On the Eve of an Illegal Attack on Syria, Avaaz/350.org Board Members Beat the Drums of War
By Cory Morningstar | Wrong Kind of Green | August 30, 2013
Appalling.
350.org’s Van Jones (U.S. Advisory Council Board member and NRDC trustee), is calling for airstrikes on Syria. [CNN Video below.]
From the 350.org website:
“Van Jones is a globally recognized, award-winning pioneer in human rights and the clean-energy economy. He is a co-founder of three successful non-profit organizations: The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Color of Change and Green For All. Jones is the best-selling author of the definitive book on green jobs, The Green-Collar Economy. He served as the green jobs advisor in the Obama White House in 2009. Jones is currently the President of Rebuild the Dream.” [Emphasis added.]
Never has the legacy of Ella Baker been so disgraced. Ella, today, spinning in her grave, once conveyed to the world:
“Remember, we are not fighting for the freedom of the Negro alone, but for the freedom of the human spirit a larger freedom that encompasses all mankind.”
Ella would surely spit on Van Jones if she were alive today.
350.org’s Ricken Patel (350.org International Advisory Council member – and Avaaz founder) is also pounding the drums of war. Just 4 days ago, on August 22, 2013, Patel himself urged Avaaz supporters to demand world leaders “place a no-fly zone over Syria.” Those who comprise Avaaz are already up to their necks – in the blood of the Libyan people who they helped annihilate. [Further reading: Did Libya’s Citizens Demand Foreign Intervention? A ridiculous question, yet according to Avaaz, the answer is yes.]
The following link is Google’s cache of the Avaaz/Patel campaign to demand a no fly zone (https://secure.avaaz.org/en/syria_no_fly_zone/). It is a snapshot of the page as it appeared on 22 Aug 2013 18:08:13 GMT: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:vzBe8PMa7H8J:https://secure.avaaz.org/en/syria_no_fly_zone/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca&client=firefox-a
Screenshots of Patel’s email:
Add to this the “Humanitarian Intervention” and “Responsibility to Protect” doctrines. The crème de le crème of imperial rhetoric. Such doctrines, created by American “think-tanks”, for the elite, by the elite, are of critical use for a declining and morally bankrupt empire. An empire that brilliantly attempts to convince and portray, utilizing the language within these doctrines, that the atrocities they manufacture, call for, and carry out, are somehow honourable and admirable – as opposed to what they actually are: crimes against humanity. Orwell would have called this psychopathic persistence a stunning feat in doublespeak.
Many so-called civil society organizations/NGOs have been instrumental in making these doctrines palatable to the public.
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That commenter on your blog may actually be working for the Israeli government
By Cecilie Surasky | July 14, 2009
Straight out of Avigdor Lieberman’s Foreign Ministry: a new Internet Fighting Team! Israeli students and demobilized soldiers get paid to pretend they are just regular folks and leave pro-Israel comments on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other sites. The effort is meant to fight the “well-oiled machine” of “pro-Palestinian websites, with huge budgets… with content from the Hamas news agency.” The approach was test-marketed during Israel’s assault on Gaza, and by groups like Give Israel Your United Support, a controversial effort to use instant-access technology to crowd-source Israel advocates to fill in flash polls or vote up key articles on social networking sites.
Will the responders who are hired for this also present themselves as “ordinary net-surfers”?
“Of course,” says Shturman. “Our people will not say: ‘Hello, I am from the policy-explanation department of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and I want to tell you the following.’ Nor will they necessarily identify themselves as Israelis. They will speak as net-surfers and as citizens, and will write responses that will look personal but will be based on a prepared list of messages that the Foreign Ministry developed.”
The full article, translated by Occupation Magazine into English here:
The Foreign Ministry presents: talkbackers in the service of the State
By: Dora Kishinevski
Calcalist 5 July 2009
Translated for Occupation Magazine by George Malent
After they became an inseparable part of the service provided by public-relations companies and advertising agencies, paid Internet talkbackers are being mobilized in the service in the service of the State. The Foreign Ministry is in the process of setting up a team of students and demobilized soldiers who will work around the clock writing pro-Israeli responses on Internet websites all over the world, and on services like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. The Foreign Ministry’s department for the explanation of Israeli policy* is running the project, and it will be an integral part of it. The project is described in the government budget for 2009 as the “Internet fighting team” – a name that was given to it in order to distinguish it from the existing policy-explanation team, among other reasons, so that it can receive a separate budget. Even though the budget’s size has not yet been disclosed to the public, sources in the Foreign Ministry have told Calcalist that in will be about NIS 600.000 in its first year, and it will be increased in the future. From the primary budget, about NIS 200.000 will be invested in round-the-clock activity at the micro-blogging website Twitter, which was recently featured in the headlines for the services it provided to demonstrators during the recent disturbances in Iran.
“To all intents and purposes the Internet is a theatre in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and we must be active in that theatre, otherwise we will lose,” Elan Shturman, deputy director of the policy-explanation department in the Foreign Ministry, and who is directly responsible for setting up the project, says in an interview with Calcalist. “Our policy-explanation achievements on the Internet today are impressive in comparison to the resources that have been invested so far, but the other side is also investing resources on the Internet. There is an endless array of pro-Palestinian websites, with huge budgets, rich with information and video clips that everyone can download and post on their websites. They are flooding the Internet with content from the Hamas news agency. It is a well-oiled machine. Our objective is to penetrate into the world in which these discussions are taking place, where reports and videos are published – the blogs, the social networks, the news websites of all sizes. We will introduce a pro-Israeli voice into those places. What is now going on in Iran is the proof of the need for such an operational branch,” adds Shturman. “It’s not like a group of friends is going to bring down the government with Twitter messages, but it does help to expand the struggle to vast dimensions.”
The missions: “monitoring” and “fostering discussions”
The Foreign Ministry intends to recruit youths who speak at least one foreign language and who are studying communications, political science or law, or alternatively those whose military background is in units that deal with information analysis. “It is a youthful language”, explains Shturman. “Older people do not know how to write blogs, how to act there, what the accepted norms are. The basic conditions are a high capacity for expression in English – we also have French- and Swedish-speakers – and familiarity with the online milieu. We are looking for people who are already writing blogs and circulating in Facebook”.
Members of the new unit will work at the Ministry (“They will punch a time card,” says Shturman) and enjoy the full technical support of Tahila, the government’s ISP, which is responsible for computer infrastructure and Internet services for government departments. “Their missions will be defined along the lines of the government policies that they will be required to defend on the Internet. It could be the situation in Gaza, the situation in the north or whatever is decided. We will determine which international audiences we want to reach through the Internet and the strategy we will use to reach them, and the workers will implement that on in the field. Of course they will not distribute official communiquיs; they will draft the conversations themselves. We will also activate an Internet-monitoring team – people who will follow blogs, the BBC website, the Arabic websites.”
According to Shturman the project will begin with a limited budget, but he has plans to expand the team and its missions: “the new centre will also be able to support Israel as an economic and commercial entity,” he says. “Alternative energy, for example, now interests the American public and Congress much more than the conflict in the Middle East. If through my team I can post in blogs dealing with alternative energy and push the names of Israeli companies there, I will strengthen Israel’s image as a developed state that contributes to the quality of the environment and to humanity, and along with that I may also manage to help an Israeli company get millions of dollars worth of contracts. The economic potential here is great, but for that we will require a large number of people. What is unique about the Internet is the fragmentation into different communities, every community deals with what interests it. To each of those communities you have to introduce material that is relevant to it.”
The inspiration: covert advertising on the Internet
The Foreign Ministry admits that the inspiration comes from none other than the much-reviled field of compensated commercial talkback: employees of companies and public-relations firms who post words of praise on the Internet for those who sent them there – the company that is their employer or their client. The professional responders normally identify themselves as chance readers of the article they are responding to or as “satisfied customers” of the company they are praising.
Will the responders who are hired for this also present themselves as “ordinary net-surfers”?
“Of course,” says Shturman. “Our people will not say: ‘Hello, I am from the policy-explanation department of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and I want to tell you the following.’ Nor will they necessarily identify themselves as Israelis. They will speak as net-surfers and as citizens, and will write responses that will look personal but will be based on a prepared list of messages that the Foreign Ministry developed.”
Test-firing in the Gaza War
According to Shturman, although it is only now that the project is receiving a budget and a special department in the Foreign Ministry, in practice the Ministry has been using its own responders since the last war in Gaza, when the Ministry recruited volunteer talkbackers. “During Operation Cast Lead we appealed to Jewish communities abroad and with their help we recruited a few thousand volunteers, who were joined by Israeli volunteers. We gave them background material and policy-explanation material, and we sent them to represent the Israeli point of view on news websites and in polls on the Internet,” says Shturman. “Our target audience then was the European Left, which was not friendly towards the policy of the government. For that reason we began to get involved in discussions on blogs in England, Spain and Germany, a very hostile environment.”
And how much change have you effected so far?
“It is hard to prove success in this kind of activity, but it is clear that we succeeded in bypassing the European television networks, which are very critical of Israel, and we have created direct dialogues with the public.”
What things have you done there exactly?
“For example, we sent someone to write in the website of a left-wing group in Spain. He wrote ‘it is not exactly as you say.’ Someone at the website replied to him, and we replied again, we gave arguments, pictures. Dialogue like that opens people’s eyes.”
Elon Gilad, a worker at the Foreign Ministry who coordinated the activities of the volunteer talkbackers during the war in Gaza and will coordinate the activities of the professional talkbackers in the new project, says that volunteering for talkback in defence of Israel started spontaneously: “Many times people contacted us and asked how they could help to explain Israeli policy. They mainly do it at times like the Gaza operation. People just asked for information, and afterwards we saw that the information was distributed all over the Internet. The Ministry of Absorption also started a project at that time, and they transferred to us hundreds of volunteers who speak foreign languages
and who will help to spread the information. That project too mainly spreads information on the Internet.”
“You can’t win”
While most of the net-surfers were recruited through websites like giyus.org, which was officially activated by a Jewish lobby [and has basically the same goal and modus operandi], in some cases is it was the Foreign Ministry that took the initiative to contact the surfers and asked them to post talkbacks sympathetic to the State and the government [of Israel] on the Internet and to help recruit volunteers. That’s how Michal Carmi, an active blogger and associate general manager at the high-tech placement company Tripletec, was recruited to the online policy-explanation team.
“During Operation Cast Lead the Foreign Ministry wrote to me and other bloggers and asked us to make our opinions known on the international stage as well,” Carmi tells Calcalist. “They sent us pages with ‘taking points’ and a great many video clips. I focussed my energies on Facebook, and here and there I wrote responses on blogs where words like ‘Holocaust’ and ‘murder’ were used in connection with Israel’s Gaza action. I had some very hard conversations there. Several times the Foreign Ministry also recommended that we access specific blogs and get involved in the discussions that were taking place there.”
And does it work? Does it have any effect?
“I am not sure that that strategy was correct. The Ministry did excellent work, they sent us a flood of accurate information, but it focussed on Israeli suffering and the threat of the missiles. But the view of the Europeans is one-dimensional. Israeli suffering does not seem relevant to them compared to Palestinian suffering.”
“You can never win in this struggle. All you can do is be there and express your position,” is how Gilad sums up the effectiveness so far, as well as his expectations of the operation when it begins to receive a government budget.
(*) “department for the explanation of Israeli policy” is a translation of only two words in the original Hebrew text: “mahleqet ha-hasbara” – literally, “the department of explanation”. Israeli readers require no elaboration. Henceforth in this article, “hasbara” will be translated as “policy-explanation”. It may also be translated as “public diplomacy” or “propaganda”.
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Terrorism with a “Human Face”: Syria Al Qaeda “Freedom Fighters” are “Not Killing Civilians”
By Prof Michel Chossudovsky | Global Research | February 10, 2014
The attacks by opposition forces largely integrated by Al Qaeda terrorists can no longer be denied.
What is now occurring is a re-branding of the various terrorist formations covertly support by Western intelligence.
The latest slur of media disinformation consists in providing a “human face” to Al Qaeda.
While the media acknowledges that the Al Nusrah front is integrated by Al Qaeda affiliated rebels, the Islamist rebels affiliated with the New Islamic Front –which has received Washington’s ascent– are now portrayed as “freedom fighters” involved strictly in para-military operations.
Media Fabrications
According to the media reports:
1. The opposition rebels are predominantly Syrian nationals.
2. They are not targeting innocent civilians.
3. They are acting in a responsible fashion. They are no longer involved in terrorist acts. They are targeting government forces and the pro-government National Defense Force militia, set up in towns and villages across Syria.
The attack on an Alawite village in the province of Hama
A Reuters report pertaining to a recent rebel attack on an Alawite village in the province of Hama suggests that civilians deaths are few in number, largely the result of “collateral damage”, attributable to “neglect” pertaining to the government evacuation programs from the areas of combat.
Read carefully (emphasis added). The Reuters report casually denies the atrocities committed by US-NATO-Saudi sponsored terrorists:
Islamist fighters battling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces seized control of an Alawite village in the central province of Hama on Sunday, part of an offensive to try to cut off supply routes from Damascus to the north of the country.
The report denies, despite ample evidence, that the “freedom fighters” killed civilians. Detailed government data on civilian casualties are dismissed;
But the government said the dead were mainly women and children and accused the fighters of committing a massacre on the eve of the resumption of peace talks in Geneva.”
Reuters prefers to quote the “evidence” provided by the fake UK based Syrian Observatory. Those killed were part of the government’s militia forces:
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said the Islamists killed 25 people in the village of Maan, mainly from a pro-Assad National Defence Force militia.
Residents of Maan, around 5 miles east of Syria’s main north-south highway, are from the same Alawite minority as the Assad family which has ruled Syria for the last four decades.
…
The Observatory said most women and children had been evacuated from the village before it was taken over.
(Reuters report Chicago Tribune, February 9, 2014
The “freedom fighters” are “overwhelmingly” Syrian national
The Reuters report fails to acknowledge something which is amply documented by media reports and official data: most of the rebels are mercenaries recruited in Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, not to mention several European countries including Britain and France.
The “freedom fighters” are “overwhelmingly” Syrian nationals according to Reuters:
Rebels fighting to overthrow Assad are overwhelmingly from the country’s Sunni Muslim majority, backed by Islamist and jihadi fighters from across the Islamic world.
“Video footage released on Sunday showed a rebel fighter performing Muslim prayers on top of a municipal building after the seizure of Maan, one of several sites in Hama targeted by the rebels in recent days. Another video showed the dead body of a pro-Assad fighter.
The Observatory said most women and children had been evacuated from the village before it was taken over.
(Reuters report Chicago Tribune, February 9, 2014
Yarmouk: The Palestinian Urban Suburb
A BBC report pertaining to the Palestinian Yarmouk, urban suburb of Damascus, sustains the legend of opposition “activists” and “freedom fighters” coming to the rescue of Palestinians:
The situation has grown desperate since last summer when the Syrian army blocked regular supplies to the camp in an attempt to force out rebels [Al Qaeda terrorists supported by US-NATO] holed up inside.
Activists’ videos and photographs have shown little children crying in hunger and with visible signs of malnutrition. Residents told the BBC that recently there have been about 100 deaths from starvation.
The strategy of the Al Qaeda rebels advised by Western and Israeli Special Forces has been to block the supply routes of food and essential commodities. And then the media comes in and blames the government:
“Babies also died because there was no milk. Their mothers couldn’t breastfeed them because they were sick and undernourished.”
Palestinians in Yarmouk say they have resorted to eating boiled herbs and plants found growing near their homes.
The insinuation is that government forces –which have acted in support of the Palestinians– are responsible for the humanitarian crisis in Yarmouk.
At the same time, the BBC refutes its own lies. It acknowledges that the Syrian authorities supported the Palestinians from the very outset:
The unofficial camp was set up as a home for refugees who left or were forced from their original homes because of the 1948 war that led to the creation of Israel.
Although the Syrian authorities did not give citizenship to refugees, they had full access to employment and social services. Many say they had relatively good lives compared to their counterparts in other Arab countries.
Yet the BBC in its coverage of Yarmouk, insinuates that the terrorists integrated by Western advisers had the support of the Palestinians against the Syrian government and that ultimately the “freedom fighters” allowed the supply routes to be opened to the United Nations relief programs led by the UNRWA:
Armed rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad moved into the camp and found support among some Palestinian groups.
After months of negotiations, a deal was struck at the end of last year between the Syrian authorities and Palestinian representatives to allow food to be delivered to the camp. BBC, February 10, 2014.
Victoria Nuland’s ‘Ukraine-gate’ Deceptions
By Daniel McAdams | Ron Paul Institute | February 9, 2014
“That’s some pretty impressive tradecraft,” said Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland of the interception and leak of her now-infamous call to US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoff Pyatt. The call consisted of the two plotting to install a US puppet government in Ukraine after overthrowing the current, democratically elected government.
Tradecraft means “spycraft.” In other words, Nuland was crediting a foreign intelligence service with impressive use of technology to be able to hack into her call to the ambassador. Everyone knew she was talking about Russia, partly because the Administration had been blaming Russia from the moment the recording was made public.
However, Nuland knew all along that this was not the case, and she did nothing while the Administration continued to escalate the accusations against Russia.
Jay Carney, White House Spokesman, “It says something about Russia,” that they would tap the telephone call. State Department Spokeswoman Jan Psaki was even harsher, calling it “a new low in Russian tradecraft.”
But the telephone call between the two, we learned yesterday, was not conducted on a secure, encrypted telephone line that the State Department requires for such sensitive conversations and communication. Rather, the call was made over unsecured cell phones and thus easily intercepted with basic equipment that is widely available to anyone. Therefore it was not “impressive tradecraft” at all that led to the capture and release of the conversation.
Nuland and Pyatt obviously knew that at the time, being the two parties to the call. They then either sat by and allowed US government official one after the other accuse Russia of going to great lengths to hack the call without admitting this fact, or they did inform their superiors but Administration officials decided to ignore this critical fact and push accusations against Russia anyway. You never want a serious crisis to go to waste, as it is said.
RPI contacted a former State Department official to clarify security procedures for such a telephone conversation between high-level personnel. The official was clear:
I know well the seriousness of using an open line (aside from anodyne conversation) for high-level classified information that would clearly be embarrassing, if not damaging, not only for the US but also the EU. For using an open line for discussing highly sensitive national security matters, both [Nuland and Pyatt] should be reprimanded, at the very least.
So this was a serious security violation.
The former official continued:
Assuming the telecon was made on insecure line, I find it curious, if not thought provoking, that Nuland’s profanity has managed to overshadow both the apparent security violation as well as the potential damage to national security of the substance of the conversation itself.
Indeed, the fallout from “Ukraine-gate” is astounding but sadly not surprising. The mainstream media in the US has focused solely on the Russian angle (now discredited) and on the salty language and particularly the false supposition that Nuland was using sailor’s language to indicate a serious rift with the EU on Ukraine policy. In fact, US and EU policy toward Ukraine is identical: regime change. The dispute is merely over velocity and is therefore cosmetic rather than substantive: should we travel 100 miles per hour or only 75 miles per hour toward regime change?
As far as we have seen, there has been virtually no discussion of the substance of the telephone conversation in the US media. But the conversation was a confirmation of all theretofore denied accusations of US involvement in the current unrest in Ukraine. It was not simply US well-wishing toward the opposition parties. It was not simply a bit of advice and a wink toward the opposition. It was wholesale planning and brokering a post-regime change governing coalition in Ukraine, with the UN being ordered to come in and “glue” the deal.
More precisely, as the Oriental Journal points out:
They agreed to nominate Bat’kyvshchina Party leader Arseniy Yatseniuk as Deputy Prime Minister, to bench Udar Party leader Vitaly Klitschko from the game for a while and to discredit neo-Nazi Svoboda party chief Oleh Tiahnybok as “Yanukovych’s project”
Shortly after “Ukraine-gate” broke, Sergei Glazyev, advisor to Russian president Putin claimed that the US was spending $20 million per week on the Ukrainian opposition, including supplying the opposition with training and weapons.
Nuland replied that such claims are “pure fantasy.”
Perhaps, but that is just what Nuland had said previously about claims that the US was meddling in the internal affairs of Ukraine. And then the tape came out. That was just what she said about Russia’s “impressive tradecraft” in intercepting the telephone call. Then we discover that she was discussing highly sensitive issues over completely unsecured telephones.
Is the US training and funding the Ukraine opposition? Nuland herself claimed in December that the US had spent $5 billion since the 1990s on “democratization” programs in Ukraine. On what would she like us to believe the money had been spent?
We know that the US State Department invests heavily — more than $100 million from 2008-2012 alone — on international “Internet freedom” activities. This includes heavy State Department funding, for example, for the New Americas Foundation’s…
…Commotion Project (sometimes referred to as the “Internet in a Suitcase”). This is an initiative from the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative to build a mobile mesh network that can literally be carried around in a suitcase, to allow activists to continue to communicate even when a government tries to shut down the Internet, as happened in several Arab Spring countries during the recent uprisings.
“Commotion Project.” What an appropriate name for what is happening in Ukraine.
It is not a far leap from the known billions spent on “democratization” in Ukraine, to the hundreds of millions spent on developing new tools for regime-changers on the ground to use against authorities in their home countries, to the State Department from the US embassy in Kiev providing training and equipment to those seeking the overthrow of the Ukrainian government.
The apparent goal of US policy in Ukraine is to re-ignite a Cold War, installing a US-created government in Kiev which signs the EU association agreement including its NATO cooperation language to effectively push the Berlin Wall all the way to the gates of Moscow and St. Petersburg.
NATO has expanded to central Europe, despite US assurances in the 1980s that it would not do so. The US rolled over Russia in its deceptive manipulation of a UN Security Council resolution on Libya to initiate an invasion. The US continues to arm jihadists seeking to overthrow the secular Assad government in Russia-allied Syria. The US and EU have absorbed the Baltics, leaving their large ethnic Russian populations to dangle in non-person limbo. The US and EU had all but absorbed Georgia. Now the US is clearly in the process of absorbing Ukraine, with its strategic importance to Russia, its proximity, and its nearly 10 million ethnic Russian minority.
Surely there is a point to where Russia will take steps to concretely limit its losses. In December Russian president Vladimir Putin said in a meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart Viktor Yanukovich that Russia and Ukraine should resume comprehensive military cooperation. Other bilateral defense agreements are already in place.
What would have to happen to trigger a Ukrainian request to its close neighbor for assistance putting down a bloody and illegal coup d’etat instigated by foreign governments? Will serious US miscalculation of Russian resolve over Ukraine lead to a tragedy of almost inconceivable proportions? What if this time Russia does not blink?
Related article
A Tale of Two Cities: Kiev and Washington
By Daniel McAdams | Ron Paul Institute | February 7, 2014
In Kiev:
Violent protestors last month occupied three cabinet ministry buildings as they sought to overthrow the Ukrainian government. Protestors physically blocked the speaker of the Ukrainian parliament from taking his seat at the speaker’s podium for weeks. Then they blockaded the speaker of parliament in his own office, forcing him to escape out the window.
As the Ukrainian authorities attempted to restore order and evict protestors from government buildings, the US government threatened sanctions and more if the legally-elected government of Ukraine moved against those occupying government buildings.
Senator John McCain last week threatened unspecified “concrete” US action against Ukraine if there is any “brutal repression of the demonstrations.” In other words, if police forcibly remove those who have taken control of cabinet ministry buildings and blocked the main square of the capitol, McCain implies that “all options are on the table.”
Meanwhile in Washington:
A man attempted to climb the fence surrounding the White House today and was immediately apprehended. The White House complex was placed in full lockdown mode. According to press reports, “the area around the White House was shut down and reporters were not allowed to leave through one of the gates because of the incident.”
Last October, a distraught woman traveling with her one year old daughter bumped into a barricade in front of the White House before driving quickly and erratically toward Capitol Hill. She did not attempt to occupy any government buildings, but once she stopped her car, police shot her dead.
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Iran: Over 20 nationals jailed in US on sanctions charges
Press TV – February 9, 2014
Iran says the United States has imprisoned more than 20 Iranian nationals over allegations of violating Washington’s sanctions regime against Tehran.
“The US government has arrested more than 20 Iranian nationals over the unfounded allegation of breaching US’s unilateral and illegal sanctions against the Iranian nation and [it] has so far taken no measure to release these innocent citizens despite [Iran’s] follow-up through diplomatic and legal channels,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham said on Sunday.
She added that Iran’s Foreign Ministry would continue to pursue and seek to secure the rights and freedom of these innocent Iranians.
She further dismissed claims about the detention of American nationals in Iran.
“No American national is in custody or prison in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the Iranian spokesperson said.
She said the two people that the US authorities and media say are in custody in Iran are actually Iranian citizens and will have to be held accountable before the law while enjoying their full legal rights.
Manufacturer Tried to Hide Results of Testing of Blood Thinner Implicated in 1,000 Deaths
By Steve Straehley | AllGov | February 9, 2014
The manufacturer of a blood-thinning drug tried to hide results of an internal study that the manufacturer feared would hurt sales of the widely-advertised medication, according to recently-unsealed court documents.
Boehringer Ingelheim, manufacturer of Pradaxa, is being sued by patients and their families, charging it failed to properly warn users about possible dangers of the drug. More than 1,000 of those using Pradaxa have died from bleeding, Katie Thomas of The New York Times reported.
Some of the papers released by Chief Judge David R. Herndon of the United States District Court in East St. Louis, Ill., indicated that a research paper would contradict the company’s claims that regular blood monitoring is not necessary while taking Pradaxa. The lack of regular monitoring is one of the main selling points of the drug over warfarin, a drug long used in the prevention of blood clots and strokes. Warfarin requires frequent blood monitoring and attention to diet.
Boehringer Ingelheim emails released by the court show concern about the effect a change in recommended monitoring would have on sales of Pradaxa. “This may not be a onetime test and could result in a more complex message (regular monitoring), and a weaker value proposition … vs. competitors,” one employee wrote.
An email from another employee expressed concern about the drug’s safety risks in older patients, and said “there may be a role” for one or two blood tests in Pradaxa patients.
The case highlights the fact that much of the research on drugs is performed by the drug makers themselves, who have a financial interest in ensuring their products are approved by regulators.
The research paper, written by Paul A. Reilly, a clinical program director at Boehringer Ingelheim, found that some patients absorb too little of the drug to prevent strokes. It also said another group absorbs so much that they are at a higher risk for bleeding. These issues could be addressed with blood monitoring to ensure that patients have the proper levels of the drug in their bloodstream. Draft versions of the paper gave optimal levels of Pradaxa in a patient’s bloodstream.
Reilly’s paper was published in the February 2014 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, but some of the conclusions about blood monitoring that appeared in the draft version aren’t in the final report.
In a statement, Boehringer Ingelheim said the unsealed documents “represent small fragments of the robust discussion and debate that is a vital component in all scientific inquiry, and in the research and development of any important medication such as Pradaxa.”
One company supervisor, Dr. Jutta Heinrich-Nols, warned that publishing Reilly’s paper could make it “extremely difficult” for the company to defend its claims that Pradaxa did not require regular blood monitoring, the Times said.
In addition, there is so far no antidote to Pradaxa’s effects. With warfarin, physicians can administer doses of Vitamin K to counteract that drug’s effects in case a patient starts hemorrhaging.
The Justice Department has previously cited the company for intentionally making “unsubstantiated claims about the efficacy” of their drug Aggrenox, which is intended to prevent subsequent strokes, or strokes due to blood clots.
The Pradaxa documents were released the same week that Physicians for Integrity in Medical Research sued the Food and Drug Administration over the heart medication roflumilast, claiming it should be pulled off the market. The drug, made by Forest Laboratories and intended to treat chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), does more harm than good, according to the plaintiff.
To Learn More:
Study of Drug for Blood Clots Caused a Stir, Records Show (by Katie Thomas, New York Times)
New Emails in Pradaxa Case Show Concern Over Profit (by Katie Thomas, New York Times)
A Promising Drug With a Flaw (by Katie Thomas, New York Times)
Pradaxa Manufacturer Has History of Illegal Activities, Ties To Controversial Groups (by Alisha Mims, Ring of Fire)
Doctors Group Sues FDA to Withdraw Approval of Heart Drug (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)
Fukushima radiation levels underestimated by five times – TEPCO
RT | February 8, 2014
TEPCO has revised the readings on the radioactivity levels at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant well to 5 million becquerels of strontium per liter – both a record, and nearly five times higher than the original reading of 900,000 becquerels per liter.
Strontium-90 is a radioactive isotope of strontium produced by nuclear fission with a half-life of 28.8 years. The legal standard for strontium emissions is 30 becquerels per liter. Exposure to strontium-90 can cause bone cancer, cancer of nearby tissues, and leukemia.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. originally said that the said 900,000 becquerels of beta-ray sources per liter, including strontium – were measured in the water sampled on July 5 last year.
However, the company noted on Friday that the previous radioactivity levels had been wrong, meaning that it was also likely readings taken from the other wells at the disaster-struck plant prior to September were also likely to have been inaccurate, the Asahi Shimbum newspaper reported.
The Japanese company has already apologized for the failures, which they said were a result of the malfunctioning of measuring equipment.
TEPCO did not mention the radioactivity levels of other samples of both groundwater and seawater taken from between June and November last year – which totaled some 140.
However, the erroneous readings only pertain to the radiation levels measured in water – readings taken to measure the radiation levels in air or soil are likely to have been accurate.
In the basement of the station, the drainage system and special tanks have accumulated more than 360,000 tons of radioactive water. The leakage of radioactive water has been an ongoing problem in the wake of the accident at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant.
TEPCO also said on Thursday that 600 liters of contaminated water – which had 2,800 becquerels of beta-ray sources per liter in it, leaked from piping leading to a tank at the Fukushima nuclear plant.
A record high level of beta rays released from radioactive strontium-90 was detected at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant beneath the No. 2 reactor’s well facing the ocean, according to the facility’s operator who released news of the measurements mid-January.
TEPCO measured the amount of beta ray-emitting radioactivity at more than 2.7 million becquerels per liter, Fukushima’s operator said as reported in the Japanese media.
In March 2011, an earthquake triggered a tsunami that hit Japan’s coast, damaging the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The catastrophe caused the meltdown of three nuclear reactors at the facility, leading to the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
The water used to cool the reactors has been leaking into the soil and contaminating the ground water ever since. Some of the radioactive water has been escaping into the Pacific Ocean.
US focused on destabilizing Ukraine: Ex-US official
Press TV – February 8, 2014
Having long displayed a “habit” of attempting to overthrow democratic governments, the United States now seems focused on destabilizing Ukraine, says a former US official, Press TV reports.
“The control freaks in Washington think that only the decisions that Washington makes and imposes on other sovereign countries are democratic,” wrote Paul Craig Roberts, who is a former assistant secretary of the US Treasury for economic policy, in an article on Press TV’s website on Friday.
“The world has witnessed this American self-righteousness for eons as Washington overthrows one democratic government after the other and imposes its puppet,” Roberts said, adding that “for the moment, Washington is focused on destabilizing Ukraine.”
Ukraine has been seeing anti-government protests since about two months ago. The unrest began after Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych refrained from signing a political and trade deal with the European Union (EU).
Clashes erupted several times between Ukrainian protesters and police forces during anti-government demonstrations. Arrests were made in the course of the protests as well.
In an effort to calm the political unrest, President Yanukovych invited all parties, including the opposition, to engage in dialog. However, the Ukrainian opposition leaders turned down his offer of negotiations.
He also offered top government positions to the opposition leaders, which they rejected. Yanukovych also pledged to change the constitution to reduce the president’s powers, following another decision to scrap an anti-protest law.
The unrest, nevertheless, continues unabated in Ukraine.
“Of all the violent protests that we have been witness to, the Ukrainian one is the most orchestrated,” Roberts said. “Ukraine has a democratically-elected government, but Washington doesn’t like it because Washington didn’t pick it.”
“Ukraine – or the western part of it – is full of Washington-funded NGOs, whose purpose is to deliver Ukraine into the clutches of the EU, where US and European banks can loot the country, as they looted, for example, Latvia,” he said, adding that, “The NGOs financed by Washington are committed to delivering Ukraine into Washington’s hands, where Ukrainians can become American serfs.”
On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s economic advisor Sergey Glazyev described the situation in Ukraine as an attempted coup.
“According to our information, American sources spend $20 million a week on financing the [Ukrainian] opposition and rebels, including on weapons,” Glazyev told the Ukrainian edition of Russian newspaper Kommersant.
Two Diseases Big Pharma Hopes You Get in 2014
By Martha Rosenberg | Dissident Voice | February 6, 2014
Most of us have our guard up when it comes to direct-to-consumer drug advertising. We know the butterflies, sunsets and puppies in the TV ads are designed to distract us from words like “blood clot”, “heart attack”, “stroke”, “seizure”, “life-threatening allergic reaction” and “death.” We are aware that more than half the ads tells us why we don’t want to ask our doctor about the new wonder drug.
Unbranded advertising, however, is much more insidious. Instead of selling a drug, it sells the disease driving the drug sales and sometimes doesn’t mention the drug at all.
Unbranded advertising often appears to be from the CDC and can even run free as a public service announcement thanks to its apparently altruistic message. The hallmark of unbranded advertising is it calls the disease it is hawking (whether depression, bipolar disorder or restless legs) “under diagnosed,” and “underreported” and cites “barriers” and “stigmas to treatment” which of course means sales. Sometimes it calls the disease a “silent killer” to scare people who think they’re fine. (Before drug advertising it was the opposite: the medical establishment said you were probably fine despite how you felt.)
Do You Have Non-24 Hour Sleep Wake Disorder?
“You can’t see me because of radio… and I can’t see you because I’m totally blind.” So begins a high saturation radio campaign that launched late last year to boost “awareness” of an obscure circadian rhythm disorder called Non-24 Hour Sleep Wake Disorder in typical unbranded drug marketing fashion. How obscure is Non-24? There are only 146 citations for the disorder in the entire US National Library of Medicine. By comparison, there are 8,463 citations for the plague.
The narrator says his blindness doesn’t “hold me back” but he often “struggles to keep up” because he is not “sleeping through the night.” He then says, “Sound familiar? You’re not alone!” The ads are from the Washington, DC-based drug company Vanda whose drug candidate for people who are blind and have Non-24, Hetlioz, received an FDA Advisory Committee recommendation for approval in January which means the FDA will likely approve it. Hetlioz is said to be chemically related to the sleeping pill marketed as Rozerem (Ramelteon).
Of course the development of “orphan drugs” that treat such a small part of the population (like the blind) they are not commercially viable is laudable. But orphan drugs are not usually accompanied by multimillion dollar ad campaigns and slick websites. (Nor are important messages for the blind usually on the Web.) Is there something disingenuous going on? For example, under “Could You Have Non-24?” on the site, it says “The key symptoms of Non-24 are the inability to sleep or stay asleep and a powerful urge to sleep during the day” with no mention of blindness. A longer list on the site mentions waking up “groggy,” being “less productive than usual at work or at school,” relationships that “are strained,” “sluggishness and forgetfulness,” mood that is “affected” and frustration “because no one seems to understand what you’re going through,” and also doesn’t mention blindness.
You don’t have to be a cynic to wonder if the new disease–and the drug that will treat it if approved– is actually being marketed to the hundreds of millions of adults with sleep problems. When I called the phone number and asked the “health educator” if I could have Non-24 even though I am not blind, I was told “you don’t have to be blind to have Non-24″ though it is more common in blind people. When I asked if there was a pill I could take if I had symptoms, my educator said he was unable to answer that because, “I am not a doctor,” but promised to send me more information.
Getting a pill approved by the FDA so it can be legally sold and then widening its apparent uses through ad campaigns is called off-label marketing and it is strictly illegal. Since the lab tests and clinical trials that would establish safety for a new condition haven’t been done, patients are guinea pigs. Almost all recent major settlements with drug companies revolve around off-label marketing of drugs including Johnson & Johnson’s Risperdal, Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Abilify, Eli Lilly’s Zyprexa, GlaxoSmithKline’s Paxil, Pfizer’s Neurontin, Bextra, Geodon and Lyrica, AstraZeneca’s Seroquel, Ortho-McNeil-Janssen’s Topamax, Forest Laboratories’ Celexa and Lexapro and Abbott’s Depakote.
“15,000 elderly people in nursing homes [are] dying each year from the off-label use of anti-psychotic medications,” testified FDA drug reviewer David Graham, MD, during congressional hearings, adding that Pharma is “laughing all the way to the bank.”
Selling the “disease” of Non-24 is reminiscent of the campaign to sell Shift Work Sleep Disorder two years ago. “Do you work a nontraditional work schedule?” asked the ads for Cephalon’s stimulant Nuvigil . “Do you struggle to stay awake?” You may be suffering from Shift Work Sleep Disorder! Soon there was an unbranded website called the Wake-Up Squad to sell the disease without ever mentioning the drug. The Wake-Up Squad is “on a mission to lead the fight against Shift Work Disorder,” it announced, offering facts and myths about the disease and a big red headline that asked “Are You At Risk?”
Both the hypothyroidism and Non-24 unbranded ad campaigns are so general, they apply to almost everyone. They bring us closer to what comedian Chris Rock predicted drug advertising would become, in a TV special: “Do you fall asleep at night and wake up in the morning? You may be suffering from…”.
Do You Have Undiagnosed Hypothyroidism?
From Joan Lunden and Mike Piazza who sold Claritin to Dorothy Hamill and Bruce Jenner who sold Vioxx, celebrity drug advertising is often phenomenally successful. No wonder the drug company AbbVie has selected actress Sofia Vergara to lead its hypothyroidism campaign.
“Emmy-nominated actress Sofia Vergara is helping to raise awareness about the importance of diagnosing and treating hypothyroidism,” read a press release last spring, “a thyroid condition that affects millions of Americans.” Her campaign, called “Follow the Script,” funded by AbbVie, “aims to educate individuals with hypothyroidism about the importance of being consistent with the treatment their doctor prescribes, and provides a ‘script’ to ensure they consistently receive the medication prescribed by their doctor when they visit the pharmacy.” Ka-ching.
While hypothyroidism certainly exists (as do other kinds of thyroid disorders) Vergara’s campaign capitalizes on the gray areas in its diagnosis and the well-documented human tendency to self-diagnosis, by planting fear and doubt. For example, the AbbVie press release says, “Thyroid conditions affect an estimated 30 million individuals in the U.S.” and “one in every eight women will develop a thyroid condition in her lifetime.” Yet Harvard Health Publications at Harvard Medical School places the figure at 12 million.
Commensurate with unbranded advertising a.k.a. “disease mongering” Vergara’s “Follow the Script” campaign website features “interactive polls, symptom and treatment information,” “stories and videos from other individuals with hypothyroidism,” and a chance for visitors to “share their own experiences.” In classic unbranded pill marketing, the site also provides “helpful ‘scripts’ for speaking with your doctor and pharmacist”–so patients don’t go all the way to the doctor and fail to ring the cash register.
AbbVie was formed in early 2013 when Abbott, located near Chicago, split into two companies, with AbbVie to concentrate on the blockbuster Humira, which made it $2 billion in one quarter of 2013. But Synthroid, the thyroid supplement drug behind Vergara’s campaign, enjoyed almost 25 percent growth last year and accounted for $153 million during the same quarter. Synthroid is the nation’s leading thyroid supplement drug despite going off patent decade ago, because it is widely perceived as more stable than competitor and generic versions of the drug.
Lest no potential customers miss the fact that hypothyroidism is an under diagnosed, under-reported major health problem with barriers and stigmas to treatment, a “National Academy of Hypothyroidism” also now exists. The first thing visitors to the site will see is a slide of an overweight woman on a scale with the brazen headline “Is Your Thyroid Making You Fat”? Visitors will also learn that hypothyroidism could be causing their stress, depression and chronic pain just as lack of hormones or antidepressants caused them ten years ago. There is even a perk for sufferers of hypothyroidism. The Academy tells them how to apply for disability benefits for their hypothyroidism. Just trying to help!
‘F**k the EU’: Senior US State Dept. official caught in alleged phone chat on Ukraine
RT | February 7, 2014
A senior US State Department official has allegedly been caught giving an unexpected message to the EU while discussing Ukrainian opposition leaders’ roles in the country’s future government. The phone call was taped and posted on YouTube.
“F**k the EU,” Assistant Secretary of State for Europe Victoria Nuland allegedly said in a recent phone call with US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, as the two were discussing a deal to end the crisis in Ukraine.
The four-minute video – titled ‘Maidan puppets,’ referring to Independence Square in Ukraine’s capital – was uploaded by an anonymous user. The origin of the recording is not clear. The video was first reported in the Kyiv Post.
The US State Department did not deny the authenticity of the video and stressed that Nuland had apologized for the “reported comments.”
The conversation is mainly focused on Ukraine’s government and President Viktor Yanukovich’s offer last month to make opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk the new prime minister and Vitaly Klitschko deputy prime minister.
“I don’t think that Klitschko should go into the government. I don’t think it is necessary. I don’t think it is a good idea,” a female voice – allegedly Nuland – said.
“In terms of him not going into the government, just let him stay out and do his political homework,” a male voice – believed to be Pyatt – replied. “In terms of the process moving ahead, we want to keep the moderate democrats together,” he said.
As Nuland sees it, Ukrainian opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk should be in charge of the new government and Klitschko would not get along with him. “It’s just not going to work,” she said.
Nuland added that she has also been told that UN chief Ban Ki-moon is about to appoint the former Dutch ambassador to Kiev, Robert Serry, as his representative to Ukraine.
“That would be great I think to help glue this thing and have the UN glue it and you know, f**k the EU,” she said in apparent reference to their differences over policies.
“We’ve got to do something to make it stick together, because you can be pretty sure that if it does start to gain altitude the Russians will be working behind the scenes to try to torpedo it,” Pyatt replied.
US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki declined to comment on the tape’s contents, but did not deny its authenticity.
“I did not say it was not authentic,” she said, adding that Nuland had apologized to her EU counterparts for the reported comments.
Meanwhile, White House spokesman Jay Carney alleged that the fact that it had been “tweeted out by the Russian government, it says something about Russia’s role.”
In the conversation, it sounds like the two officials are playing a game of chess; strategizing on how to put together the government of another country, RT’s Marina Portnaya said while commenting on the report.
Foreign policy expert Nebojsa Malic told RT that even though Nuland apologized for the reported comments, she did not admit her fault in trying to overthrow the government in Ukraine.
“What she hasn’t apologized for is the plans to midwife a new government in Ukraine. In other words, she is apologizing for cussing up the EU, but she is not apologizing for trying to overthrow the government in Kiev, calling it popular democracy,” Malic said. “I don’t think anybody in the US establishment is sorry for what they are trying to do. I think they are very proud of it and they are going to pursue it.”
The leaked chat fuels earlier allegations that Washington is heavily meddling in the Ukrainian political crisis by manipulating the pro-EU opposition and helping it in its efforts to oust President Viktor Yanukovich.
Back in December, Victoria Nuland was spotted in the cradle of the anti-government protests – Kiev’s landmark Independence Square – distributing cookies to demonstrators. Later in the month, Senator John McCain arrived in Kiev to show his support for the opposition. Addressing protesters on Independence Square, he stated that Ukraine’s future was with Europe, adding that the country would “make Europe better.”
Debunking the Suicide for 72 Virgins Myth
| Ascertain the Truth | March 1, 2009
One of the biggest Israeli propaganda myths is the invention of 72 virgins as a Muslim reward for suicide. This has been repeated to the western world so often that most people accept it as fact. The media wants us to believe that there cannot be anything wrong with Israelis – who must be seen as eternal victims – to cause anyone to commit suicide as a means of striking back at them.
Heavens no!
The motivation for suicide bombings in Israel has nothing to do with Jewish treatment of Palestinians. Instead it has to do with the evilness of the Palestinians and their religious beliefs. This is the “bill of goods” they sell the western mind while at the same time faking most, if not all, the “Islamic suicide bombings” to blame on Muslims.
It is a sick and despicable mind that feels that it has a right to attack, steal, murder and cause harm to others, but if the others dare fight back they are wrong and therefore terrorists. This one sentence describes Israeli thinking and their policies. They believe they are superior and entitled and they have a right to do anything to other people and those people better not retaliate. As a result, the Israelis have done more by way of propaganda to take the legitimate fight of those who are against their wrongs and demonize them. We now have this ongoing enormous propaganda campaign to make Palestinians and anyone belonging to the same religion as Palestinians, to be seen as mindless terrorists and suicide bombers with no cause other than to do evil. And, of course, vicariously receiving 72 virgins as a reward in paradise for committing suicide to kill a few Israelis.
The Qur’an and valid authentic Hadiths are very clear about what happens to anyone who commits suicide. According to Hadiths:
Committing Suicide is a Major Sin:
Bukhari Volume 2, Book 23, Number 445: Narrated Jundab the Prophet said, “A man was inflicted with wounds and he committed suicide, and so Allah said: My slave has caused death on himself hurriedly, so I forbid Paradise for him.”
Bukhari Volume 8, Book 73, Number 73: Narrated Thabit bin Ad-Dahhak: ”And if somebody commits suicide with anything in this world, he will be tortured with that very thing on the Day of Resurrection.
There are many more Hadiths condemning suicide but I would also like to reference the Qur’an. Amongst the many verses against suicide here is one that makes it very clear that the taking of one’s life is strongly prohibited and that there is no reward for anyone who does that.
But let there be amongst you Traffic and trade by mutual good-will: Nor kill (or destroy) yourselves: for verily God hath been to you Most Merciful! If any do that in rancour and injustice,- soon shall We cast them into the Fire: And easy it is for God. Qur’an 4:29 – 4:30
So where did the reward of 72 virgins in paradise for suicide come from? Are there any Islamic teachings we can point to endorsing that?
When we look at the highest authority in Islam, the Quran, we find nothing in it endorsing rewards for suicide. Instead we find the strongest condemnation with severe punishments for those who commit suicide. When we look at Hadiths, which after the Quran is second in authority in Islam, we find nothing in the authentic Bukhari and Muslim Hadiths endorsing suicide. Instead we find strong condemnation for it.
Searching what Muslims refer to as Gharib Hadiths (weak or strange Hadiths) we do find something about 72 wives but not virgins. The Hadith we find is the following:
Sunan al-Tirmidhi Hadith 2562 says:
The Prophet Muhammad was heard saying: “The smallest reward for the people of Paradise is an abode where there are 80,000 servants and 72 wives, over which stands a dome decorated with pearls, aquamarine, and ruby, as wide as the distance from Al-Jabiyyah [a Damascus suburb] to Sana’a [Yemen]”
This is as a weak Hadith that has no Sanad — line or sequence of narration. Although listed in an authoritative collection, this particular Hadith has technical weaknesses in its chain of transmitters and is therefore not considered impeccable. As a result, Muslims are not required to believe in it. Even if the Hadith was true, there is nothing about it that says that if someone commits suicide they would get 72 virgins in paradise.
Muslims know that the description of paradise or heaven in Hadiths and Quran is allegorical. If not, then Allah would have allowed us to take our bodies with us when we die. But the vehicle by which we could enjoy the physical things (especially 72 virgins ) mentioned as being in heaven, is left behind here in this world to rot and decay away. So we know for a fact that for heavenly rewards, physical things of this world are used to describe things totally non-physical. A Hadith to keep in mind is as follows:
The Prophet said, “Nobody who dies and finds good from Allah (in the Hereafter) would wish to come back to this world even if he were given the whole world and whatever is in it, except the martyr who, on seeing the superiority of martyrdom, would like to come back to the world and get killed again (in Allah’s Cause).” (Sahih Bukhari, 4:52:53)
I am sure that 72 physical virgins are a small part of the whole world to be given to someone who has experienced paradise to come back to. Yet the prophet (saaw) has said NOBODY who experiences paradise would want to come back to this world even for everything this world has to offer. If a man was getting 72 physical virgins in heaven, then surely he would get more than that from the world and would be enticed to come back.
On the other hand, martyrdom in war for an Islamic cause is praised extensively as in the above Hadith. The Quran teaches (3:169):
“Do not consider those killed [while engaging] in God’s cause dead. Rather, they live with their Lord, who sustains them!”
The Quranic idiom, “killed while engaging in God’s cause” is a reference to martyrdom for acting on being a Muslim, whether as a persecuted and powerless individual or as a warrior fighting in defense of Islam, country, justice, freedom and peace. A Hadith in Sunan al-Tirmidhi states that in contrast to the suicide, the martyr does not even feel the pain of his death (Fada’il al-Jihad, 26:1663). He is also forgiven all his sins and has the right to intercede on behalf of his own family to enter Heaven. So, suicide is forbidden, killing of noncombatants is forbidden, but martyrdom is rewarded with entrance into heaven and, therefore, with great material rewards in the world to come.
What I wrote about Islam’s position on suicide is not secret, esoteric knowledge. It is common knowledge well known and can easily be discerned by anyone doing a very elementary study of the religion. Yet what we have today is the knee jerk, unconscious association of the religion of Islam with suicide bombings. Even to the point where claims of getting 72 virgins are an Islamic prize offered for suicide. This is a cruel and ugly lie about Islam that has been so widely perpetuated that it is accepted as fact.
Corrections to the association of Islam with suicide and the killing of innocents are not made in the media. Instead it is glued even tighter by reporting that NOT a person disobeying Islam, but a Muslim imbued with Islamic religious fervor committed a suicide.
We have a media that is too eager to enlighten and spread the word about crazy Muslims killing themselves for 72 virgins. We read and hear everyday about suicide bombers in Iraq killing themselves and other Iraqis with them. We are to believe that a religion that strongly condemns suicide, promises severe punishment in hell for those who commit it and has never had a strategy of using suicide to fight wars until recent contact with Israelis — somehow has spawned the most suicide killers on earth. I don’t believe for a minute that the reports about suicide killings in Iraq are true. Many independent journalists and eye witnesses have reported how Mossad and US occupational forces have staged incidents to make them appear to be Iraqi suicide killings. In fact there are many cases where the perpetrators have been caught.
Oddly enough in this saga about suicide killings we read the following headlines from Israeli newspapers: “Fewer officers to be armed as suicide becomes IDF’s top killer!!!” which you can read more about at the following links:
- http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2005/12/14/17904291.php
- http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/657996.html
- http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=45975&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0&sid=4597e4e2f34898311a77dcb0c3c0f2a7
The leading cause of death for the Israeli Defense Forces is suicide!!! Well, well it looks like suicide is really an Israeli problem and not a Muslim one. Their IDF commit far more suicides than what is being blamed on Muslims. We already know that Israel leads the world in trafficking prostitutes and that there are hundreds of brothels in Tel Aviv. Israel has no law against trafficking people, and no law against prostitution. Who knows, maybe having access to one prostitute at a time on a soldier’s salary was not enough for those IDF soldiers. Maybe these soldiers believed the lies told about Muslims and were trying to get their 72 virgins too. See how strong an effect Jewish lies have on their own people.
Related:
Killing Suicide
By WILLIAM BLUM | CounterPunch | February 5, 2014
Suicide bombers have become an international tragedy. One can not sit in a restaurant or wait for a bus or go for a walk downtown, in Afghanistan or Pakistan or Iraq or Russia or Syria and elsewhere without fearing for one’s life from a person walking innocently by or a car that just quietly parked nearby. The Pentagon has been working for years to devise a means of countering this powerful weapon.
As far as we know, they haven’t come up with anything. So I’d like to suggest a possible solution. Go to the very source. Flood selected Islamic societies with this message: “There is no heavenly reward for dying a martyr. There are no 72 beautiful virgins waiting to reward you for giving your life for jihad. No virgins at all. No sex at all.”
Using every means of communication, from Facebook to skywriting, from billboards to television, plant the seed of doubt, perhaps the very first such seed the young men have ever experienced. … Full article
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Lies are Unbekoming | October 17, 2026
On June 10, 1975, Dr. Chester Stock, a vice president at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, wrote to a Canadian nurse named Rene Caisse: “Enclosed are test data in two experiments indicating some regressions in sarcoma 180 of mice treated with Essiac.” The sentence sat in a letter from one of the world’s largest private cancer research centers, concerning an herbal tea an elderly English woman had learned from an Ojibwa medicine man at a northern Ontario mining camp in the 1890s. The tests were terminated the following year after Sloan-Kettering admitted, in sworn affidavit three years later, that they had prepared the injectable solution improperly from the dried material supplied — freezing and thawing the herb rather than boiling it as Rene had instructed. By the time Calling of an Angel was published in 1988, Rene Caisse had been dead for a decade, having treated thousands of cancer patients across fifty-six years in her Bracebridge, Ontario kitchen, never charging a fee, and refusing every offer — from Memorial Sloan-Kettering, the National Cancer Institute, Merck, Parke Davis, and private corporations dangling contracts up to $1 million — to release her formula before the medical establishment admitted her remedy had merit. … continue
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