[Peace-discuss] They've sent Helbig after me

[David Johnson]

They've sent Helbig after me

Felicity Arbuthnot

Description:
http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/media/du_collage2.JPG

>From  <http://www.theecologist.org/> Ecologist Online

Roger Helbig, a man with an unhealthy obsession: he believes that depleted
uranium (DU) waste from the nuclear fuel cycle, which is used in munitions
and bullets - is safe.

I received an unsolicited email from him, entitled 'The Real Doug Rokke' in
response to an article I had written for The Brussels Tribunal. It read: 'I
see that you have been taken in by Doug Rokke, who really does not know much
about anything, let alone depleted uranium. It is sad that a Phd has so
little real knowledge. I also see you claim to be a journalist. What
newspapers, radio stations or TV stations have you actually worked for, or
are you like Bob Nichols, a self-described journalist with no actual
journalistic experience?'

His tirade continued: 'Rokke's military records and part of his PhD thesis
are attached. You will note he has no real expertise in depleted uranium and
his claims about the Middle East are pure fantasy, yet you inflame the Arab
street with them. You ought to learn more about what is before telling the
world all about it.' 

I had written in the article: 'Depleted uranium from shells fired by British
and American forces during the Balkan wars has found its way into the food
chain and has been detected amongst the civilian populations of Kosovo and
Bosnia. A study of the local population in three locations in the two Balkan
regions has found samples of the highly radioactive particles in the urine
of all those tested.'

Helbig had highlighted the excerpt, commenting: 'This is pure bullshit and
you know it. Where are the actual test results? I presume you don't choose
to read the United Nations Environmental Programme report - it is only about
300 pages, well documented instead of scientific myth!' 

Lieutenant Colonel Roger Helbig, USAF, Rtd (it appears) is one of a small
Pentagon-inspired group devoted to denigrating and undermining the efforts
of those drawing attention to the dangers of DU, which three UN
Sub-Committees have designated a weapon of mass destruction. Rokke is just
the latest in a long line of Helbig targets. Journalist Bob Nichols, Project
Censored award winner for his DU coverage, writes, 'Individuals on web sites
throughout the United States have complained about the abusive and
aggressive actions of an Air Force Lieut. Colonel named Roger Helbig'. 

David Lindorff, another award winner and the (UK) Observer's David Rose,
have also suffered a barage of abuse for stories exposing the dangers of DU,
which poisons the environment, thus entire food chain regionally where used,
for four-and-a-half billion years. 

Nichols cites Helbig 'attacking hundreds of sites and harrassing web
moderators.' Informative DU sites (such as
<mailto:www.Pandoraproject at yahoogroups.com>
www.Pandoraproject at yahoogroups.com and  <http://www.notinkansas.us>
www.notinkansas.us - the latter's meticulously researched alerts included
the chilling warning of US military in Iraq reagrding bathing in shower
water taken from Tigris river: 'GI's Beware Radioactive Showers') are also
victims. Researcher, John Ervin, posted on  <http://www.apfn.net>
www.apfn.net: 'They've already sent Lt. Colonel Roger Helbig after me.'

Leuren Moret, President of Scientists for Indigenous Peoples and City of
Berkeley (Ca) Environmental Commissioner states: 'Helbig has been harassing
me nonstop for two to three years.' Moret travels the world warning on the
dangers of DU, working with a group of independent scientists
(www.radiation.org) and submitted a paper on DU to a UN Sub-Committee, one
of the ones which led to DUs designation as a weapon of mass destruction.

The picture Helbig paints of his latest target Rokke is unrecognisable from
the truth. Major (Dr) Doug Rokke, Former Director of the US Army Depleted
Uranium Project (www.traprockpeace.org), principal author of the Pentagon
regulations and procedural guidelines (US Army Regulation 700-48 And US Army
PAM 700-48) on the dangers and handling of DU affected areas: tanks,
structures, terrain, equipment and personnel, civilian and military.

Rokke, whose team led the (impossible) clean up in Kuwait in 1991 after the
first Gulf War, was so horrified by what he found, he finally spoke out - at
cost. Sick from DU poisoning himself, he has suffered ongoing 'physical,
psychological and economic threats' from Helbig and other US government
representatives since.

Rokke has crucial, credible, hands-on knowledge, thus, writes David
Lindorff, the effort to discredit him, label him 'a fraud', demote him to
'Lt.' by Helbig, has been vicious and tenacious.

This is the same Doug Rokke whose Army evaluation report, dated July 30th
1994, cites the then Captain Rokke as being Project Director and primary
technical expert and specialist adviser to US Army major commands, the US
Army Chemical School and contractors during training, development and test
implementation. In 1995 he was cited for a 'meritorious service' medal, for
work on DU. He left the army when none of his health warning reached the
troops.

Rokke and another former Pentagon advisor, Dr Asav Durakovic, whose CV and
list of peer reviewed papers runs to 52 pages, Canadian expert Professor
Hari Sharma (who wrote to NATO and world leaders of the dangers of DU), Dr
Garth Nicholson and others have demanded appropriate testing and treatment
of all affected - soldiers and civilians - and rigorous DU clean up, where
used or tested 'as already required by the US Department of Defence
regulations...', states Rokke. The polluter pays. But the cost would be
stratospheric; so Helbig's group stalk the internet to insult and
intimidate.

'The use of uranium munitions is an act of terror,' Rokke says. In context,
the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority 'selfinitiated' a report for the
British government on DU shortly after the 1991 war. If 50 tonnes of the
residual DU dust remained, they estimated that there wiuld be in excess of
half a million cancer deaths in the region by the year 2000. The Pentagon
admits to 325 tonnes remaining and other estimates are as high as 900
tonnes. In 2003 a further two thousand tonne DU burden has been admitted to.

Iraq and the region's cancers have become a tragedy equalling Chernobyl.
Oddly, when the US/UK military allowed the looting of every Iraqi State
building, all medical records of this unique war crime was destroyed. 

Helbig is excercised by a memo from Los Alamos National Laboratories, New
Mexico, from a Lt. Colonel Larson to a Major Ziehman. It is dated the day
after the 1991 onslaught on Iraq ended (1st March 1991.) Headed 'The
Effectiveness of Depleted Uranium Penetrators', it reads: 'There is a
relatively small amount of lethality data for uranium penetrators... The
recent war has likely multiplied the DU rounds fired at targets by orders of
magnitude...

'There has been and continues to be a concern regarding the impact of DU on
the environment. Therefore, if no one makes a case for the effectiveness of
DU on the battlefield, DU rounds may become politically unacceptable and
thus, be deleted from the arsenal.' Thus, 'we should assure their future
existence' otherwise may stand to lose them. He continues, 'I believe we
should keep this sensitive issue in mind, when, after action, reports are
written.'

US tanks damaged by DU rounds in 1991 were taken to a nuclear
decontamination plant at Barnwell, North Carolina, reportedly constructed
the previous year solely for this purpose. Those beyond decontamination were
buried in specially licensed landfill sites. 

In June 1995 the US Army Environmental Policy Institute wrote of DU: 'DU is
a radioactive waste and therefore should be deposited in a licensed
repository'. The poisoned chalice of breaking the news that Kuwait had been
turned in to an unlicensed one, fell to the luckless British Ambassador.

Helbig's email cites the United Nations Environment Agency Report. There
were two UNEP Reports on Balkans contamination. The first was cut - under
alleged US/UK pressure - from 72 pages, to two. An impeccable source on the
second, to which Helbig refers, stated that in spite of considerable
obstacles placed in their way, a list of the most contaminated sites to
sample was compiled. On arrival, the multinational forces excluded visits to
those sites. As Professor Malcolm Hooper, Emeritus Professor of Medicinal
Chemistry at Sunderland University (UK) writes in his article 'Most Toxic
War in Western Military History', regarding Iraq in 1991: 'at every level,
investigation into illness, birth defects, contamination has been blocked
and bedevilled by ... a pervasive myopia which sees lack of evidence as
proof.'

Last September, Lieutenant Colonel Helbig, of Richardson, California, was in
Court. Complex, inter-connected cases, heard also in June and July, due to
resume in December, involve Helbig's neighbour, Jamahl Feres, of Syrian
origin and his Swiss wife Katherine. They allege suffering three years of
harrasment including the last year, in which Helbig covered all windows in
his house which faced theirs, with Israeli flags. Leuren Moret and Bob
Nichol will be witnesses for the Feres's.

It now transpires that Helbig (whose scorn for on-line journalists and
journals is boundless) has posted varying rants on
<http://www.inthesetimes.com> www.inthesetimes.com in the name of 'Natalie.'
You have been warned.

-###-

Felicity Arbuthnot is a freelance journalist.

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20150916/8683917e/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 28781 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20150916/8683917e/attachment-0001.jpg>