Archive for August, 2009
“Gaza Reflections”
Good friend and colleague, Antony Loewenstein, who recently spent the last few weeks reporting from inside Gaza has put together the following mini-documentary:
US soldier says “NO” to war in Afghanistan
Dahr Jamail, reports on the following story:
Truthout: Sergeant Travis Bishop, with the US Army’s 57th Expeditionary Signal Battalion, pled not guilty at a special court martial on Thursday to two counts of missing movement, disobeying a lawful order and going absent without leave (AWOL). Friday, in a trial full of theatrics from the jury, prosecution witnesses and the prosecution, he was found guilty on all counts.
Sgt. Bishop is the second soldier from Fort Hood in as many weeks to be tried by the military for his stand against an occupation he believes is “illegal.” He insists that it would be unethical for him to deploy to support an occupation he opposes on both moral and legal grounds, and has filed for conscientious objector (CO) status. A CO is someone who refuses to participate in combat based on religious or ethical grounds, and can be given an honorable discharge by the military.
Last week, Specialist Victor Agosto was sentenced to 30 days in a county jail for his refusal to deploy to Afghanistan. Agosto, like Bishop, feels the war is illegal, something that James Branum, the civilian lawyer for both soldiers, agrees with.
“The war in Afghanistan does not meet the criteria for lawful war under the UN Charter, which says that member nations who joined the UN, as did the US, should give up war forever, aside from two exceptions: that the war is in self defense, and that the use of force was authorized by the UN Security Council.”
“Reuben Brand a rare Truthful Journalist from racist Apartheid Australia: over 1.2 million Iraqis killed”
Dr Gideon Polya, a Melbourne based scientist and writer, has recently written a very interesting article regarding one of my previous pieces ”The Truth must not be sanitised.” In his article Dr Polya makes a strong point about the lack of truthful reportage by Western journalist in relation to the illegal invasion of Iraq and the horrendous crimes against humanity that are being commited in Occupied Palestine.
There is a great need for accurate reportage by journalists worldwide - this is an important issue that should not be ignored.
Thank you for your kind words Dr Polya.
How many journalists accurately report the horrendous carnage in the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi, and Afghan Territories? Answer: very few, and in racist, pro-war, pro-Zionist Australia (aka UStralia, Ozrael, Ozraelia) almost none.
Accordingly hearty congratulations and earnest approbation must be given to Australian Truthful Journalist Reuben Brand for telling the truth about neocon- and racist Zionist-promoted US Alliance wars and occupations, AND for being that extremely rare kind of journalist, a Truthful Journalist.
In a piece entitled “The truth must not be sanitized” on Australian ABC “Unleashed” (19 January 2009; see: http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/sto… ) Reuben Brand states: “As I prepare to film a documentary and work as a freelance journalist in the Middle East and South Asia, the ethical questions of what to report and how to report it constantly arise. Our myopic media moguls relentlessly force feed us with the age old “us and them” scenario, “good vs evil”, the biblical battles of yester-year. This archaic style of reportage has reached a crescendo that should not be topped and for myself and other like minded journalists the sanitisation of news and the constant rhetoric that accompanies it has reached a critical mass. Since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, 222 journalists and media assistants have been killed, 14 currently remain kidnapped and two are still missing. So why do it? Why put yourself in harms way? Simple - to tell the stories others won’t. Of course these figures pale to insignificance when placed beside the number of innocent civilians murdered by occupying forces. According to ORB, an independent UK-based research company, the current death toll in Iraq alone is well over 1.2 million and counting. Not to mention Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan or anywhere else the US or friends thereof seem to be.”
Reuben Brand’s estimate of “over 1.2 million and counting” post-invasion Iraqi violent deaths is consonant with the expert data provided by top US medical epidemiologists from the Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University Public Health Schools (and published in the top UK medical journal The Lancet), the UK ORB polling organization and the eminent US-based Just Foreign Policy (1.3 million) (see Just Foreign Policy: http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/no… ).
Of course Brand is a very famous Hungarian Jewish name - Holocaust hero Joel Brand tried to save the 0.7 million Hungarian Jews from the Nazis but his plan to “trade” them for trucks, tea, coffee, cocoa and soap was vetoed by the racist Zionists and by pro-Zionist mass murderer Churchill [he also starved 6-7 million Indians to death in 1943-1945; see 2008 BBC broadcast involving myself, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, Dr Sanjoy Bhattacharya and other scholars: http://www.open2.net/thingsweforgot… - 0.2-0.4 million Hungarian Jews were murdered thanks the Nazi collaborator Zionists.
Joel Brand on wartime Zionist leaders: “Rightly or wrongly, for better or for worse, I have cursed Jewry’s official leaders ever since. All these things shall haunt me until my dying day. It is much more than a man can bear” (see “Joel Brand exposing Zionist complicity in Nazi mass murder of Hungarian Jews”: http://sites.google.com/site/jewsag… ; see also Jews Against racist Zionism: http://sites.google.com/site/jewsag… ).
As of mid 2009, in the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories post-invasion non-violent excess deaths total 0.3 million, 1.0 million and 3.2 million, respectively; post-invasion violent deaths total about 10,000, 1.3 million and 2-4 million, respectively; post-invasion under-5 infant deaths total 0.2 million, 0.6 million and 2.3 million, respectively; and refugees total 7 million, 6 million and 4 million, respectively. This constitutes a Palestinian Holocaust, an Iraqi Holocaust and an Afghan Holocaust; a Palestinian Genocide, Iraqi Genocide and Afghan Genocide as defined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention (see: http://www.edwebproject.org/sideshow/genocide/convention.html ) ; and egregious war crimes due in part to Occupier war criminal non-supply of life-sustaining food and medical requisites demanded unequivocally by Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (see: http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/y4gcpcp.htm ) – thus the Gaza Concentration Camp has been under US-backed Israeli blockade for 2 years and according to WHO (see: http://www.who.int/countries/en/ ) the “total annual per capita medical expenditure” permitted by the Occupiers in Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan is US$124 and US$29, respectively, as compared to US$6,714 for the US (see “Pro-Zionist Western Genocide Denial”: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/298… ).
Truthful Journalist Reuben Brand has made a significant hole in the Wall of Silence of the holocaust- and genocide-complicit, holocaust- and genocide-ignoring Mainstream media of the politically correct racist (PC racist) Western Murdochracies.
Readers of this thread - please inform us all (by quotation and URL link) if you encounter any other rare Truthful Journalists.
The answer to the question “Hey, hey, USA, how many kids did you kill today?” is about 1,000 (see Bellaciao: http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?ar… ) - but virtually nobody is reporting this carnage in which the Western Murdochracies are complicit.
Decent folk must (a) follow Reuben Brand’s ethical example and inform everyone they can about the actual horrendous human consequences of US Alliance wars and occupations and (b) boycott all media that support war and ignore its horrendous consequences - and in the Western Murdochracies that means for starters boycotting all Murdoch media.
By : Dr Gideon Polya
August Sunday 9 2009
Shame Australia, shame!
Australian and US troops engage in joint millitary operations and training in our very own backyard. Its called “Operation Talisman Sabre” and is basically a pre meditated war crime in the making.
A new wave of pro-war propaganda
Ever heard the saying “history repeats itself?” No? Not to worry, because here we go again… The US pro-war propoganda press is once more in full swing, only this time its not Iraq that posses a deadly threat to the world with its supposed WMD’s (oh thats right, they didnt have any…) its Iran.
US “intelligence” have been supplying the media with a sumptous feast of pro-war rhetoric in preparation for a possible pre-emptive strike against yet another country. Iran. Will the world let itself be duped again? Iraq has been destroyed, Afghanistan is in ruins, Pakistan is high up on the “countries to invade list” and now US sights are set on Iran.
Associate Professor Jake Lynch reports on the current wave of deadly propaganda:
WHAT GOES AROUND, COMES AROUND
By Jake Lynch
The Times of London was at it again this week. “Iran has perfected the technology to create and detonate a nuclear warhead”, the paper said, “and is merely awaiting the word from its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to produce its first bomb”. Forget previous indications that the program had stalled: “Tehran had halted the research because it had achieved its aim – to find a way of detonating a warhead that could be launched on its long-range Shehab-3 missiles”.
This put the Islamic Republic within a year of having a nuclear arsenal ready to deploy, the Times said, in a special report by three of its most senior journalists. On an order from the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, “it would take six months to enrich enough uranium and another six months to assemble the warhead”. There were even supporting details of how this task was to be accomplished: a “multipoint initiation system”, which involved “wrapping highly enriched uranium in high explosives and then detonating it”. Such a system “operates by creating a series of explosive grooves on a metal hemisphere covering the uranium”, the paper continued, “which links explosives-filled holes opening onto a layer of high explosives enveloping the uranium. By detonating the explosives at either pole at the same time, the method ensures simultaneous impact around the sphere to achieve critical density”.
So – a great deal of information, conveyed with all the confidence and prestige the Times could muster. And the provenance of all these ‘facts’? Why, if it wasn’t our old friend, “Western intelligence sources”. Which ones? Not the British – the same article quoted “sources at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office” saying UK agencies had “no independent evidence” that Iran had successfully tested the explosive component of a nuclear warhead, but “no reason to doubt the assessment”. No, as I know from experience, it’s the Americans who make a habit of supplying such information to reporters, on the proviso that their identity be disguised under the euphemism, “Western”.
Afghani elecetions
Is it any wonder that Karzai is in the lead? As an ex-employee of Unocal, one of the major companies involved in the Trans-Afghan Pipeline, it would seem that his popularity amongst Western backers comes with a price. Karzai gives the US a safe route for their oil/natural gas pipeline - the US give Karzai the Presidency. Once again “democracy” will be overlooked:
AFP: “Karzai had been tipped to ease to a second term, but a strong campaign from former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah and reports of miserable turnout in the president’s southern powerbase have boosted speculation of a run-off vote.
“Negotiations are well under way for Abdullah to accept defeat at the first round. It may depend on what he gets in exchange,” one Western diplomat in Kabul told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Western backers of Karzai’s government have urged presidential candidates to refrain from premature announcements, respect the electoral process and for their supporters to keep calm.
“The Karzai camp says they have 70 percent of the vote. We have to wait and see in the coming days. It’ll be problematic if the results drag out,” said Haroun Mir, from Afghanistan’s Centre for Research and Policy Studies.”