OMNI WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION NUCLEAR, CHEMICAL, BIOLOGICAL WAR ANTHOLOGY #4. October 9, 2022

OMNI

WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

NUCLEAR, CHEMICAL, BIOLOGICAL WAR ANTHOLOGY #4.  

 October 9, 2022

Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology.

  (#1 July 16, 2012; #2, 9-7-13; #3, July 4, 2021).

omnicenter.org/donate/  

 

CONTENTS #4

 

WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

   And US Colleges
NUCLEAR WEAPONS

OMNI Hiroshima and Nagasaki Remembrance

Abolition of Nuclear Weapons International Campaign

US Latest War Budget
UAF

CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS

CHEMICAL WEAPONS
Art Hobson.  “Chemical weapons, and war.”  (WWI).  A poem for these times.

George Paulson.  WWII US Mustard Gas.

Veterans for Peace Reports  Agent Orange.
US & Vietnamese Victims of Agent Orange.

Fifty Years of US Chemical War in S. E. Asia.

BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS

US Germ Warfare

US BioWarfare

 

TEXTS #4

WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION and US Colleges

“Students Are Pushing US Colleges to Sever Ties With Military-Industrial Complex.”  Truthout (11-8-21). Ngakiya Camara & Kya Chen.  November 7, 2021.  Students and young people are witnesses to the ways in which U.S. education is deeply complicit with war and militarism.

 

NUCLEAR WEAPONS

OMNI publishes several newsletters/ anthologies advocating the abolition of nuclear weapons; two are:
OMNI Hiroshima and Nagasaki Remembrance  http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/08/omni-hiroshima-nagasaki-remembrance-and.html  

Abolition of Nuclear Weapons International Campaign

Ukraine War and Nuclear Threats

UAF

Department of War’s New War Budget

"The Day After" film screening and discussion online (or earlier YouTube) APCJ, WAND.  Hiroshima annual commemoration at the Promenade in Hillcrest, Little Rock; Union of Concerned Scientists. Commemorate the atomic bombings in Hiroshima & Nagasaki; Coalition for Peace Action.  Be Active Today to Prevent Being Radioactive Tomorrow!

Contents OMNI Nuclear Weapons Abolition Anthology #21, March 13, 2015.  http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2015/03/nuclear-weapons-abolition-newsletter-21.html

 

UKRAINE WAR

Dear James,
Twice recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened to use nuclear weapons in the war against Ukraine.
This is a horrifying act of nuclear blackmail. The stakes could not be higher. The use of even a single nuclear weapon, regardless of its size, would cause grievous human and environmental harm. It could also set in motion a rapid escalation to planetary annihilation.
What Congress and the President do next matters greatly. These threats deserve thorough condemnation. But more importantly, they require a steady response of de-escalation that pulls us back from the threat of nuclear warfare.

Tell your members of Congress that more diplomacy is the best way to protect human lives.

Write Congress

Dialogue with Russia is not capitulation or appeasement. It is, in fact, the only sane response to the threat of nuclear brinksmanship. Congress has a moral responsibility to de-escalate tensions and prevent the use of nuclear weapons to preserve the environment and all humanity.

In the face of nuclear threats, the world must work together to deter disaster. Urge Congress to keep open the lines of diplomacy and avoid further escalation of the war in Ukraine.

Sincerely,  Allen Hester, Legislative Representative
Nuclear Disarmament and Pentagon Spending, FCNL

P.S. Read more analysis about the nuclear threat from Russia.

The U. of Arkansas, Fayetteville, sponsors  a small nuclear weapons project.  The OMNI Center for Peace, Justice, and Ecology has tried unsuccessfully to gain access to its funding, operation, etc. via FOI. 

 

Many more billions for war & nuclear weapons

"A Megaton of Waste”

The White House’s new defense budget lavishes money on America’s nuclear weapons program in the name of competing with China and Russia. It’s totally unnecessary."

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/03/bidens-new-defense-budget-wastes-a-crazy-amount-of-money-on-new-nuclear-weapons.html

 

CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS

 

CHEMICAL WEAPONS

See:  https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/07/omni-us-chemical-war-newsletter-3

 

Art Hobson.  “Chemical weapons, and war.”  (WWI).

A poem for these times: 

 ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ or, to give the phrase in full: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, Latin for ‘it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country’ (patria is where we get our word ‘patriotic’ from). The phrase originated in the Roman poet Horace, but in ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’, Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) famously rejects this idea.

For Owen, who had experienced the horrors of trench warfare and a gas attack, there was nothing sweet, and nothing fitting, about giving one’s life for one’s country. Focusing in particular on one moment in the First World War, when Owen and his platoon are attacked with poison gas, ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ is a studied analysis of suffering and perhaps the most famous anti-war poem ever written.

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind. 

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est 
Pro patria mori.

WWII in Europe: Mustard Gas

The subject of chemical weapons is now in the news, with US claims that the Russians may use them in a "false flag" operation.  This issue of chemical weapons reminded me of a relatively unknown incident that took place in World War II.  Although chemical weapons--poison gas--had been prohibited, and neither side had used them, the US nevertheless authorized the manufacture of poison gas, mustard gas to be precise.  The US then shipped this mustard gas to the Mediterranean theatre of combat and the ship carrying this lethal load,  the SS John Harvey, docked in the Italian port city of Bari. Before the ship could be unloaded, however, a German air raid scored a direct hit on the ship, blowing it, its lethal contents, and everyone on board sky high.  The number of Allied dead was eventually established; the number of dead Italian civilians never was.  Doctors treating the survivors started to figure out rather quickly what they were dealing with, but the incident was hushed up.  There were too many witnesses, however, to keep it from coming out, and the US eventually admitted that one of its ships had indeed been carrying a load of poison gas, but added that it would only have been used in retaliation for a first-use of poison gas by the  Germans. 

Peace,  George Paulson  3-13-22 

 

Vietnam War

AGENT ORANGE

“VFP Agent Orange Delegation in Vietnam” by Michael Uhl.  Veterans for Peace Newsletter (Summer 2010).   VFP and VVAW have kept us aware of US use of the chemical weapons of mass destruction, Agent Orange, by repeated visits to Vietnam to witness and report the consequences on generations of Vietnamese.

 

Demand aid for US & Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange

Greta, World BEYOND War  11-6-21
Dear Dick, We're demanding that the U.S. government accept responsibility for the harm caused by Agent Orange — the toxic chemical used as a weapon of war on the people and land of southeast Asia from 1961-1971 — and provide assistance to American veterans, Vietnamese and Vietnamese-American victims, and their children. For the past six decades, millions of people sprayed directly by Agent Orange as well as their descendants have suffered from various cancers, birth defects, and other deadly diseases. Contaminated areas in Vietnam continue to poison the food, soil, water, and wildlife. It's far past time for the U.S. government to address the poisonous legacy of the American war in Vietnam. Join us in telling Congress to pass H.R. 3518: Victims of Agent Orange Relief Act of 2021. This May, Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA) introduced H.R. 3518, the Victims of Agent Orange Relief Act, saying: “The United States has a moral responsibility to compensate the victims of the Agent Orange campaign. In the same way we are focused on beginning to repair the damage of systemic racism in the form of reparations, and the war on drugs with restorative justice, it is also our responsibility to try and atone for this disgraceful campaign during the Vietnam War.” H.R. 3518 calls on the U.S. government to: · Fund significant assistance to Vietnamese Agent Orange victims · Clean up the lands and eco-systems contaminated by Agent Orange in Vietnam · Provide additional assistance and health care for U.S. veterans' children affected by Agent Orange · Address the health needs of affected Vietnamese-Americans · Require the Department of Veterans Affairs to continue to conduct research on the health effects of Agent Orange Tell your U.S. Representative in Congress to co-sponsor this important bill to help alleviate those suffering from Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam and the U.S.! Thank you for taking action, Greta Zarro, Organizing Director World BEYOND War, greta@worldbeyondwar.org Donate to support our people-powered movement for peace.

 

Lasting environmental and health impacts of U.S. chemical warfare in Southeast Asia – 50 years on

Editor.   Mronlne.org (11-13-21). 

The Vietnam War (1955-1975) is known to the Vietnamese as the “American War,” or the “War Against the Americans to Save the Nation.”

 

 

 

BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS

 

GERM WARFARE

Ross, Sherwood.  “America the Beautiful’s Germ Warfare Rush.”  The Humanist (July-Aug. 2007), 13-18.  “…what we have taking shape in the United States today is the costliest, most grandiose germ warfare research program ever attempted.”  sherwoodrl@yahoo.com

Wuhan Red Herring? While COVID-19 Origins Remain Obscure, for Decades the West has been Creating Deadly Viruses for BioWarfare By Gwen D'Arcangelis on Sep 29, 2021 09:00 am From the U.S. Right to the U.S. Left, We Need to Reorient our Attention to What Our Own Government and Scientists Have Been Doing in Germ Research and Germ Warfare Labs. At the end of August, the U.S. intelligence community released its report on the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The findings, however, left us in the same place we started—with no definitive answer as to whether the virus arose naturally or from a lab leak. The question of the virus’s origins has been intensely politicized since the start of the pandemic. Most notably, the U.S. right has pushed the Wuhan lab leak theory to advance a hawkish stance towards China—with tales of inept Chinese researchers or worse, sinister Chinese bio-weaponeers turning coronaviruses into germ weapons. These assertions are part of a growing China-as-threat narrative peddled by U.S. and European press and officials, and conveniently serve to divert blame […] The post Wuhan Red Herring? While COVID-19 Origins Remain Obscure, for Decades the West has been Creating Deadly Viruses for BioWarfare appeared first on CovertAction Magazine.     CONTENTS Chemical and Biological Warfare #3                   See WMD Weapons of Mass Destruction   CHEMICAL WAR                         Gerry Sloan, “National Insecurity” (poem)                         Nadya Williams, Doc. Film, “The People vs. Agent Orange”                         Wardah Amir. Holding Chemical War Users Accountable                         UNSC v. All Uses of CW                         Raf Casert, “US. Russia Clash. . . .”                         Bill Fletcher, Jr. “Agent Orange and the Continuing Vietnam War.”                         Liebelson, Chemical Weapons in Syria and Going to War     BIOLOGICAL WAR                         BAS, “21ST Century Perspectives” (7-21-20)                         Michael Pembroke, Korea, chapter 12                           NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND RADIOACTIVITY DEPLETED URANIUM                         Ulson Gunnar, “America’s Love Affair”                         Henes, Uranium Pollution in Tennessee Newsletters #1 AND #2       END WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION: NUCLEAR, CHEMICAL, AND BIOLOGICAL WARFARE NEWSLETTER #4