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States back nuclear test ban, right to civilian nuclear

By J.T. Nguyen | DPA | May 4, 2010

New York – More governments attending the United Nations nuclear review conference Tuesday called for an effective ban on nuclear tests and defended their right to possess nuclear energy for peaceful uses.

Indonesia announced it has begun the lengthy national process of ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). If it ratifies the treaty, just eight countries, including the United States and China, would need to ratify it for the treaty to enter into force.

Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa, who was attending the UN review conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in New York, told reporters the eight remaining countries should follow Jakarta’s example. Those countries are China, North Korea, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, Pakistan and the United States.

The treaty bans nuclear tests in the atmosphere to prevent radioactive fallout on the earth. But some countries called for a ban on all forms of nuclear explosions.

During the NTP debate, Nigeria’s Foreign Minister Odein Ajumogobia, representing African states, said the CTBT should enter into force as early as possible and it should be a total ban.

Australia’s Foreign Minister Stephen Smith, who was speaking on behalf of the Pacific Islands Forum, and others joined him in demanding the treaty enter into force.

CTBT has been signed by 182 countries, of which 151 have ratified it by adopting national laws to implement the treaty. But the treaty demands that the world’s 44 countries with nuclear technology must all ratify before it enters into force.

Many government envoys called for their inalienable right to have nuclear energy for peaceful uses, as the dispute over Iran’s nuclear activities focused on whether that country has plans to produce nuclear weapons rather than civilian energy as Tehran claims. Western government have accused Iran of diverting its advanced uranium enrichment programme to weapons.

Smith said the group of Pacific nations “fully support the rights of non-nuclear-weapon states to enjoy the benefit of peaceful nuclear energy within the framework that reduces proliferation risk and adheres to the highest international standards of safeguards and security.”

The International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna said more than 60 countries are considering building nuclear power plants for civilian uses and between 20 and 30 of them would have completed the projects by 2030.

The second day of NPT debate in the UN General Assembly in New York was welcomed by some countries that suffered the Cold War nuclear weapon expansion of the former Soviet Union.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Kostyantyn Gryshchenko, whose country still bears an “open wound” of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion in 1986, said civilian nuclear energy has become a rising international issue.

“We underscore the vital need of peaceful nuclear technology for sustainable development of nations, provided that nuclear activities are subject to full scope safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency,” Gryshchenko said.

Gryshchenko said his country, Russia and Belarus will convene an international conference in April 2011, to mark the 25th anniversary of Chernobyl and discuss progress in returning to normal life in countries and regions affected by the radioactive fallout.

May 5, 2010 Posted by | Militarism | Leave a comment

Corn industry brazenly turns Gulf disaster into marketing opportunity

By Tom Philpott | Grist | 4 May 2010

As if being bombarded with oil from below and chemical dispersants from above weren’t enough, the Gulf of Mexico also has to endure marketing rhetoric from a long-time tormentor: the corn industry.

Industrial corn production is indisputably linked to the massive hypoxic “dead zone” that emerges in the Gulf every year. According to a 2008 peer-reviewed paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “Nitrogen leaching from fertilized corn fields to the Mississippi-Atchafalaya River system is a primary cause of the bottom-water hypoxia that develops on the continental shelf of the northern Gulf of Mexico each summer.” And as corn production ramps up to satisfy government ethanol mandates, the amount of nitrogen flowing into the Gulf will likely increase by between 10 and 34 percent by 2022, the report states. That surging nitrogen load will make it “nearly impossible” to slow the growth of the already New Jersey-sized dead zone, the report concludes.

Meanwhile, how the Gulf’s two ecological calamities–the spill and the dead zone–will interact is anyone’s guess. Early indications are not encouraging, reports the Minnesota Post.

So you might expect the corn shills to maintain a respectful silence as BP’s oil disaster unfolds. Instead, the corn industry is ludicrously presenting itself as the Gulf’s salvation.

From the Nebraska Corn Board:

As those along the Gulf Coast work tirelessly to manage a disaster due to an offshore oil drilling accident, this tragic situation provides even greater impetus for others to move the ball forward on renewable fuels.

A Corn Board functionary added: “Those green fields [in the Midwest] are a tremendous reminder of the potential and promise of renewable fuels like corn ethanol, and will stand in stark contrast to the images we’ll see from the Gulf … It is renewable, very safe for the environment and does not have the lingering and environmentally damaging impact of oil.”

(How can a “renewable fuel” command up such titantic amounts of nitrogen synthesized from natural gas and mined phosphorous — so much of which ends up in the Gulf?)

On Twitter, industry publicists are also using the Gulf calamity as a prop to boost corn-based fuel, reports Dan Mitchell on The Big Money.

It’s a brazen move, like a con man helping a victim of a brutal mugging stand so he can pick what’s left of his pockets. Besieged ecosystems like the Gulf need real protection, not opportunistic rhetoric from industries that contribute to their destruction.

May 5, 2010 Posted by | Environmentalism | 3 Comments

Putting Nukes In A Poor Black Georgia Town

If A Black President Does It, Is It Still Environmental Racism?

nukes

Bruce A. Dixon — Black Agenda Report — May 5, 2010

In the weeks since President Obama announced $8.3 billion in loan guarantees to build new nuclear reactors next to an existing pair of nukes in mostly black Burke County, GA, the inconvenient questions, unanswered and mostly unasked, continue to pile up.

The first and most obvious questions are why nukes, and why Burke County?

The answer to “why nukes” is that discussion of the catastrophic risk inherent to nuclear power is pretty much off the table in mainstream media these days. The Obama administration likes to call it “safe nuclear energy,” often in the same breath as “clean coal.” Both are colossal and equally transparent lies. The 24th anniversary of the horrific nuclear accident at Chernobyl, Ukraine on April 24 passed almost unnoticed in the mainstream US media, although video of a brawl over something else in that nation’s parliament made most of the networks here. Greenpeace marked the event with the release of a study by more than 50 scientists across the planet who peg the human toll of Chernobyl at a quarter million cancers, 100,000 of them fatal. Like the anniversary of the disaster itself, the Greenpeace story dropped soundlessly down the memory hole. Our amnesia is nearly perfect. I spoke to a class of journalism students at a local university at the beginning of April. Not a one of them ever heard of Chernobyl, or even of Three Mile Island. So why not nukes?

A second set of questions are why put nukes on a river that’s already the 4th most toxic waterway in the nation, on a site just across from the contaminated Savannah River nuclear weapons installation? And if leaky civilian and military nukes really are the job-creating answers to poverty, shouldn’t Burke County, GA be one of the wealthiest, instead of the poorest places east of the Mississippi 25 years after its first civilian nukes, and six decades after neighboring towns, some of them all black on the South Carolina side of the river, were bulldozed to create the Savannah River nuclear weapons facility?

A third set of questions are whether anybody is listening to the urgent warnings from nuclear experts that the site’s planned next-generation reactors are even less safe than their leaky older cousins? Like most information unfavorable to utility companies and the nuclear industry, these warnings cannot seem to find their way into the mainstream media.

A fourth set of questions are why there are no laws requiring, and no funds to pay for, testing the air, soil, water, fish, wildlife, or the people of mostly black Burke County, who are experiencing an unexplained epidemic of cancer? The people living closest to the new and existing reactors in Waynesboro, GA depend on ground water wells for drinking and bathing water. Ground water is easily contaminated by tritium, a radioactive substance produced in abundance by civilian reactors and used on the other side of the Savannah River to produce nuclear weapons.

CNN aired a brief but excellent report from Shell Bluff, GA April 16 and 19 in which they pointed out that the cancer rate was far higher than that of surrounding communities, and that local residents have held multiple public meetings opposing the new nukes, demanding testing and answers to the widespread local cancer epidemic, to little avail. The residents of Shell Bluff don’t understand, the CNN reporter said, why their water and soil is not being tested, why nobody is interested in determining why so many of their friends, family members and neighbors are sickening and dying of cancer.

Perhaps because of the vast amounts of campaign cash the nuclear industry makes available to both Republicans and Democrats, current federal and state laws allow nuclear utilities to do their own testing, and keep the methods, extent and results of that testing confidential. And since 2004 there have been no federal funds provided to the consultants that once did limited testing on the Georgia side of the river. Persistent back channel efforts by local residents and WAND, a local, grassroots and woman-led local organization, may result in some funds being released for testing, but that outcome is by no means certain. It was the tireless work of WAND activists, who are helping locals sue in opposition to the plant’s construction and operating permits, which alerted CNN to the story in the first place.

The fifth bunch of unasked and unanswered questions are whether the people in Shell Bluff, GA want more nukes in their backward, and whether the US is democracy-proof enough to put them there anyway. The first part is easy to answer, as CNN discovered. They don’t.

“We had protests, and we voiced our opinion,” said one local resident, “and we didn’t want them, but it’s just, you know — we’re just the little peons.”

When the CNN reporter asked asked two local women whether they thought President Obama had “…done enough to make sure that people like you are safe before new reactors are built?” they opined that the president “…doesn’t know we’re down here.” That kind of answers the second part too, doesn’t it?

The last question is whether putting inherently dangerous nukes into mostly black Burke County, GA amounts to environmental racism. I asked Clark Atlanta University’s Dr. Robert Bullard, director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center and the man who first coined the term “environmental racism” to characterize the frequent placement of toxic and dangerous industrial facilities into minority communities. This is what he told us:

The siting of risky nuclear power plants in Shell Bluff community in Burke County is consistent with the environmental racism pattern I documented  in Dumping in Dixie some two decades ago. In Georgia, there are currently three coal fired power plants proposed for mostly black and poor communities with the promise of jobs. In reality, fence-line black community residents don’t get the jobs.  They get pollution and more poverty. And they get sick.

So the question hangs — if a black president does it, is it still environmental racism?

May 5, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Nuclear Power | Leave a comment

Is the War in Afghanistan Justified by 9/11?

David Ray Griffin speaks in Chicago, IL on April 27, 2010

“Whereas it is widely recognized that the US-led war in Afghanistan is illegal under international law, because it was never authorized by the UN Security Council, most Americans have believed that it was morally justified as a response to the 9/11 attacks, and many believe it is still justified as a necessary means to prevent another attack originating from that region. My lecture will present evidence showing that both of these beliefs are untrue, so that the 9/11 Truth Movement and more traditional Peace and Anti-War groups should be able to combine forces to oppose this illegal and immoral war.”
– David Ray Griffin

Source: We Are Change Chicago

May 5, 2010 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

New York Car Bomb Incident: Another False Flag?

By Stephen Lendman | May 5, 2010

On May 1, New York Times writers Al Baker and William Rashbaum headlined, “Police Find Car Bomb in Times Square,” saying:

“A crude car bomb of propane, gasoline and fireworks was discovered in a ‘smoking’ Nissan Pathfinder in the heart of Times Square on Saturday evening, prompting the evacuation of thousands of tourists and theatergoers on a warm and busy night.”

Mayor Michael Bloomberg claimed “We were very lucky. We avoided what could have been a very deadly event.”

For much of the evening, Midtown New York, from 43rd – 48th streets, was closed, heightening fear reported for hours on cable news shows, including statements by Bloomberg, Governor David Paterson, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne, saying the bomb “appeared (to be) in the process of detonating, but it malfunctioned.”

Good luck or something else? We’ve seen this too often not to be suspicious. This one, like others, has all the earmarks of a false flag, more likely given its coverage and location in Times Square on Saturday night, followed by a May 2 video saying the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility.

Who could imagine they had a branch office in New York, and no one even noticed. At least that’s the impression from media disinformation, hyped to spread fear and prepare the public for what’s to come, perhaps something much worse.

In addition, like previous times, a suspect is already in custody, a Muslim, of course, as part of the anti-Islamic post-9/11 rage, and given how abusively he may be treated (including frightening threats of life in prison or the death penalty), perhaps will confess to anything or make it appear that he did so headlines can blare it.

According to Reuters, a statement on an Islamic web site said:

“The Pakistani Taliban announces its responsibility for the New York attack in revenge for the two leaders al-Baghdadi and al-Muhajir and Muslim martyrs.”

Videos are easy to fake, including strategically timed bin Laden ones, exposed by digital experts as fakes, aside from convincing evidence he died in 2001.

See David Ray Griffin’s important book titled, “Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive?” In his latest April 30 article, “Did Osama Bin Laden Confess to the 9/11 Attacks, and Did He Die in 2001,” Griffin notes his book’s convincing evidence of his death, that if so, proves all subsequent video and audio tapes attributed to him are fakes.

According to Hactor Factor’s Neal Krawetz, bogus ones are characterized by low quality visual and audio splices and more. His analysis of a September 2007 video showed bin Laden’s beard black when in earlier images it’s gray. It also had him dressed in a white hat, shirt and yellow sweater, precisely the same attire as in October 2004. In addition, the background, lighting, desk and camera angle were the same.

Most obvious were the edits, showing obvious splices, at least six video ones and even more for audio that appeared to be words and phrases spliced together.

Videos like these are easy to make as are special effects clever enough to make anyone look like bin Laden, convincingly enough to fool the public, especially when media reports hype them.

Post-9/11, it’s vital to remind the public by strategically timed “Enemy Number One” bin Laden incidents and the “security threat” he represents. If he didn’t exist, he’d have to be invented so why not perpetuate the myth, omitting that he was a CIA asset and likely remained one until his death.

Noteworthy is that CBS News anchor Dan Rather reported that he was admitted to a Rawalpindi, Pakistan hospital on September 10, 2001, and France’s Le Figaro said:

“Dubai….was the backdrop of a secret meeting between Osama bin Laden and the local CIA agent in July (2001). A partner of the administration of the American Hospital….claims that (bin Laden) stayed (there) between the 4th and 14th of July (and) received visits from many members of his family as well as prominent Saudis and Emiratis. (During the same period), the local CIA agent, known to many in Dubai, was seen taking (the hospital’s) main elevator (to) bin Laden’s room.” Why not if he was a valued asset.

On May 2, the Israeli news website Debka.com featured an “Exclusive Report” saying:

“On April 30, twenty-four hours before a smoking SUV Nissan containing an improvised bomb was defused (in) Times Square….the Pakistani Taliban’s top bomb-maker, Qari Hussain Mehsud, took ‘full responsibility for the recent attack in the USA’ in an audiotape with images on a You Tube website.”

Saying no proof of overseas involvement was forensically found, “DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources” noted similarities between the New York bomb and earlier 2005 and 2007 ones in London and Glasgow, Scotland respectively. In each case, they used propane and failed to detonate – the Glasgow one, in fact, causing the car used to burn but not cause a major catastrophe.

DEBKA also quoted Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud saying on an April 4 nine minute tape that “The time is very near when our fedayeen will attack the American states in the major cities.” Earlier, Qari Hussein Mehsud “warned NATO governments to denounce the US and apologize for the ‘massacres in Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Pakistani tribal areas – otherwise be prepared for the worst destruction and devastation in their own countries.’ ”

A mid-April Debka report had Iran threatening to retaliate against US cities with nuclear weapons if they’re used against Iranian cities or sites.

“For the first time, DEBKAfile’s military sources (IDF and/or Mossad ones stoking fear) report, Tehran indicated the possibility of passing nuclear devices to terrorists capable of striking inside the United States….Although Iran has yet to attain operational nuclear arms, our military sources believe it does possess the makings of primitive nuclear devices or ‘dirty bombs.’ ”

With no supportive evidence, these type reports hype fear to prepare the public for what’s to come, so if a planned major terrorist event in a Western city, there’s a ready suspect to blame and popular approval to act.

Noted Previous False Flags

The historic record is full of false flags, some especially noteworthy. Below are a few examples:

— in 1898, America falsely accused Spain of blowing up the USS Maine in Havana, Cuba harbor. The Spanish-American war followed;

— in 1933 Germany, a week before general elections, the strategically timed Reichstag fire (home of the German parliament) was blamed on communists. It got President Paul von Hindenburg to sign an emergency decree. Civil liberties were suspended. Weimar Republic democracy ended, and Hitler assumed fascist powers after enough Nazis were elected to assure it;

— on August 31, 1939, Nazis impersonating Polish terrorists attacked the Gleiwitz radio station on the border between the two countries, starting WW II;

— on December 7, 1941, the Roosevelt administration succeeded in manipulating Japan to attack Pearl Harbor, giving FDR the war he wanted from the early 1930s, but had to convince a pacifist public of the threat; the fleet was also tracked across the Pacific, but Admiral HE Kimmel wasn’t warned or given known intelligence to assure enough mass casualties for congressional and public support;

— in 1962, a US Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed false flag attack never happened because President Jack Kennedy rejected it; called Operation Northwoods (a part of Operation Mongoose), the scheme included sinking US ships, shooting down US commercial airliners, blowing up buildings in US cities, attacking America’s Guantanamo base, other incidents, and blaming it on Cuba as a reason for war;

— the fake August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident initiating full-scale retaliation against North Vietnam after Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorizing war without declaring it; and the seminal event of our time –

— September 11, 2001, despite clear evidence showing it was a false flag, the Afghan and Iraq wars made possible by fear-mongering blame on the Taliban and Saddam Hussein.

On February 16, 2010, a Washington’s blog web site article titled, “Governments ADMIT That They Carry Out False Flag Terror” listed some examples, including:

— the CIA admitting its 1950s role in toppling Iran’s democratically government in 1953;

— Israel admitting a 1954 attack in Egypt, including planting bombs in US diplomatic facilities, leaving “evidence” of Arab involvement;

— Indonesia’s former president, Abdurrahman Wahid, saying the nation’s police or military most likely were involved in the 2002 Bali bombing, killing over 200 people;

— a former Italian prime minister, judge, and military counterintelligence head, General Gianadelio Maletti, saying America’s CIA instigated and abetted right wing terrorist groups in the 1970s and earlier, including bombing a Milan bank in 1969, to rally popular anti-communist support in Italy and other European countries; and

— many others, including former Carter administration National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, telling a Senate committee that a false flag terror attack on US soil might occur to blame Iran and justify war.

In his 1997 book, “The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives,” he said:

“Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multicultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat,” the kind 9/11 created – predicted, planned, orchestrated, and carried out to further new world order dominance globally.

Other False Flag Examples

(1) The March 2004 Madrid train bombings occurred three days before Spain’s general elections. With no supportive evidence, they were blamed on Al Qaeda, yet they stoked public fear and were used to warn that other Western cities were threatened, including in America.

Nearly always, Muslims are blamed and arrested, the DEBKAfile citing advance bin Laden tapes threatening to punish Spain for supporting the Bush administration. This time, Basque separatists were also named, again without evidence, and the bin Laden tapes were fakes.

(2) The July 7, 2005 London underground bombings (called 7/7) were a series of attacks on the city’s public transport system during the morning rush hour for maximum disruption and casualties. At precisely the same time, an anti-terror drill occurred, simulating real attacks. It was no coincidence this time or ever, others in America and Britain coming on the same day as a real event, other notable ones covered below.

AP reported that the London Israeli embassy warned Scotland Yard about the 7/7 one in advance, and Israeli Army Radio reported that “Scotland Yard had intelligence warnings of the attacks a short time before they occurred,” but didn’t act or issue warnings. In addition, Israel’s finance minister at the time, Benjamin Netanyahu, was told not to attend an economic conference in the city where he was scheduled to deliver an address.

Other dignitaries were also warned, but not the public. Even without smoking gun proof, the 7/7 attack was a false flag operation to heighten fear and keep Britain and the West embroiled in war.

(3) On the morning of the 9/11 attack, the CIA ran a “pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a building.” Held at the Agency’s Chantilly, Virginia Reconnaissance Office, AP reported (on August 22, 2002) that it simulated “a small corporate jet (hitting) one of the four towers….after experiencing a mechanical failure.”

Unmentioned at the time was a later revealed (but unreported) Homeland Security conference announcement a year later to commemorate the 9/11 event. Held under the auspices of the National Law Enforcement and Security Institute, one of its speakers was John Fulton, CIA Chief of the Strategic War Gaming Division of the National Reconnaissance office in charge of the operation. Another coincidence, or was something more sinister afoot?

The previous year in October, the Pentagon simulated a commercial plane striking the Pentagon, coordinated by its Command Emergency Response Team and the Defense Protective Services Police. This and the 9/11 exercises are more than coincidental, given what’s now known and the fallout.

(4) On June 30, 2007, a Jeep Cherokee with propane canisters crashed into Glasgow International Airport’s glass doors, the BBC reporting that it “was in the middle of the doorway burning….The car didn’t actually explode. There were a few pops and bangs which presumably was the petrol.”

The usual suspects were blamed, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorists, Prime Minister Gordon Brown saying:

“We are dealing, in general terms, with people who are associated with Al Qaeda,” followed by his initiating draconian security measures, hyped by the UK Telegraph saying:

An “unknown Al Qaeda terrorist cell (was) thought to be preparing to launch a series of Baghdad-style car bombings.” Another Telegraph article mentioned Washington’s involvement with UK authorities in hyping the threat, and an ABC News report suggested foreknowledge of the incident based on advance warnings (by unnamed intelligence officials) of Al Qaeda “target(ing) nightclubs and other soft targets….All of this comes just three weeks after what was described as an Al Qaeda graduation ceremony for suicide bombers at a training camp in Pakistan.”

Fear mongering and false flags? Draw your own conclusions, understanding the need to stoke fear to keep public support for the “war on terror,” the loss of civil liberties for “security,” the Afghan and Iraq wars, and whatever else may be planned.

(5) the Christmas 2009 airliner incident involving Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian citizen on an Amsterdam – Detroit bound flight. US officials claimed he was trained in Yemen by Al Qaeda, obtained explosive chemicals (PETN), and tried to detonate them on board.

In a December 29 Russia Today interview, Webster Tarpley called him a “protected (CIA) patsy (for a) provocation designed to facilitate US meddling in (Yemen’s) civil war (pitting) the Saudi-backed central government against the Iranian-backed Shiite Houthi rebels,” being bombed by US and Saudi air strikes.

Abdulmutallab was denied a UK entrance visa, wasn’t on a No Fly List, paid cash for a one-way ticket to Detroit, checked no luggage, had a US visa but no passport, and was helped on board by a “well-dressed Indian” to facilitate the likely false flag plot using him as a convenient dupe.

The Wayne Madsen Report called the incident a false flag operation “carried out by (the) intelligence tripartite grouping of CIA, Mossad, and India’s Research Analysis Wing (RAW).” Earlier they conspired with “former Afghan KHAD intelligence agents to assassinate former Pakistani Prime Minister Benezir Bhutto….to destabilize Pakistan” for planned balkanization, the same scheme planned for Afghanistan and already implemented in Iraq.

Madsen explained that Abdulmutallab’s PETN was “weak, technically deficient,” failed to go off properly, and if so would have had the impact of an exploding fire cracker.

Madsen also reported that the same tripartite CIA, Mossad, and RAW alliance was behind the November 2008 Mumbai, India attacks, killing nearly 200 and wounding hundreds more. Webster Tarpley said almost for certain Pakistan’s ISI radical wing was involved, and that Indian and Mossad operatives conduct regular cross-border missions into Pakistan from India and Afghanistan.

(6) Make of it what you will, but in Miami on January 11, 2010 (one day before Haiti’s earthquake), the Pentagon’s US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) simulated a hurricane striking Haiti in preparation for subsequent measures to be implemented, that, in fact, would be a carefully planned military operation for occupation, control, and planned plunder.

Also, Deputy SOUTHCOM head, General PK Keen, was in Haiti when the quake struck, ready to assume command when it did and use a communication tool called the Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project (TISC), linking other nations and NGOs with the Pentagon and US government to facilitate measures to be implemented, none to help Haitians.

Final Comments

As long as imperial ambitions and rogue agencies like CIA and their foreign counterparts exist, false flag operations will be commonplace, the May 1 New York one the latest example, and maybe a forerunner of what’s to come – another 9/11 some believe, far worse than the first one, perhaps involving a nuclear incident in a US city. Then using it as a pretext for more war and to divert attention from America’s deepening economic crisis, likely to erupt in protests because of Washington’s indifference to millions affected.

Whether or not the direst predictions occur will only be known in the fullness of time. In the meantime, stay tuned for more updates as events unfold, and be prepared for the worst.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived.

May 5, 2010 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism | Leave a comment

Two Little Girls: Murder in the Jordan Valley

International Solidarity Movement | 5 May 2010
Emad Fakha, father
Emad Fakha, father

We stopped by the roadside at the spot where the two little girls had been killed. Their blood still stained the cushion on which they had been sitting, fragments of the military jeep which had rammed their father’s tractor still littered the ground. Janaa Fakha (8), her sister Maasa (5) and their brother Hussein (9) never saw what hit them as they waited for their father to take them from the family fields to their home in the small village of Al Ain al Baida in the northern Jordan Valley. Al Ain al Baida (the White Spring) is one of the few remaining Palestinian villages here. Its inhabitants scratch a living from what remains to them of their lands in this fertile and beautiful area.

That April day Emad Fakha had taken three of his four children to help in the fields after school, something they enjoyed, a treat. The children had climbed into the “basket” on the ground at the rear of the tractor, ready to be lifted up. Emad was preparing to start the motor when an Israeli military jeep swerved off the road, at speed, and rammed into the tractor from behind. While Hussein was thrown clear and suffered only a broken leg, the little girls didn’t stand a chance. With the body of one sister draped obscenely over its front bumper, the jeep reversed for five or six metres and then rammed once again into the tractor. What might have been a tragic accident is thus revealed for what it was – a cold-blooded murder.

Their jeep undriveable and so unable to escape, the soldiers threatened Emad with their rifles. More soldiers arrived but it was 25 minutes before the Israeli police reached the scene. The soldiers claimed that it was “an accident”, but Israeli citizen Eliazer Salam, from the settlement at Yama, who had witnessed the entire incident from his car, testified that the jeep driver had not applied his brakes at any stage and had, indeed, swerved off the road and accelerated into the tractor.

The jeep’s driver was arrested but there has been no news that he is to face any charges in a court of law. When I asked the family whether there would be an inquest (explaining that this was the usual procedure in Western, democratic countries) they didn’t understand the term. They have no recourse to the protection of the law, as we know it. Far from protecting the civilian population of the territories which they occupy, as required under international law, the Israeli military brutalises and preys upon a helpless people.

Recent similar incidents in the Nablus region – at Awarta and in Jenin – where Israeli military vehicles have been used to run down pedestrians and ram a civilian car, with fatal consequences, seem to point to an emerging pattern. The psychopathic tendencies of certain members of the Israel Defence (sic) Force have found an outlet.

Meanwhile, a single, small grave has been dug in the graveyard at Al Ain al Baida. It houses the remains of two small sisters, their severed limbs and bodies buried as one, together forever under the sun, clouds and rain of their beloved Palestine.

Update, the pattern continues:

Uniformed woman behind Netanya hit-and-run

Ma’an – 10/05/2010

Hebron – A Hebron man working in Israel was killed in a hit-and-run incident in Netanya, north of Tel Aviv, on Monday with police saying the woman driving the vehicle was in army uniform… Full article

Military jeep, car collide near Halhoul, 2 injured

Ma’an – 10/05/2010

Hebron – Two Palestinians were injured in a car accident involving an Israeli military jeep on Sunday afternoon, when the vehicles collided near the Halhul bridge north of Hebron, reports said… Full article

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May 5, 2010 Posted by | Aletho News, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | 1 Comment

Sen. Lieberman: Deny Citizenship to Suspected Terrorists

Kurt Nimmo | Infowars.com | May 5, 2010

In addition to providing an excuse to expand New York’s electronic panopticon, last weekend’s fizzle bomb event has prompted the usual neocon suspects in Congress to call for severely rolling back the civil liberties of Americans accused of terrorism.

“If you’re attacking your fellow Americans in an act of war you lose the rights that come with citizenship,” Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman told reporters yesterday. Lieberman, often called the senator from Israel, wants to amend a U.S. law “that says that if an American citizen is found to be fighting in the military of a nation with whom we are at war, they lose their citizenship.”

“If they [investigators] make a judgment that this was a terrorist act, the person should be turned over to the military,”said Lieberman. In other words, if the government decides a suspect is a terrorist, he should be denied his rights as specified by the Sixth Amendment.

Faisal Shahzad, the American citizen busted soon after the Times Square incident, is spilling his guts to the feds. “The bearded Shahzad, 30, built his makeshift bomb in a Connecticut garage after undergoing explosives training in a remote Taliban-run region of Pakistan in a recent five-month trip there, a federal complaint charged,” reports The New York Daily News.

Shahzad must have fallen asleep during the explosives lessons. The device attributed to him was an amateurish mishmash of gas cans and propane tanks cobbled together with a toy clock timer. It was generally described as “crude” by the corporate media.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, professional car bombs with high explosives attributed to al-Qaeda and the Taliban explode on a regular basis.

“Like the Christmas Day bomber, we were lucky that both of these folks were incompetent — they couldn’t trigger the explosives,” said Sen. Christopher Bond (R-Mo).

Was Shahzad incompetent, or was his “bomb” designed to be a dud?

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was deliberately and intentionally allowed to keep his US entry visa as the result of a national security override issued by U.S. intelligence. Detroit lawyer Kurt Haskell maintains that he saw a well-dressed Indian man aid the accused bomber as he boarded the plane despite the fact that he had no passport and was on a terror watch list.

Deputy FBI director John Pistole said Shahzad was placed on the No Fly list just hours before he was arrested Monday.

According to senator John McCain, it was a “serious mistake” to read Shahzad his Miranda rights. Attorney General Eric Holder said that Shahzad was “initially questioned under a public safety exception to the Miranda rule and was cooperative.” He was later read his Miranda rights.

“The Supreme Court has held there’s no constitutional obligation to give him Miranda rights,” said Republican Rep. Pete King. In other words, according to King, a suspect has no right to remain silent and ask for legal representation.

Military commissions only have jurisdiction over “alien unprivileged enemy belligerents.” Shahzad is a naturalized American citizen. Lieberman, McCain, King, and other neocons want to create two classes of American citizens — those that are granted their constitutional rights and those who are not. The government will decide who gets constitutional rights and who does not.

Earlier this year Obama approved the “targeted killing” of Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born Muslim cleric. The killing of citizens declared by the president to be “terrorists” was first announced as state policy by Obama’s director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, in February congressional hearings. “We take direct actions against terrorists in the intelligence community,” Blair said. “If we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that.”

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May 5, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties | 3 Comments

The “New” Iraq

By Ghali Hassan | May 4, 2010

Seven years after the illegal invasion of Iraq by the Anglo-American fascist armies, it is clear today that the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Iraqi nation was a premeditated and unprovoked act of naked aggression aimed at expanding U.S.-Israel Zionist power. These barbaric crimes ‘should never be forgotten and never be forgiven’.

“By violating international laws and conventions in 2003 in order to attack a defenceless nation for no reason [other than serving Israel’s Zionist-fascist ideology], George W. Bush [and Tony Blair were] reclaiming those most primal instincts that had led the Mongol barbarians Hulagu and Turko-Tamerlane to destroy Baghdad in 1258 and 1401 respectively. And by going back to the law of the jungle, Bush [and Blair] did not just destroy Baghdad and the whole of Iraq, but [they] also instigated a treacherous plan against the precious legal and institutional heritage that mankind has been laboriously building since the Treaty of Westphalia of October 24, 1648, generally considered the founding document of the nation-state and the first attempt at outlawing the right of might”, writes Tunisian journalist Hmida Ben Romdhane (La Presse de Tunisie, April 11, 2010). Unlike the destruction of Baghdad by the barbarian Mongols, the destruction of the Iraqi society by the West’s most recent militarised religio-fascist alliance of George Bush and Tony Blair is an act of terrorism that will live in infamy.

Unprovoked Aggression

There is no doubt that the barbaric attack on Baghdad in March 2003 will remain one of the most violent acts of terrorism in the history of mankind. According to U.S. officials, “Shock and Awe” was aimed at terrorising the entire Iraqi population and intimidating Iraq’s neighbours, particularly Syria and Iran. After 13 years of genocidal sanctions, that deprived Iraqi children and the population as a whole of essential medical supplies and nutrition, Iraqis are virtually defenceless in the face of overwhelming violence.

It is estimated that the 13-year long U.S.-Britain imposed sanctions – coated with the United Nations despicable colour – caused the death of more than 2 million innocent Iraqi civilians, including the death of more than 600,000 children under the age of 5 years. The sanctions were accurately described as the real weapons of mass destruction (WMD). According to John Mueller and Karl Mueller, the brutal and inhumane sanctions against the Iraqi people have caused far more deaths over time than the combined use of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons in the two world wars (Foreign Affairs, May/June 1999).

Unsatisfied by the enormous atrocity and resilience of the Iraqi people and their government, the U.S. and Britain concocted a pretext (WMD and link to terrorism) to justify an illegal act of aggression to occupy Iraq. After the pretext was exposed as a lie, the U.S. and U.S. accomplices concocted a new pretext to justify the illegal aggression, the West’s “moral responsibility” and concern for the welfare of the Iraqi people. The so-called “Responsibility to Protect” or R2P – not applicable to the Palestinians – was the same concept used by the German Nazis to justify Nazi terror. The difference was that the Nazis were allegedly “protecting ethnic Germans” in Poland and Russia.

Not since the Fascist army of Adolf Hitler invaded and occupied parts of Europe has the world witnessed such barbaric violence and destruction as that being perpetrated by the Anglo-American fascist armies. [Editor notes that the author seems to be forgetting the barbaric atrocities committed by the European and US powers in Malaya, Kenya, Korea, Algeria, Vietnam etc…]  For most Iraqis today, living under U.S. military Occupation is no less brutal than Poles or Russians were living under the brutal Nazi occupation that most Westerners considered barbaric.

Prior to the invasion, Iraq was subjected to a massive and vicious propaganda campaign. The country was portrayed as a pariah state by mainstream-Zionist media and their despicable journalists distorting facts and promoting aggression. Iraq’s late president Saddam Hussein was demonised and used as a moral compass to justify Anglo-American aggression and war crimes.

Western opportunists and America’s apologists who pretended to be “against” the Anglo-American aggression and hide behind the “No War for Oil” Zionist deception have long fallen in line. The so-called “liberal class” and “progressives” have often described the murderous Occupation as a “failure” and “incompetence”, praised the U.S.-staged fraudulent elections and attacked the legitimate Iraqi Resistance as “violent insurgency” and “bigoted Sunnis”. Their criticism of the Occupation and U.S. imperialism has always been an intellectual cowardice. If the U.S. failed to impose its Zionist-imperialist agenda on Iraq, credit must go to the Iraqi Resistance. It shatters the myth of invincibility of the ‘world’s only superpower’.

From time to time the “liberal class” and “progressives” criticise Barack Obama’s policies and calling him ‘worse than Bush’, as if Obama has the power to make changes to U.S. criminal policies. The motive is to manipulate the public and deflect attention away from the anti-Muslim Zionist ruling class that control the centres of power and finance in America. We all know that Obama has no real power to make changes. He is just another product, a tool, of the Zionist ruling class. Indeed, the Obama Administration is the most Zionist administration in U.S. history.

After seven years of hibernation, the “liberal class” and “progressives”, including Israel’s apologists are back to show their loyalty (backflipping), attacking Iran and condemning Iran’s alleged “rigged” elections. It is important to remember that Iran doesn’t pose a threat to any nation, but Israel with its fascist ideology and an arsenal of nuclear weapon poses a threat not only to entire region but to the world. The same Zionist propaganda that led to the aggression against Iraq is being recycled.

The Zionists’ (the architects of the war) murderous strategy in Iraq was to destroy the fabric of the Iraqi society, and turn Iraq into a colonial dictatorship subservient to U.S.-Israel Zionist power. There was no “failure” or “incompetence” on the part of the U.S. government, as suggested by the loyal “opposition”. The destruction of Iraq was planned at least two years before the aggression in 2003. It was driven by the neo-conservative and neo-liberal ideologues (in lay terms, Zion-fascists) with strong ties to Israel’s fascist regime. “They openly stated that their top priority was to advance Israel’s agenda, which, in this case, was a U.S. war against Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein, occupy the country, physically divide Iraq, destroy its military and industrial capability and impose a pro-Israel/pro-U.S. puppet regime”, writes American sociologist James Petras.

As a result of the illegal invasion and seven years of murderous Occupation, an estimated 1.5 million defenceless Iraqi civilians, mostly women, children and young men, have been murdered, with the majority by the invading Anglo-American armies. It is the most premeditated and barbaric mass murder of innocent civilians in the history of human civilisation. The “new” Iraq is a nation of orphans and widows.

Furthermore, many American officials and international organisations have quietly acknowledged that the destruction of Iraq’s cultural heritage was deliberate and premeditated. It was designed to remove Iraq’s history as the birthplace of civilisation. Even Adolf Hitler never thought of committing such heinous crimes during the Nazi occupation of Europe. Priceless cultural artefacts may have been stolen by Nazi officials but never destroyed. In Iraq, Museums and galleries holding the history of world civilisation were trashed and looted. Libraries were ransacked and books were burned en masse. It was all performed under the watchful eyes of the invading armies. As James Petras noted: “[T]he destruction of the scientific, academic, cultural and legal foundations of an independent state means increasing reliance on the Western (and Chinese) multinational corporations and their technical infrastructure – facilitating imperial economic penetration and exploitation”.

In the “new” Iraq, Iraqis are living in a climate of fear and terror today. From the outset, the Occupation fomented violence in order to destroy the Iraqi society. Before the invasion, Iraqis lived side-by-side in every city and town regardless of ethno-religious backgrounds. They accommodated intermarriage and live in a cultural and mosaic society. To encourage anarchy and insecurity, the occupying army disbanded the Iraqi Army, police and security forces and replaced them with Kurdish warlords, political gangsters, imported death squads, and religious militias. “The ‘war of all against all’ served the interests of the U.S. Occupation forces”, writes James Petras. From the outset of the Occupation, the U.S. sought to control Iraq through violence and the colonial policy of ‘divide and rule’ by handing out political positions to expatriates along strictly ethno-religious lines. The so-called “political process” was designed to achieve this division of Iraq.

By propping up corrupt criminals, religious fundamentalists and terrorists who were parachuted into Iraq by the invading armies, the American and to a lesser extent the British governments were able to hide behind a facade of corrupt expatriate stooges and blaming them for the Occupation-generated violence and crimes. Corruption is one of the most effective colonial tools, brought into Iraq to deflect attention away from the Occupation. Transparency International has ranked (the ‘new’) Iraq as the fourth most-corrupt nation in the world in its annual survey. Indeed, the creation of a corrupt and illegitimate puppet government inside the Occupation Headquarters (known as the ‘Green Zone’) aimed at transforming Iraq into a “failed state” that needs Western interference and “help”.

Expatriate stooges were appointed and encouraged to compete against each other for the title of Iraq’s “strongman”. The more violent and corrupt the “strongman” the more accepted by the U.S. administration. Hundreds of young men are disappearing every month (if not every week) into “secret” prisons, where they are routinely tortured, raped, humiliated and many of them later murdered. Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) were the first to blame the puppet government for crimes committed under the radar screen of the occupying forces while they remain silent when Iraqis are tortured, raped and massacred by U.S.-British invading armies. Both, AI and HRW reports on Iraq were consciously prepared to exonerate the occupying armies and depict Iraq as a “sovereign” nation marred by violence and violation of human right law.

Violence will continue to engulf Iraq’s major cities; just enough to justify the ongoing murderous Occupation. This serves U.S.-Israel Zionist interests and diverts public attention away from the Occupation. Furthermore, to enforce colonial divisions and facilitate the liquidation of anti-Occupation Resistance leaders, the U.S. occupying army used Nazi-like methods to separate populations along ethno-religious lines by erecting walls around neighbourhoods in Baghdad and other cities. For example, the Capital Baghdad with its marked ghettoes and perpetual violence is a mirror image of Warsaw under Nazi occupation under wretched living conditions.

Deterioration of Living Conditions

Since 2003, living conditions in Iraq continue to deteriorate. Once a middle-class nation, Iraq has been deliberately reduced to a state of abject destitution. In the “new” Iraq, nearly half the population live in extreme poverty. A report by the British charity organisation, Oxfam, shows that 43 percent of Iraqis live in absolute poverty and some 8 to 10 million Iraqis need emergency aid. The country is still under the genocidal sanctions. The official unemployment rate is more than 50 percent of the Iraqi active population. The illegitimate puppet government’s own statistics revealed that 45 percent of Iraqis live in absolute poverty lacking the necessities to survive. Nearly 62 percent (15.8 million) of Iraqis ‘completely depend’ on the food rationing system to survive from month to month. The system was created by President Saddam Hussein to confront the genocidal sanctions and avert mass starvation. Despite the reduction in the number of food and non-food items by the illegitimate puppet government, many Iraqis still depend on the system to survive.

After seven years of murderous Occupation and deteriorating living conditions, Iraq is suffering the worst refugee crisis in history. “Iraq would be the world’s second-worst crisis, as the report points out, second only to Afghanistan, and ahead of Sudan. So the strain on Iraq’s neighbours, particularly Jordan and Syria, and to a lesser extent on Lebanon is immense”, said Jessica Mathews, President of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a U.S. propaganda think-tank known for its pro-Israel Zionist bias. At least 2.7 million Iraqis are internally displaced (by violence) and living in conditions of extreme poverty, enduring constant attacks and eviction from temporary shelters. An estimated 3 million Iraqis, with the means to do so, have fled Iraq into exile in neighbouring countries. Only a small number of Iraqi refugees were allowed into those Western nations who pretend to have “liberated” Iraq. The majority of Iraqi refugees have found a safe haven in Syria and Jordan. Most of Iraqi refugees are in ‘legal limbo’, unable to work and with no hope of returning to their country. The primary causes for Iraqi refugees’ flight are violence, lack of access to water, sanitation, electricity, health care and education.

Targeting Iraq’s Education

Iraq’s education, once the best in the region, has been the target of the Occupation. Iraq’s education has been dismantled by the invading armies and their collaborators. The Iraqi curriculum has been changed to distort history and depicts the U.S. and Israel as democratic and civilised societies by covering up their war crimes, flagrant violations of international law, human rights, violent ideology, corruption, growing inequalities, gross injustices and racist policies at home and abroad. It is estimated that only 30 percent of the 3.5 million of school age were attending schools. The majority of the dropouts are female. According to a report by UNESCO, school attendance prior to the Anglo-American aggression was nearly 100 percent. The crisis is exacerbated by the increase number of orphaned children. There are at least 5 million Iraqi orphans, many of them live on the streets.

Iraqi universities and colleges have been besieged by U.S.-created extremists and criminals. Tens of thousands of prominent Iraqis, including academics, doctors, teachers and political personalities have been murdered in cold blood in a U.S-Israel orchestrated assassination campaign dubbed “De-Ba’athification”. Many had to leave Iraq for safety reasons, which contributed to brain drain.

The planned campaign was designed not only to kill Iraq as a nation by destroying Iraq’s human resources and independence, but also to remove the base of the Iraqi Resistance to the Occupation. Professional Iraqis who survived the murderous campaign have left the country, leaving an education system in a state of collapse. Students are being graduated en masse without the necessary professional knowledge, especially those who work in the health care services. “There is really a huge difference between now and the times of Saddam Hussein, when medical graduates left college with competence to treat any patient”, said Professor Fua’ad Abdel-Razak of Baghdad university (IRIN, 16 May, 2007). Before the invasion, education and healthcare with modern health facilities were universal.

Deterioration of Iraq’s Healthcare

Iraq’s healthcare system has deteriorated at an alarming rate with a devastating impact on the health of the Iraqi people. The deterioration of the healthcare services has seen a marked increase in mortality. According to UNICEF, under the Occupation, Iraqi children are now dying faster than before invasion. One in four children under five years of age is chronically malnourished. One in eight Iraqi children die before the age of five, and millions of Iraqi children are affected by post traumatic disorder. “Healthcare in Iraq since 2003 is worse than during the sanctions. At that time we had little equipment and medicine, but in the last three years we have lost almost all the specialists”, said Dr Majeed al-Naomi in a Baghdad clinic. It is estimated that at least, 25 percent of Iraq’s 18,000 physicians had left the country since the invasion in 2003 which is devastating the healthcare system.

Furthermore, Thousands of tons of white phosphorous shells, ‘depleted’ uranium (DU), napalm, cluster bombs, and neutron bombs were dropped on Iraqi population centres, including Baghdad Basrah and Fallujah. The Anglo-American armies used more than 1700 tons of DU during the 2003 invasion on top of more than 320 tons of DU used in 1991 attacks on Iraq. In the natural environment, these weapons’ particles have extremely long half-lives and there is strong evidence of their detrimental effects on the health of the Iraqi people.

Iraqi officials are reporting incidences of cancer, deformed babies and other health problems have risen sharply since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Many suspect the causes are contamination from weapons used in years of Anglo-American criminal wars and unchecked pollution. In Fallujah, Iraqi children are suffering from brain damage, deformity and cancer. An Iraqi doctor said that the rate of deformity and cancer among children in Fallujah is extremely high when compared with the rate of cancer and deformity of that in 2003. A spike in the number of births of stillborn, deformed and paralyzed babies there has alarmed doctors. Fallujah was the target of two massive assaults by the U.S. military. In Basra, Doctor Jawad al-Ali said: “We have seen new kinds of cancer that were not recorded in Iraq before the 2003 war, types of fibrous (soft tissue) cancer and bone cancer. These refer clearly to radiation as a cause.” In Basra, Leukaemia cases were up by 600 percent since 1990.

Access to clean water remains inadequate in many parts of the Iraq. According to the World Bank survey, 87.5 percent of the population have no adequate water supply, and 20 percent proper sewage disposal. In many parts of Iraq, including Baghdad and Basra, the water, soil and air are contaminated with radio-active particles caused by DU shells without adequate healthcare services the situation is rapidly worsening for the most vulnerable Iraqis, including women and children.

The Status of women

According to UNICEF, before the Anglo-American invasion, “Rarely do women in the Arab world enjoy as much power and support as they do in Iraq”. After seven years of U.S. Occupation, the status of Iraqi women has deteriorated beyond belief. The U.S.-imposed constitution has stripped Iraqi women of all the civil and basic rights that they enjoyed before the invasion and condemns them to statutory second-class citizens. Unemployment among Iraqi women is nearly 80 percent. A report by the Organisation for Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI) released on the fourth anniversary of the Anglo-American invasion stated that: “women of Iraq have gradually lost most of their 20th century gains and privileges in the last 4 years of occupation”. You would think European Islamophobes who pretend to support Muslim womens’ “liberation” in Europe would be concerned about Iraqi womens’ rights under Occupation. Instead, they are engaged in a fascist campaign of anti-Muslim hatred to justify Western war on Muslims.

According to Professor Maha Sabria of Al-Nahrain University in Baghdad, “The status of women here is linked to the general situation. The violation of women’s rights was part of the violation of the rights of all Iraqis. […] At the same time women do not have freedom of movement because of the deteriorated security conditions and because of abductions of women and children by criminal gangs”. (Inter Press Service, 12 March 2010).

Furthermore, as a result of the U.S. Occupation and its violence, there are 2.5 million widows in Iraq, the highest in the world. According to the United Nations, in 2006, 90 to 100 women were widowed each day by the Occupation and its collaborators. Many of these widows do not know what happened to their spouses and most of them receive no assistance from the puppet government.

Throughout Iraq, women are living in fear of their lives and dignity. Kidnapping and rape are the common crimes under the Occupation. Over 10,000 women have suffered detention at the hands of U.S. forces and their Iraqi collaborators. The majority of detainees remain without charges. They are tortured and abused on regular basis. (See my: Iraq: A cluster of torture prisons, Online Journal, March 08, 2006). The situation for Iraqi women reflects the country’s situation under U.S. military Occupation.

Elections and Colonial Dictatorship

The recent U.S.-staged illegitimate elections were conducted in an atmosphere of terror and execution perpetrated by the Occupation forces and their collaborators. The final outcome of fraudulent elections was ensured. Like the 2005 elections, the 2010 elections were widely regarded, both in Iraq and outside Iraq, as rigged and fraudulent elections. The elections designed to legitimise the Occupation and validate a corrupt U.S.-imposed colonial dictatorship led by U.S. stooges. With a puppet government in place, the U.S. can claim that Iraq is sovereign and that U.S. Occupation of Iraq is legitimate (See my: Iraq’s Fraudulent Elections, New Matilda, January 19, 2005; Iraq: A Colonial Dictatorship, Global Research, April 29, 2005).

Unlike Iran’s recent free elections that have been condemned as “rigged” by the Zionist media and Western opportunists, Iraq’s fraudulent elections – under murderous foreign military Occupation – were promoted and praised as “democratic”. While Iyad Allawi, the U.S.-created thug claimed “victory”, prolonged post-elections’ wrangling is the norm. He has called for the privatisation of Iraq’s industries and Iraq’s oil and gas resources. Before he was parachuted into Iraq, Allawi was a Western-paid terrorist based in Europe. He still is a paid terrorist. In Iraq, Allawi and his associates were involved in terrorism, including the bombing of buses used by schoolchildren. Whatever, there is no evidence that a puppet government will demand an end to the Occupation. Meanwhile, Nori al-Maliki, the Iranian quisling has not given up his chance to continue serving U.S. and Iran interests from his office in the ‘Green Zone’.

Meanwhile, Obama’s “commitment” to troops’ withdrawal by the end of 2011 is flawed. It is a propaganda designed to manipulate the public and promote the perception that Iraq is a free and sovereign nation. The Occupation continues, but it is “invisible occupation”, as Priya Satia of Stanford University rightly called it. “In reality, most of the ‘withdrawing’ forces are merely relocating to forward operating bases where they appear to be hunkering down for a long entr’acte [pause] offstage in expensive, built-to-last [military bases]” (Financial Times, July 01, 2009). “But Iraqis are too shrewd to fall for invisible occupation again: indeed they never fall for it the first time … in 1932”, added Satia. Moreover, the so-called “Status of Forces Agreement” between the U.S. military and the puppet government is a fraud, because it was never ratified by the Iraqi people. It is a deal between an occupier and a puppet government.

American military bases are being built (against the wishes of the Iraqi people) to enforce a permanent colonial occupation and to serve U.S.-Israel Zionist interests… There are nearly 300 U.S. military bases in Iraq; many of them are the size of small towns. American advisors (at least 1,400 CIA agents) will remain stationed in the largest embassy in the world in the centre of Baghdad as a symbol of U.S. imperialism. In addition, there are at least 100,000 mercenaries (‘private war contractors’) fanning violence throughout Iraq.

Finally, the impacts of the murderous Occupation on the lives of the Iraqi people are reflected in numerous Western polls that revealed a significant majority of Iraqis despise the presence of U.S. troops and mercenaries and want an end to the murderous Occupation. Hence, without armed resistance, it is unlikely the U.S. will end its illegal colonial Occupation of Iraq. The legitimate Iraqi Resistance to the Occupation will continue until Iraq is liberated.

The premeditated and deliberate destruction of Iraq in pursuit of U.S.-Israel Zionist expansion constitutes a war of aggression that resulted in genocide. The ultimate responsibility of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Anglo-American fascist armies in Iraq rests with those who deliberately planned and executed an act of unprovoked aggression. George Bush, Tony Blair and their accomplices are guilty of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. Their crimes are reminiscent of the crimes committed by Nazi leaders. In civilised societies they would be hanged for their crimes.

The Iraqi people have the right to live in a sovereign nation free of repression, torture and terrorism; to enjoy justice and respect for human rights, and prosperity. The only condition to build a new Iraq for all Iraqis, proud of its history and Arab identity, is the liberation of the Iraqi people from U.S. colonial Occupation.

Ghali Hassan is an independent writer living in Australia.

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May 5, 2010 Posted by | Islamophobia, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , | 7 Comments