A month after Mumbai, 4 years after Tsunami...differences in response

The news paper reports are today replete with people paying homage to Mumbai terror attack victims as well as  recollection and homage of those who died in the tsunami 2004.


One natural disaster that saw, in response, a resurgence of human compassion and voluntarism while the other disaster wrought by humans led astray is responded to with anger and animosity. As the year comes to an end, war on Pakistan is increasingly being spoken to as 'when' and not as 'if'. Pakistan itself seems to be under greater  belief that India will go on a war with them. 


The war is being already fought by the media.  The media in Pakistan seems to be working overtime now.  I am sure that makes better business sense, imagine Indians had terror attack and could get good TRP for a television for a week maybe, Pakistan is selling the response to terror and getting probably better TRP (or whatever is the equivalent there) for a month. 


Modern technology and economic organization that provided Kasav and his people with easy access to guns, grenades, global phones and positioning systems has also provided the media in both countries with information on weapon capabilities, about the N processes, about the preparedness for attack, minutes for response, about weapons and their uses...the amount of knowledge we possess on instruments of violence seems endless. 


Many Indians feel that we should show that we too, 'know' how to use these tools of violence, Pakistanis feel that they should show their superior 'knowledge' on the tools of violence, while fanatics on both sides tease each other about each others' ability to use such 'knowledge'.


If the sense of security of a nation comes out of its knowledge of violent tools and methods, it must be a extremely violent society to begin with. I don't think our knowledge (and possession)  of tools of violence provides us with the sense of security.  If the response to the Mumbai attack results in us getting increasingly aggressive in acquiring, possessing and exhibiting (using) tools of mass violence, then we only perpetuate the violence, not work against it. Response to human pain cannot be in causing more human pain, response to the sense of hurt in a nation's pride cannot be solved by hurting another nation's pride. We did not win our Independence by hurting the pride of the colonials. They did not become our 'enemies' despite causing greater damage to us and killing more people for longer duration. 


I don't think India is a violent nation, it does not come to us naturally to be violent. Violent people are not majority in this country, violence does not stay in power too long either. Our tendency is to gravitate towards peaceful existence, and what we tend to, is our true stable nature, our own character.  This is defined by the traditions we have built and the leaders we have come to revere. However, we don't seem to have created either pride in this character or suitable methods of applying it in all situations. Gandhi successfully applied it against the Colonials, and since then it has surfaced once in awhile in different policies almost inadvertently.



As the year draws to the end, the image of the Mumbai attack will overshadow all other images and moments for most of us. The response to this attack on the nation's pride could unite us as a nation. We could be united  as a mob, faceless, identity-less, lynching an unequal but protesting and fighting 'enemy' or we could be united with an understanding of our true character that bring in spontaneous bonding and could make us stronger. Such understanding was seen after the tsunami, in the way many Indians bonded and worked together with complete strangers, in an understanding of compassion and peaceful co-existence. Our responses then were highly innovative, they were spontaneous and made us stronger. Our response now? 

Eternal consequences of Depleted Uranium

Since this post was published, I have received from an anonymous comment that is produced below.

Rhotel1 has left a new comment on your post "Eternal consequences of Depleted Uranium":

I tried to post this elsewhere where someone picked up your article. You have major factual errors in this piece and obviously know next to nothing about depleted uranium.

The following is untrue --

More than 35 percent (251000) of US Gulf War veterans are dead or on permanent medical disability, compared with only 400 who were killed during the conflict…[read on] Depleted Uranium Contaminates the Body for Twenty Years …
...

(About 15,000 Gulf War Veterans have died from all causes, including auto accidents, old age, etc in the 18 years since Desert Shield began -- this is far less than the number that is being bandied about in this article and none of them died from exposure to DU - DU has not killed anyone unless they were in an armored vehicle that was attacked deliberately or by mistake (friendly fire) with a DU kinetic energy penetrator munition.

The above statement, while made by an OpEdNews contributor (and even that implies some degree of journalistic accumen), is not true and not supported by the VA report that is cited in the article. They just expect that no one will actually read the citation, especially when it is not even current and the web page that is cited has been moved.

To learn about DU, what it really is, what it really does and more importantly what it does not do, go to www.depletedcranium.com and watch the dinner video - or come to DUStory in Yahoo Groups, Message 76 has a number of links to factual sites all over the world -

DUStory-owner@yahoogroups.com

Realize that the battle for promotion and opposition of technology has others  issues related to it. In America, particularly it is important how people were killed and how, etc. For us  what matters is that such a technology regardless of whether it has 'armoured vehicle' borne people getting killed or people in the open getting killed only means that people are getting killed. Violence does not have a measuring scale for me. But, for  some people I realize, death is different for different people,  death of an American is not the same as death of let's say some in India or Iraq or Afghanistan.  Though the comment does not carry any person attached nor really produces any evidence for whatever it claims beyond rhetoric and may probably originate from PR agencies working incognito, I am re-producing it.  It is of no consequence for my argument in India. We have a long history of not knowing how to handle our waste. I am also reproducing a response from Nyla sent to me independently on our civil waste management issues.  
 These statistics of death, illness and impending doom are of least consequence.

Given that India's sensibilities are so blunt that we have no aversion to municipal waste and carry on with life taking "it" "literally", in our stride.

We also do not value life, there is no attention to safety component that I can see in any public space or facility: be it road/ rail/air travel, public buildings,construction sites,schools, market place .........

So, also with nuclear waste, as and when it happens we will carry on with our routine all important chores of insignificance like TV watching, SMS, idling around ... albeit our near and dear ones, neighbours, friends and countrymen will be dropping down dead like poisoned flies around us. The lucky ones going fast, the unlucky following a slow, treacherous, hair drooping in clumps, retching in public, skin wrinkled, eye popping and what not path !

If we cannot handle our civil waste, how can we manage to handle our nuclear energy waste any better? How will we ensure that radioactive DU (immaterial of the number of Americans it may or maynot have killed) is safe guarded from militants and terrorists, when very frequently Maoists invade and take away the government arms from police stations? do we have adequate knowledge of such consequences? these are our questions as we are in transit of being a major nuclear power state.  I had originally received it from a source that is reliable to begin with and had reproduced as yet another of aspects that we need to be aware of. 
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While India awaits the NSG and supply of the much awaited raw material that would eternally solve its energy crisis, here are certain other consequences of the nuclear raw material albeit in the form of residual uranium used against the 'enemy'.

"... "More than ten times the amount of radiation released during atmospheric testing [of nuclear bombs] has been released from DU weaponry since 1991," said Leuren Moret, a U.S. nuclear scientist. "The genetic future of the Iraqi people, for the most part, is destroyed. The environment now is completely radioactive." Because DU has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, the Middle East will, for all practical purposes, be radioactive forever. ..."

The use of depleted uranium (DU) munitions by the U.S. military may lead to a death toll far higher than that from the nuclear bombs dropped at the end of World War II.

DU is a waste product of uranium enrichment, containing approximately one-third the radioactive isotopes of naturally occurring uranium. Because of its high density, it is used in armor- or tank-piercing ammunition. It has been fired by the U.S. and British militaries in the two Iraq wars and in Afghanistan, as well as by NATO forces in Kosovo and the Israeli military in Lebanon and Palestine.

Inhaled or ingested DU particles are highly toxic, and DU has been classified as an illegal weapon of mass destruction by the United Nations.

The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority has estimated that 50 tons of DU dust from the first Gulf War could lead to 500,000 cancer deaths by the year 2000. To date, a total of 2,000 tons have been generated in the Middle East.

In contrast, approximately 250,000 lives were claimed by the explosions and radiation released by the nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

"More than ten times the amount of radiation released during atmospheric testing [of nuclear bombs] has been released from DU weaponry since 1991," said Leuren Moret, a U.S. nuclear scientist. "The genetic future of the Iraqi people, for the most part, is destroyed. The environment now is completely radioactive."

Because DU has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, the Middle East will, for all practical purposes, be radioactive forever.

The two U.S. wars in Iraq "have been nuclear wars because they have scattered nuclear material across the land, and people, particularly children, are condemned to die of malignancy and congenital disease essentially for eternity," said anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott.

Since the first Gulf War, the rate of birth defects and childhood cancer in Iraq has increased by seven times. More than 35 percent (251,000) of U.S. Gulf War veterans are dead or on permanent medical disability, compared with only 400 who were killed during the conflict...[read on]

Depleted Uranium Contaminates the Body for Twenty Years

Depleted Uranium Shells Used by US Military Worse Than Nuclear Weapons