WHO blocks report on cancer in Iraq

Map of the 2010 Iraqi report

The World Health Organization has blocked, against its mandate, the release of a report on cancer and birth malformations in Iraq. The damages, attributed to the use of weapons of mass destruction by the USA, be them chemical weapons, depleted uranium or even, some have claimed, a real nuclear bomb dropped near Basra in the early 90s, seem to be really alarming for the WHO to act this way. 

Whatever the case the UN organization is morally and legally obliged to release this report. Blocking the information is a clear act of complicity with genocide. 

A previous report by the Iraqi government in 2010 highlighted the massive damages, mostly attributed to depleted uranium, as well as the pollution caused by the destruction of oil facilities.

Sources: Global Research, Webguerrillero[es].

Palestine: Zionist troops murder three in Qalandiya refugee camp, including UN employee

Not in the mass disinformation media again. 

On August 26, colonial troops attacked the Qalandiya refugee camp, near Jerusalem, in full force, shooting live fire of illegal ammunition (dum-dum bullets, illegal since more than a century ago!) against the inhabitants who could barely hurl stones in self-defense. 

Three people were killed: Jihad Aslan (20), Younis Jahjouh (22) and Rubeen Abdulrahman Zayid (34, URWA worker). Other 18 people were injured, including five minors, 12 of them required surgery. 

The pretext for the aggression was a search for Yousef al-Khatib, who had been released from prison by the very same colonial authorities just weeks ago. They arrested a relative of al-Khatib by error, beating him badly while zip-cuffed and blindfolded. 

Al-Khatib was eventually arrested and they drove his relative back to the camp to identify him. I could barely recognize him. They had broken his nose and knocked out his teeth, and his hand was broken, he explained later. 

Al-Khatib is currently arrested without charges at the Ofer military prison.

The Zionist forces claimed that they were shot at but this is rejected by the witnesses. Yehya Mteir, relative of one of the deadly victims, said:

There was only one tear gas canister fired at the beginning and one at the end, but other than that, it was all live ammunition and dumdum bullets.

There were so many people in the streets because everyone was on the way to work; usually they come in while we’re asleep. The only means of fighting we had were rocks. We had no guns or Molotov cocktails, none of us.

Even such a tendentious organization as Human Right Watch admits this version of events:

All of the people we interviewed strongly denied that Palestinians shot [live ammunition], or said that they were not aware of it,” Bill Van Esveld, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, told The Electronic Intifada. “If the Israeli military has evidence of this, they should make it public.”

UNRWA in turn explained what happened to their worker A. Zayid:

“We have nine independent eyewitness accounts which all confirm that he was unarmed, he was not involved in violence, not engaged in throwing stones, and yet he was shot with a bullet through the chest, no questions,” UNRWA spokesperson Gunness told The Electronic Intifada.

Similar reports exist regarding other victims: absolutely gratuitous murdering.

Source and more details: Electronic Intifada.

Syria: Islamist rebels and not regime used chemical weapons

Not really new but worth reminding as Russia is providing further evidence that the only use of chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war corresponds to the Islamist rebels. This was already the conclusion reached by the UN but silenced by the NATO propaganda machinery that hammered us with accusations against the Damascus regime.

According to the Russian ambassador in New York, Vitaly Churkin: sarin gas was clearly used against civilians [in Aleppo province] and there are many reasons to think that it was the opposition who used them. 

Source: Webguerrillero[es].

UN: Israel tortures children

... and abuses them in many other ways, including systematically using children as human shields, arresting them arbitrarily, etc.

Video by The Real News:

UN Human Rights Committee declares Spain guilty of tortures in the case of María Atxabal

The United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) has judged that Basque citizen María Atxabal (pictured, center) was actually tortured by the Guardia Civil (military police corps) in 1996. For that reason it demands from Spain to open an investigation, to repair the damage caused to the victim and to provide her with free health attention to treat the post-traumatic stress she suffers since then. 

The high committee also finds that isolation regime imposed arbitrarily on political arrests favors torture. 

Source: Naiz Info[es].

IAEA denies rumors of explosion at Iranian nuclear reactor

IAEA inspectors have denied rumors of explosion at Iranian nuclear facility, which I briefly echoed (expressing my doubts and caution) in this blog days ago. 

International Atomic Energy Agency spokeswoman Gill Tudor told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Iran's denial of "an incident" at the Fordo uranium enrichment plant is "consistent with our observations."

So it was mere Zio-intoxication after all. 

Sources: Fox News, Energy News. 

Must watch: Mayor of Futaba (Fukushima) speaks at UN

On October 20th the Mayor of Futaba, a town barely 20 km away from the destroyed nuclear plant of Fukushima I, whose neighbors, like many others have been abandoned by the state and TEPCO, spoke at the United Nations. Video in Japanese with English subtitles (not long but very informative):

H/t Energy News.

UN massively rejects US blockade against Cuba

Visually:

The "no" votes are the USA and its protectorates of Israel and Palau, the two abstentions are also US protectorates: Marshall Islands and Micronesia. Absolutely everybody else voted "yes" to the rejection of the blockade that the USA unilaterally imposes on Cuba.

Blockade also imposed on the rest of World, because since the Helms-Burton law of 1996, if you do business with Cuba you can't do business with the USA. 

Source: LINyM[es].

Lagarde: pay your taxes

The arrogant imperialist IMF boss and sidekick of Nicholas Sarkozy, Christine Lagarde was the other day insulting Greek workers who, according to her petty fascist imagination, do not pay their taxes. Naturally Greek leaders, including Tsipras, quickly protested her defamation - but she is yet to apologize. 

But now we know that the one who does not pay any taxes is her. 

Christine Lagarde enjoys a yearly salary of $467,940 (€374,352), plus allowances, well above what most of us, common mortals, can even dream. A salary that comes from our taxes (from the taxes of almost every single person around the World because she works for a UN agency), pays no taxes at all. 

Not in the USA, not in France and certainly not in Greece. 

This is allegedly a provision of the Vienna Convention, however she is probably not entitled to such special status after it was ruled that her predecessor, Strauss-Kahn, was lawfully arrested and not entitled the protection of diplomats. 

So... Lagarde: pay your taxes and shut up that dirty mouth.

International Atomic Energy Agency controls and censors World Health Organization

Very interesting and scary (albeit rather long) videos today at Energy News, denouncing how the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), an entity designed to promote nuclear energy (of interest for the Industrial-Military Complex mostly), has the power to block the publication of any World Health Organization report. This power is reciprocal but it's hard to imagine why the WHO would want to censor IAEA.

This means that in practical terms, the pro-nuclear camp controls absolutely all health information coming out from the United Nations, what explains all the lies about Chernobyl, the worst nuclear catastrophe before Fukushima.

I include here only one of the two videos but the other one is also very dramatic and interesting (and different point of view as well):

No cold shutdown: corium will be there forever

EneNews has other interesting info today (and often). For example, Dr. Caldicott (from the reputed International Physicians Against Nuclear War) denounces what is obvious for all of us following the Fukushima catastrophe with due care and healthy skepticism: that the cold shutdown claim is a blunt lie: the corium (uranium-plutonium lava) is still there and will be forever emitting radiation, penetrating across the Earth's crust and potentially reacting at any moment with further catastrophic results.

··> LINK


Reactor no. 3 explosion sent radiation right away to Tokyo

Again from EneNews: a US government (NARAC) map shows how the radioactive particles after the fated day of the second explosion (March 13 2011) went right to Tokyo

··> NARAC paper (PDF), including several other maps of interest illustrating how the particles probably arrived to US territory (and Eastern Siberia).

Bahrain: Human Rights activist nearing death after 55-days long hunger strike

From Bahrain Center for Human Rights:

GCHR: Urgent appeal to save the life of Bahraini human rights defender Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, who is facing death

03 April 2012

Open letter to the United Nations/governments of Denmark, US, UK and all other governments and organizations concerned with human rights:

Today, April 3, 2012, human rights defender Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, the founder of the Gulf Centre for Human Rights, enters day 55 of his hunger strike, which he began on February 8, pledging to sustain it until freedom or death. His health has deteriorated severely in a way that threatens his life, while the Bahraini government remains suspiciously silent about the dire situation.

We urge you to use your influence to immediately intervene in order to save the life of Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, the internationally well-known and prestigious human rights defender. We call on you to demand from the government in Bahrain his immediate release and transfer to Denmark, where he holds dual Bahraini and Danish citizenship, so he can obtain the medical treatment he needs as a result of his current hunger strike and of the torture he endured while he was under arrest.

The time remains very short to act and we urge you now to take action to save the life of this unique human rights defender Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, under the shadow of death.

Gulf Centre for Human Rights

Beirut - 03/04/2012

Japan will sell their radioactive fish to Third World countries via UN

Cambodia and other four unnamed countries will suffer this mischievous "aid" with World Food Program seal of approval, whose only goal is to recover the Japanese economy even in the worst irradiated areas, irrational goal that is going over the right to life of Japanese children, Australian children and now the children Cambodia and other countries. 

Source: Ex-SKF (citing several Japanese sources).

From the Net: 'Statement of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Margaret Sekaggya, on the conclusion of her official visit to Honduras' (UNHR)

From the 7 to 14 February 2012, I visited Honduras and travelled to Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula and La Ceiba. During my visit, I met with the President; the Minister of Justice and Human Rights; the Minister of the Indigenous and Afro-Honduran people; the Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs; the Vice-Minister for Defense; the Vice-Minister of Internal Affairs; the Vice-Minister of Security; the Director of the National Agrarian Institute; the President of the Human Rights Commission within the National Congress; the President of the Supreme Court of Justice; the Special Prosecutor Office for Human Rights, the Human Rights Commissioner. However, I regret not having met the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Security, Defense, Interior and Populations. I met as well with members of the diplomatic community (G16) and the United Nations agencies, including the Resident Coordinator.

(...)

Honduras faces serious challenges in combating violence and insecurity. The pervasive impunity and absence of effective investigations of human rights violations undermine the administration of justice and damages the public’s trust in authorities. The 2009 coup d’état aggravated institutional weaknesses, increased the vulnerability of human rights defenders and provoked a major polarisation in society. Due to the exposed nature of their activities, human rights defenders continue to suffer extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, torture and ill-treatment, death threats, attacks, harassment and stigmatisation.

I have observed that certain categories of human rights defenders are at particular risk, including journalists, staff of the National Human Rights Commission, lawyers, prosecutors and judges, as well as defenders working on the rights of women, children, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex community, the indigenous and Afro-Honduran communities as well as those working on environmental and land rights issues.

I am concerned that public officials, including high-ranking authorities, have made public statements which stigmatise human rights defenders. In particular, I have received information indicating that human rights defenders working on the protection of the rights of LGBTI have been threatened and persecuted because their work is perceived to defend immoral behaviour. Defenders working on children’s rights have been harassed, particularly those denouncing social cleansing of children and youth at the hands of public and private actors. Women’s organisations raised concerns that, due to pervasive gender discrimination, their complaints of violations against their integrity and work are dismissed and that they suffer intimidation by the authorities, in particular members of the police force.

(...)

... full text at the site of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (United Nations). Found via LINyM[es].

From the Net 'New allegations of UN sexual abuse [pedophilia] in Haiti' (AJE)

Peacekeepers and UN police 'exploited' children in separate cases, and an aid worker is found guilty of pedophilia.

The UN has begun an investigation into two new allegations of UN police abuse and "sexual exploitation" of children in Haiti, Martin Nesirky, a UN spokesperson, said.

One case involves UN police officers in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, Nesirky said on Monday.

Those officers have been removed from duty while under investigation, he added.

The second case involves one or more members of a police unit in the northern city of Gonaives.

... full story at Al Jazeera.

I must say that the international bullying of Haiti, led by USA and France but with important participation of other powers, notably Brazil, has no name! That it descends to this is only "natural" byproduct of the depravity that the invasion of Haiti implied to begin with.

Zionists attack Gaza again, Palestinian Government demands international intervention

Whether Israel is occupant (the Zionist point of view) or it is a civil conflict of colonialist, apartheid, genocide and racist nature (the Native Palestinian viewpoint) the continuous aggression of Israel against Gaza Strip (as well as other Palestinians, Syrians, etc.) has no justification and would demand UN intervention if the UN made anything other than obey the USA (which in turn obeys to the Zionist Lobby with such dedication that is shameful even for those of us who are not North Americans). 

Today Israel, with no pretext whatsoever, bombed again Gaza Strip. Three people were killed, assassinated.

If this is not a terrorist attack, what is terrorism?

Israel exerts terrorism every single day against Palestinians. But some days are worse than others. 

A permanent Gernika, a permanent death camp... 

When will the so-called International Community intervene to protect civilians?, to stop terrorism?, to defend democracy? 

The democratically elected government of Palestine, led by Hamas, requested it. 

The democratic media ignored the plea. 

Will they bomb Tel Aviv, the same that they bomber Tripoli with depleted uranium bombs? 

We all know that they will not. Their hypocrisy is infinite, their compassion nil. 

Will us allow them to claim to represent us, making us accomplices of their criminal complicity? Or will we oust them and begin a new era. 

Palestine is a reflection of the injustices and most serious problems that exist where you live, where I live... 

There's only one Earth: it is small, it is crowded, dirty, exhausted, feverish... and we must fix it and we must do it soon.

··> Uruknet, Al Jazeera.

Echoes from the Class War (Aug 24)

Basque Country: Bilbao fiestas on strike today. The konpartsak (popular festive clubs which are the backbone of the fiestas) close down for the full day in solidarity with two of them, Kaskagorri and Txori Barrote, banned by the Town Hall for placing photos of Basque prisoners. ··> Sare Antifaxista[es], Bilboko Konpartsak[eu].

Closed down txosna today

Only the visit to the hospitalized children and the official txupin (rocket shooting) took place today. However yesterday, the txupinera went to show her solidarity with the threatened social center Kukutza Gaztetxea:

 

··> Sare Antifaxista[es].

Basque Country: abandoned manufacture occupied in  Eibar to be used as social center (gaztetxe) ··> Euskal Herriko Gaztetxe eta Gazte Asanblada Koordinadora[eu].

Greece: Denounce the framing of social activists as alleged bank robbers ··> Contra Info.

Haiti: UN occupation force may be disbanded, as Brazil moves out of it. Dady Chery writes about it at Black Agenda Report.

Chile: Chilean students on 35th day of hunger strike, one is in serious condition already ··> TeleSur video at PO, reproduced here (Spanish with English subtitles):

USA: Virginia earthquake too close to Lake Anna Nuclear Power Plant. 

Earthquake sensors around the plant were removed because of costs. 

One of the pumps was damaged, one reactor venting steam (allegedly "not radioactive", pictured left). 

Michio Kako at ABC News:

··> Washington's Blog, Energy News (1, 2, 3).

By the resolution of fields and roads it's obviously just a few Km. away

Arab revolution update

Here there go my latest thoughts on the latest developments of the Arab Revolution:

Libya - protecting civilians or killing them?

There are serious concerns that the, rather unilateral, NATO intervention in Libya is overdoing it. The no-fly zone resolution of the UNSC was approved with ample leeway for all kind of direct attacks as the ones that Sarko and company are executing trigger-happily. The Arab League has already protested them, as they say that the UNSC resolution is intended to protect civilians, not to attack them.

A political reference in the area, the Workers' Communist Party of Tunisia (PCOT), which spearheaded to some extent the Tunisian Revolution and supports the Libyan rebels, is against the intervention because it can only serve to uphold Western interests in the area.

Other Tunisian forces have diverse opinions. In general the ones more to the left are opposed to any foreign intervention because they fear it may damage the revolution overall, including in Tunisia itself. The Islamists are also opposed, while the Liberals (center-right forces) are supportive of NATO's attacks.

Personally, I am highly concerned about the possible use of depleted uranium ammo, which has already caused widespread health problems in Bosnia and Iraq. There is nothing in the UN resolution or in the declarations of Sarko and co. that suggests that they are not using depleted uranium in the bombings.

I also subscribe to the evaluation of the PCOT, because now the Libyan rebels have suddenly become a Western protectorate. True that without the intervention they may be all dead by now but with the intervention they have become indebted with Sarko and NATO in general, what is always something bad and dangerous.

Yemen - rapidly evolving situation, officers stage coup

Yemen looks every day more like a tactical victory for the Arab Revolution. Three top ranking officers have brought their troops to the streets to protect the demonstrators, after the regime attempted to quell the revolution bloodily in the last days, after several ministers resigned in protest and after Saleh sacked his entire cabinet eventually. 

This is a de facto coup, an Egyptian way out of a situation that has become unsustainable and impossible to win by the regime. Saleh has not yet been ousted but that seems now a mere technicality.

Egypt - minimal constitutional changes upheld in referendum

Only 15% of voters opposed the minimal constitutional changes promoted by the Egyptian Junta. The remnants of Mubarak's party and their satellite Muslim Brotherhood party promoted the yes vote, while liberal and leftist parties opposed it on diverse argumentations (constitutional assembly should be called, they have no time to organize for upcoming elections...)

The reforms remove some of the most abusive regulations of Mubarak's regime but leave the system essentially untouched. Most NO votes came from the urban areas, while the rural zones went overwhelmingly for the YES, highlighting a divide between city and country in the North African country.

Only 41% of voters exerted their right, still a much higher fraction than in past tightly controlled and even rigged votes under Mubarak. The details of the approved reforms can be read here.

Update (mar 23): add Syria to the equation. Police stormed a mosque in the southern town of Daraa, at the border with Jordan, killing some. While the revolt has yet to extend to the whole country, demonstrations have happened already in several cities. That's who the Tunisian uprising began: not in the capital but in the provinces... and has proven to be a much more solid revolution than others for that reason.

USA vetoes UN Security Council resolution against Israel (again)

Much speaking about democracy and peace and blah blah but at the end of the day it is actions what really matter. And the USA has again sabotaged peace and democracy in Palestine by supporting the racist genocidal state of Israel in one of the most widely criticized behaviors: the perpetual colonization of the West Bank and East Jerusalem at the expense of the natives in what is a systematic genocide. 

Yesterday, the UNSC agreed by 14 votes against one to condemn Israeli settlement policy as an obstacle to peace and because they are illegal under any interpretation of the laws and conventions that rule Humankind. 

But Obama had the face of vetoing this most basic resolution. That's what we call fascism and racism over here. So how does the White House pretend to be defending "democracy" when it supports Israel in its persistent genocide against the people of Palestine, when it keeps Guantanamo concentration camp open, when it invades Haiti, when it supports the dictator Porfirio Lobo in Honduras and the criminal cocaine mafias in Colombia and Mexico... 

The White House has no legitimacy. It had not under Bush but it has not either under Uncle Tom Obama.

Class war chronicle

I really can't keep up with the pace of events. There's so much stuff going on all around! So I have decided to briefly mention some of them in link-list articles like this one.

Mexico: UN security staff attacks peaceful demonstrators and journalists at climate conference.

They rounded up the demonstrators and forced them to get into some bus. Photographers who imaged that were taken their accreditations. A journalist was also "arrested" into that bus, where he was beaten and had his camera stolen. As journalists protested, elements of the Presidential High Command intervened and beat them. (La Haine[es])

UN gorillas attacking journalist Jorge Silva at Cancun

Honduras: peasants violently expelled from their lands

On Thursday heavily armed police and soldiers attacked the settlement of Paso Aguán (in the hot district of Bajo Aguán, department of Colón) expelling the peasants without judicial mandate and destroying their settlement (La Haine[es]). 

Greece: 75% prisoners in food protest

More than 9000 or the 12,400 prisoners of Greece have begun a protest in which they reject to eat anything served by the jails. Where no food shops exist, they are effectively in hunger strike. They have eleven demands (La Haine[es]):

1. Stop the abuse of preventive arrest
2. Reduction of maximum legal limits to continuous imprisonment
3. Suppression of excessive penalties, more conditional freedom
4. Administrative sanctions not to be used to restrict conditional freedom
5. Abolition of the anti-terrorist law and special conditions for political prisoners
6. Special protection for minor criminals
7. Liberation of prisoners with special needs or severe chronicle illnesses
8. Allowing immigrant prisoners to complete their prison terms in their home countries and other measures for immigrant prisoners
9. Equal treatment in the concession of permissions
10. Human rights: dignity, health, education, communication, personal development, freedom of speech, exercise, work. Improvements in work allocation to prisoners. Alternatives to prison, rural prisons also for female prisoners. Prohibition of intrusive physical exams, specially vaginal and anal inspections. Improvements in waiting rooms and transport (for visitors).
11. Abolition of monetary penalties (fines).

USA: Georgia prisoners on strike for human rights and stop profiteering on their disgrace

They demand: decent living conditions, adequate medical care and nutrition, educational and self-improvement opportunities, just parole decisions, just parole decisions, an end to cruel and unusual punishments, and better access to their families. The article underlines how many basic prisoner services are given in monopoly to private companies who charge abusive rates for them, how there are no recreational facilities and nearly no training programs (Black Agenda Report[en])

Britain: violent repression in against students

Police charge at Westminster

Intercalating the highly controversial tactic known as kettling (corralling demonstrators and anyone who could be around like cattle for hours in the open) with cavalry charges, police repression has caused already 17 injured and 32 arrested. Two police are reported injured but one fell from his horse and was kicked by it while in the ground and the other was hit with a paint filled balloon, all what stands testimony to the peacefulness of the protest that has been again suppressed violently by the Metropolitan Police (La Haine[es]).

Follows video of the claustrophobic and dangerous extremes to which police kettling can reach:

15,000 Basques demonstrate at Baiona (Bayonne) against the High Speed Train (Gara[eu]).

Cholera epidemic of South Asian origin. Riots against occupation forces for second day in Haiti

It seems that the cholera epidemic, rumored for some time already to have started at a UN occupation forces (MINUSTAH) base, is the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back... the patience of the Haitian people.

I reported yesterday how the MINUSTAH occupation forces are very much hated for they repressive and rapist (yes, rape: not the first time blue berets are involved in abuse of women and even children) activities, as well as being the only thing that separates the Haitian people from democracy and popular power. Haitians do not want foreign troops in their country, what is very much understandable, specially as they are being used to legitimate and consolidate the 2004 US-led coup.

Now the strain of the cholera bacterium has been confirmed to have arrived from South Asia, probably brought the Nepalese contingent, as this illness is endemic in Nepal. It seems most likely now that sewage water from latrines at the UN base located upstream the Artibonite river have been the cause of the epidemic that has already taken hundreds of lives.

The epidemic has now extended through the country and even to neighboring Dominican Republic. Thousands of people are affected.  

This has triggered the most intense riots against the occupation so far, specially intense in the northern city of Cap Haïtien, where the message being shout to the invaders is very clear: get out now!

Source: Al Jazeera (video).