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Israel returns to Assassinations Policy

December 26th, 2009 | By Ziad Khalil Abu Zayyad

Six Palestinians were killed in two separate incidents by the Israeli forces in Gaza and the West Bank. Three of the Palestinians were assassinated in Nablus at the West Bank. According to Israeli sources, Ghasan Abu Sharkh, Raed Sarkaji and Anan Suboh took part in the last attack which resulted in killing an Israeli settler in the West Bank.

The Israeli troops entered Nablus while being directed by the Israeli Intelligence Service “Shabak” in order to assassinate the three Palestinians who are known as leaders of Fatah movement in the Palestinian territories. Israel considered this operation a success since it came only 48 hours after the attack on the Israeli’s car in the West Bank. The Palestinian authority considered this operation another act made by the Israeli government in order to destroy the peace process and the efforts made by the United States and the international community in order to renew the negotiations.

In another incident Israel killed three Palestinians in Gaza who were trying to infiltrate through Erez Checkpoint into the Israeli territories. According to Aljazeera correspondent the three Palestinians were Bedwins searching for metal and building material in order to get it back for recycling and use in Gaza.

The Israeli operation in the West Bank is considered a serious development in the area since it may bring more reactions from the Palestinian side and end in a new round of violence between the two sides. Although the Palestinian security forces are applying everything which was asked from them in matters of security, Israel continues to take law in its hands and even implements public executions claiming that this is a legal punishment for those who were involved in terrorist attacks against Israelis.

In Israel’s operation in the West Bank anti tank rockets and heavy weapons were used to target buildings full of civilians. The Israeli forces stormed into Anan Suboh’s house and stayed inside it for several hours before executing him which leaves more questions about the real Israeli intentions for this operation. The mission was not to arrest the Palestinian activists but instead to investigate with them and immediately execute them no matter what. Ghasan Abu Sharkh did not show any kind of resistance and despite this he was shot at his head immediately. Raed Sarkajy’s wife was injured while she was sleeping beside him on their bed. The Israeli forces attacked the room and shot both of them although there wasn’t any kind of resistance from inside the house.

The whole operation sends one message which Israel wants the Palestinians to understand clearly: Israel is ready to execute anyone without a court or a respect for the Palestinian authority’s presence at the West Bank. The Israeli assassinations were criticized by several International organizations for its ruthlessness and illegality. Israel is not only violating the security arrangements and attacking civilian areas but it also starts such operations with a target of killing those who are considered suspects ignoring the part of court of law and justice.

The Israeli army and Intelligence may consider this operation a successful one since it proves that Israel is holding the West Bank as it wants. However, the result of such operations will prove that the Israeli policy will only bring failure and more reactions which may return the area into a new circle of violence.

These six Palestinians were killed in the day when the Palestinians remember the 1,600 victims who died in Israel’s war on Gaza. Since the war and until today Israel continues to depend on its security plans in dealing with its conflict with the Palestinians. The only result which they are bringing on the Israeli people is more anger and hatred within the Palestinians who are suffering until today.

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December 26, 2009 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Russia: No proof of military N-plans in Iran

Press TV – December 26, 2009

As Western powers batten down the hatches and prepare sanctions against Tehran, a senior Russian official says there still is no proof of an Iranian nuclear weapons program.

In remarks published on Friday, deputy Russian foreign minister Alexander Saltanov reiterated that Moscow is not convinced that Iran seeks to weoponize its nuclear program, and moreover he has not been shown any corroborative evidence confirming that the country has any such plans.

“Russia has no concrete information that Iran is planning to construct a weapon. It may be more like Japan, which has nuclear readiness but does not have a bomb,” Primakov told The Jerusalem Post.

In order to pressure Iran into halting its nuclear work, Washington and a number of European countries have vowed to push for new UN sanctions early next year.

But the calls for renewed pressure were once again snubbed by China and Russia.

Saltanov said while “Iran has a positive potential” to cooperate with the West on its nuclear case, it is most evident that a military solution against the Tehran government would only make matters worse.

“If Israel attacks Iran it will cause great instability and will only postpone the Iranian program, not end it,” noted the Russian official.

Israel routinely threatens to bomb Iran’s enrichment sites, arguing that the country’s nuclear work is a mortal threat to Tel Aviv, which ironically is reported to have the Middle East’s sole nuclear arsenal and 200 nuclear warheads at its disposal.

This is while Iran, unlike Tel Aviv, is a signatory of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and has opened its nuclear facilities to routine inspections by the UN nuclear watchdog.

In response to Israeli war threats, Tehran warns that if Tel Aviv steps out of line, it will close the strategic Strait of Hormuz to maritime traffic, including the 15 or so supertankers that sail through on a daily basis to deliver the world’s oil supplies.

A recent report by the US Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) has confirmed that if the United States or Israel decide to bomb Tehran’s nuclear sites, Iran’s naval modernization and maritime capabilities have reached a point where it can shut down the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

“Given the importance of the Strait, disrupting traffic flow or even threatening to do so may be an effective tool for Iran,” said the intelligence report, which was revealed by Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin in November.

It notes that while Iran’s ability to shut down the Strait of Hormuz may be transitory, the impact would undoubtedly have far-reaching consequences for the already-fragile world economy.

“[World economies would suffer] a serious economic impact from a sustain closure of the Strait of Hormuz due to greatly reduced supplies of crude oil, petroleum supplies and (liquefied natural gas),” ONI said.

December 26, 2009 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

Ahmadinejad: Iran is an obstacle to “expansionist policies”

Press TV – December 25, 2009 02:49:46 GMT
President Ahmadinejad’s interview with Britain’s Channel 4

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says some Western countries are using Iran’s nuclear program as a pretext to put pressure on the Islamic Republic.

In an interview with Britain’s Channel 4, Ahmadinejad said that Iran opposes the expansionist policies being pursued by certain Western countries, adding that this was the real reason behind their animosity towards Iran.

“Some Western countries are using Iran’s peaceful nuclear program as a pretext for imposing sanctions and [passing] resolutions against the Iranian nation,” IRNA quoted Ahmadinejad as saying on Thursday.

“It would be better if they were brave enough to openly declare that they are against the Iranian nation because it is an obstacle to their expansionist policies in the world,” the Iranian president said.

He noted that Tehran had voluntarily offered to buy nuclear fuel from the West to provide them with an opportunity to cooperate with Iran.

“Based on the [IAEA] regulation they are obliged to provide Iran with nuclear fuel without setting any preconditions,” Ahmadinejad added.

Article III of the IAEA Statute clearly states that the agency, if requested to do so, should act as “an intermediary for the purposes of securing the performance of services or the supplying of materials, equipment, or facilities by one member of the Agency for another.”

He noted that the West is setting “political conditions” for a nuclear swap deal with Iran.

December 25, 2009 Posted by | Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Escalating War in Afghanistan Apt to Hurt Fragile U.S. Economy

By Sherwood Ross | December 25, 2009

If Iraq war spending helped plunge the U.S. economy into its worst slump since the Depression, what does President Obama think his escalation of the Afghan war will do to it?

Besides forcing taxpayers to cough up fresh billions to enable the Pentagon to chase down a few hundred Taliban fighters, the Afghan war is liable to continue to inflate oil prices—and this means more than the ongoing swindle of motorists at the pump.

Higher oil prices also slow the global economy, causing our trading partners to buy fewer Made-in-USA goods, thus reducing demand for our products and leading to layoffs.

Spending money on war also siphons billions of dollars from truly productive uses.

“Today, no serious economist holds the view that war is good for the economy,” write Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard government finance expert Linda Bilmes in their book “The Three Trillion Dollar War: the True Cost of The Iraq Conflict.”

Referring to Iraq, they write, “The question is not whether the economy has been weakened by the war. The question is only by how much.” They note, “Oil prices started to soar just as the war began, and the longer it has dragged on, the higher prices have gone.”

Even so, by their estimate, (a word they stress,) the increased price of oil attributed to the war comes “to somewhat in excess of $1.6 trillion.” Not only consumers but State and local governments “have had to cut back other spending to pay the higher prices of oil imports.”

The co-authors reason, “Government money spent in Iraq does not stimulate the economy in the way that the same amounts spent at home would.” A thousand dollars spent to hire a Nepalese worker to perform services in Iraq does not directly increase the income of Americans, Stiglitz and Bilmes point out. Ditto for Afghanistan—and Pakistan, friends.

By contrast, the same thousand dollars spent on university research in the U.S. directly boosts the U.S. economy, then ripples out as the university researchers spend their money on goods and services, many of them made in America.

“The money spent on Iraq could have been spent on schools, roads, or research. These investments yield high returns. It could also have been spent more productively within the Department of Veterans Affairs, in its teaching and research programs, or in expanding medical facilities such as mental health clinics….Expenditures on the Iraq war have no benefits of this kind.” And by fiscal year 2010, the Center For Defense Information reports, the cost of the Afghan fighting will total $739 billion on the cost of Iraq fighting $2.337 trillion. Imagine the good those dollars would have done spent at home!

Bilmes and Stiglitz say by the end of last year, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq hiked U.S. indebtedness by $900 billion and just the debt from military spending (excluding veterans’ benefits) will exceed $2 trillion.

Today, the Pentagon sponge not only causes the U.S. to borrow billions from China and others but it is also putting American entrepreneurs out of business. “As the private sector competes for funds with the government, private investment gets crowded out…As a result, output is lower.”

The co-authors add that the crowding out causes a loss in investment in our economy by $1.2 trillion and “the forgone output” (unbuilt homes, etc.) could be as high as $5trillion.

Another expense the Pentagon doesn’t talk about is the waste involved when it doles out no-bid contracts to favored insiders such as KBR.  Nearly all of the top 10 war machine contractors are said to land the majority of contracts without competing bidders. What a kick in the teeth to capitalist free enterprise!

Have your stocks suffered? U.S. economist Robert Wescott, Stiglitz and Bilmes write, estimated in the years immediately following the beginning of the Iraq war that “the value of the stock market was some $4 trillion less than would have been predicted on the basis of past performance.”

Why? Because, “Uncertainties caused by the war, the resulting turmoil in the Middle East, and soaring oil prices dampened prices from what they ‘normally’ would have been. This decrease in corporate wealth implies that consumption was lower than it otherwise would have been, again weakening the economy.”

Back in 2007, Democrats on Congress’ Joint Economic Committee issued a report on the two wars estimating their cost from 2002 to 2008 at $1.6 trillion. They put the cost to an American family of four at $20,900. That’s a whopping sum—but given all the indirect ways the wars have crippled the U.S. economy, probably a gross undercount.

President Obama’s expansion of the Afghan war into Pakistan has engulfed much of the Middle East in bloodshed that is, sad to say, of America’s making. And pouring more U.S. treasure into Pakistan will only further weaken the U.S. economy. This writer believes the American people—who want only what President Eisenhower’s slogan, “Peace and Prosperity,” once promised them—are going to pay dearly for a widening war the majority of them reject. And it may also bring economic catastrophe our way, courtesy of the “military-industrial complex” of which Eisenhower warned.

Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based public relations counselor who formerly worked for major dailies and wire services. Reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com

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December 25, 2009 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Targeting Lebanon’s Al Manar in Congress

“Regarding Al Manar it’s personal for Israel. The reason is that Al Manar did to the Israeli government propaganda machine during and following the July 2006 war what Hezbollah fighters did to Israeli troops. Al Manar kicked butt. That station must be made to disappear. The plan is to stop the 15-20 million daily viewers of Al Manar from receiving its transmission as well as to intimidate all the other Middle East TV channels that are suspected of moving toward the growing “Culture of Resistance spreading in the Middle East from Lebanon.” — A Washington DC observer of how Israel controls the US Congress 12/9/09.

Franklin Lamb – Beirut – December 25, 2009

Lebanon is a small country, approximately 0.7% the size of Connecticut with a population a bit more than 1% of America’s. But according to the four public US ‘Terrorist’ and Watch lists and at least seven supposedly secret US ‘T lists’ there are more Lebanese ‘terrorists’ and ‘inciters’ on the loose per square meter of planet Earth than any other nationality. Way more than say Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan or Pakistan could reasonably hope to muster. Increasingly these ‘terrorists and inciters’ work is claimed by some in the US Congress to be done via satellite TV channels. Such is the thesis of Congressman Gus Bilirakis, the ‘author’ of the 122nd US Congressional anti-Arab, anti-Muslim initiative in the past decade now known as the “Terrorist TV” Bill which passed the House on 12/08/09 and is now before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

A Fresh Lobby Front man

Veteran Congressional staffers sometimes identify the following four general groupings of supporters of Israel in Congress:

• Jewish members who care a lot about Israel and some of whom may or may not be ardent Zionists but who generally, but not always, put Israel’s concerns first;

• Evangelical Christians, who are eager to advance end-times, believe in Biblical prophecy and that Armageddon is rapidly approaching and strongly supports Israel over Arabs and Muslims in the Holy land conflict.

• Ultra Zionists with elements of racist feelings towards Arabs and Muslims

• Members who normally don’t favor Israelis much over Arabs or Muslims in their normal lives but who are regularly collared by the Israel lobby and who get the message and want to keep their congressional seats and add to their generous $100,000 –plus yearly pensions and are willing to ‘go along to get along’ and generally will do AIPAC’s bidding.

Gus Bilirakis, Reagan Republican from Florida’s 9th District is from this latter category. Filling the seat his late father Michael held since 1983, “Congressman Gus” as he prefers to be known back home, has the reputation of being a nice, affable fellow who does not claim to know much about the Middle East or foreign affairs. Hard to stereotype as being a fanatic supporter of Israel, gross Islamophobe or Arab basher, Bilirakis basically wants to get along by going along. AIPAC likes him because he appears ‘regular American’ and not too ‘neurotically pro Israel.’ as one of his District office interns explained, adding that “our boss is ordinary, folksy, and just wants to help the simple people.” Certainly he appears to fit the recent AIPAC mode shift of lining up more conservative members of Congress to do Israel’s bidding and to pull back a bit from the type casted “Liberal Jewish establishment” stereotype. By selecting Gus to introduce H.R. 2278, AIPAC and friends scored a public relations bonus.

Gus told his District’s Bay 9 News TV station on 12/9/09 that:

“My legislation will provide the United States with critical baseline information to combat media outlets that serve as vehicles for violent anti-American incitement,” said Bilirakis, who is a member of the House Committees on Foreign Affairs and Homeland Security. “Given the danger such incitement and radicalization poses to Americans both at home and aboard, it is crucial that these tools of terror be distinguished from reputable news outlets.

“We already spend too much on foreign aid to countries that take our money with one hand and slap us with the other. This legislation will help us ratchet down foreign aid to countries who take this approach.”

Bilirakis’ reputed suspicion towards ‘foreigners’ may be part of his general conservatism. The American Conservative Union Chairman, David Keene, noted during an award ceremony in May of 2009 that Gus scored “way higher than the 80% necessary to win ACU’s top award during the second session of the 110th Congress. In a short space of time, Congressman Bilirakis has already shown he is someone grass roots conservatives in Florida and elsewhere who love Israel will be turning to for future leadership.”

The Washington DC based “U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation” a pro Middle East Peace advocacy group saw things differently and gave Gus a -4 rating on its just released Congressional Report Card for the 111th Congress, which was barely above the worst rating assigned to any member of Congress, earned by Illeana Ros-Lehtinen (who represents Florida’s 18th District including the Florida everglades opposite Havana, Cuba, about which she likes to joke, “on a clear day I can see Havana and keep an eye on the Castro boys”, reminding some of Sarah Palin learning about foreign affairs by watching Russia from her bob sled), who kept her position from the 110th on the groups ‘Hall of Shame’ with a -5 score. Gus calls Ileana ‘my main Middle East tutor’.

How HR 2286 Can Save America from ‘Terrorists and Inciters’

The ‘TV Terrorist” bill passed on a House roll call vote, while, as is the norm, an eager AIPAC staffer in the front row of the House Visitor’s Gallery with clip board and pen in hand, peered down on the Floor keeping tabs on how the Members voted. As is the Congressional practice with ‘Israel Bills’ or Psych-War Resolutions Israel wants passed, the vote on H.R. 2278 was held under a suspension of the rules to cut debate short and pass it quickly with the needed two-thirds majority. This fast track is normally used for relatively minor items like honoring “butterfly watchers day”, “national be kind to fat stray cats day” etc. The totals were 395 Ayes, 3 Nays, 36 Present/Not Voting- a slightly above average tally when AIPAC sends a legislative request ‘up the Hill.’

H.R. 2278 is what some employees in Congress call “a sleeper bill”. Legislation that is quickly and quietly passed, without much public notice, but which is very powerful in its effect. The language of the Bill, while far over-broad, and many first Semester law students would no doubt hammer it on Constitutional Law grounds, and some lawyers think a case brought under this law would be nearly impossible to prosecute, this legislation, if it passes the Senate, will de jure establish that “It shall be the policy of the United States of America to designate as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT) any satellite provider in the Middle East (including Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen) that knowingly and willingly contracts with entities designated as Specially Designated Global Terrorists under Executive Order No. 13224, to broadcast their channels, or to consider implementing other punitive measures against satellite providers that transmit anti-American declarations (read criticize US support for Israeli crimes) or incite violence against Americans.

Bilirakis’ bill also requires that state-sponsorship of anti-American incitement to violence be taken into account when determining the level of assistance to, and frequency and nature of relations with, all states (Ed: such as Lebanon whose hoped for millions in US aid could be stopped) and urges “all governments and private investors who own shares in satellite companies or otherwise influence decisions about satellite transmissions to oppose transmissions of telecasts by… al-Manar … or any other Specially Designated Global Terrorist owned and operated stations that openly incite their audiences to commit acts of terrorism or violence against the United States and its citizens.”

The Bill also provides that beginning 6 months after the date of the enactment of the new law and annually thereafter, the President must prepare a report on anti-American incitement to violence in the Middle East including a description of all media outlets in the Middle East for program and news broadcast scrutiny.

Congressional sources report that the political goal is to stop the 10-15 million daily viewers of Al Manar from receiving its transmission as well as to intimidate other Middle East TV channels that are suspected of moving toward the growing “Culture of Resistance’ in the Middle East.

More than 600 Middle East TV channels risk being closed down among the 19 target Countries listed in H.R. 2278. Some of the most strident criticism of America comes from Israeli colonists and extremist Rabbi’s in occupied Palestine.

MEMRI as Congressional Staff

Part of the job description of all Congressional staff employees who works on legislation includes doing research in support of proposed legislation or to demonstrate to the Member who employs them the need for a new law. This system by and large works in the US Congress except for the Middle East. This area of inquiry is hands off for all but ardent supporters of Israel.

One Congressional staffer who recently retired after 28 years working on the hill, noted on 12/13/09:

“It used to be that Congressional staffers actually did research and wrote recommendations for their bosses around here. Those days are long gone when it comes to Middle East issues. The Israel lobby handles all that now. If staffers want to be heard on Middle East issues from Iran to Palestine, they are discouraged. If they persist they run the risk of being targeted for unemployment by AIPAC and their bosses may cut them loose rather than confront the Lobby. In essence Israel is saying to Congressional staffers, “Listen up! We know best and will handle Congressional Middle East legislation. Just get out of the kitchen, leave this to us and busy yourselves elsewhere.”

Those who demonstrated to Congress the urgent need for a “TV Terrorism” law included the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

This was confirmed by the office of Congressman Gus Bilirakis and indeed the Congressman himself noted that ‘research’ provided by MEMRI helped to establish the need for the new legislation.

MEMRI supplied the video excerpted from Al Manar and cited by the sponsors as ‘evidence’ of incitement against Americans by the station and its satellite provider because it broadcasts the speeches of Hezbollah leaders on special occasions, as does virtually every other TV news channel in the Middle East that transmit at least portions of the speeches which are popular across the region. In fact all the video shows is spliced together excerpts from two speeches Hassan Nasrallah gave and two by his deputy Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Naim Qassim. They contain no incitement against Americans but rather criticism of Israel and of US support for Israel that can be heard any day of the week in all 50 States in the US.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) describes itself as a “free media monitoring service.” Based in Washington DC with half a dozen offices set up in countries including China, Tokyo, Germany, England, Italy and Israel, MEMRI was founded in 1998 by Yigal Carmon, a former colonel in Israeli military intelligence and its first three employees were also veterans of Israeli intelligence. Following 9/11 and George W. Bush’s executive order 13222 and the unleashing of the War on Terrorism, MEMRI shed much of its earlier pretense of being objective and became stridently anti-Arab and anti-Muslim.

Increasingly, MEMRI’s work has been criticized on three grounds: that their work is biased; that they choose articles to translate selectively so as to give an unrepresentative view of the media they are reporting on; and that their translations are frequently inaccurate.

The Middle East editor for the UK Guardian newspaper, Brian Whitaker has been one of the most outspoken critics of MEMRI, writing:

“My problem with MEMRI is that it poses as a research institute when it’s basically a propaganda operation, “to further the political agenda of Israel.”

Several critics have accused MEMRI of selectivity. They state that MEMRI consistently picks for translation and dissemination the most extreme views, which portray the Arab and Muslim world in a negative light, while ignoring moderate views that are often found in the same media outlets.

Juan Cole, Professor of Modern Middle East History at the University of Michigan reported that MEMRI

“cleverly cherry-picks the vast Arabic press, which serves 300 million people, for the most extreme and objectionable articles and editorials.”

Laila Lalami, writing in The Nation stated that MEMRI

“consistently picks the most violent, hateful rubbish it can find, translates it and distributes it in e-mail newsletters to media and members of Congress in Washington”.

Professor Norman Finkelstein, in a June 2007 interview with In Focus newspaper explained that MEMRI “uses the same sort of propaganda techniques as the Nazis… it’s a reliable assumption that anything MEMRI translates from the Middle East is going to be unreliable.”

In 2007, CNN correspondent Atika Shubert and Arabic translators accused MEMRI of mistranslating portions of a Palestinian children’s television program. MEMRI translates one caller as saying ‘We will annihilate the Jews,”‘ said Shubert. “But, according to several Arabic speakers used by CNN, the caller actually says ‘The Jews are killing us.” According to one CNN source, “Put bluntly, MEMRI is a hate group”.

Working with MEMRI, as its Al Manar specialist, Avi Jorisch senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies published ‘research’ in 2004 entitled “Beacon of Hatred-Inside Al Manar”, funded by the Israel advocacy ‘think tank’, Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), with the assistance of Dennis Ross. Jorisch proudly admits he had the political goal of getting the Bush administration declare Al-Manar a “Terrorist organization.” One of Jorisch consistent worries is “that al-Manar broadcasts may contain coded communications — a way for Hezbollah’s terrorist “generals” to command terrorist “troops” in the field, for example sleeper cells in the United States and elsewhere.”

During its 2008 annual Conference, Jorisch was honored in a private reception arranged by MEMRI and AIPAC, and given a champagne toast while being introduced “as the man who put Al Manar on the Terrorism list.” As recently as 11/4/09, writing in the Wall Street Journal, Jorisch accused Iran of using the UN to skirt sanctions and various other ‘terrorist’ acts relating to importing “foodstuffs, textiles and medicine” which could help it create a nuclear weapon.

Jorisch’s campaign against Al Manar is designed to show that it is anti-Semite, but he repeatedly misunderstood the context of some of his ‘proof’ including the phrase, “Jerusalem we are coming”, which he claimed to have heard on Al Manar.

Jorisch and MEMRI claim this language shows a threat against the Jewish state and therefore is anti-Semitic. In fact, the phrase “Jerusalem, we are coming” comes from the classic song of the Lebanese Christian singer Fairouz, whose, “Jerusalem, we are coming”, extols religious unity, worshiping in Jerusalem by all religions, and Jerusalem as a city of peace. Viewers in Lebanon and the Middle East and fans of Fairouz everywhere know this song which is in no way anti-Semitic and it’s been played on hundreds of TV and radios stations including many in Israel.

With the 22 State member Arab League and the 57 member International Organization of the Islamic Conference condemning the House bill, and the Lebanese Foreign Ministry planning to summon US Ambassador Michele Sisson to discuss the matter, late word is that John Kerry, Senate Foreign Relations Chairman may actually hold hearings on the Bill. If so it will be a major setback for AIPAC and friends. Will Al Manar actually be invited to present testimony? Debate AIPAC?

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December 25, 2009 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

US behind attacks on Pakistani civilians: Ex-ISI chief

Press TV | December 25, 2009

Former ISI chief Asad Durrani says private US contractors such as Xe (formerly known as Blackwater) and other intelligence agents may be behind the assassination of civilians across Pakistan.

In an exclusive interview with Press TV, Durrani said on Friday that the local militants led by Hakimullah Mehsud primarily target the government and military instillations.

Arguing against the local militants involvements in civilian assassinations, Durrani added that the militants consider Islamabad as a close ally of the US in the so-called ‘war on terror’ and that they have been launching retaliatory attacks against the government targets, particularly since the Pakistani army launched a major offensive against their stronghold in South Waziristan.

Durrani said that he doubted the notorious militants groups were behind a recent surge in attacks on civilian targets across the country.

The former head of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) claimed that certain theories were circulating among Pakistani intellectuals suggesting that the foreign agents or private US contractors could have been orchestrating assassinations on the civilian targets in the nuclear-armed country.

According to Durrani, these attacks were being carried out to encourage Islamabad to be more involved in war against the militants.

Pakistan has experienced a wave of violence over the past two years. Nearly 3,000 people have been killed in bomb attacks and other terrorist operations across the country.

December 25, 2009 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | Leave a comment

Pentagon Spending For War Exceeds That Of All State Governments Combined

By Sherwood Ross | Black Listed News | December 23, 2009

The U.S. spends more for war annually than all state governments combined spend for the health, education, welfare, and safety of 308 million Americans.

Joseph Henchman, director of state projects for the Tax Foundation of Washington, D.C., says the states collected a total of $781 billion in taxes in 2008.

For a rough comparison, according to Wikipedia data, the total budget for what the Pentagon calls “defense” in fiscal year 2010 will be at least $880 billion and could possibly top $1 trillion. That’s more than all the state governments collect.

Henchman says all American local governments combined (cities, counties, etc.) collect about $500 billion in taxes. Add that to total state tax take and you get over $1.3 trillion. This means Uncle Sam’s Pentagon is sopping up nearly as much money as all state, county, city, and other governmental units spend to run the country.

If the Pentagon figure of $1 trillion is somewhat less than all other taxing authorities, keep in mind the FBI, the various intelligence agencies, the VA, the National Institutes of Health (biological warfare) are also spending on war-related activities.

A question that describes the above and answers itself is: In what area can the Federal government operate where states and cities cannot tread? The answer is: foreign affairs—raising armies, fighting wars, conducting diplomacy, etc. And so Uncle Sam keeps enlarging this area. His emphasis is not on diplomacy, either.

For every buck spent by the State Department, which gets some $50 billion a year, the Pentagon spends $20. As for the Peace Corps, its budget is a paltry $375 million—hardly enough to keep the Pentagon elephant in peanuts.

Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz and finance authority Linda Bilmes write in their “The Three Trillion Dollar War”(W.W. Norton), “defense spending has been growing as a percentage of discretionary funding (money that is not required to be spent on entitlements like Social Security), from 48 percent in 2000 to 51 percent today. That means that our defense needs are gobbling up a larger share of taxpayers’ money than ever before.”

And they add, “The Pentagon’s budget has increased by more than $600 billion, cumulatively, since we invaded Iraq.” With its 1,000 bases in the U.S. and another 800 bases globally, the U.S. truly has become a “Warfare State.” Today, military-related products account for about one-fourth of total U.S. GDP. This includes 10,000 nuclear weapons. Indeed, the U.S. has lavished $5.5 trillion just on nukes over the past 70 years.

No other nation has anything remotely like this menacing global presence. The Pentagon strengthens its grip by running joint “training” exercises with the military of 110 other nations, including outright dictatorships that suppress internal unrest.

The U.S. spends more on weaponry than the next dozen nations combined and is by far the No. 1 world arms peddler. “The government employs some 6,500 people just to coordinate and administer its arms sales program in conjunction with senior officials at American embassies around the world, who spend most of their ‘diplomatic’ careers working as arms salesmen,” writes Chalmers Johnson in “Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire(Henry Holt).”

Chalmers goes on to say the U.S. military establishment today is “close to being beyond civilian control” and that despite its ability to “deliver death and destruction to any target on earth and expect little in the way of retaliation” it demands more and newer equipment “while the Pentagon now more or less sets its own agenda” and “monopolizes the formulation and conduct of American foreign policy.”

How long will it be before this tyrannical, anti-democratic, colossus that is sucking up as much money for war as all states, counties and cities spend on peace—and which straddles the globe, boosts dictators, and beats the war drums—turns on its own people?

Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based public relations executive who formerly worked for major dailies and wire services. Contact him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com

Copyright © 2006-2009 BlackListedNews.com

December 24, 2009 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

Russia, China urge diplomacy in Iran nuclear case

Press TV – December 24, 2009 15:04:54 GMT

Russia and China have called for a diplomatic solution to the impasse over Iran’s nuclear energy program amid Western threats of more sanctions against Tehran.

Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Alexey Borodavkin says his country is taking part in international efforts to find a political solution to the issue.

“Russia actively takes part in international efforts on the Iranian nuclear program within the framework of IAEA, the P5+1 and the security council,” he said.

Borodavkin says Moscow hopes a compromise can be reached between Iran, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the international community.

“We consistently stand for a diplomat settlement to all problems related to Iran’s nuclear program,” the Russian official said.

China, however, said that all parties involved in Iran’s nuclear issue should enhance diplomatic efforts and stick to the path of negotiations.

“All parties should enhance diplomatic efforts and adhere to the right track of negotiations,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told reporters.

Beijing and Moscow have long been opposed to sanctions against Iran.

The US says it will seek new sanctions against Tehran if it fails to accept a proposal which was first floated by the Obama administration and later backed by the UN nuclear watchdog.

The proposal required Iran to send most of its domestically-enriched low-grade uranium out of the country for further refinement of up to 20 percent.

Despite having accepted the gist of the proposal, Iran refused to officially accept the proposed deal, as its concerns about the other side’s commitment to its obligations were not addressed.

Tehran says it needs nuclear power to produce electricity for its growing population.

December 24, 2009 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

The “Omaha Two”: Victimized by COINTELPRO Injustice

By Stephen Lendman | December 24, 2009

After a two week April 1971 trial and four days of deliberation, an 11 white/one black member jury convicted Mondo we Langa (formerly David Rice) and Edward Poindexter for the bombing murder of police officer Larry Minard on August 17, 1970. Both men denied involvement, and ever since consistently maintained their innocence, insisting they were framed. Supporters agree, including Amnesty International that declared them political prisoners, and no wonder.

They were Omaha chapter National Committee to Combat Fascism (NCCF) leaders, an off-shoot of the Black Panther Party, targeted (as later revealed) by secret FBI/police Domino task force/COINTELPRO tactics, following J. Edgar Hoover’s orders to infiltrate, disrupt, sabotage, and destroy their activism for ethnic justice, racial emancipation, and real economic, social, and political equality across gender and color lines.

COINTELPRO is the acronym for the FBI’s secretive/mostly illegal counterintelligence program to neutralize political dissidents, including communists; anti-war, human and civil rights activists; the American Indian Movement; and Black Panther Party among others.

In their book “Agents of Repression,” Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall wrote:

“the term came to signify the whole context of clandestine (typically illegal) political repression activities (including) a massive surveillance (program via) wiretaps, surreptitious entries and burglaries, electronic devices, live ‘tails’ and….bogus mail” to induce paranoia and “foster ‘splits’ within or between organizations.”

Other tactics included:

— “black propaganda” through leaflets or other publications “designed to discredit organizations and foster internal tensions;”

— “disinformation or ‘gray propaganda’ ” for the same purpose;

— “bad-jacketing” to “creat(e) suspicion – through the spread of rumors, manufacture of evidence, etc. – that bona fide organizational members, (usually leaders were) FBI/police informants,” to turn some against others violently;

— “assassinations (of) selected political leaders,” including Fred Hampton and Mark Clark on December 4, 1969 by Chicago police while they slept; and

— “harassment arrests (on bogus) charges.”

Individuals and organizations were targeted for their activism, not crimes that were blamed on innocent victims like the “Omaha Two.”

In November 1968, a J. Edgar Hoover memorandum ordered his agents “to exploit all avenues of creating….dissension within the ranks of the BPP (using) imaginative hard-hitting counterintelligence measures aimed at crippling the BPP.” From 1968 – 1971, they were vicious, including against Mondo we Langa and Edward Poindexter, targeted by the Bureau to be neutralized.

Months before they were arrested, FBI agents and Omaha police harassed them with tactics like frequent traffic stops, verbal abuse, and more. We Langa was called before a grand jury, and the Greater Omaha Community Action Agency fired him. Poindexter was victimized by bogus newspaper letters and an anonymous phone campaign. For the two men, it was just the beginning of a long nightmare, ongoing after 40 years.

Background on the “Omaha Two”

We Langa joined the BPP in 1969, then later the NCCF. He wrote for the local underground paper, Buffalo Chip, and in prison created art, wrote plays, short stories, articles, and five poetry books. He also contributed poems and stories to literary journals and magazines, including The Black Scholar, ARGO, Black American Literary Forum, Pacifica Review, Black Books Bulletin, and many others.

He’s one of several co-authors of “The Race: Matters Concerning Pan Afrikan History, Culture, and Genocide” published in 1992, and a contributor to Nebraska Voices, commissioned by the Nebraska Humanities Council in commemoration of the sesquicentennial of Nebraska’s statehood.

Like Poindexter, he’s been incarcerated for nearly 40 years, during which time he’s been non-violent and mentored young inmates as a model prisoner. Yet he’s bogusly called a “cop killer,” repeatedly (with Poindexter) denied parole, and in June 1968, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled them ineligible unless the Board of Pardons commutes their sentences – unlikely as it’s composed of the governor, attorney general and secretary of state who haven’t commuted a first-degree murder conviction in two decades, and overruled numerous Nebraska Parole Board’s post-1993 unanimous decisions to commute their sentences to time served.

Edward Poindexter is a Vietnam veteran, a graduate of Metro State University, St. Paul, MN with a straight A average, and earned an MA from Goddard Graduate Program in Montpelier, VT. He was imprisoned in Minnesota to separate him from we Langa.

He’s held leadership positions in the Art Club, Jaycees as president, and Harambee African Cultural Organization. He also:

— received the Insight Program’s Antoniak Award for outstanding achievement;

— created the musical drama, Shakedown Blues;

— published two Youth Survival Guides booklets for troubled youths;

— recorded Jammer from the Slammer promoting constructive problem-solving and self-motivation;

— participated in Minnesota’s Turn Off the Violence Campaign;

— was involved in the Juvenile Detention Bed Hotline Information Message Program producing works to support non-violence;

— teaches and is currently writing a workbook for a Minnesota Correctional System class on building self-esteem;

— teaches a health class including AIDS education;

— is involved in teaching other classes on the history of intolerance in America, the civil rights movement, black history, and music;

— developed a program for prisoners to encourage attitudinal and behavioral changes for men who batter women;

— produced motivational tapes; and

— proposed an audio recording studio, currently operating.

He’s also been a model prisoner, yet he’s denied parole.

Background on the Case

At trial, jurors were told that, using dynamite, blasting caps, and a battery, Poindexter made a suitcase bomb in we Langa’s kitchen. A week later, he allegedly instructed 15-year old Duane Peak to put it in a vacant house, call the police, and say a woman was dragged into it screaming. Peak was charged with the crime, confessed, and claimed we Langa and Poindexter put him up to it, but changed his story numerous times, only once incriminated the “Omaha Two,” was sentenced as a juvenile, and served about five years.

Initially, he didn’t implicate them. In fact, he was in custody three days before mentioning their names, clearly under pressure, threats, and believed beatings in return for leniency.

The defense never heard his taped 911 call. It wasn’t introduced at trial, and the original tape was destroyed. Years later, a copy surfaced with an accompanying FBI memo suggesting it was withheld because the voice wasn’t Peak’s, so perhaps authorities were shielding whoever made it, someone complicit in the crime to incriminate we Langa and Poindexter.

A week after the bombing, police targeted the black community, conducted warrantless searches, arrested NCCF members, had no evidence to hold them, so invented it by apparently planting dynamite, other explosives, blasting caps, and weapons in we Langa’s basement, then discovered them when he was in Kansas City for a speech, prepared a shoddy report, gave perjured trial testimony contradicting it, yet got the two men convicted for a crime they didn’t commit.

Years later, one juror admitted believing they were innocent because only circumstantial evidence was introduced, and Duane Peak’s testimony wasn’t credible. Another juror said the only black one thought they were innocent, yet relented after the others agreed to no death penalty.

Judicial Hypocrisy

The entire process was controversial and tainted, including circumstantial evidence that never should have been allowed pertaining to the defendants’ political beliefs, ones held by millions in the country, then and now.

In addition, their fingerprints weren’t on the alleged dynamite, skin tests performed to detect traces were negative, and according to former Omaha police officer, Marvin McClarty, an improper search procedure found it. Then shortly after the mens’ conviction, we Langa’s house mysteriously burned down, eliminating any chance for a post hoc accuracy check of police testimony.

In addition, in 1974, a federal court ruled the search illegal, cited inconsistencies in a police lieutenant’s testimony authorizing it, admitted the dynamite might have been planted, and ordered a new trial, upheld by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1975.

However, in 1976, the Supreme Court applied a post hoc jurisdictional technicality to deny it by ruling that when states provide full and fair Fourth Amendment litigation opportunities (a dubious conclusion in this case), the Constitution warrants no habeas relief. Later rulings blocked the appellate process, and the statutory time limit for filing in Nebraska courts expired while the men awaited the federal outcome.

A major obstacle is that the Court of Appeals won’t address whether the men were fairly tried, whether tainted evidence was introduced, whether key witnesses committed perjury, only if under legal system standards the process was fair, true or not.

Most important, the likelihood that political targets can get due process and judicial fairness is nil when authorities want to convict and have complicit judges allowing it. The courts today are corrupted with them, hanging ones of the worst kind, so what chance have two black men under a system structured against them and always has been.

On June 19, 2009, the Nebraska Supreme Court showed it by denying Poindexter a new trial despite overwhelming evidence of his innocence as well as we Langa’s – with added closing statement emphasis saying:

“We affirm the judgment of the district court denying Poindexter’s motion for postconviction relief,” meaning that to be Black in America grants you none.

In the 1980s, Nebraska Chief Supreme Court Justice Norman Krivosha commissioned a study of the state’s judicial fairness that concluded it was equitable with one exception – race. People of color were more likely to be arrested, indicted, convicted, and given longer sentences than whites, including the death penalty for capital offenses. It’s no surprise that Nebraska’s 3% black population comprises over 40% of its inmates, and the same disparity holds nationally.

Blacks make up around 12.4% of the population, but almost half of those incarcerated. Around 50% of them are for non-violent offenses, and about half of those are drug related. In 2000, Human Rights Watch reported that in one-third of the states, 75% of all drug related offenders were black. In Illinois, it was 89%. Shockingly, with less than 5% of the world’s population, America has almost one-fouth of its prisoners, by far the largest total at around 2.4 million, growing at about 1,000 per week, mostly affecting blacks and hispanics.

It’s no wonder that we Langa and Poindexter couldn’t reopen their case despite later FBI documents (released in 1978) showing police and the Bureau collaborated to suppress exculpatory evidence to convict two innocent men. Jack Swanson, the chief detective in charge of the investigation, told the BBC why:

“I think we did the right thing at the time because the Black Panther Party….completely disappeared from Omaha after we got the two main players.” In other words, neutralize the leadership and the organization dies.

Yet former Nebraska Governor Frank Morrison (1961 – 1967, who with Thomas Kenney represented Poindexter as a public defender) believed the men:

— “were convicted for their rhetoric, not for any crime they committed….The only thing these fellas did was try to combat all the racial discrimination of the time the wrong way….They weren’t convicted of murder.”

It was for their activism and prominence to stifle dissent, keep them imprisoned to assure it, and continue a long tradition of defiling due process and judicial fairness for people of color, the poor, and disadvantaged in a democracy for the privileged alone, as virulent under Obama as earlier.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com

December 24, 2009 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Bernanke and the Corruption of Washington Culture

By Dean Baker | The Guardian Unlimited | December 21, 2009

The Senate Finance Committee overwhelmingly voted to approve Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke for another 4-year term. This is a remarkable event since it is hard to imagine how Bernanke could have performed worse in his last 4-year term. By Bernanke’s own assessment, his policies brought the economy to the brink of another Great Depression. This sort of performance in any other job would get you fired in a second, but for the most important economic policymaker in the country it gets you high praise and another 4-year term.

There is no room for ambiguity in this story. Bernanke was at the Fed since the fall of 2002. (He had a brief stint in 2005 as chair of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors.)  At a point when at least some economists recognized the housing bubble and began to warn of the damage that would result from its collapse, Bernanke insisted that everything was fine and that nothing should be done to rein in the bubble.

This is worth repeating. If Bernanke knew what he was doing, he should have been able to see as early as 2002 that there was a housing bubble and that its collapse would throw the economy into a recession. It was also entirely predictable that the collapse could lead to a financial crisis of the type we saw, since housing was always a highly leveraged asset, even before the flood of subprime, Alt-A and other nonsense loans that propelled the bubble to ever greater heights. Of course as the bubble expanded, and the financial sector became ever more highly leveraged, the risks to the economy increased enormously.

Through this all, Bernanke just looked the other way. The whole time he insisted that everything was just fine.

To be clear, there was plenty that the Fed could have done to deflate the bubble before it grew to such dangerous proportions. First and foremost the Fed could have used its extensive research capabilities to carefully document the evidence for a housing bubble and the risks that its collapse would pose to the economy.

It then should have used the enormous megaphone of the Fed chairman and the platform of the institution to publicize this research widely. The Fed could have ensured that every loan officer who issued a mortgage, as well as all the bank officers who set policy, clearly heard the warnings of a bubble in the housing market, backed up by reams of irrefutable research. The same warnings would have reached the ears of every potential homebuyer in the country. It’s hard to believe that such warnings would have had no impact on the bubble, but it’s near criminal that the Fed never tried this route.

The second tool that the Fed could have pursued was to crack down on the fraudulent loans that were being issued in massive numbers at the peak of the bubble. It is absurd to claim that the Fed didn’t know about the abuses in the mortgage market. I was getting e-mails from all over the country telling me about loan officers filling in phony income and asset numbers so that borrowers would qualify for mortgages. If Bernanke and his Fed colleagues did not know about these widespread abuses, it is because they deliberately avoided knowing.

Finally, the Fed could have had a policy of interest rate hikes explicitly targeted to burst the bubble. Specifically, it could have announced that it will raise rates by half a point at every meeting, until house prices begin to fall and it will keep rates high until house prices approach their pre-bubble level.

This is what a responsible Fed policy would have looked like. But Ben Bernanke did not pursue a responsible Fed policy. He insisted that everything was just fine until he had to run to Congress last September, saying that if it didn’t immediately give $700 billion to the banks through the TARP program then the economy would collapse.

How on earth can you do worse in your job as Fed chair then bring the economy to the brink of a total collapse? If this is success, what does failure look like?

But, in Washington no one is ever held accountable for their performance. The economic collapse is treated like a fluke of nature – a hurricane or an earthquake – not the result of enormous policy failures.

So, it is the 15 million unemployed that go without work, not Ben Bernanke. Instead, the senators praise Bernanke to the sky and thank him for his service. The running line in the Senate is: “it could have been worse.”

That is the way Washington works these days. And, everyone should be very very disgusted.

Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy. He also has a blog on the American Prospect, “Beat the Press,” where he discusses the media’s coverage of economic issues.

Source

December 23, 2009 Posted by | Corruption, Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

The world’s worst radiation hotspot

At the start of the Cold War, Stalin chose one of the furthest outposts of his empire to test the Soviet Union’s first nuclear bombs. Sixty years on, their cancerous legacy is still being felt. Jerome Taylor reports from Kurchatov

10 September 2009
The Independent

Walking through the flat and endless Kazakh steppe, Nemytov Oleg suddenly stops, fumbles in his desert camouflage trousers and pulls out a Geiger counter. The device bleeps into life. He peers pensively at the reading. When we got out of the car it read 3. Now, within a couple of hundred yards, it has jumped to 10. He unwraps breathing masks and two pairs of disposable shoe coverings. “If we want to go any further we will have to wear these,” he says.

Further along the dusty road he checks his device once more. “You see, the meter is now reading 21,” he says. “If we were in a city far away from here it would read about 0.1. The radiation increases very quickly.”

The reason Mr Oleg is keeping such a close eye on background radiation is because we are standing on the very spot where, 60 years ago, the Soviet Union launched the Cold War, with the detonation of its first nuclear bomb. Watched from a lead-lined bunker by Stalin’s feared secret police chief Lavrenti Beria, First Lightning exploded at exactly 7am on 29 August 1949, throwing up an enormous mushroom cloud which billowed over the steppe and, unbeknownst to people nearby, dumping huge quantities of radioactive material on them, their houses and their fields.

It is the names of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Chernobyl that stand for the horrors of the new technology. The name of Semipalatinsk has no such resonance, and is all but forgotten. Yet nowhere else in the world was there such a large concentration of nuclear explosions in one place over such a long period. When Beria earmarked this far eastern corner of Kazakhstan to be the Soviet Union’s top secret nuclear test facility, he described the place as “uninhabited” – conveniently forgetting the 700,000 people who lived in the surrounding villages, towns and cities. Overnight the region was deleted from the map and for the next 40 years Soviet scientists detonated 615 nuclear devices at their secret Semipalatinsk Polygon.

For the first 13 years, tests inside the 80,000 square kilometre Polygon site were conducted above ground, throwing huge amounts of nuclear waste into the atmosphere. The underground tests that followed polluted vast tracts of land with a toxic combination of radioactive chemicals which will continue to contaminate the soil for thousands of years. Kazakhstan shut down the test site almost as soon as the Central Asian republic gained its independence in 1991 (and also became the first country in the world to voluntarily give up nuclear weapons). But the deadly legacy of those tests lives on.

In a new hospital on the outskirts of Semei – the new Kazakh name for the otherwise unremarkable provincial capital which lies 150km east of the Polygon – Galina Bityukova, aged 54 and painfully thin, is midway through a second course of chemotherapy for ovarian cancer. “Sometimes I feel that my cancer is linked to the nuclear tests, you can’t help but think so,” she says. “It could just be cancer like anyone else gets but when you remember what happened here and how many people have cancer it makes you wonder.”

On the bed opposite Svetlana, a woman in her late fifties who is recovering from a mastectomy, firmly agrees. “In my mind I know the nuclear tests had something to do with me getting ill,” she says, flashing a strained smile which reveals a full set of gold teeth. Dr Baipeisov Muhametkalievich is the head of oncology at Semei’s cancer ward, which treats up to 40,000 people every year. “It’s difficult to know whether their cancer comes from the testing or not,” he says. “But you only have to look at the data to know that this area of Kazakhstan has the highest rates of cancer of anywhere in the country.” It is roughly one-third higher than the national average, he says, a clear indication that the Polygon continues to make people sick.

When Kazakhstan gained its independence following the Soviet Union’s collapse, the country was left bankrupt and the damage caused by the nuclear tests was just one of the problems that Moscow consigned to the new government, dominated by the local Communist chief Nursultan Nazerbayev who is still Kazakhstan’s President. As the Russian military convoys rolled back over the border they not only took away all the scientific data regarding the Polygon, but also most of the modern medical equipment from Semei’s hospital.

For many years the victims of Semipalatinsk, unlike those of Chernobyl, were left to fend for themselves. But flush with new revenue from its enormous gas fields and mineral deposits, money is finally heading their way. The oncology department in Semei has just received state-of-the-art equipment from Japanese doctors in Nagasaki while a £40m radiology department is under construction. “When I first got here I was absolutely astonished at the level of poverty and neglect among the victims of nuclear testing,” says Fiona Corcoran, an Irish charity worker who had seen the effects of nuclear fallout in Chernobyl and who now runs two orphanages in Semei. “Children with horrendous birth defects were just left to rot in institutions. But recently there have been some major improvements.”

Ms Corcoran’s charity, the Greater Chernobyl Cause, was one of many working in Chernobyl but when she arrived in Kazakhstan a decade ago outside aid was almost non-existent. “The Kazakhs would always say to me, ‘People come here, they go and they forget’. There was none of the same sense of urgency that there was with Chernobyl. But what happened at Chernobyl was a single tragic accident. What happened here was the systematic and deliberate exposure of thousands of people to nuclear material.”

Most of those who worked on the test site have long since died, but the radiation levels continue to poison new generations of Kazakhs. In an anonymous-looking block of Soviet- era flats is Semei’s only facility for disabled children. According to the centre’s director Tylysova Toleakarovna, of the 346 children they regularly treat, 45 have illnesses which result directly from radiological contamination. Baurzhanaly Kuanysh is one of them. Now 16 years old, he was born in Abay district, one of the areas closest to the Polygon. He suffers from microcephaly, a common illness among radiation victims where the victim’s head is abnormally small. “We can provide for some of the victims who live near the city but we need to get out to the villages,” explains Mrs Toleakarovna. “That is my dream.”

Some 160km west of Semei lies Kurchatov, a meticulously planned settlement that was once the most secretive town in the Soviet Union. Here scientists work to map and contain the nuclear contamination inside the Polygon.

What is already clear is that the three sites where the explosions were regularly conducted will be uninhabitable for thousands of years, and a river that flows through the site into the Irtysh is contaminated. Yet that has not deterred new arrivals: government and private investors are keen to open up some areas of the test site because it is littered with deposits of coal, copper and silver. There are already 400 miners digging for coal close to where some of the later and most powerful tests were carried out in the 1960s and 1970s.

But the rush to extract minerals from this poisoned land has set alarm bells ringing among medical experts. Boris Gallich, a specialist in the effects of radiation, said: “My biggest fear is that these people could become contaminated and pass it on to their children and families. That may be a matter of indifference for the company directors, but not for the people on the ground.”

29 August 1949: The birth of the Cold War

  • The Soviet Union’s first successful test of a 22-kiloton nuclear weapon – called First Lightning – on 29 August 1949 was, in effect, the day that began the Cold War.
  • Ever since the USA dropped two atom bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, Stalin was desperate to obtain the same technology.
  • Stalin placed Lavrenti Beria, the feared head of his NKVD secret police, in charge of the project and gave the country’s top atomic scientist, Igor Kurchatov, virtually unlimited funds.
  • The successful first detonation led to a massive nuclear arms race as the two foes frantically built up their arsenals, a contest which only ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

December 22, 2009 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

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