[CitizensTruth] Starving Somalia, nuclear waste, and the story behind pirates (and empire)

[Geri Perry]

We can add pirates to the long list of items we are being lied to about 
- but what about nuclear waste - and starvation, in a world awash with 
food? As John Perkins said, It's a story as old as empire.

Excerpted from article titled "You Are Being Lied to About Pirates":

<SNIP>Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the 
"golden age of piracy" - from 1650 to 1730 - the idea of the pirate as 
the senseless, savage thief that lingers today was created by the 
British government in a great propaganda-heave. Many ordinary people 
believed it was false: pirates were often rescued from the gallows by 
supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can't? . . . .In 1991, 
the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its nine 
million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many 
of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great 
opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear 
waste in their seas.<END SNIP> Full article: 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/you-are-being-lied-to-abo_b_155147.html

Unfortunately John Perkins, like all too many Americans, believed that 
the "Economic Hit Men" were operating only in third world countries. 
Thus we easily forget that both coasts of the US were also subjected to 
nuclear waste dumping from the 1940s thru 1970.

Excerpted from 2002 article by Senator Bill Nelson:

<SNIP>The United States began dumping low-level radioactive waste into 
the ocean in the 1940s and didn't end the practice until 1970. The drums 
are known to contain laboratory waste, in some cases even material from 
laboratories engaged in nuclear research during the Cold War. In some 
reported instances, it was the military that dumped such waste. The 
practice resulted in an estimated 94,000 barrels at depths starting at 
around 400 feet at sites in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and the Gulf 
of Mexico.<END SNIP> (from: 
http://billnelson.senate.gov/news/details.cfm?id=243995& )

NOW it seems that our government has entered into what may be the most 
horrific of all "public/private" partnerships:

<SNIP>GNEP means foreign nuclear waste imported and "reprocessed" in the 
USA. This is a national issue! We need a big national outcry!!! 
Washington, Oregon, Idaho, New Mexico, Ohio, Tennessee, Kentucky, 
Illinois, South Carolina, and all our sister states! . . .[Hearings were 
held in early December] With GNEP, the Pacific Northwest, Hanford 
Nuclear Reservation and Idaho Falls, the Southwest and sites in the 
Eastern USA could all get a lot more nuclear waste (both from within and 
outside the country) and dirty nuclear waste ‘reprocessing’ plants, 
“recycling” reactors, and “advanced fuel cycle research facilities”—all 
verbal green-washings of very dirty processes.<END SNIP>

Full article and links: 
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/11/17/18551760.php