News: Americas
» 2009
December 30, 2010
Research links rise in Falluja birth defects and cancers to US assault
A study examining the causes of a dramatic spike in birth defects in the Iraqi city of Falluja has for the first time concluded that genetic damage could have been caused by weaponry used in US assaults that took place six years ago. The research, which will be published next week, confirms earlier estimates revealed by the Guardian of a major, unexplained rise in cancers and chronic neural-tube, cardiac and skeletal defects in newborns. The authors found that malformations are close to 11 times higher than normal rates, and rose to unprecedented levels in the first half of this year – a period that had not been surveyed in earlier reports.
Read article in The Guardian (UK)
December 22, 2010
United States Ratifies Nuclear Arms Treaty with Russia
The U.S. Senate ratified a nuclear arms reduction pact with Russia on Wednesday by a strong bipartisan vote of 71 to 26. The New START treaty was one of the last measures approved during a busy post-election, end-of-year session.
Read article on the Voice of America news website (USA)
December 21, 2010
F.C.C. Approves Net Rules and Braces for Fight
Want to watch hours of YouTube videos or sort through Facebook photos on the computer? Your Internet providers would be forbidden from blocking you under rules approved by the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday. But if you want to do the same on your cellphone, you may not have the same protections. The debate over the rules, intended to preserve open access to the Internet, seems to have resulted in a classic Washington solution — the kind that pleases no one on either side of the issue. Verizon and other service providers would prefer no government involvement. Public interest advocates think the rules stop far short of ensuring free speech.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
December 16, 2010
How to Survive a Nuclear Attack
Touching on a subject most people prefer to avoid, the Obama administration is planning to educate the public about dealing with the effects of a nuclear bomb. "We have to get past the mental block that says it's too terrible to think about," W. Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told the New York Times. "We have to be ready to deal with it." Martin Hellman, professor emeritus of electrical engineering at Stanford and co-inventor of public key cryptography, who has been focusing on nuclear deterrence for the past 25 years, said that a baby born today, with an expected lifetime of 80 years, faces a greater than 50-50 chance that a nuclear weapon attack will occur unless the number of weapons and available weapons-grade material is radically reduced.
Read article on the CBS News website (USA)
December 13, 2010
Obama signs child nutrition bill, championed by the first lady
The Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 is intended to provide more healthful school meals to a great number of students.
With his wife by his side, President Obama on Monday signed the child nutrition bill, strongly pushed by the first lady, who has made nutrition part of her campaign to help the young get healthy. Speaking at Harriet Tubman Elementary School, President Obama praised the bill as a rare example of bipartisan political cooperation as both parties backed the measure designed to provide better school meals to more students and to regulate those meals to make them more healthful.
Read article in the LA Times (USA)
December 11, 2010
Venezuela's Chavez to move into Gaddafi tent
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says he is going to govern temporarily from a tent so that families made homeless by recent floods can take refuge in his office. Mr Chavez said he would have a Bedouin tent given to him by the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi put up in the garden of the presidential palace.
Read article on the BBC News website (UK)
December 11, 2010
A Secretive Banking Elite Rules Trading in Derivatives
On the third Wednesday of every month, the nine members of an elite Wall Street society gather in Midtown Manhattan. The men share a common goal: to protect the interests of big banks in the vast market for derivatives, one of the most profitable — and controversial — fields in finance. They also share a common secret: The details of their meetings, even their identities, have been strictly confidential. Drawn from giants like JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the bankers form a powerful committee that helps oversee trading in derivatives, instruments which, like insurance, are used to hedge risk. In theory, this group exists to safeguard the integrity of the multitrillion-dollar market. In practice, it also defends the dominance of the big banks.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
December 10, 2010
Groups say US FCC proposal not real net neutrality
WASHINGTON - The open Internet principles laid out by the top U.S. telecommunications regulator last week fall short of "real" net neutrality, more than 80 groups said in a letter on Friday. Public interest groups, businesses and civil rights groups signed the letter to the Federal Communications Commission, saying net neutrality rules should ban paid prioritization of online content. They also said the framework FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski laid out last week gave wireless carriers too much freedom to police Internet traffic.
Read news report at reuters.com
Comment: The paid prioritizing of online content would dramatically restrict your freedom to learn about cutting-edge research in natural health, the pharmaceutical business with disease and the Nazi roots of the Brussels EU. Significantly, therefore, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission is slated to vote on Net Neutrality on Dec. 21. To support the campaign to protect internet freedom and net neutrality, visit the Save The Internet website.
December 5, 2010
Unearthing the 1996 Pfizer tragedy
The global outrage triggered by the 1996 trovafloxacin clinical trial tragedy, which resulted in the untimely demise of 11 voiceless children in kano at the hands of the researchers of the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Incorporated is still raising more questions than answers. At the heart of the matter is government’s criminal neglect of its citizens and the ensuing inability to protect their lives and guarantee their welfare. This is reflected in the secrecy which surrounds the process through which the Federal Government has chosen to withdraw the $6billion (dollars) suit and charges initially filed against the company. As the soap-opera of a scam unfolds the arrowhead of the deal, Michael Aondoakaa, Nigeria’s erstwhile Attorney General and Minister of Justice is attempting to wash his hands, Herod-like off the money surreptitiously collected from Pfizer. Instead, he argues that the counsels who represented the Federal Government being more acquainted with the case are better placed to enlighten the public. However, on their part, both the counsels and officials of Pfizer have refused to disclose details of the deal. The terms of the settlement, they insist was covered by a ‘standard confidentiality clause.’ This, to us is reprehensible.
Read article in the Daily Independent (Nigeria)
November 29, 2010
US lethal injection drug faces UK export restrictions
Business Secretary Vince Cable has restricted the export of a drug used to execute prisoners in the United States. The decision, which reverses the UK government's previous position, came amid a legal battle over sodium thiopental manufactured in Europe. Mr Cable's lawyers had told the High Court they couldn't stop exports because the drug had legitimate uses. However, he changed that position after seeing evidence that the drug was only being exported for use on death row.
Read article on the BBC News website (UK)
Comment: Whilst the legal action before the British courts has not definitively established the source of the sodium thiopental being exported to the U.S. for use in executions, U.S. officials have now admitted they obtained it from Britain. Thus far, however, they have refused to explain precisely how it got to the U.S. or who supplied it to them. Significantly, therefore, in California, a San Francisco judge has now ordered state officials to explain how they obtained fresh stocks of sodium thiopental given that is no longer available in the U.S. With the pharmaceutical industry already having been proven to have supplied the chemicals that killed tens of thousands of prisoners at the Auschwitz WWII concentration camp, it is high time that all modern-day drug companies selling drugs for use in executions are publicly exposed.
November 24, 2010
China, Russia quit dollar
China and Russia have decided to renounce the US dollar and resort to using their own currencies for bilateral trade, Premier Wen Jiabao and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin announced late on Tuesday. Chinese experts said the move reflected closer relations between Beijing and Moscow and is not aimed at challenging the dollar, but to protect their domestic economies. "About trade settlement, we have decided to use our own currencies," Putin said at a joint news conference with Wen in St. Petersburg. The two countries were accustomed to using other currencies, especially the dollar, for bilateral trade. Since the financial crisis, however, high-ranking officials on both sides began to explore other possibilities. The yuan has now started trading against the Russian rouble in the Chinese interbank market, while the renminbi will soon be allowed to trade against the rouble in Russia, Putin said.
Read article on the China Daily website (China)
November 17, 2010
Bid to ban export of 'execution' drug
An attempt will be made at the High Court today to prevent a British company exporting a drug which could be used in the execution of US prisoners. Solicitors representing two clients on Death Row and human rights group Reprieve are challenging Business Secretary Vince Cable's refusal to ban the overseas sale of sodium thiopental. The strong painkiller is given as the first of a cocktail of three drugs used in US state lethal injections. London-based solicitors firm Leigh Day & Co, acting for prisoners Edmund Zagorski and Ralph Baze, argue that Mr Cable's refusal was wrong in law. Leigh Day says the case arises from the state execution in Arizona of Jeffrey Landrigan on October 25.
Read article in The Independent (UK)
Comment: Archimedes Pharma, a British pharmaceutical company, is suspected to be the source of the sodium thiopental used in the execution of death-row prisoners in the US. Despite being fully aware of this, Vince Cable, the UK government’s Business Secretary, has steadfastly refused to use his powers under the UK’s Export Control Act to place an immediate ban on it being sold to the US for use in executions. As such, with the pharmaceutical industry already having been proven to have supplied the chemicals that killed tens of thousands of prisoners at the Auschwitz WWII concentration camp, some might argue that these and other possible links between the modern-day industry and executions are anything but surprising.
November 17, 2010
A Hedge Fund Republic?
Earlier this month, I offended a number of readers with a column suggesting that if you want to see rapacious income inequality, you no longer need to visit a banana republic. You can just look around. My point was that the wealthiest plutocrats now actually control a greater share of the pie in the United States than in historically unstable countries like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana. But readers protested that this was glib and unfair, and after reviewing the evidence I regretfully confess that they have a point. That’s right: I may have wronged the banana republics. You see, some Latin Americans were indignant at what they saw as an invidious and hurtful comparison. The truth is that Latin America has matured and become more equal in recent decades, even as the distribution in the United States has become steadily more unequal.
Read article by Nicholas D. Kristof in the New York Times (USA)
November 13, 2010
Obama Calls Arms Treaty a Priority
YOKOHAMA, Japan — President Obama ended a 10-day diplomatic and economic journey through Asia on a personal note Sunday, visiting a colossal copper Buddha that he had seen as a 6-year-old boy, then headed for Washington to confront the lame-duck Congress on Monday. He told President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia here that his “top priority” on foreign policy for the Congressional session is ratification of their new arms control treaty, which is stalled in the Senate.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
November 13, 2010
Nazis Were Given ‘Safe Haven’ in U.S., Report Says
WASHINGTON — A secret history of the United States government’s Nazi-hunting operation concludes that American intelligence officials created a “safe haven” in the United States for Nazis and their collaborators after World War II, and it details decades of clashes, often hidden, with other nations over war criminals here and abroad. The 600-page report, which the Justice Department has tried to keep secret for four years, provides new evidence about more than two dozen of the most notorious Nazi cases of the last three decades.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
November 10, 2010
George Bush could face arrest over sanctioning torture, says leading human rights lawyer
George Bush could face arrest abroad after his frank admissions on waterboarding, a leading human rights lawyers has claimed. Geoffrey Robertson said the former President was now at risk of being detained having sanctioned the controversial interrogation technique. ‘Ignorance of the law is no defence,’ he said. ‘There are countries where proceedings might be instituted against him.’
Read article in the Daily Mail (UK)
Comment: The phrase “enhanced interrogation techniques” -- a bureaucratic euphemism for torture techniques such as waterboarding -- represents virtually a literal translation of the term used for similar purposes by the German Gestapo during WWII,” Verschärfte Vernehmung.” Notably, therefore, Bush’s grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, is alleged to have been a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany. Moreover, it has been suggested by some that the money Prescott Bush made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty.
November 6, 2010
Our Banana Republic
In my reporting, I regularly travel to banana republics notorious for their inequality. In some of these plutocracies, the richest 1 percent of the population gobbles up 20 percent of the national pie. But guess what? You no longer need to travel to distant and dangerous countries to observe such rapacious inequality. We now have it right here at home — and in the aftermath of Tuesday’s election, it may get worse. The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976. As Timothy Noah of Slate noted in an excellent series on inequality, the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana. C.E.O.’s of the largest American companies earned an average of 42 times as much as the average worker in 1980, but 531 times as much in 2001. Perhaps the most astounding statistic is this: From 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.
Read article by Nicholas D. Kristof in the New York Times (USA)
October 28, 2010
British company link to drug used in execution
The suspected source of the drug used in the execution of death-row prisoners in the US has been identified as a British company in Berkshire. Archimedes Pharma – which is based in Reading and describes itself as a "fast-growing specialty pharmaceutical business marketing a portfolio of products to specialist prescribers" – confirmed last night that it did produce the drug sodium thiopental. But it denied it was involved in the export of the drug to the United States. The company's directors are now under pressure to disclose the identity of all third parties that may have supplied the state of Arizona, which yesterday used a lethal injection to put to death the convicted murderer Jeffrey Landrigan.
Read article in the Independent (UK)
Comment: Nuremberg Pharma Tribunal records clearly show that the deadly medical experiments conducted in Auschwitz and other WWII concentration camps were contracted by the pharmaceutical divisions of IG Farben Cartel members Bayer and Hoechst. The “drugs” injected into tens of thousands of innocent inmates were previously untested chemicals patented by Bayer and other IG Farben firms. Most of the victims died during these cruel experiments. Those who survived were frequently sent to the gas chambers. Even the pellets for the gassing – Zyklon B – were provided by subsidiaries of IG Farben. As such, viewed in this historical light, some might argue that suspected links between the modern-day pharmaceutical industry and the supply of drugs used to execute prisoners are anything but surprising.
October 25, 2010
The Tea Party movement: deluded and inspired by billionaires
By funding numerous rightwing organisations, the mega-rich Koch brothers have duped millions into supporting big business
The Tea Party movement is remarkable in two respects. It is one of the biggest exercises in false consciousness the world has seen – and the biggest Astroturf operation in history. These accomplishments are closely related. An Astroturf campaign is a fake grassroots movement: it purports to be a spontaneous uprising of concerned citizens, but in reality it is founded and funded by elite interests. Some Astroturf campaigns have no grassroots component at all. Others catalyse and direct real mobilisations. The Tea Party belongs in the second category. It is mostly composed of passionate, well-meaning people who think they are fighting elite power, unaware that they have been organised by the very interests they believe they are confronting. We now have powerful evidence that the movement was established and has been guided with the help of money from billionaires and big business.
Read article by George Monbiot in The Guardian (UK)
Comment: To understand how the goal of special interests – namely, the Oil and Drug Cartel – in the US today is to transform democratic society into a corporate dictatorship, thus enabling multi-trillion dollar corporations to exert direct control over the political executive and the country, click here to read the latest Open Letter by Dr. Rath, published 1 November in the New York Times.
October 6, 2010
Hitler's Nuremberg Laws End Convoluted Journey at National Archives
Original Nazi Documents Returned to Govt. Hands, Displayed Publicly for First Time
Martin Dannenberg, an Army intelligence officer, was sitting in a German beer hall in April 1945 when a local man approached him, asking for help getting out of the war-torn country. In exchange, he promised him something that would be highly valuable to the Americans. Intrigued, Dannenberg followed the man he called Uncle Hans to a bank vault in the town of Eichstatt, where he found a swastika-embossed envelope containing four of the most symbolic records from the war: original copies of the Nuremberg Laws. The laws, which were signed by Adolf Hitler 75 years ago last month, outlawed marriages and sex between Jews and citizens of "German blood;" stripped Jews of their German citizenship; and established the swastika as the official flag of the Third Reich. They established the legal underpinnings for marginalization of Jews and ultimately set into motion the Holocaust, historians say.
Read article on the ABC News website (USA)
Comment: The placing of the Nuremberg Laws in the U.S. National Archives is a timely reminder that Walter Hallstein, founding president of the European Commission and key architect of the ‘Brussels EU’ had, in 1939, openly called for their imposition in the Nazi-occupied countries as a top priority. Following his career as a prominent law professor under the Nazis, Hallstein held the post of EU Commission President from 1958 to 1967. To learn more about Hallstein and the Nazi roots of the ‘Brussels EU’, click here.
October 6, 2010
Argentina's Roundup Human Tragedy
Ten years of GM soy and glyphosate poisoning have escalated the rates of cancer and birth defects
Argentina has become a giant experiment in farming genetically modified (GM) Roundup Ready (RR) soy, engineered to be tolerant to Roundup, Monsanto’s formulation of the herbicide glyphosate. The Argentine government, eager to pull the country out of a deep economic recession in the 1990s, restructured its economy around GM soy grown for export, most of which goes to feed livestock in Europe. In 2009, GM soy was planted on 19 million hectares - over half of Argentina’s cultivated land - and sprayed with 200 million litres of glyphosate herbicide. Spraying is often carried out from the air, causing problems of drift.
Read article on the Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) website (UK)
October 2, 2010
U.S. admits its scientists infected Guatemalans with syphilis
Exposing a dark page in its history, the U.S. government acknowledged Friday that its scientists had infected hundreds of Guatemalans with syphilis in experiments conducted from 1946 to 1948 in "appalling violations" of medical ethics.
Read article on the St. Louis Today website (USA)
Comment: For anybody who has innocently been assuming that criminal experiments conducted by or on behalf of the pharmaceutical, chemical and weapons industries had ceased after those carried out by the IG Farben cartel during WWII, the above story provides definitive proof that this is not in fact the case. Worse still, nor is this latest example even an isolated incident. Between 1932 and 1972, for example, in the notorious “Tuskegee Experiment”, U.S. Public Health Service doctors secretly enticed around 400 poor black men into a study whose aim, unknown to the participants, was to observe the natural progression of untreated syphilis. For 40 years, the men were deliberately never told they had syphilis and were never treated for it. Similarly, in South-West England, scientists from Porton Down sprayed toxic chemicals into the air around Bristol in the early 1960s to analyze how they dispersed, with passers-by and lunchtime shoppers knowingly being exposed and used as guinea pigs. In other tests, British soldiers recruited as volunteers to test "cold remedies" at Porton Down were instead given forms of the sarin nerve agent developed by the Nazis in World War II. To help put a stop to current examples of such deceptions, such as the Pharma Cartel's AIDS Genocide, please support the Call for a Second Nuremberg Tribunal.
September 20, 2010
"Manufacturing Dissent": the Anti-globalization Movement is Funded by the Corporate Elites
Under contemporary capitalism, the illusion of democracy must prevail. It is in the interest of the corporate elites to accept dissent and protest as a feature of the system inasmuch as they do not threaten the established social order. The purpose is not to repress dissent, but, on the contrary, to shape and mould the protest movement, to set the outer limits of dissent. To maintain their legitimacy, the economic elites favor limited and controlled forms of opposition, with a view to preventing the development of radical forms of protest, which might shake the very foundations and institutions of global capitalism. In other words, "manufacturing dissent" acts as a "safety valve", which protects and sustains the New World Order. To be effective, however, the process of "manufacturing dissent" must be carefully regulated and monitored by those who are the object of the protest movement.
Read article by Michel Chossudovsky on the Centre for Research on Globalization website
September 16, 2010
Blackwater Spied for Disney, Monsanto, Royal Caribbean
Controversial private security firm Xe (nee Blackwater) has long had a checkered reputation. Now a new article in the leftist magazine The Nation says that in addition to its involvement in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Blackwater operated through a related firm called Total Intelligence Solutions to perform work for a range of American corporations with international dealings, including Monsanto, Chevron, Royal Caribbean cruises and Walt Disney.
Read article at aolnews.com
September 8, 2010
Nuremberg is valid precedent for Iraq trials
Recently in Dublin, anti-war protesters threw eggs and shoes at Tony Blair. During a TV interview, he showed a flash of exasperation when asked to explain why people thought that he was a war criminal. His annoyance at the question is little consolation for the thousands of families who lost loved ones during that illegal war. Blair should be tried under principles established for the Nuremberg trials, together with former president George W Bush and his advisers who orchestrated the Iraq war. The Nuremberg Principles, a set of guidelines established after World War II to try Nazi party members, were developed to determine what constitutes a war crime. Those principles could also be applied today, when judging the conditions that led to the Iraq war and in the process to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, many of them children, and to the devastation of a country’s infrastructure.
Read article by Dr Cesar Chelala, MD, PhD, in the Gulf Times (Qatar)
August 25, 2010
BP 'ignored concerns about oil well'
BP ignored the concerns of its contractor over the cementing of the Deepwater Horizon well shortly before it ruptured, a US hearing was told. Halliburton official Jesse Gagliano told US federal investigators in Houston, Texas, that he was at odds with the oil giant over the need for additional centralisers - devices used to help plug a well.
Read article in The Independent (UK)
Comment: The Gulf of Mexico oil spill is the largest oil spill in US history and was caused by British Petroleum (BP), a prominent member of the international Oil Cartel. To understand who benefits from this crisis, click here.
August 16, 2010
Mankind is using up global resources faster than ever
The growing world population and increasing consumption has pushed the world into ‘eco-debt’ a month earlier this year, according to the latest statistics on global resources. Think tank the New Economics Foundation (NEF) look at how much food, fuel and other resources are consumed by humans every year. They then compare it to how much the world can provide without threatening the ability of important ecosystems like oceans and rainforests to recover. This year the moment we start eating into nature's capital or ‘Earth Overshoot Day’ will fall on 21st August, a full month earlier than last year, when resources were used up by 23rd September.
Read article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)
August 6, 2010
Google accused of betraying internet golden rule in net neutrality row
Google, the internet giant, has been accused of betraying one of the most widely accepted "laws" of the internet called net neutrality; the principle that everyone has equal access. The firm has admitted that it has been in talks with the US communications provider Verizon and even agreed an outline plan on how internet traffic should be carried over networks. However, many have already voiced fears that if the plan becomes public, it could serve as a blueprint for how to carve up the internet and sell the best performance to the highest bidder.
Read article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)
Comment: Internet freedom advocates have described this plan as the "doomsday scenario" that "marks the beginning of the end of the internet as you know it". In short, the Google/Verizon pact potentially sets the stage for a corporate takeover of the Internet that could, in future, restrict your freedom to learn about cutting-edge research in natural health, the pharmaceutical business with disease and the Nazi roots of the Brussels EU. To learn about the campaign to protect internet freedom and net neutrality, click here.
July 27, 2010
Iraq inquiry: Former UN inspector Blix says war illegal
The UN's former chief weapons inspector Hans Blix has said it is his "firm view" that the Iraq war was illegal.
Read article on the BBC News website (UK)
July 24, 2010
Toxic legacy of US assault on Fallujah 'worse than Hiroshima'
The shocking rates of infant mortality and cancer in Iraqi city raise new questions about battle
Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study. Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have complained since 2005 of being overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. They said they were also seeing far more cancers than they did before the battle for Fallujah between US troops and insurgents. Their claims have been supported by a survey showing a four-fold increase in all cancers and a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in under-14s. Infant mortality in the city is more than four times higher than in neighbouring Jordan and eight times higher than in Kuwait.
Read article in The Independent (UK)
June 30, 2010
Iraq inquiry: secret documents showing Tony Blair’s frustration published
Tony Blair’s irritation and frustration at being told that going to war in Iraq would be illegal have been made public with the unprecedented release of top secret Government documents. On one note, written six weeks before the March 2003 invasion, the then-prime minister scrawled “I just do not understand this” alongside a warning from Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, that military force would be illegal without a fresh United Nations resolution.
Read article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)
June 30, 2010
Diplomat questions Blair's handling of Bush in runup to Iraq war
Lord Jay tells Chilcot inquiry Tony Blair gave commitments to US president about British involvement
Britain's senior diplomat at the time of the Iraq war has questioned how Tony Blair conducted his dealings with the then US president, George W Bush, in the runup to the conflict, during this morning's session at the Chilcot inquiry in central London. Lord Jay of Ewelme, who was head of the Foreign Office as permanent secretary there between 2002 and 2006, told the inquiry that the former prime minister gave commitments about Britain's support for the war in advance that he would not have given himself. His evidence also disclosed that there was internal debate and conflict within the Foreign Office about the legality of the war and that its senior legal advisers were strongly opposed to the conflict without a second UN resolution.
Read article in the Guardian (UK)
June 29, 2010
Britain's Iraq War Inquiry Resumes
Britain's Iraq war inquiry began again on Tuesday after suspending its hearings for the country's general elections. Former U.N. inspector Hans Blix is among those called to appear before the five-member panel in the coming weeks.
Read article on the Voice of America news website (USA)
June 29, 2010
Sir John Chilcot asks lawyers: Was Iraq war legal?
An official verdict on the legality of the Iraq war crept closer today after the Chilcot inquiry called for international lawyers to submit their views on the conflict. Resuming public hearings after a break for the general election, Iraq Inquiry chairman Sir John Chilcot issued an “open invitation” to legal experts to give their judgments on the US-UK invasion in 2003.
Read article in the London Evening Standard (UK)
Comment: Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary-General at the time of the US-UK invasion of Iraq, openly stated in 2004 that it was an illegal act that contravened the UN charter. We share this opinion and continue to call for former U.S. President George W. Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to be held responsible for the deaths of more than one million people in Iraq and put on trial for genocide and other crimes against humanity.
June 10, 2010
Former Nuremberg prosecutor chides U.S., China, Russia
Kampala, Uganda -- One of the attorneys who prosecuted Nazi war criminals at the end of World War II cautioned the United States, Russia and China on Wednesday over their opposition to the final inclusion of "crimes of aggression" in the mandate for the International Criminal Court. "Crimes of aggression" were initially included in the court's Rome Statute of 1998, but unlike the other three crimes put under the tribunal's jurisdiction -- genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes -- crimes of aggression were not defined and jurisdictional conditions were not set. A review conference, which began May 31 in Kampala and continues through Friday, hopes to accept a proposal that will finally give the court what it needs to try cases of crimes against aggression. But the United States, Russia and China have balked. "A country should not commit crimes for its own benefit thinking no one will question it," said Benjamin Ferencz, a former chief prosecutor during the 1946 Nuremberg Tribunal that brought top Nazi war officials to justice. "This is the time all nations in the world should come in full support of the crime of aggression to be part of crimes tried by ICC so that we put to past impunity and open a new chapter to accountability," he said.
Read article at cnn.com
Comment: CNN reports that a total of 33 African nations now want former U.S. President George W. Bush and his close ally former British Prime Minister Tony Blair prosecuted for their invasion of Iraq in 2002. In particular, attorneys for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir are urging the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, to indict Bush and Blair for lying to the world regarding the existence of weapons of mass destruction to support the invasion.
June 2, 2010
Nuclear Option on Gulf Oil Spill? No Way, U.S. Says
The chatter began weeks ago as armchair engineers brainstormed for ways to stop the torrent of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico: What about nuking the well? Decades ago, the Soviet Union reportedly used nuclear blasts to successfully seal off runaway gas wells, inserting a bomb deep underground and letting its fiery heat melt the surrounding rock to shut off the flow. Why not try it here? The idea has gained fans with each failed attempt to stem the leak and each new setback — on Wednesday, the latest rescue effort stalled when a wire saw being used to slice through the riser pipe got stuck. “Probably the only thing we can do is create a weapon system and send it down 18,000 feet and detonate it, hopefully encasing the oil,” Matt Simmons, a Houston energy expert and investment banker, told Bloomberg News on Friday, attributing the nuclear idea to “all the best scientists.” Or as the CNN reporter John Roberts suggested last week, “Drill a hole, drop a nuke in and seal up the well.” This week, with the failure of the “top kill” attempt, the buzz had grown loud enough that federal officials felt compelled to respond. Stephanie Mueller, a spokeswoman for the Energy Department, said that neither Energy Secretary Steven Chu nor anyone else was thinking about a nuclear blast under the gulf. The nuclear option was not — and never had been — on the table, federal officials said. “It’s crazy,” one senior official said.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
May 27, 2010
Fidel Castro Awarded Highest Decoration of Ecuadorean Parliament
The Ecuadorean Parliament bestowed its highest award —the Gen. Eloy Alfaro Delgado Decoration— on the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro. The distinction was received on behalf of Fidel by Cuban First Vice President Jose Ramon Machado from the hands of the president of the Ecuadorean legislative body, Fernando Cordero Cueva, during a ceremony held at Havana’s Revolution Palace. “The people’s revolution in Ecuador and all the ongoing process of changes and integration that we are experiencing in Latin America could hardly be conceived without Fidel and Cuba,” said Cordero Cueva.
Read article on the website of the Cuban News Agency (Cuba)
May 20, 2010
Cannes hears call for ‘war criminals’ Bush, Blair to face trial
CANNES, France — Director Ken Loach, in Cannes with his Iraq war film, called Thursday for the "war criminals" George W. Bush and Tony Blair to be tried for launching the invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein. "We have to keep pursuing Blair, Bush and the others until we have them in the dock," he said as he arrived for a red carpet premiere of his film "Route Irish" which is in the running for the festival's Palme d'Or top prize. "It's certainly true that the people who started the war, who are war criminals, have not been called to account," said Loach, whose new work probes the murky world of private security contractors in Iraq.
Read article on the Raw Story website (USA)
May 2, 2010
Fears for crops as shock figures from America show scale of bee catastrophe
The world may be on the brink of biological disaster after news that a third of US bee colonies did not survive the winter
Disturbing evidence that honeybees are in terminal decline has emerged from the United States where, for the fourth year in a row, more than a third of colonies have failed to survive the winter. The decline of the country's estimated 2.4 million beehives began in 2006, when a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD) led to the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of colonies. Since then more than three million colonies in the US and billions of honeybees worldwide have died and scientists are no nearer to knowing what is causing the catastrophic fall in numbers.
Read article in the Guardian (UK)
Comment: Colony collapse disorder is now a serious worldwide problem. Significantly, therefore, evidence in the United States and Europe has linked pesticides produced by Bayer CropScience to the deaths of bees. In recognition of this, in the UK, a group of members of the British Bee Keepers Association has recently split from the organization and criticized the sponsorship deals it has with companies such as Bayer CropScience and Syngenta, from whom it receives around £17,500 pounds-a-year in funding.
April 22, 2010
European big business admits to lobbying Washington, but not Brussels
Many of Europe's biggest corporations are avoiding registering their lobbying activities in Brussels even as they admit to the scale of their operations in Washington where registration of lobbyists is required by law, according to a new study. As a result of the different registry frameworks between the two legislative capitals - in Brussels, the European Commission's lobby registry is a voluntary affair - European big business on the whole is able to make it appear that it is engaged in much more lobbying in Washington than in Brussels. This is the conclusion of a new study by lobbying watchdogs that analyses what the EU's 50 biggest corporations say they are spending on influencing policy.
Read article at euobserver.com
Comment: The ‘Brussels EU’ is controlled by corporate interests and it is now a matter of public record that multinational corporations have engaged in successful long-term lobbying strategies to shape European Union policy making in their favour. As a result of these activities, the EU’s risk assessment process has been rigged to benefit multi-trillion dollar business interests – especially those of the chemical, petrochemical and pharmaceutical industries – at the expense of public health.
April 21, 2010
Google releases list of government censorship requests
Internet search giant Google has revealed that Brazil's government has made the most requests for information or censorship. However figures for China, which censors great swathes of online information, have not been revealed. Google could not include requests made by Beijing because the information is regarded as a state secret. Instead, Brazil tops the list, with 3,663 data requests between 1 July and 31 December 2009. The US made 3,580 and the UK came third with 1,166.
Read article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)
Comment: To see Google’s list of government censorship requests, click here.
April 8, 2010
US and Russian leaders hail nuclear arms treaty
US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, have signed a landmark nuclear arms treaty in the Czech capital, Prague. The treaty commits the former Cold War enemies to each reduce the number of deployed strategic warheads to 1,550 - 30% lower than the previous ceiling. Mr Obama said it was a key milestone, but only the "first step on a longer journey" of nuclear disarmament. Mr Medvedev said the deal would create safer conditions throughout the world. If ratified by lawmakers in both countries, the treaty will replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start) of 1991, which expired in December.
Read article on the BBC News website (UK)
April 7, 2010
U.S. Court Curbs F.C.C. Authority on Web Traffic
WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that regulators had limited power over Web traffic under current law. The decision will allow Internet service companies to block or slow specific sites and charge video sites like YouTube to deliver their content faster to users. The court decision was a setback to efforts by the Federal Communications Commission to require companies to give Web users equal access to all content, even if some of that content is clogging the network.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
Comment: The world’s largest telephone and cable companies want to be the Internet’s gatekeepers and to be able to decide which Web sites load quickly, which load slowly and which won't load at all. As such, without legal requirements to prevent them from doing so, Internet service providers will eventually be able to discriminate against content and services they don't like – thus putting their own vested interests before the public good. Amongst other things, this could result in cutting-edge natural health research and the exposure of the Nazi roots of the Brussels EU effectively being censored. To learn more about the ongoing battle to prevent Internet service providers from discriminating between different kinds of content and applications online, click here.
March 4, 2010
Falluja doctors report rise in birth defects
Doctors in the Iraqi city of Falluja are reporting a high level of birth defects, with some blaming weapons used by the US after the Iraq invasion.
Read article on the BBC News website (UK)
February 3, 2010
US blames Lisbon Treaty for EU summit fiasco
The US State Department has said that President Barack Obama's decision not to come to an EU summit in Madrid in May is partly due to confusion arising from the Lisbon Treaty. State department spokesman Philip J. Crowley told press in Washington on Tuesday (2 February) that the treaty has made it unclear who the US leader should meet and when. "Up until recently, they [summits] would occur on six-month intervals, as I recall, with one meeting in Europe and one meeting here. And that was part of – the foundation of that was the rotating presidency within the EU. Now you have a new structure regarding not only the rotating EU presidency, you've got an EU Council president, you've got a European Commission president," he said.
Read article at euobserver.com
Comment: As a result of the Lisbon Treaty, the ‘Brussels EU’ now has a total of four presidents: the rotating EU presidency (currently held by Spain); the EU Council president (Herman Van Rompuy); the European Commission president (José Manuel Barroso); and the European Parliament president (Jerzy Buzek). So who’s really in charge? To learn the facts about the ‘Brussels EU’, click here.
February 2, 2010
Iraq to sue U.S., Britain over depleted uranium bombs
Iraq's Ministry for Human Rights will file a lawsuit against Britain and the U.S. over their use of depleted uranium bombs in Iraq, an Iraqi minister says. Iraq's Minister of Human Rights, Wijdan Mikhail Salim, told Assabah newspaper that the lawsuit will be launched based on reports from the Iraqi ministries of science and the environment. According to the reports, during the first year of the U.S. and British invasion of Iraq, both countries had repeatedly used bombs containing depleted uranium. According to Iraqi military experts, the U.S. and Britain bombed the country with nearly 2,000 tons of depleted uranium bombs during the early years of the Iraq war. Atomic radiation has increased the number of babies born with defects in the southern provinces of Iraq. Iraqi doctors say they' have been struggling to cope with the rise in the number of cancer cases -- especially in cities subjected to heavy U.S. and British bombardment.
Read article in the Tehran Times (Iran)
January 29, 2010
Bush decided UN backing not necessary, says Blair
United Nations backing for the Iraq war would have made "life a lot easier", Tony Blair said today. But the former prime minister said US President George Bush decided the UN Security Council's support "wasn't necessary".
Read article in the Independent (UK)
January 12, 2010
A sign of empire pathology
Here is a shocking statistic that you won't hear in most western news media: over the past nine years, more US military personnel have taken their own lives than have died in action in either the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. These are official figures from the US Department of Defence, yet somehow they have not been deemed newsworthy to report. Last year alone, more than 330 serving members of the US armed forces committed suicide - more than the 320 killed in Afghanistan and the 150 who fell in Iraq (see wsws.org).
Read article at gulf-daily-news.com (Bahrain)
January 12, 2009
Dutch inquiry says Iraq war had no mandate
An inquiry into the Netherlands' support for the invasion of Iraq says it was not justified by UN resolutions. The Dutch Committee of Inquiry on Iraq said UN Security Council resolutions did not "constitute a mandate for... intervention in 2003". The inquiry was launched after foreign ministry memos were leaked that cast doubt on the legal basis for the war. The Netherlands gave political support to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but has denied having any military role. The report demolishes the Dutch case for supporting the invasion, says the BBC's Europe correspondent Jonny Dymond. It could also be taken to reinforce the international case against the Iraq war, he says.
Read article on the BBC News website (UK)
January 4, 2010
Use of potentially harmful chemicals kept secret under law
Of the 84,000 chemicals in commercial use in the United States -- from flame retardants in furniture to household cleaners -- nearly 20 percent are secret, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, their names and physical properties guarded from consumers and virtually all public officials under a little-known federal provision. The policy was designed 33 years ago to protect trade secrets in a highly competitive industry. But critics -- including the Obama administration -- say the secrecy has grown out of control, making it impossible for regulators to control potential dangers or for consumers to know which toxic substances they might be exposed to. At a time of increasing public demand for more information about chemical exposure, pressure is building on lawmakers to make it more difficult for manufacturers to cloak their products in secrecy. Congress is set to rewrite chemical regulations this year for the first time in a generation.
Read article in the Washington Post (USA)