Friday, November 11, 2005
Vietnam Revisited with "New, Improved" Napalm
VIEWPOINT
Visit the Viewpoint archives at http://archives.GopherCentral.com
Editor's Note:
On Monday, Nov. 7th, Italian television network RAI decided to air a documentary of a story that was reported by Bloggers and online sources almost a year ago: The US used chemical weapons during the assault on Fallujah (see stories at the end of today's articles to verify that this is not a new story.) Today's article comes from The Independent, but we have gone one step further.
We have video clips from the program that aired so that you can verify the reports with your own eyes. WARNING: The video clips are extremely disturbing and should not be viewed by those of delicate nature. War is not pretty, but in the interest of disseminating the truth, we felt that this week's video clip-of-the-week and today's article should go hand in hand.
Video Clip-Of-The-Week
Fallujah - Hidden Massacre
All of these clips come from the Fallujah RAI documentary.
http://www.evtv1.com/index.asp?itemnum=1067 "> Civilian Casualties (Warning, GRAPHIC FOOTAGE)
http://www.evtv1.com/index.asp?itemnum=1068 "> Fallujah - Illegal & Bloody War
http://www.evtv1.com/index.asp?itemnum=1069 "> GI Interview on Fallujah
http://www.evtv1.com/index.asp?itemnum=1066 "> Bush and Blair Exposed
US used Chemical Weapons on Fallujah Assault - Peter Popham
Powerful new evidence emerged yesterday that the US dropped massive quantities of white phosphorus on the Iraqi city of Fallujah during the attack on the city in November 2004, killing insurgents and civilians with the appalling burns that are the signature of this weapon.
Ever since the assault, which went unreported by any Western journalists, rumors have swirled that the Americans used chemical weapons on the city.
On 10 November last year, the Islam Online website wrote, “US troops are reportedly using chemical weapons and poisonous gas in its large-scale offensive on the Iraqi resistance bastion of Fallujah, a grim reminder of Saddam Hussein's alleged gassing of the Kurds in 1988.”
The website quoted insurgent sources as saying: "The US occupation troops are gassing resistance fighters and confronting them with internationally banned chemical weapons."
In December the US government formally denied the reports, describing them as "widespread myths". "Some news accounts have claimed that US forces have used 'outlawed' phosphorus shells in Fallujah," the USinfo website said. "Phosphorus shells are not outlawed. US forces have used them very sparingly in Fallujah, for illumination purposes. They were fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters."
But now new information has surfaced, including hideous photographs and videos and interviews with American soldiers who took part in the Fallujah attack, which provides graphic proof that phosphorus shells were widely deployed in the city as a weapon.
In a documentary to be broadcast by RAI, the Italian state broadcaster, this morning, a former American soldier who fought at Fallujah says: "I heard the order to pay attention because they were going to use white phosphorus on Fallujah. In military jargon it's known as Willy Pete. Phosphorus burns bodies, in fact it melts the flesh all the way down to the bone ... I saw the burned bodies of women and children. Phosphorus explodes and forms a cloud. Anyone within a radius of 150 meters is done for."
Photographs on the website of RaiTG24, the broadcaster's 24-hours news channel, www.rainews24.it, show exactly what the former soldier means. Provided by the Studies Centre of Human Rights in Fallujah, dozens of high-quality, colour close-ups show bodies of Fallujah residents, some still in their beds, whose clothes remain largely intact but whose skin has been dissolved or caramelized or turned the consistency of leather by the shells.
A biologist in Fallujah, Muhammad Tareq, interviewed for the film, says: "A rain of fire fell on the city, the people struck by this multi-coloured substance started to burn, we found people dead with strange wounds, the bodies burned but the clothes intact."
The documentary, entitled Fallujah: the Hidden Massacre, also provides what it claims is clinching evidence that incendiary bombs known as Mark 77, a new, improved form of napalm, was used in the attack on Fallujah, in breach of the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons of 1980, which only allows its use against military targets.
The news came as a suicide car bomber killed four American soldiers at a checkpoint south of Baghdad yesterday.
More selected Readings
http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-jamail190105.htm "> Flashback: US Reporter Says Chemical Weapons Used
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4417024.stm "> BBC: Americans Used Illegal Weapons
http://electroniciraq.net/news/1928.shtml "> Flashback: Firebombs in Iraq
Visit the Viewpoint archives at http://archives.GopherCentral.com
Editor's Note:
On Monday, Nov. 7th, Italian television network RAI decided to air a documentary of a story that was reported by Bloggers and online sources almost a year ago: The US used chemical weapons during the assault on Fallujah (see stories at the end of today's articles to verify that this is not a new story.) Today's article comes from The Independent, but we have gone one step further.
We have video clips from the program that aired so that you can verify the reports with your own eyes. WARNING: The video clips are extremely disturbing and should not be viewed by those of delicate nature. War is not pretty, but in the interest of disseminating the truth, we felt that this week's video clip-of-the-week and today's article should go hand in hand.
Video Clip-Of-The-Week
Fallujah - Hidden Massacre
All of these clips come from the Fallujah RAI documentary.
http://www.evtv1.com/index.asp?itemnum=1067 "> Civilian Casualties (Warning, GRAPHIC FOOTAGE)
http://www.evtv1.com/index.asp?itemnum=1068 "> Fallujah - Illegal & Bloody War
http://www.evtv1.com/index.asp?itemnum=1069 "> GI Interview on Fallujah
http://www.evtv1.com/index.asp?itemnum=1066 "> Bush and Blair Exposed
US used Chemical Weapons on Fallujah Assault - Peter Popham
Powerful new evidence emerged yesterday that the US dropped massive quantities of white phosphorus on the Iraqi city of Fallujah during the attack on the city in November 2004, killing insurgents and civilians with the appalling burns that are the signature of this weapon.
Ever since the assault, which went unreported by any Western journalists, rumors have swirled that the Americans used chemical weapons on the city.
On 10 November last year, the Islam Online website wrote, “US troops are reportedly using chemical weapons and poisonous gas in its large-scale offensive on the Iraqi resistance bastion of Fallujah, a grim reminder of Saddam Hussein's alleged gassing of the Kurds in 1988.”
The website quoted insurgent sources as saying: "The US occupation troops are gassing resistance fighters and confronting them with internationally banned chemical weapons."
In December the US government formally denied the reports, describing them as "widespread myths". "Some news accounts have claimed that US forces have used 'outlawed' phosphorus shells in Fallujah," the USinfo website said. "Phosphorus shells are not outlawed. US forces have used them very sparingly in Fallujah, for illumination purposes. They were fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters."
But now new information has surfaced, including hideous photographs and videos and interviews with American soldiers who took part in the Fallujah attack, which provides graphic proof that phosphorus shells were widely deployed in the city as a weapon.
In a documentary to be broadcast by RAI, the Italian state broadcaster, this morning, a former American soldier who fought at Fallujah says: "I heard the order to pay attention because they were going to use white phosphorus on Fallujah. In military jargon it's known as Willy Pete. Phosphorus burns bodies, in fact it melts the flesh all the way down to the bone ... I saw the burned bodies of women and children. Phosphorus explodes and forms a cloud. Anyone within a radius of 150 meters is done for."
Photographs on the website of RaiTG24, the broadcaster's 24-hours news channel, www.rainews24.it, show exactly what the former soldier means. Provided by the Studies Centre of Human Rights in Fallujah, dozens of high-quality, colour close-ups show bodies of Fallujah residents, some still in their beds, whose clothes remain largely intact but whose skin has been dissolved or caramelized or turned the consistency of leather by the shells.
A biologist in Fallujah, Muhammad Tareq, interviewed for the film, says: "A rain of fire fell on the city, the people struck by this multi-coloured substance started to burn, we found people dead with strange wounds, the bodies burned but the clothes intact."
The documentary, entitled Fallujah: the Hidden Massacre, also provides what it claims is clinching evidence that incendiary bombs known as Mark 77, a new, improved form of napalm, was used in the attack on Fallujah, in breach of the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons of 1980, which only allows its use against military targets.
The news came as a suicide car bomber killed four American soldiers at a checkpoint south of Baghdad yesterday.
More selected Readings
http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-jamail190105.htm "> Flashback: US Reporter Says Chemical Weapons Used
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4417024.stm "> BBC: Americans Used Illegal Weapons
http://electroniciraq.net/news/1928.shtml "> Flashback: Firebombs in Iraq
Thursday, November 10, 2005
John Howard -"Like Father, Like Son"
[As Australian Prime Minister Joh Howard steps up to ram his ne "Workplace" Relations Bill the the Parliament, I discovered a hint that his service-station-owner father may have been a member of Australia's own Fascist Party, the New Guard. Nothing can be proven, but...]
If John Howard’s father was a member of Australia’s home-grown fascist organization, the New Guard, the PM’s hatred of organized labour acquires a new dimension. One can now see that it goes back beyond his parliamentary term, and even beyond adolescent anguish that his father’s business was not a roaring success, to the most pernicious and best-organized anti-labour movements of the twentieth century — the Fascism of Benito Mussolini and the Nazism of Adolf Hitler.
Many people use the term fascism to refer to any form of authoritarianism with which they personally disagree, and think of Nazism only in terms of the Holocaust. But Fascism was a movement — consisting mainly of the disgruntled and fearful petit bourgeois, like the PM’s father — designed to change suddenly, brutally and permanently the relationship between capital and labour in favour of the former. Adolf had to serve his economic masters by destroying the unions, liberals, “socialists” and communists” before he was permitted to embark on his private barbarity, the massacre of Europe’s Jews.
Not that we can expect to see stormtroopers in the streets soon. Capital needs to be desperate before it gambles on full-blown fascism, preferring to attain its ends by other means. Many of the elements of fascism — rabid nationalism and anti-intellectualism, exaltation of violence, xenophobia and the targeting of minorities — have long been present in Australia; others, such as the authoritarianism of the “Liberal” party and the adulation of the Leader as the “Lil Aussie Battler,” are specific to JW Howard’s Prime Ministership. However there has been no need for Howard to “smash” the organized working class — it has been transformed into a group of separate individuals competing for contracts largely through fifty years of propaganda from our Great ‘n’ Powerful Ally.
If only Adolf had had US TV to teach the workers about individual reward for individual effort — and if he hadn’t had to go through Poland to get to the USSR — he might have survived to toast Edward VII and Prescott Bush’s heirs.
Many people use the term fascism to refer to any form of authoritarianism with which they personally disagree, and think of Nazism only in terms of the Holocaust. But Fascism was a movement — consisting mainly of the disgruntled and fearful petit bourgeois, like the PM’s father — designed to change suddenly, brutally and permanently the relationship between capital and labour in favour of the former. Adolf had to serve his economic masters by destroying the unions, liberals, “socialists” and communists” before he was permitted to embark on his private barbarity, the massacre of Europe’s Jews.
Not that we can expect to see stormtroopers in the streets soon. Capital needs to be desperate before it gambles on full-blown fascism, preferring to attain its ends by other means. Many of the elements of fascism — rabid nationalism and anti-intellectualism, exaltation of violence, xenophobia and the targeting of minorities — have long been present in Australia; others, such as the authoritarianism of the “Liberal” party and the adulation of the Leader as the “Lil Aussie Battler,” are specific to JW Howard’s Prime Ministership. However there has been no need for Howard to “smash” the organized working class — it has been transformed into a group of separate individuals competing for contracts largely through fifty years of propaganda from our Great ‘n’ Powerful Ally.
If only Adolf had had US TV to teach the workers about individual reward for individual effort — and if he hadn’t had to go through Poland to get to the USSR — he might have survived to toast Edward VII and Prescott Bush’s heirs.
