US families of dead raise $600,000 for Fallujah refugees

LOS ANGELES, Dec 23 (AFP) - Families of US troops killed in the offensive on the Iraqi city of Fallujah are to travel to Jordan next week with 600,000 dollars worth of humanitarian aid for refugees of the attack.

The November assault on Fallujah left 71 US military dead, according to the families, and the Iraqi government said more than 2,000 Iraqis were killed.

"This delegation is a way for me to express my sympathy and support for the Iraqi people," said Rosa Suarez of Escondido in California.

"The Iraq war took away my son's life, and it has taken away the lives of so many innocent Iraqis. It is time to stop the killing and to help the children of Iraq," she added in a statement released by the families.

The families said with peace groups, physicians' organisations and relatives of the September 11, 2001 attacks victims, they raised 100,000 dollars in an internet appeal. Humanitarian groups such as Middle East Children's Alliance and Operation USA contributed 500,000 dollars worth of medical supplies.

The families are to fly to Amman on December 26 and hand over the supplies to humanitarian and medical workers there.

If we put those people in charge, we'd have the hearts and minds in no time flat.

Ohio electoral fight becomes 'biggest deal since Selma' as GOP stonewalls.

The Ohio Supreme Court certified attorney appearances today. In other words, they took the case of Moss vs. Bush (complaint; PDF 1.2 MB). Kos has these good threads: this first or second front-page story on Ohio in about 40 days, and discussion with video footage of voter supression.

Ohio outlawed racially inequitable voting facilities in 1936.

Business Week writes, "Alternative Energy Gets Real"

Pricey oil and gas are heating up industrial interest in renewable sources....

Often the pros are divided on just which are the leading companies. In fact, today's renewable business is reminiscent of the computer industry in the early 1980s, "when no one knew who the winners would be," says Carsten Henningsen, chairman of Portfolio 21, a mutual fund that invests in environmentally conscious companies. That's why many analysts and fund managers recommend investing in a basket of companies. "People should try to pick companies positioned to be winners and get enough of them," says Henningsen.

Wind might produce the biggest winners. A U.S. tax credit of 1.8 cents per kilowatt-hour is in place until 2006, and 19 states now require electricity producers to generate part of their power from green sources. Energy information and services company Platts, like Business Week, part of The McGraw-Hill Companies, expects that most of the new sources will be wind. One beneficiary could be Denmark's Vestas Wind Systems, the world's biggest turbine manufacturer, which is listed in Copenhagen and trades over the counter in the U.S. "It is profitable, and there is more certainty and a more favorable political climate surrounding wind than solar or hydrogen," says Henningsen.

As an added bonus, it's not denominated in U.S. dollars.

It seems those backed by our "full faith and credit" are standing up to Bush.

Japan is warning the White House that there will be 'enormous capital flight' from the dollar if the Bush administration maintains its laissez-faire approach to the mounting currency crisis. Tokyo fears that Japan's strongest economic recovery in a decade could be derailed by the sudden appreciation in the yen against the greenback.

The criticism of President Bush's inaction, by a senior member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, will be taken as a veiled threat that Japan could start to sell off its multi-billion-dollar holdings of US Treasuries. 'The Japanese government is going to ask for a strong dollar policy; if it continues to fall, there would be enormous capital flight from the dollar,' said Kaoru Yosano, chairman of the LDP's policy council, adding that Japan would be calling on its fellow G7 governments to demand the US deal with the massive fiscal deficit that has helped to prompt the dollar's decline.

Yosano's remarks echoed a warning from a senior Japanese Ministry of Finance official that if the US does not push up interest rates to make the dollar more attractive, 'the one-way sentiment on the dollar will have a negative impact on the flow of capital into the US.' He added that Japan is urging its European counterparts to join a campaign of coordinated currency-market intervention, saying: 'If the dollar is depreciating, we should have coordinated action: that has already been communicated to my European counterparts....

Japan is taking a double hit from the decline in the dollar because the Chinese renminbi is pegged to the US currency, so Japanese exports are simultaneously becoming sharply dearer in both their major markets. Takeo Fukui, the chairman of Honda, admits, for example, that an appreciation of 1 yen against the dollar, if it lasts for more than three months, knocks 10 billion yen off the carmaker's profits.

Reuters:

Surgeons who play video games three hours a week have 37 percent fewer errors and accomplish tasks 27 percent faster

Hm. If "Super Monkey Ball" is good, I bet a decent simulator would be a whole lot better.

But on the other hand, a good simulator might be more like work than play, with all the inherent stress and lack of appeal.

A "Jim Crow" disenfranchisement analysis of the number of active voters based on historical turnouts compared to actual voters, in light of precinct voting machine allocation in Ohio, should lead to more than 130,000 additional votes for Kerry from discouraged voters in overloaded precincts statewide. Based on a rough extrapolation from the number of problems reported to VoteProtect.org, and the identified disparity in Franklin county (+1.9% for Kerry if the machines had been distributed based on active voters per precinct) then since there were five times as many problems reported in Cuyahoga County then we might predict +9% for Kerry in the Cuyahoga County vote, or 39,000 additional votes, and at least 22,000 in Deleware county, too. Extrapolating statewide, from Franklin County's results at the level of 9,971 votes per 246 incidents, we can predict 40.5 votes for each reported incident, or 137,500 more votes for Kerry.

The recount will include 93,000 "spoiled ballots" which have never been counted.

At present, Kerry is trailing by less than 119,000 votes, so he has won by more than 10,000.

Other than the well-understood problem of armor shortages, and the less well-undestood problem of poison gas from burning uranium, oh, and that thing with the torture, and the lies about WMD programs, what do you suppose, "openly eliminating anyone - doctors, clerics, journalists - who dares to count the bodies," does to troop morale? More info here and here. One would think the makers of war more likely to remember the reasons for the laws of war, not less likely.

Speaking of remembrance of old laws, some people still remember Jim Crow, and his new friend Strom Diebold. Never give up!

Dwight Eisenhower, a man who intimately knew both the military and government having served in top capacities in both, warned in a speech on January 18, 1953, "The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without."

more here

How is the fact that Republicans spent more than a third of a century lying dirty, poison lies to keep tobacco legal help me spread the truth about depleted uranium? Do I get the benefit of the doubt, and if so, exactly how do I go about claiming it?

Is a Helen Thomas column going to help get through these days? Is a Vanity Fair article going to help much? I doubt it.

I have an equal confidence, about 75%, on the interval of 500,000 to 50,000,000 people so far who have shortened their expected lifespan by half or more, because of cancer alone, from uranium combustion product inhalation or secondary food chain contamination. That's not even counting the birth defects. I'm waiting for some more accurate information on aortic valve stenosis and hydroxyl radical mutations to provide the correct count.

The U.K. has already ruled a decision on the question in February of this year [First Award for Depleted Uranium Poisoning Claim, Gulf Veterans Hail Uranium Poisoning Ruling, BBC background.] There has been only more damning evidence in the time since February, and nothing to indicate they got it wrong.

We will be lucky if there are any chordate fish in the Indian ocean thirty years from now. The people who might want to eat such fish, however, will not be so lucky.

Iraq is now outsourcing to the U.S., and so the circle is complete:

I need in excess of 50 people ASAP. And I need them ready to deploy within 7 days or less of signing a contract. These positions are not going to wait. If they are not filled, they will simply be cancelled. The initial deployments are 3 months, but based on performance will be extended into semi-perm....

f you are currently in-country (Iraq), or in-theater (south west Asia/Gulf), and are completing a contract or want to switch to something new - I need to hear from you ASAP. If you already have experience in Iraq, all the better. If you have experience in the ME/NA region, great.

The standard comp package is base salary (negotiable but calculated off your most recent base pay) plus 25% HDP, and 25% Post Differential (both non-cumm and calculated off the base), 5 days R&R every 3 months (we'll fly you to point of origin or equiv) and 15 business days a year annual leave (same procedure). Lodging and M&IE are covered, so no perdiems unless in transit in Kuwait or Amman. Lodging and work is in the GZ....

SEND ... YOUR CV/RESUME. NOW.

Here's a partial listing of where I need to place people:

IRMO (ops mgt office and Info center)

Ministries of: Interior; Justice; Planning and Develpoment Cooperation; Utilities Sectors.

I wonder who thinks mutating their potential kids is worth a 50% raise above ordinary pay?

Someone asked if there was proof that D.U. accumulated in the testes. Here it is: "A review of the effects of uranium and depleted uranium exposure on reproduction and fetal development," Toxicology and Industrial Health, 17(5-10): 180-191 (June 2001.)

This one is most interesting for the fact that they admit they haven't assayed the uranium combustion products. That doesn't stop them from showing how they can travel tens of kilometers: "Modeling the Dispersion of Depleted Uranium Aerosol," Health Physics 84(4):538-544 (April 2003.)

This is going to be with us for generations, messing with the genes of anyone descended from an exposed vet.

More in the directory.

Check out the inflection point at 3/25/04. Obviously someone's comedic delievery needs some practice in front of the mirror. Looks like that slope has returned. Only a few dozen Ohio and federal judges can help at this point.

Republicans have killed more U.S. troops than any Iraqis have.

[UPDATE: Here is antidote research and a lengthy medical bibliography.]

Dear Ms. Clayton:

Thank you again for speaking with me today.

Here, again, are excerpts from my most recent emails on the subject. Please do not delete the following information. If someone asks for it, please use your best judgement as to whether it still requires medical review.

I have omitted the PDF file from the attachments, but I am told that I will have a hardcopy soon. Please reply by email when you get this message.

Sincerely,
James Salsman

Sadly, uranyl nitrate is also used in fuel reprocessing, which back in the '60s-'80s era was a much more sensitive topic than it is now. I have a feeling that some of the important subjects having to do with detection ended up classified and/or maybe in the patent literature, which I haven't checked yet. Maybe toxicology subjects also did.

I want to go through the antidotes before I go back to detection methods....

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: UO2(NO3)2 is not just a combustion product (was Re: FW: FOIA Request)
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 06:24:08 -0800
From: James Salsman
To: Diana dot Hemphill, at se. amedd dot army. mil
[cc excerpts:] ranekn, at anl. gov, hairemj, at ornl. gov,
biro. dot susan, at epa. gov
References:
E91587EA968C3444A90B27229BEEBF0E28494A@amedmlsermc132.amed.ds.army.mil

Dear Ms. Hemphill:

Thank you for your kind reply. I spent Wednesday evening and
Thursday afternoon at Stanford's chemistry library. I have good
news and bad news. I place this message in the public domain.
I ask that you respond to anyone else who files a similar Freedom
of Information Act Request with a copy of this message.

[Please see subsequent js7a journal entry, "Everything You Wish You Didn't Know About Uranium" for the portion of this message elided here.]

There are lots of different detection methods, and I am still
working on trying to determine which is most cost-effective.
The _Gmelin Handbook_, Title U, Supl. Vol. D4, "Cation Exchange
-- Chromatography," has a wealth of detection information
which I only skimmed because I decided to focus on antidotes.
Again, a citation search on the Gmelin citations is sure to
produce plenty of good resources.

More to follow when I get back from the medical library.

Sincerely,
James Salsman

> December 2, 2004
>
> Dear Mr. Salsman:
>
> Attached please find our letter in response to your Freedom of
> Information Act request concerning depleted uranium
> combustion products and aerosol detection methods. A copy of this
> letter also has been mailed to you today.
>
...
>
> Sincerely,
> Diana Hemphill
> Technical Information Officer
> U.S. Army Aeromedical Research Laboratory
>
> <<FOIA.pdf>>

[attachment omitted: no responsive documents, 1 page, as from D.o.E. and all inquiries to national labs yet.]

I suppose you are all wondering what a polyaminopoly alkylphosphonic antidote is about now. Well, it's like a little ionophore machine with a claw, which redirects bad stuff out of the blood.

I predict Noam Chomsky's students will announce one that eats sugar and sends an RFID signal when they are full by this time next week.

Then again, we could all be doomed to unavoidable mutations about five generations out. Lets err on the side of caution (and cations) this time, shall we? Get it right with the left chirality! New: no longer sinister!

Apparently, we've got:

Warren County lockdown
Perry County counting discrepencies
Perry County registration peculiarities
Unusual results in Butler County
Unusual results in Cuyahoga County
Spoiled Ballots
Franklin County overvote
Miami County vote discrepency
Mahoning County machine problems
Machine shortages
Invalidated provisional ballots
Directive to reject voter registration forms

Plus, Bush and his dad have killed more U.S. troops than all the Iraqis combined. Pass it on.