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The Queensland-based Invasive Species Council has assessed weed risks posed by 18 biofuel crops currently proposed as solutions to cutting greenhouse emissions, wrote science and environment reporter Rosslyn Beeby in The Canberra Times (4/10/2007, p.11).

Noxious weeds being considered: The Council warned cultivation of energy crops on a large scale would cause "grave environmental damage", deplete water resources and inflict high costs on agricultural productivity. The report, by best-selling Feral Future author Tim Low and conser­vationist Dr Carol Booth, said seven plants currently being considered as promising biofuel crops were already banned as noxious weeds in parts of Australia. Two biofuel species – giant reed and Spartina – being hailed as "miracle crops" were listed by the World Conservation Union among the world’s top 100 worst invasive weed species.

Solving one problem by creating another: "Australia should not try to solve one environmental problem by cre­ating another. These plants have no proven value as biofuel crops but bad reputations as weeds," Low said. One of the highest risk biofuels – the drought-tolerant tropical succu­lent Jatropha – had been promoted as a crop that could be grown without irrigation on 20 million hectares of "marginal land" in Australia, but was closely related to bellyache bush, one of the worst farm weeds in northern Australia.

The Canberra Times, 4/10/2007, p. 11

By Oct. 29, 70 per cent of U.S. air strikes were in support of the Northern Alliance armed forces, most guided by the U.S. Special Forces on the ground. The MQ-1 Predator drone with Hellfire missiles was operating over Taliban forces, directing air attacks and launching missiles.

By Nov. 5 the number of individual air missions was up to 120 per day, adding F-16 and

F-15 fighter-bombers out of U.S. bases in Kuwait.

The turning point in the war to oust the Taliban government came on Nov. 6 at Mazar-e Sharif, a key city in the northern plains. Attack aircraft rained down hundreds of MK82 500-lb bombs. B-52 bombers used carpet bombing to kill thousands of Taliban forces. It was here that U.S. forces dropped the first BLU-82 Daisy Cutter bomb, each weighing 15,000 lbs, producing devastation over a 600-yard radius. All the weapons used by the U.S. air attack included depleted uranium shielding.

Depleted uranium (DU) is produced during the uranium enrichment process. The U-235 used to produce fuel for reactors generating electricity is removed, leaving the U-238 isotope. The material is extremely dense and increases the penetration ability of weapons; it is used to coat shells and warheads on missiles and bombs. On impact, the shell, with its uranium and traces of americium and plutonium, vaporizes and becomes very tiny particles of radioactive dust. When it is inhaled it can stay in the body, emitting radiation.

The DU used in U.S. weapons comes from the uranium mines in Saskatchewan.

In the 1991 Gulf war, DU was delivered almost exclusively with shells from tanks and ammunition used by aircraft. It is used in all armour-piercing ordnance. In the wars in Bosnia in 1995 and Kosovo in 1999, NATO allies added DU missiles and bunker busting bombs. Thousands of DU bombs and missiles have been used by U.S. forces in the Afghan and Iraq wars. A typical bunker bomb contains 1.5 tonnes of depleted uranium.

In August 2003 Scott Peterson of the Christian Science Monitor used a Geiger counter to test several sites in Baghdad near where bunker-buster bombs and missiles had fallen. He found radiation readings that were between 1,000 and 1,900 times higher than normal background radiation readings. DU weapons are still being extensively used in Iraq and Afghanistan.

After the 1991 Gulf War, birth defects and leukemia rose dramatically in the areas around Basra where these weapons were used. By 2003, the U.S. Defense Department admitted that over 200,000 Gulf War veterans had filed for compensation for death, illness or disabilities.

The veterans refer to this as "Gulf War Syndrome." In the first Gulf War, the U.S.-led coalition suffered 148 deaths.

Since then 8,000 veterans of this war have experienced early death.

In 1996 the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution declaring that DU weapons were illegal "weapons of mass destruction." In 2002, the U.N. Human Rights Convention passed a resolution urging a ban on the use of any DU weapons. We will have to wait to find out the impact of these weapons on the people of Afghanistan and the men and women in the U.S., Canadian and NATO armed forces.

– Warnock is a Regina political economist and author.

This is an extract from his forthcoming book Afghanistan: The Creation of a Failed State, to be published by Fernwood in 2008

Mungo’s defence of Garrett, as much as Garrett’s desertion of principle itself, proves that the Alternative Liberal Party is now a creature of the establishment. The ALP must, according to Mungo, compromise its principles to gain power. If that means selling workers down the drain, Uranium to warring states, or our hospitals, schools and water to international corporations, then so be it.

When the Liberal Party self destructs after this election, Mungo and other apparatchiks of the establishment will find themselves facing a far more formidable opposition; a passionate and principled movement that is ready to govern on behalf of the people and the environment that supports us.

The choice for the future is stark. We either vote for the establishment parties that will sacrifice us all on the altar of economic growth or for the emerging parties that recognise we must learn to live better to survive.

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