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No 'safe' threshold for radiation | |
| Anna Salleh ABC | Thursday, 31 March 2011 |
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Established research disproves this claim.
According to the National Academy of Sciences, there are no safe doses of radiation.
Decades of research show clearly that any dose of radiation increases an individual's risk for the development of cancer.
Associate Professor Tilman Ruff of University of Melbourne's Nossal Institute for Global Health says there may be a threshold for some effects of radiation, but not for cancer.
Ruff, who is also a member of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War:
There is unfortunately a continuing tirade of statements by self-interested parties and some official agencies ... implying a threshold for radiation exposure below which there are no adverse consequences.
Overplaying or underplaying risk?
While some are concerned about the media downplaying the risk of radiation, others think the opposite is occuring.
For example, the UK Science Media Centre says the media has been giving a much more dire impression of the seriousness of damage to the Fukushima power plant than scientists.
Peter Burns, former acting CEO of Australia's nuclear safety agency, ARPANSA says the media lack scientific understanding and coverage has tended to overplay the health effects from small amounts of radiation.
Burns, a former chair of United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR):
It's probably been a bit over the top because of a lack of understanding about what the measurements really mean."
Dose and effect
But on the question of whether there is a safe threshold for exposure to radioactivity, Burns agrees with Ruff.
"There is no level below which we believe radiation effects can't occur," says Burns.
He says the oft-cited effect 'threshold' of 100 millisieverts comes from the most statistically-significant results from studies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bomb survivors.
According to international agencies, 100 millisieverts corresponds to a risk of serious cancer of less than 1 per cent.
But Burns says there is other evidence that supports the adverse effects of low doses of radiation, including studies showing an increased risk in foetuses getting cancer later in life from a mother's one-off 10 millisievert medical scan.
Risk comparisons
Burns believes it is important to put radiation exposure into context given natural and other man-made sources of radiation we are exposed to.
"We all get between 1 to 10 millisieverts a year - an average 2 to 3 millisieverts - from background radiation," says Burns.
Air travel and CT scans are other common sources.
Official limits for radiation in food and water are set in the context of such exposures.
For example, the limit for nuclear workers is much higher than for the general public.
Ruff says it's important to remember radiation limits like this are not levels below which there is no effect.
"They're just a practical compromise between what's achievable and what's deemed an acceptable risk," he says.
Ruff says it's also important to remember the impact of radiation is greater on the unborn, infants and children, especially girls, compared to adults.
Contaminated water
The World Health Organization recommends a limit of 10 becquerels of radioactive activity per litre of drinking water, equivalent to a dose of 0.1 millisieverts per year.
After the Fukushima accident, the Japanese government set a maximum water contamination level of 300 for adults, 100 for infants and 3000 for emergency workers.
Following news that Japanese tap water had become contaminated, one expert reportedly advised the Japanese government to prevent public alarm by giving more context when releasing such information.
The expert, Professor Robert Gale of Imperial College London is reported in The Australian this week as saying he would be happy to drink the water, even if it exceeded the maximum contamination levels set by the Japanese government.
"We live with radioactive water all the time," he was quoted as saying.
Individual versus public health risk
The Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) question Gale's position.
"His position illustrates very neatly the divergence between individual and public health risk," says PSR's Dr Ira Helfand.
The risk to any one individual from drinking water with this much radiation is indeed very low.
The problem comes when 40 million people in the Tokyo water district drink the water and get this much radiation.
Helfand says if the risk of cancer from a low dose exposure is 1 in a million, an individual does not need to take any special precautions.
"But if 40 million get this dose of radiation then 40 of them are going to get cancer," he says.
And they may also be getting radiation in the days ahead from increased levels of radiation in the air, and from radiation contamination of food.
Helfand says it is reasonable to assure the public that they don't need to take individual action if the level of radiation is very low.
"But we should not mislead them that the dose is 'safe' or 'no cause for concern' which is very different," he says.
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The Dangers of Radiation: Deconstructing Nuclear Experts (TV and otherwise)
click here |
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NATO air strikes on Gaddafi held military targets |
Two words that were notably absent from the Monday night speech by Obama on national television were rebels and CIA
click here |
Gaining control of the central banking system in Libya
click here |
Ali Tarhouni has been named finance minister by the Libyan opposition national council
Tarhouni understands Western mentality — opposition spokeswoman Iman Bugaighis
click here |
From: When the Fukushima Meltdown Hits Groundwater
The disaster is occurring the opposite way than Chernobyl, which exploded and stopped the reaction.
At Fukushima, the reactions are getting worse. I suspect three nuclear piles are in meltdown and we will probably get some of it.
If reactor 3 is in meltdown, the concrete under the containment looks like lava.
But Fukushima is not far off the water table.
When that molten mass of self-sustaining nuclear material gets to the water table it won’t simply cool down.
It will explode – not a nuclear explosion, but probably enough to involve the rest of the reactors and fuel rods at the facility.
Pouring concrete on a critical reactor makes no sense — it will simply explode and release more radioactive particulate matter.
The concrete will melt and the problem will get worse.
I emotionally have problems with the nuclear option suggested in the article — but I am neither a scientist nor an engineer!
I am watching — and waiting!
Kewe |
When the Fukushima Meltdown Hits Groundwater
click here |
'The photos published by Rolling Stone are disturbing and in striking contrast to the standards and values of the US Army,' US Army statement.
You mean the standards of disclosing US military killings!
Right on that! The US Army indeed would prefer not to have photos of its mass war crime killings spread around!
You can view many photos of US military killings of children and their parents if you click on the Afghanistan page below!
These are however a miniscule number of images of actual US military killings and injuries!
Photos on the Afghanistan page are those that have managed to escape traps and money pockets the US military have set to prevent release of such images!
US war crimes have now reached such a monstrous level in Afghanistan that on the various dimensions involved it needs vast tomes to record!
Kewe |
US Staff Sgt. Gibbs in the back of a Stryker vehicle, a pair of scissors visible in the top pocket of his uniform.
Dead fingers are tossed around within the company.
Gibbs is said to have used a pair of medic shears to cut the finger off at least two Afghan civilians murdered by members of his platoon. |
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How U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan murdered innocent civilians and mutilated their corpses
— and how their officers failed to stop them.
Rolling Stone article click here |
Afghanistan — Western Terror States: Canada, US, UK, France, Germany, Italy Photos of Afghanistan people being killed and injured by NATO |
NATO completely out of control — strafing and killing hundreds
A doctor treating wounded soldiers described hundreds of deaths and terrible injuries.
The first day we had 56 seriously wounded. To the head, the brain, lost arms and legs. Soldiers with a lot of shrapnel in them. It was like that every day after. |
Hand of Libya soldier killed by NATO in Ajdabiya 26 March 2011 |
Testimony of Russia Doctors in Libya
click here |
The “no fly zone” is pretty much past the “protect civilian” stage and well into the “kill Libyan soldiers” phase
click here |
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March 28, 2010
Highly radioactive water has leaked from the number two reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi plant reactor turbine building to an a linked underground tunnel.
Radiation readings are showing the radioactive water emits a dosage rate of more than 1,000 millisieverts per hour.
There is estimated to be several thousand cubic metres of this radiactive water inside the tunnel.
Each reactor turbine building is connected to a maintenance tunnel large enough for workers to walk through.
The radioactive water in the tunnel at the last check was one metre (three feet) form the top of a 15.9-metre access shaft which is located 55 metres from the sea.
This water could overflow through the shaft into the sea.
From Kewe
Many people have a natural deficiency in iodine.
This is especially important for the thyroid gland which will suck out of the air any radioactive iodine it can find to replenish this deficiency.
Even small amount of iodine intake can help to prevent this.
3 x tablets of kelp that have 125 micrograms of iodine will help to prevent intake of dosages of radioactive iodine from the air.
While the governments are saying that radioactive iodine levels in the atmosphere are low for place far removed from Japan, they are neglecting to state that a kelp tablet, or three as I recommend, could help form a prophylactic thyroid gland inhibitor to low levels of radioactive iodine.
Kelp itself with many trace minerals is beneficial to the body and is recommended to be taken daily for health.
Potassium iodine KI at 125 milligram levels should only be ingested when there is knowledge of a pulse of high iodine content forthcoming in the air, and should only be taken while this pulse is flowing overhead. At such times it is also recommended to remain indoors. 125 milligram levels of iodine can have harmful effects if taken over more than a few days.
Kelp tablets that contain 125 micrograms of iodine however, taken even as much as 3 to five tablets daily, can have long term health benefits both for the thyroid gland and the rest of the body, especially as many people due to incorrect food intake have a deficiency in iodine and trace minerals. |
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Fed FREAKING OUT about financial system — a freak out on par with 2008
click here |
U.S. Debt Escalating Military Spending — Income Redistribution in Disguise |
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Afghanistan — Western Terror States: Canada, US, UK, France, Germany, Italy Photos of Afghanistan people being killed and injured by NATO |
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Chernobyl Hell on Earth
The first thing we noticed was that many miles of trees in the forest turned red
click here |
I visited the still highly contaminated areas of Ukraine and the Belarus border where much of the radioactive plume from Chernobyl descended on 26 April 1986
Guardian 2006 article click here |
Fetal origins of disease
Rapidly growing cells in a fetus may divide before repair negating the body's defense mechanism and replicating the damage
click here |
Fukushima radioactive fallout nears Chernobyl levels
New Scientist article click here |
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24 March 2011
Pakistan 'crop shortage' warning
By M Ilyas Khan
BBC News, Islamabad
Lowering wheat prices would create food shortages in Pakistan and encourage smuggling, officials say, responding to criticism from the UN.
Lowering wheat prices would create food shortages in Pakistan and encourage smuggling, officials say, responding to criticism from the UN.
On Wednesday the UN's food relief agency said the government set prices too high and malnutrition was rising.
But an official at Pakistan's food ministry told the BBC farmers would simply switch to more lucrative crops if wheat prices went down.
Devastating floods across Pakistan in 2010 damaged acres of arable land.
Although crop yields in 2011 are projected to be healthy, prices are too high for an impoverished population, the director of the UN's World Food Programme told journalists on the sidelines of humanitarian meetings in Geneva on Wednesday.
"The crop outlook is not bad but the food security situation remains difficult because prices remain so high," Wolfgang Herbinger said.
Smuggling risk
Malnutrition levels in the southern province of Sindh had reached 21% to 23%, according to the WFP.
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"That is well above African standards. The emergency standard is 15%," Mr Herbinger said.
But lowering prices would do little to help the situation, an official at the food and agriculture ministry, who wished to remain unnamed, said.
He also warned that much of the crop would end up in the hands of smugglers.
"Low farm-gate prices lead to lower acreage of wheat crop as farmers switch to other crops and it works as an incentive for smugglers seeking international prices in the neighbourhood.
"It is nearly impossible to stop smuggling across the Afghan border, which is extremely porous," he said.
So if prices are lowered, the official said, the risk is that they would eventually rise to even higher than the level they are currently set at.
In the 1990s and between 2007 and 2009 there were severe wheat shortages across Pakistan, leading to extremely high prices.
Pakistani officials also say that malnutrition in Sindh province is not a new phenomenon and is unrelated to the food supply.
"Government statistics show that food consumption has not gone down despite the doubling of food prices since 2007-08," Kaisar Bengali, advisor to Sindh's chief minister said.
A lack of public hygiene facilities and safe drinking water were more important factors in child nutrition, he said.
"These are neglected areas, and there has been hardly any development in the public health sector here in decades," Mr Bengali said.
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Cheerleading for War |
by Stephen Lendman March 24th, 2011 When America goes to war, managed news goes with it spreading rumors, half-truths, misinformation, and willful deception about targeted nations, regimes and leaders, whether despots or democrats. Whoever first said it, the first casualty of war is truth, and then some as John Pilger once observed saying:
Journalism is the first casualty.
Not only that: it has become a weapon of war, a virulent censorship and willful misreporting that goes unrecognised in the United States, Britain and other democracies.
Censorship by omission, whose power is such that, in war, it can mean the difference between life and death for people in faraway countries.
Managed news jeopardizes free and open societies by substituting fiction for facts, carefully filtered reports for truth, and cheerleading propaganda for real journalism.
As a result, wars of aggression are called liberating ones.
Civil liberties are suppressed for our own good, and patriotism means going along with lawless governments, reigning death and destruction on defenseless nations for imperial, not noble, reasons.
Media support backs them, notably in America where dominant electronic and print reporting marches in lockstep with government policy, right or wrong.
As a result, dominant information sources (the major media) are in crisis as leading media scholar/critic/activist Robert McChesney once observed, saying:
Going to war is arguably the single most important decision any society can make.
The track record of the US news media in the twentieth century is that they often went along with fraudulent efforts to get the nation into one war or another" from WW I to today.
Each time with no exceptions:
Administration(s) in power believed that (truth wouldn't enlist) support (for) war.
So they lied.
The Pentagon Papers (exposed it about Southeast Asia) in shocking detail.
Post-9/11 through Obama's war on Libya: "The very debate over whether to go to war" is absent.
Obama decides.
The media salute, and public opinion is manipulated to say amen.
Never discussed are justifiable reasons, choosing diplomacy over militarism, America acting as judge, jury and executioner, and cui bono fruits of war.
Without them, they'd be none.
Said another way, absent the power and profit benefits, who'd wage them, especially capitalist America, generously enriching war profiteers that fund politicians for bottom line friendly policies.
As a result, government is unaccountable to the electorate.
Democracy is the best money can buy, and wars are always imperial, not liberating ones, especially ones America wages.
Today, round the clock media coverage supports them. Long before television, media critic AJ Liebling said, "People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news."
Today it's mostly TV, the dominant managed news source, supporting power, not truth, functioning as a propaganda system for elitist interests, especially on matters of war and peace.
Cheerleading 101
A March 21 New York Times editorial headlined, "At War in Libya" highlights it, saying:
Col Muammar el-Qaddafi has long been a thug and a murderer who has never paid for his many crimes, including the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.
Thug and murderer, yes.
Downing Pan Am Flight 103 proved false.
He had nothing to do with it, clear evidence The Times suppresses to willfully lie to readers.
Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi was bogusly convicted for the December 21, 1988 bombing, then released last August because of terminal cancer and sent home to Libya.
In fact, Scottish judges who convicted him knew he was innocent, saying so in their final opinion.
In addition, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission's investigation uncovered multiple reasons for believing his conviction was a gross miscarriage of justice, including no credible evidence of his involvement.
No witnesses, video, documentation, fingerprints or other corroboration linked him to the bomb inside a suitcase downing the plane.
Even the court admitted to the case:
"The absence of any explanation of the method by which the primary suitcase might have been placed on board KM180 (Air Malta to Frankfort) is a major difficulty."
Further, misreporting claimed Gaddafi admitted fault.
In fact, he said Libya would take responsibility for the crime, solely to have international sanctions against him lifted.
The dominant media know it, including The Times, but never reported it.
Instead, they distort, exaggerate, lie, and, and suppress uncomfortable truths to support state and corporate interests, even at the cost of innocent lives.
As a result, The Times editorial praised Obama's decision to bomb, never questioning why, whether alternatives should have been considered, or rule of law considerations.
Instead, it admitted:
no perfect formula for military intervention
the importance of "us(ing) it sparingly
abstaining in Bahrain, Yemen, other regional uprisings, and Occupied Palestine is justified.
In contrast it called Libya "a specific case" saying Gaddafi:
is erratic, widely reviled, armed with mustard gas and has a history of supporting terrorism
Ignoring other worse regional despots than him, notably Israeli leaders armed with nuclear weapons, other sophisticated ones, no shyness about using them, regularly attacking Palestinians, besieging Gazans, and waging lawless wars on Lebanon and Gaza with impunity.
In fact, Times and other major media reporters, op-ed, and editorial writers wholeheartedly support them, a chilling example of hypocrisy and biased journalism.
On March 23 Washington Post editorial headlined, "Confused in Libya," saying:
The only solution to Libya's crisis.... is the removal of Mr. Gaddafi from power. (Obama) still seems to lack a coherent strategy for accomplishing that aim.
While ignoring other worse regional ones, he needs to:
(E)xercise US leadership.... many (unnamed) Arabs have been puzzled and even outraged by (his) manifest reluctance to support a revolution (in fact, a US/UK-instigated insurrection), aimed at overthrowing one of the region's most vile dictatorships.
On March 20, a Wall Street Journal op-ed headlined, "GOP on Libya: What's Obama's Goal?" saying:
Republican lawmakers are glad (Obama) is intervening in Libya, but they're not happy with how (he's) carry(ing) out (his) decision to do so."
The same day, House Speaker John Boehner said Obama:
Has a moral obligation to stand with those who seek freedom from oppression and self-government for their people.
Something that is in fact absent throughout the region, yet unmentioned in media commentaries or official statements.
Fox News contributor Bill Kristol wants ground troops in Libya as well as bombing.
Ahead of hostilities, convicted Iran-Contra felon Elliot Abrams called Obama's response "feeble....a non-response," promoting war based on false information he cited.
Bill O'Reilly headlined a commentary, "Getting Gaddafi," wanting him ousted for the wrong reasons.
Other figures on the left and right agree, supporting a lawless agenda to do it.
Peter Dale Scott expressed other concerns, comparing Libya to Iraq, saying:
Both countries had a monstrous dictator.
Both were subjected to no-fly zones.
(They) don't deter the dictator.
In due course, this evolves into a massive intervention in which the government is overthrown and the opposition goes into an internal civil war while simultaneously attacking the invaders.
Diana Johnstone asked "Is This Kosovo All Over Again?" saying:
Despite enormous differences, disturbing similarities include:
As a result, expect protracted hostilities ahead, perhaps killing thousands, injuring and disabling many more, and causing widespread destruction and contamination from toxic munitions.
Once ended, Gaddafi may be gone, either dead or tried like Saddam then killed, and Libyans left no better off than Iraqis and Afghans, suffering horrifically under imperial occupation, a fate no one deserves.
thepeoplesvoice.org — click here
Right or wrong, vilifying a leader
The 'we must do something' chorus
Evoking 'crimes against humanity (and) genocide'
'Leftist (narrow vision) idiocy,' mindlessly cheerleading for war;
'Refugees,' using over-the-top unexplained exaggeration
Resurrecting bin Laden, despite compelling evidence he's dead
Spurning negotiations, mediation, and diplomacy to pursue war, Washington's favorite pastime.
©2011 by thepeoplesvoice.org |
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Remains on payroll of US military
click here |
Afghanistan — Western Terror States: Canada, US, UK, France, Germany, Italy Photos of Afghanistan people being killed and injured by NATO |
Flesh-Eating Pigfuckers
click here |
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<posted by kewe 5:44 PM Wednesday April 2, 2003 |
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But it is upstairs on those wards that the suffering scream.
Anton Antonowicz And Mike Moore
Report From Inside Babylon General Hospital. Apr 3 2003 Mirror.co.uk THEY lie in packed wards, eight to each airless room. Many are crying. Others softly moaning. Some stare, as if lifeless. These are the survivors of what are claimed to be cluster bomb attacks on villages in Babylon and its capital Al Hillah, some 70 miles south of Baghdad. The attacks, which happened around lunchtime on Monday, are said to have killed at least 60 people and injured a further 250. But no one has completed the tally. I see six bodies in the makeshift morgue, a crude metal box teeming with flies, situated beneath an awning at Babylon General Hospital. There are scores of slightly injured patients hobbling through the grounds. Beds are laid in the entrance, every space being exploited. But it is upstairs on those wards that the suffering scream.
Among the 168 patients I counted, not one was being treated for bullet wounds.
All of them, men, women, children, bore the wounds of bomb shrapnel.
It peppered their bodies.
Blackened the skin.
Smashed heads.
Tore limbs.
Two sisters, Khoda, five, and Mariam Nasser, aged 10, share the same bed.
Khoda is crying when I approach.
Her mother is trying to re-dress the wounds to her forehead and the back of her skull.
Mariam sits there saying nothing, a dressing over her left shoulder, cuts all over her back and one eye bloodied.
They had been playing in the garden of their home, 15 miles from Al Hillah, when the bombs went off.
Goran Ali, three, has a huge blood-blister beneath one eye.
His little body is a mess of tubes.
His mother Zubeida just looks at me shaking her head at the madness of it all.
Kifel Hassan, 13, tries to tell me what happened when the explosions struck but the effort made in pointing to his mother, his brother and sister, all lying injured alongside him, proves too much.
He lowers his bandaged arm.
He has lost his hand.
Sejad Ali is five and lies alone.
His three brothers were killed.
His parents are burying them as I look upon this lad with wounds all over his body.
Khalid Hallil, 21, was inside his house three miles from the centre.
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His left thigh is torn from knee to crotch.
His father Hamid speaks English:
“Metal just came from everywhere.
Believe me, there were no soldiers in the area.
Only civilians.
There was no reason for attacking us in our homes.
No justification for this murderous act.
“Tell your countrymen what is happening.
Let them see with their eyes instead of listening to Tony Blair’s lying words.
Look, this is reality — not the make-believe world of Bush and Blair.”
Ali Abed bends to kiss his injured son Hussein.
Ali tells me his wife died in the attack.
He is all that’s left for his four-year-old boy.
AZOR Abdul Waled, 20, holds her seven-month-old daughter Zena, her head swathed in bandages.
Two other daughters have died.
Her own right leg is gashed.
She comes from the village of Al-Ameinera, six miles south.
And she tells me a different story.
Azor says that US soldiers had tried to land in the village outskirts by helicopter but that local militia and tribesmen had sent up a hail of fire which had seen off the three twin-prop transporters.
Then, some 10 minutes later, fighters screamed out of the sky, delivering their fatal payloads.
“All the injuries you see were caused by cluster bombs,” Dr Hydar Abbas tells me.
“Most of the people came from the southern and western periphery.
The majority of the victims were children who died because they were outside.
“We have an ambulance driver, Abdul Zahra, whose leg has had to be amputated after he came under attack while he was driving to the area.
“What kind of war is it that you and America are fighting?
Do you really think that you will be supported by the Iraqi people if you win?
Do you think we will all forget this and say it was for our own good?
“This war is building a hatred which will grow and grow against you.
I have no anger for the British people.
But one day, I fear they will suffer for this just as we do now.”
I find another ambulance driver, Hassan Ali, 37, and ask him what happened two days ago.
He said he was racing to the scene of the first attack when cluster bombs erupted around him, cutting his tyres to shreds.
“I turned around and slowly drove back to shelter,” he says.
“Even in that short space, I saw so many injured.
Some dead. Animals - dogs, cattle, sheep - lying all over.”
He adds that there are reports that a bus containing 35 people had been hit by a tank or artillery shell.
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But I cannot obtain confirmation.
It is getting on for 1pm, about the time that those bombs fell, and the minders want us back aboard the bus for the 65-minute journey to Baghdad.
There is no time to make polite farewells to the injured.
They are abruptly left to their misery...
On the way back, a guide proudly announces that we are crossing the River of Babylon, a tributary of the Euphrates.
In the distance, through the date palm groves, lies the ancient city, named after the river.
Here, I can see the resistance with my own eyes.
The troops digging in.
The field guns and tanks hidden in the trees.
The lorries parked in ditches.
The machine-gun nests.
It would be wrong to say it’s an iron ring.
The defences are patchy but, nevertheless, there is a significant presence.
Yet the closer we come to Baghdad, the less evidence there is of soldiery — a few emplacements but nothing obvious.
The guides prevent filming.
Suddenly, over to the south-west of the capital and about six miles from our hotel — we see an enormous angry cloud.
It is too light to be one of Saddam’s oil fires.
It must be a bomb.
Its shape and colour then changes, with blacker smoke coming from its heart.
Huge balls of fire lick and spit into the sky.
It didn’t look as if the local refinery had been hit.
This looked as though the bombs had found a fuel dump — and an enormous one at that.
“No pictures!” yells the guide.
None are taken but everything is seen.
It is only then that you notice how dark the sky is over the capital and how polluted the air is.
At Babylon, the sky was blue and cloudless.
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Here, on the edge of the city, its true colour is masked by smoke which is dark, low and cruel.
That is the space in which five million Iraqis are forced to live.
Not that there are five million here any more.
Most have moved elsewhere.
Drivers in the hotel make constant phone calls to loved ones and return with tears in their eyes.
They have to make a living and it’s a lonely one now their families have gone.
The Information Minister, Mohammed Sayeed al-Sahaf, gives us an afternoon update, saying 10 people were killed and 90 wounded overnight in Baghdad.
He also accused the Americans of dropping booby-traps — shaped like ballpoint-pens — to maim anyone picking them up.
DURING fighting on Tuesday and into yesterday morning, Iraqi troops had destroyed two Apache helicopters, nine tanks and 26 armoured personnel carriers.
“We have again inflicted heavy casualties on the mercenary enemy,” he says.
He scoffs at reports that the US and Britain have made substantial gains.
“They claim to have taken Karbala.
Well, this morning I sent an Iraqi TV team to record what’s really happening there and all the world will see it.
“I also had a detailed briefing from the Governor there, who said that what the Pentagon is saying is an illusion, all lies.
“They claim to have inflicted heavy losses on our soldiers.
Believe me, the impact on our capacities is trivial — trivial.”
He then went on to complain that enemy fighters were deliberately flying low over the ancient Shiite shrines in Kerbala and Najaf, attempting to wreck them.
These magnificent tombs are the most sacred in Shiism.
Any desecration would inflame the largely Shiite Iraqi population, not to mention the 65 million faithful in neighbouring Iran.
Whether the claim is true or false, it is easy to see its value in the propaganda war.
“Deeds not words. That is what is important,” the Minister is saying...
Deeds not words.
Visible deeds which result in so many lying in Babylon Hospital.
Visible deeds such as that fireball rising before us on the way home.
Invisible ones, like so much battleground bravery.
Or the moment that high-flying pilot’s finger presses the button.
All deeds which matter.
While words are tossed around like shrapnel.
While words are tossed around like shrapnel.
BOMBS FALL ON BABYLON.
posted by kewe 11:09 AM |
Flesh-Eating Pigfuckers
click here |
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| Kewe Archives | News you might have missed | TheWE.cc | The Planet |
It is nearly impossible to stop smuggling across the Afghan border, which
Food and Agriculture ministry spokesman
