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James Galbraith: Former NATO Generals’ “Radical Manifesto” Violates Key Principle Of International Law

Guardian | James K Galbraith | January 25, 2008

Five former Nato generals, including the former chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, John Shalikashvili, have written a “radical manifesto” which states that “the West must be ready to resort to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to try to halt the ‘imminent’ spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.”

In other words, the generals argue that “the west” – meaning the nuclear powers including the United States, France and Britain – should prepare to use nuclear weapons, not to deter a nuclear attack, not to retaliate following such an attack, and not even to pre-empt an imminent nuclear attack. Rather, they should use them to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by a non-nuclear state. And not only that, they should use them to prevent the acquisition of biological or chemical weapons by such a state.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/01/25/james-galbraith-former-n_n_83346.html

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A criminal idea

Attacking other countries to stop them acquiring nuclear weapons repudiates a key principle of international law

James K Galbraith 

Five former Nato generals, including the former chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, John Shalikashvili, have written a “radical manifesto” which states that “the West must be ready to resort to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to try to halt the ‘imminent’ spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.”

In other words, the generals argue that “the west” – meaning the nuclear powers including the United States, France and Britain – should prepare to use nuclear weapons, not to deter a nuclear attack, not to retaliate following such an attack, and not even to pre-empt an imminent nuclear attack. Rather, they should use them to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by a non-nuclear state. And not only that, they should use them to prevent the acquisition of biological or chemical weapons by such a state.

Under this doctrine, the US could have used nuclear weapons in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, to destroy that country’s presumed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons – stockpiles that did not in fact exist. Under it, the US could have used nuclear weapons against North Korea in 2006. The doctrine would also have justified a nuclear attack on Pakistan at any time prior to that country’s nuclear tests in 1998. Or on India, at any time prior to 1974.

The Nuremberg principles are the bedrock of international law on war crimes. Principle VI criminalises the “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression …” and states that the following are war crimes:

“Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation of slave labor or for any other purpose of the civilian population of or in occupied territory; murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.”

To state the obvious: the use of a nuclear weapon on the military production facilities of a non-nuclear state will mean dropping big bombs on populated areas. Nuclear test sites are kept remote for obvious reasons; research labs, reactors and enrichment facilities need not be. Nuclear bombs inflict total devastation on the “cities, towns or villages” that they hit. They are the ultimate in “wanton destruction”. Their use against a state with whom we are not actually at war cannot, by definition, be “justified by military necessity”.

“The west” has lived from 1946 to the present day with a nuclear-armed Russia; no necessity of using nuclear weapons against that country ever arose. Similarly with China, since 1964. To attack some new nuclear pretender now would certainly constitute the “waging of a war of aggression …” That’s a crime. And the planning and preparation for such a war is no less a crime than the war itself.

Next, consider what it means to determine that a country is about to acquire nuclear weapons. How does one know? The facilities that Iran possesses to enrich uranium are legal under the non-proliferation treaty. Yes, they might be used, at some point, to provide fuel for bombs. But maybe they won’t be. How could we tell? And suppose we were wrong? Ambiguity is the nature of this situation, and of the world in which we live. During the cold war, ambiguity helped keep both sides safe: it was a stabilising force. We would not use nuclear weapons, under the systems then devised, unless ambiguity disappeared. But the generals’ doctrine has no tolerance for ambiguity; it would make ambiguity itself a cause for war. Thus, causes for war could be made to arise, wherever anyone in power wanted them to.

The generals’ doctrine would not only violate international law, it repudiates the principle of international law. For a law to be a law, it must apply equally to all. But the doctrine holds that “the west” is fundamentally a different entity from all other countries. As the former Reagan official Paul Craig Roberts has pointed out, it holds that our use of weapons of mass destruction to prevent the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction is not, itself, an illegal use of weapons of mass destruction. Thus “the west” can stand as judge, jury and executioner over all other countries. By what right? No law works that way. And no country claiming such a right can also claim to respect the law, or ask any other country to respect it.

Conversely, suppose we stated the generals’ doctrine as a principle: that any nuclear state which suspects another state of being about to acquire nuclear weapons has the right to attack that state – and with nuclear weapons if it has them. Now suppose North Korea suspects South Korea of that intention. Does North Korea acquire a right to strike the South? Under any principle of law, the generals’ answer must be, that it does. Thus their doctrine does not protect against nuclear war. It leads, rather, directly to nuclear war.

Is this proposed doctrine unprecedented? No, in fact it is not. For as Heather Purcell and I documented in 1994, US nuclear war-fighting plans in 1961 called for an unprovoked attack on the Soviet Union, as soon as sufficient nuclear forces were expected to be ready, in late 1963. President Kennedy quashed the plan. As JFK’s adviser Ted Sorensen put it in a letter to the New York Times on July 1, 2002:

“A pre-emptive strike is usually sold to the president as a ’surgical’ air strike; there is no such thing. So many bombings are required that widespread devastation, chaos and war unavoidably follow … Yes, Kennedy ‘thought about’ a pre-emptive strike; but he forcefully rejected it, as would any thoughtful American president or citizen.”

It’s not just citizens and presidents who are obliged to think carefully about what General Shalikashvili and his British, French, German and Dutch colleagues now suggest. Military officers – as they know well – also have that obligation. Nuremberg Principle IV states:

“The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”

Any officer in the nuclear chain of command of the United States, Britain or France, faced with an order to use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state would be obliged, as a matter of law, to ponder those words with care. For ultimately, as Nuremberg showed, it is not force that prevails. In the final analysis, it is law.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/james_k_galbraith/2008/01/a_criminal_idea.html

Fortified Green Zone mortared

Baghdad – Voices of Iraq

Wednesday , 30 /01 /2008

U.S. base in Falluja comes under missile fire

Anbar – Voices of Iraq

Wednesday , 30 /01 /2008

Anbar, Jan 29, (VOI) – A U.S. army base in Falluja was hit by four missiles on Tuesday, Anbar police said, while the “Islamic army” claimed in statement that the attack was a show of support for the blockaded Palestinian city of Gaza.
“Four missiles landed in the U.S. army base, located 3 km east of Falluja, on Tuesday,” a Falluja police officer, who requested anonymity, told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq – (VOI).
He added, “The missile, launched from the southern and eastern sides of the base, landed in the middle of the base where billows of smoke were seen spiraling upward.”
The U.S. side was not available to comment on the incident.
A short time later, four U.S. helicopters were seen hovering over Falluja for 25 minutes.

The Islamic army claimed responsibility for the attack in flyers circulated across the city.
The Islamic army is one of the large armed groups that has joined the campaign launched by the U.S. troops and Tribal awakening (Sahawa) forces to fight al-Qaeda network and crush its operatives in Anbar province and many Iraqi cities.
”The attack came as part of a campaign to support our people in Gaza,” the armed group’s statement said
Falluja, one the biggest cities in Anbar province, lies 45 km west of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.
AM/SR

http://66.111.34.180/look/english/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=4&NrArticle=67736&NrIssue=2&NrSection=1

Turkey continues to hammer at Israel on Gaza despite anger over Erdogan remarks

The New Anatolian / Ankara 

30 January 2008

Turkey on Friday has again declared it is deeply concerned with the onhgoing Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip while Israel has protested earlier remarks by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemning the action.

“The embargo imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip, in this context the closure of the border gates between Israel and the Gaza Strip and lastly the cutting off of fuel supplies is cause of great concern,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a written statement.

“As a result of these measures, the conditions of the civilian population of Gaza, already living under the harshest circumstances, have further deteriorated, serious disruptions have occurred in the distribution of water and electricity, as well as in health services,” the Ministry reported.

It said Turkey is convinced that embargoes and blockades “which further aggravate the life of the people in the Gaza Strip” merely serve the goals of extremist elements. The Foreigbn Ministry said Turkey calls for an immediate end to these practices.

The Foreign Ministry said “it is, of course, our expectation that the rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip to Israel and the military operations of Israel directed at Gaza come to a halt.”

Prime Minister Erdogan irked the Israelis when he said no Israelis have been killed by Qassam missiles, while every Israel Defense Forces attack in the Gaza Strip kills dozens of Palestinians, Israeli daily Hazaretz reported.

Haaretz said senior Israeli Foreign Ministry officials Wednesday issued a protest to Turkey’s ambassador to Israel, Namik Tan, and requested clarifications of Erdogan’s remarks.

“Israel is very disappointed by Erdagan’s statements in light of the friendly relations between the two countries. … Israel expects a different response from a state that itself is fighting terror,” a senior Foreign Ministry official told Tan, in conveying the official protest.

Erdogan was critical of Israel’s closing the Gaza Strip border as well as Israeli military operations in the area.

“The Palestinian territories are like an open-air prison, they are under siege from Israel,” he said in a televised speech to lawmakers Wednesday.

He blamed Israel for the situation in Gaza: “The people of Gaza are facing a humanitarian tragedy,” he said. “We cannot accept a practice that amounts to punishing nearly 2 million innocent people due to some rocket attacks. … When we ask our Israeli colleagues how many Israeli citizens died as a result of these rocket attacks, we do not get an answer.”

http://www.thenewanatolian.com/tna-30934.html

Sibel Edmonds: ‘Buckle up, there’s much more coming.’

01/30/08

In the last few weeks, UK’s Times has run a series of articles about the so-called ‘Sibel Edmonds case.’ (’For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets, ‘FBI denies file exposing nuclear secrets theft’ and ‘Tip-off thwarted nuclear spy ring probe’)

Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds stumbled into a world of espionage, nuclear black market, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, and corruption at the highest levels of the US government.

I interviewed Sibel yesterday regarding the current investigation and reporting by the Times, the failures of the US media, and last week’s decision by the Bush administration to legalize the sale of nuclear technology to Turkey, in an apparent effort to exonerate prior criminal activity by officials in his administration.

Sibel also has some urgent ‘action items’ so that we can stop these dangerous nuclear proliferation activities. I urge you to act on her suggestions. 

Luke Ryland: What do you have to say about the recent work by the Insight journalists – Chris Gourlay, Jonathan Calvert, Joe Lauria – at the UK’s Times?

Sibel Edmonds: They’ve done good, solid reporting so far by doing what reporters are supposed to. They have been chasing sources and getting their hands on documents. It’s pretty simple. As you know, this story has been available to any journalist for six years now.

There’s been a lot of speculation in the last few weeks that American reporters haven’t touched this story because they are ‘corporate owned’ but it is wrong to exonerate these reporters so quickly. Many of them are too close to their official sources, and some are simply lazy. This Times team chases sources, and if they can’t reach them one way, they’ll try and try again, or they’ll seek out alternate sources, or find other ways to ensure that they get the story.

When I hear from US reporters, they say ‘Sibel, give us all the documents we’ll need, and you line up all the sources for us, and then maybe we’ll do a story’ and if one source doesn’t return their phone call, they simply give up. That’s not journalism!

Luke Ryland: Why has the US failed on this story so dramatically for 6 years?

Sibel Edmonds: It’s a combination of things, obviously. You need to consider that the entire US press corps has failed on this story; not only the regular print and TV media, but the alternative media has failed on this too.

Part of the reason is that journalists are simply too close to their official sources. Those sources might tell the journalist that there’s nothing to the story, and so the journalist gives up on it, or the official sources might ‘request’ that the journalist to stay away from the story, and the journalist is then concerned about losing access to the source in the future.

Another reason is the partisanship. With the foreign press, there is no partisanship, and that’s one reason why they have been more effective at covering this case, and I’m not just talking about the recent Times articles here. With the US media, it appears as though if there is no clear partisan angle, then there’s no story. As you know, this case is spread over two administrations, and that appears to make it difficult for the reporters to cover the story. Even within one news organization you might have one journalist who wants to use the story to indict Clinton, and another who wants to use the story to bash Bush, and in the end neither of them write about the story because it doesn’t fit their partisanship, their ‘narrative’, so they just drop it altogether.

I had such high hopes for the alternative press, and they do a lot of good work, but partisanship repeatedly gets in the way there too, on both sides.

The US media also suffers from a pack mentality. I was told by one executive that they weren’t doing the story because it was ‘old news’ because 60 Minutes did a single segment in October 2002, even though they only covered a tiny part of the case. This executive literally told me that he’d only cover the story if it was ‘hot and sexy.’ I often think that I’d need to be able to hire Britney Spears to be a spokesperson – and this is not just for my case, but for any of the many other solid, important cases at the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition. Apparently this is what it would take to get any coverage.

Of course, given the pack mentality, if any of these stories does become ‘hot and sexy’ then all the journalists focus on the same issues and there’s no differentiation in their reporting.

The other major problem in the US is the focus on symptoms, rather than root causes. My case is a good example, but there are lots of others too. Look at the early reporting on my case in 2002, the Washington Post broke the story in July 2002 about the espionage in the translation bureau and then they dropped the story after two weeks. They stopped reporting on it when more important information came out and the State Secrets Privilege was invoked. To this day not a single US reporter has asked ‘Why was the State Secrets Privilege been invoked here? What is going on?’

Just this week I was approached by a major US outlet who wanted to do a story on Kevin Taskesen! Ed note: Taskesen was an incompetent FBI translator who got his job because his wife worked in the administrative office This is absolutely the most trivial element of the case, and it has already been reported at length. I told them that they could learn everything they needed to know by watching 60 Minutes, 2002. Again, the US media needs to start looking at the root causes of these problems, not the symptoms.

Luke Ryland: Will the US media start reporting on this now that it is ‘hot and sexy’ again?

Sibel Edmonds: It’s hard to know. After being told for years that they won’t cover it because it is ‘old news,’ now there are certain officials in the agencies quietly telling journalists to stay away from the story because I came across a highly sensitive covert national security operation.

Also, Turkey’s army of lobbyists in DC are very effective. The US press tends to stay away from any stories critical of Turkey, I would say even more than Israel.

There’s also the possible problem of ‘eating crow’ but I hope this isn’t an issue, this story is way too important for any of that. The information that has been published in the Times recently could have easily come out four years ago in the US press. We now need everyone to focus on the important issues.

I have one message for the US media: If they think this is over, it’s not over. Much more will come out. They won’t be able to ignore it any longer, and so I hope they get over any reluctance they might have.

Look at the positive press that the Times’ series has received since their first article ran. Do you think their editors haven’t noticed? The Times is adding more and more resources to the story, more journalists, bigger budgets, and more importantly, they are getting more and more sources coming forward to shed light on these illegal activities. As I have said from the beginning, this story is not about me, there are many sources who have been waiting for the right time to come forward, I’ve probably never even heard of most of them, and now they are coming forward. This will play out like Watergate played out, with the drip, drip, drip. So I say to everyone ‘Buckle up, there’s much more coming.’

So, hopefully American reporters will start to cover the story. I’m not particularly confident, but to a certain degree it doesn’t matter that much because the internet and the blogs can spread the reporting from the UK as soon as it hits the wires.

Luke Ryland: Two weeks after the first article in the Times about the involvement of high-level US officials being involved with Turkish and Israeli interests in supplying the nuclear black market, President Bush quietly announced that the US will start supplying nuclear technology to Turkey. Do you think that is a coincidence?

Sibel Edmonds: The timing is certainly very, very suspicious. The proposals that are being floated are very suspicious too. There are reports that Turkey will build an enrichment facility, and that Turkey will become the key supplier of nuclear fuel to other Muslim countries who want nuclear power plants. None of this makes any sense.

And again, the US media is nowhere to be seen on this issue. Where are the journalists? Do you remember the noise made a couple of years ago when the US announced that it would supply India with nuclear technology? So far, nearly a week after the announcement and not a single major US media outlet has even reported on the deal! Think of the hypocrisy, with all the saber-rattling at Iran over enrichment.

If it’s such a good idea to sell nuclear technology to Turkey, why isn’t the White House out there selling the idea? Where are the arguments in the press saying that this will be good for regional stability, or that it will help reduce demand for oil, or even that it is simply good business because US firms will be able to sell their hardware and knowledge? There’s nothing! Silence. What does that tell you?

Luke Ryland: What needs to be done?

Sibel Edmonds: The way they’ve structured this deal is that Congress has 90 days from the announcement, now 84 days, to block the ‘agreement’ otherwise it basically becomes law.

The first thing that we need to do is to make sure that this doesn’t ‘automatically’ become law. We need the journalists, the experts, and the bloggers to raise hell over this issue, and we need to make sure that Congress investigates this properly before rubber-stamping it. The clock is ticking and we need to act now.

As you know, and this was even published in the White House press release on this issue, certain ‘Turkish private entities’ have been involved ‘in certain activities directly relating to nuclear proliferation.’ This includes supplying the A.Q. Khan network – which built Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, and also supplied North Korea, Iran and other countries – but as the recent Times stories indicate, so much more as well.

The White House press release states that all these issues have been resolved; that the Turkish government has addressed these issues, that the US government has evaluated these actions and that the US government is satisfied, and that all of this is secret, classified!

Given the track record of this administration in abusing classification and distorting intelligence, why on earth would we trust them with this? What is in the report? Is it truthful? Why is it classified? We saw these exact same people do the same thing in the late 80s when they enabled Pakistan to get nuclear weapons. Richard Barlow did his best to stop them then, but if Congress doesn’t hold hearings this time around the same thing will happen again. We should have stopped Pakistan then, but unless this ‘classified’ report is made public and the contents publicly debated, then the Barlow of today won’t even get the chance to debunk whatever is in that ‘classified’ report. What conceivable logic is there in classifying the details of how Turkey has cleaned up its act regarding nuclear proliferation? If they have, they should be proud of it!

There are many great anti-proliferation organizations out there, we need to rally all of them, and all of the ‘pro-transparency’ organizations, to this cause. We need journalists to contact these experts for their opinion and expertise, and we need these experts to contact journalists to ensure that the story, and the issues, is covered, and covered thoroughly.

We also need to recruit bloggers and alternative media to keep the pressure on. Perhaps a ‘countdown clock’ as we count down the 90 days might help.

Luke Ryland: What are the next steps in the process?

Sibel Edmonds: I’m not exactly sure of the process at the moment, but it has been reported that this ‘automatically’ becomes law after the 90 days, somehow, unless Congress blocks or amends the legislation.

Apparently the approval process somehow includes convincing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee not to object, so those committees appear to be our first firewall.

(Ed note: Senate Foreign Relations Committee includes Joe Biden (Chair), Chris Dodd, John Kerry, Russ Feingold, Barbara Boxer, Barack Obama and Jim Webb for the Democrats, and Richard Lugar, Chuck Hagel and George Voinovich for the minority. Hopefully one of them will stand up on this important issue. The House side looks more difficult, the Chairman is Tom Lantos who was listed in Sibel’s Rogue’s Gallery, which apparently identifies 18 of the guilty parties in her case, so that might be a problem. Ron Paul is also on that committee, he might be a prime target for this campaign.)

Luke Ryland: Is there anything else we can do?

Sibel Edmonds: There is one other hope. As last week’s White House press release states, Bill Clinton tried to pass this legislation in 2000 but “immediately after” Clinton tried to send it to Congress it was blocked because some people apparently highlighted Turkish involvement in the nuclear black market and, who knows, maybe threatened to blow the whistle. Those same individuals, and others like them, can stop this again, and they should do everything they can to make sure that this doesn’t happen. They should try to do it internally, and if they can’t do it internally, then they need reach out to journalists, either on or off the record. Hopefully some honest, dedicated people will try to block it again, but we can’t rely on that. We need to pressure congress to ensure that this doesn’t go through.

Time is running out, the countdown clock is ticking down, and we need to stop this now. We need the help of journalists, congress, nuclear proliferation experts, bloggers and those active citizens in the blogosphere and elsewhere.

http://letsibeledmondsspeak.blogspot.com/2008/01/sibel-edmonds-buckle-up-theres-much.html

Système financier : le prochain domino est encore plus gros

29 janvier 2008

Par Paul Gallagher, EIR

Une bulle de quelque 50 000 milliards de dollars de contrats financiers dérivés [cf. note 1] menace d’éclater incessamment, provoquant un déferlement de faillites et d’insolvabilités bancaires. Raison de plus pour passer de toute urgence à une réorganisation du système.

Les produits dérivés en cause sont des contrats assurant le risque de crédit (credit default swaps – CDS). Pratiquement inexistants il y a cinq ans encore, leur « valeur » nominale a triplé en trois ans, selon des sources new-yorkaises bien informées qui parlent du « prochain domino à tomber », estimant que le choc sera « beaucoup plus sévère » que l’éclatement de la « bulle hypothécaire américaine », qui ne représentait « que » 20 000 milliards.

Les CDS s’échangent uniquement de gré à gré, c’est-à-dire qu’il n’existe aucun marché organisé qui puisse assumer une quelconque responsabilité pour cette énorme masse de contrats financiers, contrairement aux actions et obligations. Comme les fameux SIV (véhicules d’investissement structurés), les contrats bilatéraux assurant le risque sont des opérations spéculatives hautement rentables qui n’apparaissent jamais dans les bilans des banques et hedge funds qui en tirent profit – jusqu’au moment où ils s’évaporent, provoquant des centaines de milliards de dollars de pertes.

Dans le cas des CDS, il faudrait plutôt parler de dizaines de milliers de milliards, selon ces sources. Le but officiel de ces contrats est d’assurer les acheteurs d’obligations d’entreprise contre la défaillance de ces obligations. Or le montant des dettes d’entreprise effectivement « assurées » par ces 50 000 milliards de dollars de CDS ne s’élève qu’à… 5000 milliards. C’est incontestablement la plus haute montagne de dette par effet de levier !

En réalité, les swaps sur défaillance sont des moyens de spéculer massivement sur la capacité d’une société à rembourser ses dettes et obligations et sur lesquels des dizaines de banques, fonds spéculatifs et autres sociétés financières parient des sommes considérables. En outre, d’autres hedge funds achètent des swaps sur défaillance pour parier si, en cas de défaillance, les sociétés qui assurent les obligations ne feront pas défaut elles-mêmes !

Les hedge funds et les banques ayant vendu une « assurance » aux sociétés détentrices d’obligations d’entreprise encaissent des primes de la part de ces sociétés. Ensuite, ces primes sont titrisées – c’est-à-dire vendues comme titres financiers à d’autres banques et hedge funds, de la même manière que les crédits hypothécaires subprime avaient été regroupés dans toutes sortes de titres qui ont récemment perdu toute valeur.

Il existe peu d’instruments financiers qui aient permis, autant que les CDS, aux fonds spéculatifs de faire plus de profits en si peu de temps, avec un tel effet de levier et si peu de capital réel. Tant que sir Alan Greenspan (directeur de la Réserve fédérale jusqu’en 2006) faisait en sorte que les taux d’intérêt à court terme restent très faibles sur le plan international, et que le « yen carry trade » [cf. note 2] fournissaient aux spéculateurs des centaines de milliards de dollars d’« argent gratuit », il n’y avait quasiment pas de défaillances sur les obligations d’entreprise, même sur les obligations poubelles.

La vente d’une assurance contre défaillance, à l’aide de swaps, est alors devenue un jeu extrêmement rentable, presque entièrement financé par de l’argent emprunté avec un fort effet de levier. On comptait dix vendeurs d’assurance d’obligations pour chaque détenteur d’obligations susceptible de l’acheter. Par conséquent, les vendeurs se sont vendus les swaps entre eux, ajoutant de nouveaux paris de produits dérivés à la même obligation de référence sous-jacente. Et ils ont vendu les primes d’assurance sous forme de titres financiers, accumulant encore des dettes sur ces produits.

Sur les marchés et dans la presse financière, une peur bleue se répand face à la perspective d’une faillite imminente des grandes sociétés d’assurance d’obligations, comme Ambac Financial Corporation et MBIA, qui assurent plus de 2000 milliards de dollars de bons du Trésor et vendent des CDS. Merrill Lynch vient d’essuyer une perte de 3,1 milliards de dollars sur les CDS avec l’une d’entre elles. Mais selon nos sources, 50 % de ces 4500 à 5000 milliards de dollars représentent des obligations potentielles de banques et 24 % de fonds spéculatifs. Dans la première vague de défaillances, lorsqu’elles se volatilisent, ces obligations vont se retrouver chez les mêmes banques qui ont prêté aux fonds l’argent pour jouer le jeu des CDS.

L’effondrement financier en cours depuis juillet-août 2007 frappe désormais l’« économie réelle », avec des effets notables sur l’emploi, l’industrie, la consommation et, bien sûr, le bâtiment et l’ensemble du secteur immobilier. Pour les premiers mois de 2008, selon les estimations toujours optimistes des agences de notation Fitch et Moody’s, le pourcentage de défaillance sur les dettes d’entreprise devrait atteindre 4 à 5 % (10 % pour les obligations poubelles).

Mais les vendeurs de CDS, qui devraient normalement payer, n’ont rien provisionné pour cela. Ils comptent sur le jeu des contre-paris et contreparties pour s’en tirer indemnes, laissant les pertes échoir aux détenteurs originaux des obligations.

Ted Seides, directeur financier de Protégé Partners, a comparé la bulle des CDS à une « énorme industrie de l’assurance, dont les fournisseurs n’ont rien mis de côté pour couvrir les futures pertes. Imaginez ce qui se passera s’il y a des pertes de 5 % sur 45 000 milliards de dollars, et personne [dans les banques] n’a de quoi payer les pots cassés. »

Quelqu’un a-t-il espère t-il encore sauver le système ou alors en change t-on ?

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Notes :

1- Le « contrat financier dérivé » est un pari hautement spéculatif puisqu’il porte sur la valeur future d’un objet tiers (matières premières, taux de change, indice boursier, etc.), dont le montant ne fait pas l’objet d’un paiement immédiat, mais seulement d’une « option » valant par exemple 1 % des sommes en jeu, d’où les « effets de levier » permettant de jouer gros avec presque rien.

2- Le « Yen carry trade » consistait à emprunter une somme en Yen lorsque celui-ci était à un taux anormalement bas (moins de 1 %) et permettait d’aller jouer ailleurs avec un bénéfice quasi-assuré à la clé, puisque le coût de ce crédit en Yen équivalait à 0.

solidarite et progres

Neurological Symptoms Of Pork Plant Workers Studied

From Patricia Doyle, PhD1-29-8

Prompted by reports of neurological symptoms among workers at 2 pork processing plants in the USA, CDC [US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] has dispatched an urgent bulletin to all US neurologists requesting information about any similar cases they may come across. The CDC sent the bulletin to American Academy of Neurology (AAN) 17 Jan 2008; it reports that clinicians at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota notified the Minnesota Department of Health in the fall of 2007 about an unusual cluster of 12 patients who developed inflammatory neuropathy between November 2006 and November 2007.

All of the subjects worked in a pork processing plant in Austin, Minnesota, in an area of the facility where the pigs’ heads are processed. In mid-January of 2008, there were reports of an additional cluster of patients with similar symptoms among individuals working in a pig processing plant in Indiana.

“In particular, neurologists who have diagnosed patients with peripheral neuropathy, myelopathy, or a mixed clinical presentation of peripheral/central (and, more specifically, myelopathic) involvement in persons with exposure to pig butchering or processing during the past year are asked to report this information to their state health department and contact the CDC at (770) 488-7100.”

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/569320

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******

[2] CDC: letter to American Academy of Neurology (AAN)

Date: Thu 17 Jan 2008

Source: American Academy of Neurology (AAN) website

http://www.aan.com/globals/axon/assets/3459.pdf

In the fall of 2007, clinicians at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, notified the Minnesota Department of Health of an unusual cluster of 12 patients with inflammatory neuropathy occurring between November 2006 and November 2007 among workers at a pork processing plant in Minnesota. An initial investigation has revealed that they all have worked in the same area of the plant where the heads of the pig are processed.

The investigation in Minnesota is ongoing and additional patients have been identified in Indiana, among workers in a similar plant. At this point an etiologic agent has not been identified.

These patients have frequently had illness onset with pain, numbness, and tingling in the extremities. The illness typically progressed with development of relatively symmetric mild to moderate weakness involving predominantly the distal lower limbs. Occasionally, facial weakness has also been observed. They often complain of difficulty with balance (ataxia). Electrodiagnostic testing showed prolonged motor distal latencies and F-wave latencies, minimal sensory nerve conduction abnormality, and evidence of mild denervation of distal muscles on EMG (electromyography).

Of the cases in which cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) has been obtained, all have had elevated CSF protein, with minimal if any pleocytosis (such as, cytoalbuminologic dissociation). Thoracic and lumbar magnetic resonance imaging has demonstrated mildly thickened nerve roots and contrast enhancement. Time of illness progression ranged from several days to months with severity of illness ranging from mild weakness in most cases to paraplegia in one. Most have had some level of recovery.

Given the apparent close association of these patients with participation in the processing of pig head material, it is possible that similar illnesses are occurring at other pork processing plants. The CDC is requesting neurologists to provide information about patients who may have developed illnesses similar to that reported by the Mayo Clinic. In particular, neurologists who have diagnosed patients with peripheral neuropathy, myelopathy, or a mixed clinical presentation of peripheral/central (and, more specifically, myelopathic) involvement in persons with exposure to pig butchering or processing during the past year are asked to report this information to their state health department, and contact the CDC at 770-488-7100.

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More clinical information is given here but the issues of using air pressure to extract the porcine brain in the plants where cases occurred is not mentioned and what kind of personal protective equipment was used is also not stated. – Mod.LL

*****

[3] Neurology Today: upcoming article [7 Feb 2008]

Date: Mon 28 Jan 2008

Source: American Academy of Neurology (AAN) website

http://www.aan.com/globals/axon/assets/3462.pdf

An unusual illness in a dozen workers at a Minnesota pork processing plant has state health officials concerned that the cluster could be an unknown animal-borne nervous system disease.

All of the employees worked in an area where compressed air was used to cleanse brain cavities, giving rise to speculation that the illness, health officials are calling it an unknown inflammatory polyneuropathy, may have been caused by exposure to an infectious agent in airborne brain particulate matter.

Early reports suggested chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP), which damages the myelin sheath surrounding nerves and typically progresses for months.

However, CIDP, as a specific diagnosis, was ruled out after workers were examined by neurologists and had nerve conduction studies.

According to Daniel Lachance MD, the Mayo Clinic neurologist who is caring for many of the workers, “an astute nurse” at the plant brought the symptoms to the attention of local Austin physicians, who in turn notified the Mayo Clinic. Dr Lachance recognized the symptoms as being unusual.

He told Neurology Today in a telephone interview that while the illness shares many similarities with CIDP, tests have shown it has a different signature. Unlike CIDP, which is characterized by slowing or blocking of nerve conduction, the workers’ illness can be categorized only as an inflammatory response that is attacking nerve roots proximally, and peripheral motor nerves distally, he explained.

“While they do have electrophysiological evidence for peripheral nerve involvement and the disorder appears associated with a remarkable activation of the immune system, the clinical picture is different from CIDP,” he said….”the syndrome is best characterized as an inflammatory polyradiculopathy.”

“All of the information we have to date indicates that the general public is not at increased risk for developing this type of illness,” said Minnesota commissioner of health Sanne Magnan MD PhD, in a news release. “Also, there is no evidence that the foot supply has been affected.”

Symptoms appeared over several weeks to months, characterized by muscle weakness, paresthesias, especially in the legs, and chronic fatigue with a sudden onset. In most patients, symptoms have been severe enough to limit many daily activities, according to Dr Lachance, noting, for example, that many have difficulty managing stairs.

Symptoms were first noted in a worker in a local soccer league when he could not continue playing. In some patients, sensory symptoms and discomfort in the neck, lower back, and limbs dominate the clinical picture, while in others, mild to moderate weakness can be demonstrated on the neurological examination. Treatment has generally consisted of observation in milder cases, while the more severely affected have been treatment with steroids or intravenous immunoglobulins.

At press time, the Minnesota state health department had not identified a cause of the illnesses. Investigators had interviewed all 12 patients, as well as workers who worked in the same area and those who did not, collecting information on work history, medical history, potential exposures, and other topics. Clinical specimens, including throat swabs and blood, were obtained from 90 per cent of those interviewed and evaluation for possible infectious agents is ongoing.

All cases of the cases involved people who worked in an area where swine heads are processed and brains removed.

A compressed air system for cleaning out the brain cavities of processed swine was introduced at the plant shortly before the 1st worker complained of symptoms, and there has been concern that the illness might have been caused by inhalation of aerosolized brain tissue or a microorganism associated with this mode of exposure.

The plant quickly stopped using the compressed air system and implemented other measures to protect workers in early December 2007, and as of press time, no new cases with symptom onset since the changes were made have been reported, according to Dr Lachance.

Aerosolized blood and organ particulate in slaughterhouses and meat processing plants, referred to as “blood mist” in occupational safety circles, has long been recognized as a potential health risk and there are regulations for worker exposure in the Occupational Health Act. Even so, the symptoms do not match any known neurological illness that can be transmitted from animals to humans.

Exposure to chemical toxins at the plant has been ruled out as a cause. To date, no similar cases have been found in other states [as noted earlier in the posting, there appears to be cases in an Indiana plant using the same compressed air technique - Mod.LL] or elsewhere in Minnesota.

Because the workers were close to the brain removal area, concern was raised that the pig CNS might be the infectious vehicle. “But we did not know of any specific infectious or autoimmune disorder like this that is caused by exposure to animal tissue,” Dr Lachance said, adding the disorder could be an autoimmune response to an infection.

“Transverse myelitis or a brachial plexopathy after a viral syndrome, Guillian-Barre syndrome associated with _Campylobacter_ infection are the most likely models, but to our knowledge, nothing like this has even been encountered before.”

Byline: Kurt Samson

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This piece states, of note, that the use of the compressed air technique was started only shortly before cases began. The cause here may or may not be an infectious agent but could be an immunologically reactive moiety such as myelin.

More information is clearly needed here to better define this entity. – Mod.LL

In a telephone call the MN epidemiologist reported that there is no respiratory protection although full face shields are in use.- Mod.TG Patricia A. Doyle DVM, PhD  Bus Admin, Tropical Agricultural Economics  Univ of West Indies 

Please visit my “Emerging Diseases” message board at: 

http://www.emergingdisease.org/phpbb/index.php

Also my new website:

http://drpdoyle.tripod.com/

Zhan le Devlesa tai sastimasa 

Go with God and in Good Health 

http://rense.com/general80/porkp.htm

 

Species Spread of H5N1 in Calcutta Suburbs

Recombinomics Commentary 01:19
January 29, 2008

In the affected district of Howrah, avian flu spread to Panchla in addition to Sankrail. Reports from the district said a fox and other birds like falcon were found dead there.

The above comments describe likely spread of H5N1 to additional species in the Calcutta suburbs that have tested positive for H5N1 (see satellite map here and here).

Although West Bengal has not confirmed H5N1 in additional species, Bangladesh has reported H5N1 confirmation in massive crow deaths in north and south Bangladesh.  Videos of initial outbreaks in Birbhum also showed large numbers of dead crows in regions where poultry died.  Similarly, crow deaths have been described in multiple regions in West Bengal.

The spread of H5N1 to these additional species hampers control of H5N1.  Although Calcutta has been sealed, the additional species provide vectors that can navigate over and through poultry checkpoints on Calcutta’s borders.

Similarly, these wild species also impacts control of H5N1 at the borders with neighboring districts or countries. Although alerts have been issued and checkpoints have been increased, further spread of H5N1 is likely and excessive poultry deaths suggest H5N1 has already crossed into adjacent districts and countries.

More extensive testing and reporting in these border areas would be useful.

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Recombinomics Paper at Nature Precedings

 L’Union européenne envoie “une force de paix” à la frontière du Darfour

“La décision de lancer l’opération au Tchad et en République centrafricaine a été adoptée”, souligne une déclaration des ministres des Affaires étrangères des 27 pays de l’UE réunis à Bruxelles.

Avec cette décision, “l’UE intensifie l’action qu’elle mène depuis longtemps en faveur d’un règlement de la crise du Darfour, au travers d’une approche régionale de la crise”, affirment-ils.

L’opération baptisée Eufor Tchad-RCA consiste à envoyer près de 3.700 soldats, dont plus d’une moitié viennent de France et le reste de 13 autres pays européens, dans l’est du Tchad et le nord-est de la Centrafrique.

L’insécurité dans ces régions frontalières du Darfour, province soudanaise où sévit un conflit meurtrier depuis 2003, est aggravée par les heurts entre groupes rebelles et soldats des gouvernements de N’Djamena et de Bangui.

“Conformément à la résolution 1778 du Conseil de sécurité des Nations unies” de septembre 2007, l’Union confie à la nouvelle Eufor la tâche de “protéger le personnel de l’ONU“, autrement dit la mission de police des Nations unies et ses 300 policiers instructeurs, ainsi que “les civils exposés au danger” et le “personnel humanitaire”.

Elle devra “faciliter l’arrivée de l’aide humanitaire” en “aidant à sécuriser” la région, dit le texte.

L’Eufor devra ainsi veiller à la sécurité de 241.000 réfugiés soudanais du Darfour dans l’est du Tchad et de 3.000 autres dans le nord-est de la Centrafrique, ainsi que des 179.000 Tchadiens et 20.000 Centrafricains déplacés, à l’intérieur de leurs pays respectifs, par les violences.

Les premiers éléments de l’Eufor, notamment un détachement d’une quinzaine d’Autrichiens, partiront mardi, a annoncé Vienne. Ils seront suivis d’une cinquantaine d’Irlandais début février.

L’Eufor, commandée par le général irlandais Patrick Nash, devrait être au complet en juin.

Depuis que la politique européenne en matière de défense est devenue vraiment opérationnelle en 2001, il s’agit de la plus importante mission militaire de l’UE hors du continent européen, et sans assistance de l’Otan, contrairement à l’opération Althea lancée par l’UE fin 2004 en Bosnie.

L’Eufor Tchad-RCA, qui aurait dû initialement démarrer en novembre, a eu du mal à se constituer et à se doter des moyens logistiques nécessaires (transport aérien, antennes hospitalières).

Les principales nations contributrices sont la France (2.100 soldats), l’Irlande et la Pologne (400 chacune). La Suède fournira 200 hommes et l’Autriche 160.

Neuf autres pays ont promis aussi des contributions, parfois à confirmer: Belgique, Espagne, Finlande, Grèce, Italie, Pays-Bas, Portugal, Roumanie et Slovénie.

En revanche, l’Allemagne, qui avait largement participé l’été 2006 (bien 2006) à la précédente Eufor en République démocratique du Congo, n’envoie que quatre officiers à l’état-major parisien et le Royaume-Uni, deux.

Néanmoins, la contribution financière de l’UE à cette opération ayant été portée à près de 120 millions d’euros au lieu des 99 millions d’euros prévus au départ, le ministre français Bernard Kouchner a salué la “très grande générosité” de l’Allemagne et du Royaume-Uni.

Outre le fait que les armées européennes ploient sous le nombre d’interventions extérieures, de l’Afghanistan à la Côte d’Ivoire, les difficultés à mobiliser pour le Tchad pourraient tenir aussi à certaines appréhensions à l’égard de Paris.

Des députés au Parlement européen et des ONG ont exprimé leurs craintes d’une confusion entre l’Eufor et les soldats français présents au Tchad au titre d’un accord de défense bilatéral.

news.yahoo

 ________________________Related links______________________

Force d’intervention au Darfour : les Etats-Unis et la France se disputent la direction des opérations au détriment de l’Union africaine

Sarkozy et Kouchner vont-ils courir au Darfour ?

Le Darfour ? C’est une affaire de pétrole, idiot…-

Ten Reasons Why “Save Darfur” is a PR Scam to Justify the Next US Oil and Resource Wars in Africa

MM. Sarkozy et Brown se rendront au Darfour pour “régler” la crise sur place

Darfour: le président soudanais met en garde l’Occident

Operation Desert Slaughter

It is seventeen years since America and Britain embarked on their ‘Final Solution’ for the population of Iraq.The forty two day carpet bombing, enjoined by thirty two other countries, against a country of just twenty five million souls, with a youthful, conscript army, with broadly half the population under sixteen, and no air force, was just the beginning of a United Nations led, global siege of near mediaeval ferocity. Having, as James Baker boasted they would, reduced ‘Iraq to a pre-industrial age’, the country was denied all normality : trade, aid, telecommunications, power, sanitation, water repairs, seeds, foods, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment.

As I write, seventeen years ago, Iraq would be entering the second week of a barbaric, near twenty four hour a day, carpet bombing, which, then, as now (lest we forget – yet again) scrupulously ignored Protocol 1, Additional to the Geneva Convention of 1977: ‘It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies such as irrigation works (denying them) to the civilian population or to the adverse Party … for any motive.’

The blitzkrieg on Iraq deliberately targeted all ‘indispensable to survival’.

Within twenty four hours, most was destroyed. The electricity went off within two hours, leaving patients on life support machines and vital equipment, babies in incubators, or those on oxygen to die. Refrigerators defrosted, all medicine needing refrigeration, blood banks and vital saline solutions for the injured were destroyed. Food rotted and between the bombing and the bank closures (latter for fear of looting) replacements were scarce to unbuyable.

In Najav, seventy dialysis patients, ‘old friends’, said the senior nurse in charge of the unit, died for want of electricity. The water supply was deliberately destroyed, parts denied subsequently by the pathetic, US-UK dominated Sanctions Committee – a Committee without a backbone between them – and remains lethal to this day.

This was the plan by US Central Command, it seems, all along. The destruction of Iraq’s water system has been described by Professor Nagy and Stephanie Miller as: ‘a slow motion holocaust’. Few could have put it better.

(See: How the US deliberately destroyed Iraq’s water. by Thomas J Nagy : http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/NAG108A.html)

The telecommunications tower was also one of the earliest casualties, an elegant, soaring, structure on the edge of Baghdad’s Mansur district. It lay, broken and crumpled, as did the remains of those who worked inside it. Iraq was thus cut off from the world, the extent of the bombing and atrocities largely unknown for considerable time. Iraqis throughout the world had no way of knowing if their families, friends, loves, were dead or alive. Radio and television stations across Iraq were blitzed so no warnings to populus could be given (journalists too have special protection in wars, but decision makers, seemingly are not only illiterate, but ignore legalities.)

Hospitals, health clinics, schools and kindergartens were bombed, education eradicated so totally that the stores for educational materials, in buildings separate from the schools (usually in a central distribution point some miles away) were also bombed. Agriculture in all forms was deliberately targeted. Chicken farms bombed, flocks of sheep and goats, broadly half of all buffalo were killed, dairy farms obliterated. Crops, food processing factories reduced to rubble. A war crime stupendous in its immensity, for which not one murderous, genocidal, infanticidal, decision maker or pilot has stood trial.

Pharmaceutical factories were bombed, the medical syringe factory was destroyed. And in an especially psychotic policy, the countries who were Iraq’s trading partners and had built factories and installations for the country, bombed those which they had built. America’s gung-ho goons whooped over bombing the Pepsi and Coca Cola factories. ‘Bravery’ doesn’t come more deviant, sub-normal and retarded than that.

Due to the use of defoliants and napalm, half of all Iraq’s trees, including the great, ancient palms, died. Remaining palms did not bear their succulent fruit for about five years. In the tranquil, family farming settlements, amongst the palms, women and livestock alike aborted and often died. Survivors consistently described a ‘vapor’ coming from the ‘planes, then the horrific aftermath, affecting those living in the shelter of the palm groves or copses of trees, where dwellers settled for relative cool from Iraq’s searing summers. And, of course, in this decimation from above, which dropped more ordinance daily than was dropped daily in the second world war, five times more explosive power was dropped than on Hiroshima.

The weapons used were depleted uranium, which continues to irradiate Iraq and the region, the people, flora and fauna -and will continue to do so for four and a half billion years. ‘..protection of the natural environment against widespread, long term and severe damage’, is another absolute dictate under the Geneva Convention. It proscribes absolutely ‘… damage to the natural environment (prejucing) the health and survival of the population.’ Contraventions don’t come bigger than condemning inestimable generations yet unborn, to death and deformity. The Nuremberg Principles are exercised by the treatment of both civilians and prisoners and the: ‘… murder or ill treatment …of prisoners of war … further, extermination … and other inhuman acts against any civilian population’.

The ‘inhuman acts’, committed against the Iraqi people in 1991 constitute war crimes which, since no one was brought to justice, one can only hope haunt those responsible for all time.

The slaughter on the Basra Road, after the ceasefire, the fleeing civilians and retreating troops, ripped to pieces, or incinerated in General Norman Schwartzkop’s ‘turkey shoot’. The whole war, of course, was nothing else. Saddam Hussein had offered, indeed, started to retreat from Kuwait before the carnage began, but as ever, for the United States, conciliation was ‘too late’. Buses, lorries, cars were also targeted throughout the forty two day massacre. Lorries carrying medicines, meat, essentials were burned, with their drivers. Western troops took their repulsive ‘trophy photos’, with the pathetic remains of the incinerated and dismembered.

When the (UK) Observer, to its credit, printed the picture which became the symbol of the 1991 atrocities, the Iraqi soldier, with his near melted face welded to the windscreen of his vehicle, there was an outcry. The sensitivities of readers should not be exposed to such horrors. Maggie O’Kane, writing in the Guardian Weekly (16th December 1995) describes searingly, reality. Relatives, praying, hope against hope, that those they loved, had somehow miraculously survived the hadean inferno that was the Basra Road massacre. “On the day the war ended, at a bus station south of Baghdad, dusk was falling and the road was covered with weeping women.

The Iraqi survivors of the `turkey shoot’ on the Basra Road were crawling home with fresh running wounds. Their women were throwing themselves at the battered minibuses and trucks, pulling, pleading, begging. `Where is he, have you seen him ? Is he not with you ?’ Some fell to their knees on the road when they heard the news.

Others kept running from bus, to truck, to car, looking for their husbands, their sons or their lovers – the 37,000 Iraqi soldiers who would not come back. It went on all night and it was the most desperate and moving scene I have ever witnessed.” There was worse. Think of the excesses of horrors the Western media has deluged its readers with over the years, those perpetrated by people of other cultures, with other features: Stalin, Pol Pot, indeed Saddam Hussein and consider this in Maggie O’Kane’s article: ‘

When Sergeant Joe Queen returned to his home town of Bryson City North California, after the Gulf war, the first thing he saw was a huge banner draped outside Hardees Burger Restaurant, which read: `Welcome Home Joe Queen.’ Joe Queen, who’d been awarded a bronze star, wanted to chill out after the war, but Bryson City wouldn’t let him Joe, 19-years old, had gone straight from Desert Storm to become one of the first American troops to cross the Saudi border in an armored bulldozer. His job was to bury the Iraqis alive in their trenches and then cover over the trenches real smooth so the rest of the Big Red One, as The First Armored Mechanized Brigade is called, could come nice and easy behind him. ‘Joe Queen doesn’t know how many Iraqi troops he buried alive on the front line.

But five years later, in his military base in Georgia, he remembers well how it worked:

`The sand was so soft that once the blade hits the sand it just caves in right on the sides, so we never did go back and forth. So you are traveling at five, six, seven miles an hour just moving along the trench… You don’t see him. You’re up there in the half hatch and you know what you got to do. You did it so much you could close your eyes and do it… I don’t think they had any idea because the look on their faces as we came through the berm was just a look of shock. `While I was retreating, I saw some of the soldiers trying to surrender, but they were buried. There were two kinds of bulldozers, real ones, actual ones, and also they had tanks and they put something like a bulldozer blade in front of them. Some of the soldiers were walking towards the troops holding their arms up to surrender and the tanks moved in and killed them. They dug a hole in the ground and then they buried the soldiers and leveled it.’ One survivor described the friends buried alive, who he had laughed with, eaten with …’I really don’t know how to describe it. We were friends. I ate with some of them. I talked to some of them. I cannot express how I felt at that moment….. I saw one soldier and his body was just torn apart by a bulldozer. The upper part was on one side and the lower on the other side.’

I hope your nightmares and those of your colleagues haunt for all time Joe Queen. May the specter of those for whose live burial you and your murderous colleagues were responsible, follow in all your footsteps, for all time.

These mass graves also carry the names of the leaders who ordered the decimation of Iraq in 1991,their military Commanders and soldiers, on every one of them. Ironically, the mass graves of Saddam Hussein have seemingly not materialized, just war graves and those from the uprising encouraged by the US and UK at the end of the 1991 decimation. The war, of course, never ended. The thirteen year subsequent embargo cost maybe one and a quarter million lives.

Additionally, the US and UK, bombed Iraq (illegally) until the (illegal) invasion of 2003. In 2002, they stepped up their destruction of life, limb and of entire housing projects with families within, children playing, doing homework, flocks of sheep and goats with their child shepherds. ‘Approximately a year before the United States initiated Operation Southern Focus, as a change to its response strategy, by increasing the overall number of missions and selecting targets throughout the no-fly zones to disrupt the military command structure in Iraq. The weight of bombs dropped increased from none in March 2002 and 0.3 in April 2002 to between 8 and 14 tons per month in May-August, reaching a pre-war peak of 54.6 tons in September 2002.’ (Wikipedia.)

A recent study by the Centre for Public Integrity, has also uncovered lies of impeachable stature, leading to invasion, by the Bush Administration..

‘The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them, or had links to al Qaeda, or both. ‘Bush led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq’s links to al Qaeda, the study found. That was second only to Powell’s 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al Qaeda.’ (http://www.publicintegrity.org)Iraq’s post invasion (2003-2007) excess under five mortality has been estimated at over one million. In Afghanistan, post invasion, at 1.9 million (2001-2007.)

For another humanitarian abomination of our time, the Israeli siege of the Gaza strip (June 2007 and ongoing) total excess death figures are elusive. CIA figures for infant mortality, however (2004) are woeful at 23.54 per thousand births. Sweden (2007) just 2.76 per thousand births. Given Israel’s withdrawal of electricity and just about all needed to sustain life since last June, some serious statistical data is needed – and relentless and absolute demands for humanity and human rights for our global neighbors in Gaza, Iraq and Afghanistan, the forgotten of Lebanon’s ‘Simmer Rain’ decimation, by ‘we the people …’ Like Joe Queen’s genocidal actions, the atrocities committed in these countries are being carried out in our name. ‘Silence is complicity’. (For much more shameful complicity – since 1950 – please see Dr Gideon Polya: ‘Body Count’, an academic, key and indispensable work: http://www.globalbodycount.blogspot.com)‘There was no one left to kill’, declared General Norman Schwartzkopf after the Basra Road bloodbath, where even the injured holding white flags, and doctors accompanying them were obliterated. ‘Morally, we won’, an Iraqi doctor told me shortly afterwards. Indeed. ‘We are the new Jews’, is an oft heard, Arab refrain now.

As I write, on Holocaust Memorial Day, it is impossible not to reflect that is does not take forced labor camps, forced transport and Zyclon B to create a holocaust. When the figures of the dead in Iraq, Afghanistan and Gaza, reach six million, as the world stands by, will they too get their own Holocaust Memorial Day? Will we all, regardless of color or creed, ever learn, before it is too late?

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7920