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Point of View with Barb
Sumner Burstyn October 13
2003
We really are living on the dark side
of the moon
My friend Ben emailed me from Vancouver: "Dear Barbara, What happened
to you? You've become cynical. Why not look at the positive things
happening in our world. Especially in the environment. There are
so many good things happening out there."
So I decide to try to view things through Ben's eyes, to look
for, as he calls it, the green shoots of change in our world. The
same day I opened the Independent and the headline "Pentagon spends
millions seeking environmentally friendly bullets" jumped out at
me.
Of course. All that toxic lead, just lying around in hotspots
like Iraq, can't be good for the environment. Perhaps Ben was right.
The article quoted Bob DiMichele, spokesman for the US Army's
environmental centre. With lead bullets, he said without the slightest
hint of irony, there is a cost in terms of human safety. Mr DiMichele
called it green ammunition, one that can kill you or that you can
shoot a target with and that's not an environmental hazard.
I felt Ben's optimism wavering. It's the kind of news that makes
you wonder if you're inside some kind of altered reality. A place
of profound cognitive dissonance where a lead-free green bullet
is described as frangible and extolled as environmentally sound
and the vice-president of the company who gained the Pentagon's
US$5 million ($9.6 million) contract can say, also without irony,
that if lead were not toxic he would not be having this conversation.
But the disconnect goes deeper. On the first day of the war against
Iraq the US was reported to be dousing Iraqi lines with napalm.
Washington denied it. They were adamant that napalm had not been
part of their arsenal since 1993. But napalm's first cousin the
MK-77 firebomb was - and five months later the colonel, who made
the first denial, said if he'd been asked about MK-77s, he would
have confirmed their use.
And the difference between these two devices? According to the
Pentagon, while the new mixture still coats its victims bodies in
fuel gel before igniting, causing untreatable third degree burns,
a la Vietnam, it's less harmful to the environment.
"This additive has significantly less of an impact on the environment,"
said Marine spokesman Colonel Michael Daily.
Well that makes sense, first a PC bullet and now a PC version
of Agent Orange. Especially in light of the ongoing disastrous effects
of the chemical spraying in Vietnam. A report in the Guardian by
Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy exposes horrendous deformities
three generations after the country was defoliated. They reveal
that more than 650,000 people today suffer from an array of baffling
chronic conditions while another 500,000 have already died.
But sadly the PC approach to warmongering is not across the board.
In the breakdown of law and order since the invasion the of Iraq,
the US has failed to prevent things such as the expected biological
disaster from the releasing of thousands of flies known as chrysomya
bezziana (screw worms) which were bred by Iraq's Nuclear Authority.
Or the inadvertent looting of radioactive yellow cake by impoverished
civilians who saw the storage barrels as ideal water and milk containers.
Or the looming medical disaster for the people of Iraq from radioactive
depleted-uranium (DU). Even a DU bullet fragment no bigger than
a pencil eraser produces levels 1000 times the normal level of radiation
and over 75 tons of DU is reported to have been dropped on Iraq.
And then, last week, Iraq was put up for sale. Defoliated now
of its infrastructure, its morale, its educated and competent people
and all impediments to the new regime of a perfect free-market economy,
the US announced that all 192 state companies will be sold to foreigners,
income tax will be introduced for the (local) workforce and the
entire country opened to unlimited foreign investment.
Like new owners everywhere, they'll no doubt set about renovating,
stripping out what's left of the old and decorating in their own
style. And the previous owners, the Iraqis who will become no more
than serfs in their own country? No one's even bothered to do an
official body count yet so it seems unlikely the negative realities
of their new lives will make even a news item, let alone a headline.
So I'm sorry Ben, I tried, but the green shoots just didn't stand
a chance. Not against a world that describes bullets as frangible,
that turns the human suffering of napalm into a plus for the environment,
that destroys and steals a country under the guise of liberating
it.
When I was a teenager, I loved the Pink Floyd song Us and Them.
It caused in me an inexplicable ache. Today that ache is back. I'm
cynical yes, but my cynicism is no match for theirs. We really are
living on the dark side of the moon.
© Barbara Sumner Burstyn, 2003
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