See It To Believe It

[AiA in Atlanta]

The colonel says his only regret was that not everybody could have been there with him. Bet he isn't saying that now.

[Neferti]

The colonel says his only regret was that no everybody could have been there with him. Bet he isn't saying that now.

Is he still alive?

Americans are only No 1 in number of people in prison (per capita) ... or is China better at that? Even Australia and New Zealand are better than some areas that America thinks it "leads the world" at. Check here (with graphs, etc)

http://rankingamerica.wordpress.com/how ... s-rank-in/

[Capitus11]

Really i also wander about the condition of these five volunteers.

[Black Orchid]

I have read that all 6 people there that day have had cancer but they say there is no definite link

[mantra]

If they're still alive 55 years later they should consider themselves lucky. They were men in their 30's and 40's back then. Worse happened here with the atom bomb testing at Maralinga. No-one knew about them apart from PM Menzies. The place was inhabited with aborigines. Marilinga is only a few hundred kms from Adelaide - perhaps that's why there's something so different about the inhabitants.

A series of British hydrogen bomb tests was conducted in the Pacific Ocean during 1957 and 1958 without Australian involvement. ……While less spectacular than the major detonations, the minor trials were more numerous. They also contributed to the lasting contamination of the Maralinga area. As a result of the nearly 600 minor trials, some 830 tons of debris contaminated by about 20 kg of plutonium were deposited in pits which graced the South Australian landscape. An additional 2 kg of plutonium was dispersed over the area. Such an outcome was unfortunate indeed, as plutonium is one of the most toxic substances known; it dissipates more slowly than most radioactive elements. The half-life of plutonium is 24,000 years. At this rate of decay, the Maralinga lands would be contaminated for the next half-million years.

…….the sacrifices made by Australians on behalf of the ‘motherland’ were not equally borne. Whilst low population density and remoteness from major population centres were among the criteria for the selection of the testing sites, the Emu and Maralinga sites in particular were not uninhabited. Indeed, they had been familiar to generations of Aboriginal Australians for thousands of years and had a great spiritual significance for the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara people.

A variety of factors underlay the harm to public health, Aboriginal culture and the natural environment which the British tests entailed. Perhaps most significant was the secrecy surrounding the testing program. The decision to make the Monte Bello Islands available to the British for their first nuclear test appears to have been made by the Prime Minister alone, without reference to Cabinet, much less Parliament or the Australian public. During the entire course of the testing program, public debate on the costs and risks borne by the Australian public was discouraged through official secrecy, censorship, misinformation, and attempts to denigrate critics……

[Yogi]

No-one knew about them apart from PM Menzies. The place was inhabited with aborigines.

Rubbish. There are photographs, even movies of those explosions. Aussie diggers initially with their back to blast, then to turn around to look.

[mantra]

Menzies didn't consult with the cabinet, nor the people. He made the agreement with Britain on his own. Perhaps the country was informed shortly before the testing hence the troops, but it wasn't an experience that the Australian people had a say in.

[Yogi]

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/ ... 86255.html

[mantra]

That is actually a good article Aussie - well done. Obviously there are different opinions by different journalists so perhaps the article I read wasn't entirely correct.

This is chilling.

It was a time when things much worse than accidental "friendly fire" happened. British, Australian and New Zealand servicemen were deliberately and repeatedly exposed to nuclear hazard. Dressed only in boots and shorts and using scrubbing brushes and buckets filled with detergent, they were instructed to strip and service and clean radioactive aircraft and other equipment. Wearing gumboots and suits made variously of rubber, wool and cotton, they were ordered to walk, crawl or drive through places where Hiroshima-size bombs had hours before roasted the saltbush and red desert sand into three-inch thick glass, called "bomb glaze".

The dead were subject to experimentation as well. After a cloud of strontium-90 drifted towards Adelaide following a detonation in 1958, the bodies of deceased Australians, especially of young children and still-born babies, were secretly harvested.

Their ashed bones were analysed in laboratories in Adelaide, Melbourne and, in Britain, Aberdeen, Liverpool and London. The body snatching was done in the name of public safety and without the consent of parents, in violation of the code of ethics drawn up at Nuremberg after the Second World War.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/ ... 86255.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Yogi]

No-one knew about them apart from PM Menzies. The place was inhabited with aborigines.

And this ^^^^^^^ is just shit as usual.