Gorilla’s Guides

With thanks to my Sister in humanity Sophia.

Mohammed Ibn Laith

As we remarked before the expression “ongoing diplomacy” is just a nice way of saying “Genocide.” Courtesy of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit it’s now indisputably “legal” under American “law.”

On Friday 22nd 2008, to nobody’s surprise the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit  upheld [follow this link to download the judgement as as PDF] the dismissal [follow this link to download the judgement as as PDF] of the case brought by approximately three million Vietnamese plaintiffs against against Dow Chemical Co, Monsanto Co and nearly 30 other American chemical companies for producing and supplying defoliants, including Agent Orange that US forces used during the Vietnam war. 

American warplanes sprayed these highly toxic substances on Vietnamese forests between 1962 and 1971 to destroy Vietnamese sources of food and cover. In other words just as they have done — and continue to do in Irak today, the Americans during the Vietnam war used the starvation of civilians as a weapon.

Long after the last bullet has been fired in a war, unexploded bombs, landmines and toxic chemicals continue to maim and kill civilians. This is particularly true of the Vietnam war. Three decades after US soldiers and diplomats scrambled aboard the last planes out of Saigon in April 1975, the toxins they left behind still poison Vietnam.

Source: Comment is free: Agent of suffering

Do you remember this child?  He’s one of the millions who will not get any help or restitution from the people who did this to him, they can hide behind the legal doctrine of sovereign immunity. He won’t get any help or restitution from the people who made a lot of money selling the poison to the people who did this to him.

This is from Reuters on Friday:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal appeals court upheld on Friday the dismissal of a civil lawsuit against major U.S. chemical companies brought by Vietnamese plaintiffs over the use of the defoliant “agent orange” during the Vietnam War

… … …

A U.S. District Court judge in Brooklyn, New York ruled in March 2005 that the plaintiffs failed to show that use of agent orange, a plant killer supplied to the U.S. military in Vietnam, violated a ban on the use of poisonous weapons in war and that the lawsuit did not prove the plaintiffs’ health problems were linked to the chemical.

“Although the herbicide campaign may have been controversial, the record before us supports the conclusion that agent orange was used as a defoliant and not as a poison designed for or targeting human populations,” Judge Roger Miner wrote for the three-judge appeals court panel.

The court also upheld two other agent orange rulings, including one in a case that was brought by veterans and their families who said their health problems did not become apparent until after a 1984 class-action settlement was reached with a group of veterans. In that case, the Second Circuit found that, as government contractors, the chemical companies could be shielded from liability.

Source: Court upholds dismissal of agent orange suit | Reuters

Dioxins:

Dioxins are a class of chemical contaminants that are formed during combustion processes such as waste incineration, forest fires, and backyard trash burning, as well as during some industrial processes such as paper pulp bleaching and herbicide manufacturing. The most toxic chemical in the class is 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-para-dioxin (TCDD). The highest environmental concentrations of dioxin are usually found in soil and sediment, with much lower levels found in air and water

Source: Dioxins 

2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-para-dioxin (TCDD) 

TCDD is considered to be one of, if not the most toxic man-made substance. It has been shown to cause cancer and disrupt multiple endocrine functions. TCDD is a by-product of several manufacturing processes such as paper production and pesticide formulation. Among its varied effects, TCDD has been shown to cause increased fetal loss and reduced birth weight in animal studies.

Source: Birth Outcomes of Women Exposed to Dioxin in Seveso Italy - DERT

Three decades later America and her surrogates make war on all the peoples of the Middle East in the same evil, and futile way that they made war on the peoples of South East Asia, only the means of delivering death across the generations have changed. Not the calculated barbarity, not the hypocrisy, not the evil, and most certainly not the racism. It’s not just Irak, and it’s not just Lebanon:

What I mean by that is that it’s going to be a cold day in hell before the Lebanese forgive or forget what was done to their children by Israeli troops and Israeli aviators. They’re not going to forgive or forget that the weapons used to slaughter their children and destroy their livelihoods were made in America, paid for by America, and calculatingly used against their children in a war planned for years by Israel, and launched with America’s blessing.

They’re not going to forgive or forget that America blocked all attempts to stop their children being massacred by Israeli troops and Israeli aviators. They’re never ever ever going to forgive or forget what that bloodsoaked slut Condoleeza Rice said about how the agonised deaths of their children were the “birth pangs of the new middle east.” They’re not going to forgive or forget that neither the “light unto the nations” nor the “shining city on the hill” gave a flying fuck about their children. It didn’t matter that a lot of the dead children were Christians all that mattered was that they were Lebanese, that they were Arabs, untermenschen and that it was worth killing them because the political calculation in America and Israel was that killing them would cause their parents to blame and hate their fellow Lebanese.

Source: Gorilla’s Guides (old site): Guest Posting by Declan: “What I Did At The Weekend”

And its not just Gaza:

In any event, in Gaza the Oslo experiment in indirect rule seems to be over. Israel now treats the territory less like an internment camp and more like an animal pen: a space of near total confinement whose wardens are concerned primarily with keeping those inside alive and tame, with some degree of mild concern as to the opinions of neighbors and other outsiders.

Source: Middle East Report Online: Disengagement and the Frontiers of Zionism by Darryl Li

America’s “ongoing diplomacy” is directed at all the peoples of the Middle East, or at least at those of us who aren’t utterly and slavishly obedient to American demands. The war in Irak is part of America’s “ongoing diplomacy,” the “ongoing diplomacy” that is carried out by “Democrat” and “Republican” administrations alike, of saying to us and to everyone who has something that America covets:

We are your new masters, we are intrinsically better and moral than everyone else simply because we are American. We are the new master race. We know what is good for you. Obey us or we will do this to your children and your home.

No.

Maryam, Mohammed Ibn Laith, Fatima.

Re-posted in its entirety by gracious permission of Sophia, of Les Politiques.

From the article Sophia linked to:

Why has Washington been so doggedly determined to deny any compensation to Vietnamese victims, even refusing to come up with humanitarian aid? A clue can be found in the intervention of the White House counsel in the Vietnamese lawsuit against the chemical companies. The US government intervened to argue that if the court permitted the case to prosper, it would undermine national security and limit presidential options in a time of war.

In the New York Court Seth Waxman, defence counsel for the chemical companies, argued there was a lack of legal precedent for punishing those who used poisons during warfare, and said US battlefield decisions could be harmed. “This does affect our ongoing diplomacy,” he said, citing the use of depleted uranium shells by US forces in Iraq.

Source: Comment is free: Agent of suffering

U.S. warplanes dumped about 18 million gallons (70 million liters) of the defoliant on Vietnamese forests between 1962 and 1971 to destroy Vietnamese sources of food and cover. The plaintiffs seek damages from dioxin poisoning which decades later they say has caused cancer, deformities and organ dysfunction.

Source: Vietnamese appeal agent orange suit in New York | U.S. | Reuters

Polychlorinated dibenzodioxins (PCDDs), polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) constitute a group of persistent environmental chemicals. A number of dioxin or furan congeners, as well as some co-planar PCBs have been shown to exert a number of toxic responses similar to those of 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD), the most toxic dioxin. These effects include dermal toxicity, immunotoxicity, reproductive effects and teratogenicity, endocrine disruption and carcinogenicity.

Source: WHO - Assessment of the health risk of dioxins: re-evaluation of the Tolerable Daily Intake (TDI)

The judges appeared unmoved by previous cases from years following World War Two, when makers of the gas Zyklon B, used in Nazi death camps, were convicted of crimes.

Unlike those cases, the judges questioned if poisons used in war that were not directly intended to kill people and only found years later to cause harm violated international law.

“It’s a different circumstance here, is it not?” asked appeals court judge Robert Sack. “Is poison designed to kill or hurt?”

Source: Vietnamese appeal agent orange suit in New York | U.S. | Reuters

“This does affect our ongoing diplomacy,” he said, citing the use of depleted uranium shells by US forces in Iraq.

“Ongoing diplomacy” what a nice way of saying “genocide”. We Irakis know all about American “ongoing diplomacy“:

13129 malformed children have been born in Iraq in the last five years. Their deformities have been caused by American Depleted Uranium munitions used in the American led 1991 “Desert Storm” war with Irak launched after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. The war saw heavy use of depleted uranium rounds by American and British forces and was followed by a punitive sanctions regime enforced by the United Nations primarily at America’s behest. The sanctions included preventing Irak from importing drugs for the treatment of cancers and birth defects. The current war on Irak was launched on the pretext that Irak was failing to comply with sanctions and had weapons of mass destruction.

Source: Gorilla’s Guides: 13129

Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.

–60 Minutes (5/12/96)

Source: “We Think the Price Is Worth It”

According to the green zone government Ministry of Health the numbers of maimed children born with defects in Irak after the United States used over 940 thousand depleted uranium rounds in the war with Iraq in 1991 in the last 5 years is 13129.

The report from Al Melaf gives the statistics from a Ministry of Health briefing on the number of children born with birth defects since 2001 as 13129 in total.

The number of deformed children born last year was more than 1919.

Ninewa (Nineveh) province, has the highest number of children born maimed as 411.

Baghdad is next with 372 children born distorted.

Basra has seen the birth of 300 distorted children .

Between 30 to 40 children per month are born with defects attributed to their mothers inhalation of radioactive dust from depleted uranium rounds. The American army used depleted uranium during the last war and this was confirmed by a German team who visited Irak recently and were able to obtain a missile which proved after checking that the American forces used depleted uranium.

Source: Gorilla’s Guides: 13129

We Irakis know exactly what former U.S Solicitor General Seth Paul Waxman means when he talks about “ongoing diplomacy“.

Maryam, Mohammed Ibn Laith, Fatima.