Military Base Burn Pits

I. Burn Pits on Military Bases
"Burn pits were dug on military bases in the midst of housing, work and dining facilities, with zero pollution controls. "Tons of waste -- an average of 10 pounds daily per soldier -- burned in them every day, all day all night. Ash laden with hundreds of toxins and carcinogens blackened the air and coated clothing, beds, desks and dining halls, according to  a Government Accounting Office investigation."

"Some of the U.S. bases were built on the remnants of Iraqi military bases that had been bombed and flattened by U.S. airstrikes. A handful of these bases -- at least five -- contained stockpiles of old chemical warfare weapons, among them the nerve agent sarin and the blistering agent mustard gas, used by Iraq against Iran and the Kurds in the 1980s and 1990s."

"From the ailing veterans, Joseph Hickman, former Marine and Army soldier, learned of medical claims denied by DOD and Veterans Health Administration doctors, who flatly refused to consider that their health problems were service-related, and insinuated that they were looking for a free ride. He discovered that veterans had more than 20 class-action lawsuits in 2008 and 2009 against KBR Co., the DOD contractor that constructed the burn pits."

"In the course of his work, Hickman enlisted the legal assistance of Seton Hall University Law School's Center for Policy and Research. The center was highly regarded for its uncovering of human rights violations at Guantanamo and exhaustive probing of the 2008 financial crisis. Its work yielded a list of the most prevalent illnesses reported by 500 veterans interviewed by Hickman, mainly, acute and debilitating respiratory illnesses (74 percent) and throat, lung and brain cancers and leukemia (26 percent). Over 90 percent, after long waits, were refused disability."

"Medical research has since pinpointed titanium dust particles, inhaled by soldiers from the burn pits, as a likely cause of their high rates of brain cancer."

"The arc of poisons begins with the oil fires in Kuwait set by fleeing Iraqi soldiers, which burned for seven months, and depleted uranium weapons used by the U.S. in the first Gulf War (1991) and in the Iraq War (2003-2011). It extends to the burn pit air toxins from U.S. bases that wafted into nearby towns and cities and the recent oil conflagrations set by ISIS and ignited during U.S. bombing of ISIS strongholds." (Source: Joseph Hickman, "The Burn Pits: The Poisoning of America's Soldiers")

II. A New U.N. Framework
The co-chairs of the Commission on Global Security, Justice and Governance were former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former U.N. Under Secretary-General Ibrahim Gambari. Their report makes the case that we can't have security anywhere without justice, or justice anywhere without security. And it asserts that nothing could do more to provide both security and justice to much of humanity than smart 21st Century innovations in global governance.

The Commission addressed three broad issue areas -- the impact of climate change on the poor and vulnerable, the intersection between "cross-border economic shocks" and various cyber nightmares, and intrastate "violence" in fragile states. For climate, the report proposed an "International Carbon Monitoring Entity" and a "Climate Engineering Advisory Board," as well as atmospheric modification and climate adaptation efforts.

Regarding the U.N. Security Council, the Commission called for adding new members beyond the present 15, creating a new kind of "dissenting vote" that would not block passage of a resolution, and it recommended "restraint in the use of the veto." It concluded that if the U.N.is ever to become both democratic and effective, the veto doesn't need to be "restrained." The veto needs to be eliminated.

The Commission also recommended the creation of a "UN Parliamentary Network." The concept is that individuals already elected to national legislatures could be selected to sit in this new international body.

The principle of one nation one vote, for states large and small, could hardly be more undemocratic. Also, once the votes are cast in the U.N. General Assembly, its decisions serve only as polite requests to the world. It has no power to make anything like universal laws. The solution is to establish some  kind of weighted voting system in the General Assembly (perhaps accounting for both population and monetary contributions to global public initiatives), and then to give the results of its balloting the force of international law (like Security Council decisions already possess).

As a funding mechanism, the Commission suggested something like the "Tobin Tax," which by placing a microscopic fee on international currency speculation, could provide new resources.

Finally, to try to prevent genocide and crimes against humanity, the Commission proposed a permanent, directly-recruited, all-volunteer U.N. Rapid Deployment Force (UNRDF).The UNRDF would be poised to act not to serve the national interests of any individual state, but to serve the common human interest in relegating genocide to the dustbin of history. It could free the American president, in particular, from the dilemma of dispatching "the most powerful military force in the world" to stop crimes that have little to do with us, or doing noting while the nightmares continue to unfold.