Nonviolent Ways Project's Web Log

Nonviolent Ways Project's Blog
... for social justice news, analysis, information and commentary
... this is a niche blog, what hits and fits - feel free to add a comment
... for some background on who we are, visit this web page
... we have two web homes: NV Ways and Wild Clearing

CHECK OUT OUR URANIUM WEAPONS BLOG

Maintained by Wes Rehberg

TACTICS TO THWART A NONVIOLENT CAMPAIGN AGAINST URANIUM WEAPONS

This entry was posted on 6/5/2007 6:44 PM and is filed under Information.

Roger Helbig, Air Force Lt. Colonel, reportedly pressured sponsors, conferees, delegates in Tennessee

by Cliff Kindy (CPT, Stop-DU)

   One week before the Depleted Uranium (DU) Conference at East Tennessee State University, Roger Helbig, Lieutenant Colonel, United States Air Force,sent scathing emails to the organizers and speakers, saying, among other things, "You really have been had [with these speakers]." He went on to discredit them systematically. One of the speakers, Cathy Garger, reported receiving sixteen messages from Helbig. Helbig also made two phone calls and sent two emails to the director of the Church of the Brethren Newsline, which had sent out the announcement of the conference.

   Helbig was attempting to divide the speakers and planners and force them to spend time defending themselves rather than just telling their stories. Apparently, other pressures from behind the scenes also entered this drama.

   An encampment across from the Aerojet Ordnance plant, a primary DU manufacturer, was supposed to happen in conjunction with the conference. Two landowners, who in previous months had offered their land for the Stop-DU encampment, withdrew those invitations in the last days before the conference.

   Then, the final day before the event, the professor who had arranged the space for the DU Conference on campus received a call on her personal cell phone from the Dean of East Tennessee State University. He questioned why she had opened her classroom to an "outside" group. The implication was that she should rescind the offer.

   As planners assess the timing of the conference, they can draw the conclusion that some people are feeling uncomfortable with the growing visibility of DU issues and are pulling out the stops to make the Stop-DU campaign falter.

   Their tactics failed. The conference proceeded on schedule. Sixty activists and interested visitors from at least nine U.S. states and Canadian provinces attended the six-hour teaching/organizing conference.

   [Members of Christian Peacemaker Teams' 18-26 May delegation that participated in the 19 May DU conference are Russell Attoe and Judy Leurquin (Madison, Wisconsin), Bill and Genie Durland (Colorado Springs, Colorado), Ron Forthofer (Longmont, Colorado), Ron Friesen (Loveland, Colorado), Anne Herman (El Paso, Texas), Kirsten Romaine Jones (Toronto, Ontario), Cliff Kindy (North Manchester, Indiana) Murray Lumley (Toronto, Ontario), Jane MacKay Wright (Providence Bay, Ontario), Wes Rehberg (Chattanooga, Tennessee), Michael Smith (Gibson City, Illinois) and Dick and Gretchen Williams (Boulder, Colorado).]

Trackbacks

Trackback specific URL for this entry

Trackbacks are closed for this entry.

Comments

Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

6/8/2007 1:19 AM Roger Helbig wrote:
Cliff Kindy ought to correspond with me rather than ratting me out to his friends on this BLOG. I was writing a long and impassioned message about the frauds in the anti-DU crusader business. Yes, it is a business, look at the books and DVDs that they sell, the donations that they solicit and even paid admission to conferences like the one in Vancouver, BC later in June. Where is all that money going and why do you support them? There job is to convince you to keep supporting them. I am the ultimate bad guy for now because I have Google searches on my name (that's how I found this one, Doug Rokke, one of the principal frauds, Leuren Moret, another of the principal frauds, and Bob Nichols, their spokesperson and I read the mail on anti-DU groups, some of which are open to the public. I am a retired Air Force Reservist and when I turn 60 in July, I will actually begin to draw a small monthly check for serving 25 years active and reserve duty. Doug Rokke is not yet 60, so he does not get the check, but he is a retired Army Reservist. He served all of about 2 years in the Army as a Reservist, and all the rest of his time (he tries to make you believe he is a career soldier; Don Williams bought that line hook line and sinker, but Rokke really served a number of years in the Illinois National Guard when they were mainly home in the cornfields, not in Iraq, and in the Army Reserve. He did get called for the Gulf War and he served in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - he sometimes tells people that he is a disabled combat veteran - well, he never saw combat, so that is a lie, just one of many, like that he was the Director of the Army DU program, well Captain Rokke, Army Reserve, on active duty in Alabama at the Army Chemical Corps School got out of active duty and became Mr Rokke, Civilian supervisor of the School's classes about DU. Mr Rokke failed to complete his first six months probation. Doctor Rokke is a PhD in Education, not in Medicine, not in Physics, not in Health Physics, his PhD thesis is long, dull and boring and has absolutely nothing to do with depleted uranium. Lieutenant Rokke, back from the Gulf never even mentioned DU. He did not join that bandwagon until he realized that it was a comfortable living, better than just being a substitute teacher and an actor in community theater and he found he could spin tall tales with the best of them. That's why I call it a business. Rokke, Moret, Nichols, Garger, some of the big names, and Garger is just a windbag, has absolutely no knowledge about anything, just writed convincing stories, Nichols is her tutor; whatever he says goes and he has even less knowledge than Garger. Moret likes to be called Doctor Moret, but she knows that she really dropped out of the doctoral program and never studied anything to do with radiation, uranium or how to measure radioactivity, but snows you because she once worked at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and before that Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.
6/8/2007 1:33 AM Roger Helbig wrote:
I overran my 3000 character limit -- write me - I answer all mail, even the nasty and impolite .. I have made an in depth study of the characters in the anti-DU business and I have made an in depth study of DU. I got in this because I learned about nuclear fallout when I was a young Captain heading for Iceland and I saw DU being described as if it were fallout. I also saw a false comparison with the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan and there are Japanese activists who have fomented the anti-DU crusade because of what we did to end WW-II. I am also afraid that some kid in the Middle East is going to be convinced by the frauds in the anti-DU business that he should pay the US back for poisoning his country forever. That would be a horrific result from these frauds because the fact is that no one has poisoned anyone's country forever with DU and especially not Afghanistan which is the heart of why the fraud Mohammed Daud Miraki continues to raise money for non-existent health care facilities to care for non-existent patients in Afghanistan even after the State of Illinois shut down his non-profit corporation. I turned him in to the IRS and I hope that they go after him for tax fraud in addition to being one of Cathy Garger's very best people. I see she is mentioned many times in Cliff's piece, which seems to be drawing no ratings except mine, but has been circulated around the world to make me out to be some awful government spook when all I really am is a smart fellow with a keyboard who used to love having his elderly cat sit on the mouse and purr. Unfortunately, that pleasure of battling the anti-DU crusade business has ended because at the age of 18 she died of kidney failure.

Roger Helbig
rwhelbig at gmail dot com

DU Story, DU and other Yahoo groups have the actual documents about Moret, Rokke and links to factual information about DU, uranium, natural radioactive minerals like Thorium, very common in the sands of Rio de Janerio, now, has anyone seen a Brazilian bikini clad beauty out with a radiation meter like Moret in Hawaii .. if they did it would make Moret's readings look like mere background radiation, which of course is just what they were.