The State of the
World
HELEN CALDICOTT
speaking at Smith College 12nov02
Dr. Helen Caldicott is the Founding President of Physicians for
Social Responsibility (PSR). PSR was the co-winner of the 1985 Nobel Peace
Prize, and Dr. Linus Pauling individually nominated Dr. Caldicott for the
Prize. Dr. Caldicott also founded Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament
(WAND), and is the author of numerous books exploring nuclear and
environmental issues, the most recent of which is entitled The New Nuclear
Danger: George W. Bush’s Military-Industrial Complex. source: Nuclear
Policy Research Institute. For a more complete bio, go to http://www.noradiation.org/caldicott
Mindfully.org note: This text was transcribed by mindfully.org
from a rebroadcast on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman on 2jan03. For a copy of
the show, contact Pacifica Radio Archives at 800-735-0230 or www.pacificaradioarchives.org.
CD #PZ0517.068
we don't diagnose because of an illness we can't cure it. We never
knew what caused polio and people were paralyzed all over the place—infantile
paralysis. My mother wouldn't let me eat apples or go with local swimming pool
because we didn't know what caused it, until Jonas Salk, who worked with me in
the physicians movement, worked out that the polio virus cause polio myelitis.
And thus we are able to immunize people, and we don't see it anymore. If you go
to India, it's rife.
The cause of the nuclear arms race, and the situation in the world today, is
the minds of the men running this country. And in other countries to, but mostly
the United States. It's important that we start to analyze these people for the
public health of the planet. And if we find that they are mentally or
psychologically inappropriate for our survival, they must be removed from office
on an urgency basis.
[Audience applauds loudly]
And in this book, I do short CVs on all of them. They're quite revealing. And
they'll go into this a little later.
Now, what is the situation? America's got 2500 hydrogen bombs on hair-trigger
alert. Remember there are only 240 cities in the Northern Hemisphere—major
cities—240. So, two and a half thousand hydrogen bombs, and so does Russia.
America's got a policy to fight and win a nuclear war. Russia's best friends—Putin
goes to the Crawford Ranch and eats hot dogs, he drives around in George Bush's
little golf cart. I don't know what else they do it Crawford, but Bush said,
"I looked into his soul and I saw that I could work with him in trust him.
OK? So they're best friends, yet America's policy still is to fight and win a
nuclear war.
And how you do that? Let me just tell you. You've got 18 Trident submarines
at sea at any one time. On each submarine—and their noiseless, silent
submarines—are 24 missiles. And in each missile are 8 hydrogen bombs. You've
got 50 MX missiles, which Reagan nicknamed "The Peacekeeper." On each
MX missile are 10 hydrogen bombs. And then we go to this book, and we look at
the Minutemen missiles scattered—you can look down when you fly across the
country at the Midwest and see the missile silos scattered across her country.
[Showing slides of aerial photographs]
There's a map here of Missouri. It looks like it's got measles. Can you see
that? All the red dots?
OK, what's the next state? Montana. That's world film stars go and have their
homes, because there are lots of moose and deer, and things out there, and
bears.
What's the next one? South Dakota. And I could go on and on.
In each silo, are two men, aged 18 to 21. Each is armed with a pistol—one
to shoot the other if one show signs of deviant behavior. Conditioned like
Pavlovian dogs—yes sir, no sir, press the button sir. You see, they have to
be. Men who have never really lived our experience life, probably never
delivered a baby, or had seen a child die, or helped anyone to die.
The key locks to turn the missiles are twelve feet apart so one man can't get
to turn both keys. But if you tie a strain on one key, you can actually turn
both keys and launch a nuclear war.
How the win a nuclear war? It goes like this. And go along with this sort of
fantastical logic. The Russians and the Americans have satellites circling
consistently. In the satellites are infrared detectors. So, if America launches
a missile, Russia picks up the heat from the missile and radios back to its
control center in Moscow.
If America wants to fight in win a nuclear war, you've got to knock out their
eyes and ears. So, you're working really hard on anti-satellite warfare at the
moment. And Lockheed Martin is doing most of that—the biggest corporation in
the country—military corporation in the world, which really runs the Bush
administration.
Then, you knock out the command and control center, which is Moscow, with a
nuclear weapon. And any launcher missiles and a huge swarm. In the hydrogen
bombs land very accurately on each Russian missile silo. And you kill their
missiles. That's the military terminology, you kill them.
If you miss a few and some get launched, you're building national missile
defense system so that it will wipe out the Russian missiles to get launched.
Star Wars is really about fighting in winning a nuclear war.
Then you've won the nuclear war. You've kill their missiles. The fact is that
billions of people die as a result, that's called by the military collateral
damage. We don't get killed, the missiles get killed and our deaths are
irrelevant to the Pentagon.
So serious is this that in 1995, the Russians picked up the fact that someone
had launched an American missile—a Titan missile—and there was a Norwegian
weather satellite on top. The Pentagon had notified the Kremlin, but they lost
the data. The Russians are sort of hopeless, they lost it. And they picked up
for telemetry from this missile and said, "good God, America's launched a
first strike against us to win a nuclear war!"
There's Yoxen (?) sitting there before the nuclear football, open for the
first time in the history of the nuclear age, sozzled [drunk]. He drank at least
two bottles of vodka a day. Almost certainly Werniky's Antipilopathy (???) and
Korsakoff's syndrome, which you get from alcoholism and pickling your brain.
By the time the missile is launched, and the satellite picked up the attack
and radios back to Moscow, that loop took 15 minutes. The missiles take 30
minutes to land. So in the footballs opened with the directions to press the
buttons, he had three minutes to decide whether or not to annihilate planet, and
America, and Australia, because we're covered with U.S. bases, which I plan to
get rid of.
[Audience applauds]
He's sitting there, and the general's over his shoulder saying, "Mr.
President, press that button." 10 seconds before the end of that
three-minute interval, the missile appeared off course. That's why your still
sitting in those chairs, and you're not radio active atoms floating around in
the stratosphere.
January 1995, what were you doing then? That was reported in the New York
Times in a big story, but it was back page near the obituaries. The New York
Times and the media are determining the fate of the earth.
[Audience applauds]
Why it wasn't it headlines? 10 seconds from annihilation—like nine miners
saved in the mines from Pennsylvania—why does the media beside to keep us all
ignorant? Why the New York Times? I can understand NBC, which is owned by GE.
[People are getting up to leave the room]
Now, no one else is to leave the room! I can see people getting up and
walking out because they think I'm boring. You're not to go. This is very
important and I want the doors locked! If you have to go to the bathroom, you
can, but on no other circumstances are you to leave the room.
A; it's rude to leave the visiting lecturer. And B; what I'm saying tonight
will determine your future and whether or not you live or die. Okay?
Students are not to leave the room. Nor any adults. And those guys can guard
the doors.
All right. So, we were 10 seconds from annihilation. Let's describe what
happened if there was a nuclear war. Let's pretend, for instance... you know,
when you're listening to NPR, and you hear [she makes a high-pitched noise
through her pursed lips]? And a very deep voice mail voice says [speaking in a
very deep tone] "we are just testing the emergency broadcasting
system."
This time, there'd be an announcement "we are under nuclear attack. Run
to the nearest fallout shelter. You'll have about 10 minutes to get there."
You'll never get there. And in comes this bomb, this hydrogen bomb that 20 times
the speed of sound, and you won't even hear it coming. It will land on this
beautiful auditorium and explode with the heat inside the center of the sun,
turning this building and millions of tons of rock and earth into radioactive
fallout shot up and that's swirling mushroom cloud.
[Looking down at herself, she notices she has a button on her blouse undone]
Sorry, I've got one button undone cause I'm hot. So, if you see a little bit
of something, it's quite fashionable these days anyway.
Then, five miles in all directions from here, everyone is going to be
vaporized. In Hiroshima, a little tiny bomb was exploded, which killed about
120,000 people in a flash of light. And a little boy was reaching up to catch a
red dragonfly with his hand against the blue sky, and there was a blinding
flash. And he literally disappeared. The shadow is in the museum at Hiroshima on
the pavement. That's all that was left.
20 miles from here, and think of where you live in all directions, everyone
will be grotesquely burned. The burned the patient is the most difficult patient
we ever treat. Hundreds of units of blood and plasma; serum leaking out;
terrible infections; skin transplants, and often than we still lose the
patients.
There aren't many burn beds in the whole of the United States. But don't
worry, the White House's stockpiling large quantities of morphine, just in case
there's going to be a nuclear war. Winds of 500 mph will suck people out of the
buildings in turn them into missiles traveling at 100 mph through the air.
Then, if you look at the flash 50 miles out, he'll get retinal burns and be
instantly blinded. And the whole area would become engulfed in a firestorm of
3000 square miles. So, if you're in a fallout shelter you'll asphyxiate from the
heat of the fires using up the oxygen.
Now, I only dropped one bomb. There are 2 1/2 thousand that can drop on
America. Every single town and city with a population of 10,000 or more is
targeted with at least one of those. Every university, every college, every
corporation, every factory, even railway yards. Twenty are probably targeted on
Washington alone. That, is Bill Clinton's legacy.
[Someone in audience asked question]
You mustn't interrupt me. [Chuckle] you can ask questions afterwards. Cause I
have to build up, you know?
[Audience applauds]
We live under the threat of annihilation every second of everyday. The
Russian early warning system is falling apart. The satellites only work
one-third of the day. People steal copper wiring from the early warning system
and the radars, and the like, because so poor in Russia. And the Pentagon's
building up more and more nuclear weapons.
Now what is the Pentagon actually up to apart from fighting in winning a
nuclear war, which is insanity?
The Pentagon and the nuclear weapons labs are building new nuclear weapons.
They've got the second Manhattan Project going.
Hands up from those who know what the first Manhattan Project was. For those
who do not, it was when they built the first three nuclear weapons. The first
one was called Trinity named after Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. When they blew
it up in the desert, if it didn't work the telegram to the president was to read
"it's a girl." It didn't work. And the telegram of course read
"it's a boy." Right from the beginning of the nuclear age there's been
a sexual underpinning archetypal, archetypal Jungian underpinning to the whole
thing.
The second one was called Little Boy. Dropped on Hiroshima. Killed 120,000
people, and thus began the age of nuclear genocide.
And the third was dropped on Hiroshima three days later, on Christian City,
which no one thought America would bomb.
It took a huge amount of money, manpower and brilliance to build those three
nuclear weapons. And afterwards, the scientists said to themselves, "for
first time physicists have known sin."
Then they developed the nuclear power program thinking they could harness
atoms for peace and assuage their guilt. As Robert Oppenheimer, who developed
the first three weapons watched Trinity blowup, he muttered under his breath,
"I have become death, the destroyer of worlds," from the
Bhagavad-Gita, because he knew that nuclear weapons have the power to destroy
whole the whole creation, the only life in the universe.
God dam those people who kept building nuclear weapons ever since! You know
how many nuclear weapons America built in the nuclear age? 77,000.
When 1000 bombs dropping on 100 cities would create nuclear winter and cover
the earth with a cloud of thick black oily smoke locking up the sun for years,
causing a short Ice Age, only the cockroaches would survive.
77 times the number for annihilation of life on the earth. It's called an
addiction. It's like an alcoholic reaching for their next drink. Every other
country that supports the United States, including my own, are enablers to
America's nuclear addiction.
Then of course, Russia got them. Why would Russia wants them? Because she
wants to be the big butt guy on the block too. Huh? Then friends got them
because she lost her empire, and wants to be like Napoleon again. Written got
them because she lost her empire. China got them, but she's only got 18 missiles
that can hit you. Only 18, so she's really a very small nuclear power. India and
Pakistan got them because they copy you.
Everyone wants to copy America. Don't they? Because of the propaganda that
goes out would say that this is the greatest country on earth. So we all want to
be like you. And we end up being like you can them or not happy. Anyway, that's
a different issue.
[Audience laughs]
Who else has got them? Israel. Israel's the third-largest nuclear nation in
the world with 300 hydrogen bombs. So, why don't we go in and have inspections
in Israel? Why don't we have civilian inspections and America, which is the
largest rogue nation in the world.
[Audience applauds wildly, with the whistling and screaming]
Maybe we could all dress up in white coats and stethoscopes, and hardhats
stuff, and say were going to go inspect the nuclear weapons and America. The New
York Times had a lead editorial said, "America, the Rogue State." The
New York Times is pretty conservative, so that was an interesting thing.
But now, in order to get the scientists and the nuclear weapons labs to allow
the nonproliferation treaty to get through the Senate, Clinton bribed them. And
he said, "Look, I'll give you $5 billion a year for the next 15
years." And he said it's for stockpile stewardship and maintenance — S.
S. and M., which also has sexual connotations — to make sure that the bombs
are reliable when they blowup, they blowup with twenty megatons cannot 18
megatons.
What we need is to have the bombs go rusty and not work. Actually, with the
labs are doing is designing, testing, and developing new nuclear weapons as I
speak. But America doesn't have any enemies.
I mean, you've got some terrorists that don't like you, but you've got a few
zealots in this country too [chuckle], including those right wing Christians,
who believe that Armageddon is going to come, because it says it in Revelations.
And when Armageddon comes, it's going to be nuclear war and one-third of the
human race, which is them, are going to be raptured up --that's to be raptured.
It's a verb — up to the sky to meet Jesus and their nightgowns and their
dressing gowns. And all of us are going to be burnt in the fires of hell,
because not Christians. And, all the Jews, just before it happens, are all going
to be instantly converted to Christianity too. And they're going to be raptured
up to Heaven too.
In fact, John Ashcroft believes this. I think probably George Bush does.
Reagan certainly did. His defense minister or secretary, Weinberger believed in.
And the right wing Christians control The Republican Party, and I think that's
partly how they got back into power such large majorities. 70 million of them
are foot soldiers to work for the Republican Party, because they really want
Armageddon to happen. So, it's all good that we have a first strike winnable
nuclear war policy, and the weapons are still on hair-trigger alert.
The scientists themselves are very interesting. They are like Merlin, or who
was the Wizard and Lord of the Rings?
[Someone in audience shouts out Gandolf]
Yes. Gandolf. Because they've captured the energy inside the stars, the
politicians, who are mostly scientifically illiterate — about 3 percent of
politicians are scientifically illiterate — they literally bow down in front
of these people when they want to Congress. Like Edward Teller, who designed the
super bomb, the hydrogen bomb, and others.
The nuclear weapons scientists worked in a cult. The right of passage into
the cult is to design your own bomb and blow to. The night before the bombs
exploded in the desert in Nevada, deep underground, the man who designed to bomb
sleeps with the mechanisms to blowup to bomb by himself in a little hut in the
desert. He sleeps with annihilation. He talks about giving birth to the bomb. He
talks about having labor pains, and the need to push. He talks about having
postnatal depression after the bomb explodes.
If you want to check this out, this work was done by an anthropologist called
Hugh Gustafson, who went up and drank beer with them in the pubs. And they
talked to him. But the language they used is also very interesting.
[Dr. Caldicott reads from a book]
"The scientists felt that their technical mastery bomb implied that they
would be able to control the impending annihilation that their work signified.
But in psychological terms, the mastery they had acquired actually implied that
they had intense fear of the bomb and the death.
"The first bomb ever blown up in the desert, called Trinity, was called
Oppenheimer's baby, in honor of Oppenheimer. When the bomb explodes it gets
'married' to the diagnostic canister. As it explodes it 'couples' with the
ground, making 'daughter' fission products that pass through generations."
I said one of the scientists described the test has like having a baby. But, they
also use language for the weapons which is analogous to human language. It says,
"on the other hand, unlike the nurturing instincts of a new mother, much of
their language reflects a profound dehumanization of people. To them, people are
human resources, and components within the system. They describe human
communication as interfacing and miscommunications as disconnects. The pain of
human injuries is referred to as damage. And when a human being is killed she is
disassembled. The Pentagon echoes this language, calling targeting a city as
counter-value targeting. People are dubbed soft targets. Missile silos are hard
targets."
Gustafson said, "Techno-strategic discourse is characterized by its lack
of emotion, its game-theoretical models of human motivation, its fondness for
abstraction and for passive sentence construction, its spokes on hardware rather
than people. And its fundamental unquestionable assumption is that weapons
development must continue. As they remove pain and fear from their vocabulary —
see, this is the pathology that I talked about initially, that we've got to be
courageous enough to psychoanalyze and remove these people from office —
presumably, these scientists are protecting their psyches from the human
consequences of the work. At the same time, they wax lyrical about their
weapons, describing nuclear equipment has beautiful, and their relationships to
technology as Zen. Weapons are arms. Bombs are warheads. And nuclear attack is a
decapitating strike. The strategic nuclear forces have three legs. Early warning
satellites are eyes and years. Missiles are covered with skins. Aging weapons
grow whiskers that can interfere with their health."
Isn't that fascinating? This is the fundamental basis that we have to start
examining. You can talk about numbers of weapons until cows come home, and about
the medical effects of nuclear war the cows come home. But unless we
psychoanalyze the psyche of these people and decide they are inappropriate to
what they're doing because they're about to blowup our earth, then we're
nowhere.
And we have to do it without politicians too. I coined a new phrase the other
day — Politicians for Social Irresponsibility. Your Congress is full of them.
They are bought and sold by the corporations, time and time again. And even when
those corporate scandals came out, the Democrats and Republicans were flying
around in corporate jets, going to weekends paid by the corporations. They are
corporate prostitutes. They do not represent you in any way, shape, or form. Not
at all.
The drug companies paid $16 million for this selection. The drug companies
are making huge amounts of money. I speak now as a physician. They should make
virtually no profit at all. Doctors shouldn't get rich. Teachers should be paid
more than doctors because they have a greater responsibility toward society than
do we.
[Audience applauds.]
The White House is run by corporations. Lockheed Martin and Boeing and TRW,
which are militarizing space, and building starwars, and the like — 32 members
from those corporations are in the administration. Lynne Cheney, Cheney's wife,
you know, Dick?, who lives mostly underground and the fallout shelter in
Washington. He's really the president. And he's protecting his life by living
underground in case there's a nuclear war. His wife Lynne, she sat on the board
of Lockheed Martin for 20 years. Donald Rumsfeld is extremely closely associated
with Lockheed Martin, as are others in the Pentagon. Colin Powell isn't, but
he's been marginalized.
I'm going to talk about Iraq and a minute.
The rest of the people in the Administration Come from the Heritage
Foundation. Hands up of those who know what the Heritage Foundation is.
[Sounding disappointed] 0hhhh. OK, hands up of those who watch Jim Leher and Ted
Koppel. [Questioningly] Oh. What you watch, Fox?
[Audience laughs]
You don't watch television? Hello Francis. No, what do you watch? Or do you
watch television?
[Audience answers her questions]
ABC?
[Someone in audience] CBS.
Yeah, well, they've been bought and sold too, haven't they? They've all lost
their souls like Faust.
The Heritage Foundation is what they call or right-wing think tank, funded by
Lockheed Martin. It's really an advertising agency for Lockheed Martin. And
every time you turn on the television, there is one right winger debating and
other right winger. They are never saying, "Should we go into Iraq? And
maybe that's immoral," they're saying, "We're going to Iraq, this,
this, and this." Someone said the media have become stenographers. All they
do is right down what Rumsfeld said — Rummy-Speak. You know, he speaks a funny
language that no one can really understand, but he's very charming. I heard a
man on NPR today talking about Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, and who really runs
this presidency, and how George Bush doesn't really understand much at all. But
there was no moralizing. They were reporting facts. But they weren't talking
about whether or not what is happening would be immoral or illegal, and time
reminded of Germany.
The only way evil flourishes is for good people to do nothing.
Is that not us?
[Pause]
It's a very, very dark time. Those Republicans run by the right-wing
Christians — they're going to fill those courts up with Christians. They're
NOT Christians. Jesus wouldn't have a bar of them.
[Audience applauds]
Christianity isn't about going to church on Sunday, or going up to meet Jesus
when you die. It's about living with a man preached — the greatest
psychiatrist almost that ever lived.
And what did he preach? He preached love thine enemy.
[Dr. Caldecott whispers]
It's a very hard thing to do.
The Heritage Foundation has people at the White House. You see them on
television. I've debated with a couple recently. They're very smooth. There like
snake oil salesmen. I was on with Larry King. I know Larry. I've been on with
him for 30 years, when he had a radio program. I was on for seven half minutes
with Frank Gaffney, for the Center for Security Policy. He's a right-wing Star
Wars aficionado. He's got a mustache, looks OK. And he said I had no right to be
talking about this and Star Wars and the like because I'm an Australian.
[Sounds of astonishment from audience]
Then he said [that] I used to rant during the eighties about nuclear war. And
I should've been quick enough witted to have said, "well, that ranting
produces a Nobel Peace Prize." [Chuckles]
I was on for seven half minutes with this man. So, I only that about 3
minutes. And then on comes Pamela Anderson. If you've ever seen her, I'd never
seen her before, she's got HUGE...mammary glands.
[Audience laughs]
And she's terribly thin. She's a medical monstrosity. I mean, the poor girl,
when she gets old she's going to look awful. Then, I thought, well, maybe I
should have some implants too. And maybe Larry would have me on for an hour and
like to talk about what I need to talk about.
But isn't that typical of the media? Isn't that typical?
During a break, [Larry King] turned to me and said, "These people are
really dangerous. Aren't they?"
I said, "Yes Larry."
He said, "I say their sinister."
We came back on air and he said, "Look, I'll have you on for half an
hour. We need to do more time on this. I'll do you from Australia."
I rang him the other day. The producer said, "we actually have no time
to slot you in into next three weeks while you're here."
And I said, "You're lying to me, aren't you? Just tell me the truth. Did
your top people say that I'm not to come on again? On being blocked from the
media." I am very annoyed about this.
It's Jefferson who said an informed democracy will behave in the responsible
fashion. This democracy is almost totally on informed, hence the voting
patterns.
[Audience applauds loudly]
I'm setting up a new institute, called the Nuclear Policy Research Institute.
Rosie O'Donnell gave me $100,000 the other day. Richard Gere's given me only
$10,000, but I need $850,000.
I'm going to have the office in Washington with a very best media person, who
can ring the bureau chiefs and say, "OK, tonight we're going to do Star Wars
and are going to have Jackie Cabasso (????) on from California."
Top-notch. Really good person. Or were going to do Bruce Gagnon, who is a
Republican, in the Air Force, charismatic speaker, knows all about the fire
blazes of Star War, and the militarization of space. And we are going to be
proactive so the administration has to respond to us.
And who owns the airwaves?
[Someone any audience answers, "we owned the airwaves."]
You own the airwaves. They have been co-opted in stolen from you. And that
must not happen. So now, you've got to take back your airwaves.
What I'm calling for is revolution.
[Audience applauds, hoots, and hollers cheers of approval]
But, it's got to be a Gandhian type revolution. Would Gandhi take on the
British? He didn't go back in a uniform with a gun! He practiced asymmetry. He
went back almost stark naked, in a loincloth, and conducted on march, with
tremendous sagacity and dignity. And he won.
And don't just join organizations and do the same all things. The
Democrats...hopeless. And as Gore Vidal says, you've got one political party
with two right wings. I mean, it's hopeless. Hopeless!
We've got to have a revolution from the grass-roots up. If I can get on Larry
King or Phil Donahue, or the like and speak to 20 million people, and talk about
the risk of nuclear war, then we've got 20 million people in the grass-roots
movement.
OK? And then you take over your country. Because in fact, the politicians are
your followers and you are their leaders.
What's more, you've got to take a leaf out of our book in Australia. Voting
must become compulsory. One.
Two. Our campaigns are three weeks long.
Three. The government pays for them. Why can't you have that? The Post Office
has all your names and addresses. Everyone can automatically be registered to
vote. And you can fix your country. Because if everyone voted, you'd probably
have a free health-care system like we do at home. Totally free. Paid for by our
tax dollars.
I've just worked at the Sydney Children's Hospital as a pediatric intern.
Best medical care in the world. Money is never mentioned. I go to the doctor,
pay my bill, walk next-door, and into my hand is given cold, hard cash by my
government to pay for my doctor's visit.
[Whispering very low]
Oh, but isn't that socialism? Ohhhhh. Naughty word!
What was Jesus? He was a socialist. Yes he was.
It's more difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than it is
for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle.
What to do good Samaritan do? He stopped and cared for the man.
What the Jesus talk about all the time, the love?
What to the other profits talk about? Love thy neighbor as thyself. To unto
others as you would have them to unto you.
Free medical care system. Every person in this country requires an education
like the people here at Smith get.
[Someone in audience asks, "Everyone?]
Yes, every single person. But where does the money coming from?
Well, where does your money go?
[Inaudible response from audience]
Yes, well, how much?
[Inaudible response from audience]
Nearly half a trillion. If you spend $1000 a minute since Jesus was born you
would have just about spend $1 trillion dollars. Almost half that amount is
spent on death every year.
Why do I say death? It's not the Department of Defense. It's the Department
of Death.
I know and Admiral — a really nice fellow. He said, "Helen, our
mission at the Pentagon is to destroy property and kill people."
What did the Bible say? Or any other religion? [Very slowly and deliberately]
Thou...shalt...not...kill.
And in the nuclear age, any war could lead to a nuclear war and annihilation
of the planet.
Einstein got it right when he said the splitting of the atom changed
everything, all reality, save man's mode of thinking. And I'm talking about
these reptilian midbrains on the other end of the bell curve, fed by
testosterone. Thus we drift towards unparalleled catastrophe. We have to stop
the fighting.
Now, there's one magic solution, and that is that 53 percent of the Earth's
population do not secrete testosterone from their gonads.
[Audience laughs]
They secrete estrogen and progesterone. Which, if you've ever have a baby,
are the most nurturing hormones. I felt, when I was breast-feeding, that I could
feed the whole world. I was so nurturing.
And it's interesting because there's a scientist, who was in a lab recently,
who studies hormone levels. And she noticed when something difficult came up in
the lab and there was animosity — and don't any of you man take this
personally — the man would tend to go off and shut their doors, and sort of
fume and workout vengeance.
When the women got upset, they cleaned the lab, they make coffee, and they
set around and talked. She thought that was very interesting. So she did the
hormone levels. The hormone levels of the women under stress — oxytocin, which
actually is responsible for uterine contraction, but clearly is a very nurturing
hormone, went right up. And the testosterone levels in the man went right up.
Isn't that interesting? Why? Sociobiogically why?
If you go back to when we were troglodytes, 3 million years ago — we're a
very young primitive species — we sat in the case breast-feeding our babies in
the man went out and kill the sabertooth tigers and some marauding tribes. And
they had to for us to survive.
That was necessary because the world was a very scary place then. But there
has been little evolution in this primitive evolutionary instinct for men to
kill for territorial imperative. Whereas 53 percent of us are women, and we are
not a minority, where majority, we do two-thirds of the world's work for which
we earn 10 percent of the income. We own 1 percent of the property. And we have
all the babies. And that's without question.
It's time that there was a mandated law mandating that 53 percent of the
Congress and every single organization in the world is composed of women. And
the magic number is 30 percent. Below 30 percent, the women tend to vote for
missiles. But above 30 percent, they reinforce each other and say, "No,
you're not getting your missiles. Now, we're voting for milk for the
children."
There's good women, bad women, right-wing, left-wing, all sorts of women,
because there's a certain empathy we have and they need to nurture and preserve
life.
In France, they just passed a parity law saying that 50 percent of all people
running for office have to be women. It's interesting that France should be
ahead of United States, isn't it? I'm just giving you lots of ideas for the
Revolution.
The next thing that I want to describe is Star Wars. There are five layers of
Star Wars. I won't go into it all. It's very complex. It will never work. But
they're going to spend billions and billions and billions of dollars. In fact,
this administration for spending four times as much money on Star Wars as on the
State Department. Boy, do you need your diplomats.
You are sagacious, wise people who speak all sorts of languages and are
well-trained. They've been totally sidelined. The people conducting your foreign
policy are Rumsfeld et al. The Pentagon. That's totally inappropriate.
The most important thing and want to say is that America is about two
militarized space, which, according to the United Nations, belongs to the globe —
all of the people of the world. Don't forget that America is only 4.5 percent of
the world's population.
Why do they want to do that? Because NASA — it's really military — has
been mapping the planets and the moon and the asteroids for rare minerals. Then
they're going to launch nuclear reactors and put them on the planets — it's
all in the book — mine the rare minerals and bring them back. In the
corporations get the profits and you pay for the whole thing.
If America spend so much capital and space, it's got to control it. I mean,
why not? Dominate it. It's called full-spectrum dominance. They're putting out
anti-satellite weapons, orbiting nuclear reactors to power laser beam weapons
that can take out cities with a flash of light, and affect very many killed,
they say. Particle beam weapons and possibly hydrogen bombs up there.
One hydrogen bomb exploded high in space shoots out such a voltage, called
electromagnetic pulse, that would take out the whole of United States of
America's wiring systems, and totally paralyze the U.S. That's something else
the Pentagon won't talk about, because they know it's true, but they don't know
what to do about it.
These are the plans. Their ongoing, and this stuff is being built as I speak,
mostly by Lockheed Martin.
Now, Iraq.
The first invasion of a rock by the United States was a nuclear invasion.
America used shells made of uranium. Uranium is 1.7 times more dense than lead.
So, if you have and antitank shell, it develops tremendous momentum. Momentum
equals mass [multiplied] by velocity. It slices through the steel armor of tank
like a hot knife through butter. But it's pyrophoric, so when it hits the tank,
it burns, producing tiny little particles that can be inhaled into the lungs.
They used up to 800 tons of it in Iraq, especially on those retreating
soldiers on the death highway. Uranium 238 has a half-life of 4.5 billion years.
So, they left a radioactive battlefield — radioactive for the rest of time.
Children are 10 to 20 more radio sensitive than adults. The incidence of
leukemia and cancer in the children in Bozrah, where these weapons were used,
has gone up 6 to 12 times. Little girls age can our getting breast cancer. Women
are terrified to give birth because the giving birth to monsters. The incidence
of congenital deformities has tripled. Babies with single eyes, babies born with
no brain, no vault to the skull, just enough of the mid-brain so they cough,
cry, suck, and then die. Babies with spina bifida, with no limbs.
[Long pause]
Americans don't know that because the media is conducting a conspiracy of
silence. The Europeans know it because the soldiers who went to Kosovo, for
peacekeeping operations, our getting leukemia and brain cancers. There's been a
huge debate in the European Parliament.
Your veterans are excreting uranium in their seamen. What's in the seamen?
The most precious cells in the human body apart from the ovum. The sperm. There
are 3000 genetic diseases. My specialty, cystic fibrosis, is the most common.
Can you imagine what that means?
These shells were also polluted with plutonium, the most deadly substance
known to the human race, such that one pound, hypothetically, if adequately
distributed could give every person on earth line cancer. Strontium-90, which
causes bone cancer and leukemia. Cesium-137, which is very carcinogenic. Because
this uranium was reclaimed from old that nuclear reactors in submarines and
mixed with some of these products from the nuclear reactors.
They just discovered up to 1000 tonnes of it in Afghanistan. And when they go
in again, they're going to use [DU shells] again. That's called evil.
The armor of one-third of the American tanks was made of uranium too, so the
men sat in a radioactive environment with their testicles being irradiated —
the most organ in the male body, if you're talking about evolution.
Now, they're going to go in. It doesn't matter what the United Nations says.
George Bush doesn't understand it, but he's very belligerent now, and very
cocksure. They've got 250 troops over there at the moment, thousands of planes
and the like, aircraft carriers.
Every month since 1991, 5000 children have died of waterborne diseases —
cholera, typhoid, dysentery — because America, on purpose, bombed the water
supplies and the sewage systems, so they been drinking dirty water.
Because of the sanctions applied by the United States, they can't be treated.
My colleagues stand at the foot of these children's beds, dying of leukemia,
weeping, because they have no drugs.
They're going to do it again. And nobody knows. And I know that if the whole
of America knew this they've stopped the war. It's not a war, it's a massacre.
It's a radioactive war.
There's a 50-50 chance they'll use a nuclear weapon there — a nuclear
bunker buster, a real nuclear weapon, which the Russian satellites could pick up
the flash, misinterpret it, thinking America's launched missiles, and launch
their missiles, like they nearly did in '95.
We were on hair trigger alert, incidentally, on September 11. The highest
state of alert, with planes in the air, B-52s armed with nuclear weapons. The
guys wear one patch over one, so when they fly to Russia and drop the bombs —
when they're blinded in one, they can take the patch off and they can fly home.
But they'll be no home. Because everything is destroyed and incinerated.
That could trigger nuclear winter. Or, Israel said that if Hussein launches
SCUDs towards her, she could use nuclear weapons back. And were still a point
where we could have nuclear war between Russia and America be triggered by that.
The probability is not zero. And I can't give a number of having a global
nuclear war because this, but I could say maybe 10 percent — 5 to 10 percent.
Are you prepared to go along with that risk of wiping out the only life in
the universe?
Hussein has no nuclear weapons. Dick Cheney says he doesn't. And if he's got
biological and chemical, there were given to him by America, because he's a CIA
man. And he was armed and financed by the United States to fight Iran when Iran
thumbed its nose at America and took some American hostages.
That war between Iran and Iraq killed over one million people, many of them
little boys under the age of 14 — child soldiers.
Then, the right-wingers say when we are done Iraq, we are going to then do
Iran. And then, they say we might do China and Syria. It's all in here. They
write about it. They're setting China up as a new Cold War enemy too.
You know, life began in Iraq. That's where the garden of Eden was. Absolutely
tragic. About 10 percent of the world soil is there. Hussein nationalized it.
So, America's got to have it so everyone can drive their SUVs, and cause global
warming, and the destruction of two-thirds of the world species, and the rising
of the seas, and one-third of the human population, and spreading malaria
epidemics around the world as the mosquitoes proliferate in the heat. That's
what this war is about — SUVs.
I don't know what else to say, except that I'm really scared. I wake up in
the middle of the night, and I can to see these Iraqi women, with their babies.
[Helen laughs nervously] I'm having a baby tonight. Washing them and bathing
them — one of the loveliest things you do when your new mother is to bath the
baby, and put Johnson's baby powder on it. But the minute diapers and wrap them
and shawls can put them in bed at night. Breast-feed them. And then a few weeks
there'll be hot shards of metal slicing through their bodies.
And if you see these men talk on Oprah — I was on Oprah the other day, they
use me to justify the war — they have no idea, it's all male left brain
thinking. They're not talking about killing people at all.
The people who get killed are innocent people — man, women, and children.
War isn't about soldiers fighting soldiers, these days, it's men dropping bombs
from 40,000 feet in the air and never smelling the blood or seeing the people
with their intestines falling out of huge gashes in their abdomen, or babies
with their heads blown off.
They don't fight. They just murder...from cyberspace, because Americans
mustn't get killed, must they?...after Vietnam.
We are right at the brink, at the precipice, never before as the world than
in such a dangerous situation.
[Holding up a flower]
This is a dahlia, one of my most favorite flowers. They bloom in the fall, as
do chrysanthemums. I've got a book of Peter Pan and Wendy, and the paintings are
by R. M. Rackham, who drew the most beautiful little fairies in the park —
Windsor Park in London — and they've got chrysanthemums like little low
ladies, hobbling along, and the fairies playing. This represents that to me.
We're so lucky to be here. We're so lucky to have been born and conceived.
Life is such a privilege. It so beautiful. Walk outside and smell the leaves,
falling from the trees on this lovely day. Look at their colors. It's an
absolute miracle. Scuba dive under to sea and see fish. And we're about to
destroy it all.
So, as I said in a speech years ago, if you love this planet you will change
the priorities of your life and work every second of every day to save it. And
you'll never feel depressed again. You'll feel a sense of great joy and
fulfillment.
Thank you very much.
[Long applause]
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