The Age of the Siege: Nazi Military Tactics Revisited

NATO Strategies, Economic Sanctions and the "Responsibility to Protect"

Global Research
Felicity Arbuthnot

“Disengage, avoid, and withhold support from whatever abuses, degrades and humiliates humanity.” (Alice Walker, b:1944.).

“[former Danish PM and Secretary General of NATO] Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Du har blod på dine hænder” ( “You have blood on your hands”), Danish protester, 2003.

The siege of Leningrad is still considered the most lethal siege in world history, a shocking “racially motivated starvation policy”, described as: “an integral part of Nazi policy in the Soviet Union during World War 11.”

The 872 day siege began on 8th September 1941 and was finally broken on 27th January 1944. It is described  as: “one of the longest and most destructive sieges in history and overwhelmingly the most costly in casualties.” Some historians cite it as a genocide. Due to record keeping complexities the exact number of deaths resultant from the blockade’s deprivations are uncertain, figures range from 632,000 to 1.5 million.

Sieges now extend to entire countries, they have become the torture before the destruction. And they are not counted in long days, but in long years. Iran thirty three years, Iraq thirteen-plus years. Ironically the disparity in the deaths in Iraq resultant from that siege, mirror near exactly what was considered a “genocide” in Leningrad.

Syria has been subject to EU “restrictions” since 2011, ever more strangulating, with near every kind of financial transaction made impossible by May 2011- when “restrictions” were also placed on President Assad himself, all senior government officials, senior security and armed forces Heads. The list of that denied is dizzying (i.) By February 2012, assets of individuals were frozen, as those of the Central Bank of Syria.

Cargo flights by Syrian carriers to the EU were also barred, as was trade in gold, precious metals and diamonds – anything which might translate in to hard cash, without which neither individuals or countries can purchase the most basic essentials.
By July 2012 Syrian Arab Airlines and even Syria’s Cotton Marketing Organisation had joined the EU’s victims.

America of course, had been way ahead of the game, with the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Act (ii) signed in to law on 12th December 2003, the year of Iraq’s comprehensive US-led destruction. Thus the mighty USA’s personal siege on under twenty one million people, is now entering its tenth year.

By last August, as with Iraq before it, the inability to trade meant that, as ever, the now Nobel Peace Prize winning EU and the policies of the Nobel Peace Prize winning US President, were targeting Syria’s most vulnerable.

Depleted Uranium Factory Had a Fire

The Telegraph
By Michael Smith, Defence Correspondent and Maurice Weaver

A POTENTIAL health threat caused by a fire in a factory producing depleted uranium ammunition has emerged in a Pentagon document.

Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, insisted to Parliament yesterday that there was "no significant risk" from DU ammunition and no evidence linking it to any cases of ill health. But a copy of the scientific study appears to indicate that there may be a much greater potential long-term danger where fire breaks out in an area where the material is stored.

Although the report deals with the subject in general terms, such a fire occurred at the Royal Ordnance Speciality Metals factory at Featherstone, Staffordshire, in 1999. Two unions which believe their members may have been exposed to DU during the fire are demanding investigations into possible health repercussions.

Firemen from two brigades fought to bring the blaze under control and potentially contaminated fumes drifted across nearby buildings including a 600-inmate jail. While initial scientific reports said there was no evidence of contamination among firemen, renewed concerns about the effects of DU have led the Fire Brigades Union and the Prison Officers Association to call for further tests.

Shane Rixom, the POA representative at Featherstone prison, wrote yesterday to Mike Pascoe, the governor, listing four cancer cases among the 160 staff during the past four years. He said Featherstone had the "second highest sick rate" in the Prison Service.

Britain was nuked by their own weapons

PressTV

Maybe all the people that live within an area from Birmingham across to Norwich and down to Bristol, Bournmouth and across to Dover and back up to Norwich were not aware that they may have been exposed, on more than one occasion, to extremely high levels of radiation from the weapons used by the US, UK and coalition forces in and around the Middle East war zones……not to mention the onslaught on Libya that saw an incredible amount of DU weapons being used and also possibly low yield nuclear weapons.

Back in the 1940’s during the Los Alamos nuclear test they discovered a type of poisonous gaseous substance that was emitted from the weapons. The Generals seized this new found substance as a potential people killer that basically would drift on the wind, have no footprint to identify the aggressor and would kill over a long period of time.

A secret memo to Brigadier General Grove clearly showed their intention to carry out mass genocide, mass depopulation and mass infertility using this technology resulting in the development of depleted uranium (DU) weapons as used extensively today in all areas of conflict. If you don’t believe me ask the people of Iraq, especially those living in Fallujah and Basra who may not to be able to ever have a child.

It was in more recent time they seized an opportunity to dispose of the nuclear waste from their nuclear programmes (Uranium 238 or DU) as existing stockpiles were massive and in very poor condition and so it made sense to give it away to the arms manufacturing companies to be used as a penetrator, shaped charged liner or simply for ballast in weapons and aircraft etc.

DU is pyrophoric which basically means it is self igniting at low temperatures around 170 degrees. When it leaves the barrel of a gun it is basically igniting, like tracer bullets. Upon hitting the target it erupts into a massive thermo nuclear type explosion in access of 5000 degrees and emits a huge cloud of radioactive nano-particles in their millions that then drift on the wind.

The UN/WHO state that DU is no risk to our health and it was the UN who carried out an extensive survey in the Balkans after the war which resulted in a rather pathetic report that really didn’t even address the main issue which was total contamination of the war zone making some areas almost totally uninhabitable.

If you were to scan any particle piece of earth where radiation exists in its natural form you would probably get a reading of around 5-15 pulses, on the other hand DU would go up to around 10,000.

73,846 US Soldiers Dead from both Gulf Wars, How they manipulated the numbers to fool you

Federal Jack

Guardsman Gerard Darren Matthew,
sent home from Iraq with mysterious
illnesses, holds baby daughter, Victoria,
who has deformed hand. He has tested positive
for uranium contamination

(ATS)   Iraq War Deaths Exceed Vietnam War Numbers.

Department of Veterans Affairs Reports 73 Thousand U.S. Gulf War Deaths.

More Gulf War Veterans have died than Vietnam Veterans.  This probably is news to you.  But the truth has been hidden by a technicality.  So here is the truth.

The casualties in the Vietnam War were pretty simple to understand.  If a soldier was dead from his combat tour, he was a war casualty.  There are 58,195 names recorded on the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC.

But something odd has happened with the Iraq War.  The government, under the Bush administration, did something dishonest that resulted in a lie that’s persisted since the war began — and continues to this very day.  They decided to report the war deaths in Iraq only if the soldier died with his boots on the ground in a combat situation.

The actual figures have been hidden from the American public just like the returning, flag draped coffins were censored from the press.  But the figures are now available and we can only hope that the American people will be outraged when they learn how they have been misled.

According to The Department of Veterans Affairs, as of May 2007, reports in the Gulf War Veterans Information System reveal these startling numbers:

Total U.S. Military Gulf War Deaths: 73,846

* Deaths amongst Deployed: 17,847

* Deaths amongst Non-Deployed: 55,999

The stastics for non-lethal injuries are likewise staggering:

Total “Undiagnosed Illness” (UDX) claims: 14,874

Total number of disability claims filed: 1,620,906

* Disability Claims amongst Deployed: 407,911

* Disability Claims amongst Non-Deployed: 1,212,995

Percentage of combat troops that filed Disability Claims 36%

I know you probably will think this is another conspiracy theory
full article — www.viewzone.com…

Source: www1.va.gov… Note: Sometimes this link is not active so we have posted the pdf file on viewzone 393 kb.]

More deaths and mysery to follow…

More than 1,820 tons of radioactive nuclear waste (i.e. depleted uranium) were exploded in Iraq alone in the form of armor piercing rounds and bunker busters. This represents the worlds worst man made ecological disaster ever. 64 kg of uranium were used in the Hiroshima bomb. The U.S. Iraq Nuclear Holocaust represents far more than fourteen thousand Hiroshima’s.

The nuclear waste the U.S. has exploded in the Middle East will continue killing for hundreds of years! That’s how long these particles of radioactive dust will continue to blow around, get lodged in someone’s lungs or be ingested. Scientists calculate that there is now enough radioactive material in Iraq to wipe out a third of the world’s current population.

While we never found any WMD’s (Weapons of Mass Destruction) in Iraq, we sure made up for it by importing our own! Birth defects among Iraqi newborns are up a whopping 600% from before the war. The defects are typical of the kind produced by exposure to radioactive poisons. And these injuries are happening to the civilian population of Iraq — the people we were supposedly “liberating.”
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread699497/pg1

Use of Depleted Uranium war-heads and Cluster Bombs in Libya

Sons of Malcolm

The Global Civilians for Peace in Libya delegation has arrived in the mission area and aims to determine the physical and psychological effect on the people of Libya, their culture and the structural damage to sites targeted by NATO, the United Nations, U.S. U.K. and France under UNSCR-1973. The delegation is going to visit bombed out sites and use radiation detectors and individual dose rate meters (Dosimeters) to ascertain if any Depleted Uranium (DU) war-heads have been used. The delegation is also going to look into the use of Cluster bombs since the No-Fly-Zone (NFZ), was enforced, to determine who is responsible for them as the sovereign Libyan government has not been able to scramble the military aircraft that are necessary to drop them.


Tunisian / Libyan border
Thousands of black Africans and Bangladeshis have been left dispossessed and distressed at camps along this border.. From countries like Somalia, Mali, Nigerand Chad these young men and woman - many with families at home in Africa - have been left stranded with little hope of returning either to Libya or their home countries - the collateral damage due to the attempted coup d'etat by NATO supported Libyan rebels which has failed to succeed.. There are many charities and international organizations trying to help - but providing only minimal help. The food is dismal, there is little shelter or water.

Workers in Libya never wanted to leave before the NATO bombs. They were, settled, had jobs and social benefits. Mainstream media points the finger at Colonel Gaddafi for being responsible for this "collateral damage" since there was no flight of Libyans or"guest workers" before the NATO bombs started to fall - destroying the Libyan economy and taking thousands of jobs.

Birth Defect Weapons Used in Libya

US-led warplanes drop depleted uranium on Libyan civilians

Aletho News via INN

“[Depleted uranium tipped missiles] fit the description of a dirty bomb in every way… I would say that it is the perfect weapon for killing lots of people.” – Marion Falk, chemical physicist (retd), Lawrence Livermore Lab, California, USA

In the first 24 hours of the Libyan attack, US B-2s dropped forty-five 2,000-pound bombs. These massive bombs, along with the Cruise missiles launched from British and French planes and ships, all contained depleted uranium (DU) warheads.

DU is the waste product from the process of enriching uranium ore. It is used in nuclear weapons and reactors. Because it is a very heavy substance, 1.7 times denser than lead, it is highly valued by the military for its ability to punch through armored vehicles and buildings. When a weapon made with a DU tip strikes a solid object like the side of a tank, it goes straight through it, then erupts in a burning cloud of vapor. The vapor settles as dust, which is not only poisonous, but also radioactive.

An impacting DU missile burns at 10,000 degrees C. When it strikes a target, 30% fragments into shrapnel. The remaining 70% vaporises into three highly-toxic oxides, including uranium oxide. This black dust remains suspended in the air and, according to wind and weather, can travel over great distances. If you think Iraq and Libya are far away, remember that radiation from Chernobyl reached Wales.

Particles less than 5 microns in diameter are easily inhaled and may remain in the lungs or other organs for years. Internalized DU can cause kidney damage, cancers of the lung and bone, skin disorders, neurocognitive disorders, chromosome damage, immune deficiency syndromes and rare kidney and bowel diseases. Pregnant women exposed to DU may give birth to infants with genetic defects. Once the dust has vaporised, don’t expect the problem to go away soon. As an alpha particle emitter, DU has a half life of 4.5 billion years.

In the ‘shock and awe’ attack on Iraq, more than 1,500 bombs and missiles were dropped on Baghdad alone. Seymour Hersh has claimed that the US Third Marine Aircraft Wing alone dropped more than “five hundred thousand tons of ordnance”. All of it DU-tipped.

Al Jazeera reported that invading US forces fired two hundred tons of radioactive material into buildings, homes, streets and gardens of Baghdad. A reporter from the Christian Science Monitor took a Geiger counter to parts of the city that had been subjected to heavy shelling by US troops. He found radiation levels 1,000 to 1,900 times higher than normal in residential areas. With its population of 26 million, the US dropped a one-ton bomb for every 52 Iraqi citizens or 40 pounds of explosives per person.

William Hague has said that we are in Libya ” to protect civilians and civilian-populated areas”.You don’t have to look far for who and what are being ‘protected’.

In that first 24 hours the ‘Allies’ ‘expended’ £100 million on DU-tipped ordnance. The European Union’s arms control report said member states issued licences in 2009 for the sale of £293.2 million worth of weapons and weapons systems to Libya. Britain issued arms firms licences for the sale of £21.7 million worth of weaponry to Libya and were also paid by Colonel Gadaffi to send the SAS to train his 32nd Brigade.

For the next 4.5 billion years, I’ll bet that William Hague will not be holidaying in North Africa.

Soldiers, like my sister, return from Iraq gripped by cancer. The US military says cancer isn't a war wound.

Uruknet.info

NEW YORK — When my sister, 101st Airborne Army Capt. Chaplain Fran E. Stuart, returned from Iraq, she was forever changed.

Not only had the desert sand, gun blasts and heat penetrated her psyche during her one-year deployment, but a carcinogen had made its way into her body as well. Unbeknown to her, the carcinogen was making a home in my sister's body, along with the Anthrax vaccine, depleted uranium, burn pit smoke and contaminated water dished up at every meal.

In March 2006, when my sister was 41, she was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive, stage-IV dysgerminoma cancer, also called "germ cell" cancer, which is usually only seen in pregnant women and teenage girls. The cancer was advancing quickly, wrapping itself around her internal organs like an octopus and gathering fuel from her central abdomen.

My sister was flown to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington for immediate surgery and further testing, when a volleyball-sized tumor was removed from her abdomen. Fortunately, doctors were able to corral her cancer, but only after 10 months and 35 rounds of exhaustive chemotherapy.

She wasn't the only one undergoing such trauma. While visiting her at Walter Reed, I witnessed many soldiers returning from Iraq with cancer, unknown to the public and unacknowledged by the military. Walter Reed had two floors dedicated solely to the soldiers arriving daily with cancer. Their lives were spared on the battlefield, but the cancer was ravaging their bodies from within.

I began to do research, and was alarmed to discover how the military uses depleted uranium, especially in Iraq. Soldiers I talked to at Walter Reed began to say the same thing: Cancer is not a "war wound," so the military denies responsibility.

Since soldiers are uninformed about depleted uranium, they don't wear protective gear and unknowingly inhale the toxic, pollen-like, yellow dust. The toxins develop into different forms of rare cancers within four to 36 months.

In August 2002, before the Iraq war commenced, U.S. Army Col. J. Edgar Wakayama wrote a report for the military, "Depleted Uranium (DU) Munitions," which pointed to the health and environmental risks associated with depleted uranium. Depleted uranium is produced as a byproduct of the enrichment process for nuclear reactor-grade or nuclear weapon-grade uranium. Due to its extreme density, it is used as the armor plating in 16 different size cartridges of U. S. ammunition.

Depleted uranium, which can particularly damage the kidney and bone, is radioactive, which means it produces alpha particles, beta particles and gamma rays. Alpha particles can cause cell damage and cancer; beta particles are hazardous to skin and eyes.

Wakayama outlined three methods of human exposure: shrapnel wounds, inhalation (lung fibrosis, risk of lung cancer and thoracic lymph nodes) and ingestion (contaminated soil, contaminated drinking water and food). Children playing at impact sites can ingest heavily contaminated soil. The slow leeching of depleted uranium into the local water supply contaminates plants and food.

Even after the internal release of this study, the Defense Department did not heed warnings. Seven months later, the U.S. military began the "Shock and Awe Campaign." They proceeded to drop 320 metric tons of depleted uranium munitions in Iraq.

In 2003, a Christian Science Monitor journalist Scott Peterson measured radiation in Baghdad at 1,900 times higher than normal. Peterson noted that depleted uranium has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, and total disintegration estimated after 25 billion years. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reaffirmed these findings, and followed up with a map of depleted uranium used worldwide.

The International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons was formed in the U.K. in 2003, but despite its strong start, U.K. and U.S. forces continued to use depleted uranium weapons despite warnings that they pose a cancer risk, the BBC reported in November 2006.

CNN aired a special "America Morning" with Greg Hunter in February 2007, during which they discussed the hazardous effects of depleted uranium. Followed by a CBS Evening News feature in 2008 about 29-year old Marine Sgt. Carmelo Rodriguez, stricken with stage IV melanoma post-Iraq.

In January 2010 the Guardian released a study, including a map, that highlights 42 contaminated sites in Iraq.

And just last month, the BBC reported that doctors in the Iraqi city of Fallujah are seeing a high level of birth defects — the level of heart defects among newborns is said to be 13 times higher than in Europe.

British-based Iraqi researcher Malik Hamdan told the BBC's World Today program that, based on data from January 2010, the rate of congenital heart defects was 95 per 1,000 births. "I've seen footage of babies born with an eye in the middle of the forehead, or nose on the forehead," she added. BBC correspondent, John Simpson saw a photograph of one baby who was born with three heads.

Doctors and parents believe the culprits are highly sophisticated weapons the U.S. used in Fallujah in 2003. But the U.S. military says it is not aware of any official reports showing an increase in birth defects in the area.

A U.S. military spokesman, Michael Kilpatrick, said they take public health concerns "very seriously," but that "[n]o studies to date have indicated environmental issues resulting in specific health issues."

The aforementioned sources are a mere fraction of the stories telling of depleted uranium's horrific effects. But they don’t garner anywhere near the media attention in the U.S. as do stories about Tiger Woods and the earthquake in Haiti.

The European media consistently chips away at the environmental disaster that infiltrates their borders, while the U.S. media has yet to demand military accountability. And all arrows point to the erroneous decisions of the U.S. to defy Wakayama's recommendations.

The U.S. military's unwillingness to publicly admit there is danger of radiological exposure among deployed troops leaves the American people uninformed, the soldiers on the battlefield unprotected and the Iraqi civilians increasingly at risk.

Our soldiers are offered up for radiological contamination, and possibly death. A byproduct of the greatest weapon of all, an invisible carcinogen, with the capabilities to annihilate everything that lives — that is our gift of democracy that keeps on giving.

Why did Sgt. Thomas die?

Omaha World Herald
Sgt. Klayton Thomas looked every bit the poster boy Marine as he strode into a military hospital last September to get his back checked.

He taught karate and earned his abs in the gym. He had survived a 2007 deployment to Iraq, even thrived during his prolonged stay in the middle of the then-treacherous Sunni Triangle. He rarely drank. He didn't smoke. Life seemed perfect on this mid-September Thursday, if only his back would stop aching. The 25-year-old Columbus, Neb., native thought he had wrenched it playing soccer. Three months and 10 days later, he died in hospice care.

This much is known: Thomas succumbed to an unstoppable lung cancer that crushed his vertebrae, blitzed his bones and invaded his brain, dumbfounding doctors who had spent their entire careers treating the disease.

His death leaves a medical mystery, one similar to those posed by hundreds of other American military personnel battling exotic cancers or struggling with rare respiratory problems.

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This mystery begins in the unlikeliest of places: Iraqi “burn pits” — large, primitive landfills where contractors set trash aflame, causing ever-present black smoke to drift over dozens of U.S. military bases.

Health experts, a high-powered defense lawyer, Congress and even the president have taken notice, asking questions like Klayton Thomas' parents and doctors asked in the weeks after he fell ill.

Why would an otherwise healthy young nonsmoker contract a cancer that generally haunts older smokers? Why did this cancer spread like wildfire when experts say its normal path can take year.

Simply put: Why did Sgt. Klayton Thomas die?

Full Article