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Toxic Legacy of US Assault on Fallujah 'Worse Than Hiroshima'
The shocking rates of infant mortality and cancer in Iraqi city raise new questions about battle
Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.
Children in Fallujah who suffer from birth defects which are thought to be linked to weapons used in attacks on the city by US Marines. (Getty images) Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have complained since
2005 of being overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth
defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the
lower limbs. They said they were also seeing far more cancers than they
did before the battle for Fallujah between US troops and insurgents.
Their claims have been supported by a survey showing a four-fold increase in all cancers and a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in under-14s. Infant mortality in the city is more than four times higher than in neighbouring Jordan and eight times higher than in Kuwait.
Dr Chris Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster and one of the authors of the survey of 4,800 individuals in Fallujah, said it is difficult to pin down the exact cause of the cancers and birth defects. He added that "to produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the attacks happened".
US Marines first besieged and bombarded Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, in April 2004 after four employees of the American security company Blackwater were killed and their bodies burned. After an eight-month stand-off, the Marines stormed the city in November using artillery and aerial bombing against rebel positions. US forces later admitted that they had employed white phosphorus as well as other munitions.
In the assault US commanders largely treated Fallujah as a free-fire zone to try to reduce casualties among their own troops. British officers were appalled by the lack of concern for civilian casualties. "During preparatory operations in the November 2004 Fallujah clearance operation, on one night over 40 155mm artillery rounds were fired into a small sector of the city," recalled Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster, a British commander serving with the American forces in Baghdad.
He added that the US commander who ordered this devastating use of firepower did not consider it significant enough to mention it in his daily report to the US general in command. Dr Busby says that while he cannot identify the type of armaments used by the Marines, the extent of genetic damage suffered by inhabitants suggests the use of uranium in some form. He said: "My guess is that they used a new weapon against buildings to break through walls and kill those inside."
The survey was carried out by a team of 11 researchers in January and February this year who visited 711 houses in Fallujah. A questionnaire was filled in by householders giving details of cancers, birth outcomes and infant mortality. Hitherto the Iraqi government has been loath to respond to complaints from civilians about damage to their health during military operations.
Researchers were initially regarded with some suspicion by locals, particularly after a Baghdad television station broadcast a report saying a survey was being carried out by terrorists and anybody conducting it or answering questions would be arrested. Those organising the survey subsequently arranged to be accompanied by a person of standing in the community to allay suspicions.
The study, entitled "Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009", is by Dr Busby, Malak Hamdan and Entesar Ariabi, and concludes that anecdotal evidence of a sharp rise in cancer and congenital birth defects is correct. Infant mortality was found to be 80 per 1,000 births compared to 19 in Egypt, 17 in Jordan and 9.7 in Kuwait. The report says that the types of cancer are "similar to that in the Hiroshima survivors who were exposed to ionising radiation from the bomb and uranium in the fallout".
Researchers found a 38-fold increase in leukaemia, a ten-fold increase in female breast cancer and significant increases in lymphoma and brain tumours in adults. At Hiroshima survivors showed a 17-fold increase in leukaemia, but in Fallujah Dr Busby says what is striking is not only the greater prevalence of cancer but the speed with which it was affecting people.
Of particular significance was the finding that the sex ratio between newborn boys and girls had changed. In a normal population this is 1,050 boys born to 1,000 girls, but for those born from 2005 there was an 18 per cent drop in male births, so the ratio was 850 males to 1,000 females. The sex-ratio is an indicator of genetic damage that affects boys more than girls. A similar change in the sex-ratio was discovered after Hiroshima.
The US cut back on its use of firepower in Iraq from 2007 because of the anger it provoked among civilians. But at the same time there has been a decline in healthcare and sanitary conditions in Iraq since 2003. The impact of war on civilians was more severe in Fallujah than anywhere else in Iraq because the city continued to be blockaded and cut off from the rest of the country long after 2004. War damage was only slowly repaired and people from the city were frightened to go to hospitals in Baghdad because of military checkpoints on the road into the capital.
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192 Comments so far
Show AllThe American government is evil. That may sound like an oversimplification, but it's true when it comes to our military aggression.
Evil is not limited to military aggression abroad.
We are all getting poisoned here in our own country.
Mountaintop removal coal mining in West Virginia with its toxic sludge.
Hydraulic fracking for natural gas that is polluting the ground water from New York to Texas.
Off shore drilling which is currently killing off the Gulf of Mexico.
Atrazine in everything we eat and drink.
Criminals...but the funny thing is that neighboring rich Arab countries hardly speak out against US war crimes. All the gulf countries still promote US interests(i.e., importing America's shitty leftover SUV's and Harley's that don't sell) and Israeli (3 Starbucks every Kilometer in Saudi, Kuwait, Dubai).
Iraq has been simply bled dry and will soon be a toxic wasteland like Laos (the US did the same thing). I thought the worst was when the marines stood by when the national museums were looted, but the human cost is really tragic.
We have known this and the cause for years.
I put it in a song.
"Deleted Uranium blues is no joke with a half life over 2 billion years
It's dust is blowin now over the planet, while the Chicken Hawks cheer..the Chicken Hawks cheer
It's the nuclear weapon of US choice in every war every day
With a strong affinity for phosphate structures in our DNA... in our DNA
Depleted Uranium Blues.......... Depleted Uranium Blues....
It's a heavy metal chemical radio active poison with a particle too small to see
Every country the US fights in, its blowin back to you and me... You and me...
There's no way to clean it up and it keeps on killing, that's what the experts say
If we don't stop it who the Hell will, who do you think is gonna pay?... Who's gonna Pay..
Half a million Gulf Vets are now disabled and their babies are being born deformed
missing eyes brains arms legs and blood diseases and they were never warned... never warned...
It started with a memo from the Manhattan Project addressed to General Groves
"Dirty bombs dirty missiles , dirty bullets is now the way to go"... the way to go...
Now babies in Fallugah are born with these very same defects that we have seen
They try to keep it secret but all they do is prove what war really means... really means
Depleted Uranium Blues"
" The Cancer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind.... The Cancer is blowin in the wind."
I rather doubt Robert (Dylan) foresaw that coming, but I think he'd approve if he read this article.
A ringworm is morally superior to every church or steward of law in our nation. I would rather join Geronimo in the dirt.
To paraphrase the quote (the name of the writer escapes me at the moment): "History doesn't repeat. It rhymes".
Sam Clemens aka Mark Twain
A Bomb on Japan, Napalm on Vietnam, depleted Uranium on Fallujah, Drones on villages in Afghanistan I think there is a pattern here but we will just call them our heroes and ignore the whole thing.
THALIDIMIDE: I often use the phrase, "Mars rules" as it is the warrior ethos, even applied to corporate capitalism without conscience (as that system makes war on labor, i.e. THE people) that is destroying so much. To your list I'd add the Bhopal disaster, the rampant ecocide underway in the Niger Delta, and the bleeding, dying Gulf of Mexico, spawning ground to countless species.
The web of life, from the smallest elemental kingdoms to entire civilizations, is being decimated by the Mars-rules mindset. In its claim to ownership, its self-proclaimed right to kill (under the dubious warrior ethos), it is rapidly dismantling the web of life and putting us all at risk. That this expensive mode of oeprations still passes for "defense strategy" is indicative of criminal intent, or M.A.D.ness on steroids!
Nothing long coheres when LOVE is taken out of all equations!
Ok but I do not think long complex philosophical analyses are necessary here. I want you to spend more time studying the actual day in and day out murders and mayhem inflicted upon the women and children and men of Falluja. And weep for them, and for us.
Rose-
not his time. this is not astrological and it's not mars. This is Fallujah! this is about the insane, perverted, but still deliberate murder of a whole city planned and carried out by heartless monsters who do not do this because of the stars. They doit because they really are monsters.
ABUELO: Psychology sees human behavior through an interplay between three driving forces: ego, super-ego, and the id... or unconscious, subconscious, and conscious mental operations.
Astrology expands the understanding of human behavior by integrating a larger body of archetypes. When I speak of Mars, I am relating the primary archetype that deals with raw force, brutal responses, and naked self-interest. This element exists in EVERY human being; but it has been intensified by our society's focus on militarism and glamorizing the fierce use of force, weaponry, and combat. And that is NOT natural. It's been engineered to legitimize the same make-war state that IKE warned about in his chillingly prescient words about the rising power (in l959!) of the MIC!
I believe that an understanding of this archetypal influence, and how it's intended to be balanced by the OTHER human archetypes is critical. The explanations for human character and behavior have largely evolved from the Bible. It views the world through the narrow, polar prism of good and evil. In order to transcend those limited categorical references, the circle of the heavens provides an education in a far more evolved set of systems and how these relate to one another (potentially acting as check-balances to those drives that left unchecked cause societies to collapse). As per geometry, the circle's inborn mathematical formulae demonstrate the criteria that can be utilized to mitigate what otherwise appears as irreconcilable opposition.
When Einstein stated that no problem could be solved from the level of thought that brought it about, it strengthened my view that only by transcending linear reference points (this team/that team, good-evil, democrat-republican)... a 2-dimensional worldview, can we begin to fashion TRUE alternatives. Humanity cannot be sustained by or through the systems currently in vogue. A new phase is dawning... the wheel of time turns, and what once was the dominant way of living, passes away that something else will come to fill the vacuum.
These ages each endure for over 2000 years, and thus much of recorded history reflects ONLY the ethos associated with its dominant mindset. There are TWELVE paths... twelve disciples or archetypes. A different worldview evolves around every one of them. In a best case scenario, ALL are spoken for in terms of society's mores, values, costs, and benefits. The circle is the one model that totally disintegrates the rationales behind any class-based or caste-based hierarchy. Power always seeks to find justification for erecting yet another. Whether it be the king, tyrant, dictator, pharaoh, or corporate captain of industry at the top... cutting the head (which incidentally represents Mars/Aries) off this beast by demonstrating how society can work for ALL members (the circle) is critical in humanity's understanding.
I apologize that the topic DID divert to other tributaries... MCOYTE and OLE MAN RIVER added powerful realism to this thread. So much of it, so difficult to read... my pointing out the power of Mars, as inflamed archetype that's so obviously OUT OF CONTROL (and balance) in our world is ultimately NOT off topic.
Life is a circle and circle is being broken. It is easy to use numbers when talking about this cancer or that infectious disease, it is a different matter to experience it. One does not have to travel to exotic faraway places, it happening in our own backyard under our very noses. In America they call it health care reform.
clearbluesky said "One does not have to travel to exotic faraway places, it happening in our own backyard under our very noses. In America they call it health care reform."
Oh sure, Americans are experiencing the same pain as Falluja. There's no need to have any concern for those we are killing in far away places. As most Americans have always known, everything is always really about us. WACOS.
"Toxic Legacy of US Assault on Fallujah 'Worse Than Hiroshima'. The shocking rates of infant mortality and cancer in Iraqi city raise new questions about battle"
I'm disgusted to live on the same planet as people acting like this. Knowing that my name and my life is part of the pretext for destroying and killing this way makes me very angry.
So angry I laugh out loud at their solemn military rituals of 'respect', e.g. when dead soldiers are buried. The inverse side of the claimed respect is the opposite - for the people the soldiers have harmed. The shows of respect for soldiers is contempt for other people.
The Truth is self-evident, "that all men are created equal" - and soldiers are no more "equal" than others to have rights to kill and destroy. In fact, due to their voluntarily achieved skills in evil conduct, soldiers should be considered less "equal" than others and held in restraint. Soldiers are human beings destroyed - to be skilled at destroying other people.
Truth be told, I'm a little disgusted by the post 9-11 wars...
Penta-gone-insane should be razed from the Earth and all signs of it removed and covered in fields of flowers of melancholy mourning.
There is karma for this.
Karma is for learning. Some day the truth will be learned. But nowadays many fear the truth.
The truth will set us all free.
Yes one would think so.
Just like "By deception we will wage war" is the motto o Israeli Mossad, I heard "the truth will set us free" is the saying at the entrance of the CIA building.
It is funny that these days the last place that one would expect to get the truth of freedom is from the CIA.
The truth shall set you free (but we're not tellin).
These two sentences stood out to me:
"...the Iraqi government has been loath to respond to complaints from civilians about damage to their health..."
"Researchers were initially regarded with some suspicion by locals, particularly after a Baghdad television station broadcast a report saying a survey was being carried out by terrorists..."
If one asks, "who is pulling the strings of this puppet government?" an obvious, familiar pattern of denial and cover-up emerges.
I caught that one too; the news must be a propaganda rag!
The nuclear power industry made a deal with the defense department back in the '80s to use DU (depleted uranium) in armor piercing shells. It is very heavy and was put inside the shell in a pencil shape, which, as it penetrates steel, burns and cuts through, creating uranium oxide, which gets everywhere.
It was used extensively in the 1991 Gulf War, exposing Iraqis and our troops to illness. In 2004, Project Censored (part of Sonoma State's journalism department) reported that DU, and NDU (non-depleted U) were being put into almost all artillery rounds, including smart bombs. By that time, we had already dropped thousands of times the amount of radioactivity in Iraq compared with Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
DU was also extensively used in Serbia. Radioactivity doesn't discriminate. We've contaminated our troops along with those we chose to kill, and have left most of Iraq uninhabitable for a few billion years.
Nice work, and most Americans have never heard of the problem on Fox News...
Makes you wonder if the "right to life" legions would give a damn if they viewed this damning evidence... or if they'd console themselves with the racist deception that other (darker-hued) nations' babies don't quite "count" in their religious calculus?
The so called right to life legions only think that the unborn American, babies have the right to life and the born Iraqi, babies only have the right to death! The horrible death and pain of children in Iraq is just fine with many of them because we are killing them to bring them freedom and democracy!
re-cycling is not always a good thing...
All this crap will leech into the water, land and air across the Middle East and beyond. The fools in Tel Aviv and Washington will one day see themselves, their children and their own grandchildren deformed and diseased as well.
This planet is a ship of fools.
The fools (or more accurately, monsters) in Tel Aviv and Washington are already deformed and diseased - morally and mentally.
"... a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in under-14s ..."
It was necessary - after all, those kids might have grown up to become a threat to Israel.
In WW-II, when the Nazis occupied Norway, they appointed Vidikun Quisling to form a new government, which he did under Nazi guidance. Germany recognized the Quisling government as the legal government of Norway. Therefore, any patriotic Norwegian who fought against the Quisling government was an insurgent or traitor and subject to the death penalty. After the war, Quisling was hanged.
We have been doing the same thing in every country we invade or occupy. We appoint a "Quisling" government to act in our stead, under our direction. Hence the "Iraqi" government's reaction to the survey. IF it affects us negatively, it becomes the propaganda of "terrorists" and is banned by the Quislings.
It is so sad, to me, that of all the lessons learned in WW-II, we seem to be learning the ones taught by the Nazis, forgetting Nuremberg and the Nuremberg Principles.
World War II was to have wiped fascism and Nazism from the face of the earth. Now it is all coming back, as the actions of the WW-II victors. It was all for naught, I fear. Another generation died for nothing.
STEVE: I see credence in a metaphysical metaphor, for it casts light on your observation. The U.S became an entity (as per its birthdate) on July 4, and therefore its destiny falls under the constellation of Cancer, signifying the crab with clutching claws. Cancer, the sign of the stomach, brings to mind the adage, "You are what you eat." In devouring the nations it's conquered, the U.S. digested their "ingredients." Now in many ways it horrifyingly displays the traits it's inadvertently integrated into itself. Of course access to a great many rich assets didn't hurt the elites one bit, either... not till the law of karma comes full circle like a boomerang, a cosmic fact that's scheduled to demonstrate its veracity over the next few years.
I guess that you forgot what a GREAT COUNTRY We are!!!!! We redocumented and brought to the United States 1600 Nazi Scientists and Psychiatrists to work in the Department of Defense, NASA, and CIA ("Operation Paperclip).....Our leaders: The Rockefellers, Bushes, Dulles Brothers, and The Military Industrial Complex were so impressed by the NAZI organization that they wanted to improve on it....
Some of the scientists found their way into Fort Detrick and the production of chemicals to be used in times of war or to use for assassinations.....Remember the anthrax scandal of 2001 that came from Fort Detrick and the FBI tried scapegoating on whoever they wanted.....Then there were the chemicals that were sent to Hussein to use against the Iranians.
Where do you think the CIA got the idea for torture and brainwashing.....They got it from those wonderful Nazi Psychiatrists that were put in the CIA.......
So why get upset with DOD murdering unarmed civilians with: depleted uranium, phosphorous, drones controlled in Nevada by kids playing video games? You have a President who has an "Assassination List" which he is now calling his "Black List"
He is still murdering innocent unarmed civilians.
What a GREAT COUNTRY we are!
HERBERT: I agree with your post, although I would say that the Nazis got at least some of their torture tactics from the Catholic Church. Imagine the spectacle of burning people alive, or the joy of the dunking stool? Then, as now, these devices were brutally used on innocent citizens... probably the ones that got independent ideas of their own. Authoritarian regimes of every stripe rely upon absolute conformity, and any who seek to fly over their cuckoo's nests, or provide a valid example that challenges the status quo are taught quite a lethal lesson for their efforts. The enemy to Truth, Freedom, and the notion of a democratic society is found in the "one size fits all" ethos. Whether it's tied to an authoritarian church or a totalitarian/fascist government, it exists to murder the spirits of all those who march to a different (higher!) drummer. Creation is not modeled on mono-culture or uniformity for a very good reason...
Do you have any inkling of how many identify with Christianity in the U.S? 51% are hardly atheists or secular in their orientation. You have no respect for any facts that disabuse you of your carefully nurtured false notions. And the screen names you pick, like "Truth-Light" are quite imaginative... given the content of your posts.
A correction:
Technically the burnings were carried out by the State, not by the Church. The "heretics" were condemned by the church but church law had no death penalty. The condemned prisoner was then handed over to the secular arm of the state for capital punishment. (This is why, for centuries, prisoners in England memorized a select few Biblical "neck verses" in order to demonstrate their literacy at a time when only priests were expected to be literate and therefore could only be tried and punished--non-capitally--by the church).
Dunking was not conducted by the state but was a local, village practice, probably very rare but famous nowadays because of its peculiarity.
Sorry, no cigar. The church WAS the state during this phase in Europe. The church sponsored the burning of witches... it was considered a crime of heresy. And that little, not exactly local "amusement," precursor to today's entertainment-as-Roman-arena went on for more than a century. Where's the apology to women? The Catholic church is founded upon misogyny, denies the feminine aspect of the God-head, and even now protects priests who diddle with children. What a legacy!
Hi Namaste,
I've written quite a few articles on Israel and its Nazi learning curve.
The hard part when looking at the US and Israel is identifying which is the tail and which is the dog. ;-)
So much for our "heros" in the military. The cowardly SOBs kill from afar using joysticks, and murder and maim innocent children with their toxic crap. This is a government of war criminals and anyone who works for--the button-men and women in the military included--are also war criminals.
Yeah Donna, too bad the Foxy News, Madame and the rest of the MSM presstitutes do not see it that way. If they did they would say: we cannot thank you for your service military men and women....to our government of war criminals.
"Presstitutes"
excellent. I hope you don't mind if I carry that one with me.
I think that Donna and Paul Revere have made very important points here. If the White House Press Corps had an ounce of honesty in their collective spines, they [or at least someone] would be holding up pictures of those deformed babies and children and asking Obama and/or his White House Press Secretary Gibbs why the United States should be not be considered war criminals for what they have done to the youth of Iraq. Someone [alas, that person cannot be Helen Thomas] should point out to one or both of those two what the article stated which is that so many of Iraq's children have, astoundingly, been more deformed and withered than the survivors of the Atomic Bomb blasts that incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If they did that they should then ask Gibbs or Obama how they can possibly continue to justify having troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Instead we have writers such as Sebastian Junger who portray American soldiers in a sympathetic light with his popular book called War which has been much praised on Amazon. What Junger never does in his book, as the White House reporters also fail to do, is to look at the damage that our fine upstanding young soldiers have done to the people of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Perhaps the American people could finally begin to question and protest against these occupations if they were to see on their television screens the terrible damage that the United States has wrought upon the people of the Middle East such as the effects that DU has had on these young people. Who weeps for these children? Apparently not too many of the White House Press Corps or anyone from the television and cable programs. Has that darling of the liberals, Keith Olbermann, shown these pictures on Countdown? How about Rachel Maddow? Have either of these two condemned the Obama administration and his military for what they have done to these people? Have they demanded that the Obama administration and members of the U.S. military be tried as war criminals?
It would seem that being labeled a liberal means that one will only go so far in criticizing a supposed fellow liberal who holds the highest office in the land.
Cowards and hypocrites-the whole lot of them.
Erroll,
They don't show us films as they did with Vietnam as you say. They say there is so much good the soldiers are doing: then where are the films of all the good?
Words cannot describe the blatant nefarious atrocities committed upon these innocent people of Iraq, which had “NOTHING!” whatsoever to do with 9/11.
It was all a pack of mendacity. It is just so dam sad what we've done and continue to do now in Afghanistan. Sigh!
Maybe we don't call DU "nuclear bombs," but we are certainly waging nuclear war by other technical means. Those images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki just give us a way to pretend that because we didn't drop A-bombs (or H-bombs now) that we have not repeated Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Who needs a mushroom cloud when you can just embed uranium oxide dust spray from DU in the very soil and water supply of the country, inch-by-inch.
Nothing to see here, folks, we're just gentrifying the Mushroom Cloud.
Better to be a birth defect like the children of Fallujah than a killer malignancy like the US. We'd better pray to our savage god there is not perfect justice in the universe.
Intended or not -
Our legacy of poisoning the lands we decide are 'against' us is reminiscent of the Romans plowing salt into the lands of Carthage to prevent any future generations from living there.
To whom it may concern,
You evil loathsome motherfuckers. You are a disease on the human race. Who needs Satan when we have you sons of maggots who profit from war, pain, and death? Curse you all. Anyone that is willing to pick up a flag, a gun, and a lie, and hand over your moral responsibility to any institution, whether it is a church, a government, or military organization, deserve eternal punishment in hell. Look what you have done. It should have been your children, your wives, your grandmothers. It should have been you whose eye and testicles are melted. I wish there were a God to hand out eternal punishment for anyone that believes they can pass on their moral responsibility to any person or institution.
Capital trumps Satan every time, and if Satan existed he would find his allies in every church and army in the land. You are the armies of the Apocalypse. May you die quickly and spare the rest of us.
"I wish there were a God to hand out eternal punishment"
No, you really don't ...
You're right.
:)
Bring America Back !!!!
****If America did and does not care about 9/11 Responders who became ill from smoke or asbestos ingestion, enough to provide medical treatment, then how do you expect America to care about Iraquis. The DVD "SICKO' by Michael Moore proved America did not care.
****If US hospitals employ the practice of "dumping' sick patients, not having insurance, out onto the streets
why would we expect them to care about human sickness thousands of miles away in Fallugia ?
****If Americans did not rise up when George W Bush ordered 40,000 missiles launched into the sovereign nation of Iraq in 2003's 'Shock and Awe' Invasion of that defenseless country; then, are we now to jump to our feet on a comparison to Hiroshima ?
****Little sister ally Israel massacred 1500 human beings in GAZA, including 400 children; yet, not one word of remorse from our current leadership for the Genocide. Eleven human beings assassinated recently on a boat Peace flotilla in GAZA, and , not one word of sympathy from our current leadership.
****Having been the mass murderers in Iraq, the complicit ally of Israel in child killing and Genocide, how can the USA take any kind of remorseful stand on the by products in Fallugia===even when compared to another product of US Agression in Japan.
****When millions of Americans are employed by the US, and by its Military Industrial Complex, and are dependant thereon, how can they rise up against their employers, and their political and economic masters--and against their crimes?
****Pres Eisenhower strongly warned us in his farewell speech of exactly this severe and serious problem. Watching his video on giving this warning to the Nation is convincing indeed that his fears have now come true. Thanx for this reminder from The Independent of the UK !
At some point, the American people will wake up. Regrettably, it is the docile and compliant American people who enable this madness. We are, after all, the scientists who create the technologies of death, we are the weapons engineers who design the bombs, and we are the technicians and assemblers working in the factories that produce them. There is a way to stop the insanity. Once we have awakened, we simply cease to participate in it any longer. This will no doubt evoke an immediate, angry response from the monster. It will smash us and annihilate us. But, so what? We're going to die anyway sooner or later. Once enough of us have ceased to feed the monster, and the monster has annihilated us all, the monster will die of starvation, having no one to feed it any longer.
PONDERER: I am not the first or last to point this out, but the use of the word WE implies agreement and consensus where neither exists. Did WE ask our leaders to push for war when the media was awash with lies and infiltrated by those who intended to unleash their dark militant agenda? Did WE tell the president we wanted the banks bailed out, even though Ford figured out a century ago that if he didn't pay his workers enough in wages, there'd be no one to sell his car-product to? Now the fruit of rewarding the wealthy at the expense of citizens is catching up with the actual economy. Did WE tell the leaders that single payer was OFF the table? Now those who can't pay their rent/mortgages will be expected to pony up insurance "protection racket" monthly fees?
WE is a lie. Even if polls were accurate they'd largely be measuring how successfully massive disinformation campaigns (i.e. propaganda) had worked its magic on millions of naive, uninformed minds, a good percentage of which was born with the inclination to follow leaders and adapt authoritarian codes of conduct.
Your "we" doesn't speak for me, or many in this forum.