Gorilla’s Guides

The women of Iraq have disappeared. Five years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, women’s secular freedoms - once the envy of women across the Middle East - have been snatched away because militant Islam is rising across the country. Across Iraq, a bloody and relentless oppression of women has taken hold. Many women had their heads shaved for refusing to wear a scarf or have been stoned in the street for wearing make-up. Others have been kidnapped and murdered for crimes that are being labelled simply as “inappropriate behaviour”. The insurrection against the fragile and barely functioning state has left the country prey to extremists whose notion of freedom does not extend to women. In Basra, where Mehdi Army retains a stranglehold, women insist the situation is at its worst. Here they are forced to live behind closed doors only to emerge, concealed behind scarves, hidden behind husbands and fathers. Even wearing a pair of trousers is considered an act of defiance, punishable by death. One Basra woman, known only as Dr Kefaya, was working in the women and children’s hospital unit at the city university when she started receiving threats from extremists. She defied them. Then, one day a man walked into the building and murdered her.

Behind the wave of insurgent attacks, the violence against women who dare to challenge the Islamic orthodoxy is growing. Fatwas banning women from driving or being seen out alone are regularly issued. Infiltrated by militia, the police are unwilling or unable to crack down on the fundamentalists. Ms Alebadi said: “After the fall of the regime, the religious extremist parties came out on to the streets and threatened women. Although the extremists are in the minority, they control powerful positions, so they control Basra.” To venture on the streets today without a male relative is to risk attack, humiliation or kidnap. A journalist, Shatta Kareem, said: “I was driving my car one day when someone just crashed into me and drove me off the road. If a woman is seen driving these days it is considered a violation of men’s rights.”

Source: Accompanying text to : YouTube - The Women in the New Iraq المرأة في العراق الجديد  shown above.

Thank you America for making it possible for these scum to set our Sisters’ rights back by several generations.

Maryam, 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.

As posted immediately below the independent Iraki newsagency Aswat Al Iraq (Voices of Iraq) are reporting the finding of the corpse of one of the captured American soldiers. According to the report a spokesman for the green zone government Ministry of Defense, said on Sunday, that a combined American/green zone government force found two days ago the body of an American soldier captured about six months ago, in an area 60 Kilometres north of the city of Hilla.

The soldier has been missing since gunmen launched an attack on an American observation post near Mahmoudia south of Baghdad, on the twelfth of May last. During the attack which was complex and well-organised the attackers killed four soldiers patrol and an Iraqi interpreter.

The gunmen captured three other soldiers. The so-called Islamic State of Irak claimed the responsibility for the attack.

The American army immediately launched a massive campaign of  searches, in which thousands of American and green zone government soldiers searched the areas south of Baghdad and north of the city of Hilla  during the most intense phase about 900 people were questioned intensively and 36 detained. American planes dropped leaflets offering a reward  of $200 thousand dollars to those who gave information about the whereabouts of the missing soldiers. The so-called Islamic State issued a video (see report of June 4th 2007 under the heading "Late Breaking Report:  for screengrabs) in which a speaker on the video said:

“Fearing the occupying army will continue its searches, harming our Muslim brothers … (the Islamic State in Iraq) decided to settle the matter and announced the news of their killing to cause bitterness to God’s enemies”

At least two American soldiers died during the search for their missing comrades, and several others were wounded.

The body of Pfc. Joseph Anzack Jr. was subsequently recovered on May 23rd from the Euphrates near Musayyib.

According to Aswat al Iraq’s report the green zone government Defense Ministry spokesmen said that the body was recovered when a hideout was stormed and that 4 people have been detained in connection with the discovery.

It should be noted that the spokesman did not provide any other details about the storming operation or its context, and whether finding the dead soldier was based on specific information … Or by chance.

At the time of writing there has been no official statement from the Americans about the matter.

However we are inclined to believe the report first because there was a big sweep north of Hillah 2 days ago followed by intense activity and also because the last time the green zone government Defense ministry got an announcement like this wrong they got very badly burnt by their American masters.

Saba Ali & Mohammed Khader Hashi

New Developments:

• There are two confirmed cases in Diyala. More are expected.
• 6 cases are being reported from Mosul four of them from the same family.
• The cases previously reported from Basrah are now confirmed.

Update: The water in the Basrah cases appears to have have come from a privately operated desalination plant according to reports. - Maryam

In all the above other suspected cases are being investigated. The next two months are particularly dangerous — as the weather cools the environmental factors conducive to a major outbreak will be present.

Particular Causes For Concern As The Disease Spreads:

So far efforts to contain the outbreak have been relatively successful. To a large extent this is likely to be because the disease outbreak was in three relatively peaceful governorates with functioning, if dilapidated heath systems, and where doctors and other medical staff are in relatively good supply. Furthermore WHO staff were able to move around, it was relatively easy to move the emergency supplies needed. This is not the case in other governorates.

In governorates such as Diyala, Ninawa, Salah ad Din, Basrah, Al Anbar, and Baghdad the logistical difficulties of getting the supplies needed to the affected areas are formidable. The security situation is such that it is difficult to see how doing so would be accomplished. Worse than that in those governorates and in Baghdad particularly there is a desperate shortage of doctors, nurses, medical technicians, and pharmacists. They are dead or fled. It will be extremely difficult to provide anything even approximating the human clinical resources needed should there be a wide outbreak.

I am desperately concerned also by the water supply situation. Since they were bombed by the Americans during the 1991 war the water treatment plants throughout Irak have limped along. Their degradation was further worsened by the adamant refusal of the UN during sanctions to allow the plant and supplies needed to repair them to be imported. There has been no serious attempt made to repair water treatment plants in Irak although many no-bid contracts were dished out to large and politically well connected American firms who took the money and left.

Those plants that are operating operate irregularly and frequently at drastically reduced capacity because they either cannot get the fuel they need to run their generators or if they depend on national grid they get at most a few hours electricity a day.

Additionally they cannot get adequate supplies of Chlorine. Basrah for example has now run out of Chlorine. There have been many statements about plans to ensure the security of Chlorine deliveries from the green zone government but so far little or no Chlorine.

These factors are particularly worrying as they could lead to the formation of biofilms in the pipes carrying water. Bacteria in biofilms are far more resistant free-floating bacteria both to antibiotics and to disinfectants such as Chlorine.

Playing Politics With Cholera 1

While (see Sitrep_10) there have been measures put in place in every governorate to control the outbreak I am not confident that these will be immune to political pressure. If you read the report linked to above about the outbreak in Diyala you will see that the green zone government are declining to say where the outbreak occurred stating only that it is in a “hot area” - such frivolity is deeply worrying. The areas - plural not singular - of concern in Diyala are Baquba, Muqdadiyah, and Al Khalis as anyone who can read an Iraki newspaper will tell you. 

Playing Politics With Cholera 2

Azad Pamarni a Kurdish member of the green zone parliament has made a report to the green zone parliament saying that the outbreak is largely under control and expected to be over within a month. He criticised the WHO for making a false statement statement that there were 16,000 (sixteen thousand) cases of Cholera in the three affected governorates, Arbil At Ta’mim (Kirkuk) and Sulaymaniyah. He went on to demand that organisations not politicise this medical crisis as doing so could damage the psychological health of the citizenry and harm the country’s economy.

Both Pamarni and the journalists covering this outbreak should try getting their facts straight. The statement about which he is complaining is this one and what it says is this [emphasis added] :

The cholera outbreak has so far claimed 10 lives in the provicen of Sulamaniya and Kirkuk while three provinces – Sulamniya, Kirkuk and Erbil have reported laboratory confirmed cases of cholera. There has been a sharp increase in reported cases of diarrhoeal disease in the three northern governorates since mid‐August. Vibrio cholerae, the bacterium responsible for the disease, has been isolated from the stool speciment of 1055 diarrheal disease cases so far. V. cholera can be fatal if untreated. So far, the outbreak has been concentrated in the northern region of Iraq with a population of more than 3 million people. Between from 23 August and 10 September, at least 6000 people have been reported with diarrhoeal diseases in Sulaymaniyah, almost 7000 in Kirkuk province and on since 6 September, the outbreak has spread to Erbil province causing at least 3000 cases.

6000 + 7000 + 3000 = 16000 cases of diarrhoeal diseases is not the same as 16000 cases of Cholera as the statement makes entirely clear.

Maryam.