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Blair's Bloody Hands
by John Pilger
March 4, 2005
(----)
When Blair demonstrably lied about weapons of mass destruction in order to
help an extremist regime launch an unprovoked attack on Iraq, a defenseless
country, the Foreign Office's deputy legal adviser Elizabeth Wilmshurst
resigned, calling it, correctly, a "crime of aggression."
The blood shed by more than 100,000 civilians killed and 300,000 injured
is her and our witness. Now consider the "tough new limits on arms sales."
A study by ActionAid reveals that the Blair government has sold weapons to
14 impoverished African countries where there is internal conflict. The people
of Aceh, stricken by last year's tsunami, have been terrorized by
British-supplied Hawk fighter jets, machine guns, and ammunition. Britain is
a world leader in the export of small arms, even depleted uranium.
Almost everything about a Blair regime was known before it was elected. Blair's:-
a.. His Vichy-like devotion to Washington was known: read his speeches about
a new order led by America .
b.. His devotion to Rupert Murdoch, who flew him and Cherie Booth around the
world first class, was known.
c.. His devotion to an extreme neoliberal Thatcherite economics was known,
spelled out in Peter Mandelson's and Roger Liddle's The Blair Revolution: Can
New Labour Deliver?, in which Britain's "economic strengths" are listed as
multinational corporations, the "aerospace" (arms) industry and "the preeminence
of the City of London."
d.. His class contempt for the poor was known; his pre-election attacks on
single mothers passed quickly into law, assisted by the majority of his new,
opportunistic female MPs.
Those trying to cover for Blair and "move on" from Iraq refer to the reduction
of poverty as one of his "achievements." In fact, relative poverty in childless
households in the UK has reached record levels under Blair, up to 13 percent -
and a greater number than under Margaret Thatcher or John Major. A certain
PC-ism, such as the sound and fury over dropping the gay age of consent, adds to
the illusion of a Labour government that, had it not fallen in with the awful
Bush, would be celebrated as "progressive." Tell that to the people of a faraway
country, more than half of whom are children, whose lives have been devastated
by the fanatical Blair and his court of apologists. Read the robotic Hoon's
statement on the use of cluster bombs - how Iraqi mothers would one day be
"grateful" for the use of weapons that killed their children - and Ministry of
Defense letters to the public that lie about depleted uranium and its Hiroshima
effect. The silence of those who regard themselves as commissars of this
country's and Europe's respectable, moral, liberal class is quite disgusting.
In a superb piece in the Guardian on Feb. 24, Victoria Brittain asked: "How can
it be that not one mainstream public figure in Europe has denounced [Bush's
systematic torture regime]?" She points out that The Torture Papers - more than
1,200 pages of government memos and reports, edited at New York University -
shows systematic torture, approved and directed from on high. Such is the regime
of a man with whom Blair "shares values." I thought of this when I noted the
current debate in the Church of England about the "rift" caused by the "issue"
of gay marriage. Compare that with the "issue" of the slaughter of tens of
thousands of innocent people, about which not a word is heard from those who
claim moral courage as a deity. Read the searing account of Dr. Salam Ismael,
who took aid to Fallujah in January. He describes the ordeal of a 17-year-old
girl, Hudda Fawzi. Her father opened the door to U.S. Marines who shot him and a
friend dead, then shot her elder sister, having beaten her senseless, then
destroyed the family's furniture. Wounded people were dragged from their homes
and run over by tanks; a clinic was destroyed by missiles. "It became clear to
us," Ismael wrote, "that we were witnessing the aftermath of a massacre, the
cold-blooded butchery of helpless and defenseless civilians."
It is not surprising that the Blair government has refused Ismael fresh
permission to visit and speak out in Britain. His testimony, and that of many
other reliable witnesses, is known and feared. Last April, the U.S. command
agreed that it may well have slaughtered as many as 600 people in Fallujah. When
a listener asked Judy Swallow, presenter of the BBC World Service Newshour
program, why the BBC continued to suppress this truth, Swallow sent this e-mail
to a colleague: "Oh God, Mike - do you take care of these sorts of things, or do
we ignore them?" On the BBC Web site, she describes Newshour as "exposing
injustice and challenging lies." The silence is almost never broken by those
paid to "expose injustice and challenge lies," let alone set the record
straight. On Channel 5, a member of the public, Neil Coppendale from
Shoreham-by-Sea, confronted Blair with this question: "Bearing in mind that tens
of thousands of innocent men, women, and children have died as a result of the
invasion of Iraq, how do you sleep at night, Mr. Blair?" When did a journalist,
one with privileged access to Blair, ever ask that? For their part, the BBC's
Downing Street man Andrew Marr (apparently together with his wife) and his
colleague from the Today program James Naughtie have been over to the prime
minister's country home,Chequers, to sup with the killer Blair. It was Marr who,
at the fall of Baghdad, told viewers that Blair had "said they would be able to
take Baghdad without a bloodbath, and in the end the Iraqis would be
celebrating, and on both these points he has been proved conclusively right."
And it is Naughtie who has played a leading role in the British American
Project, set up by Ronald Reagan to find a "successor generation" to those who
propagated the Cold War on America's behalf.
If shame has no place in what is called "public life," then the rest of us
should break their silence for them. The Guardian says the electorate is "cross"
with Blair. Cross? Such a genteel word. Supporting Blair, in his propaganda and
his contemptuous need for another term of office, is supporting mass murder.
=============================
Weapons of Mass Destruction Employed by US to Imolate Falluja: White Phosphorus is a Chemical Weapon
Albasrah.net
March 7, 2005
The use of white phosphorus "violates the Geneva Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare. Incendiary agents such as napalm and phosphorus are not considered to be CW agents since they achieve their effect mainly through thermal energy. [Ref. http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/cw/cwindex.html ]
However, a report by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry concludes that White Phosphorus achieves its effects mainly through non-thermal energy. It must be concluded that White Phosphorus is considered a CW [chemical weapon] agent, and would violate the Geneva Protocol since its use causes indiscriminate and extreme injuries especially when deployed in an Urban area such as Falluja, Iraq.
Pictures of the dead of Falluja have been published by reporter Dahr Jamal of the Electronic Iraq project, and several commentators have suggested that their injuries are consistent with the use of White Phosphorus by US forces in Falluja.
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=10211&hd=0&size=1&l=x
Blair's Bloody Hands
by John Pilger
March 4, 2005
(----)
When Blair demonstrably lied about weapons of mass destruction in order to
help an extremist regime launch an unprovoked attack on Iraq, a defenseless
country, the Foreign Office's deputy legal adviser Elizabeth Wilmshurst
resigned, calling it, correctly, a "crime of aggression."
The blood shed by more than 100,000 civilians killed and 300,000 injured
is her and our witness. Now consider the "tough new limits on arms sales."
A study by ActionAid reveals that the Blair government has sold weapons to
14 impoverished African countries where there is internal conflict. The people
of Aceh, stricken by last year's tsunami, have been terrorized by
British-supplied Hawk fighter jets, machine guns, and ammunition. Britain is
a world leader in the export of small arms, even depleted uranium.
Almost everything about a Blair regime was known before it was elected. Blair's:-
a.. His Vichy-like devotion to Washington was known: read his speeches about
a new order led by America .
b.. His devotion to Rupert Murdoch, who flew him and Cherie Booth around the
world first class, was known.
c.. His devotion to an extreme neoliberal Thatcherite economics was known,
spelled out in Peter Mandelson's and Roger Liddle's The Blair Revolution: Can
New Labour Deliver?, in which Britain's "economic strengths" are listed as
multinational corporations, the "aerospace" (arms) industry and "the preeminence
of the City of London."
d.. His class contempt for the poor was known; his pre-election attacks on
single mothers passed quickly into law, assisted by the majority of his new,
opportunistic female MPs.
Those trying to cover for Blair and "move on" from Iraq refer to the reduction
of poverty as one of his "achievements." In fact, relative poverty in childless
households in the UK has reached record levels under Blair, up to 13 percent -
and a greater number than under Margaret Thatcher or John Major. A certain
PC-ism, such as the sound and fury over dropping the gay age of consent, adds to
the illusion of a Labour government that, had it not fallen in with the awful
Bush, would be celebrated as "progressive." Tell that to the people of a faraway
country, more than half of whom are children, whose lives have been devastated
by the fanatical Blair and his court of apologists. Read the robotic Hoon's
statement on the use of cluster bombs - how Iraqi mothers would one day be
"grateful" for the use of weapons that killed their children - and Ministry of
Defense letters to the public that lie about depleted uranium and its Hiroshima
effect. The silence of those who regard themselves as commissars of this
country's and Europe's respectable, moral, liberal class is quite disgusting.
In a superb piece in the Guardian on Feb. 24, Victoria Brittain asked: "How can
it be that not one mainstream public figure in Europe has denounced [Bush's
systematic torture regime]?" She points out that The Torture Papers - more than
1,200 pages of government memos and reports, edited at New York University -
shows systematic torture, approved and directed from on high. Such is the regime
of a man with whom Blair "shares values." I thought of this when I noted the
current debate in the Church of England about the "rift" caused by the "issue"
of gay marriage. Compare that with the "issue" of the slaughter of tens of
thousands of innocent people, about which not a word is heard from those who
claim moral courage as a deity. Read the searing account of Dr. Salam Ismael,
who took aid to Fallujah in January. He describes the ordeal of a 17-year-old
girl, Hudda Fawzi. Her father opened the door to U.S. Marines who shot him and a
friend dead, then shot her elder sister, having beaten her senseless, then
destroyed the family's furniture. Wounded people were dragged from their homes
and run over by tanks; a clinic was destroyed by missiles. "It became clear to
us," Ismael wrote, "that we were witnessing the aftermath of a massacre, the
cold-blooded butchery of helpless and defenseless civilians."
It is not surprising that the Blair government has refused Ismael fresh
permission to visit and speak out in Britain. His testimony, and that of many
other reliable witnesses, is known and feared. Last April, the U.S. command
agreed that it may well have slaughtered as many as 600 people in Fallujah. When
a listener asked Judy Swallow, presenter of the BBC World Service Newshour
program, why the BBC continued to suppress this truth, Swallow sent this e-mail
to a colleague: "Oh God, Mike - do you take care of these sorts of things, or do
we ignore them?" On the BBC Web site, she describes Newshour as "exposing
injustice and challenging lies." The silence is almost never broken by those
paid to "expose injustice and challenge lies," let alone set the record
straight. On Channel 5, a member of the public, Neil Coppendale from
Shoreham-by-Sea, confronted Blair with this question: "Bearing in mind that tens
of thousands of innocent men, women, and children have died as a result of the
invasion of Iraq, how do you sleep at night, Mr. Blair?" When did a journalist,
one with privileged access to Blair, ever ask that? For their part, the BBC's
Downing Street man Andrew Marr (apparently together with his wife) and his
colleague from the Today program James Naughtie have been over to the prime
minister's country home,Chequers, to sup with the killer Blair. It was Marr who,
at the fall of Baghdad, told viewers that Blair had "said they would be able to
take Baghdad without a bloodbath, and in the end the Iraqis would be
celebrating, and on both these points he has been proved conclusively right."
And it is Naughtie who has played a leading role in the British American
Project, set up by Ronald Reagan to find a "successor generation" to those who
propagated the Cold War on America's behalf.
If shame has no place in what is called "public life," then the rest of us
should break their silence for them. The Guardian says the electorate is "cross"
with Blair. Cross? Such a genteel word. Supporting Blair, in his propaganda and
his contemptuous need for another term of office, is supporting mass murder.
=============================
Weapons of Mass Destruction Employed by US to Imolate Falluja: White Phosphorus is a Chemical Weapon
Albasrah.net
March 7, 2005
The use of white phosphorus "violates the Geneva Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare. Incendiary agents such as napalm and phosphorus are not considered to be CW agents since they achieve their effect mainly through thermal energy. [Ref. http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/cw/cwindex.html ]
However, a report by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry concludes that White Phosphorus achieves its effects mainly through non-thermal energy. It must be concluded that White Phosphorus is considered a CW [chemical weapon] agent, and would violate the Geneva Protocol since its use causes indiscriminate and extreme injuries especially when deployed in an Urban area such as Falluja, Iraq.
Pictures of the dead of Falluja have been published by reporter Dahr Jamal of the Electronic Iraq project, and several commentators have suggested that their injuries are consistent with the use of White Phosphorus by US forces in Falluja.
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=10211&hd=0&size=1&l=x
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