Iraq records huge rise in birth defects
New study links increase with military action by Western forcesIt played unwilling host to one of the bloodiest battles of the Iraq war. Fallujah’s homes and businesses were left shattered; hundreds of Iraqi civilians were killed. Its residents changed the name of their “City of Mosques” to “the polluted city” after the United States launched two massive military campaigns eight years ago. Now, one month before the World Health Organisation reveals its view on the legacy of the two battles for the town, a new study reports a “staggering rise” in birth defects among Iraqi children conceived in the aftermath of the war.
High rates of miscarriage, toxic levels of lead and mercury contamination and spiralling numbers of birth defects ranging from congenital heart defects to brain dysfunctions and malformed limbs have been recorded. Even more disturbingly, they appear to be occurring at an increasing rate in children born in Fallujah, about 40 miles west of Baghdad.
There is “compelling evidence” to link the increased numbers of defects and miscarriages to military assaults, says Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, one of the lead authors of the report and an environmental toxicologist at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health. Similar defects have been found among children born in Basra after British troops invaded, according to the new research.
US marines first bombarded Fallujah in April 2004 after four employees from the American security company Blackwater were killed, their bodies burned and dragged through the street, with two of the corpses left hanging from a bridge. Seven months later, the marines stormed the city for a second time, using some of the heaviest US air strikes deployed in Iraq. American forces later admitted that they had used white phosphorus shells, although they never admitted to using depleted uranium, which has been linked to high rates of cancer and birth defects.
The new findings, published in the Environmental Contamination and Toxicology bulletin, will bolster claims that US and Nato munitions used in the conflict led to a widespread health crisis in Iraq. They are the latest in a series of studies that have suggested a link between bombardment and a rise in birth defects. Their preliminary findings, in 2010, prompted a World Health Organisation inquiry into the prevalence of birth defects in the area. The WHO’s report, out next month, is widely expected to show an increase in birth defects after the conflict. It has looked at nine “high-risk” areas in Iraq, including Fallujah and Basra. Where high prevalence is found, the WHO is expected to call for additional studies to pinpoint precise causes.
The latest study found that in Fallujah, more than half of all babies surveyed were born with a birth defect between 2007 and 2010. Before the siege, this figure was more like one in 10. Prior to the turn of the millennium, fewer than 2 per cent of babies were born with a defect. More than 45 per cent of all pregnancies surveyed ended in miscarriage in the two years after 2004, up from only 10 per cent before the bombing. Between 2007 and 2010, one in six of all pregnancies ended in miscarriage.
topernic
I wonder a lot.
Tag Archives: War/Conflict
Read it and Weep
The cost of America’s police stateAt the height of the Occupy Wall Street evictions, it seemed as though some diminutive version of “shock and awe” had stumbled from Baghdad, Iraq, to Oakland, Calif. American police forces had been “militarized,” many commentators worried, as though the firepower and callous tactics on display were anomalies, surprises bursting upon us from nowhere.
via Salon
March to War Continues
Although all 16 U.S. secret state intelligence agencies confirmed, again, that “Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program years earlier,” reaffirming the “consensus view” of not one, but two National Intelligence Estimates The New York Times reported last week, the march towards war continues.
Last Saturday The Daily Telegraph, citing The Wall Street Journal, reported that “military planners have asked for emergency funding from Congress to address a perceived shortfall in defence capabilities that could undermine the ability of US forces to respond to an Iranian closure of the Strait of Hormuz.”
Plans are underway “to modify weapons systems on ships that are at present vulnerable to Iranian fast-attack boats, many of which carry anti-ship missiles,” the Telegraph averred.
Feeling the heat from pro-Israeli lobby shops and congressional grifters, President Obama told The Atlantic on Friday: “When I say we’re not taking any option off the table, we mean it. I think that the Israeli government recognizes that, as president of the United States, I don’t bluff. I also don’t, as a matter of sound policy, go around advertising exactly what our intentions are. But I think both the Iranian and the Israeli governments recognize that when the United States says it is unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, we mean what we say.”
In other words, despite repeated assertions by Iran that its nuclear program is strictly for civilian, not military purposes, facts borne out by multiple on-the-ground inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency and assessments by American spy agencies, the bar for Iranian “compliance” is continually set higher, moved from an “active program” to a mere “capability,” it is now clear that war is the first, last, indeed only “option.”
Source:
Antifascist Calling…: Secret State Agencies: ‘No Hard Evidence’ Iran Building Nukes, March to War ContinuesAlthough all 16 U.S. secret state intelligence agencies confirmed, again, that “Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program years earlier,” reaffirming the “consensus view” of not one, but two National Intelligence Estimates The New York Times reported last week, the march towards war continues.
via Blogspot
The Disease of Civilization in a Nutshell
Yesterday, the State Department “quietly” warned that Syria’s nuclear weapons program “may still be in operation” and their other suspected WMDs threaten the region. In other words, the final push for another war is being sold using the same marketing strategy that’s been proven to work time and time again.
Foreign Policy magazine writes:
This week, the State Department sent a diplomatic demarche to Syria’s neighbors Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia, warning them about the possibility of Syria’s WMDs crossing their borders and offering U.S. government help in dealing with the problem, three Obama administration officials confirmed to The Cable. For concerned parties both inside and outside the U.S. government, the demarche signifies that the United States is increasingly developing plans to deal with the dangers of a post-Assad Syria — while simultaneously highlighting the lack of planning for how to directly bring about Assad’s downfall.
Syria is believed to have a substantial chemical weapons program, which includes mustard gas and sophisticated nerve agents, such as sarin gas, as well as biological weapons. Syria has also refused IAEA requests to make available facilities that were part of its nuclear weapons program and may still be in operation.(My emphasis)
Swap out the word “Syria” for “Iraq” or “Libya” and we’ve all read this press release for the business of war before. What worked for attacking an innocent Iraq worked for attacking an innocent Libya. And now it’s also being used as an excuse to destroy two more nations which have never even threatened the West: Syria and Iran.
Even the blind should notice the same trends leading to war:
- Claim the leaders are bad guys (which is not difficult because most leaders are).
- Incite, fund and arm rebels (terrorists) to lure those governments into fighting back.
- Claim the leaders are killing their own citizens (which almost all leaders do including the good ole U.S.).
- Slap economic sanctions on the government while simultaneously creating a shadow government, central bank, and economy for the puppet rebel leaders.
- Scare domestic populations until they’re okay with more war.
- Bypass any authority to commit tax money and troops for war.
- Drop billions of dollars in bombs by remote control destroying innocent life and infrastructure.
- Murder the former leader in cold blood if need be.
- Consolidate any and all resources into the hands of Western cartels.
- Fund these same cartels with more tax dollars to reconstruct the devastated war zone.
- Rinse and repeat.
The only difference lately is that “providing aid to terrorists” is no longer used as an excuse for war. Perhaps, this is because Israel and NATO, led by the U.S., are the only ones currently aiding terrorists, as they did to oust Gaddafi in Libya, and who they are now arming to instigate a civil war against Assad in Syria. They’re even openly funding terrorists in Iran to do the exact same thing. Furthermore, the FBI has proven to be the only provider of aid to supposed domestic U.S. terrorists.
But you, Activist Post readers, already know all this. But understand that WMD is not just any propaganda, it’s the “nuclear option” of propaganda. It’s the only way to claim these countries are a threat of any kind, because they have very little or no history of actually attacking the West. And they will keep beating this WMD war drum because it works.
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Neo-colonial rule for Iraq
Iraq: Invasion Ends – Neo-Colonial Rule Begins – BlackListedNews.comBy Tony CartalucciBlacklistedNews.comEven as US troops symbolically withdraw from Iraq, a superficial indicator that many may interpret as the return of Iraqi sovereignty, it is the flow of foreign-investment into the country that marks the true chains of foreign-rule being laid out.
via Blacklistednews
They are Coming for You
Here are some excerpts from the link below.
NOTE: Within an hour of posting this article and linking to the pertinent document, the feds at FBO.gov have pulled the link and implied that it was a classified posting. We believe this was public and of interest to American citizens, taxpayers and peoples of the world and are in the process re-establishing an archive link of the material.
It involves not only operations for the relocation of COG personnel and key officials, population management, emergency communications and alerts but the designation of the American people as ‘enemies’ under a live military tracking system known as Blue Force Situational Awareness (BFSA).
Further, this Nov. 18, 2011 FEMA-released plan National Continuity Programs (NCP) Program and Mission Support Services (PAMSS) [PDF] linked at the FedBizOpps.gov website outlines a scenario that overlays with eerie accuracy the bigger picture sketched out by concurrent calls for troops to keep order in the streets of places like New Orleans, as well as other bombshell documents like those released from KBR seeking to activate contracted staff for emergency detention centers and for services like fencing and barricades, as well as numerous agencies and think tanks who’ve prepared for civil unrest and economic breakdown in America.
Military to Designate U.S. Citizens as Enemy During CollapseAaron Dykes | FEMA Continuity of Government Plans Prep Total Takeover of Society, Dispatching Military Domestically Under Economic Collapse Emergency.
via Infowars
The End is Near
Obama Approves Draconian Police State Law | Mostly WaterObama Approves Draconian Police State Law – by Stephen Lendman Obama supports draconian FY 2012 National Defense Authorization Act provisions. Justification given is national security and war on terror hokum. Henceforth, anyone anywhere, including US citizens, may be indefinitely held without charge or trial, based solely on suspicions, spurious allegations or none at all.
via Mostlywater
