OCT-NOV 97 - HOME
HIS IS JIM HIGHTOWER SAYING . . .
ATOMIC FALLOUT IN AMERICA
Remember the classic, late-night ad that ran on cable TV, featuring an elderly
woman sprawled on the floor, saying: "Help, I've fallen and I can't
get up"?
Well, tragically, tens of thousands of Americans can't get up, because of
something that fell on them from the sky: Radioactive Iodine. During the
'50s and '60s, atomic bomb tests were made in Nevada, even though government
scientists knew the radioactive fallout would spread across the country.
Not to worry, they said, a little iodine won't hurt you.
A little? The National Cancer Institute now tells us that this fallout was
ten times greater than that from the Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion in
Russia. So much that every county in America got some fallout, that 98 counties
became fall-out "hot spots," that a quarter million of our people
suffered dangerous levels of exposure and that up to 75,000 cases of thyroid
cancer have resulted.
Iodine concentrates in the thyroid, and the incidence of thyroid cancer
among people who were children at the time has risen fourfold above normal.
One of the hot spots is Meagher County, Montana, where the Mayns family
is mad-as-hell. Deryl Mayns, the 61-year-old matriarch of the family, told
USA Today that she has an enlarged thyroid, her two elderly sisters had
to have thyroid surgery, and her son was desperately ill for seven years
because his thyroid simply quit working. Others in the county are sick,
too.
Especially appalling is that officials have known about this for forty years,
but failed to tell the people. Thyroid cancers grow very slowly and are
curable, but your chances of survival are much greater if you're treated
when the cancer first appears. As one watchdog group put it: "It's
criminal that they did not alert the public."
To get more information on this exposure, contact the Physicians for Social
Responsibility at 202-898-0150.
ARMS SALES TO
LATIN AMERICA
An ad for a car repair shop asked: "Why go elsewhere to be cheated?
Come here first." Well, we citizens and taxpayers are being cheated
by a Clinton administration decision to lift a 20-year ban against selling
arms to Latin American governments. This is a policy change that Lockheed
Martin and other weapons manufacturers have been lobbying furiously to get,
hoping to sell billions worth of tanks, fighter jets and other high-tech
weaponry to Latin American generals.
On the other hand, those pushing for democracy have dreaded this day, since
it opens a new arms race among Latin militaries that have a history of using
their arsenals against their neighbors and their own struggling people.
Yet, in a cynical bit of doublespeak, Clinp;ton actually said he was
lifting the arms ban "to promote stability and security among our neighbors."
Security for whom? Not for the impoverished majority who will now be confronted
by a military establishment with even more weapons to hold them down.
Oh, the weapons-makers say, the region now is controlled by elected civilian
governments and the threat of military action is nil. I wish! Unfortunately,
from Mexico to Paraguay, the generals still lurk and scheme. Indeed, the
first in line to buy weapons is Augusto Pinochet, the notoriously-brutal,
former dictator of Chile. While he's no longer dictator, he still heads
the military . . . and he's rushed to Lockheed to buy two dozen F-16 jets.
These sales cheat us as citizens, because they mock our peaceable principles,
turning America into an arms proliferator while we're preaching disarmament.
They cheat us as taxpayers, too, since we subsidize these purchases-by giving
money to the generals so they will buy from the Lockheeds.
This is Jim Hightower saying . . . Rep. Nita Lowey wants to reinstate the
arms-sale ban . . . and common sense. Call her at 202-225-6506.
Contact us directly at: hightower@essential.org
Copyright 1997 - Hightower and Associates, Inc.
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