Top 5 Chemical Weapon Tests The British Conducted On Their Own People
By Stuart J. Hooper | 21st Century Wire | July 9, 2015
How anyone could have ever thought any of this was a good idea is simply unconscionable.
Unfortunately, this article is not satirical. Instead, it documents five, historically factual cases where the British Government thought it would be a great idea to test chemical and biological weapons upon their own people during the Cold War.
1) Zinc Cadmium Sulphide Dispersal
Between 1953 and 1964 around 4600 kilos of zinc cadmium sulphide was dispersed from ships, trucks and airplanes. Scientists knew the chemical concoction had a ‘largely unknown toxic potential’, yet still conducted the experiment around Salisbury in Wiltshire, Cardington in Bedfordshire and Norwich in Norfolk. It was also dispersed across areas of the North Sea and English Channel, where the extent of its effects are entirely unknown. Today, we understand zinc cadmium sulphide to be carcinogenic.
Photo Credit: Ronoldson Slim
2) Bacillus Globigii Dispersal in London’s Subway System
To find out whether the long distance traversal of aerosols through London’s tube system was done through the ventilation system or on board the trains, scientists released the bacteria Bacillus Globigii into the subway system. While some scientists are documented as having reservations about the experiment, it is unknown whether or not any adequate, if any, testing was done on the effects of the bacteria before its release. Today, we know it causes food poisoning, eye infections, and septicaemia.
Photo Credit: Ernest Sealing
3) Black Death Released Off Scottish Coast
Live plague bacteria were released just a few miles from the Isle of Lewis, an island that several thousand people called home. The experiment was thought to be safe as the prevailing wind should have blown the bacteria out to sea, however if the wind were to change direction thousands of innocent lives would have been at risk. It is well documented that at least one fishing vessel travelled through the plague cloud. We need not expand upon the effects of the plague.
Photo Credit: Michael B. Watkins
4) Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis Experiment in The Bahamas
The case of the fishing vessel becoming an unwilling participant in a plague field test meant that future chemical and biological tests were conducted further afield, where scientists knew of areas ‘without restrictions’. British overseas territories (AKA colonies or occupied lands), like the Bahamas, were the new playground. Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis was released near an uninhabited island in the Bahamas by scientists, despite the fact it can cause high fever, long term fatigue, headaches and occasionally death if it were to reach populated shores.
Photo Credit: Caycee Cook
5) Experimental Nerve Gas Dispersal in Nigeria
In Obanaghoro, located in the South of British-occupied Nigeria, scientists spent over a year dispersing experimental nerve agents. The tropical environment was key to what the scientists were trying to test in relation to these particular agents. Again, the extent to which this nerve gas affected local populations and even employed locals, working as a part of the project, is entirely unknown. Sarin is known to have been tested here, which causes loss of bodily function and usually death, while those who survive are likely to suffer brain damage and psychiatric disorders.
Photo Credit: Wikicommons
Conclusion
Ulf Schmidt, Professor of Modern History at the University of Kent who carried out the research exposing all of these cases, said: ‘the government records I’ve been looking at are conspicuously silent on all this’. He went on to say that ‘officials had clearly good reasons as to why the kind of experiments undertaken in Nigeria were strictly prohibited on the British mainland’.
Schmidt’s work has also found that 30,000 secret chemical warfare experiments were carried out between 1945-1989 on more than 14,000 ‘volunteer’ British soldiers. He believes that most of the soldiers were never given enough information to give informed consent. All of these findings and more can be found in the professor’s new book, Secret Science.
Do you believe similar, deadly experiments are still going today?
Follow Stuart J. Hooper here: http://twitter.com/StuartJHooper
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How the British Government subjected thousands of people to chemical and biological warfare trials during Cold War
During the Cold War, the British Government used the general public as unwitting biological and chemical warfare guinea pigs on a much greater scale than previously thought, according to new historical research.
In more than 750 secret operations, hundreds of thousands of ordinary Britons were subjected to ‘mock’ biological and chemical warfare attacks launched from aircraft, ships and road vehicles.
Up until now historians had thought that such operations had been much less extensive. The new research, carried out by Ulf Schmidt, Professor of Modern History at the University of Kent, has revealed that British military aircraft dropped thousands of kilos of a chemical of ‘largely unknown toxic potential’ on British civilian populations in and around Salisbury in Wiltshire, Cardington in Bedfordshire and Norwich in Norfolk.
Psychologists colluded with CIA to keep ethics code in line with post 9/11 torture needs – damning report
RT | July 11, 2015
The US’s leading professional psychologists’ organization helped justify CIA and Pentagon torture programs, a new 542-page report shows. The psychologists involved later profited from torture-related contracts.
The report, concluded this month, examined the involvement of the American Psychological Association (APA) in the validation of the so-called program of enhanced interrogation, under which terror suspects were subjected to torture at CIA black cites and at the Pentagon’s Guantanamo Bay prison facility.
The document prepared by a former assistant US attorney, David Hoffman, says some of the APA’s senior figures, including its ethics director, pushed to keep the association’s ethics code in line with DoD’s interrogation policies. Other prominent external psychologists took actions that aided the CIA’s torture practices, defending it from growing dissent among its own psychologists.
“The evidence supports the conclusion that APA officials colluded with DoD officials to, at the least, adopt and maintain APA ethics policies that were not more restrictive than the guidelines that key DOD officials wanted,” the report published on Friday by the New York Times said. “APA chose its ethics policy based on its goals of helping DoD, managing its PR, and maximizing the growth of the profession.”
The Hoffman report focuses on the APA’s close ties with the Pentagon and can be viewed as complimentary to last December’s Senate report that exposed the brutality of post 9/11 CIA tactics towards terror detainees, the NYT said. It also gives additional details about how the intelligence agency adopted the enhanced interrogation program and solicited outside advice to stem concerns among its own medical professionals.
The report also describes several instances in which senior figures involved in the program moved into the private sector to get lucrative contracts from the CIA and the Pentagon. For instance, Joseph Matarazzo, a former president of the psychological association and a member of the CIA advisory committee, was asked by Mr Kirk Hubbard (CIA psychologist who was chairman of the agency advisory committee), to provide an opinion about whether sleep deprivation constituted torture. The conclusion was that it did not.
Later, Matarazzo became a partner in Mitchell Jessen and Associates, a contracting company created by James Mitchel and Bruce Jessen to consult with the CIA on their interrogation program. They were instructors for the Air Force’s SERE (survival, evasion, rescue and escape) program, in which US troops are subjected to simulated torture to prepare them for possible capture. They adapted the program’s techniques for use against terror detainees, the report said.
After the Hoffman report was made public, the American Psychological Association issued an apology.
“The actions, policies and lack of independence from government influence described in the Hoffman report represented a failure to live up to our core values,” Nadine Kaslow, a former president of the organization, said in a statement. “We profoundly regret and apologize for the behavior and the consequences that ensued.”
One of the more immediate consequences of the report was the resignation of the APA’s ethics chief, Stephen Behnke, according to the Guardian. The psychologists coordinated the group’s public policy statements on interrogations with a top military psychologist, the report said. He later received a Pentagon contract for training interrogators, without notifying the American Psychological Association’s board.
Kaslow told the newspaper that Behnke’s last day at the APA was July 8, after the association received Hoffman’s report, and that further resignations were likely to follow.
A similarly damning report on the APA’s involvement in US government torture programs was published in April.
Judge orders US government to prepare Guantánamo force-feeding tapes for public release
Reprieve | July 10, 2015
A federal judge today ordered the Obama Administration to prepare secret videotapes of a Guantanamo detainee’s treatment for release to the public.
In a ruling this afternoon in Washington DC, Judge Gladys Kessler ordered the US Government to complete all national security-related redactions to the first eight tapes – which show Abu Wa’el Dhiab being forcibly removed from his cell and tube-fed — by August 31, and to complete other key redactions by September 30.
The tapes were first filed to court as classified evidence in a legal challenge to prison conditions at Guantanamo Bay, Dhiab v Obama. 16 press organizations, including Associated Press, the Washington Post and the New York Times, intervened seeking the videos’ release to the public on First Amendment grounds. Judge Kessler ordered them to be released; the Obama Administration then appealed in what Judge Kessler called “as frivolous an appeal as I’ve seen.’
Reprieve attorney for Abu Wa-el Dhiab Cori Crider said:
“This is a great win for the US press, and for the First Amendment. The Obama Administration has been kicking and screaming to avoid processing even one minute of this footage, and never wanted to have to give a specific reason for keeping it secret. That is because the real reason for trying to hide Mr Dhiab’s face is that what he suffered is a scandal and an embarrassment to the Administration that allowed it.
“The Government has been rightly chided by the judge and now will be made to give real reasons for every frame of this footage that they want to keep hidden from the public.
“Images of a suffering detainee are matters of public importance and should no more be suppressed than those of Abu Ghraib, Eric Garner or Rodney King. An Administration truly committed to transparency would release the tapes forthwith.
“That’s why the US press is intervening in this case, and the courts are standing firm to preserve our right to see what is being done in our name.”
Cancer cases double at Gaza’s Shifa Oncology Department since 2010
Dr. Rami Mokdad
By Dr. Rami Mokdad | ISM | July 10, 2015
Gaza, Occupied Palestine – At Shifa Oncology Department we treat 150 patients everyday, and we are in total 3 doctors, 5 nurses and have just 15 beds. Obviously that’s not enough.
In the last 10 years the number of patients with cancer in the Gaza Strip has grown a lot. Especially in young people and children, before most of the cases affected old people, but since the Zionist aggressions against Gaza started it became normal to receive children and young people with cancer.
The three kinds of cancer that have grown more in those years are thyroid cancer, leukaemia and multiple myeloma cancer.
For example, in 2005 we had less than 50 cases of thyroid cancer, in 2014 we had 300 cases. Actually, each month we are receiving between 70 and 100 new cases of cancer patients. In this oncology department, the most important in the Gaza Strip, we treated around 2,800 patients in 2010. In 2013 the number grew to 5,000 and last year, 2014, we treated around 6,000 patients. And I’m afraid these numbers will continue to grow even more. In 10 years we’ll have a huge crisis in Gaza, as the risk factors are getting worse; the use of war weapons by Israel in highly populated areas, the consumptions of polluted water, the use of polluted land for growing food, etc.
Another special case we find in Gaza is the nasopharyngeal cancer, especially in children. Those cases come from areas where the people had primary contact with the Zionist bombs, especially with white phosphorous, but also in cases where their home was bombed.
Due to the blockade we find a lot of difficulties for making the diagnosis and treating those patients. For example in Gaza we don’t have either radiotherapy or molecular therapy, and we find a lot of obstacles to sending the patients to the West Bank to receive the appropriate treatment. We also don’t have PET scan, isotope scan or laboratory markers. We also suffer from an important shortage of chemotherapy supplies and other drugs, we could say that we work with 40% of the supplies we really need. As even when we receive some of these drugs, we don’t receive them continuously, so we never know if the next week we’ll be able to provide the needed treatment to the patients.
The Palestinian Authority is responsible for this shortage of drugs, as they don’t send the supplies intended for Gaza due to its will to punish Hamas.
This attitude from the Ramallah based government, along with the blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt that doesn’t allow the patients to leave the Strip in order to receive the treatment outside, and in the case of Egypt, that also doesn’t allow the entrance of medical supplies and drugs through Rafah Border; are responsible of our inability to properly treat the cancer patients from Gaza.
Unfortunately, due to the lack of resources of the local government we don’t have any serious studies addressing the cancer issue. And we don’t know why any of all the International Agencies or NGOs are [not] studying that.
NYPD officers slammed autistic teen’s head against concrete – lawsuit
RT | July 10, 2015
A 17-year-old autistic boy was thrown onto the sidewalk by New York City police officers, punched in the face, arrested, hauled to the precinct for questioning and released without charges, according to a lawsuit.
Troy Canales was standing in front of his Bronx home on the night of November 12, 2014, when two officers drove up in a police car demanding to know what he was doing, according to the Manhattan federal court lawsuit.
The lawsuit claims the officers clearly had no training in how to deal with people with special needs when they began questioning Canales, who is able to talk but has a hard time making eye contact with strangers.
“[Canales] was extremely scared, but told the officers that he was just ‘chilling’ and was not doing anything,” the suit stated.
“[The officers] each grabbed the plaintiff’s arms and forcefully threw him down on the sidewalk, smashing his head against the concrete. [The officers] kneed plaintiff in the back and punched him in the face as he screamed to his family for help.”
Canales’ mother and brother came out of the house and saw him cuffed on the ground. They told the police he was autistic but the cops ignored them and took the teenager to the precinct, said the complaint.
Canales was held for an hour until his mother, Alyson Valentine, spoke to the commanding officer, who apologized and said, ‘things like this happen” before releasing the teen.
Police officers had no explanation for the assault or the arrest except to say that one officer “feared for his life” when he spoke to Canales on the sidewalk, according to the lawsuit.
In the wake of the beating, Valentine said her son became reclusive and it took professional therapy to help him go out of the house again.
“Every other house on the block, there’s a child with disability,” Valentine told DNAinfo. “A lot of them don’t come outside that much. If you’re policing the neighborhood, you should know the people.”
A lawyer for Troy Canales, now 18, said the NYPD violated the teen’s civil rights during the November 2014 incident. The federal lawsuit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, and better training for police officers to deal with people with special needs.
A New York City Law Department spokesman said the suit is under review, reported the New York Post.
Israeli Official Orders Barring of “Palestine 1948” TV
IMEMC & Agencies | July 10, 2015
Israeli Police spokeswomen Luba Samri said, Thursday, that Israeli Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan has signed an official order shutting down “Palestine 1948 TV,” and barring all of its activities in the country.
Erdan said “Israel will not allow anybody to harm its sovereignty, or to grant the Palestinian Authority any foothold in the country.”
He alleged that the TV station never obtained any proper authorization to operate in Israel, and said “Palestine 1948″ began broadcasting, a month ago, from Nazareth. The order is valid for six months.
Head of the Palestine Public Broadcasting Corporation, Minister Riyad al-Hasan, said the TV is broadcasting from the West Bank city of Ramallah, and that Israel has no authority, or right, to shut it down.”
Al-Hasan told the WAFA News Agency that the Israeli threats also targeted production companies and media outlets that have business or cooperation with the TV station.
Arab Member of Knesset of the Joint Arab List, Basel Ghattas, issued a press release denouncing Erdan’s decision, and considered it as a “desperate Israeli move to control Arab media outlets.”
“This is a dangerous, uncivil, decision based on stupidity; it is an attempt to control and dominate media outlets,” he added, “While Israel claims democracy, and while media and technology continue to advance, Israel still tries to silence us.”
Related, June 18, 2015: Netanyahu Orders New Palestinian TV Shut, P.A Plans to Appeal Decision
Hillary Clinton: Use Congress and Corporations to End Boycott Israel Movement
By Naji Dahi – ANTIMEDIA – July 9, 2015
According to a letter from Hillary Clinton to pro-Israel donor, Haim Saban, she wants to be the top pro-Israel candidate in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. More specifically, Clinton pledges her opposition to the BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) movement. According to McClatchy,
“I know you agree that we need to make countering BDS a priority… we can work together…to reverse this trend with information and advocacy, and fight back against further attempts to isolate and delegitimize Israel… from Congress and state legislatures to boardrooms and classrooms, we need to engage all people of good faith, regardless of their political persuasion or their views on policy specifics, in explaining why the BDS campaign is counterproductive to the pursuit of peace and harmful to Israelis and Palestinians alike.”
It is no secret that Hillary Clinton is the Wall Street-sponsored candidate in the Democratic primary race. Data from Open Secrets for the 1999-2016 election cycles shows that three of her top five contributors were Wall Street firms (Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and J.P. Morgan Chase). It seems that Clinton now wants to become the undisputed pro-Israel candidate, as well.
In the United States presidential elections, all major party candidates are obliged to show their loyalty to the state of Israel. In return, wealthy pro-Israel donors fill their election campaign coffers with much needed cash. In 2008, for example, the top three candidates in both parties (Obama, Clinton, McCain) were also the top three recipients of donations from pro-Israel groups and individuals. In 2012, history repeated itself with Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, the top two recipients of campaign cash from pro-Israel individuals and groups. While it is too early to tell, it is highly likely that the top two candidates from the two major parties will also be the top two recipients of pro-Israel campaign contributions.
Haim Saban, a billionaire who made his fortune in the entertainment industry, is a long time Democrat and ally of Hillary Clinton. He will likely promote pro-Israel, anti-BDS discourse in the Democratic Party. Sheldon Adelson, also a billionaire, is a long-time Republican whose job is to enforce pro-Israel, anti-BDS discourse in the Republican Party. According to The Times of Israel,
“Adelson said his prime focus… was to reverse the inroads being made by what he called ‘the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) and company… the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic organizations [that] are making a lot of headway on the campuses in the United States.’ He said he would encourage Jewish groups to work to have boycott decisions taken by student campus groups reversed… Saban made clear that he intended to fight back against any business groups inclining to boycott Israel, and create a climate in which they were deterred from doing so.”
The success of the BDS movement is becoming an issue for Israel—so much so, that Saban and Adelson held a secret summit in Las Vegas last month to address the matter. The two billionaires invited 50 pro-Israel groups and pledged to fund their efforts to fight BDS on American college campuses with the hope of branding the movement anti-Semitic. According to Haaretz,
”…of millions of dollars were raised to combat campus campaigns to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel — or BDS, as the movement is known… both [Adelson and Saban] stressed their view that BDS — a form of nonviolent protest promoted by a diverse array of groups opposed to Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians — as simply a form of anti-Semitism.”
With Hillary Clinton officially on board and the two billionaires raising $20 million for the anti-BDS cause, American college campuses will be interesting centers of debate this fall.
Ukraine unrecognized republics demand international tribunal on Kiev actions
RT | July 8, 2015
The heads of the Ukrainian unrecognized Donetsk and Lugansk republics have asked the United Nations Security Council to establish an international tribunal to investigate and prosecute those responsible for waging civil war in eastern Ukraine.
“Donetsk People’s Republic [DNR] and Lugansk [LNR] People’s Republic are addressing the UN Security Council with a plea to establish an international tribunal for legal prosecution of those responsible for violation of the International Humanitarian Law and crimes against humanity in Ukraine,” the DNR head, Aleksandr Zakharchenko, and LNR head Igor Plotnitsky said at a joint press conference.
Those found responsible should be brought to trial, they stressed.
The heads of the unrecognized republics are calling for the leaders of Russia, the US, China, Great Britain and France to consider this proposal at the next UNSC session.
“Expecting your soonest reply to the proposal,” Plotnitsky said.
Aleksandr Zakharchenko said Kiev’s operation in Donbass is “a direct violation of the Geneva convention.”
The military operation in eastern Ukraine began in spring last year after residents in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions refused to recognize the coup-imposed government in Kiev.
On February 12, in Minsk, peace negotiations between the two sides resulted in a second ceasefire agreement. The first was signed in summer 2014 and was violated practically immediately. The current ceasefire is also being violated on a frequent basis. Shelling in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics happens every other day, with both sides pointing the finger at each other.
Aleksandr Zakharchenko said the prosecutors’ offices of both republics have collected copious evidence of war crimes committed by Kiev troops.
“There is a considerable volume of evidence of the Ukrainian National Guards’ involvement in torture and killing of civilians. Dozens of mass graves have been found on territory that was occupied by Ukrainian troops,” Zakharchenko said.
The DNR and LNR also have evidence of Ukrainian troops using weapons prohibited by the international arms conventions, including cluster and phosphorous bombs.
Since the beginning of 2015 an estimated 1,212 civilians, including 25 children, have died in shelling incidents.
New Online Terrorism Reporting Bill Will Harm Minorities, Chill Speech
By Gabe Rottman | ACLU | July 7, 2015
If there’s one thing the First Amendment stands for, it’s that vigorous debate about the issues of the day—even, and perhaps especially, uncomfortable debate about things like racism or terrorism—should be free from government interference. Tragically, that principle has been betrayed repeatedly over the past decade and a half, as law enforcement agencies continue to single out individuals for scrutiny based on speech or association protected by the First Amendment.
And, if the Senate intelligence committee gets its way, we’ll be chalking one more betrayal up on that blackboard. Last week, the press reported that the committee had secretly inserted a provision in a spending bill that would require social media companies to report posts about “any terrorist activity” to the government.
The bill is hopelessly vague on what that means. That’s because it goes far beyond a reporting requirement for wrongful conduct—terrorist activity—and will invariably result in the reporting of speech about terrorism—including by activists and other peaceful people with forceful opinions.
In practice, were this to become law, websites will likely do a couple of things.
First, they will over-correct and start taking down content wholesale. They will monitor posts for keywords like ISIS or “don’t tread on me” (a libertarian slogan that some identify with white supremacist and anti-government ideology) and pull them. That will chill an enormous amount of online debate over sensitive and important topics like the propriety of the Confederate flag memorial in South Carolina.
This is not a theoretical concern. There are numerous cases of large internet content companies taking down uncomfortable—but perfectly legal—speech because of government pressure (far less than the mandatory reporting requirement in this bill). For example, Apple voluntarily blocked applications that permitted users to identify the sites of overseas U.S. drone strikes. Say what you will about the legality, ethics, or wisdom of overseas drone strikes themselves (and we’ve had a lot to say), the free flow of information about drone strikes—such as their locations—is essential to feed vigorous and unfettered debate about this critical issue. One can just imagine what would disappear from the online debate in the face of a must-report law.
Second, and perhaps worse, companies—faced with the proposal’s utter lack of guidance on what the law requires them to report—will apply it inconsistently. Our nation’s history and its recent post-9/11 practices tell us that sensitive issues of particular interest to vulnerable minorities—religious, racial, ethnic, social, political, etc.—will receive more scrutiny, and therefore more censorship.
Consider, for instance, online discussion about the spate of police shootings of unarmed African-American men, and claims by many in law enforcement that the growth of a protest movement against police violence is feeding violence against the police. There have been several indications that the FBI is quite literally treating activists in the #blacklivesmatter initiative as suspected terrorists. Undoubtedly, some social media platforms are going to follow that lead, report that content to the FBI, and thus perpetuate the targeting of minority groups for law enforcement scrutiny based on First Amendment activity.
Free speech means ensuring the public square—which is increasingly migrating online—is open to viewpoints and arguments that we disagree with or find objectionable. Oftentimes, the hurly burly of public debate includes opinions that may make us squirm, but that nevertheless have an important place in a country that values truth above comfort in the marketplace of ideas. We have a right to discuss any issue, even sensitive ones, without fear that our internet provider, social media platform or telephone company is monitoring and reporting what we say. This bill language would lead to the improper monitoring and suppression of constitutionally protected speech.
Israeli Minister to Decide on Deportation of Palestinian MPs
Ma’an – July 7, 2015
The Israeli Minister of the Interior was given 30 days by the Supreme Court on Monday to reach a final decision on the possible deportation from East Jerusalem of three Palestinian lawmakers and a former Palestinian Authority Jerusalem affairs minister.
Monday’s hearing was a follow-up to a previous hearing in the same court on May 5, 2015 that discussed the possibility of revoking the Jerusalem residency rights of officials Muhammad Abu Teir, Ahmad Attun, Muhammad Tutah and Khalid Abu Arafeh.
While Abu Arefeh formerly served as the PA’s minister of Jerusalem affairs, the other three are members of Palestine’s parliament, the Palestinian Legislative Council.
All four live in occupied East Jerusalem.
The Israeli Ministry of the Interior has been threatening to deport the lawmakers and former minister since Hamas won Palestinian legislative elections in 2006.
The pretext for the ruling is disloyalty to the Israeli state, the lawmakers said last year.
The four were initially detained along with other lawmakers and, after their release, Israeli police seized their identity documents.
The permanent residency status of 107 Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem was revoked in 2014, adding to the 14,309 revoked by Israel since 1967.
Gaza war anniversary: ‘Aggressive’ UK police arrest 8 at Israeli arms factory protest
RT | July 6, 2015
Staffordshire Police have been accused of making a “heavy-handed” intervention during a protest outside an Israeli arms factory organized to mark the anniversary of last year’s Gaza conflict.
At least eight people were arrested Monday during the demonstration outside a factory in Shenstone, which is owned by a subsidiary of Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems.
An activist with London Palestine Action, speaking in personal capacity, told RT that the demonstration was meant to be a “fun, creative” experience, but was met with “aggressive [and] forceful police tactics.”
Campaigners estimate 200 people attended the protest near Birmingham, which was the site of a similar blockade in August 2014.
The protest was timed to mark the one-year anniversary of start of the Gaza conflict. Activists held a memorial service for the 2,200-plus Palestinian victims, 490 of whom were children.
Protests were also held in Tamworth and Broadstairs in the UK, and Melbourne in Australia.
Shenstone protesters targeted the UAV Engines factory where engines for Hermes, one of Israel’s primary armed drones, are manufactured.
Drones owned by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) may have been used in attacks that resulted in civilian deaths and violated international law, according to reports by Human Rights Watch and The Guardian.
A variety of campaign groups including War on Want, Campaign Against the Arms Trade and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign united under the umbrella movement “Block the Factory” to organize the day of action.
Protesters posted videos on Twitter indicating a heavy police presence. At one point, a police officer is seen dragging a man holding a megaphone out of a crowd and arresting him.
Speaking to RT, activist Alex Levan, 31, said organizers had intended the protest to be peaceful.
“There were lots of police from early on,” he said. “They were very rough, they manhandled protestors, [and] they were very heavy-handed.”
“The idea was to reclaim the space around the factory and to turn it into a real festival environment, a creative activist environment with workshops, with a family space, with arts and crafts.”
“But the police were heavy-handed, they’ve made at least 10 arrests, but there will probably be more. These were completely unprovoked arrests, these were peaceful protests,” he added.
“But we did spend the majority of the day, from the early hours of the morning, blocking the factory.”
The protest succeeded in halting factory production for the day.
Activists called on the British government “to initiate an immediate two-way arms embargo – to stop arming Israel and to stop buying weapons from Israel.”
The Hermes, which is partly produced in the UK, carries two Spike-MR (medium range) missiles, which are produced by Israeli firm Rafael Advanced Defense Systems.
It can stay airborne for up to 24 hours at altitudes of up to 18,000 feet (5,486 meters) and is equipped with optical, infrared and laser sensors that enable it to identify and track targets.
Human Rights Watch claim to have found evidence Spike missiles were used against two Red Cross ambulances during Israel’s conflict in Lebanon in 2006.
Six medical workers and three patients were injured in the attack. The Geneva Convention forbids armed forces from targeting medical staff or hospitals.
Staffordshire Police Chief Inspector Steve Smith said: “At Tamworth this morning, a number of individuals climbed onto the roof of a factory building as part of a protest. All seven voluntarily came off the roof. Police officers then directed them to leave the area under public order legislation. No arrests were made.
“At Shenstone, a number of protesters locked themselves to fencing and others blocked the road. A civil injunction is in place around this location so police have the power to arrest anyone breaching this injunction.
“So far eight people, seven men and one woman, have been arrested on suspicion of breaching a high court injunction.”
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The silver that medicine dropped — four thousand years of clinical use, four decades to erase.
Colloidal Silver — First Edition, 2026, Paperback
Lies are Unbekoming | October 16, 2026
Silver was medicine. Not alternative medicine. Not folk medicine. Medicine. In surgery. In obstetrics. In the burn ward. In water treatment. In the household medicine chest. Every physician before 1938 knew this.
By the 1870s, silver nitrate was standard in surgical wound care across the leading hospitals of Britain, Germany, and the United States. Colloidal silver preparations — Collargol, Argyrol, Protargol — entered European and American practice through the 1890s and early 1900s and became standard antiseptics in military field medicine. By the time Fleming grew his first penicillin mould in 1928, silver was the first-line antimicrobial of the Western pharmacopoeia. The Lancet and the British Medical Journal carried the clinical reports in volume. The practice ran continuously through the Victorian era, the Edwardian era, the First World War, the interwar period. By 1980, almost all of it was gone.
What has not been treated at book length, until now, is how a four-thousand-year clinical record disappeared from mainstream medicine within four decades of the Flexner Report — and what the honest account of silver looks like once that record is reassembled.
Colloidal Silver reconstructs the pre-1938 record from The Lancet, the British Medical Journal, and the primary literature of the era; recovers Robert Becker’s bioelectric framework from the regeneration research the pharmaceutical model buried; and places silver inside a practical terrain-paradigm guide to its current place — in water, on the body, inside the body, and in the chronic conditions where antibiotics have failed. … continue
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- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
