In fact, the "hysterical" predictions have been fulfilled, indeed over-fulfilled. Black rain, full of oil and a thick black cloud at least 2,000 kilometers wide are spreading from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. This is already a day-to-day reality for millions in Kuwait,
Qatar, Bahrain, the Gulf Emirates, Saudi
Arabia, Iraq, and Iran.
According to official estimates from
Washington and Riyadh, about 800 wells are now burning in Kuwait, and many more in Iraq. According to most
Western sources, the Iraqis are responsible for most of these fires. According to
Teheran, on the other hand, the great majority of them are due to coalition bombing. In any case, whoever bears the larger share of the responsibility, the indisputable fact is that this fire is now raging and that nobody foresees it being put out in less than a year and a half.
We are only at the beginning of its effects. Even so, there is enough information to give good grounds for great anxiety. The thick cloud took only a few days to cover the Khuzestan region in southern
Iran and to turn day into night in the towns of Ahwaz and Khorramshahr. Two weeks saw it spread over three provinces in south-eastern Turkey and reach Adana.
According to the British Meteorological
Service, a single day of strong wind would be enough for the cloud to touch
India.
But what does the cloud represent? At first it seems to produce an effect like an eclipse of the sun. This could be seen from watching one of the famous "live" CNN reports from Kuwait, where what look at first like night scenes turn out to have been shot at midday.
Thus day turns into night. The immediate consequence of this is a sudden drop in temperature. According to
Associated Press reports dated February 27, the temperature in Kuwait city had dropped from its usual 24/25°C to
6/ °C. Such an unprecedented climatic disturbance, if it lasts a few weeks, will obviously cause all kinds of chain reactions.
Black rain destroys crops But this is only the start of the nightmare. The black rain that accompanies the cloud seems to destroy everything on which it falls. The first scientific evaluations from Turkey, done on the urgent orders of the local authorities, find that one day of heavy rain of this kind would be enough to destroy agricultural lands, grasslands and reserves of drinking water in urban areas, while lakes and rivers would be polluted beyond repair. On top of this, black rain directly and indirectly threatens the health of the populations, since it contains large quantities of cancer-inducing essences.
Exaggeration? Readers should bear in mind that at least three million barrels of
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GULF WAR oil a day — twice as much as normal production — are being turned into smoke by the fires in the Kuwaiti oilfields. But it will take some time before the full damage becomes apparent. According to well-known scientist and popularizer Carl Sagan of Cornell University, there is an immediate danger of a disturbance to the monsoons — the rains that give Southeastern Asia its normal climate, and which sustain the agriculture off which hundreds of millions live.
Some — though by no means all - scientists claim that there could be serious effects on the climate of the whole planet, for example, by advancing the process of "global warming" by as much as 30 years. Whatever the validity of such predictions, we can say with confidence that we are witnessing an unprecedented involving ecological destruction on a scale greater than ever seen in the past. This is the view of organizations such as Greenpeace, Worldwatch, the WWF and the United Nations Environment Program. According to a joint statement by 11 UN organizations, if the oilwell fires continue for more than one week there is a threat to "human health and the environment in a large part sphere...Not only in the Persian Gulf but of the Northern Hemialso in areas thousands of kilometers away."
Thus, as Bush, Major, Mitterrand et al rejoice over their military victories and enthuse about the "new world order" in we prefer to agree with store for us,
Greenpeace when it declares that "there the defeated."
are Among the defeated are us, our children no winners, only and our grandchildren who will pay for decades to come the price of Operation
Desert Storm.
Too many such triumphs and there will be nobody left to celebrate. *
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025° 92 50 19 PANCHO March 18, 1991 • #202 International Viewpoint
GERMANY
Deutsche Bank
Begrüßungs geld
Begrüßungsgeld
Begrußungs geld
Begrüßungsgeld few will find other jobs.
People over 45 who lose their jobs will have practically no opportunity to get rehired; the re-introduction of capitalism literally makes them into a "no future" generation. After putting most of the immigrant workers from other "socialist" countries on the dole, it is women who are now bearing the brunt, especially in the southern regions of Saxonia and Thuringia, with their highly vulnerable industries relying on manual labour and on women.
(Begrüßungsgeld = money paid to immigrants from East Germany before unification)