Mood: disgusted
The link below leads to an article in Italian, but the translation follows.
By such means the US 'took' Falluja.
White phosphorous used on civilian populace
ROME. In soldier slang they call it Willy Pete. The technical name is white
phosphorus. In theory its purpose is to illumine enemy positions in the dark. In practice, it was used as a chemical weapon in the rebel stronghold of Fallujah. And it was used not only against enemy combatants and guerrillas, but against innocent civilians. The Americans are responsible for a massacre using unconventional weapons, the identical charge for which Saddam Hussein stands accused. An investigation by RAI News 24, the all-news Italian satellite television channel, has pulled the veil from one of the most carefully concealed mysteries from the front in the entire US military campaign in Iraq.
A US veteran of the Iraq war told RAI New correspondent Sigfrido Ranucci this: I received the order use caution because we had used white phosphorus on Fallujah. In military slag it is called 'Willy Pete'. Phosphorus burns the human body on contact--it even melts it right down to the bone.
RAI News 24's investigative story, Fallujah, The Concealed Massacre, will be broadcast tomorrow on RAI-3 and will contain not only eye-witness accounts by US military personnel but those from Fallujah residents. A rain of fire descended on the city. People who were exposed to those multicolored substance began to burn. We found people with bizarre wounds-their bodies burned but their clothes intact, relates Mohamad Tareq al-Deraji, a biologist and Fallujah resident.
I gathered accounts of the use of phosphorus and napalm from a few Fallujah refugees whom I met before being kidnapped, says Manifesto reporter
Giuliana Sgrena, who was kidnapped in Fallujah last February, in a recorded interview. I wanted to get the story out, but my kidnappers would not permit it.
RAI News 24 will broadcast video and photographs taken in the Iraqi city during and after the November 2004 bombardment which prove that the US
military, contrary to statements in a December 9 communiqué from the US Department of State, did not use phosphorus to illuminate enemy positions
(which would have been legitimate) but instend dropped white phosphorus indiscriminately and in massive quantities on the city's neighborhoods.
In the investigative story, produced by Maurizio Torrealta, dramatic footage is shown revealing the effects of the bombardment on civilians,
women and children, some of whom were surprised in their sleep.
The investigation will also broadcast documentary proof of the use in Iraq of a new napalm formula called MK77. The use of the incendiary substance
on civilians is forbidden by a 1980 UN treaty. The use of chemical weapons is forbidden by a treaty which the US signed in 1997
Fallujah. La strage nascosta [Fallujah, The Concealed Massacre] will be shown on RAI News tomorrow November 8th at 07:35 (via HOT BIRDTM
statellite, Sky Channel 506 and RAI-3), and rebroadcast by HOT BIRDTM satellite and Sky Channel 506 at 17:00 [5 pm] and over the next two days
Just another link to prove that what was once an outrageous theory is proving to be fact. Physics professor Steven E Jones confirms the collapse of the WTC towers was more likely to have been caused by pre-positioned explosives. "Muslims are (probably) not to blame for bringing down the WTC towers after all" he writes.
See the article here:
Y. professor thinks bombs, not planes, toppled WTC
Also, read his findings in his paper here which includes photos and links to video footage.
Two items of interest which I read this week from the States and the UK:
"US to cut higher-education funding
The United States House of Representatives is scheduled to vote
tomorrow on a budget-reconciliation resolution that contains potentially
devastating cuts for higher-education programmes, according to higher education unions.
The Senate has already cut student-aid programs to provide for
hurricane relief efforts, but it is considering even deeper cuts to an already
inadequate student aid programme. The proposed Bill reduces student
loan programmes by $US14.5 billion to pay for deficit reduction, disaster
relief and tax cuts.
A background paper from the American Association of University
Professors says the Bill includes several concerning provisions, including more expensive student loans, intrusions on academic freedom and
institutional autonomy and fewer checks on fraud and abuse in the for-profit sector."
What greater way to ensure the masses are kept ignorant so that the truth of the motives of a corrupt government are kept hidden.
"UK universities fear research and lectures may be illegal
Academics and university librarians could fall foul of the UK
Government's new terror legislation unless they curb debate in tutorials and restrict the range of research materials available to students, vice-chancellors have warned. Universities UK (UUK) and the Association of University Teachers (AUT) said the day-to-day work of thousands of academic staff may be criminalised if the new laws, being debated in the Commons this week, are passed.
Professor Drummond Bone, UUK President, said that the Bill was drafted
in such a way that it might well get in the way of normal academic work.
"It might provoke the kind of suspicion and intolerance we are trying to
deal with," he said.
Vivienne Stern, Public Affairs adviser to UUK, said that the Bill is
unacceptably wide and will, in the view of UUK, expose academic staff
and librarians and, by virtue of that, the university management to the
risk of committing criminal offences during their standard work."
Pretty soon libraries will be forbidden to hold copies of 'controversial' books which reveal the true nature of what's really going on in the world.
The world is getting dangerous as apparently paranoid governments impose more restrictions, take away more freedoms, make life more difficult as they take on greater and greater powers. I don't see democracy at work here. It's all greed and power, ensuring that the masses are tightly controlled and unlikely to be able to topple the corrupt autocracies. We all have to protest such moves for our own safety and wellbeing. The threats to our daily lives are not coming from 'terrorists' but from our own supposedly democraticlly-elected governments.
That supposed role model of the democratic world, invading countries because they might have chemical weapons, is discovered to have dumped chemical weapons off the coast of several countries including New Zealand after WWII.
Chemical weapons dumped off NZ
US chemical weapons dumped off foreign shores
Countries include Italy, France, India, Australia, the Philippines, Japan, Denmark and Norway, New Zealand, China, Russia and unidentified Latin American countries. Australia alone has 60 million pounds of chemical weapons off the coast of Brisbane.
"The hazard of leaking shells likely will last for "another tens to hundreds of years..."." But of course, nothing can legally be done, because they're in international waters and occurred before the signing of the 1975 treaty prohibiting ocean dumping of chemical munitions. Morally, of course, the US government should clean it up. Ha. Morals is what the US government has always lacked.
I read with disgust that a former colonel in the Israeli 'Defence' Force (defence my ass) is in New Zealand to talk to NZ foreign affairs about NZ/Israeli relations (which are 'warming' up) as well as supposed Iranian terrorists.
Former Israel Intel Officer In NZ
It doesn't matter which government is in power - they pander to the allies of the US and Israel is a western democracy within the Middle East so have to be seen as the 'good' guys. Lerman's research into the Hizballah is naturally biased. This is just another attempt at the gradual demonising of Iran.
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On the same page at the above Scoop link I read of New Zealanders detained at Baxter, known for its infamous Red One compound apparently. This is interesting. It seems various NZers resident in Australia for some years are put in the detention centre only after they've applied for citizenship...
"at least two people have been unlawfully locked away for as long as seven years."
The article above includes the experiences of one NZer detained because of a suspended sentence in NZ over 10 years beforehand. He was kept in Red One - the maximum security compound.
"Suddenly you're ripped from your family and thrown into a prison facility. You don't get a trial. Rights of appeal are, effectively, withheld from you. You have less rights than a convicted criminal. You're cut off completely from the outside world. All of your possessions are taken away from including your small change. Every movement is monitored by closed circuit TV. You have no say in what you eat. Contact with anyone is limited apart from those employed by your captives. You can earn $56 a week cleaning and you have to support your family on the outside. You haven't actually committed any crime in Australia at any time, or anywhere else for over ten years. Any past conviction has been appropriately dealt with. Now understand, this is happening in Australia! "
His wife was also told not to have anything to do with him or her children would be taken away from her.
"Immigration apparently hadn't finished grinding. According to my partner, Australian welfare services contacted her and informed her, apparently on nothing more than the say-so of Immigration, that I was a 'high risk offender' and she should have no further contact with me. She was further advised that if she tried to ring me at Baxter or have any contact with me, her daughter would be removed from her care. "
To add insult to injury many people are being given a bill for the cost of incarceration.
Any favourable thoughts I had of Australia are being pretty quickly eroded, especially with the new 'anti-terrorist' laws rushed through by Howard.
of the US never fails to amuse me.
I just read this - Bush's strategy against 'the terrorists' (and the danger is in defining who terrorists are) - and laughed inwardly at this statement:
"United States will work to deny the militants future recruits by replacing hatred and resentment with democracy and hope across the entire Middle East. "
Who the fuck do they think they are kidding? Well, yes, there are still millions of ignorant people in the world who believe every word he utters, even though he's proven to be a total moron.
Rather than replacing hatred, the actions of his government are fomenting it. Who wouldn't hate the US after their injustices and continuing aggression?
I'm still reading Stephen Zune's book 'Tinderbox', having been diverted from it with other tasks. US hypocrisy angers me. This morning I was just reading about the human rights abuses by the Israeli government and in particular a massacre on a refugee camp, which killed hundreds. You won't have heard about it because journalists and medical aid were refused entry to the area by the Israelis. The international community wanted an inquiry into the incident, but US vetoed it (just as the US vetoes every attempt at bringing peace and justice to an area). The Israelis are guilty of gross human rights abuses but anyone who protests against it is labelled as anti-semitic. Besides which, Israel is America's sponsored ally against the Arabs. Any attack by a Palestinian on an Israeli is heavily publicised and punished. Any similar attack by Israel on Palestine (including innocent women and children) goes unpunished and news of it suppressed or just not reported. Whereas the murderers of an Israeli government minister were jailed and guarded by Americans, the murderers of a Palestinian government minister were not even arrested. The double standards are apparent for anyone to see.
And Bush talks about 'freedom' and 'democracy' when it is US actions that have prevented peace throughout the world by its support of dictators and anti-leftist or anti-communist regimes.
There will only be hope for peace and democracy if US stays the fuck out of other countries. But it never will. The US is the worst imperialist of them all.
