Blowin' In The Wind
In Chapter Six of Psyclone a character involved in what he knows is a “war that was primarily a business run by men in suits in public office, men engaged in illegal arms dealing, international drug trafficking, slavery and paedophile prostitution” asks himself the question “How many times could a man turn his head and pretend that he just didn’t see?” The question for those of you that don’t recognise it was asked by Bob Dylan in his song Blowin’ In The Wind.
Blowin’ In The Wind is also the title of a documentary film by Australian filmmaker, David Bradbury, which has shocked, angered and surprised audiences since its release. The subject of the film is the secret treaty that allows the U.S. military to train and test its weaponry on Australian soil. Bradbury reveals that Iraqi babies are being born with major birth defects and asks whether Australians living downwind from the military testing ranges will be next.
The U.S. military has an abysmal track record in other parts of the world where it has trained and tested its chemical and nuclear weapons. Citizens of Vieques, Puerto Rico, are outraged that the United States has used depleted uranium and other carcinogenic weapons on their island. Cancer rates amongst its children are 256% higher than on surrounding islands. The use of depleted uranium by the US military in its weaponry is a cause of grave concern to the Australian filmmaker. He concludes that the term 'depleted' uranium is a misnomer. Its use in the first and second Gulf wars, in Afghanistan and the Balkans has put us all in the nuclear firing line forever. The half-life of depleted uranium is 4.5 billion years. Bradbury seeks further insights from world authorities on depleted uranium and from Australian servicemen suffering the effects of DU poisoning from the first Gulf war. Armed with information about this new nuclear weapon, that cuts through tanks and thick concrete bunkers like a hot knife through butter, David Bradbury dares to expose the moral complicity of Australia in this war-crime, where uranium from Australia is now ending up on distant battlefields infecting unborn children and civilians. When he discovers a deformed baby that was born last year right next to the US military training and testing grounds at Shoalwater Bay, he asks whether the chickens might now have come home to roost.
Also mentioned in Psyclone is a ‘buried report that shows that uranium aerosols have been blown up here on wind currents from the war zone resulting in concentrations of uranium over Reading high enough to alert the Environment Agency…” A PDF version of the Green Audit study featuring that report, ‘Did the use of Uranium weapons in Gulf War 2 result in contamination of Europe? Evidence from the measurements of the Atomic Weapons Establishment, Aldermaston, Berkshire, UK’, by Chris Busby and Saoirse Morgan, can be downloaded from here.
