[quote author=hiorta link=board=afterlife_knowledge;num=1136953097;start=0#14 date=01/12/06 at 09:43:46]Aye, Doc, this line is being crossed constantly.
The US has used and is using nuclear weapons in Iraq (twice) Kuwait and Afghanistan.

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I think you're confusing nuclear weapons with depleted uranium weapons. 

The former involves splitting or fusing the nucleus of the atom in a way to sustain a violent chain reaction.  I think it would be beneficial if we used low yield nukes in the middle east because the blast can be more targeted to bunkers more effectively w/o more overall destruction.  I didn't think nukes have been allowed yet, but given greater ability to target the force of the blast in deep bunker situations, I think it would be a good idea.  Most people, however, can't get themselves over the "nuclear" word, because they think of Hiroshima or Nagasaki.  If you are correct about them being used in the middle east, I expect it was in the context of a deep bunker, and the damage to surrounding civilian areas was probably less than it would have been otherwise.

Depleted uranium is the leftover U from enriching electricy plant fuel.  Natural U is .71% U235 before enrichment, 3 -5% afterwards.  The U238 leftover has less than .2% U235 and is considered "depleted."  It's heavier than lead, and when used as a dart-like anti-tank weapon, the shear lines actually sharpen it on its way through the armour so it penetrates exceedingly well.  Shear lines are determined by crystal structure, which are a result of both the element itself and the processing method. The inside of the tank is then splattered with molten stuff that kills the occupants.  Not pretty, but it's war after all, not a garden party.  This has been used in conflicts for over a decade.

The danger of depleted U is the dust/oxide generated on impact and the residue inside the vehicle.  If you sprinkle this on your food, or breath the dust for a fair amount of time, or play in it as a child might, it will cause the same immuno problems that breathing any heavy metal creates, (Pb, Cd). 

Depleted U is not radioactive (it's depleted), and so doesn't pose a radiation problem like power plant waste or bomb fallout.

Here's a World Health Organization Factsheet.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs257/en/

Hi Bud_S, you are quite correct, I have confused the two terror weapons. My apologies.

The after effects of both seem worse than the initial devastation.
"Mans inhumanity to man, makes countless tousands mourn"  Robert Burns.

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They do have nuclear bunker busters, and the latest improved one under study is called an RNEP (Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator)  It doesn't sound like they did anything but study it.  ($15 million worth).

http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-56/iss-11/p32.html

From that article:

"To exploit that efficiency, in 1997 the US replaced its aging 9-megaton bombs with a lower-yield but earth-penetrating 300-kt model by putting the nuclear warhead from an earlier bomb design into a strengthened alloy-steel casing and a new nose cone. When dropped onto a dry lakebed from 12 km, the missile penetrated a modest 6 m. But even at this shallow depth a much higher proportion of the explosion energy would be transferred to ground shock compared to a surface burst at the same yield. "

edit1: Also, Figure 6 in the article shows the narrow column of vented material that shows up instead of a mushroom cloud.  This could be what hiorta was referring to earlier about the weapons in use not having a traditional tell-tale mushroom. ?

Actually, Jambo, your last lines are important to the afterlife discussion.  If there is a divine law, truth, right and wrong, then suicide bombers would likely go to a hell, or at best a restricted Islamic area.  If truth is relative, and you believe you have done the right thing, and if our belief is all (right or wrong), then one would guess they would have their version of heaven and 72 vestal virgins.

My own take, is that there is a divine law, there is right action and action that leads either to or away from the divine.  Thus I believe that these guys are going to a hell in a handbasket.

Matthew

Hi Jambo-

In past life work I've been able to locate two of the guys involved with 911, but only briefly. One got away and was reborn before I could get any data. The other was extremely happy to nolonger have to be involved with previous activities, and was hanging out in his version of heaven. "That's all water under the bridge." He said that he was member of a three personcell that comunicated by pink paper (which means nothing to me) and the grafiti on the walls of rest rooms (which sounds possible and reasonable).


I also encountered a group of three people who were doing a sort of collective activity to steal from an evil lord in the Middle Ages who was over-taxing the people of the town. They'd steal his stuff, distribute it to their cronies in town, and thus were trying to repair obvious social wrongs. They got caught, were hung on dungeon walls where they were very slowly starved to death. Then the went into their own little cubicle of heaven, where they were all alone, but were able to enjoy the fruits of their good deeds. Then on rebirth they got into the negative karma part.

A woman came in who had been living in the early 1800s, went to a finishing school, and was then essentially sold by her father into marriage with an ancient business associate. His children, of whom she was now the mother, were older than she was. They mistreated her, made her into a domestic slave and eventually were so wretched that she jumped out a window with a sash cord around her neck. She spent a long time being all alone in a peaceful place.   Her rebirth was into a modern family in which she was sister to the owner, who made her into a general office slave, given all possible junk jobs, lots of work, no praise and no reward. In other words, she was right back where she started.  Th solution was to get her to gointo business with her husband as his assistant doing office work while he did automotive engine repair, and thus was able to abandon the situation.

Again, the karmic kicker comes back at the time of rebirth. To my knowledge (I don't have a Koran in my office) there is no specific provision that denies rebirth in Islam. In fact, the Sufis do a form of meditation that is identical to that done by Hindus who assuredly believe inreincarnation. Guru Nanak recognized the two religions as identical in their basic ideas, and founded the Sikh faith as a merger of the two. Sufism would thus be expected to agree that we get reborn and as such we get to work out our problems with the world.

This leads me to think that, as Doc put it, the tendency would be to have a"Muslim section" in the Light, followed by returning to the same kind of situation that they created.  This is precisely the type of thinking that led me to speculate on the fact that suicide bombers are probably doing themselves personally very little good, and that they are going to get back what they give out. More than that, their collective enterprise is going to be tainted by the method of its doing, snce, in the last analysis, life is not an end point, but a serial process.

The Buddhists who torched themselves in French Indo-China would at least return to a place in which theywould again be faced with the same decision, but not with the inevtability of their children being turned into hamburger by the guys living on the other side of the wall because they had just finished doing that to those guys' kids.

And - I still believe that despite the greater military efficiency of attrition of the other guys and their families, that in a climate that is primarily a political stage on which we are watching a kind of perverted morality play, those who can pull the heartstrings will do more for their cause than those who pull the trigger.

d

ROFLMAO!  That might be the case!  they may be 72 she-males with hairy bodies   

OK, so I'm not hearing a lot of optimistic solutions or ideas for this very difficult problem of terrorism.  I know it's messy but maybe shoving democracy down the throats of the people in the heart of the middle east is the best option we have.  If freedom and liberty can give them a better life and educate them, that makes sense to me.  Maybe Bush is doing the only thing that might work in the long run.  It's been very messy like I said, but haven't heard anything better.  I don't mean to get political, but is democratizing the middle east a bad idea?  Is there any other realistic way of doing it other then by force?

I like a little logica consistency in my political systems. There is something logically awry in the concept of democratization by force.

this war isn't about sharing democracy, it's about oil. President Cheney is not "for the people." I wouldn't mind seeing Bush impeached.

If intent produces results, then intent must always be in motion, in play, a causative variable...because we always have results.  Then what is in my intent that contributes to terrorism in the world?  (this was one of my underlying reasons for starting the thread on intent, to figure out this level of action...the role of intent)