THOUSANDS OF FREE BLOGGER TEMPLATES

Monday, August 31, 2009

Secret nuclear and biological weapons programs in Israel

Israel: Ex-staffer at Dimona nuclear reactor says made to drink uranium
Report by Yossi Melman, Haaretz
Published: 18/08/09

Workers at the nuclear reactor facility in Dimona were made to volunteer to drink uranium in 1998 as part of an experiment, according to a lawsuit filed four months ago in the Be'er Sheva Labor Tribunal by a former worker at the facility.

The experiment was allegedly carried out without obtaining written consent from the workers or warning them of risks or side effects, as required by the Declaration of Helsinki on human experimentation.

The Israel Atomic Energy Commission said in a statement that the Dimona facility "has the safety and health of its workers as its highest priority.”

The commission statement added that the amount of uranium the Dimona staffers drank in the experiment (100 micrograms) was less than the amount Be'er Sheva residents drink from their taps in one month.

The worker who submitted the lawsuit, Julius Malick, recently retired after he said he was threatened by the former director of the facility, Yitzhak Gurevich, and the director of human resources, Gary Amal, that if he did not retire he would be fired.

Malick is suing the Dimona facility for a total of NIS 1. 8 million in compensation. According to the suit, Malick was "asked by his superiors to take part in an experiment on five workers. In the framework of the experiment, Mr. Malick and the other workers drank uranium. The experiment was conducted without medical supervision and no explanation was given as to the health risks to participants. Mr. Malick, out of fear for his livelihood and future in the department, agreed to the demand that he participate.”

Malick, who worked at the Dimona reactor for 15 years before retiring in 2008, received his bachelor's and master's degrees in chemistry at Bar-Ilan University. He has another degree, in industrial engineering and management, from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Be'er Sheva.

The lawsuit also notes that, while the workers did not receive the results of the experiment, an article about it appeared in the scientific journal Health Physics. According to the suit, the article, written by a number of researchers - headed by Drs. Zeev Karpas and Avi Lorber, the directors of the Dimona facility's analytical chemistry lab - included the subjects' names without their permission.

The subjects were given grape or grapefruit juice containing uranium to drink and were then asked for a urine sample, which was then analyzed to determine how uranium is excreted from the body through urine. The researchers said it was not supposed to be dangerous, Malick told his lawyer, Alexander Spinrad.”Lorber and Karpas said that even they took part in the experiment themselves, although to this day it's not clear to me whether they actually did. Afterward co-workers to whom I told this said I was stupid for drinking it and they wouldn't have agreed under any circumstances to do it,” Malick also told his lawyer.

Malick, a chemist, also said that a long time after the experiment, Lorber told him it was his and Karpas' private project.”That's ridiculous, of course, because the article listed other partners, whose names appear under their names and listed as workers of the Dimona facility,” Malick said.

Malick also said he once complained that no records were being kept and Karpas "joked with me and said I was making a tempest in a teapot.” The suit also states that his superiors never recorded his participation in the experiment in his medical records.

The suit describes a work accident in August of 1998, in which Malick sustained a burn on his hand as a result of contact with small amounts of uranium and other materials. Malick said he received poor treatment, and that he discovered by chance that the materials to which he had been exposed in the accident were not identified in the medical report. Malick told his lawyer he believed this type of maltreatment was systematic, and the suit alludes as much.

The lawsuit also states that Malick, in an internal memo to the safety department at the Dimona reactor, warned that workers who had been exposed in an accident to radioactive materials had not received suitable medical treatment. His first position at the Dimona reactor was in the analytical chemistry lab, where his job, among other things, was to evaluate possible damage to workers exposed to hazardous materials.

In the early years, Malick's superiors highly praised his work. However, Malick claims that he was later branded as a troublemaker when he tried to improve the level of safety and medical service at the plant. He was subsequently transferred to other positions where his skills could not be put to good use, the lawsuit states, and finally he resigned under threat of dismissal. After he resigned, Malick says he was forced to sign an agreement that discriminates against him relative to other pensioners of the facility.

Malick declined to be interviewed for this article out of concern over harassment by his former employers through the plant's security officers and the head of the security department in the Defense Ministry, which is responsible for security of information and the reactor. However, he confirmed to Haaretz that he had filed the lawsuit.

Source



From the archive: The secrets of Israel’s nuclear arsenal revealed

October 5, 1986: Insight finds the warhead factory buried in the desert


THE secrets of a subterranean factory engaged in the manufacture of Israeli nuclear weapons have been uncovered by The Sunday Times Insight team.

Hidden beneath the Negev desert, the factory has been producing atomic warheads for the past 20 years. Now it has almost certainly begun manufacturing thermo-nuclear weapons, with yields big enough to destroy entire cities.

Information about Israel’s capacity to manufacture the bomb comes from the testimony of Mordechai Vanunu, a 31-year-old Israeli who worked as a nuclear technician for nearly 10 years in Machon 2 – a top-secret, underground bunker built to provide the vital components necessary for weapons production at Dimona, the Israeli nuclear research establishment.

Vanunu’s evidence has surprised nuclear experts who were approached by Insight to verify its accuracy because it shows that Israel does not just have the atom bomb – which has been long suspected – but that it has become a big nuclear power.

Vanunu’s testimony and pictures, which have been scrutinised by nuclear experts on both sides of the Atlantic, show that Israel has developed the sophisticated and highly classified techniques needed to build up a formidable arsenal.

They confirm that Israel now ranks as the world’s sixth most powerful nuclear power after America, the Soviet Union, Britain, France and China – with an arsenal far greater than those other countries, such as India, Pakistan and South Africa, which have also been suspected of developing nuclear weapons.

It has possessed its secret weapons factory for more than two decades, hiding its plutonium extraction processes from spy satellites and independent inspections during the 1960s by burying it beneath an innocuous, little-used building.

The plant is equipped with French plutonium extracting technology, which transformed Dimona from a research establishment to a bomb production facility. Plutonium production rates amount to 40kg a year, enough to build 10 bombs. In the past six years Israel has added further equipment to make components for thermo-nuclear devices.

The 26 megawatt reactor, also built by the French, has been expanded and is probably now operating at 150 megawatts to allow it to extract more plutonium. An ingenious cooling system disguises the output.

The nuclear scientists consulted by The Sunday Times calculate that at least 100 and as many as 200 nuclear weapons of varying destructive power have been assembled – 10 times the previously estimated strength of Israel’s nuclear arsenal.

The scientists include Theodore Taylor, who was taught by Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, and worked on America’s first bomb designs. He later went on to head the Pentagon’s atomic weapons test programme.

Taylor studied the photographs taken by Vanunu inside Dimona and a transcript of his evidence near Washington last week. He said: “There should no longer be any doubt that Israel is, and for at least a decade has been, a fully-fledged nuclear weapons state. The Israeli nuclear weapons programme is considerably more advanced than indicated by any previous report or conjectures of which I am aware.”

Vanunu says that despite tight security he was able to smuggle a camera into Machon 2 and take more than 60 photographs.

The assessments of Taylor have been confirmed by other top nuclear scientists who were shown the pictures and detailed evidence.

Israel refused to comment on the evidence but confirmed that Vanunu worked for the Israel Atomic Energy Commission in Dimona. He was made redundant last November with 180 other Dimona workers during a cost-cutting drive.

Security men had grown concerned about Vanunu’s political contacts with West Bank Arab students during a part-time philosophy course that he was taking at Beersheba University.

Before publication Vanunu, now 63, was lured into flying to Italy for a holiday by a Mossad agent named Cheryl Bentov. He was captured by Israeli agents, smuggled to Israel and put on trial on charges of treason and espionage. He was released in 2004 but is not allowed to leave the country and is subject to numerous other restrictions including a ban on speaking to foreign journalists.

Source

A film by the BBC

Which country in the Middle East has undeclared nuclear weapons...undeclared biological and chemical weapons... and no outside inspection?

Israel's weapons of mass destruction: how they use them and how they keep the fact of their existence from the world.




There are pictures and a lot of information at this site as well.
The Dimona Plutonium Nuclear Reactor



Mordechai Vanunu: The Sunday Times articles

...arsenal/ Atomic technician Mordechai Vanunu reveals secret weapons production...bomb come from the testimony of Mordechai Vanunu, a 31-year-old Israeli...is growing for the safety of Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli who revealed the...

21 April 2004 Times Online

Mordechai Vanunu faces return to jail

MORDECHAI VANUNU, the nuclear whistleblower freed 11...nuclear plant or leaving Jerusalem. Mr Vanunu, 50, was arrested and detained last...Rayna Moss, of the Campaign to Free Mordechai Vanunu, said: “*This is...

18 March 2005 The Times

Profile: Mordechai Vanunu

Mordechai Vanunu, 50, is reviled as a traitor, has been...first 11 of them in solitary confinement.Vanunu, the man who told the world about Israel...there's nowhere to run," he wrote.Vanunu, who has been nominated more than once...

21 April 2004 Times Online

Israel has much more to gain by freeing Mordechai Vanunu

...appeal to the Israeli court by Mordechai Vanunu (World News, last week). Israel...Israeli court set the price for what Vanunu had done* he has paid...8217*s treatment of Vanunu is unacceptable. From the way...

27 June 2004 The Sunday Times

Vanunu shouts his defiance after 18 years

...it began, in raw defiance. Mordechai Vanunu strode to the gates of the...inside. “*But Vanunu, Mordechai, says we don’*t need a Jewish State. Vanunu, Mordechai, says ... it’...

22 April 2004 The Times

Snatched ... just like Mordechai

...who had interviewed Mordechai Vanunu. I drove there from...My relationship with Vanunu was of great concern...cost I had to make sure Mordechai would not be placed...probably to do with Mordechai Vanunu. “*...

30 May 2004 The Sunday Times

Bishop fears murder attempt on Vanunu

...Anglican bishop who has given Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear whistle...more hated man in Israel than Mordechai Vanunu,”* Meir Vanunu...along. But those in need, like Mordechai Vanunu, who have spent a long time...

27 April 2004 The Times

Bishop fears murder attempt on Vanunu

...Anglican bishop who has given Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear whistle...more hated man in Israel than Mordechai Vanunu,”* Meir Vanunu...along. But those in need, like Mordechai Vanunu, who have spent a long time...

27 April 2004 Times Online

Vanunu vows to fight Israel's bid to make a prison of his freedom

...the world supporters of Mordechai Vanunu, the whistleblower jailed...secret service against Vanunu —* which...despondent and so does Mordechai, whom I saw last week...Minnesota couple who adopted Vanunu when he was 42 after...

Peter Hounam

18 April 2004 The Sunday Times

Defiant Vanunu walks free after 18 years in jail

Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli whistleblower, walked...Justice Minister. claimed today that Vanunu was "hell-bent" on doing as much...Amnesty International UK, said: "MordechaiVanunu’*s release is long...

21 April 2004 Times Online

Vanunu: the truth about my kidnap

...Israeli agents in 1986, Mordechai Vanunu has spoken out publicly...solitary confinement. Vanunu, in the only interview...The bishop has allowed Vanunu to stay at St George...providing sanctuary to Mordechai.”*

Tom Walker

30 May 2004 The Sunday Times

Celebrities press Israel to let Vanunu leave

...prevent the nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu from leaving the country. The...an end to the restrictions on Vanunu have also been delivered to the...Cuthbertson, said: “*Mordechai Vanunu has repaid his debt to Israeli...

Peter Hounam

11 July 2004 The Sunday Times

Vanunu is defiant after 'revenge' arrest

...nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu on suspicion of disclosing...finally managed to see Vanunu he found him upset after...attempted to persuade Mordechai to obey a ban on speaking...before a magistrate, Vanunu was released on bail...

Peter Hounam

14 November 2004 The Sunday Times

Vanunu faces interrogation

...nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu is facing interrogation...rejected a petition by Vanunu’*s...the criminal inquiry. Vanunu’*s...8220*Mordechai told all he knew about...

Peter Hounam

01 August 2004 The Sunday Times

Spy boss reveals Mossad considered killing Vanunu

...agency, once considered killing Mordechai Vanunu, the technician who revealed details...disclosure came two months before Vanunu is due to be released after more...masterminded the 1986 operation to kidnap Vanunu and return him to Israel, referred...

Peter Hounam

08 February 2004 The Sunday Times

Vanunu reporter is freed by Israelis

...journalist who first reported Mordechai Vanunu’*s revelations...ceaseless security obsession with Vanunu. ”*Mr Hounam...operating on the supposition that Mordechai Vanunu has new secrets to reveal about...

28 May 2004 Times Online


Vanunu fears for his life after street threats

THREATS of violence against Mordechai Vanunu, the nuclear whistleblower, have...It could have been nasty but Mordechai was accompanied on both occasions...be lifted.”* Vanunu left jail in April after serving...

Peter Hounam

06 June 2004 The Sunday Times

Vanunu defiant as Israel brings new charges

THE nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu reacted defiantly yesterday to criminal...Jerusalem where he has sought sanctuary, Vanunu said he had always believed that...rights issue,”* Vanunu said. “*I want...

Peter Hounam

20 March 2005 The Sunday Times

There is more on Vanunu Here


Iran: Whose War?


Hyping threats from Tehran doesn’t serve America’s interests

By Jeff Huber

Rupert Murdoch’s Times of London has set a new standard in canard journalism. The headline of an Aug. 3 story exclaims, “Iran is ready to build an N-bomb—it is just waiting for the Ayatollah’s order.” The first sentence reads, “Iran has perfected the technology to create and detonate a nuclear warhead and is merely awaiting the word from its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to produce its first bomb.”

The article goes on to make similar outrageous claims, all supported by the testimony of unnamed “western intelligence sources.” The identity of the “sources” becomes pretty clear in the 11th paragraph when the article attributes revelations about Iran’s three-decade “master plan” to build a nuke to an unidentified “Israeli official.” And oh, the article was written in Tel Aviv.

The authors—James Hider, Richard Beeston and Times Defense Editor Michael Evans—attempt to “confirm” what the Israelis breast-fed them by stating that anonymous sources say British intelligence services are “familiar with the secret information about Iran’s experiments.” The authors admit that “British agencies” do not have their own “independent evidence” regarding Iran’s nuclear-weapons experiments, but “they said there was no reason to doubt the assessment.”

We can’t prove that aliens built the pyramids, but we can’t completely disprove it either, so it must be true. Run it on the front page.

This pandering to the Israelis might be tolerable if Murdoch’s media were the only hooligans doing it. Unfortunately, the very same thing is going on in the legislative and executive branches of the U.S. government.

Gareth Porter recently revealed that a May 2009 report on Iraq generated by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was based on information provided by “an intelligence official of a foreign country” and unnamed “foreign analysts” and “a senior allied intelligence official.” Noting that a May 6 Associated Press story said that interviews for the report were conducted in Israel, Porter accurately deduced what nationality these foreign allies were. The crux of the report was that Iraq ceased its nuclear weapons program in September of 2003 as described by the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran only because it had already discovered how to detonate a nuclear warhead. This conclusion was nearly identical to the theme of the Times story.

Dick Cheney’s Iranian Directorate cooked intelligence on Iran in the same manner that his Office of Special Plans fabricated Saddam Hussein’s WMD program. Cheney’s pillow-pal ties with the America Israel Public Affairs Committee and Likudniks like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu consolidated Israel’s grip on U.S. foreign policy during the Bush regime. Those of us who voted for change in this regard have been hoodwinked.

In a March 2009 interview, Netanyahu told The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg that if Obama didn’t stop the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons, Israel might attack Iran’s nuclear facilities itself. We’re now hearing reports that Israel is losing patience with the Obama administration’s inability to get Iran to the negotiating table. No doubt that’s why Joe Biden, Robert Gates, and Hillary Clinton have been rattling cardboard sabers lately.

Biden, a doublewide ego with a life-support system, is an even bigger oaf at foreign policy than John McCain. In a June 2009 interview with George Stephanopolous, Biden gave a virtual green light for Israel to go ahead and bomb Iran. Asked if Netanyahu taking matters into his own hands was the right approach, Biden replied, “Look, Israel can determine for itself—it’s a sovereign nation—what’s in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else. …Whether we agree or not.” Talk about lack of subtlety. When Cheney gave Israel the nod to attack Lebanon in 2006, he at least had the tact to do it behind closed doors at an American Enterprise Institute jamboree in Colorado.

Gates is a servant of Gen. David Petraeus’s “long war” mafia, a cabal that includes Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, senior Iraq commander Gen. Ray Odierno and Gen. Stan McChrystal, our man in the Bananastans. That makes Gates a servant of the American neocons, whose objective since the ‘90s has been permanent U.S. occupation of the Middle East. It also makes him a tool of the Israeli right, whose objective is to sucker us into bullying their neighbors for them. During a recent trip to Israel, Gates said that U.S. overtures to Iran are not “open ended.” He gave the impression that he wheedled and begged enough during the visit to stay Israel’s hand for a little while longer. “Our hope still remains that Iran will respond to the president’s outstretched hand in a positive and constructive way,” Gates said, “but we’ll see.”

Candidate Hillary took a hard-line stance on Iran so the Republicans wouldn’t call her a girl. As secretary of state, she has threatened that America would extend a “defense umbrella” over the Middle East if Iran refuses to negotiate with us and persists in “its pursuit of nuclear weapons.” But like so much of Hillary’s rhetoric, this is laughable from multiple aspects. We already have Iran surrounded by virtue of our occupation of its neighbors Iraq and Afghanistan. We already have an umbrella over the Middle East, the same one we have over the entire planet: the nuclear deterrence umbrella. We can barbecue Iran at the push of a button.

Hillary, Biden, Gates, and the rest of the Obama administration—and nearly all of the media—seem unaware that Iran has a perfectly good reason for not negotiating with us about their nuclear program; it’s the same perfectly good reason they wouldn’t negotiate with the Bush administration. As Roger Cohen noted recently in the New York Times Magazine, the Obama administration “still insists on the ‘zero option’—no enrichment, no reprocessing, no sensitive technology.”

The zero-option policy is a hangover from Bush era “make them an offer they can’t accept” diplomacy. The Cheneyacs would agree to talks but set preconditions that the other party would have to be insane to go along with, guaranteeing that the talks would never take place. Then they could say, “we tried diplomacy but it didn’t work” and start lopping heads off.

The logical goal of Iran’s nuclear program is not possession of nuclear bombs but a thriving nuclear energy industry. Having nukes would merely make Iran a target—both Israel and the U.S. would have justification for a massive preemptive strike. We’d know they have them because they wouldn’t keep them a secret. Nukes are deterrence weapons, and like the doomsday machine in “Doctor Strangelove,” they provide no deterrence if nobody knows you have them. Israel’s missile-carrying Dolphin class submarines give it second-strike capability, and if something happens to the subs, we’ll erase Iran from the pages of time ourselves.

A nuclear power industry, conversely, is sound strategic thinking for Iran. Peak oil, the point at which global oil production can no longer keep up with the world’s energy demand, has already occurred or will happen very soon. At that point, humanity will have to turn to other forms of energy or turn the clock back on its technology-centric infrastructure, which could lead to a worldwide “Road Warrior” scenario. No alternative solution has materialized that can provide the amount of energy that nuclear power can generate.

Any oil-exporting country that hopes to emerge as a regional power in the post-peak world order will need to have an independent nuclear industry in place when the wells run dry. The key to having truly independent nuclear energy is the ability to refine your own uranium. Telling Iran that it can have a nuclear energy industry but can’t refine its own uranium is like saying it can have an auto industry as long as it makes its cars in the U.S. from American steel and uses American labor. Dependence on other countries for refined uranium is a strategic liability that Iran will not and should not agree to. An independent nuclear energy industry is the only chip Iran brings to the table, and we’re asking them to hand it over before they sit down.

The soundbite fury over what AIPAC calls Iran’s “relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons” is a crimson herring. We know that Iran doesn’t have a nuclear-weapons program. The International Atomic Energy Agency can’t find any evidence of one, and our 2007 National Intelligence Estimate stated that Iran ended whatever Mickey Mouse nuclear weapons program it had in fall of 2003. The Cheney mob’s attempts to stifle the Intelligence Estimate failed, and their efforts to discredit the report, including their smoking laptop hoax, have been debunked. We know that—despite what the war propaganda machine would have us believe—Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never threatened to use nukes to “wipe Israel off the map” and that Iranian leadership has consistently condemned nuclear weapons.

The real threat of Iran’s nuclear program is not one that directly affects Israel. Cheney’s big oil pals will keep us on a strict oil diet for as long as they can. It’s not good business sense to shift the infrastructure to new energy sources as long as the old source is still profitable. If Iran becomes a Middle East leader in nuclear energy, Exxon/Mobil, Shell, BP America, and the rest will lose control of the energy transition. The smart way to keep that from happening would be normalize relations with Iran and bring them into the fold, but when’s the last time we did the smart thing? Was it the Cuban Missile Crisis, maybe?

It transcends the pathetic that top U.S. leaders like Biden, Gates, and Clinton are spreading the alarm that Israel is “losing patience” with us. The entire world clearly sees that the mightiest nation in history is allowing Israel to lead it around. I have profound appreciation for the reasons the West established a Jewish state after World War II, but Israel has existed for more than 60 years now. If the Israelis want to stay in the Middle East, they need to learn how to get along with their neighbors. If, on the other hand, they want us to guarantee their security, let’s give them half of Utah and make them pay taxes.

Source

China faces 3rd case of mass lead poisoning

Aug. 31 2009

The Associated Press

BEIJING -- Two hundred children are suffering from lead poisoning in southwest China, the country's third such case of mass sickening in the past month, an official newspaper said Monday.

Parents in Tongdu, a township in Yunnan province's capital of Kunming, blamed the poisoning on a nearby industrial park while local environmental officials attributed it to vehicle exhaust, the China Daily reported.

The Yunnan official overseeing the province's lead prevention office told The Associated Press that up to 60 per cent of children under 14 are suffering from lead poisoning in areas of Yunnan with high mining activity -- including Dongchuan, where the industrial park is located.

The Child Lead Prevention and Cure Office in Yunnan conducted the survey of random children last year, director Liu Dakun said. He declined to take further questions or say how excessive the levels were. He did not comment on this case.

An official with the Yunnan provincial environmental agency, however, told The Associated Press he was unclear of the situation, while calls to the Kunming environmental bureau Monday rang unanswered.

Earlier this month, more than 1,300 children in central Hunan province and at least 615 children in northern Shaanxi province tested positive for lead poisoning, which can damage the nervous and reproductive systems and cause high blood pressure and memory loss.

Those cases have been linked to metal processing plants near their homes and schools. Both plants have been shut down.

Anger is growing in China over public safety scandals in which children have been the main victims. The ruling Communist party is worried that mass protests will threaten the country's social stability and challenge its grip on power.

In the latest lead poisoning case, environmental officials in Tongdu said it was not linked to industrial pollution but to vehicle exhaust, the China Daily said. But the newspaper quoted parents as saying only children living near the industrial park were sickened.

Mining is one of the biggest industries in Yunnan, a mountainous region that is home to many of China's ethnic minorities and has large deposits of zinc, lead, tin and other metals, according to the provincial government's Web site.

China's breakneck economic growth has caused serious environmental problems. For decades, many companies dumped poisons into rivers and the ground, counting on the acquiescence of local governments unwilling to damage their economic lifelines.

Source

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Israel's Visa Rule: If You Visit Palestine, Stay There

By Matthew Kalman / Ramallah

Aug. 22, 2009

An aerial view shows the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem's old city.
An aerial view shows the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem's old city.
MENAHEM KAHANA / AFP / Getty

When Canadian businessman Sam Ismail brought his wife and five children to visit his brother's family in Ramallah last week, he planned to stay for 10 days and tour both Israel and the Palestinian territories. They had flown into Amman, crossed over to the West Bank. Knowing that Palestinian Authority license plates are banned in Israel, Ismail reserved a car at an Israeli rental company. But, when he got to Israeli border control, he was shocked to discover that his Canadian passport was stamped "Palestinian Authority Only." "Last time they came, they visited Acre, Haifa, Jerusalem — the whole country," Ismail's brother Nedal, who lives in the West Bank, told TIME. "This time they packed up after 96 hours and spent the extra week in Jordan instead."

Ismail had fallen afoul of an Israeli border policy, quietly begun in June, that bars foreigners who say they are visiting the Palestinian Authority from entering Israel. Israel says the visa helps to exclude visitors who threaten security. According to Israeli Interior Ministry spokeswoman Sabine Haddad, the procedure is based on an unpublished 2006 decision by the Israeli interior and defense ministers that "any foreign national who wants to enter the Palestinian Authority must have a permit issued by the army, and entry is permitted only into PA territory." (Read a story about Mike Huckabee's visit to Israeli settlements in the West Bank.)

Palestinians say it violates international law and the promise of unhindered movement for foreign travelers under the 1995 Oslo II Accords. "Israel wishes to strictly regulate travel of visitors who come to the country, especially those curious to see the West Bank," says Toufic Haddad, a Palestinian-American activist. (Read about Ezra Nawi, the Israeli activist jailed for aiding Arabs.)

The policy has affected U.S. citizens. This week, Betty Najjab, an American from Centreville, Virginia and the widow of a Palestinian, was given one of the new visa stamps after visiting in-laws in Jordan. She told TIME she didn’t know if she would be able to fly home: the return leg of her ticket departs from Israel’s Ben-Gurion airport. "We have made it quite known to the Israeli Government... that we expect all American citizens to be treated the same regardless of their national origin," U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters this week. "These kinds of restrictions we consider unacceptable."

"It is being applied in an arbitrary manner," Salwa Duaibis, Coordinator for the Right to Enter Campaign in Ramallah, told TIME. "It depends on the discretion of the person sitting at the border. If you want to go and visit family in Jerusalem and you get this visa, then your whole plans are thrown out of the window."

The new policy is alienating businessmen like Khaled Sabawi of London, Ontario whose family has for years fostered investment in Palestine and whose father Mohamed was on the board of the Peres Peace Center. Sabawi runs the Ramallah-based MENA Geothermal, one of the first green energy companies in the Middle East. He has spent nearly three years traveling between Canada and Ramallah on three-month Israeli tourist visas. Last January, Sabawi was suddenly turned back at the border crossing from Jordan. Subsequently, he was denied entry twice. Since June, his visa has restricted him to Palestinian territory. Says Sabawi: "I find myself being racially profiled, interrogated by security officials and forced to wait for up to eight hours at the border."

" "I can't meet with Israelis any more and lots of our equipment comes from Israeli manufacturers. I can't buy from them if I can't meet them to negotiate," Sabawi told TIME. "We will withdraw our investments if we can't be here to oversee our businesses. It will simply be too risky for us to invest in Palestine."



Sunday, August 16, 2009

Part 1: H1N1 weapon of mass destruction vaccine and human experimentation

 

 

Update April 12, 2021

 Uncovering The US Army-Sponsored LSD Experiments On Military Personnel (1955 & 1975) | Our Life 

Winner of three major international awards, this documentary investigates how for twenty years from 1955, US soldiers were used by the army to test LSD and other narcotics. Featuring disturbing archive footage of the experiments and up-to-date interviews with volunteers who spent time in Edgewood. Reconstructions are also used to highlight the tragic deaths of those men who were involved in the experiments but knew nothing of it. This film was first broadcast: 02 March 1993

 


August 16 2009

This is Part 1 of a 2-part report on H1N1 weapon of mass destruction vaccine and human experimentation.

Letters leaked in the UK link the vaccine for the bio-engineered H1N1 flu not only to a deadly nerve disease and forced infertility, but also to global human experimentation.

UK Health Protection Agency (HPA) July 29 letter to about 600 senior neurologists alerted that the H1N1 'swine' flu vaccine could trigger Guillian-Barre Syndrome (GBS) brain disease causing paralysis and death. (Jo Macfarlane, Swine flu jab link to killer nerve disease: Leaked letter reveals concern of neurologists over 25 deaths in America, Daily Mail (Dailymail.com) 15 August, 2009)

Medical research

The Daily Telegraph reports that specialist doctors are urged to “report every case of Guillain-Barre syndrome to the Health Protection Agency so the circumstances of each patient can be investigated,” indicating research, despite advising that “experts are not expecting to spot any cases linked to the vaccinations.” (Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor, Doctors told to watch for Guillain-Barre syndrome during Swine flu vaccination programme, Daily Telegraph, August 16 2009)

Mike Penning, UK Shadow Health spokesman stated, “The last thing we want is secret letters handed around experts within the NHS… Why is the Government not being open about this? It’s also very worrying if GPs, who will be administering the vaccine, aren’t being warned,” according to the Daily Mail report.

Continually, released data suggests that secret non-consensual human experimentation has been more frequent and with greater impact than initially acknowledged, particularly military weapon testing. (Sklar, M. and The Coalition Against Torture and Racial Discrimination, Involuntary Human Scientific Experimentation found in Torture in the United States, World Organization Against Torture USA, 1998, p.93 drawn from 1995 submission to the Human Rights Committee by the Science and Human Rights Program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science included in the Status of Human Rights in the United States.)

All weapons require testing on humans. Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) are no different to personal weapons when it comes to testing them on humans, including “testing weaponized biological warfare agents on a large scale.” (Gary Null, Gulf War Syndrome-Killing Our Own (Trailer), April 2007)

The United States has a long history of testing WMDs on large populations. In one year alone, 1950:

  • U.S. Department of Defense developed plans to detonate nuclear weapons in United States desert areas to monitor downwind residents for medical problems and mortality rates;
  • U.S. Navy secretly sprayed from a ship a cloud of bacteria over San Francisco for biological research of subsequent infections, many residents suffering pneumonia-like symptoms;
  • U.S. mass mind control and structured behavior control weapon testing began with the then new Nazi-CIA merger, outcome of Operation PAPERCLIP Allen Dulles’s direction and Big Oil’s power;
  • U.S. research project BLUEBIRD used children for "controlling an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against such fundamental laws of nature as self-preservation."

The U.S. General Accounting Office (GOA) issued a report dated September 28, 1994 stating that between 1940 and 1974, Department of Defense (DoD) and other national security agencies studied hundreds of thousands of human subjects in tests and experiments involving hazardous substances, some in secret, many of which were open-air testings.

The GOA revealed that the government sprayed entire cities such as San Francisco, St. Louis and New York City with bio-chemicals, obviously conducted secretly, without citizen consent.

Secret government testing of war weapons historically included large geographical areas, and the most powerless in institutions.

Secret test subjects include: society’s most vulnerable, isolated, and terminally ill; people confined, such as hospital patients, psychiatric patients; centers for people with disabilities; prisoners, accused double-agents, military personnel; victims of war and citizens in communities throughout the United States.

In recent years, the mandatory anthrax vaccine, MDPH-PA or AVA renamed BioThrax, administered to over 1,400,000 service members and some civilians since March, 1998, resulted in massive human suffering and death through betrayal. (video) (Scott Miller, “A Call To Arms” Movie Trailer.)

Government testing of war weapons historically included as test subjects: individuals, large geographical areas, and the most powerless in institutions.

These test subjects included: society’s most vulnerable, isolated, and terminally ill; people confined, such as hospital patients, psychiatric patients; centers for people with disabilities; prisoners, military personnel, accused double-agents; victims of war and citizens in communities throughout the United States.

In an age considered one of civilized living, electro-chemical-biological warfare program testing is legal today, evidenced in laws such as Public Law 95 that states:

"The use of human subjects will be allowed for the testing of chemical and biological agents by the U.S. Department of Defense, accounting to Congressional committees with respect to the experiments and studies" and "The Secretary of Defense conduct tests and experiments involving the use of chemical and biological agents on civilian populations." (95-79, Title VIII, Sec. 808, July 30, 1977, 91 Stat. 334 found in U.S. Statutes-at-Large, Vol. 91, page 334, and Public Law 97-375, title II, Sec. 203(a)(1), Dec. 21, 1982, 96 Stat. 1882 found in U.S. Statutes-at-Large, Vol. 96, page 1882)

The 1991 Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects, the binding regulation on human-subject research for 17 federal agencies including military and intelligence agencies, outlines guidelines for informed consent and states, "Unless otherwise required by law, department or agency heads may waive the applicability of some or all of the provisions of this policy." (Cheryl Welsh, Outlaw nonconsensual human experiments now, 16 June 2009)

Experimentation with unknowing human subjects is morally and legally unacceptable.

Non-consensual human experimentation has nevertheless impacted over millions of Americans and others in the past and an untold number suffering effects of the tests today.

An unprecedented number of people may soon suffer and die due to the planned worldwide military-big-pharma-based research program.

US leaders are owned by Insurance Companies

Most leaders in the US are covered by a publicly run Health Care Package.
No insurance problems for them. So what is good for them is also good for the citizens of the US. the Publicly run system must be rather well run or the politicians would use Insurance instead. Right? Obviously they themselves prefer the Publicly run system.
Meanwhile they badmouth the Publicly run systems. They who speak out against a Publicly run system are bought and paid for by the Insurance companies. All Americans should have the same health coverage as their political leaders have. Wouldn't you agree?

Health Insurance Abuses