A poisoned memorial to World War I: The forests of Verdun

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NorthStar

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This is something that I'm learning more about, and it blows the mine.
The high level of toxic substances in the soil is so high that humans remain affected hundred years later. When we start new wars we should think about that first. And it should not be permitted on planet Earth, period.

What kind of species are we? Ten years from now, sooner or later a big explosion would be sparked by a lighting bolt. When you drop bombs you should be accountable for the mess you create. You free nobody, just the contrary. Freedom comes from intelligent wars, wars of peace without toxic waste for the next thousand years. You defend your land and your family armed to the teeth with guns of no mass destruction. No toxic bombs, no chemicals, no nuclear, no radioactivity, no soil contamination, no children and no women hit.

It seems to me, and to many more, that we are a barbaric species who have learned zero from our past mistakes. We just keep repeating them till our climate become poisonous and deadly, till our ground is completely intoxicated.

I'll have more to say about that later on ...
 

the sound of Tao

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War... that gift that keeps giving. We are a such a dodgy species. Hopefully humankind learns that conflict is not sustainable for any of us. We first have to see the kind in humankind. One kind being kind is the only way genuinely forward.
 
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NorthStar

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It's the mess that wars leave behind. It should be cleaned up by the people who started them and encouraged them. It's their responsibilities when it's over. We honor the people who fought and died to protect their families and countries. We should also clean our mess after it's over, because if we don't we are protecting no one, not our families, not our land, not our country with our soil soaked in toxic bomb waste. We think in complete reverse of the way we act, we act without thinking. Tomorrow is remembrance day across the world, tomorrow our past battlefields are still very there, impact and intact, and full of debris that still kill thousand years from now.

If we don't use the broom and the shovel to clean our mess we advance nowhere and we remember nothing. We do our ceremonies with humility and tears in our hearts, we don't account for the mess we're still in today. We are too afraid to clean up and we don't want to invest where it counts the most. So we honor the dead, the veterans, we remember them. But life is still living underground with millions of unexploded bombs and toxic soil where someday someone will plant a garden and feed the villagers, the citizens with toxic vegetables and fruits.

The red zone will become not remembered anymore, we will need more land to feed from, and the Verdun forest will feed part of the planet. We are poisoning children that will come centuries from now, way after we are long gone.

It must be very similar in many other countries...Russia, Japan, USA, Canada, China, Africa, etc. ...Were toxic soils are the results from past wars...WW1 and WW2.
Where they thinking before they started them? No, the proof we are seeing it today.
It's not the planet Earth that is wrong, it's the people who inhabit it.
 
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the sound of Tao

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100 per cent Bob, many live with the remembrance of the great (???) wars to this very day. Reparations should have required immediate remediation of the land as well as the rebuild of the cities. The inequity of the militarily strong but ethically weak seeking to impose on the others because of greed and self interest is hardly a new thing. It’s about time that we actually learnt something from it. We know plenty and understand little.

We went to war over the last century for oil and coal... let’s not next be going to war over food and land. We need to heal and prepare for a difficult time ahead.
 

DonH50

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War is horrible, the aftermath horrific. Maybe it is sometimes necessary, maybe not. I have lost friends and family as have many others. But I cannot help thinking that this thread, at this time of honoring veterans, is just not appropriate. There is horror, but also honor, and I honor those who paid for the freedom of my life and family.

Tomorrow I shall play taps, perhaps the hardest 24 notes for any trumpeter, in honor of the living veterans as well as those who gave all.
 

NorthStar

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I found the entire article very well written and to the point.
I didn't want to quote it in full, so I made an exception and posted the link.
Not to take people away but to have them back stronger than ever right here, @ the base.

"They burned it for years, basically for the entire 1920s and we never thought about the consequences," said historian Moizan.
The results are obvious nearly a century later. A 2007 environmental study of the site showed the soil holds levels of arsenic up to 35,000 times higher than typical soil levels. In some areas this lethal compound makes up 17.5% of the soil. But for small shrubs, little grows on this patch of polluted earth.
While La place a Gaz isn't representative of the battlefields as a whole, it provides powerful testimony to war's persistent fallout."


Yes we need to learn of the long lasting consequences of wars if we want to live in peace.
That's the essence, learning from past mistakes.
We send our kids to the battlegrounds and the ones who survived, some, come back to us and they are completely in need of readaptation to peaceful life.
I was thinking about how impactful it is to kill someone else in front of you. Wars do that to our kids; grownups send them there and later on wonder why there is so much violence and killings within our own countries.

Yes, oil is unbelievably harmful in so many aspects. Look @ the situation right now, with all the cars in big cities, the war in Yemen, the Paris accord, the coal in China, ...the toxic clouds encircle the entire globe, the economics take precedence over health and peace. Jobs are more important than life.

It's not just in France, in the forest of Verdun that we didn't clean up properly, it's in almost every country of the planet, even in space.

We need to be accountable to what we have created and still creates today.
If we don't we have our priorities wrong. It's not normal life to live in fear, in hatred, with so many guns, with so much violence, with no consideration for human lives, with so much blood soaking our planet's blanket. Yes, dictators and controllers are nobody without a happy family on the ground and up in the air. Wars are inevitable as long as there will be dictators and people following them. We need a better education, kids need an education, we need to remove the bad guys efficiently and discretely, so that the good guys can take care of a healthy garden without contaminating our soil from toxic war's waste.

We need healthier resources than oil and coal; ocean wave turbines, powered by the tides, wind energy, sun energy, human heat energy, cooler temperatures, snow flakes, forest management, and quality management, pure water management, ...like we take care of our hi-fi stereo systems with the best grounded boxes, quality dirt, unfiltered cables, oxygen-free pure copper, vibration-free platforms, hurricane-free AC power cords, turbulance-free space, noise-less disturbances, distortion-free zones, cleaner speaker drivers.
 

the sound of Tao

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War is horrible, the aftermath horrific. Maybe it is sometimes necessary, maybe not. I have lost friends and family as have many others. But I cannot help thinking that this thread, at this time of honoring veterans, is just not appropriate. There is horror, but also honor, and I honor those who paid for the freedom of my life and family.

Tomorrow I shall play taps, perhaps the hardest 24 notes for any trumpeter, in honor of the living veterans as well as those who gave all.

Don,
Tomorrow is absolutely a day to honour all those lost and also all those that survived the war, the civilians and veterans on all sides.

My great grandfather is among those whose grave is an unmarked one in the fields in France from the time of the first Great War, my uncle also lays in an unmarked grave when shot down over Poland in the second Great War.

There will be no disrespect for any of the victims of these wars or indeed any war before or since, and with the very greatest respect there has never been a better time to also take time to reflect on our ongoing failure to protect all of humankind from the impossible suffering that comes from these actions.
 
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the sound of Tao

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Jul 18, 2014
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War is horrible, the aftermath horrific. Maybe it is sometimes necessary, maybe not. I have lost friends and family as have many others. But I cannot help thinking that this thread, at this time of honoring veterans, is just not appropriate. There is horror, but also honor, and I honor those who paid for the freedom of my life and family.

Tomorrow I shall play taps, perhaps the hardest 24 notes for any trumpeter, in honor of the living veterans as well as those who gave all.

To be able to play taps on such a moment Don, that would be very moving. Music is surely the core to sharing and feeling... there’s so much healing that a moment of music can bring.

It’s the music that joins us together as a tribe and too often its just the words that tend to separate us. Music is such a better way to communicate the richest of things.
 
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NorthStar

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Feb 8, 2011
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War is horrible, the aftermath horrific. Maybe it is sometimes necessary, maybe not. I have lost friends and family as have many others. But I cannot help thinking that this thread, at this time of honoring veterans, is just not appropriate. There is horror, but also honor, and I honor those who paid for the freedom of my life and family.

Tomorrow I shall play taps, perhaps the hardest 24 notes for any trumpeter, in honor of the living veterans as well as those who gave all.

It's very honorable that you play the trumpet tomorrow in honor to our veterans.

Me I disagree with you that my thread is inappropriate. Tell me what you see.
 

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