January 15, 2001, Concord Ma.

(Pictures below text)

Organizer:	Grassroots Actions for Peace
Issues:	1. Local military-industrial uranium contamination. 2. Worldwide potential health threat of DU weapons to soldiers and civilians.
Press:	A French video crew documented the event and attended the press conference, the Herald ran an editorial, and an Associated Press report appeared in several local papers.

About fifty protesters, including several veterans, assembled at 08:00 at Concord's Monument Square to voice their intentions to help ban DU weapons and to force a cleanup of the contaminated Starmet property (formerly called Nuclear Metals, Inc.)

Since the dawn of the atomic age, spent nuclear fuel from civillian and military fission piles has been accumulating with no agreement on how to dispose of it safely. What to do with this accumulating pool of (perhaps overly-politicized) waste? Those nutty folks at the Pentagon decided to kill two proverbial birds by spraying the radioactive toxin all over 'enemy territory'.

Long before the Gulf War, the United States developed a 30 mm. gattling gun capable of penetrating modern armor. This impressive weapon, mounted on the Fairchild A-10 anti-tank airframe, fires tungsten or depleted uranium (DU) tipped rounds at an incredible rate. The weapon was first put into (overt) combat use in Iraq, leaving behind solid and powdered "U". The weapon's killing efficiency makes it hard for the Air Force to drop it, though the tungsten rounds are apparently nearly as effective, except for the lasting radiation and toxicity which seem to violate the nature and intent of the Geneva Convention, and dozens of related treaties intended to reduce useless cruelty in combat, particulary to non-combatants.

An isotope's halflife is inversely proportional to its continuous radiation output. Though depleted uranium has a nearly eternal halflife, it simply isn't very "hot". But it is also chemically toxic, causing a form of nephritis (kidney failure).

DU opponents claim that U.S. military personnel and foreign civilians, including children who play on battlefields, are being poisoned by DU rounds' resultant , fragments and powder, and 'aerosol', which could remain lethal for thousands of years.'

Shocking US Government documents reveal a prior knowlege that DU ammo would not only cause cause these diseases, but that there would be a public movement in the event these devices were used. Despite this, US lead NATO forces used the pernicious rounds post Gulf War, in the Balkans. And the US military continues to fire DU on a practice range in Vieques, where Puerto Rico residents have little means to oppose it, as Puerto Rico is essentially a colonial possession of the US, where residents live under US influence, with no real representation. Is it any wonder why Concordians find this abhorrent?

Starmet, (formerly Nuclear Metals, Inc.) a byproduct of the WWII Manhattan Project which intentionally killed tens of thousands of civilians, (Oh, my! A patternn emerges!) manufactured DU rounds in Concord leaving huge amounts of hot and toxic uranuim where it threatens the mercury-laced Concord River. Residents are lobbying to declare the dufunct Starmet plant a superfund site, a tricky proposition, as it could initiate lawsuits by the Feds against their own insider buddies, perhaps even the Massachusetts Institute of Technology itself, to pay for the staggeringly expensive cleanup.