Luna Books and Democracy Center
1633 P Street, N.W., 2nd Floor
(5 blocks east of Dupont Circle)

Video: “Depleted Uranium: The Invisible War” (features interviews with civilians, soldiers, military officials, politicians, and scientists in Iraq and in Europe)

Panelists:

Stephanie Reich, Middle East Researcher; Co-coordinator, D.C. Coalition to Stop the War against Iraq

John Steinbach, Coordinator, Hiroshima-Nagasaki Peace Committee; Author, “Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal: a Threat to World Peace,” in Covert Action Quarterly (Spring, 2001)

We are honored to have two Hibakushi on the program to provide eyewitness testimony to the effects of the use of nuclear weaponry. Hibakushi are Korean survivors of the A-bomb explosions in Japan, where they worked as slave labor during the war.

Fumiko Amano, 14 years of age at the time of the bombing of Hiroshima

Keiko Hara, 5 years of age at the time of the bombing of Hiroshima

Sponsored by:
D.C. Coalition to Stop the War against Iraq, 202-452-7454;
Gray Panthers, D.C. Metropolitan Area; Hiroshima-Nagasaki Peace Committee, 1-703-369-7427

Endorsers (list in formation): Al-Awda (Palestinians Right of Return Committee), D.C. Committee; All-African Peoples Revolutionary Party; Alliance for Global Justice; American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee; Conversion for Reclaiming Earth in the Americas (CREA); Dorothy Day Catholic Worker; Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC); Global Spin; International Action Center; Peter Maurin Catholic Worker; Middle East Research and Information Project(MERIP); Social Action and Leadership School for Activism (SALSA) of the Institute for Policy Studies; Washington Peace Center

 U.S. sanctions against Iraq have claimed over a million civilian lives, more than half of them those of children. On the 11th anniversary in early August of the sanctions scourge, the National Network to End the War against Iraq is focusing on another dimension of the attack on Iraq -- the effects on Arab civilians and U.S. soldiers of the depleted uranium (DU) used in bombs that are dropped on Iraq. Despite the high incidence of death and painful debilitation resulting from exposure to radiation, the U.S. is again flying trial balloons in the media (see the New York Times, June 27) on escalating its almost daily bombings of Iraq.

 DU has caused cancer in UN soldiers and civilians in the Balkans and is believed to have raised the cancer rate among Puerto Ricans living near the US testing range in Vieques by 300%.