Depleted uranium
Hundreds of thousands of Gulf War veterans are now suffering from a syndrome which eminent scientists like Doug Rokke, former head of the Pentagon's Depleted Uranium Project, attribute to exposure to depleted uranium. DU has been found in the blood and urine of civilians and military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Pentagon itself warns that all exposed personnel must have medical attention (Medical Management of Unusual Depleted Uranium Casualties, DOD, Pentagon, October 10, 2003, and Medical Management of Army personnel Exposed to Depleted Uranium (DU) Headquarters, US Army Medical Command, April 29, 2004).
Australians are now being sent to Samawah which was used as a dump for materiel destroyed by DU tipped shells; it is radioactive. Our defence department said it would "conduct reconnaissance before the deployment" (Sydney Morning Herald, February 24).
If Beazley is sincere about supporting Australian troops going to Iraq he should immediately challenge the government on this issue. Sailors were barred from going to Iraq because they refused vaccination. Will those who refuse radiological exposure be similarly treated?
Gareth Smith
Byron Bay, NSW
Anti-depressants
In the last few weeks I have heard horrific stories from the communities of Wollongong and Moree. First, when I was sitting down in Wollongong, I was told by a Tharawal sister that there was an unnaturally high incidence of young people being admitted into mental institutions. All these young people were offered anti-depression tablets from their GPs, whether they visited for mental disorders or not. Consequently, these young people have been in a never-ending cycle of being institutionalised and the number is increasing at an abnormal rate.
I was told that one young man — a university graduate who, on visiting his GP, was prescribed these anti-depressants despite previously having no mental disorders — has ended up in this cycle. On his release, he was hunted down and taken back to the institution. His family had noticed a significant change in his behaviour since he was institutionalised.
A Gamilaroi sister from Moree rang me and was mortified as in the weeks prior three murders had been committed by members of our nation. These three women were all prescribed anti-depressants also, and had been in the same cycle of being institutionalised by their GPs — the same scenario as the Wollongong mob.
She then told me that she could count 30 females off the top of her head in that community in the same cycle and the number was greater with the males.
She became aware of the local GP administering anti-depressants when she went for a health check-up. The doctor proceeded to ask about her life in general and then recommended that she take anti-depressants.
Of course she refused and walked away dumfounded, but realised how her kinsmen/women were coerced into accepting the GP's recommendations. She told me this was happening in neighbouring communities as well.
The pattern seems to be GPs, not psychiatrists, are prescribing these anti-depressants. The communities targeted are communities with a high Aboriginal population. This is another form of genocide committed on our people.
Peta Ridgeway
va email
Fred Thompson
Fred Thompson suffocated his dying wife, Katerina, after giving her six sleeping tablets. She was suffering from advanced multiple sclerosis and had begged him to end her life. She died with dignity at the hands of the person she loved.
Fred Thompson is a hero. He deserves a medal for carrying out an act of love and self-sacrifice in the face of state oppression. Instead, he had to suffer the indignity of being charged with aiding and abetting a suicide, for which he received an 18-month suspended jail sentence.
Our pathetic politicians have refused to recognise the right of the dying to choose a dignified ending. Our director of public prosecutions then implemented an unjust law that continues to feed the public mentality that people like Fred Thompson have committed a wrong.
I congratulate you, Fred Thompson. You have nothing to be ashamed of and everything to be proud of.
Adam Bonner
Meroo Meadow, NSW
Iraq occupation
It seems you can justify any evil, and people will happily go along with it, if you pretend it's for a noble cause. Hence, blowing up Iraqi civilians to bits is actually easier to accept if we can pretend to ourselves that the aggression waged against Iraq was to bring Iraqis "democracy" rather than for the purpose of securing oil for Halliburton.
Likewise, the lies and deceit about bringing "democracy" in Iraq are easier to swallow when the bombs aren't falling on your head, and you're a million miles away from the slaughter, safely tucked up in bed.
Yes, it's so much nicer (not to mention convenient) to believe the comforting lie that thousands of people died so the US could "liberate" them than to face the fact that the US (with Australia's blessing) aggressively attacked another nation to steal its resources.
And people ask how Hitler could have been able to do the things he did!
Dorothy Papanicolaou
Prospect, South Australia
Cuba
On the front cover of the February 19 Good Weekend magazine supplement to the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age was a nice picture of smiling Cuban kids with the headline "Children of the revolution". But inside the magazine this suggestive title was nowhere to be seen. Instead, under the headline "Castro's Last Stand", readers were told "Fidel Castro has defied the constant bullying of successive US administrations for 46 years. And, although old age is catching up with him, the Cuban president is showing no signs of easing his stance."
Readers were told that SMH journalist "Paul McGeough discovers [that] those caught speaking out against the ailing dictator run the risk of death". Nowhere in the six pages of dense type that
followed was there even a shred of evidence presented to justify this outrageous slander of the Cuban Revolution. There was, however, a quote from Camila Ruiz, the director of government relations for the US-funded Cuban American National Foundation, who told McGeough, presumably with a straight face, that "you face death when you decide to become a dissident in Cuba".
If McGeough's piece were just another crude frame-up of Cuba by a right-wing journalist of the likes of Paddy McGuinness or Andrew Bolt, it would deserve no comment. It would be, and be seen by most readers to be, just another exercise in Cuba bashing by the capitalist media. But McGeough is a respected liberal journalist, whose reportage from occupied Iraq was generally a cut above the usual pro-US propaganda.
McGeough's piece is a frame-up of the Cuban Revolution, but one of a far more dangerous variety than the usual right-wing rant because of its sophistication. Interspersed with page after page of "shock, horror" about the supposed "show trials" of "dissidents" and the hardships of daily life for Cubans, McGeough concedes little grains of truth here and there which lead the reader to think that he's being balanced, even-handed. The US, McGeough acknowledged, "runs a savage blockade that makes it difficult for Havana to trade internationally" — though he does make a connection between this blockade and the everyday hardships Cubans have to endure.
And while the overwhelming bulk of the article is simply
a mouthpiece for the tiny community of anti-Castro Cubans living in Cuba and the counterrevolutionary mob in Miami, McGeough does interview, in passing, a couple of Cuban government officials. One of them accurately points out that the "dissidents" arrested, tried and imprisoned in 2003 are actually "traitors in the pay of the Americans".
Marce Cameron
Sydney [Abridged]
From Green Left Weekly, March 9, 2005.
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