Raping Opium in the Third Galaxy

[Rampant dishonesty and hypocrisy about what was really going on in the Third Galaxy, politically, economically, environmentally, were ignored by the Bankers of Illusion and together they brewed the cocktail which brought on the Terrible Times. Occasional mention, ouch as the one below, occurred only in small media outlets -- these were, of course, ignored by the mass media (unless there was a sex scandal involved)]

The moral lines we draw between us and our adversaries are fictional. The uplifting narratives used to justify the war in Farawaystan are pathetic attempts to redeem acts of senseless brutality. War cannot be waged to instill any virtue, including democracy or the liberation of women. War always empowers those who have a penchant for violence and access to weapons. War turns the moral order upside down and abolishes all discussions of human rights. War banishes the just and the decent to the margins of society. And the weapons of war do not separate the innocent and the damned. An aerial drone is our version of an improvised explosive device. An iron fragmentation bomb is our answer to a suicide bomb. A burst from a belt-fed machine gun causes the same terror and bloodshed among civilians no matter who pulls the trigger...

[The rest of the article can be found here: ]

Just a Joke About Them "Chiggers"

[Here is the brief memo by Ichabod Rain on his childhood in Poosah City I promised to look up for you in my last post]

Being a white boy from up north, I'll never know (Great Potato be praised) what it's like to grow up in a place like Poosah City as a "chigger" just because your great, great great great grandparents didn't run fast enough when the slavers came.

My family moved to Poosah City when I was 9 years old -- segregation and what it meant was something new to me. I quickly learned was that there were two kinds people -- people and "chiggers".

The signs were everywhere. "Chiggers" were to seat from the back of the bus, separate water fountains, schools and, although they could eat in the same restaurant, "they" partook their meals in a dingy room at the back. True, the signs said "colored" and not "chigger". But that was a facade just as the phrase "separate but equal" -- the stress being on "separate", "equal" came in second or third place at least.

The epithet "chigger" itself was a tool in the beastly back beat to Jim Crow as it cawed in Poosah City. A story I often overheard as a child perhaps can give a better perspective of the reality. The story was told as a "joke" -- but the message was deadly serious:

Two boys* decided to go up north and they both struck it rich together. The one boy asked the other what he was going with all his money:

"I'm going to buy me a big white car, a suit and a white hat with white shoes to match. Then I'm going hitch up with a pretty blond white woman, go back to Poosah City and drive down Main Street -- what are you going to do with your money?

The other boy just kind of shuffled his feet and said, "I'm going to buy me a big black car, a black suit and a black hat with black shoes to match. Then I'm going to get me a good-looking black woman, go back to Poosah City and watch them hang your BLACK ASS from a lamp post on Main Street!!!"

But it wasn't a joke for the thousands of black "boys" who had seemed "a bit too uppity" to the "good old boys", or had just been at the wrong place at the wrong time.

_________
* In the Poosah City of my youth, "boys", when referring to adults, always meant "chiggers". The exception was when it was used in a phrase like, "good old boys" -- then "boys" refers to whites who understood how to "keep them chiggers in their place"

On the Obscenity of Ignorance, Part Two

To continue my rant about the obscenity of ignorance, let me say: it is not ignorance in itself which is obscene, but the habit of not caring to know.

Not caring to know, implies a lack of compassion, for how can one be compassionate without knowing?

Compassion is at the heart of all religion. Why? Because compassion is at the heart of our common humanity. If this were not so, then our common humanity would be dead and what would be left would be but a wild and ugly beast. After three billion years of evolution would this not be the height of obscenity.

To disregard, neglect, ignore and minimize, to misinform about the consequences of military industrial use of nuclear technologies and materials -- is that not an ugly and obscene thing to do? Yes, it is!

Yesterday, I wrote about the catastrophic effects of even a "small" nuclear exchange.

Today, I hope to clarify certain things about the deleterious effects of radioactive materials when they are disseminated into the environment. What matters is not whether the source is an atomic bomb, a "dirty" bomb, a Chernobyl or a "whatever". What matters is how finely divided the particles are -- the more finely divided the greater hazards they present.

The first way to bend the truth in these matters is to compare the radiation of the contaminant to background radiation and ignore whether the source or radiation people are being exposed to is from an external or internal source.

There are enormous differences in how you will be affected by walking past a dog turd on the pavement, by stepping on it or, yech, by eating it.

The same is true with radioactive material. As a rule of thumb, outside the body, no problem. Inside the body, big problem.

A kilo of uranium inside your neighbor's house is no problem in itself. A kilo of uranium on the tip of armor piecing munitions chopping into the neighborhood can be a big problem.

When shells penetrate concrete, armor plate -- whatever -- up to 50% and more of the metal is aerosolized. That means it is dissipated into very small particles which float in the air and can be inhaled or ingested along with food or water it has contaminated.

There are three different kinds of radiatio,.alpha, beta and gamma radiation.

Alpha radiation is a helium nucleus (two protons and two neutrons) ejected from the kernel of an unstable atom. The typical speed with which the particle is ejected is about 15,000 kms. It can't go far though. Outside the body, it will be stopped by the dead cells of the epidermis of the skin and thus no problem. Inside the body is a different story as the only thing it can collide with is living cells.

Beta radiation (with a few footnotes) is an electron ejected at high speed. An electron in itself is harmless, ít is its energy which can cause damage to living tissue. Inside the body, a beta particle can travel a bit farther than an alpha particle.

Gamma radiation is a photon, that is like light, although of a frequency comparable to that of X-rays.

Gamma radiation (which mainly originates in interstellar space) is a major part of what is called "background radiation". That is also why it is misleading to compare the radiation of local contaminants to the background radiation as the radiation of most radioactive material is mainly alpha and beta.

Radiation from small particles of radioactive material inside the body can kill individual cells, but it can also damage DNA. Cells are especially vulnerable when they are dividing and can become cancerous if damaged -- what can happen with a human fetus can be terrifying.

Why am I utterly convinced that Uranium Lite (aka Depleted Uranium) is deadly?

First of all, I am mainly concerned when it is used in ways that cause it to be aerosolized, as when it is used to tip rounds of munitions or to increase the penetrating power of bunker-buster bombs.

Secondly, Uranium Lite is not a single product -- it is not simply a by-product of refining U235 from virgin uranium, it can also be a product of refining used rods from nuclear power plants -- it which case it can be contaminated with other elements including isotopes of plutonium.

Finally, something hardly ever mentioned is that when an atom decays, the product is usually not stable -- far from it!

Unstable elements decay in a cascade to various elements which can be exponentially more radioactive then the parent atom -- it all depends on which isotope of which element you start with.

Summa summarum: radioactive material lodged inside the body is bad, period.

The military and the atomic power industries bend the truth so it screams when they tell us what they are doing is safe.

It isn't.

Rant on the Obscenity of Ignorance

Digby had a post on Tuesday with observations on the ignorance of politicians, in particular senators and representatives responsible for national security, yes and even [especially?] the president.

Such ignorance is not only appalling but outright dangerous and in at least one case, apparently deliberate. This especially applies to the most basic knowledge about the Middle East, as revealed by their own statements. Many of this gaggle of klutzes still don't get the difference between Shia and Sunni -- and that in a place in the world which has a most critical bearing on our national security.

Jeeze, on the eve of the Iraq invasion, as he clapped his hands together and exclaimed, "Boy! This sure feels good!" just before he announced the start of the new TV show, "Iraq Cakewalk", Bush didn't even know there were such Sunnis and Shias!

Digby makes the point that if you have been reading newspapers over the years and have at least a passing interest in reality, some information ought to ooze into your awareness.

I'd like to take this a bit further and bet the knowledge of these same people about the consequences of even a "limited" nuclear war is also minimal. Furthermore I'll bet they are ignorant of why and what sort of danger radioactive material presents. Heck, the fact that they deny the obvious dangers of Uranium Lite (aka Depleted Uranium) proves they don't know, comprehend or understand -- either that or they are shape-changing alien lizard monsters...

A "moderate" exchange of nuclear weapons of, say, 50 atomic bombs between, say Pakistan and India, just to pick an example,would have immense, terrible and lasting effects on global climate -- so much so that, if I knew for certain that it was for certain to happen I might say let's go all out and emit as many greenhouse gasses as we can as fast as we can.

I don't really mean it, of course, but still, it might mitigate some of the consequences of a "small" nuclear war.

When I was growing up back in Poosah City and got up at 4 in the morning to see the televised broadcast of a atomic bomb test nothing happened to climate and there were, over the years, before testing was done underground, many tests -- so, how could an exchange of 50 bombs between two warring nations affect the whole world?

There is a difference between running a test with crash-car dummies and a busload of people driving off a mountain road.

Similarly, there is a difference between a hundred atomic tests over a couple of decades and fifty explosions over a few hours or days in a war.

In a war, cities are destroyed, there are firestorms and large amounts of dark particles are sent up into the atmosphere where they will remain for years, even a decade, blocking out sunlight and dramatically lowering the earth's temperature.

That sort of thing is common knowledge -- but not to our leaders, to whom is but a detail or a theory.

In any case, they know that if the balloon goes up and the shit comes down, they will go to shelters with underground swimming pools, movie theaters and, probably, even golf courses.

I'll return later and rant about how radioactive material can be described as both safe and a great danger to both health and life -- it all depends on whether you want to know the truth or just to be able to bend it to suit a purpose.