites by truck, rail or barge, and are emitted in exhaust gas. Booster rockets with their debris are commonly allowed to fall into the oceans. Rocket exhaust emissions will put carbon dioxide, water and nitrates directly into the stratosphere. Re-entry into earth's atmosphere can also produce potentially significant quantities of nitric oxides.
          Some of the more obvious effects on the oceans due to the space program result from the depletion of the ionosphere, effluent releases into the atmosphere, acid rain and increases in visible and infra-red light. Waste heat rejection from space satellites is expected to make them the brightest objects in the night sky, next to the moon, in the far infra-red region. The intensity of 100 satellites may be equivalent to that of the moon, having an unknown effect on living organisms.
          Thermal energy release in both the upper and lower atmosphere may be expected to impact weather and climate. The amount of solar radiation received by earth, needed to support photosynthesis will be changed because of orbiting debris and large metal reflecting surfaces inserted between earth and sun.
          These and other problems related to the expansion of space military programs require the immediate attention of the international scientific community.

Nuclear Powered Ships

          The U.S. operates 33 strategic submarines, having 20 submarines carrying 3000 nuclear weapons, at sea at any given time. The Soviet Union has 62 strategic submarines, with about 10 at sea carrying 300 nuclear weapons at all times.
          In addition to these, NATO has 139 diesel attack submarines, 103 nuclear attack submarines, and 490 major warships (aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers and frigates). The Warsaw Pact countries have 174 diesel attack submarines, 105 nuclear attack submarines and 295 major warships. China has 101 diesel submarines, 2 nuclear attack submarines and 34 large warships.[3]
          These vessels routinely discharge toxic chemical and toxic radioactive chemical debris into the oceans, poisoning marine life. They are also subject to "abnormal releases" such as the highly radioactive spill in Apra Harbor, Guam, in 1975, after which the level of radioactivity on nearby beaches rose to 50 times the allowable level.
          A report issued by the Washington based Fund for Constitutional Government accused the U.S. navy of at least 13 such major abnormal discharges in coastal waters. The Soviet navy has caused comparable routine and abnormal discharges, including a catastrophic accident in 1966 releasing highly radioactive material from the nuclear powered ice-breaker, Lenin.
          Moreover, commercial fish are seldom checked for radioactive chemical pollution. Tuna fish caught in Pearl Harbor, the major U.S. naval base in the Pacific, are a case in point. These fish are not checked for contamination with any of the radioactive or chemical toxic material emitted from the military vessels which frequent that major harbor. Tuna fish are noted for their ability to travel great distances, and by eating other fish they tend to concentrate in their tissues the pollutants which are less concentrated in water and other marine life. Therefore even when caught at a distance from these major military installations the fish may be contaminated. I personally asked the Director of the Department of Noise and Radiation for the State of Hawaii, in Honolulu, if the tuna fish were monitored for contamination with fission or activation products. His answer was "no," since the fish were all canned and sent out of state. None was consumed locally.
          Turtles travel long distances on the ocean floor. They are a delicacy in Fiji and other Pacific Islands. No one checks the radio- chemical toxicity of this primary food.
          There are some exceptions, of course, to the general non-screening of marine life for radioactivity. In 1963, scientists at the University of Baja California, reported increasingly high degrees of radioactivity in fish caught along the Baja Peninsula of Mexico. Peru has also reported radioactivity in fish off its shore. This pollution is thought to be connected to French military activity in French Polynesia.
          In its nuclear weapon testing in the Marshall Islands, the U.S. navy deliberately blew up ships. The radioactive remains, together with plutonium laced soil and other contaminated garbage, was sunk in the Bikini and Eniwetok lagoons. These lagoons were and still are spawning grounds and fisheries for the Pacific people.
          I would recommend a network of internationally sponsored radiobiology laboratories, testing the plankton and other marine life on a routine basis. Some countries which depend on fish as an economic commodity, such as Peru, are already doing this. Others, like New Zealand, have an elaborate radiation laboratory, still testing for atmospheric fall-out, although this problem is now minimal. The laboratory is not, however, used to test the food chain.
          To protect a key source of human food, the military use of the oceans should cease. Recent U.S. proposals to sink outmoded nuclear powered vessels in the oceans, and to bury nuclear fuel rod debris in the ocean floor, should be rejected. This plan is now being reviewed after a temporary stay order by the London Dumping Convention in February 1983.
          Japanese plans to dump nuclear reactor waste in the Pacific Ocean, British dumping into the North and Irish Seas, and European dumping into the Atlantic must be halted to assure preservation of the ocean's oxygen and food generating capacity. Calculations of the ocean's carrying capacity for pollutants must include not only the present measurable level, but the commitment already made. This committed pollution includes the burden in the stratosphere, all waste now temporarily isolated in non-retrievable form, and the annual routine releases from commercial activities.
          My guess is that the pollution commitment is already near to or beyond the carrying capacity of the oceans. It goes without saying that war is an intolerable pollution-generator capable of destroying the delicate living balance of the oceans.

Underwater and Underground Nuclear Testing

          France is testing nuclear devices in the basalt rock below the lagoon in Moruroa and in French Polynesia. The U.S and U.S.S.R. are testing nuclear devices underground on their own territory. China is the only nation currently testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, and the fallout from these Chinese tests must, unfortunately, be added to the global pollution commitment threatening the life of the oceans.
          In November 1976, a four megaton blast was set off in China. This is about 200 times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. Hiroshima-size blasts in the atmosphere took place in September 1977, March 1978 and December 1978. A test more than 10 times the size of the Hiroshima blast was set off in China in October 1980. The global levels of strontium 90, cesium 137, plutonium and other radioactive debris rose with these tests, as did the radioactive content of the stratosphere. The carbon 14 from atmospheric testing is not expected to impact global health until after the year 2000.
          While atmospheric nuclear testing is deliberately designed to release all of the radiochemical toxic products, underground testing is designed to "contain," i.e. temporarily isolate, some portion of that debris. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, which operates the Nevada Nuclear Test site, 23 of their "announced" underground shots were crater shots or had unstemmed holes, and were designed to release most of the radioactive material. The U.S. admits to:
  333 atmospheric nuclear tests

   23 underground tests designed to release radioactive material

  356 tests with admitted atmospheric pollution
          The 1982 United Nations' estimate of U.S. atmospheric nuclear tests is 193, about 60% of the U.S. reported and only 54% of the U.S. reported as atmosphere polluting. The U.N. underestimation of nuclear testing for the other nations might be expected to be even greater if one assumes the numbers are based on direct national reporting with apparently some rule that only blasts above some arbitrary fission yield must be reported. The oceans, of course, receive all the pollution from announced as well as unannounced tests, small and large blasts, admitted and unadmitted.
          The conservative U.N. estimate of nuclear detonations globally, atmospheric and underground, is 1233, of which half were set off by the U.S., and half by the U.S.S.R., U.K., France, China, India, South Africa, and Israel.
          It is difficult to even mentally accept the fact that these nuclear explosions have already taken place in the name of our supposed security. However, the gross pollution and insanity of atmospheric testing should not be allowed to blind us to the damage being done by the underground blasts. Besides the mechanical damage to geological structures, these involve ground pollutions with seriously toxic radioactive chemicals. There is gross thermal pollution, and probably seismic instability.
          I would like to mention one contentious problem related to French underground testing beneath the lagoon of Moruroa. Like U.S. testing, French underground testing has released radioactive material, especially the Krypton and Xenon gases, radioactive iodine, carbon 14 and tritium. In one test July 25, 1979, the nuclear blast accidentally occurred when the bomb stuck half way down the shaft. The blast was intended to go off below the coral atoll, in the basalt rock ocean floor. Instead, millions of tons of coral were loosened. About five hours after the blast, the coral fell into the ocean causing a huge localized tidal wave. Even without such observable effects, there is no doubt that thermally and radioactively hot gases 50,000 to 500,000 degrees Centigrade (10^5 to 10^6 degrees Fahrenheit) are injected directly into the ocean during most underground- underwater tests.

Marked Weather Changes

          There have been marked changes in weather in French Polynesia since the French underground nuclear testing began in 1975. Prior to that testing, there were few cyclones in that part of the Pacific Ocean. The last known cyclones were in 1903, 1905, and 1906. In fact, the French mentioned the lack of severe storms in their rationale for using French Polynesia as a testing ground. On November 28, 1980, a severe cyclone hit Moruroa, and during the night between the 11th and 12th of March 1981, a second major cyclone hit Moruroa. During 1983, five cyclones passed over Moruroa with 10 meter (30 feet) high waves, doing extensive damage to the test site, washing radioactive waste into the ocean and leaving thousands homeless in the Islands.
          It is well known that cyclones are produced when ocean water temperature is above 28 degrees centigrade (82 Fahrenheit). The sea water between French Polynesia and the Equator now measures about 32 degrees (90F). No active underwater volcanoes have been identified to account for the temperature change, so the prime candidate causes would be either damage to the atmosphere from French nuclear testing prior to 1975, causing increased solar radiation, or direct injection of thermally hot radioactive gases (50,000 degrees or more) into the ocean water.
          Heating of the ocean near French Polynesia has had multiple effects on weather, including the El Nino effect in Peru, reversal of the trade winds, heavy rain and mud slides in Peru, and draught in Australia, Fiji and other Pacific Island nations.
          France is, of course, denying responsibility for the severe weather changes in the Pacific region, and it may well be that British and American nuclear testing there, including the hydrogen bombs, prior to 1963, paved the way for this delayed ecological disaster.
          However, the French argument based on the low transfer of heat from the nuclear blast through the basalt rock to the lagoon floor and thence to the water, appears to me to be irrelevant. Direct transfer of blast heat is probably not the mechanism. I would assume the heat sources which alter ocean temperature include fission debris washed out to sea by the storms and the release of radioactive gases from the nuclear tests.
          Until independent investigators are allowed to investigate the causes of severe Pacific weather changes, France will remain the prime suspect. It would appear to be in the best interest of France, the Pacific nations and the global community, to take seriously the disruption of the Pacific Ocean habitat, source of life for millions of people in the Island and rim land masses.
          In a U.P.I. release from Cambridge, Mass., December 18, 1983, researchers reported that the major climatic disturbance that spawned the powerful Pacific storms during 1983 had slowed the earth's rotation, making several days slightly longer. Meteorologists measured slowing of the planet's daily rotation as one-fifth of a millisecond.
          This news struck me as especially significant because of a conversation I had had with a former Fijian naval officer now residing in Vanuatu. He described for me the hydrogen bomb blasts at Easter Island which he had witnessed in the early 1960's, blasts in the megaton range. He said several times that he believed such blasts were capable of affecting the earth 's rotation, slowing it slightly.

Missile Testing in the Pacific

          Before turning to the health hazard posed to Pacific nations by the non-nuclear missile testing by the U.S., U.S.S.R. and China, I would like to summarize the nuclear testing in that area. In addition to the release of radioactive chemical pollution, nuclear testing causes massive disruption of the regional ecology, thermal pollution, and mechanical breakage of the coral reefs.
          According to U.N. reporting in 1980, there have been 1233 nuclear tests globally since 1945, including more than 200 tests in the Pacific region. This may well be an underestimate, as previously noted, but the summary figures at least give locations and proportional usage.
U.S.A.      Hiroshima, August 6, 1945  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1
U.S.A.      Nagasaki,  August 9, 1945  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1
U.S.A.      Bikini, Marshall Islands, 1946-58  . . . . . . . . . 23
U.S.A.      Eniwetok, Marshall Islands, 1948-58  . . . . . . . . 43
U.K.        Johnston Island, 1958-62 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
U.S.A./U.K. Christmas Island . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
U.K.        Australia (Monte Bello, Emu, Maralinga, 1950-60) . . 12
France      Moruroa, Fangataufa (1966-1980)  . . . . . . . . . . 80
                                                          ---------
                                                          Total 197
          There has been an escalating military presence in the Pacific Ocean, with concomitant need for harbors, underwater surveillance systems, jungle warfare training grounds, conventional bombing grounds, and missile targets. The main target area is the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, used by the U.S. for testing ICBM's (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles) released from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Occasionally the Soviet Union tests missiles in the ocean, north of Hawaii, or in the vicinity of the Cook Islands. China has tested missiles near the Fiji Islands.
          These missiles do not carry nuclear warheads, but they do crash into the lagoon at a speed of roughly 8000 miles per hour (about 13,000 km per hour). This impact, as well as other related military activity, alter the coral ecosystem of the lagoon.
          In a major study by Dr. Takeshi Yasumoto, Professor of Food Hygiene, Faculty of Agriculture, Tohoku University, a dinoflagellate which grows on the surface of algae has been identified. Many species of normally edible reef fish, the staple protein source for Pacific Islanders, become toxic when they feed on this dinoflagellate, causing in humans a severe food poisoning. Several thousands of cases are occurring annually in the South Pacific. This fish toxicity increases after changes in the coral ecosystem, and it is thought that the dinoflagellate grows more abundantly on algae which thrives on newly denuded surfaces of dying coral. The Gambier Islands represent an example of both epidemic proportions of ciguatera fish poisoning and an extraordinary amount of dead coral. The Marshall Islands, site of Kwajalein missile range, is also an area with high ciguatera fish poisoning rates.
          A statistical study by the World Health Organization Epidemiological Office in Suva, Fiji, shows the extraordinary diverse distribution of ciguatera fish poisoning in the Pacific. The highest rate, 1977-1980, occurred in French Polynesia, where the active nuclear testing is now in progress. The center of the French Polynesian epidemic is in the Gambier Islands, not Moruroa where the testing is taking place. However, the base for French military ships which observe the testing at Moruroa is in the Gambiers. The lagoon there was dredged for sand and a harbor constructed. Moreover, the French warships were "cleaned" there, i.e. the radioactive debris hosed off, after contamination from the nuclear blasts at Moruroa.

Conclusions

          I realize that many of the problems I have mentioned are generally unknown in the world community, even among concerned experts. I believe this is because of the secret science which surrounds military operations and the false assumption that ocean damage is both slight and temporary. Many military persons believe they have to pollute for "national security reasons," although like Admiral Rickover they are not proud of what they have done.
          International security and the rights of future generations demand an immediate and total termination of all seriously polluting military and commercial activities, packaging with engineered storage for toxic wastes, and a reduction in the production of wastes. Until we accurately measure the future impact of the waste that is already beyond human control, even if not yet distributed in the food chain, we cannot sensibly act to preserve the irreplaceable human habitat, with its exquisite self-regulating air, land and ocean systems.
          The variables undermining this system need to be quantified and publicly disclosed. We must take a fearless stand against the global self-destruction that is taking place on a scale never witnessed in previous civilizations. Unless scientists now act courageously, the earth will gradually become radically altered and severely depleted. Our earth will then offer less food and more disease, even without suffering global nuclear war.
          We can also endorse and support Resolution GA-2-7 of the Association of Pacific Island Legislatures: "to permanently ban radioactive waste dumping in the oceans . . . and establishing the Northwestern Pacific Ocean as a nuclear free zone." This resolution is widely endorsed by the people of the South Pacific Island nations, New Zealand and Australia. It should serve as a basic model for the global community. Such courageous action on the part of ordinary people, conscious of the goodness of life and the desirability of freedom, should give us courage and hope.

References
  1. "No Holds Barred," Center for Study of Responsive Law, p. 71.

  2. "Five Years Experience of ICRP," Publication 26, IAEA CN-42. p. 17.

  3. Center for Defense Information, 600 Maryland Ave., S.W., Washington, DC 20024.


          Even if you made an agreement to abolish all nuclear weapons, but you left established power structure in the U.S. and the USSR, they'd go on to research mind control or some chemical or biological thing. My view is, there exists a group of people in the world that have a disease. I call it the "power disease." They want to rule and control other people. They are a more important plague than cancer, pneumonia, bubonic plague, tuberculosis, and heart disease put together. They can only think how to obliterate, control, and use each other. They use people as nothing more than instruments to cast aside when they don't need them any more. There are fifty million people a year being consumed in a nutritional holocaust around the world; nobody gives a damn about starvation. If fifty million white Westerners were dying, affluent Western society would worry, but as long as it's fifty million Third World people dying every year, it doesn't matter.
          In my opinion, what we need is to move toward being nauseated by people who want to be at the top, in power. Can you think of anything more ridiculous than that the Chinese, Russian, and American people let their governments play with superlethal toys and subject all of us to these hazards? The solution is not to replace one leader with another or to have more government. Society has to reorganize itself. The structure we have now is, the sicker you are socially, the more likely it is that you'll come out at the top of the heap.

-- John Gofman, M.D., Ph.D., Prof. Emeritus of Medical Physics, UC Berkeley
      from "Nuclear Witnesses, Insiders Speak Out," 1982



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