the ascent of man

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Looks like descent to me.

I think it's Jordan Maxwell who likes to say man is evolving into apes....

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This song has been blasting in my head since I opened my eyes this morning. In fact, it might have been what woke me. It took a few moments for the muttering of AJ about Mubarak across the room to penetrate, but it was soon overtaken again by Lake and Lukather. Sometimes I wonder if I ever need to bother going to YouTube or switching on a stereo. My head does such a great job of playing my own or others' music for me.

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love, 99
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i won't forget that fucker if i live to be a hunnert an' ninety-nine

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I had this unspeakably evil sociiopath who would visit here every time I posted about depleted uranium, insisting it was safe and you could eat off DU-glazed dinner plates. He would tell me I was too smart to be posting all these lies. He always came in the middle of the night and it was always from a different computer at the City of Benecia... like he was a janitor there... but really, Benecia has all kine oil refineries and a Naval graveyard and sundry military personnel stationed there, and I used to have to pass by it on the freeway every day to go be Ms. Bombshell Legal Ace when I moved to the Walnut Creek office to try to get some mental poise back. Didn't work, and the ugly emanations from Benecia every day didn't help. Very sensitive to that. Actually beginning to think it's an even better job I never had kids because I passed through there every day for so many years. Who KNOWS what kind of dread DNA damage I incurred just trying to maintain hotshottitude for my frickin' Rotarian mother. Heavy sigh.

I was an object of worship at the office. Not just for my unaccountably intense sex appeal. I remember one of the puppies Jack put me in charge of. He thought I was a goddess for my free spirit, my disinclination to be bound by the usual head trips, for giving Wally, our very own fundamentalist Republican partner The Communist Manifesto for Christmas....

Don't kid yerseff. I've ALWAYS been this way. Unbelievably, have even gained a measure of compassion for my insane mother. Heh, had a friend who was waaaaaaay into psychological concepts and he was determined that women with father issues were poison to him. I told him once it was too bad we didn't get together because I was DEFINITELY the exact OPPOSITE of poison for him. His best attribute, among many good ones, was that he wore the stodgiest drugstore cheaters made at the time, and I coveted them. They looked spectacular on him. We had pizza nights together sometimes, and would watch old movies and be goofy, and I always tried to figure out things he needed to read so he'd put on those damn cheaters.

Anyway, this psychopath who seems finally to have shut up about DU... hauled off to the bin, no doubt... has to be mixed in with all those memories now forever for having come from that particular place and managed to outrage me so acutely as to make himself immortal here.

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love, 99
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not like there isn't much at stake

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Cancer — The Deadly Legacy of the Invasion of Iraq
Eye on Arab Media
New America Media, News Digest, Jalal Ghazi, Posted: Jan 06, 2010

Forget about oil, occupation, terrorism or even Al Qaeda. The real hazard for Iraqis these days is cancer. Cancer is spreading like wildfire in Iraq. Thousands of infants are being born with deformities. Doctors say they are struggling to cope with the rise of cancer and birth defects, especially in cities subjected to heavy American and British bombardment.

Here are a few examples. In Falluja, which was heavily bombarded by the US in 2004, as many as 25% of new- born infants have serious abnormalities, including congenital anomalies, brain tumors, and neural tube defects in the spinal cord.

The cancer rate in the province of Babil, south of Baghdad has risen from 500 diagnosed cases in 2004 to 9,082 in 2009 according to Al Jazeera English.

In Basra there were 1885 diagnosed cases of cancer in 2005. According to Dr. Jawad al Ali, director of the Oncology Center, the number increased to 2,302 in 2006 and 3,071 in 2007. Dr. Ali told Al Jazeera English that about 1,250-1,500 patients visit the Oncology Center every month now.

Not everyone is ready to draw a direct correlation between allied bombing of these areas and tumors, and the Pentagon has been skeptical of any attempts to link the two. But Iraqi doctors and some Western scholars say the massive quantities of depleted uranium used in U.S. and British bombs, and the sharp increase in cancer rates are not unconnected.

Dr Ahmad Hardan, who served as a special scientific adviser to the World Health Organization, the United Nations and the Iraqi Ministry of Health, says that there is scientific evidence linking depleted uranium to cancer and birth defects. He told Al Jazeera English, "Children with congenital anomalies are subjected to karyotyping and chromosomal studies with complete genetic back-grounding and clinical assessment. Family and obstetrical histories are taken too. These international studies have produced ample evidence to show that depleted uranium has disastrous consequences."

Iraqi doctors say cancer cases increased after both the 1991 war and the 2003 invasion.

Abdulhaq Al-Ani, author of “Uranium in Iraq” told Al Jazeera English that the incubation period for depleted uranium is five to six years, which is consistent with the spike in cancer rates in 1996-1997 and 2008-2009.

There are also similar patterns of birth defects among Iraqi and Afghan infants who were also born in areas that were subjected to depleted uranium bombardment.

Dr. Daud Miraki, director of the Afghan Depleted Uranium and Recovery Fund, told Al Jazeera English he found evidence of the effect of depleted uranium in infants in eastern and south- eastern Afghanistan. “Many children are born with no eyes, no limbs, or tumors protruding from their mouths and eyes,” said Dr. Miraki.

It’s not just Iraqis and Afghans. Babies born to American soldiers deployed in Iraq during the 1991 war are also showing similar defects. In 2000, Iraqi biologist Huda saleh Mahadi pointed out that the hands of deformed American infants were directly linked to their shoulders, a deformity seen in Iraqi infants.

Many US soldiers are now referring to Gulf War Syndrome #2 and alleging they have developed cancer because of exposure to depleted uranium in Iraq.

But soldiers can end their exposure to depleted uranium when their service in Iraq ends. Iraqi civilians have nowhere else to go. The water, soil and air in large areas of Iraq, including Baghdad, are contaminated with depleted uranium that has a radioactive half-life of 4.5 billion years.

Dr. Doug Rokke, former director of the U.S. Army’s Depleted Uranium Project during the first Gulf War, was in charge of a project of decontaminating American tanks. He told Al Jazeera English that “it took the U.S. Department of Defense in a multi-million dollar facility with trained physicists and engineers, three years to decontaminate the 24 tanks that I sent back to the U.S.”

And he added, “What can the average Iraqi do with thousands and thousands of trash and destroyed vehicles spread across the desert and other areas?”

According to Al Jazeera, the Pentagon used more than 300 tons of depleted uranium in 1991. In 2003, the United States used more than 1,000 tons.
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BLUEBEAR'S DU POSTS
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the order was given as the polls closed in 2004

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Since we'd failed so abysmally the first time, we gave them everything we've got the second time... and the people of Fallujah might be better off just moving as far away as they can... the people of IRAQ are better off moving as far away as they can.

good question

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Extra Credit

millions more lungs filling with depleted uranium

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what ever could they be inhaling with that smoke?

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Could it be...?

And maybe we have an explanation for why so many male soldiers are coming home and going postal on their spouses too. Really. It keeps occurring to me that we have such a higher rate of PTSD this time than ever before, and it's always the men.... Or it seems that way....