Stephen Lendman

This article follows an earlier UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Special Report titled, "The Impact of the Barrier on Health," accessed through THIS link

StoptheWall.org (STW) is a "Palestinian movement against the (Separation) Wall and the settlements under Israeli repression," calling for it to be stopped, portions built dismantled, all confiscated lands returned, and compensation paid for losses.

On July 9, it released a report titled, "People versus Oppression," a March - June 2010 account of Israeli repression, including

"large scale violations of the civil, political and human rights of activists and communities active against the Wall that compounds the dispossession brought upon them by (its) illegal construction."

In defiance of the International Criminal Court (ICJ) ruling it illegal, calling for it to be dismantled and reparations paid for lost homes, businesses, farmland, orchards, olive groves, and other immovable property seized, construction continues unabated, committing human rights violations against many thousands affected.

Over the past year alone, harsh repression included killings, targeted assassinations, mass arrests, travel bans, raids against Stop the Wall's offices, and other Palestinian organizations and international activists, notably Freedom Flotilla ones, up to 15 murdered in cold blood in international waters delivering humanitarian aid to besieged Gazans.

From March - June 2010, the "extent of violence and dehumanization (has been) staggering."

The past year "marked (a) quantitative shift in....Israel('s) overall policies and strategies," its ongoing deterrence and oppression agenda, punctuated by daily violence against defenseless civilians, including women and children, endangering their struggle for justice, self-determination and peace, notions Israel spurns, preferring conflict to conciliation, collective punishment to the rule of law, and crimes of war and against humanity over democratic freedoms and equal justice - how all rogue states operate.

Combined, they're "part of a new Israeli strategy to deal with growing international (and internal) criticism - through legislation, belligerence, and repression, including Wall construction, land theft, and isolation.

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Tom Eley

The Iraqi city of Fallujah continues to suffer the ghastly consequences of a US military onslaught in late 2004.

According to the authors of a new study, “Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009,” the people of Fallujah are experiencing higher rates of cancer, leukemia, infant mortality, and sexual mutations than those recorded among survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the years after those Japanese cities were incinerated by US atomic bomb strikes in 1945.

The epidemiological study, published in the International Journal of Environmental Studies and Public Health (IJERPH), also finds the prevalence of these conditions in Fallujah to be many times greater than in nearby nations.

The assault on Fallujah, a city located 43 miles west of Baghdad, was one of the most horrific war crimes of our time. After the population resisted the US-led occupation of Iraq—a war of neo-colonial plunder launched on the basis of lies—Washington determined to make an example of the largely Sunni city. This is called “exemplary” or “collective” punishment and is, according to the laws of war, illegal.

The new public health study of the city now all but proves what has long been suspected: that a high proportion of the weaponry used in the assault contained depleted uranium, a radioactive substance used in shells to increase their effectiveness.

In a study of 711 houses and 4,843 individuals carried out in January and February 2010, authors Chris Busby, Malak Hamdan, Entesar Ariabi and a team of researchers found that the cancer rate had increased fourfold since before the US attack five years ago, and that the forms of cancer in Fallujah are similar to those found among the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb survivors, who were exposed to intense fallout radiation.

In Fallujah the rate of leukemia is 38 times higher, the childhood cancer rate is 12 times higher, and breast cancer is 10 times more common than in populations in Egypt, Jordan, and Kuwait. Heightened levels of adult lymphoma and brain tumors were also reported. At 80 deaths out of every 1,000 births, the infant mortality rate in Fallujah is more than five times higher than in Egypt and Jordan, and eight times higher than in Kuwait.

Strikingly, after 2005 the proportion of girls born in Fallujah has increased sharply. In normal populations, 1050 boys are born for every 1000 girls. But among those born in Fallujah in the four years after the US assault, the ratio was reduced to 860 boys for every 1000 female births. This alteration is similar to gender ratios found in Hiroshima after the US atomic attack of 1945.

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Chris Floyd

Henry Miller once said that the purpose of the artist is to "inoculate the world with disillusionment." We are in desperate need of disillusionment today -- disillusionment on a vast scale, disillusionment as a constant discipline. Arthur Silber is one of the greatest such artists now at work, and he has just released a remarkable piece aimed at one the deadliest illusions of our time: the myth of American Exceptionalism. I cannot recommend strongly enough that you read the entire piece, but below are a few excerpts to highlight some of the salient points.

Silber writes of the poisonous effects of the all-pervasive, ever-hardening Exceptionalist myth that has such a death-grip on the American psyche. In some ways, of course, this myth is just a variant of the same kind of self-deluding trumpery that powerful nations and tribes have told themselves down through the centuries -- "We are special, we are superior, whatever we do is good and right, because we are the ones doing it, etc." You could find beliefs like this going back to Rome, to Babylon, to Sumer, probably all the way back to Çatalhöyük or the Blombos Cave.

But the longevity and universality of this pernicious mindset is in no way a mitigation of it. It does not reduce by one iota the responsibility -- the blood-guilt -- of any society that adheres to such a myth, and uses it to "justify" (indeed, celebrate) horrendous crimes. It is American Exceptionalism that we must deal with in our time. And although the belief of this particular bunch of bare, fork'd animals that they are special is nothing new, the gargantuan, ravenous military force that backs up this delusion is unprecedented in world history. It is only in its destructiveness, real and potential, that the American system is indeed exceptional.

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Doug Bandow

In one of the most celebrated debate exchanges of the 2008 presidential campaign, GOP contender Rep. Ron Paul pointed out that Americans were hated because they were "over there" in Islamic lands. In fact, there is virtually no country on earth where American forces are not located.

Luckily, most people in most of those nations are not trying to kill Americans. In fact, many foreigners enjoy being protected at U. S. expense. Alas, Washington's desire to garrison most of the earth's surface helps explain why Uncle Sam is effectively bankrupt.

In fact, it's hard to keep track of America's many overseas military installations. By one Pentagon count there are 865 foreign facilities. But that doesn't count bases in Afghanistan and Iraq, which probably pushes the total past 1000.

There are 268 in Germany, 124 in Japan, and 87 in South Korea. Many of these are small, but the numbers are still incredible. Moreover, writes David Vine of American University:"Others are scattered around the globe in places like Aruba and Australia, Bulgaria and Bahrain, Colombia and Greece, Djibouti, Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, Romania, Singapore, and, of course, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- just to name a few. "

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