UK MPs call for internet ban on ‘anti-Semitism’
BBC | February 9, 2015
Social media users who spread racial hatred should be banned from sites such as Twitter and Facebook, MPs say.
The All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into anti-Semitism wants prosecutors to examine whether prevention orders like those used to restrict sex offenders’ internet access could be used.
The cross-party group also highlighted the use of anti-Semitic terms online.
Last week, a Community Security Trust report said UK anti-Semitic incidents more than doubled to 1,168 in 2014. […]
The report said: “There is an allowance in the law for banning or blocking individuals from certain aspects of internet communication in relation to sexual offences.
“Informal feedback we have received from policy experts indicates that this is a potential area of exploration for prosecutors in relation to hate crime.
“If it can be proven in a detailed way that someone has made a considered and determined view to exploit various online networks to harm and perpetrate hate crimes against others then the accepted principles, rules and restrictions that are relevant to sex offences must surely apply.”
The report also said there was an “unacceptable rise in anti-Semitic incidents” in July and August last year.
It added: “It is for non-Jews to speak out and lead the fight against anti-Semitism with strong action.”
It also called for:
- A government fund to be set up to cover the costs of security at synagogues
- Fresh research on identifying and explaining anti-Semitic language
- Guidance for teachers on how to handle the Middle East conflict in the classroom
All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into anti-Semitism
By Ruth Tenne | Palestine Chronicle | April 17, 2007
A recent article in The Jewish Chronicle (29 March 2007) reports that “concern over increasing Anti-Semitism in Britain is reflected in the government’s broad acceptance of the grim conclusions of last year’s Parliamentary inquiry into hatred directed at the Jewish community”. It goes on to say that “In a 20-page command paper that will be presented to Parliament, ministers have backed action on the majority of the inquiry’s recommendations and expressed understanding of communal anxieties” […]
Unfortunately, The All Party Inquiry into anti-Semitism and the Government’s follow-up recommendations fail to recognize that a multi-racial and multi-faith society ought to have a coordinated and consistent policy whereby no ethnic or, religious, group, should be considered in isolation from other such groups. Thus, an inquiry into anti-Semitism which singles out one particular religion may constitute an unwelcome precedent that may lead to undesirable, if not harmful, effects. Moreover, the follow-up report takes a dangerous step by stating that rhetoric about Israel and Zionism, “from the far right to the far left and Islamic extremists alike, employs anti-Semitic motifs that are consistent with ancient forms of hatred towards Jews”
This seems to suggest that peace organizations and activists who criticize Israel may be under the danger of being subjected to a witch hunt reminiscent of McCarthyism and the un-American activities campaign of the 50s. A similar danger equally applies to universities where the report points out that anti-Semitic activities are “all the more regrettable for occurring in places where [Jewish students] should be free to study unhindered by prejudice and harassment”.
The above statement is clearly inflammatory and opens the way to accusations and counter- accusations against any political and social activity on the campus which is deemed to be undesirable by Jewish students or the Union of Jewish Students. This may also legitimize the imposition of pressure on academic lecturers who seem to criticize Israel’s policies. Such an example could be seen by the recent pronouncements of the UJS and the Jewish Board of Deputies against the appointment of the reputable Israeli historian -Ilan Pappe – to the Chair of the History Department at Exeter University. The Chief Executive of the Board has recently told TotalyJewish.com that “after taking full advantage of all the freedoms accorded to him in Israel, a country he has so shamelessly attacked, Pappe has decided to set up shop here. …. the uncomfortable fact is that in the lecture theatres and seminar rooms at Exeter, many impressionable young minds will be exposed to his partial and biased views.”
Similar, though more harsh and dangerous, precedents take place in USA where academics who express critical views of Israel’s policies are hounded and, on occasion, lose their posts due to unacceptable pressure from the Jewish lobby there. The vile campaign and attempts by the pro-Israeli lobby to prevent the granting of tenure to Professor Norman Finkelstein – who is a staunch critic of Israel’s constant violation of human rights – is a case in point.
Sadly, various forms of harassment by Israel’s apologists are quite wide-spread in Britain. In the course of my work with peace organisations in Britain I encountered, along with my colleagues, the phenomenon of “reverse anti-Semitism”- namely, being claimed to be anti-Semite by Jewish groups and individuals who could not tolerate the fact that a Jew, or an Israeli like myself, is prepared to criticize Israel’s policies and its treatment of the Palestinians. […]
If the Government chooses to ignore the political and social marginalization of the Muslim community, and to regard the views of Israel’s critics as being an implicit form of anti-Semitism, it may face the danger of engendering a perilous and inexcusable rift in Britain’s pluralist society. Such a policy may stand in a stark contrast to the Government’s declared efforts of “wining the hearts and minds” of disaffected communities and their members. – Full article
Bahraini exiles test Britain’s policy on statelessness
By Alastair Sloan | MEMO | February 9, 2015
The Al-Khalifa monarchy in Bahrain recently stripped over 70 exiled activists of their citizenship, eight of whom live in Britain. In 2012, they did something similar, stripping 31 human rights and pro-democracy activists of Bahraini citizenship, 11 of them living in the UK. These new exiles are testing Britain’s policy on statelessness.
Bahrain’s move is particularly ironic because much of its state security apparatus is made up of mercenary enforcers and interrogators from Pakistan, Yemen, Syria and Jordan. All have been given Bahraini citizenship, housing and salaries by the regime in return for their role in the torture, humiliation and shooting of peaceful pro-democracy protesters.
The Al-Khalifas use citizenship as a weapon. It is offered to those who take part in callous oppression, but removed from citizens who call for democracy.
This latest move was choreographed carefully to coincide with the confiscation of passports from preachers and fighters associated with ISIS. Thus the authorities have conflated the two movements in a clumsy smear.
The British charity Asylum Aid has been conducting wide-ranging research into the negative impacts of statelessness, interviewing stateless persons in Britain who have been destitute for months. They have been detained by the UK immigration authorities despite evidence that they have no prospect of returning to their home country, or that they have been separated for years from their families overseas. Some have been forced to sleep on the streets. Many have seen their accommodation and support cancelled repeatedly and then reinstated. In the absence of a dedicated and accessible procedure to identify people who are stateless, they have been left in a legal limbo for years.
In a rare moment of progressive policy making, Britain has taken steps recently to address the problem of statelessness. Across the European Union, approximately 600,000 quasi-citizens are estimated to be stateless. The UK is so far the only EU member to implement substantive measures to assimilate stateless refugees, implementing a specialised asylum procedure from April 2013. Thousands of refugees are currently applying through the official mechanism, with immigration officials deciding each case carefully; it is not a straightforward process.
The British authorities must act to treat the Bahraini exiles stripped of their citizenship on the same basis as other refugees. However, as the repression in Bahrain grows worse, it is becoming increasingly clear that the British government is sticking to its commitment to support the Al-Khalifa regime. As I have reported previously elsewhere, Britain has been accused of harassing, rather than helping, such exiles, often in collusion with the Bahraini government.
In January, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond praised improvements in Bahrain’s human rights record, shortly before the Gulf state jailed its most prominent human rights activist, Nabeel Rajab, for six months. His “crime” was to send an “insulting tweet”. He is currently on bail pending an appeal scheduled for later this week. In July 2014, the Guardian revealed that Hammond had sat next to the Earl of Clanwilliam, a lobbyist for the Bahraini government, at a fundraising dinner for the Conservative Party.
The parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee also lamented the government’s decision not to “bite the bullet” – its own words – by designating Bahrain as a human rights “country of concern” for 2014. “We see little or no evidence that Bahrain has made enough progress in implementing political reform and safeguarding human rights,” the committee judged. Civil society organisations described the British government’s reluctance as a whitewash.
The FCO response was short, disdainful and factually inaccurate. “On the human rights front Bahrain is by no means perfect,” it insisted, “but it is a country that is making progress and its leadership has shown a willingness to engage with the human rights challenges that it faces.”
Research by Bahrain Watch, an NGO which has been tracking progress on the Al-Khalifa government’s alleged reforms, shows that if British officials believe Bahrain to be “making progress”, they are wilfully and obstinately ignorant.
Of the 25 recommendations made to improve human rights in Bahrain after the 2011 uprising, 11 have been violated openly, six have seen no action at all, five have had no details about their progress released by the government, and three have been implemented “partially”. Not a single reform is judged to have been implemented in full.
The leader of the main opposition Al-Wefaq Party, Ali Salman, was arrested recently on what are claimed to be trumped-up charges. He was also slapped with a travel ban just as he was about to embark on “a major European tour, meeting officials, think tanks, civil society leaders, academics and media professionals.”
Despite this, Britain announced recently a significant expansion to its military assets in Manama harbour, with plans for a full-scale naval base. The Royal Navy has deployed small minesweepers out of Bahrain for some years, but when larger vessels visit the port the crews sleep on board; there are limited facilities for such ships. With a naval base, British warships will be able to deploy regularly from Bahrain. The expansion of the base will resume a long term British military presence in the area and mark the end of a 40-year Middle East policy by the government. Controversially, the Bahrain government will foot the bill for building the Royal Navy facilities, effectively buying Britain’s silence over its ongoing human rights abuses.
Britain has a patchy record on human rights, but addressing statelessness has been a more positive example of what can be done. In applying this new policy rigorously and fairly, they must include Bahraini exiles, as they would any other refugee.
‘Patriotic’ Folly
By Brandon Martinez | Non-Aligned Media | February 6, 2015
Capitalizing on the recent Charlie Hebdo killings in France, many European nationalists have been exploiting the tragedy to bolster sentiment towards their cause.
While the cause of European nationalists is as legitimate as any other nationalist cause, and their misgivings about mass immigration merits reflection, the way in which many of them have gone about promoting their agenda by taking advantage of what appears to be a ‘let it happen’ if not a full blown false flag provocation in Paris last month warrants criticism.
Marine Le Pen, the incumbent leader of France’s ‘National Front’ political party, seized the opportunity to rally the French public behind her anti-Muslim platform. In the wake of the Paris shootings, Le Pen offered the militant language of neoconservatism in a New York Times column, stressing that France is being besieged by “Islamic fundamentalists” who need to be dealt with. Le Pen, like many rightist political leaders in Europe, has in recent years sought to ingratiate herself with the Jewish-Zionist community, hoping to curry favor with the power brokers of that persuasion who can help her into power.
What often goes unsaid in the rhetoric of European nationalists is the fundamental backwardness and duplicity of Western foreign policy. Like its counterparts in Britain and America, France has meted out plenty of violence upon other countries without just cause, but then cries foul when the chickens come home to roost. Canadian journalist Eric Margolis observed that France presently has troops conducting military operations in about a dozen countries, many of which have Muslim majorities, namely “Mali, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, East Africa, Abu Dhabi, Iraq, Afghanistan (from where French troops have been withdrawing, as well as covert operations in Syria, Lebanon and Somalia.” Not to mention France’s leading role in the 2011 war against Libya and its unreserved support of the terrorist state of Israel.
Violence is for the most part counter-productive and shouldn’t be the first option of those seeking retribution for mistreatment, but it can still be said that if France wants to continue to pursue imperial escapades throughout the Muslim world, then it should not be surprised when some of that violence reaches their shores as well. As the mathematician Isaac Newton discovered, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Why shouldn’t that principle apply to the West’s foreign policy?
Anti-Muslim British ‘patriots’ constantly invoke the 2013 murder of Lee Rigby, a British soldier, by two disgruntled British Muslim men in London. “Look how violent Muslims are,” lowbrow English Defence League (EDL) and British National Party (BNP) activists shout in the streets. While the slaying of Rigby was certainly heinous and deplorable, it was predictable blowback for London’s lunatic neoconservative foreign policy. One of Rigby’s killers, Michael Adebolajo, made it clear that he acted in revenge for what he sees as anti-Muslim aggression on the part of the British government, most notably the invasion of both Iraq and Afghanistan alongside the Americans. Rigby’s attackers did not go after civilians, but rather targeted a soldier who represents the British military which has greatly contributed to the deaths of several million Muslims in the Middle East since 2001. Religious fanaticism was a negligible factor in the Rigby killing, but if the sub-par intellects of the EDL and BNP are to be believed religious ideology and a desire to enforce ‘Sharia Law’ in Britain was the sole motivation.
Ditto with Charlie Hebdo and other alleged acts of ‘Muslim’ violence in the West. Even if we were to accept the questionable ‘official stories’ of these events, instead of addressing the underlying causes of Muslim discontent, plastic ‘patriots’ promulgate the neocon folly of ‘they hate us for our freedoms and way of life,’ a rancid myth which doesn’t compute considering the flagrant lack of freedom in much of the West where there are surveillance cameras and cops on every street corner as well as laws on the books that relegate certain political and historical opinions outside the parameters of ‘acceptable’ discourse.
For many unsophisticated ‘patriots’ in Britain, France, America and elsewhere, state-sponsored acts of violence by ‘their side’ is defensible, even admirable, whereas violence in the opposite direction that pales in comparison to the former, and which is often committed in reprisal for perceived wrongs, is contemptible.
They can’t have it both ways.
Copyright 2015 Brandon Martinez
The Great Israeli Theft of Iraqi Jewish Heritage
Extreme right-wing Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman (C) holding the Torah stolen from Iraq on January 22, 2015
By Alaa al-Lami | Al-Akhbar | February 3, 2015
Recently, Israel stole one of the symbols of Iraqi Jewish heritage, a rare ancient copy of the Torah. The incident went smoothly and quietly, with blatant collusion between Israel, the United States, the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq, and the Jordanian authorities, amid suspicious silence from the Iraqi federal authorities and the Iraqi cultural scene, save for a few objections.
The Torah manuscript in question, known as the Iraqi Old Testament Scroll, was written using concentrated pomegranate juice on deer-skin parchments. The manuscript was seized by US forces, among other Iraqi antiquities, which survived the systematic destruction by the illegal Anglo-American invasion and occupation.At the time, it was said that many Iraqi archaeological treasures and large amounts of documents from the Iraqi state’s secret archives were transferred to Israel, ostensibly for restoration and preservation. In truth, however, this was the deliberate looting of Iraqi heritage.
At a ceremony held at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Israeli authorities publicly displayed that major Iraqi artifact, thus admitting that they had pirated part of Iraq’s heritage. The Israeli Foreign Minister explicitly admitted that the manuscript had been obtained from Kurdistan via Baghdad and Amman, and that it is now being used in daily prayer in the Foreign Ministry synagogue.
According to The Times of Israel, “After it was repaired and prepared for ritual use by a Jerusalem-based scribe, the scroll was placed in a case from Aleppo, Syria and brought over to the ministry.” Avigdor Lieberman, the extremist foreign minister of Israel, did not let the occasion go without repeating old Zionist cliches, saying that “the scroll’s journey from Kurdistan to Baghdad to Amman to Jerusalem was reminiscent of the destiny of the Jewish nation.”
Some like Iraqi writer Akil al-Azraki, one of the rare voices who commented on the affair, believe that the Israeli announcement exposed the lies of the Iraqi government. The Iraqi government had claimed the manuscript was sent along with other Iraqi artifacts to the United States for restoration.
Azraqi, citing information revealed by The Times of Israel, said, “The claim about the Torah scroll having been sent to the United States for restoration is a lie. The scroll was revealed not to have travelled to the United States, but to the Israeli embassy in Amman from that time until 2011. After the attack by Egyptian protesters on the Israeli embassy in Cairo, the manuscript was sent to Israel.”
After the Israelis celebrated their successful piracy, official Iraqi authorities were oddly silent. There was no immediate response to the reports, even in the Iraqi media and cultural scene, save for a few voices.
Recall here that the Minister of Tourism and Antiquities in Iraq Adel Shershab had said on January 19, 2015, “The Jewish archive should have been returned to Iraq since 2005, after it was removed on the grounds of restoring it,” stressing that this was part of Iraqi heritage and that his government would continue efforts to retrieve it.
However, the minister did not say anything in response to the Israeli theft. In turn, the Iraqi Ministry of Culture fell completely silent following the incident, although it had announced on May 13, 2010, that an agreement was conducted between Iraq and the United States, whereby the Iraqi Jewish archive and millions of documents that the US army removed from Baghdad following the US-led invasion in 2003 would be returned to Iraq. These include the archive of the dissolved Baath Party and many Iraqi historical artifacts.
A few days after the report on the Israeli theft, the media published remarks by a member of the Culture Committee in the Iraqi parliament calling on the Iraqi Foreign Ministry to issue a complaint to Washington over the matter.
The news agency that first published the remarks, which is owned by Fakhri Karim, a businessman and senior adviser to former Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, tried to promote another account of what happened.
The news agency said the way the manuscript reached Israel was a “mystery,” describing what happened as “the loss of parts of the manuscript,” even though the Israeli foreign ministry had said in its ceremony that the scroll had come from Baghdad via Kurdistan, Jordan, and then Tel Aviv. Fakhri Karim, however, is known for his pro-Israel attitudes. Karim visited the headquarters of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC in Washington, as reported by renowned Iraqi poet Saadi Youssef, in a story Al-Akhbar reported in August 2013 (in Arabic).
On the day Al-Mada reported the story, one of its most famous staff writers, Sarmad al-Tai, wrote a strongly-worded criticism of those who protested the theft of the Iraqi Torah scroll, accusing them of folly. He suggested that the Jews who were expelled by the Iraqis from their country in various ways had only retrieved their Torah.
Tai’s article is often quoted by the Israeli media, though some Iraqi Jews who live in Israel and beyond dispute such analysis. Refer, for example, to what Sasson Somekh wrote in his books, and novels by Jewish Iraqi writer Samir Naqqash, who wrote all his novels in Arabic and refused to write anything in Hebrew, considering himself an Iraqi until the last day of his cruel life in Israel. The article received strong responses, though they were few in number, on social media.
The article’s absurd and sinister logic is meant to exonerate the occupation and its allies in the Iraqi federal government, the KRG, and Israel, for the crime of stealing important Iraqi artifacts, produced in Iraq hundreds of years before the creation of the Zionist entity.
Extrapolated further, the same skewed skewed logic can be used to justify an artificial entity, built on injustice, aggression, and warmongering, which has killed, maimed, and displaced people by the millions amid global silence.
The official Iraqi position was not stated publicly until days after the incident. The Iraqi minister of tourism released a statement calling on Washington to return the manuscript to Iraq, and said what happened was unlawful confiscation of a part of Iraqi heritage.
However, the minister repeated previous claims purporting the manuscript had been in Washington. These claims were invalidated by remarks made by Israeli Labor MP Mordechai Ben-Porat, who has Iraqi Jewish ancestry. Ben-Porat said that it was Iraqi government officials who gifted Israel a number of precious historical manuscripts.
Ben-Porat’s account cannot be completely dismissed. It is indeed possible that insiders colluded with this theft and piracy. Recall that Lieberman said that the manuscript was moved from Baghdad to Kurdistan, Jordan, then Tel Aviv.
The theft of Iraqi antiquities is not unprecedented. Many Western powers, led by France, Britain, Germany, and the United States, have its looted artifacts in the last century and before.
Dr Mahmoud al-Saied al-Doghim, Research Associate, Centre of Islamic Studies at the University of London, wrote a paper titled, “One Hundred and Ten Years of US Theft of Iraqi Heritage.” The paper says that entire wings of the Louvre Museum, the Berlin Museum, and the British Museum would have to close down entirely, if they returned all the artifacts stolen from Iraq (and elsewhere).
Doghim estimates the number of stolen artifacts at more than one million. A single US university, the University of Pennsylvania, as he wrote, “Acquired more than 50,000 palettes and other artifacts shedding light on the history of Mesopotamia, and discrediting many of the biblical claims promoted by the Zionists.”
The American occupation forces hit the mother-lode following the invasion of 2003. The US forces seized a large part of the contents of Iraq’s 33 museums.
In effect, the astounding rich history of Iraq and its wealth of ancient historical artifacts is not the subject of dispute. However, it might be very surprising when one examines the numbers.
According to a statement made in March 2003 by former head of Iraqi antiquities Jaber Khalil Ibrahim, archaeologists believe that there are 500,000 archaeological sites in Iraq that remain undiscovered and unstudied, along with ten thousand registered and discovered sites. The sites include at least 25,000 highly important ones.
Only 15 percent of the sites in Iraq have been excavated, most of them located between the Euphrates and the Tigris. This area is considered the cradle of humanity, and from six thousand years ago, it was home to civilizations like the Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians, Babylonians, all the way to the Abbasids.
The US occupation of Iraq was a disaster for the country’s material heritage.
Charges against Israeli war crimes protesters dropped
MEMO | February 2, 2015
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has dropped charges against nine activists who occupied the roof of an Elbit Systems factory in Staffordshire during Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip last year.
The collapse of the case came as the defence company “refused to hand over evidence about its exports of weaponry to Israel.”
The protesters from London Palestine Action had been facing charges of aggravated trespass after shutting down UAV Engines Ltd. (UEL), an Elbit subsidiary, for two days 5-6 August 2014.
But charges were dropped by the CPS “just hours before a deadline expired to provide the defendants with details of arms export licences granted to UEL to send its hi-tech engines to Israel for use in the Hermes 450 – a drone widely deployed by the Israeli military.”
According to a report in The Independent, two witnesses from the company declared that they were “no longer prepared to give evidence, and that documentation – understood to be the arms export data – would not be forthcoming.”
A statement from London Palestine Action accused the UK government and Elbit Systems of “running scared from a court case that would have put their collusion with Israeli war crimes on trial.”
The statement added: “The activists pleaded not guilty to charges of ‘preventing lawful activity’ on the basis that the operations at the Staffordshire factory were aiding and abetting war crimes and therefore illegal.”
Lawyers for the defendants say it appears the case collapsed either because the prosecution had been told either that Elbit Systems were unwilling to testify in court about their activities or because the UK government was unwilling to comply with the court’s order to disclose information it holds about licenses for arms exports to Israel, or both.
When Climate Heretics Speak. . .
By Steven Hayward | PowerLine | January 25, 2015
. . . They usually mop the floor with the climatistas. That’s one reason why the climate campaign has resorted to rank conformism and outright bullying.
Matt Ridley offered his observations about the state of things in an article in the London Times a few days ago entitled “My Life as A Climate Lukewarmer.”
I am a climate lukewarmer. That means I think recent global warming is real, mostly man-made and will continue but I no longer think it is likely to be dangerous and I think its slow and erratic progress so far is what we should expect in the future. That last year was the warmest yet, in some data sets, but only by a smidgen more than 2005, is precisely in line with such lukewarm thinking.
This view annoys some sceptics who think all climate change is natural or imaginary, but it is even more infuriating to most publicly funded scientists and politicians, who insist climate change is a big risk. My middle-of-the-road position is considered not just wrong, but disgraceful, shameful, verging on scandalous. I am subjected to torrents of online abuse for holding it, very little of it from sceptics.
I was even kept off the shortlist for a part-time, unpaid public-sector appointment in a field unrelated to climate because of having this view, or so the headhunter thought. In the climate debate, paying obeisance to climate scaremongering is about as mandatory for a public appointment, or public funding, as being a Protestant was in 18th-century England.
Kind friends send me news almost weekly of whole blog posts devoted to nothing but analysing my intellectual and personal inadequacies, always in relation to my views on climate. Writing about climate change is a small part of my life but, to judge by some of the stuff that gets written about me, writing about me is a large part of the life of some of the more obsessive climate commentators. It’s all a bit strange.
There’s more; definitely worth reading the whole thing. … continue
Israeli False Flags and the Attack on Rev. Stephen Sizer
By Brandon Martinez | Non-Aligned Media | January 31, 2015
The counterfeit hoopla surrounding the Charlie Hebdo ‘free speech’ saga was further undermined this week when a prominent British vicar posted an article on Facebook linking Israel to the 9/11 attacks, for which he is now ‘under investigation.’
Stephen Sizer, a well-known reverend of Christ Church, Virginia Water, posted the Wikispooks article “9/11: Israel Did It” on Facebook and subsequently asked, “Is this [research] anti-Semitic?”
“It raises so many questions,” he added.
Sizer eventually removed the post under mounting pressure from his Diocese and Britain’s Jewish lobby, but affirmed his right to freedom of speech and inquiry.
“It is essential the public become convinced of what happened before and after 9/11,” Sizer told Jewish News Online. “Inevitably the truth will upset many people if it is shown by further investigation that the official explanations are shown to be deficient.” Suppressing discussion of Israel’s role in 9/11 will only “fuel suspicion,” the outspoken preacher stressed.
Sizer is barking up the right tree, hence the frenzied reaction from Zionists and those under their sway.
Mainstream outlets such as the BBC, The Telegraph, The Daily Mirror as well as a number of overt Zionist sources piled on the principled man of god by running identical smear stories about this manufactured ‘scandal.’ The articles in question emphasize that Sizer is ‘being investigated’ for the posting, as if it is a crime to promote an article that calls attention to Israeli false flag terrorism. The hit-pieces also prominently quote a spokesman from the Board of Deputies of British Jews, a thuggish Zionist hate-gang who have attacked Sizer as an ‘anti-Semite’ on numerous occasions. But none of the articles or the Israeli fifth columnists they champion addresses the evidence of Israel’s involvement in the 9/11 attacks.
Israel’s fingerprints do indeed appear to be all over the events of 9/11. And judging by the Zionist state’s past behaviour, it should not come as a surprise to learn that 9/11 was in some way organized by Israel’s secret agencies who have on plenty of previous occasions executed false flag attacks aimed at framing their Arab/Muslim adversaries, thereby inducing adverse reactions towards their foes from the West.
A History of Deception
At the time, Israel’s founding fathers were some of the most brutal terrorists around. Two former Israeli prime ministers, Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin, were leaders of Jewish terrorist militias which waged a merciless insurgency against the indigenous Arabs of Palestine as well as the British colonial administrators of the land in the 1940s. Benjamin Netanyahu’s father, Benzion Netanyahu, was the personal secretary for Vladimir Jabotinsky, the brains behind the bellicose ‘Revisionist’ fold within the Zionist movement which formulated the ideological framework of the Zionist militant groups who eventually besieged Palestine, destroying more than 500 Arab villages and driving out a minimum of 750,000 Palestinians in a matter of two years, from 1946 to 1948.
In 1946, two years before Israel became a state, Irgun assailants carried out an attack on the King David Hotel which housed Britain’s administrative headquarters in the Mandate of Palestine. Jewish militants under the direction of Begin disguised themselves as Arabs and planted a number of bombs hidden in milk crates in the hotel’s basement, then detonated them causing a huge explosion which leveled a good chunk of the building. Ninety-one people were killed in the blast, including dozens of British personnel. “I’m glad to have been a terrorist for liberation,” said one Jewish Irgunist in a BBC documentary about the bombing. “We didn’t mind being called terrorists then,” another former Irgun militant confessed.
A competing Zionist terrorist faction, the Stern Gang (also known as Lehi), assassinated British soldiers as well as multiple foreign diplomats and mediators such as Sweden’s Count Folke Bernadotte. That group, originally headed by the Jewish supremacist Avraham Stern, even proposed a military alliance with Nazi Germany in 1941, viewing Britain as a greater roadblock to a Jewish ethno-state in Palestine than Hitler’s regime which was quite happy to expedite the re-settlement of Germany’s Jews to the Middle East.
Fast-forward to 1954 – Israel again initiates a false flag conspiracy in the region, this time in Egypt. A terrorist cell of Zionist mercenaries was discovered in Cairo and Alexandria after they tried and failed to detonate incendiary devices in British and American installations. The Israeli operatives were discovered after one of the conspirators prematurely discharged an incendiary device in his pocket, leading to his arrest and the capture of the whole cabal. The Israeli terrorists later confessed to Egyptian authorities that the provocation was planned, organized and directed by Tel Aviv. The operation was intended to stymie a burgeoning British-American-Egyptian rapport and derail ongoing negotiations between Egypt and Britain which would have seen the British relinquish control of the Suez Canal, much to Israel’s displeasure. It was later dubbed the “Lavon Affair.”
Analyst Richard H. Curtiss, writing in a 1992 article for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, observed that Israel had in the works an identical subterfuge against Jordan the same year, wherein Israeli intelligence “conceived a plan to attack British personnel seconded to King Hussein’s government in Jordan.” “The purpose,” Curtiss explained, “was to sour relations between Britain and Jordan [as well as turn] both Jordan and Britain [against] Egypt, which would be blamed for such attacks.” Curtiss cited a 1979 book, The Untold History of Israel, by Israeli journalists Jacques Derogy and Hesi Carmel which related the story.
The Lavon Affair was not the first, nor would it be the last Israeli covert operation aimed at framing Arabs for terrorism against the West. In 1967, during the Six Day War between Israel and several Arab states, the Israeli military attacked an American surveillance ship, the USS Liberty, in international waters. Israeli warplanes and torpedo boats besieged the vessel for hours, even shooting holes in the large American flag billowing in the wind. Having scoped out the ship hours beforehand, the Israelis were well aware it was American. As a result of Israel’s heinous attack, more than 200 American sailors were dead or wounded. The motive of the blitz was to sink the Liberty, thereby preventing it from relaying messages back to Washington which could have scuttled Israeli plans to seize land from Egypt and Syria during the six-day conflict. If the ship had been successfully destroyed, Israel would have most likely attributed the attack to its Arab foes. The Israelis later captured the Sinai and Golan Heights from Egypt and Syria respectively. Unfortunately for the Israelis, the Liberty did not sink and survivors revealed Israel’s hand behind the attack.
In his books By Way of Deception and The Other Side of Deception former Mossad katsa Victor Ostrovsky revealed a litany of Israeli covert operations. One clear example of Israeli chicanery that Ostrovsky exposed was a 1986 plot codenamed ‘Operation Trojan’ which saw Mossad agents plant a transponder device on Libyan soil that relayed false coded messages making it look like the Libyan government was coordinating terrorists from their embassies worldwide to attack American targets. Simultaneously a bomb explosion rocked a Berlin nightclub frequented by US military personnel, killing two US servicemen. The Mossad deception successfully coerced a hoodwinked US President Ronald Reagan into launching air strikes on Libya, who cited the fake ‘terrorist’ transmissions emanating from a Mossad device as proof of Libyan culpability in the nightclub attack.
The Israelis are also implicated in the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. An investigative report on the World Socialist Web Site entitled “Questions mount in Kenya, Tanzania bombings” detailed US/Israeli foreknowledge of the attacks. The article, authored by Martin McLaughlin, cites reports from ABC News and Haaretz which affirmed that Israeli intelligence elements caused US officials to ignore warnings of an imminent attack against the embassies. US intelligence officials looked to their Israeli colleagues to diagnose the reliability of various warnings of looming danger, but the Israelis insisted they weren’t serious, resulting in no precautions being taken to defend against an assault.
“Four months worth of tips and alert signals that the Nairobi embassy was facing a potential disastrous explosives attack were sent to Washington,” wrote Warren Hough in a report for the American newspaper The Spotlight. “But nothing was done to protect this poorly shielded facility because, on the standard operating procedure inaugurated in the Reagan era, the FBI had to turn to the Israelis for a definite evaluation of these early warnings.”
“Ignore them, it’s just another false alarm,” Mossad told their counterparts in the CIA. The imprudent Israeli advice, Hough explained in the aforesaid article, “was the key factor in persuading the U.S. to let its guard down, resulting in the loss of life of at least 250 victims including 11 Americans.”
Israel didn’t seem to believe its own counsel. According to researcher Ralph Schoenman, the first soldiers at the scene of the crime in Kenya and Tanzania “were special units of the Israeli armed forces and high level agents of the Mossad” who quickly “took control” of the bombed out sites.
Israel’s penchant for coercing America to let its guard down indicates a more sinister fraud at work, beyond an equally damning ‘let it happen’ scenario.
September 11: Israel’s ‘Hanukkah Miracle’ & the Neocons’ ‘New Pearl Harbour’
Exploiting and outright manipulating fissures between the West and the Arab/Muslim world has been a key component of Israeli strategy from the outset. And it is this artificial divide, fostered by years of Zionist subterfuges and political scheming, that lies at the core of the agenda of those truly responsible for the 9/11 attacks, the primordial affair which kick started the bogus ‘war on terror’ and endless American war-making in the Middle East.
In a September 2001 interview with the Pakistani newspaper Ummat, Osama bin Laden denied responsibility for the attacks, articulating that the real architects of 9/11 are “persons who want to make the present century as a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity so that their own civilization, nation, country, or ideology could survive.” The “civilization, nation, country, or ideology” bin Laden spoke of that prospered the most from 9/11 is undoubtedly Zionism as an ideology and Israel as a country. Israel’s pugnacious leaders made that fact abundantly clear in cavalier public statements made shortly after the disaster.
The 9/11 attacks were “good for Israel” and had the effect of “[shifting] American public opinion in our favour,” announced a jubilant Benjamin Netanyahu on two separate occasions following the attacks, as quoted in Haaretz and other Israeli papers. According to Israeli journalist Aluf Benn, Ariel Sharon and his top military-intelligence advisors had proclaimed 9/11 a ‘Hanukkah miracle’ of good fortune for Israel, “coming just as Israel was under increasing international pressure because of the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians.” The assault on the Twin Towers “placed Israel firmly on the right side of the strategic map with the U.S., and put the Arab world at a disadvantage,” Benn wrote in Haaretz. “That’s the impression left by the speeches given by Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy and National Security Council chairman Maj. Gen. Uzi Dayan, at this week’s Herzliya conference on national security.”
“Since September 11, our leaders have been euphoric,” the former Israeli intelligence chief Ami Ayalon told France’s Le Monde newspaper. “With no more international pressures on Israel, they [the Israeli leadership] think, the way is open.” Ehuk Sprinzak, a founding Dean at Israel’s Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, reiterated the expressions of relief and delight amongst the Zionist leadership, telling the Israeli press that 9/11 was the “most important public relations act ever committed in our favour.” On the day of 9/11, Zionist commentator and Stratfor director George Friedman expressed the view that “[t]he big winner today, intended or not, is the state of Israel” because the attacks will foster a closer alliance between the US and Israel as well as lead America into “a massive covert and overt war against” the Muslim world. Even Israel’s former Mossad chief, Efraim Halevy, told a Canadian journalist that “one of the immediate results of 9/11 was clearly a very severe backlash of international approbation of Islam in general” and that Israel “obviously benefitted” from America’s response to the atrocity.
Years before 9/11, Zionists and neocons formed a number of think tanks to promote their militarist agenda in the Middle East. The most prominent one was called Project for the New American Century (PNAC), and was headed by William Kristol and Robert Kagan, two of Israel’s staunchest supporters in the US. In a September 2000 report entitled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” the neocons pontificated about the need for a “New Pearl Harbour” to actualize their war plans against Middle Eastern regimes, particularly that of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Four years earlier, in 1996, several prominent American neocons, notably Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser, authored a strategy paper for an Israeli think tank called the ‘Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000.’ In their paper titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” the cadre of pro-Israel evangelists essentially called for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, which was an “important Israeli strategic objective” from their perspective. The Clean Break authors stipulated that ousting Hussein was needed in order to ultimately weaken Syria, and they further expressed a desire to do away with the Iranian regime, Israel’s foremost military rival in the region.
In April 2002, PNAC neocons sought to capitalize on the 9/11 attacks to expedite their agenda of Iraq’s destruction, calling on President Bush in a written plea to “support Israel” in its “war on terrorism” by accelerating “plans for removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.” Israeli citizens Perle, Feith and Wurmser effectively put their wet dreams of war into practice by entering senior policy-making positions in the US administration of George W. Bush, leading the drive for the war in Iraq alongside the Israeli fifth columnist Paul Wolfowitz who in turn was a high ranking Pentagon official under Bush. Researchers fingered Feith’s ‘Office of Special Plans’ in the Pentagon as the fountainhead of disinformation and propaganda about Iraq’s non-existent “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” a devious ploy also promoted in Neocon-Zionist literature throughout the 1990s.
And who devised the ‘war on terror’? Despite popular belief among leftists, that ominous philosophy’s birthplace was not in the dysfunctional brain of George W. Bush. Rather, it first emerged at the Jonathan Institute’s ‘Conference on International Terrorism’ held in 1979 in Jerusalem. That group was spearheaded by Israeli politicians of the Likudnik persuasion, principally Benjamin Netanyahu, who endeavored to export their propagandistic memes about ‘terrorism’ to the West, hoping Western governments would do Israel’s bidding in the region. The foundry of lies and untruths sponsored by Netanyahu and his neocon minions in Washington was ultimately calculated to delegitimize Arab/Muslim resistance to Israeli imperial expansion and aggression, hence the widespread dissemination via Zionist-owned media venues of the erroneous contention that ‘Islamic terrorism’ is a unique threat facing the West. In actual fact, the biggest perpetrators and patrons of terrorist violence in the world are the Zionists, the Americans and their allies.
Unsolved Mysteries and Unanswered Questions
Writing in his informative essay “The War on Iraq: Conceived in Israel,” Dr. Stephen Sniegoski asserts “the ‘war on terrorism’ was never intended to be a war to apprehend and punish the perpetrators of the September 11 atrocities. September 11 simply provided a pretext for government leaders to implement long-term policy plans.” Indeed, the ‘war on terror’ amounted to nothing less than a ‘war of terror’ against Israel’s opponents in the Middle East, with 9/11 serving as a very conveniently timed casus belli.
And what of Israel’s Mossad, that “ruthless and cunning” agency of terror that “has the capability to target US forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act,” according to a group of US Army analysts? As the Army School of Advanced Military Studies acknowledged in the aforesaid study, Israel’s proclivity for ruthlessness and deception leads many to believe that 9/11 was yet another ‘false flag’ contrivance of the master manipulators in Tel Aviv.
What really happened on that fateful day?
There are many lingering questions about Israel’s role in the attacks. An oft-cited proof of Israeli involvement is the ‘five dancing Israelis’ incident, wherein a group of five individuals, later identified by ABC News, the Jewish Forward and FBI insiders as Mossad agents, were seen by witnesses video-taping the disaster from a New Jersey rooftop, and subsequently cheering, laughing and shouting with “joy and mockery” as 3000 innocents were suffocating in the burning Twin Towers.
The suspicious crew of Israelis were arrested on that day by the NYPD, and later questioned by the FBI about possible foreknowledge of the attacks. Considering they had shown up (with a video camera) in a very convenient spot at a very opportune time of the day, just as everything went down, and outwardly expressed signs of elation rather than fear and horror, it beggars belief to suggest they didn’t know exactly when, where and how the assaults on the Twin Towers would come to pass. In fact, FBI reports partially declassified in 2005 revealed that one of the arrested Israelis named Omer Marmari told authorities that he and his compatriots were acting in a celebratory manner because the attacks would help make the world “understand” Israel’s predicament vis-à-vis the Palestinians. “We’re Israelis. We’re not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are the problem,” Israeli Sivan Kurzburg told the NYPD upon his arrest. While in custody, another of the five Israelis named Oded Ellner remarked: “the United States will [now] take steps to stop terrorism in the world.” How did any of them know for sure who did 9/11 before any investigation had been conducted or how the US’s response to the attacks would benefit their country? Did they not only know when and where the attacks would occur, but also who would be blamed for it and the consequent direction of US foreign policy? That’s way more information than a group of self-professed ‘furniture movers’ should be privy to. The five Israeli suspects were eventually deported back to Israel without charge. In an article about the incident, journalist Christopher Ketcham quoted an anonymous CIA insider close to the investigation into the five Israelis who said “the decision to close down the investigation into the Israelis came from the White House” and that “[i]t was immediately assumed at CIA headquarters that this basically was going to be a cover-up so that the Israelis would not be implicated in any way in 9/11.”
And what of those 200 Israelis that Fox News reported had been arrested shortly before and after 9/11, some of whom claimed to be ‘art students’ but were in actuality Mossad spies with expertise in eavesdropping and explosives? What of the mysterious ‘truck bomb’ or ‘explosive laden van’ which was reported to have been ‘packed with explosives’ as it approached the George Washington Bridge? Why were the identities of the apprehended suspects never revealed to the public? Was it because they were Israelis and not Arabs? Is it just a coincidence that the Mossad passed along a very vague and dubious ‘warning’ to the CIA a few months before the attacks, suggesting that 200 ‘Arab terrorists’ were present on American soil and were planning a ‘major operation’? And is it not amazingly conspicuous that the Mossad linked this ‘imminent attack’ of which they had no specific information to “Osama bin Laden and Iraq,” as the UK’s Telegraph reported?
What about the ‘mural van’ that police stopped between 6th and 7th on King Street near the World Trade Center on 9/11? Surely a van with a painting depicting a plane crashing into the Twin Towers that was rented to ‘ethnic Middle Easterners’ according to a Norman Y. Mineta International Institute for Surface Transportation Policy Studies (MTI) report is worthy of scrutiny. If the ‘ethnic Middle Easterners’ behind such an obvious display of foreknowledge were Arabs or Muslims, surely the Zionist-influenced mass media would have reported it, and surely the Zionist-influenced US government would have included it in official reports. But nary a mention of the incident can be found in media or government reports concerning the attacks.
How do we explain the mysterious acquisition of the entire World Trade Center complex by shady New York businessman Larry Silverstein six weeks before the attacks? The Jewish real estate magnate who weirdly “felt a compelling urge” to own the worthless, asbestos-laden Twin Towers happens to be a rabid Zionist with innumerable connections to Zionist lobbies, most notably the Israeli Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS) under whose auspices the Zionist neocons produced the “Clean Break” regime change manifesto. On top of that, Silverstein was a ‘personal friend’ of Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon, and had weekly conference calls with Netanyahu. Moreover, ‘Lucky Larry’ skipped out on a routine business meeting at the top of the North Tower (the first one hit) on 9/11, claiming a ‘miraculous’ intercession by his wife who insisted he attend a ‘doctor’s appointment’ instead. Silverstein’s business partner on the murky WTC deal, Frank Lowy, is likewise an ardent Zionist Jew who fought in Israel’s ‘war of ethnic cleansing’ and chairs multiple pro-Israel think tanks in Israel itself as well as in Australia where he acts as Tel Aviv’s pro-bono ambassador.
And what of the lack of any credible evidence tying Arabs or Muslims to the attacks? What about the ‘indestructible passport’ of alleged hijacker Satam al-Suqami which miraculously escaped the cabin of the exploded plane into the North Tower, falling hundreds of feet to the ground and emerging without so much as a blemish? Why even bring a passport on a domestic flight let alone a suicide mission? What of the plethora of other eyebrow-raising FBI ‘discoveries,’ such as the inexplicable Mohammed Atta luggage filled to the brim with incriminating ‘evidence’ including Atta’s ‘al-Qaeda plans,’ Arabic-language flight training devices/videos, a Koran, etc. It is the height of credulity to believe that this luggage, which a former FBI agent told Newsday amounted to the “Rosetta stone” of the investigation, conveniently did not get loaded onto the plane and fell right into the FBI’s lap. Does that not reek of a cheesy Hollywood stage-play for the gullible public’s consumption?
What about the markedly un-Islamic theatrics of the ‘19 martyrs for Allah’ who were witnessed cavorting with strippers, taking drugs and binge drinking in bars and clubs throughout Florida and Las Vegas months before the attacks? Why would dedicated ‘jihadists’ who we are told obsessively observed Islamic laws and edicts behave in this blasphemous way shortly before a ‘martyrdom operation’? Isn’t the obvious answer that these folks weren’t real Muslims and were just pretending to be in order to create a phony ‘evidence trail’ for an equally bogus ‘al-Qaeda plot’?
Has it ever been sufficiently explained why several of the named ‘9/11 hijackers’ turned up alive and well in the Middle East, protesting their innocence, as the BBC reported? Could the fact that their passports had been lost and/or stolen in the years preceding the attacks indicate a frame-up at work? Are the CIA and Mossad not experts at stealing identities of innocent people for use on covert ops? Doesn’t Mossad have a ‘special unit’ for crafting fake passports to be used on foreign missions?
Has there ever been a credible explanation as to why most of the ‘19 hijackers’ gained entry to America through a CIA ‘fast-tracking’ VISA program run out of a US consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, as J. Michael Springmann revealed?
Can we explain how America’s multi-billion dollar military, intelligence and defence apparatus, which consists of a dozen or so intelligence agencies and the most sophisticated defence and spy equipment and networks the world has ever seen, was astoundingly ‘asleep at the wheel’ and ‘unable to detect’ this plot and its rather clumsy progenitors? As the former Pakistani spy chief Hamid Gul mused with bewilderment, “a man living in a cave inside a mountain or a peasant’s hovel” was able to orchestrate 9/11 and thereby outfox the combined military might of America and its powerful allies? “I don’t believe it,” Gul retorted.
Has it ever been properly explained how shoddy pilots who never flew commercial aircraft in their lives were able to precision guide three planes into their targets without a hiccup? How could a plane enter the Pentagon’s highly-protected and watched airspace without fighter jets intercepting it? Is it not odd that whoever was at the controls of Flight 77, or whatever actually hit the Pentagon, decided to not dive into the roof of the building, which would have been a much safer and easier-to-hit target than the façade? Is it just a coincidence that the very side of the building which was hit had just been ‘recently renovated’ with blast-walls and other upgrades so that it could endure explosive impacts with minimal damage? Is it also mere happenstance that all of the Pentagon’s top brass including Donald Rumsfeld were on the opposite side of the building, safely out of harm’s way?
Can we explain how two giant skyscrapers can collapse to the ground at nearly free fall speed, hurling hundred-ton chunks of steel structure hundreds of feet horizontally, simply from the impact of planes and a few scattered fires? Has there ever been a sufficient explanation as to how gravity can pulverize into dust large portions of two 110-story buildings? How did WTC Building 7 – the 47-story high-rise that was not hit by a plane – collapse neatly and symmetrically like a controlled demolition into its own footprint at free fall speed? Does it not defy logic, common sense and even basic laws of physics that no explosives were involved in the gravity-defying collapses of these enormous structures?
These are merely a few of the hundreds of enduring questions that have haunted the US government and its apologists for years.
It is safe to say that satisfactory answers to these very valid and logical inquires will not be forthcoming. Truth cannot prevail so long as the Neocon-Zionist clique which usurped the Bush administration and instigated the calamitous ‘war of civilizations’ by way of monstrous lies and deceit is running the show in Washington and other epicenters of power that effectively dominate the world at the present time.
~
Brandon Martinez is an independent writer and journalist who has written extensively on Zionism, Israel-Palestine, American and Canadian foreign policy, war, terrorism and deception in media and politics. He is the co-founder of Non-Aligned Media (http://nonalignedmedia.com) and author of Hidden History and Grand Deceptions. Readers can contact him at martinezperspective[at]hotmail.com or visit his blog at http://martinezperspective.com.
Copyright 2015 Brandon Martinez
Fiji compensates victims of 1950s UK nuclear tests
RT | January 30, 2015
Fiji’s prime minister said his island nation would compensate soldiers exposed to radiation during British nuclear tests in the Pacific more than 56 years ago.
The British government has refused to pay any compensation, but Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama said Fiji could wait no longer.
“We are righting a wrong. We are closing an unfortunate chapter in our history,” Bainimarama said at a ceremony recognizing the suffering of the veterans.
“We are bringing justice to a brave and proud group of Fijians to whom a great injustice was done.
“Fiji is not prepared to wait for Britain to do the right thing. We owe it to these men to help them now, not wait for the British politicians and bureaucrats.”
Veterans and their families have campaigned for decades to get payouts for their health problems. More than 70 Fijians were stationed on Kiritimati, then known as Christmas Island, during the 1957 and 1958 nuclear tests during the Cold War.
As a result, they suffered serious health problems, including leukemia and other blood disorders, due to the radiation they were exposed to.
The 24 survivors who attended the ceremony each received Fiji$9,855 (£3,181) from a compensation pool of Fiji$2.95 million (£950,000).
“We were only told that we will go there to test some weapons, but when we got there we found out that we were brought there to be part of the British test of weapons of mass destruction,” survivor Naibuka Naicegulevu, 76, whose job was to clean and repair vehicles on the island, told AFP.
“My two sons, now in their early 30s, get sick suddenly and they can be ill for one week, sometimes more, this is all because of the radiation that we were exposed to,” he added.
Bainimarama said Fiji, which was a Crown colony until 1970, could no longer afford to wait for Britain to take the lead on compensation.
“The ranks of these survivors are rapidly thinning. Too many men – our fellow Fijians – have gone to their graves without justice. Those who remain deserve justice and Fiji as a nation is determined for them to finally get it,” he said.
Legacy of Endless Afghan War Includes Nation Plagued by Unexploded Bombs
By Jon Queally | Common Dreams | January 29, 2015
As seen in other abandoned battlefields in the anals of U.S. wars overseas, new reporting out of Afghanistan shows that among the other deadly legacies left behind by foreign troops are tens of thousands unexploded munitions dropped from the sky or left in the ground that will continue to kill and maim civilians long after the “official” fighting has stopped.
Reporting from the Afghan city of Khost, Guardian foreign correspondent Sune Engel Rasmussen reviewed data and spoke with members of the UN’s Mine Action Coordination Centre of Afghanistan (Macca) to learn that unexploded bombs and shells in Afghanistan “are killing and maiming people at a rate of more than one a day”—the vast majority of whom are children.
Citing MACCA statistics from 2014, Rasmussen reports “there were 369 casualties in the past year, including 89 deaths. The rate rose significantly in October and November when 93 people were injured, 84 of them children. Twenty died.”
Offering a tragic account of siblings from a single family, Rasmussen relays the story of 10-year-old Mohammad Yunus and his eight-year-old sister, Sahar Bibi. “The grenades that killed Mohammad and Sahar, as they were combing through dry branches to collect firewood for their family, should have detonated long before they were picked up. Instead, the shells exploded in the children’s hands and ripped through their bodies, killing them instantly. The blasts also injured their two brothers, aged five and 12.”
In a war that has spanned more than twelve years—with no end in sight—it is not surprising that the number of unexploded ordnances (UXOs) has risen to alarming rates, but as was true in the U.S. war in southeast Asia—where the nations of Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia continue to suffer the consequences of years of carpet bombing by the U.S. military—the problem will not go away just because the war is at some point declared over.
As the Guardian reports:
Though first steps have been taken to tackle [UXO], agencies complain the US-led forces are withholding information about where they may have dropped explosives.
“We ask for information about battlefields that may have UXO, but we have received coordinates for only 300 locations. It’s not enough,” said Mohammad Sediq Rashid, director of Macca.
Colonel Calvin Hudson, Nato’s Combined Joint Task Force chief engineer in Kabul, says Nato gives as much information to mine-clearing agencies as possible without compromising operational operational security – coordinates for areas where Afghan forces continue their operations are withheld.
Much of the fighting in Afghanistan has taken place in and around residential areas, increasing the risk of civilian casualties in the aftermath of the war. UK and US diplomats emphasise that international law does not give their countries a responsibility to clear battlefields. But that does not absolve Nato countries of their duty to clean up after themselves, said Rashid.
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From the Archives
MMR (Measles, Mumps and Rubella) – Vaccine Risk Statement
MMR Vaccine (Measles, Mumps, and Rubella) Is It Safer Than Measles, Mumps and Rubella?
Physicians for Informed Consent | December 2024
… It has not been proven that the MMR vaccine is safer than measles, mumps, and rubella. The vaccine package insert raises questions about safety testing for cancer, genetic mutations, and impaired fertility. Although VAERS tracks some adverse events, it is too inaccurate to measure against the risk of measles, mumps, and rubella. Clinical trials do not have the ability to detect less common adverse reactions, and epidemiological studies are limited by the effects of chance and possible confounders. Safety studies of the MMR vaccine are particularly lacking in statistical power. A review of more than 60 MMR vaccine studies conducted for the Cochrane Library states, “The design and reporting of safety outcomes in MMR vaccine studies, both pre- and post-marketing, are largely inadequate.”19 Because permanent sequelae (aftereffects) from measles, mumps, and rubella are so rare (especially in children with normal levels of vitamin A and infected after birth),6,15-17 the level of accuracy of the research studies available is insufficient to rule out the possibility that the MMR vaccine causes greater death or permanent disability than measles, mumps, and rubella. – Read full article
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