[ RadSafe ] Italian Court, Soldier in Balkans and DU

[Ernesto Faillace]

I am not personally familiar with this group or its acitivies, as I have
been living in the US for all of my adult life (the past 30 years).  Based
on what is on their web page (http://www.anavafaf.com/index1.html), ANAVAFAF
has been around only about 20 years, so I am thinking they are more of an
advocacy group (closer to the ACLU than the American Legion), but are not
directly involved in policy making (other than perhaps lobbying the
government) or claims distribution.  Their site solicits donations and has
not ONE, but TWO direct links on the home page just for uranium issues and
its "victims" - no other direct links to other issues of concern to military
personnel or their families, so they are obviously not much concerned with
more hazardous exposure to "kinetic" hazards from other heavy metals such as
lead or tungsten used extensively in the military.

ANAVAFAF is an acronym for "Associazione Nazionale Assistenza Vittime
Arruolate nelle Forze Armate e Famiglie dei Caduti" (not sure what happened
to that last "C" which is missing from the acronym) which roughly translates
to "National Association for the Assistance to Enlisted Armed Forces Victims
and Families of the Fallen"

Regards,

Ernesto Faillace, CHP

PS,  Regarding my translation, I used, and highly recommend, the Google
translation tool over Babelfish, which I have also used in the past.  Its
machine translation engine, while not perfect (none of them are - yet)
appears to be more accurate, making the necessary adjustments much easier
and efficient.  And it allows users to suggest better translations if they
are native speakers inclined to be critical of the translation's accuracy.
Over time, the input of these users (that is, those who actually take the
time to make the suggested corrections to Google) serves as an effective
means to improve the translation engine, similar to the way Wikipedia, the
open source encyclopedia, might work (with similar, but obviously less
"political", caveats - input can only be as accurate as the "inputter").


Thank you for the translation, Ernesto.
>
> Is this "Anavafaf" similar to the American Legion in the US? Or, are they
> more of an activist group? Don't they have an agency like the US Dept. of
> Veterans Affairs that handles these claims?