Bishop Williamson, whose talk was held Nov. 4, 2007 in Bedford, Mass., is quoted as saying:
"Without 9-11, it would have been impossible to attack Afghanistan or Iraq. The forces inside the United States government and driving the United States government absolutely wanted to attack and destroy Iraq. The destruction wrought upon Iraq is unspeakable. And now the same forces want to do the same thing to Iran . . . They may well be plotting another 9-11."
The news item continues: "Heat from the burning fuel of the planes that flew into the twin towers of the World Trade Center could not have melted the 47 steel columns in each tower, causing them to collapse, he claimed. And a commercial airliner could not have penetrated six of the ten walls that were breached by 'whatever hit the Pentagon,' he said."
What did hit the Pentagon, according to Bishop Williamson?
"It was a missile that hit the Pentagon. It was a missile that could only have been fired by the American military."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well it isnt the first time these theories have been suggested. I guess we will never know .... or will we ?
Thursday, 29 November 2007
Friday, 23 November 2007
Radioactive Ammunition Fired in Middle East May Claim More Lives Than Hiroshima and Nagasaki
By firing radioactive ammunition, the U.S., U.K., and Israel may have triggered a nuclear holocaust in the Middle East that, over time, will prove deadlier than the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan.
So much ammunition containing depleted uranium(DU) has been fired, asserts nuclear authority Leuren Moret, "The genetic future of the Iraqi people for the most part, is destroyed."
"More than ten times the amount of radiation released during atmospheric testing (of nuclear bombs) has been released from depleted uranium weaponry since 1991," Moret writes, including radioactive ammunition fired by Israeli troops in Palestine.
Moret is an independent U.S. scientist formerly employed for five years at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and also at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, both of California.
Adds Arthur Bernklau, of Veterans For Constitutional Law, "The long- term effect of DU is a virtual death sentence. Iraq is a toxic wasteland. Anyone who is there stands a good chance of coming down with cancer and leukemia. In Iraq, the birth rate of mutations is totally out of control."
Moret, a Berkeley, Calif., Environmental Commissioner and past president of the Association for Women Geoscientists, says, "For every genetic defect that we can see now, in future generations there are thousands more that will be expressed."
She adds, "the (Iraq) environment now is completely radioactive."
Dr. Helen Caldicott, the prominent anti-nuclear crusader, has written: "Much of the DU is in cities such as Baghdad, where half the population of 5 million people are children who played in the burned- out tanks and on the sandy, dusty ground."
Caldicott goes on to say the two Gulf wars "have been nuclear wars because they have scattered nuclear material across the land, and people---particularly children--- are condemned to die of malignancy and congenital disease essentially for eternity."
Because of the extremely long half-life of uranium 238, one of the radioactive elements in the shells fired, "the food, the air, and the water in the cradle of civilization have been forever contaminated," Caldicott explained.
Uranium is a heavy metal that enters the body via inhalation into the lung or via ingestion into the GI tract. It is excreted by the kidney, where, if the dose is high enough, it can induce renal failure or kidney cancer. It also lodges in the bones where it causes bone cancer and leukemia, and it is excreted in the semen, where it mutates genes in the sperm, leading to birth deformities.
Nuclear contamination is spreading around the world, Caldicott adds, with heaviest concentrations in regions within a 1,000-mile radius of Baghdad and Afghanistan.
These are, notably, northern India, southern Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Tibet, Pakistan, Kuwait, the Gulf emirates, and Jordan.
"Downwind from the radioactive devastation in Iraq, Israel is also suffering from large increases in breast cancer, leukemia and childhood diabetes," Moret asserts.
Doug Rokke, formerly the top U.S. Army DU clean-up officer and now anti-DU crusader, says Israeli tankers fired radioactive shells during the invasion of Lebanon last year. U.S. and NATO forces also used DU ammunition in Kosovo. Rokke says he is quite ill from the effects of DU and that members of his clean-up crew have died from it.
As a result of DU bombardments, Caldicott writes, "Severe birth defects have been reported in babies born to contaminated civilians in Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan and the incidence and severity of defects is increasing over time."
Like symptoms have been reported among infants born to U.S. service personnel that fought in the Gulf Wars. One survey of 251 returned Gulf War veterans from Mississippi made by the Veterans Administration found 67% of children born to them suffered from "severe illnesses and deformities."
Some were born without brains or vital organs or with no arms, hands, or arms, or with hands attached to their shoulders.
While U.S. officials deny DU ammunition is dangerous, it is a fact Gulf War veterans were the first Americans ever to fight on a radioactive battlefield, and their children apparently are the first known to display these ghastly deformities.
Soldiers who survived being hit by radioactive ammunition, as well as those who fired it, are falling ill, often showing signs of radiation sickness. Of the 700,000 U.S. veterans of the first Gulf War, more than 240,000 are on permanent medical disability and 11,000 are dead, published reports indicate.
This is an astonishing toll from such a short conflict in which fewer than 400 U.S. soldiers were killed on the battlefield.
Of course, "depleted uranium munitions were and remain another causative factor behind Gulf War Syndrome(GWS)," writes Francis Boyle, a leading American authority on international law in his book "Biowarfare and Terrorism," from Clarity Press Inc.
"The Pentagon continues to deny that there is such a medical phenomenon categorized as GWS---even beyond the point where everyone knows that denial is pure propaganda and disinformation," Boyle writes.
Boyle contends, "The Pentagon will never own up to the legal, economic, tortious, political, and criminal consequences of admitting the existence of GWS. So U.S. and U.K. veterans of Gulf War I as well as their afterborn children will continue to suffer and die. The same will prove true for U.S. and U.S. veterans of Bush Jr.'s Gulf War II as well as their afterborn children."
Boyle said the use of DU is outlawed under the 1925 Geneva Convention prohibiting poison gas.
Chalmers Johnson, president of the Japan Policy Research Institute, writes in his "The Sorrows of Empire"(Henry Holt and Co.) that, given the abnormal clusters of childhood cancers and deformities in Iraq as well as Kosovo, the evidence points "toward a significant role for DU."
By insisting on its use, Johnson adds, "the military is deliberately flouting a 1996 United Nations resolution that classifies DU ammunition as an illegal weapon of mass destruction."
Moret calls DU "the Trojan Horse of nuclear war." She describes it as "the weapon that keeps killing." Indeed, the half-life of Uranium-238 is 4.5-billion years, and as it decays it spawns other deadly radioactive by-products.
Radioactive fallout from DU apparently blew far and wide. Following the initial U.S. bombardment of Iraq in 2003, DU particles traveled 2,400 miles to Great Britain in about a week, where atmospheric radiation quadrupled.
But it is in the Middle East, predominantly Iraq, where the bulk of the radioactive waste has been dumped.
In the early Nineties, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority warned that 50 tons of dust from DU explosions could claim a half million lives from cancer by year 2000. Not 50 tons, but an estimated two thousand radioactive tons have been fired off in the Middle East, suggesting the possibility over time of an even higher death toll.
Dr. Keith Baverstock, a World Health Organization radiation advisor, informed the media, Iraq's arid climate would increase exposure from its tiny particles as they are blown about and inhaled by the civilian population for years to come.
The civilian death toll from the August, 1945, U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been put at 140,000 and 80,000, respectively. Over time, however, deaths from radiation sickness are thought to have claimed the lives of another 100,000 Japanese civilians.
So much ammunition containing depleted uranium(DU) has been fired, asserts nuclear authority Leuren Moret, "The genetic future of the Iraqi people for the most part, is destroyed."
"More than ten times the amount of radiation released during atmospheric testing (of nuclear bombs) has been released from depleted uranium weaponry since 1991," Moret writes, including radioactive ammunition fired by Israeli troops in Palestine.
Moret is an independent U.S. scientist formerly employed for five years at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and also at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, both of California.
Adds Arthur Bernklau, of Veterans For Constitutional Law, "The long- term effect of DU is a virtual death sentence. Iraq is a toxic wasteland. Anyone who is there stands a good chance of coming down with cancer and leukemia. In Iraq, the birth rate of mutations is totally out of control."
Moret, a Berkeley, Calif., Environmental Commissioner and past president of the Association for Women Geoscientists, says, "For every genetic defect that we can see now, in future generations there are thousands more that will be expressed."
She adds, "the (Iraq) environment now is completely radioactive."
Dr. Helen Caldicott, the prominent anti-nuclear crusader, has written: "Much of the DU is in cities such as Baghdad, where half the population of 5 million people are children who played in the burned- out tanks and on the sandy, dusty ground."
Caldicott goes on to say the two Gulf wars "have been nuclear wars because they have scattered nuclear material across the land, and people---particularly children--- are condemned to die of malignancy and congenital disease essentially for eternity."
Because of the extremely long half-life of uranium 238, one of the radioactive elements in the shells fired, "the food, the air, and the water in the cradle of civilization have been forever contaminated," Caldicott explained.
Uranium is a heavy metal that enters the body via inhalation into the lung or via ingestion into the GI tract. It is excreted by the kidney, where, if the dose is high enough, it can induce renal failure or kidney cancer. It also lodges in the bones where it causes bone cancer and leukemia, and it is excreted in the semen, where it mutates genes in the sperm, leading to birth deformities.
Nuclear contamination is spreading around the world, Caldicott adds, with heaviest concentrations in regions within a 1,000-mile radius of Baghdad and Afghanistan.
These are, notably, northern India, southern Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Tibet, Pakistan, Kuwait, the Gulf emirates, and Jordan.
"Downwind from the radioactive devastation in Iraq, Israel is also suffering from large increases in breast cancer, leukemia and childhood diabetes," Moret asserts.
Doug Rokke, formerly the top U.S. Army DU clean-up officer and now anti-DU crusader, says Israeli tankers fired radioactive shells during the invasion of Lebanon last year. U.S. and NATO forces also used DU ammunition in Kosovo. Rokke says he is quite ill from the effects of DU and that members of his clean-up crew have died from it.
As a result of DU bombardments, Caldicott writes, "Severe birth defects have been reported in babies born to contaminated civilians in Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan and the incidence and severity of defects is increasing over time."
Like symptoms have been reported among infants born to U.S. service personnel that fought in the Gulf Wars. One survey of 251 returned Gulf War veterans from Mississippi made by the Veterans Administration found 67% of children born to them suffered from "severe illnesses and deformities."
Some were born without brains or vital organs or with no arms, hands, or arms, or with hands attached to their shoulders.
While U.S. officials deny DU ammunition is dangerous, it is a fact Gulf War veterans were the first Americans ever to fight on a radioactive battlefield, and their children apparently are the first known to display these ghastly deformities.
Soldiers who survived being hit by radioactive ammunition, as well as those who fired it, are falling ill, often showing signs of radiation sickness. Of the 700,000 U.S. veterans of the first Gulf War, more than 240,000 are on permanent medical disability and 11,000 are dead, published reports indicate.
This is an astonishing toll from such a short conflict in which fewer than 400 U.S. soldiers were killed on the battlefield.
Of course, "depleted uranium munitions were and remain another causative factor behind Gulf War Syndrome(GWS)," writes Francis Boyle, a leading American authority on international law in his book "Biowarfare and Terrorism," from Clarity Press Inc.
"The Pentagon continues to deny that there is such a medical phenomenon categorized as GWS---even beyond the point where everyone knows that denial is pure propaganda and disinformation," Boyle writes.
Boyle contends, "The Pentagon will never own up to the legal, economic, tortious, political, and criminal consequences of admitting the existence of GWS. So U.S. and U.K. veterans of Gulf War I as well as their afterborn children will continue to suffer and die. The same will prove true for U.S. and U.S. veterans of Bush Jr.'s Gulf War II as well as their afterborn children."
Boyle said the use of DU is outlawed under the 1925 Geneva Convention prohibiting poison gas.
Chalmers Johnson, president of the Japan Policy Research Institute, writes in his "The Sorrows of Empire"(Henry Holt and Co.) that, given the abnormal clusters of childhood cancers and deformities in Iraq as well as Kosovo, the evidence points "toward a significant role for DU."
By insisting on its use, Johnson adds, "the military is deliberately flouting a 1996 United Nations resolution that classifies DU ammunition as an illegal weapon of mass destruction."
Moret calls DU "the Trojan Horse of nuclear war." She describes it as "the weapon that keeps killing." Indeed, the half-life of Uranium-238 is 4.5-billion years, and as it decays it spawns other deadly radioactive by-products.
Radioactive fallout from DU apparently blew far and wide. Following the initial U.S. bombardment of Iraq in 2003, DU particles traveled 2,400 miles to Great Britain in about a week, where atmospheric radiation quadrupled.
But it is in the Middle East, predominantly Iraq, where the bulk of the radioactive waste has been dumped.
In the early Nineties, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority warned that 50 tons of dust from DU explosions could claim a half million lives from cancer by year 2000. Not 50 tons, but an estimated two thousand radioactive tons have been fired off in the Middle East, suggesting the possibility over time of an even higher death toll.
Dr. Keith Baverstock, a World Health Organization radiation advisor, informed the media, Iraq's arid climate would increase exposure from its tiny particles as they are blown about and inhaled by the civilian population for years to come.
The civilian death toll from the August, 1945, U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been put at 140,000 and 80,000, respectively. Over time, however, deaths from radiation sickness are thought to have claimed the lives of another 100,000 Japanese civilians.
Thursday, 22 November 2007
The "No" Peace conference
"The mountain went into labor, then it gave birth to a rat ," so says the famous Arab proverb. This adage is likely to caricature the outcome of the upcoming American-sponsored "peace conference," slated to take place on 27 November, in Annapolis , Maryland .
Forecasting the failure of the Annapolis meeting is more than speculation. It is a realistic assessment of an event that is not intended to be successful, even if the declared desire suggests otherwise.
Indeed, apart from the pleasantries which are meant to create positive atmospherics, Israel and the PA have failed to reach any modicum of agreement on the core issues that define the Palestinian problem.
A few weeks ago, PA officials were almost euphoric about the conference. PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas vowed to boycott the Annapolis meeting unless Israel agreed in principle at least to end its occupation of the West Bank , Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem , as well as accept a just settlement of the refugee problem pursuant UN resolution 194. But Israel, of course, agreed to none of that.
Now, the PA will go to Annapolis without any assurance policy, relying mainly on George Bush's "good will," (whatever that means in real terms).
There will be several categories of participants and attendees at the Annapolis conference: First, the master of disaster, George W. Bush, the Fuhrer of the White House who has invaded, occupied and destroyed two Muslim countries and killed or caused the death of over a million innocent human beings under the pretext of ridding the world of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be nonexistent.
The man, who claimed that God had told him to do what he did, has never had the moral courage to say "I made a mistake, Mea Culpa." Instead, he concocted all sorts of pretexts, canards and lies to justify his criminality and evil designs. After all, criminals show no concern about their crimes.
Which really begs the following question: can the peoples of the Middle East in particular and humanity in general count on one of the world's most premier murderers and liars to force Israel to make peace? Let us not forget that this is the man who had described Ariel Sharon, the certified Israeli war criminal, as a man of peace.
Then there is the perpetual murderer, liar land thief, namely Israel, a state that murders school children and calls the murder self-defense and then lies about its crimes and calls the lying hasbara and public relations, a state that claims to have ended its occupation of Gaza while continuing to tightly control Gaza's borders, border crossings, territorial water, skies and the region's very lifeline.
The leader of this nefarious state, Ehud Olmert, is going to the Annapolis conference, not to make peace and show good will towards Israel's victims, but rather in order to make sure that no substantive progress will come out of it.
Olmert, a man notorious for his criminality, mendacity and deceitfulness, will heavily indulge in prevarication, verbal juggling and red herrings, but will shun the real issues, namely ending the hateful occupation of the Palestinian homeland and brutality against the Palestinian people.
Olmert will not even allude to millions of miserable Palestinian refugees languishing in squalid refugee camps all over the Middle East because a state calling itself a light upon the nations wouldn't allow them to return to their homes and villages from which they were uprooted when that state was born sixty years ago.
He will not mention East Jerusalem whose Arab Christian-Muslim identity successive Israeli governments have sought to decapitate, humanly spiritually, demographically and economically.
And, of course, he will completely ignore the sinister Israeli blockade of 1.4 million Gazans who are being tormented and starved to death because Zionism can't forgive Palestinians for electing a political party that Israel doesn't like.
Instead of dealing honestly and seriously with the real issues, Olmert, will launch a charade about strengthening PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and encouraging "the forces of moderation and peace" as if the real problem in Palestine was the absence of moderation and peace among Palestinians, not the Nazi-like Israeli occupation and oppression of Palestinians.
And then there is Abbas, the American-backed PA leader who apparently thinks that now is the best time for making peace because America's conscience has suddenly waked up from its slumber and George W. Bush has undergone a graceful metamorphosis, from an evil man to a saint.
Abbas looks really very pathetic. He had already placed all his eggs into the American basket which means that he won't be able to say "No" to the Americans even when he must.
This is why all he can do to save his Palestinian Authority, which is actually devoid of any real authority, is to day-dream and implore the werewolf of the White House to press Israel to demonstrate true desire for peace. Day-dreaming, psychologists say, represents the highest degree of frustration.
But, as the famous Arab poet Zuheir said more than 1400 years ago, he that doesn't respect himself shall not be respected by others. Abbass should have himself to blame. He trusted Bush and Olmert too much to the extent that he has become a vanquished supplicant at their doorsteps. He maltreated his people and did many things that should not have been done, all to please and appease Olmert and Bush, but to no avail.
In a nutshell, beggars can't be choosers.
And then there will be the usual horde of Arab despots who are at America's beck and call and who always value the legitimacy that comes form America's acceptance more than which comes from their own masses' acceptance.
Most of these kings and presidents-for-life are quite tired of the enduring Palestinian cause and are very much eager to sell out whatever has remained of Arab honor and Arab rights, probably including the al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third holiest shrine. This inertia, this exhaustion, can be detected in the tone of their voices.
These are the same so-called leaders who are now quietly colluding with Israel to decimate and starve to death the people of Gaza in order to appease America and obtain from it a certificate of good conduct.
Then there is the European Union (EU), whose leaders continue to curry favor with Israel, despite its wicked treatment of Palestinians. This is the same EU that has proven ad nauseam that it won't miss an opportunity to succumb to Israeli and Zionist pressure, even at the price of seeing innocent civilians starved and killed.
A few days ago, France 's Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner assured Israel that France would always seek to ensure Israel's security. You see the moral whoredom! The security of Israel, a country that possesses 300 nuclear weapons, 700 state-of-the-art fighter bombers, and 4000 battle tanks and several nuclear-fit submarines, must be protected and preserved, while the Palestinians who can hardly put food on the table for their starving children, must be blockaded and punished.
We shouldn't forget Tony Blair, the deceitful and duplicitous former British Prime Minister, who has tons of Iraqi blood on his dirty hands. This war criminal is now trying to bribe the Palestinians with "economic projects," in the hope that this would make them forget some of their inalienable rights, including the right of return for the refugees and Jerusalem .
Finally, Annapolis will be honored to have the comical Ban Ki-moon attending the conference. For those who don't know, this Ki-moon must always watch his tongue very carefully lest he inadvertently says something Bush and Condoleezza Rice don't like.
Well, with such a great company, the Palestinians need not worry!! Their cause is in honest hands!
Forecasting the failure of the Annapolis meeting is more than speculation. It is a realistic assessment of an event that is not intended to be successful, even if the declared desire suggests otherwise.
Indeed, apart from the pleasantries which are meant to create positive atmospherics, Israel and the PA have failed to reach any modicum of agreement on the core issues that define the Palestinian problem.
A few weeks ago, PA officials were almost euphoric about the conference. PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas vowed to boycott the Annapolis meeting unless Israel agreed in principle at least to end its occupation of the West Bank , Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem , as well as accept a just settlement of the refugee problem pursuant UN resolution 194. But Israel, of course, agreed to none of that.
Now, the PA will go to Annapolis without any assurance policy, relying mainly on George Bush's "good will," (whatever that means in real terms).
There will be several categories of participants and attendees at the Annapolis conference: First, the master of disaster, George W. Bush, the Fuhrer of the White House who has invaded, occupied and destroyed two Muslim countries and killed or caused the death of over a million innocent human beings under the pretext of ridding the world of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be nonexistent.
The man, who claimed that God had told him to do what he did, has never had the moral courage to say "I made a mistake, Mea Culpa." Instead, he concocted all sorts of pretexts, canards and lies to justify his criminality and evil designs. After all, criminals show no concern about their crimes.
Which really begs the following question: can the peoples of the Middle East in particular and humanity in general count on one of the world's most premier murderers and liars to force Israel to make peace? Let us not forget that this is the man who had described Ariel Sharon, the certified Israeli war criminal, as a man of peace.
Then there is the perpetual murderer, liar land thief, namely Israel, a state that murders school children and calls the murder self-defense and then lies about its crimes and calls the lying hasbara and public relations, a state that claims to have ended its occupation of Gaza while continuing to tightly control Gaza's borders, border crossings, territorial water, skies and the region's very lifeline.
The leader of this nefarious state, Ehud Olmert, is going to the Annapolis conference, not to make peace and show good will towards Israel's victims, but rather in order to make sure that no substantive progress will come out of it.
Olmert, a man notorious for his criminality, mendacity and deceitfulness, will heavily indulge in prevarication, verbal juggling and red herrings, but will shun the real issues, namely ending the hateful occupation of the Palestinian homeland and brutality against the Palestinian people.
Olmert will not even allude to millions of miserable Palestinian refugees languishing in squalid refugee camps all over the Middle East because a state calling itself a light upon the nations wouldn't allow them to return to their homes and villages from which they were uprooted when that state was born sixty years ago.
He will not mention East Jerusalem whose Arab Christian-Muslim identity successive Israeli governments have sought to decapitate, humanly spiritually, demographically and economically.
And, of course, he will completely ignore the sinister Israeli blockade of 1.4 million Gazans who are being tormented and starved to death because Zionism can't forgive Palestinians for electing a political party that Israel doesn't like.
Instead of dealing honestly and seriously with the real issues, Olmert, will launch a charade about strengthening PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and encouraging "the forces of moderation and peace" as if the real problem in Palestine was the absence of moderation and peace among Palestinians, not the Nazi-like Israeli occupation and oppression of Palestinians.
And then there is Abbas, the American-backed PA leader who apparently thinks that now is the best time for making peace because America's conscience has suddenly waked up from its slumber and George W. Bush has undergone a graceful metamorphosis, from an evil man to a saint.
Abbas looks really very pathetic. He had already placed all his eggs into the American basket which means that he won't be able to say "No" to the Americans even when he must.
This is why all he can do to save his Palestinian Authority, which is actually devoid of any real authority, is to day-dream and implore the werewolf of the White House to press Israel to demonstrate true desire for peace. Day-dreaming, psychologists say, represents the highest degree of frustration.
But, as the famous Arab poet Zuheir said more than 1400 years ago, he that doesn't respect himself shall not be respected by others. Abbass should have himself to blame. He trusted Bush and Olmert too much to the extent that he has become a vanquished supplicant at their doorsteps. He maltreated his people and did many things that should not have been done, all to please and appease Olmert and Bush, but to no avail.
In a nutshell, beggars can't be choosers.
And then there will be the usual horde of Arab despots who are at America's beck and call and who always value the legitimacy that comes form America's acceptance more than which comes from their own masses' acceptance.
Most of these kings and presidents-for-life are quite tired of the enduring Palestinian cause and are very much eager to sell out whatever has remained of Arab honor and Arab rights, probably including the al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third holiest shrine. This inertia, this exhaustion, can be detected in the tone of their voices.
These are the same so-called leaders who are now quietly colluding with Israel to decimate and starve to death the people of Gaza in order to appease America and obtain from it a certificate of good conduct.
Then there is the European Union (EU), whose leaders continue to curry favor with Israel, despite its wicked treatment of Palestinians. This is the same EU that has proven ad nauseam that it won't miss an opportunity to succumb to Israeli and Zionist pressure, even at the price of seeing innocent civilians starved and killed.
A few days ago, France 's Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner assured Israel that France would always seek to ensure Israel's security. You see the moral whoredom! The security of Israel, a country that possesses 300 nuclear weapons, 700 state-of-the-art fighter bombers, and 4000 battle tanks and several nuclear-fit submarines, must be protected and preserved, while the Palestinians who can hardly put food on the table for their starving children, must be blockaded and punished.
We shouldn't forget Tony Blair, the deceitful and duplicitous former British Prime Minister, who has tons of Iraqi blood on his dirty hands. This war criminal is now trying to bribe the Palestinians with "economic projects," in the hope that this would make them forget some of their inalienable rights, including the right of return for the refugees and Jerusalem .
Finally, Annapolis will be honored to have the comical Ban Ki-moon attending the conference. For those who don't know, this Ki-moon must always watch his tongue very carefully lest he inadvertently says something Bush and Condoleezza Rice don't like.
Well, with such a great company, the Palestinians need not worry!! Their cause is in honest hands!
Thursday, 15 November 2007
War and Lies - from someone who knows....
Matt Howard gave this statement at a recent protest at the Statehouse.
In 2003 I illegally invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq with 1st Tank battalion 1st Marine Division. My commander in chief unleashed the world's fiercest fighting force upon the country and people of Iraq, and now those of us used and betrayed by him are demanding justice.
Four and a half years after our opening "shock and awe" Bush's lies are known throughout the world, and yet he continues to act with impunity. Four and a half years later the Bush regime has unleashed a hell upon the country of Iraq that only those who have been there can truly understand.
As a two-tour combat veteran of this brutal war, I have a responsibility to speak honestly and openly about what has been done and what continues to be done in our name. We veterans know that this war is not the one being sanitized on the nightly news. It has nothing to do with the liberation of the people of Iraq; instead it has everything to do with the subjugation and domination of these people in the name of U.S. imperial economic and strategic interests.
We did not go to war with the country of Iraq, we went to war with the people of Iraq. During the initial invasion we killed women. We killed children. We senselessly killed farm animals. We were the United States Marine Corps, not the Peace Corps, and we left a swath of death and destruction in our wake all the way to Baghdad.
Let me say again so that there is no misunderstanding. I stand here today as a former U.S. Marine saying we are killing women and children in Iraq. This is the true nature of war. War lends itself to atrocities. Don't think you can use an organization designed to kill other human beings for anything humanitarian. That has never been our mission. That was crystal clear from the moment I was forced to bury the crate of humanitarian food given to me in Kuwait.
Four and a half years later we as soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines are done. We are done being told under threat of court martial to run over children that get in the way of our speeding convoys.
We are done raiding and destroying the homes of innocent Iraqis on a nightly basis.
We are done abusing and torturing prisoners.
We are done being hired thugs for the 160,000 contractors and U.S. corporate interests in Iraq.
We are done being poisoned by depleted uranium, the unspoken Agent Orange of this war.
We are done coming home broken, from two, three, four tours of duty - only to find our commander in chief has actually tried to CUT funding to the Department of Veterans Affairs. To find our doctors being told to diagnose us with pre-existing personality disorders instead of post traumatic stress syndrome.
We are done killing for lies.
So Iraq Veterans Against the War is taking back our history - the history that has been robbed from us. We are dispelling the myth that the Vietnam war ended when the Democrats started voting against it. Instead we are spreading the truth about how the American War in Vietnam ended.
The Vietnam War ended when soldiers put down their weapons and refused to fight; when pilots dropped their bombs in the ocean.
We are re-educating the public to let them know that the power ultimately lies with the people. Just take a look at the thousands of pages of internal documents from the Department of Defense explicitly detailing how at the end of the Vietnam war the military had collapsed. It was literally in a state of mutiny. And that movement is slowly starting again. Because ultimately in every war waged throughout human history, those forced to fight quickly realize they have much more in common with those they are being told to kill than with those telling them to do the killing.
And we are re-educating the public about the true nature of sectarian violence. No, the middle east is NOT inherently violent. In fact, in the 1,400-year schism between Sunnis and Shias - there has NEVER been a civil war fought. They have always lived in the same neighborhoods and even intermarried. The United States has caused this civil war using the classic colonial techniques of divide and conquer.
George Bush is a war criminal who has violated international law, the Geneva convention and the Nuremburg standards and needs to tried accordingly for crimes against humanity.
I ask every red-blooded American today: What would you do if your homeland was savagely invaded and occupied by another country? The Iraqis will continue to resist and fight until the last American has left their homeland. Period. End the violence in Iraq? End the occupation.
We veterans are speaking out to stop the violence being perpetrated in our name. When we voted in the Democrats on an anti-war mandate, the Bush regime expanded the war. As we are marching against further occupation, the Bush regime is making threats against Iran.
And we will not continue to be silenced by the mainstream media. Top generals and bottom privates are all speaking in unison now. We know the truth about the slaughter of upwards of one million Iraqis. Why is no one listening? We will not stand by as this regime tricks the country into thinking that if you oppose the war you do not support the troops. We ARE the troops and we have never felt support from this administration. Stop mindlessly supporting the troops. Start demanding that we come home - and maybe think about apologizing to us when we get back.
In 2003 I illegally invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq with 1st Tank battalion 1st Marine Division. My commander in chief unleashed the world's fiercest fighting force upon the country and people of Iraq, and now those of us used and betrayed by him are demanding justice.
Four and a half years after our opening "shock and awe" Bush's lies are known throughout the world, and yet he continues to act with impunity. Four and a half years later the Bush regime has unleashed a hell upon the country of Iraq that only those who have been there can truly understand.
As a two-tour combat veteran of this brutal war, I have a responsibility to speak honestly and openly about what has been done and what continues to be done in our name. We veterans know that this war is not the one being sanitized on the nightly news. It has nothing to do with the liberation of the people of Iraq; instead it has everything to do with the subjugation and domination of these people in the name of U.S. imperial economic and strategic interests.
We did not go to war with the country of Iraq, we went to war with the people of Iraq. During the initial invasion we killed women. We killed children. We senselessly killed farm animals. We were the United States Marine Corps, not the Peace Corps, and we left a swath of death and destruction in our wake all the way to Baghdad.
Let me say again so that there is no misunderstanding. I stand here today as a former U.S. Marine saying we are killing women and children in Iraq. This is the true nature of war. War lends itself to atrocities. Don't think you can use an organization designed to kill other human beings for anything humanitarian. That has never been our mission. That was crystal clear from the moment I was forced to bury the crate of humanitarian food given to me in Kuwait.
Four and a half years later we as soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines are done. We are done being told under threat of court martial to run over children that get in the way of our speeding convoys.
We are done raiding and destroying the homes of innocent Iraqis on a nightly basis.
We are done abusing and torturing prisoners.
We are done being hired thugs for the 160,000 contractors and U.S. corporate interests in Iraq.
We are done being poisoned by depleted uranium, the unspoken Agent Orange of this war.
We are done coming home broken, from two, three, four tours of duty - only to find our commander in chief has actually tried to CUT funding to the Department of Veterans Affairs. To find our doctors being told to diagnose us with pre-existing personality disorders instead of post traumatic stress syndrome.
We are done killing for lies.
So Iraq Veterans Against the War is taking back our history - the history that has been robbed from us. We are dispelling the myth that the Vietnam war ended when the Democrats started voting against it. Instead we are spreading the truth about how the American War in Vietnam ended.
The Vietnam War ended when soldiers put down their weapons and refused to fight; when pilots dropped their bombs in the ocean.
We are re-educating the public to let them know that the power ultimately lies with the people. Just take a look at the thousands of pages of internal documents from the Department of Defense explicitly detailing how at the end of the Vietnam war the military had collapsed. It was literally in a state of mutiny. And that movement is slowly starting again. Because ultimately in every war waged throughout human history, those forced to fight quickly realize they have much more in common with those they are being told to kill than with those telling them to do the killing.
And we are re-educating the public about the true nature of sectarian violence. No, the middle east is NOT inherently violent. In fact, in the 1,400-year schism between Sunnis and Shias - there has NEVER been a civil war fought. They have always lived in the same neighborhoods and even intermarried. The United States has caused this civil war using the classic colonial techniques of divide and conquer.
George Bush is a war criminal who has violated international law, the Geneva convention and the Nuremburg standards and needs to tried accordingly for crimes against humanity.
I ask every red-blooded American today: What would you do if your homeland was savagely invaded and occupied by another country? The Iraqis will continue to resist and fight until the last American has left their homeland. Period. End the violence in Iraq? End the occupation.
We veterans are speaking out to stop the violence being perpetrated in our name. When we voted in the Democrats on an anti-war mandate, the Bush regime expanded the war. As we are marching against further occupation, the Bush regime is making threats against Iran.
And we will not continue to be silenced by the mainstream media. Top generals and bottom privates are all speaking in unison now. We know the truth about the slaughter of upwards of one million Iraqis. Why is no one listening? We will not stand by as this regime tricks the country into thinking that if you oppose the war you do not support the troops. We ARE the troops and we have never felt support from this administration. Stop mindlessly supporting the troops. Start demanding that we come home - and maybe think about apologizing to us when we get back.
Thursday, 1 November 2007
The US is not Japan - Will history repeat itself ?
A top US scholar of wartime Japan said Wednesday that the Bush administration's "war on terror" bore close parallels to Japan's past militarism through a defiance of international law.
Herbert Bix, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for his landmark biography of wartime emperor Hirohito, said he believed US aerial bombings and alleged use of torture in Afghanistan and Iraq constituted war crimes.
"The current American rampage in Iraq and elsewhere, not to mention the Bush administration's threats of war against Iran, so clearly replicates Imperial Japan during the period when its leaders willfully disregarded international law and pursued the diplomacy of force," Bix said during a visit to Tokyo.
The point is that Japan is still paying for these crimes decades later. Will America ?
Japan defied the Nine-Party Treaty guaranteeing China's sovereignty, signed in 1922 in Washington, when imperial troops invaded Manchuria in 1931.
Bix compared Japan's action to current US efforts to scuttle the Treaty of Rome establishing the International Criminal Court, which President George W. Bush argues could unfairly target Americans.
"US war criminality is justice institutionalised, as Japan's once was," Bix said.
"In today's America, torture is not only standard battlefield practice in the so-called war on terror. Torture is celebrated in American popular culture
When will the US ratify the issue of torture ? Do they have any respect for fellow human beings at all ?
Herbert Bix, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for his landmark biography of wartime emperor Hirohito, said he believed US aerial bombings and alleged use of torture in Afghanistan and Iraq constituted war crimes.
"The current American rampage in Iraq and elsewhere, not to mention the Bush administration's threats of war against Iran, so clearly replicates Imperial Japan during the period when its leaders willfully disregarded international law and pursued the diplomacy of force," Bix said during a visit to Tokyo.
The point is that Japan is still paying for these crimes decades later. Will America ?
Japan defied the Nine-Party Treaty guaranteeing China's sovereignty, signed in 1922 in Washington, when imperial troops invaded Manchuria in 1931.
Bix compared Japan's action to current US efforts to scuttle the Treaty of Rome establishing the International Criminal Court, which President George W. Bush argues could unfairly target Americans.
"US war criminality is justice institutionalised, as Japan's once was," Bix said.
"In today's America, torture is not only standard battlefield practice in the so-called war on terror. Torture is celebrated in American popular culture
When will the US ratify the issue of torture ? Do they have any respect for fellow human beings at all ?
American Hypocrisy - Again
Fifteen months ago, the armed wing of Lebanon's Hezbollah party, listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and most other Western countries, attacked Israel's northern border, capturing two Israeli soldiers and killing eight more. Israel replied with a month of massive air attacks all across Lebanon that destroyed much of the country's infrastructure, leveled a good deal of south Beirut, and killed around a thousand Lebanese civilians.
Washington, London, Ottawa and some other Western capitals insisted that this was a reasonable and proportionate response, and shielded Israel from intense diplomatic pressure to stop the attacks even when Israel launched a land invasion of southern Lebanon in early August, 2006. The operation only ended when Israeli casualties on the ground mounted rapidly and the Israeli government pulled its troops back.
So what would be a reasonable and proportionate Turkish response to the recent attacks by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and most other Western countries, from northern Iraq into southeastern Turkey? More than forty Turkish civilians and soldiers have been killed in these attacks over the past two weeks, and a further eight Turkish soldiers were captured.
Well, it would be unreasonable for Turkey to bomb Iraq, where the PKK's bases are, for any more than one month. It would be quite disproportionate for the Turkish Air Force to level more than a small part of Baghdad - say, 15,000 homes. Ideally, it should leave Baghdad alone and restrict itself to destroying some Kurdish-populated city in northern Iraq near Turkey's own border. Moreover, when the Turks do invade Iraq on the ground, they should restrict themselves to the northern border strip where the PKK's bases are.
What's that? Washington is asking Turkey to show restraint and not attack Iraq at all? Even after the Kurdish terrorists killed or kidnapped all those Turkish people? Could it be that Turkish lives are worth less than Israeli lives?
More like the US and EU will back Israel in anything they do, even if it breaks international laws and human decency !
Washington, London, Ottawa and some other Western capitals insisted that this was a reasonable and proportionate response, and shielded Israel from intense diplomatic pressure to stop the attacks even when Israel launched a land invasion of southern Lebanon in early August, 2006. The operation only ended when Israeli casualties on the ground mounted rapidly and the Israeli government pulled its troops back.
So what would be a reasonable and proportionate Turkish response to the recent attacks by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and most other Western countries, from northern Iraq into southeastern Turkey? More than forty Turkish civilians and soldiers have been killed in these attacks over the past two weeks, and a further eight Turkish soldiers were captured.
Well, it would be unreasonable for Turkey to bomb Iraq, where the PKK's bases are, for any more than one month. It would be quite disproportionate for the Turkish Air Force to level more than a small part of Baghdad - say, 15,000 homes. Ideally, it should leave Baghdad alone and restrict itself to destroying some Kurdish-populated city in northern Iraq near Turkey's own border. Moreover, when the Turks do invade Iraq on the ground, they should restrict themselves to the northern border strip where the PKK's bases are.
What's that? Washington is asking Turkey to show restraint and not attack Iraq at all? Even after the Kurdish terrorists killed or kidnapped all those Turkish people? Could it be that Turkish lives are worth less than Israeli lives?
More like the US and EU will back Israel in anything they do, even if it breaks international laws and human decency !
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