William Bowles

Sarah Meyer, 73, who published her work on Index Research, died at 11:00 PM Wednesday, March 3rd. 2010 from cancer. We hung out a couple of times, once at her little hideaway in the country and on demos, but most of our contact was via the Web and our related writings. An American ex-pat, her writing was exhaustive, thoroughly documented analyses on Iraq, Afghanistan and much more. According to Sarah, her decision not to go through treatment in an attempt to delay the inevitable was hard for the NHS to accept, which resulted in her fighting her final battle with doctors, who just could not understand why she refused to undergo treatment. Perhaps her own words sum up her reasons: ‘The language applied to cancer sounds like Obama’s wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. We hear about “battles” – “Fighting the Enemy” and the “War on Cancer.” Constructively discussing the actual process of life and death can often be a no-go zone. Even the word ‘death’ is replaced by the awful term, “passing away.” ‘I am almost 73 now, and I am ready for death. The suffering of peoples on our planet is a burden for me. I have tried for much of my life to be useful, but of course one cannot ‘cure’ this central crux of life itself.’ But her life lives on through her contributions, which is more than many of us can claim. Hamba Kahle, Sarah.* "center">___________________________________________________________________________________ AWIP/Musafir's Musings: Hands Across the Seas. AWIP/Sarah Meyer: My Cancer: The Waiting Game. Sarah's website HERE. * Zulu for farewell.

Abel Bult-Ito

Disturbing photos of children

Iraqi and visiting doctors, and a number of news reports, have reported that birth defects and cancers in Iraqi children have increased five- to 10-fold since the 1991 Gulf War and continue to increase sharply, to over 30-fold in some areas in southern Iraq. Currently, more than 50 percent of Iraqi cancer patients are children under the age of 5, up from 13 percent. Children are especially vulnerable because they tend to play in areas that are heavily polluted by depleted uranium.

The Pentagon has been using radiooactive weapons for at least a decade and a half with full complicity of at least three White House administrations and Republican and Democratic congressional legislators. Conservatively, at least 300 tons and 1,700 tons of depleted uranium were used in the Gulf War and the current Iraq War, resectively. This is about 70 grams of depleted uranium per Iraqi citizen, and if inhaled or ingested, it is enough to kill them all.

Is this not radioactive genocide, especially when our troops used and continue to use most of the depleted uranium munitions in densely populated areas such as Baghdad and Fallujah? Depleted uranium has a half-life of billions of years. Consequently, Iraq will be a wasteland forever and essentially uninhabitable for anyone.

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William Bowles

I am staggered. There are 10,000 ‘NGOs’ (Non-Governmental Organizations) in Haiti, one for every 900 inhabitants and each one of them has no doubt at least one Westerner working within, yet aside from the Cuban health workers, it seems they could do nothing until the gringos arrived with their Blackhawks and nuclear-tipped aircraft carrier and of course, the 82nd Airborne, paying yet another ‘visit’ to this benighted and super-exploited land to 'secure' the place for the locust storm of aid to come (too late for too many).

Now I’ve never been a fan of ‘NGOs’ not only because my own experience with them has been less than edifying but because they are the direct result of ‘benign neglect’ on the part of the state. In other words they initially appeared to fill a void left when states washed their hands of the mess they’d left behind or they just ditched their responsibilities.

But unlike governments who are, in theory anyway, answerable to their electorate, ‘NGOs’ are answerable to no one. They are not elected, they are not representative. In their way they are more like neo-colonial ‘stand-ins’ for the former colonizers, at least at the ‘social services’ end of things. Well, it seems many of the 10,000 have been tested and found wanting.

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William Bowles

“In Post-War Iraq, Use Military Forces to Secure Vital U.S. Interests, Not for Nation-Building” — The Heritage Foundation

And just in case you still haven’t got the point, the same Heritage Foundation document, dated 25 September, 2002 went on to tell us,

“Protect Iraq’s energy infrastructure against internal sabotage or foreign attack to return Iraq to global energy markets and ensure that U.S. and world energy markets have access to its resources.”[1]

Anything that says otherwise in the corporate or state press is just propaganda and/or lies. Period.

The turning point when oil took centre stage came significantly as the 20th century began with the world’s most powerful imperial navies, the German and British switching from burning coal to burning oil. From that point on the destinies of Persia and the Arab world irrevocably became central to Western imperial ambitions, so much so that to this day we are living (and dying) with the results, most notably the Palestinians and the Iraqis, not to mention two World Wars where oil was central for all the combatants, not only to fight with but to control.

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Chris Floyd

[Via Mark Crispin Miller, the Center for Constitutional Rights points to some venues for getting help to the people of Haiti: Partners in Health and the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund. You can find several more in this listing from the New York Times.]

I.
The relentlessly maintained, deliberately inflicted political and economic ruin of Haiti has a direct bearing on the amount of death and devastation that the country is suffering today after the earthquake. It will also greatly cripple any recovery from this natural disaster. As detailed below, Washington's rapacious economic policies have destroyed all attempts to build a sustainable economy in Haiti, driving people off the land and from small communities into packed, dangerous, unhealthy shantytowns, to try to eke out a meager existence in the sweatshops owned by Western elites and their local cronies. All attempts at changing a manifestly unjust society have been ruthlessly suppressed by the direct or collateral hand of Western elites.

The result? Millions of people -- weakened by hunger, deprivation, malnutrition, disease -- living jammed together in precarious, substandard housing. A lack of the physical, financial and civic infrastructure needed to support a decent life in ordinary times -- and to provide proper assistance, and a strong framework for rebuilding, when disaster strikes. Even a far lesser earthquake than the one that struck this week would have caused an unconscionable amount of unnecessary suffering in a nation that has been as ruthlessly and deliberately throttled as Haiti.

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Sarah Meyer

Storm Clouds over Rodmell Photo © Sarah Meyer

Birth Is The Disease; Death Is The Cure.

The language applied to cancer sounds like Obama’s wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. We hear about "battles" - “Fighting the Enemy” and the “War on Cancer.” Constructively discussing the actual process of life and death can often be a no-go zone. Even the word 'death' is replaced by the awful term, “passing away.”

I am almost 73 now, and I am ready for death. The suffering of peoples on our planet is a burden for me. I have tried for much of my life to be useful, but of course one cannot ‘cure’ this central crux of life itself.

Some people emailed that they were "shocked" at my cancer news. Why is this? Cancer is a big reality in our times. 1 in 3 people die of cancer (UK).

I hope that this essay will be helpful and informative for others. If you would wish to write to me with your own experiences of cancer, or obstruction of your wishes, or treatment, please email me (see About Me above), with subject: "cancer."

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William Bowles

“The US does not need a final victory over the Talibs. Despite their widely advertized ferocious conflict, the US and the Talibs manage to coexist quite successfully in Afghanistan…”[1]

Come on folks, it’s just good sense, there is no way the Empire can actually win the war in Afghanistan. As I have stated before it’s not about ‘winning’ but occupation. Afghanistan is basically a stepping stone on the way to some place else and leaving an oil pipeline behind with a friendly government in place to protect it. Ah, but the best laid plans of mice and men
etc...

And this is why it bears no comparison to the idiotic occupation that the Soviets got sucked into, except for the slaughter of course. But from a strategic and economic perspective, along with Iran, Pakistan and India, Afghanistan commands the entrance to East Asia and there’s gold in them thar hills!

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William Bowles

Have you ever seen anything more outrageous? Talk about double standards! For weeks the BBC bombarded us with outrage concerning the elections in Iran with wall-to-wall coverage of the protests and predicting some other kind of ‘colour’ revolution, a green one this time (what will USAID, NDI, Freedom House, George Soros et al do, when they run out of colours?).[1]

“Millions of Iranians simply did not believe the result. The main demand of the protesters has been an annulment of the result and an election re-run.” — ‘Q&A: Iran election aftermath’, BBC News, 22 June, 2009.

Compare the BBC’s squeals of outrage over the Iranian elections with how the BBC ‘delicately’ deals with the Afghan elections. No wall-to-wall coverage of Afghan outrage over a stolen election. Instead,

“There was no further reference to fraud. It was pointed out that the figures were more or less in line with the opinion polls - President Karzai, the candidate of the majority Pashtun people, in the high 40s and Dr Abdullah in the low 30s.” — ‘Karzai back in favour - conditionally’, BBC News, 2 November, 2009.

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08/18/09 Eric Margolis The US Denounces Iran While running fake elections in Afghanistan
08/18/09 Chris Floyd The Gadarene Gambit: Surging Over the Cliff in Afghanistan
08/20/09 Pepe Escobar The Afghan pipe dream
08/28/09 Patrick Martin Washington’s double standard: The elections in Iran and Afghanistan
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10/22/09 Eric S. Margolis Flames From Afghanistan Ignite Pakistan
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11/04/09 Malalai Joya Speech of Malalai Joya: No nation can liberate another
11/05/09 Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan Why the UN is so disturbed at the Murder of the Western Nationals?
11/05/09 William Bowles The nerve of these guys! Karzai 'wins' anyway
11/06/09 William Bowles Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires or just a graveyard with a pipeline running through it?
11/06/09 Gwynne Dyer Last Exit From Afghanistan
11/12/09 Christopher King The Afghanistan war on Remembrance Sunday
11/17/09 Pepe Escobar UNDER THE AFPAK VOLCANO: Welcome to Pashtunistan
11/23/09 Olivia Ward 'Liberation was just a big lie'
11/24/09 Eric S. Margolis The Pot Calls The Kettle Black
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12/03/09 Stephen Lendman Obamathink on Afghanistan: Escalate to Exit
12/03/09 Justin Raimondo Obama’s War Speech: An Unconvincing Flop
12/11/09 William Blum The Anti-Empire Report -Yeswecanistan
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01/02/10 Peter Dale Scott Obama and Afghanistan: America’s Drug-Corrupted War
01/08/10 What Really Happened Afghan My Lai Massacre
01/20/10 Jeremy Scahill Blackwater Wants to Surge its Armed Force in Afghanistan
01/21/10 Jeffrey Kaye Afghanistan: Women Dying and Torture Run Amuck
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02/28/10 Gwynne Dyer Afghanistan guerrilla war will have a predictable result
02/02/10 Anand Gopal Terror comes at night in Afghanistan
02/03/10 Mehdi Hasan Malalai Joya Intervieved by Mehdi Hasan
02/03/10 Nick Turse Drone surge: Today, tomorrow and 2047
02/15/10 Johann Hari Obama's secret prisons in Afghanistan endanger us all
02/15/10 Chris Floyd The Last Station: Surging Into the Savage Past in Afghanistan
02/17/10 Chris Floyd All Systems Go: No Disfunction in Profitable Afghan Enterprise
02/17/10 Chris Floyd Collateral Accumulation: Passing on the Abiding Wisdom of Empire
02/20/10 David Lindorff Battle for Marjah: The US has Already Lost
02/21/10 Christopher King Dutch government falls over Afghanistan
02/24/10 Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan Marjah Operations are an Exemplary Lesson for the Invaders
02/24/10 Chris Floyd Many Thousand Gone
02/28/10 Gwynne Dyer Afghanistan guerrilla war will have a predictable result
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03/07/10 James Lucas Destroying Afghanistan
03/09/10 Gareth Porter Fiction of Marja as City Was U.S. Information War
03/12/10 Chris Floyd Cud and Complicity: Burying the Alternatives to Empire's Dominion
03/16/10 David Lindorff This Time It's Pregnant Women: Another US Atrocity in the Bush-Obama War in Afghanistan
03/20/10 Chris Floyd Night Riders: Afghan Atrocity and American Values
03/27/10 Chris Floyd An Unaccustomed Truth: American Commander Admits Afghan Atrocities
03/30/10 Rethink Afghanistan NATO Tries to Silence a Truth-Teller in Afghanistan After Killing Pregnant Women
03/30/10 Bill Van Auken Obama’s visit underscores US crisis in Afghanistan
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04/01/10 Richard North "We will not prevail in Afghanistan"
04/03/10 Victor Korgun The Afghan dilemma
04/06/10 Stephen Lendman US-Committed Atrocities in Afghanistan
04/06/10 Tom Eley US Special Forces covered up massacre of Afghans
04/06/10 Stephen Lendman US-Committed Atrocities in Afghanistan
04/14/10 Marc W. Herold Obama’s Unspoken Trade-Off: Dead US/NATO Occupation Troops versus Dead Afghan Civilians?
04/16/10 The Anti Press Special Forces Death Squads in Afghanistan
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