NZ support for chemical weapons

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New Zealand has a long history of supporting chemical weapons in the Middle East through the Super Fund's investments in manufacturers of depleted uranium munitions.

The use of depleted uranium weaponry in the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004 has resulted in birth abnormalities at a rate worse than post-1945 Hiroshima. The poisonous legacy is clearly explained by Al-Jazeera journalist Dahr Jamail in this interview with Amy Goodman from Democracy Now.
And going on to Fallujah, because I wrote about this a year ago, and then I returned to the city again this trip, we are seeing an absolute crisis of congenital malformations of newborn. There is one doctor, a pediatrician named Dr. Samira Alani, working on this crisis in the city. She’s the only person there registering cases. And she’s seeing horrific birth defects. I mean, these are extremely hard to look at. They’re extremely hard to bear witness to. But it’s something that we all need to pay attention to, because of the amount of depleted uranium used by the U.S. military during both of their brutal attacks on the city of 2004, as well as other toxic munitions like white phosphorus, among other things.
One scientist recently described the situation in Fallujah as "the highest rate of genetic damage in any population ever studied."

The New Zealand SuperFund has investments of $80,000 in GenCorp, the parent company of Aerojet which manufactures depleted uranium tipped weapons; and $1,967,381 in General Dynamics which manufactures depleted uranium weapons for the US military.

General Dynamics was very recently cleared for return to the SuperFund portfolio after ceasing making cluster munitions.

So if New Zealand wants to prevent the use of chemical weapons it needs to stop financing the manufacturers of depleted uranium.

-Omar, SA


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