|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
cerulean808
Joined: 14 Mar 2006
Location: Seoul
|
 Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 2:28 am Post subject: Suharto the Model Killer |
 |
|
A blood thirsty tyrant dies and Western leaders wax lyrical about what a superb man he was. Another sad tale of the betrayal of democracy and human rights by "Us".
John Pilger:
| Quote: |
In my film Death of a Nation, there is a sequence filmed on board an Australian aircraft flying over the island of Timor. A party is in progress, and two men in suits are toasting each other in champagne. "This is an historically unique moment," says one of them, "that is truly uniquely historical." This is Gareth Evans, Australia's foreign minister. The other man is Ali Alatas, principal mouthpiece of the Indonesian dictator, General Suharto. It is 1989, and the two are making a grotesquely symbolic flight to celebrate the signing of a treaty that allowed Australia and the international oil and gas companies to exploit the seabed off East Timor, then illegally and viciously occupied by Suharto. The prize, according to Evans, was "zillions of dollars".
Beneath them lay a land of crosses: great black crosses etched against the sky, crosses on peaks, crosses in tiers on the hillsides. Filming clandestinely in East Timor, I would walk into the scrub and there were the crosses. They littered the earth and crowded the eye. In 1993, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Australian Parliament reported that "at least 200,000" had died under Indonesia's occupation: almost a third of the population. And yet East Timor's horror, which was foretold and nurtured by the US, Britain and Australia, was actually a sequel. "No single American action in the period after 1945," wrote the historian Gabriel Kolko, "was as bloodthirsty as its role in Indonesia, for it tried to initiate the massacre." He was referring to Suharto's seizure of power in 1965-6, which caused the violent deaths of up to a million people.
To understand the significance of Suharto, who died on Sunday, is to look beneath the surface of the current world order: the so-called global economy and the ruthless cynicism of those who run it. Suharto was our model mass murderer - "our" is used here advisedly. "One of our very best and most valuable friends," Thatcher called him, speaking for the West. For three decades, the Australian, US and British governments worked tirelessly to minimise the crimes of Suharto's gestapo, known as Kopassus, who were trained by the Australian SAS and the British army and who gunned down people with British-supplied Heckler and Koch machine guns from British-supplied Tactica "riot control" vehicles. Prevented by Congress from supplying arms direct, US administrations from Gerald Ford to Bill Clinton, provided logistic support through the back door and commercial preferences.
In one year, the British Department of Trade provided almost a billion pounds worth of so-called soft loans, which allowed Suharto buy Hawk fighter-bombers. The British taxpayer paid the bill for aircraft that dive-bombed East Timorese villages, and the arms industry reaped the profits. However, the Australians distinguished themselves as the most obsequious. In an infamous cable to Canberra, Richard Woolcott, Australia's ambassador to Jakarta, who had been forewarned about Suharto's invasion of East Timor, wrote: "What Indonesia now looks to from Australia �is some understanding of their attitude and possible action to assist public understanding in Australia �"
Covering up Suharto's crimes became a career for those like Woolcott, while "understanding" the mass murderer came in buckets. This left an indelible stain on the reformist government of Gough Whitlam following the cold-blooded killing of two Australian TV crews by Suharto's troops during the invasion of East Timor. "We know your people love you," Bob Hawke told the dictator. His successor, Paul Keating, famously regarded the tyrant as a father figure. When Indonesian troops slaughtered at least 200 people in the Santa Cruz cemetery in Dili, East Timor, and Australian mourners planted crosses outside the Indonesian embassy in Canberra, foreign minister Gareth Evans ordered them destroyed. To Evans, ever-effusive in his support for the regime, the massacre was merely an "aberration". This was the view of much of the Australian press, especially that controlled by Rupert Murdoch, whose local retainer, Paul Kelly, led a group of leading newspaper editors to Jakarta, fawn before the dictator.
Here lies a clue as to why Suharto, unlike Saddam Hussein, died not on the gallows but surrounded by the finest medical team his secret billions could buy. Ralph McGehee, a senior CIA operations officer in the 1960s, describes the terror of Suharto's takeover of Indonesia in 1965-6 as "the model operation" for the American-backed coup that got rid of Salvador Allende in Chile seven years later. "The CIA forged a document purporting to reveal a leftist plot to murder Chilean military leaders," he wrote, "[just like] what happened in Indonesia in 1965." The US embassy in Jakarta supplied Suharto with a "zap list" of Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) members and crossed off the names when they were killed or captured. Roland Challis, the BBC's south east Asia correspondent at the time, told me how the British government was secretly involved in this slaughter. "British warships escorted a ship full of Indonesian troops down the Malacca Straits so they could take part in the terrible holocaust," he said. "I and other correspondents were unaware of this at the time �. There was a deal, you see."
The deal was that Indonesia under Suharto would offer up what Richard Nixon had called "the richest hoard of natural resources, the greatest prize in south-east Asia". In November 1967, the greatest prize was handed out at a remarkable three-day conference sponsored by the Time-Life Corporation in Geneva. Led by David Rockefeller, all the corporate giants were represented: the major oil companies and banks, General Motors, Imperial Chemical Industries, British American Tobacco, Siemens and US Steel and many others. Across the table sat Suharto's US-trained economists who agreed to the corporate takeover of their country, sector by sector. The Freeport company got a mountain of copper in West Papua. A US/ European consortium got the nickel. The giant Alcoa company got the biggest slice of Indonesia's bauxite. America, Japanese and French companies got the tropical forests of Sumatra. When the plunder was complete, President Lyndon Johnson sent his congratulations on "a magnificent story of opportunity seen and promise awakened". Thirty years later, with the genocide in East Timor also complete, the World Bank described the Suharto dictatorship as a "model pupil".
Shortly before he died, I interviewed Alan Clark, who under Thatcher was Britain's minister responsible for supplying Suharto with most of his weapons. I asked him, "Did it bother you personally that you were causing such mayhem and human suffering?"
"No, not in the slightest," he replied. "It never entered my head." "I ask the question because I read you are a vegetarian and are seriously concerned with the way animals are killed."
"Yeah?"
"Doesn't that concern extend to humans?"
"Curiously not."
|
|
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
pesawattahi
Joined: 30 Sep 2007
Location: it rubs the lotion on it's skin or else it gets the hose again
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
cerulean808
Joined: 14 Mar 2006
Location: Seoul
|
| Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 2:50 am Post subject: |
|
|
Is there something in the article you disagree with? Something you don't believe is true?
You don't believe Alan Clark said those things?
You don't believe Gareth Evans toasted Suharto's thug about "zillions of dollars" while 100000's of East Timorese were being massacred?
Post something of substance for once pesawattahi instead of whining about 'anti Americanism'. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
pesawattahi
Joined: 30 Sep 2007
Location: it rubs the lotion on it's skin or else it gets the hose again
|
| Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 3:03 am Post subject: |
|
|
Did I touch a nerve? I wasn't whining, merely pointing out this guy's agenda. Sometimes when we have an agenda we tend to stretch the truth. Some farther than others. I just got done watching another interesting truth stretching session (actually a few were lies) but it was interesting nontheless.
Here is the othe video and one of the stretching portions is at about 1hr 10min give or take when they reach item 15, it lasts about 30 min. It runs along the same vein as that movie posted earlier.
http://berkeley.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?publish_id=444 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
cerulean808
Joined: 14 Mar 2006
Location: Seoul
|
| Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 3:08 am Post subject: |
|
|
Stretching the truth? Like Saddam's WMD you mean?
Just state what assertions you disagree with and why. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Mosley
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
|
| Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 8:24 am Post subject: |
|
|
John Pilger, eh? There's a source for ya 
That said, except for his anti-communist stance, the guy was by & large a scumbag.... |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
|
| Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 8:28 am Post subject: |
|
|
And here my muslim ethnic Indonesian Singaporean friends are lecturing me day after day after day about how the "Western Media" and politicians are only focusing on the bad stuff.
Oh well, they also thought that Whites would be gunning down Asians all over the West in a fit of rage after the VT killings. They also said that Obama wouldn't make it past May (of last year).
I guess the West is a big, diverse place that people like to essentialise. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
|
| Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 8:31 am Post subject: |
|
|
Pilger is an anti US left wing fascist who was an apologist for Saddam Hussein.
| Quote: |
first casualty of Pilger. . ., The
Spectator, The, Jun 28, 2003 by Sweeney, John
John Sweeney says that John Pilger blames the Americans alone for birth defects in Iraq, and overlooks evidence that implicates Saddam Hussein
The Americans arc making a hash of rebuilding Iraq, but one of the not so bad things they have done is to give Iraqis the freedom to scribble. On the wall outside the Baathist ministry of health the other day, a graffiti artist had scrawled in perfect English, 'We need a health ministry free of corruption.'
For years John Pilger - 'one of the world's most renowned investigative journalists', it says on the back of his latest book - has been insisting that the West, not Saddam, is to blame for the crisis in Iraq's public health; that 5,200 Iraqi children were dying every month; that Western depleted-uranium weapons were to blame for an epidemic of cancers; that sanctions crippled Iraq's doctors. Funnily enough, Pilger's journalism echoed what the Baathist regime wanted people to hear.
But very recently in Baghdad what some might call the Pilger-Baathist line was put to a very public test by yet another American blunder. They handpicked a new acting health minister, Dr Ali Shenan al-Janabi, who was number three at the health ministry under Saddam. According to virtually every Iraqi doctor I spoke to, he was an unacceptable choice. The Iraqi doctors were not keen to say so to the BBC on camera. To criticise the Baath party on the record is, even now, something that no Iraqi will do lightly. Then two surgeons at Al Kindi teaching hospital in Baghdad, Dr Rahim Ismael and Dlair Omar, mulled it over and said, 'OK, we'll do it.' They damned the health ministry under Saddam as a corrupt and brutal instrument of state oppression. They said that many medicines had been held back in warehouses. The ministry was trying to make healthcare worse in Iraq, the goal being to blacken the name of UN sanctions, which Saddam detested as a brake on his power. The fewer drugs, the worse the equipment and the more dead babies, the better it was for the regime. Any Iraqi doctors who didn't toe the line were punished.
In the mid-1980s Iranian human-wave offensives almost took Basra, but they were stopped by Saddam's chemical weapons. The UN found incontrovertible evidence that Saddam used mustard gas against the Iranians every year between 1984 and 1988. When the Iranians came close to Basra, the Iraqis dropped gas on their own people, too. Nearly all of the war was fought in Iraq, not Iran, so that's where Saddam dropped his chemical weapons.
Mustard gas - sulphur mustard - is carcinogenic and mutagenic. That is, sulphur mustard causes cancers, leukaemias and birth defects. The children of Iranian soldiers who were gassed by Saddam's men have developed terrible cancers and birth defects. No depleted-uranium weapons were used on them. The children of Halabja, the Kurdish town gassed by Saddam, have developed cancers and birth defects. Again, no depleted uranium was used on them.
Pilger knows all about chemical weapons. He wrote in the Minor in January, 'I often came upon terribly deformed Vietnamese children in villages where American aircraft had sprayed a herbicide called Agent Orange. This terrible chemical weapon was dumped on almost half of South Vietnam. Today, as the poison continues to move through water and soil and food, children continue to be born without palates and chins and scrotums or are stillborn. Many have leukaemia.' If chemical weapons cause cancers in Vietnam, why don't they do the same in Iraq? The answer seems a simple one: chemical weapons cause cancer so long as they are dropped by the Americans.
Shortly after Pilger's programme was broadcast in 2000, Arbuthnot phoned Gwynne Roberts, the only journalist brave enough to go to Iraq in 1988 and dig up soil contaminated by Saddam's chemical weapons. Portland Down found mustard gas in Roberts's soil samples. Arbuthnot was puz-zled: how could the cancers in Iraq have started in 1992? Roberts's view, like mine, is that - without letting the West off the hook on the question of depleted uranium - the contribution that Saddam's chemical weapons may have made to the Hiroshima Effect should be seriously investigated.
I emailed John Pilger, asking him, 'You know about Saddam's use of chemical weapons, so why didn't you raise the possibility of that being the cause of the cancers and birth defects?' He replied, 'You apparently think my film was made in 1991. It wasn't. It was made in 1999, eight years after the 1991 Gulf war, or twice the time it takes for deformities to develop, according to you. In the film I clearly put to one of the doctors the doubts that depleted uranium is the cause of the deformities. Her answer was a good one. Another specialist himself raises the doubts and addresses them. At no point in the film do I say that DU is, on its own, responsible for the extraordinary rise in cancers over, I repeat, a period of eight years up to when the film was made.'
This is artful. If Pilger and Arbuthnot accept that DU cannot have caused cancers observed in 1992, why haven't they made this clear? None of the cancers and birth defects that Pilger's researcher dates hack to 1992 can be the fault of depleted uranium. To omit the possibility that some of the cancers were caused by Saddam's chemical weapons is to misrepresent the facts. To imply by that omission that depleted uranium is solely responsible for the cancers and birth defects in Iraq as he docs in his book, his film and in the Daily Mirror is a disgrace to journalism.
I accuse John Pilger of cheating the public and favouring a dictator.
John Sweeney is special correspondent for the BBC.
Copyright Spectator Jun 28, 2003
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved |
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3724/is_200306/ai_n9265264/pg_3 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
arjuna
Joined: 31 Mar 2007
|
| Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 11:46 am Post subject: |
|
|
Suharto: 'One of the greatest mass murderers of the 20th century'
http://tinyurl.com/2ugx5m
When General Suharto came to power in 1965 he overthrew the grandfather of journalist Chris Kline, who explains here why he will not mourn the death of Indonesia's dictator
3 February 2008
When I was five or six, the Indonesian dictator Suharto, who died last week, came to Rome for a state visit. My Indonesian mother and I were summoned to the embassy to pay homage.
But when it came time for photographs, and Suharto picked me up, I shouted for him to put me down, and began punching him while he awkwardly kept smiling. I called out that he was a �uomo cattivo�, a bad man. Millions of Indonesians who thought the same would never have dared to say so aloud.
Why did Suharto permit this? Because I am the American grandson of the founder of modern Indonesia, Sukarno. General Suharto (both men, like many Indonesians, are known by only one name) overthrew him in a blood-soaked coup in 1965, covertly aided and enthusiastically abetted by the US, Britain and Australia.
I was just two when Suharto unleashed his �New Order�, living in Europe with my American father, Frank Latimore, and my Indonesian mother, Rukmini Sukarno. He was a Hollywood and Broadway actor, she was a European opera diva. We were far from Indonesia, home to a fifth of the world�s natural resources, which my grandfather led to independence after a long liberation struggle against colonial rule by the Netherlands. But we were not free from Suharto�s dictatorship.
Much of my family that hadn�t been purged after the coup remained in Indonesia, where Suharto held them hostage. Some in the family changed sides willingly, but for the sake of �national unity�, and out of fear of retaliation, the rest of us had to play along, even if we lived in exile. It was particularly loathsome for my mother, haunted all her life by the fate of her cousin, Brigadier General Sabur, who was slowly hacked to death in one of Suharto�s dungeons.
So I will not mourn Suharto. His death is some small measure of justice, far too late, for all those he killed during nearly 32 years as the absolute dictator of the world�s fourth most populous nation, and largest Muslim country. And until he fell in 1998, Suharto enjoyed Western support.
Sukarno, a fiery nationalist, was one of the key architects of the Non-Aligned Movement. The Cold War was at its height, the US was escalating its role in Vietnam, and the �domino theory� held sway. Indonesia�s Communist Party, the PKI, then the third largest in the world, openly declared it would arm itself as a rival force to the Indonesian military. Sukarno, rightly or wrongly, was regarded as a crypto-Marxist who would empower the PKI further. He told America and Britain to �go to hell�; clearly his days were numbered.
The military and intelligence attach�s in the US and British embassies were sending helpful death lists to the Indonesian high command when Suharto struck. In the midst of the mass executions, the British ambassador, Sir Andrew Gilchrist, sent a chilling telegram to London, saying: �I have never concealed from you my belief that a little shooting in Indonesia would be an essential preliminary to effective change.�
Time magazine described the horrors Gilchrist so calmly endorsed: �The killings have been on such a scale the disposal of corpses has created a serious sanitation problem in east Java and northern Sumatra, where the humid air bears the reek of decaying flesh. Travellers from those areas tell of small rivers and streams that have been literally clogged with bodies.� At least 500,000 Indonesians died violently in the months following the takeover, but studies suggest the figure might have been between a million and two million.
A decade later, again with a green light from Washington, London and Canberra, as many as 230,000 more people, or a third of the civilian population of East Timor, died when Suharto invaded the former Portuguese colony. Australia monitored busy Indonesian military radio traffic in the build-up, but said nothing. As Suharto�s marines and paratroopers conquered the territory, a satisfied CIA internal communiqu� stated: �Without continued heavy US logistical, military support the Indonesians might not have been able to pull it off.�
The man who has just died in Jakarta is one of the greatest mass murderers of the 20th century, but he was never indicted by the International War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague. Throughout, Suharto received all the weaponry his brutal military wanted. Britain sold him Scorpion armoured vehicles and Spartan troop carriers after a �thorough assessment� that they would not be used for �internal repression�, according to the then Defence Secretary, Michael Heseltine. Curious, then, how they turned up on the streets to hold back angry crowds demanding change.
Suharto�s advocates claim he modernised Indonesia and returned the country to the community of nations. Indonesia is now praised as the third-largest democracy on the planet, which has resisted Islamist radicalisation. But what of the estimated $15bn to $30bn Suharto plundered, while 49 million of his people survive on less than $2 a day, deprived of primary education and basic medical care? If Indonesia has moved forward at all, it is despite Suharto, not because of him.
I have visited many countries as a foreign correspondent for CNN and Fox, but all my life I have been excluded from Indonesia, because of Suharto. Now that he is gone, I will be able to embrace my own heritage at last. And the man who overthrew my grandfather will take his place beside Pol Pot, Pinochet, Milosevic, Stalin, Idi Amin, Mao and all the other great murderers of their own people.
Chris Kline is an international print and broadcast journalist |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
cerulean808
Joined: 14 Mar 2006
Location: Seoul
|
| Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 12:54 pm Post subject: |
|
|
You've posted that discredited source before, Roo. But I understand how you might have forgotten, after all you post lots of smear material on here so it would be easy for you to lose track.
| Quote: |
We sent Sweeney's Observer article to Hans von Sponeck, who had run the UN's oil-for-food programme in Iraq. Von Sponeck's response was damning:
"Sweeney's article is exactly the kind of journalism that is Orwellian, double-speak. No doubt, the Iraq Government has manipulated data to suit its own purposes, everyone of the protagonists unfortunately does this. A journalist should not. UNICEF has used large numbers of international researchers and applied sophisticated methods to get these important figures. Yes, the Ministry of Health personnel cooperated with UNICEF but ultimately it was UNICEF and UNICEF alone which carried out the data analysis exactly because they did not want to politicize their work... This article is a very serious misrepresentation." (Email to Media Lens Editors, June 24, 2002)
Von Sponeck felt sufficiently moved to write to Sweeney directly:
"Dear Mr. Sweeney, I have always held the 'Observer' in high regard. I am therefore even more taken aback by the article you have written on Iraq in which you consider the mortality figures as Iraqi propaganda. Unfortunately it is very difficult to get any statistics on Iraq which are as rigorously researched as would professionally be desirable. This includes the available mortality figures. You are, however, very wrong in your assessment of the UNICEF analysis.
UNICEF, of course, cooperated with the Government but methodology of analysis and the findings is UNICEF's. A large team of UNICEF professionals subjected the data to rigorous review to avoid what you have not avoided and that is a politicization of statistical material. This is not professional and disappoints. Why did you not consult with UNICEF/Baghdad and New York before you wrote your article? I am sure you did not want to play into the hands of those who want to find reason to discredit every effort that tries to portray the enormous damage that sanctions have done to Iraq in addition to the damage the Iraqi civilian population has experienced from within. But this is exactly what you have done, making a difficult situation even more difficult. Regards, Hans von Sponeck" (Forwarded to Media Lens, June 25, 2002)
Sweeney uses the corruption of the Iraqi Ministry of Health to attack what he outrageously describes as "the Pilger-Baathist line" in his Spectator article. He reports the views of two doctors interviewed by him in Iraq:
"They damned the health ministry under Saddam as a corrupt and brutal instrument of state oppression. They said that many medicines had been held back in warehouses. The ministry was trying to make healthcare worse in Iraq, the goal being to blacken the name of UN sanctions, which Saddam detested as a brake on his power. The fewer drugs, the worse the equipment and the more dead babies, the better it was for the regime. Any Iraqi doctors who didn't toe the line were punished."
To be sure these views are worthy of consideration. But whereas Sweeney is willing to present sources for his own arguments, he offers none that might lie behind "the Pilger-Baathist line". Adnan Jarra, a UN spokesperson in Iraq, told the Wall Street Journal last year:
"The [oil-for-food] distribution network is second to none. They [the Iraqis] are very efficient. We have not found anything that went anywhere it was not supposed to." (Quoted, Anthony Arnove, 'Iraq: Smart Sanctions and the US Propaganda War', ZNet Commentary, May 21, 2002)
Tun Myat, the administrator of the UN oil-for-food programme, said in an interview with the New York Times:
"I think the Iraqi food-distribution system is probably second to none that you'll find anywhere in the world. It gets to everybody whom it's supposed to get to in the country." (Ibid)
Denis Halliday, who set up the UN's oil-for-food programme in Baghdad, has said there was no evidence of the cynical withholding of food and medicines by the Iraqi government:
"There's no basis for that assertion at all. The Secretary-General has reported repeatedly that there is no evidence that food is being diverted by the government in Baghdad... The Secretary-General would have reported that.
We have had problems with medical drugs and supplies, there have been delays there. There are several good reasons for that. One is that often the Iraqi government did some poor contracting; so they contracted huge orders - $5 million of aspirins or something - to some small company that simply couldn't do the job and had to re-tool and wasted three, four, five months maybe. So that was the first round of mistakes. But secondly, the Sanctions Committee weighed in and they would look at a package of contracts, maybe ten items, and they would deliberately approve nine but block the tenth, knowing full well that without the tenth item the other nine were of no use. Those nine then go ahead - they're ordered, they arrive - and are stored in warehouses; so naturally the warehouses have stores that cannot in fact be used because they're waiting for other components that are blocked by the Sanctions Committee." (Interview with David Edwards, March 2000, www.medialens.org)
Sweeney continues:
"In Victorian London the biggest killer was not the absence of medicines. It was unclean water, untreated sewage and uncollected rubbish. In Saddam's Iraq dirty water, untreated sewage and uncollected rubbish from the Shia slums of Baghdad and Basra were state policy for a regime that earned $12 billion in oil revenue every year. Yet Pilger makes no mention of Saddam's neglect of public health. Why?"
The claim that Iraq's collapsed infrastructure is the result of wicked "state policy" is foolish and merely capitalises on the endless demonisation of Saddam Hussein. In 1991, UN Under Secretary-General Martti Ahtisaari reported the effects of bombing during the 1991 Gulf War, describing the "near apocalyptic" state of Iraq's basic services. "Iraq has for some time to come been relegated to a pre-industrial age", he wrote, "but with all the disabilities of post-industrial dependency on an intensive use of energy and technology." (New York Times, June 3, 1991)
The key point - ignored by Sweeney - is that the restriction of resources as a result of sanctions made the large-scale reconstruction of this infrastructure impossible. In March 1999 an expert 'Humanitarian Panel' convened by the Security Council concluded the UN's 'oil-for-food' programme could not meet the needs of the Iraqi people, "regardless of the improvements that might be brought about in the implementation of" the relief programme. (Quoted, Voices in the Wilderness website, March 2002: www.viwuk.freeserve.co.uk)
The Panel continued:
"Regardless of the improvements that might be brought about - in terms of approval procedures, better performance by the Iraqi Government, or funding levels - the magnitude of the humanitarian needs is such that they cannot be met within the context of [the oil-for-food programme]... Nor was the programme intended to meet all the needs of the Iraqi people... Given the present state of the infrastructure, the revenue required for its rehabilitation is far above the level available under the programme." (ibid)
Their conclusion being that:
"The humanitarian situation in Iraq will continue to be a dire one in the absence of a sustained revival of the Iraqi economy which in turn cannot be achieved solely through remedial humanitarian efforts".
In other words, regardless of Iraqi "state policy", Iraq was condemned to chaos and suffering by the US-UK stifling of the economy through sanctions. Sweeney rejects, and/or ignores, all this as part of "the Pilger-Baathist line".
A Disgrace To Journalism?
Sweeney continues:
"That the cancer rates from 1991 onwards are the fault of the West's depleted-uranium weapons alone was one of Saddam's central messages."
Sweeney again uses the trusty intellectual sleight of hand - if Saddam is the only source for a claim, it must be ridiculous.
Professor Doug Rokke, ex-director of the Pentagon's Depleted Uranium Project, who was tasked by the US department of defence with organising the DU clean-up of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait after the Gulf War, is himself ill:
"I am like many people in Southern Iraq. I have 5,000 times the recommended level of radiation in my body. The contamination was right throughout Iraq and Kuwait. With the munitions testing and preparation in Saudi Arabia, uranium contamination covers the entire region... What we're seeing now, respiratory problems, kidney problems, cancers, are the direct result of the use of this highly toxic material. The controversy over whether or not it's the cause is a manufactured one; my own ill-health is testament to that." (Quoted, Pilger, The New Rulers of the World, Verso, 2002, p.4
According to Rokke, a former professor of environmental science at Jacksonville University, the US and UK have covered up the hazards, despite the rising death toll among allied troops who fought in the Gulf from illnesses linked to DU exposure, including Gulf War syndrome. Rokke says:
"DU is the stuff of nightmares. It is toxic, radioactive and pollutes for 4,500 million years. It causes lymphoma, neuro-psychotic disorders and short-term memory damage. In semen, it causes birth defects and trashes the immune system." (Quoted, ibid)
Michio Kaku, a professor of physics at City University of New York, has said:
"Ultimately, when the final chapter is written, DU will have a large portion of the blame [for health problems in Iraq]." (Scott Peterson, 'DU's fallout in Iraq and Kuwait: a rise in illness?' The Christian Science Monitor, April 29, 1999)
Siegwart-Horst Gunther, a German epidemiologist and president of Yellow Cross International, set up to protect children's health, said his studies in Iraq since 1991 had led him to believe that contact with DU weapon debris was linked to "sharp increases in infectious diseases and immune deficiencies, Aids-like syndromes, kidney disorders and congenital deformities". (Richard Norton-Taylor, 'Uranium shells warning for Kosovo alternative maybe: MoD accused of hiding truth', the Guardian, July 31, 1999)
Against this serious scientific evidence, Sweeney proposes his own theory involving Iraqi chemical weapons:
"Mustard gas - sulphur mustard - is carcinogenic and mutagenic. That is, sulphur mustard causes cancers, leukaemias and birth defects. The children of Iranian soldiers who were gassed by Saddam's men have developed terrible cancers and birth defects. No depleted-uranium weapons were used on them. The children of Halabja, the Kurdish town gassed by Saddam, have developed cancers and birth defects. Again, no depleted uranium was used on them."
Sweeney quotes Pilger to the effect that US chemical warfare in Vietnam caused an increase in cancers. Sweeney then reports that a journalist, Gwynne Roberts, dug up soil in Iraq in 1988 which was found to contain traces of mustard gas. Beyond this he presents no credible sources, hard facts, or research, in support of his claim. Instead he cites two opinions - his own and Roberts':
"Roberts's view, like mine, is that - without letting the West off the hook on the question of depleted uranium - the contribution that Saddam's chemical weapons may have made to the Hiroshima Effect should be seriously investigated."
Sweeney's conclusion, based on this evidence:
"To omit the possibility that some of the cancers were caused by Saddam's chemical weapons is to misrepresent the facts. To imply by that omission that depleted uranium is solely responsible for the cancers and birth defects in Iraq as he does in his book, his film and in the Daily Mirror is a disgrace to journalism.
I accuse John Pilger of cheating the public and favouring a dictator."
But as Sweeney himself writes, the effect of chemical weapons "should be seriously investigated" - clearly indicating that it has not been investigated. In other words, as he himself makes clear, there are no facts to misrepresent.
This is the depressing level of rational thought in a mainstream media system protected from almost all serious criticism: it is "a disgrace to journalism" to omit to mention hypothetical facts which a journalist happens to believe would be revealed and would be important if the issue were ever seriously investigated. This is remarkable.
Unfortunately, Sweeney has form. In responding to an earlier response of ours to an article he had written, Sweeney responded:
"I don't agree with torturing children. Get stuffed."
(Email to Media Lens Editors, June 24, 2002. See: 'Media Alert: John Sweeney Of The Observer And The BBC on Mass Death In Iraq', June 24, 2002'. Also, John Sweeney Responds on Mass Death in Iraq and On', June 28, 2002, www.medialens.org |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
|
| Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 2:38 pm Post subject: |
|
|
History has proven you and Pilger wrong
| Quote: |
Hussein's Regime Skimmed Billions From Aid Program
By SUSAN SACHS; ABEER ALLAM IN CAIRO, ERIN ARVEDLUND IN MOSCOW AND JASON HOROWITZ IN ROME CONTRIBUTED REPORTING FOR THIS ARTICLE.
Published: February 29, 2004
In its final years in power, Saddam Hussein's government systematically extracted billions of dollars in kickbacks from companies doing business with Iraq, funneling most of the illicit funds through a network of foreign bank accounts in violation of United Nations sanctions.
Millions of Iraqis were struggling to survive on rations of food and medicine. Yet the government's hidden slush funds were being fed by suppliers and oil traders from around the world who sometimes lugged suitcases full of cash to ministry offices, said Iraqi officials who supervised the skimming operation.
The officials' accounts were enhanced by a trove of internal Iraqi government documents and financial records provided to The New York Times by members of the Iraqi Governing Council. Among the papers was secret correspondence from Mr. Hussein's top lieutenants setting up a formal mechanism to siphon cash from Iraq's business deals, an arrangement that went unnoticed by United Nations monitors.
Under a United Nations program begun in 1997, Iraq was permitted to sell its oil only to buy food and other relief goods. The kickback order went out from Mr. Hussein's inner circle three years later, when limits on the amount of oil sales were lifted and Iraq's oil revenues reached $10 billion a year.
In an Aug. 3, 2000, letter marked ''urgent and confidential,'' the Iraqi vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, informed government ministers that a high-command committee wanted ''extra revenues'' from the oil-for-food program. To that end, he wrote, all suppliers must be told to inflate their contracts ''by the biggest percentage possible'' and secretly transfer those amounts to Iraq's bank accounts in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. |
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0CE5DB1F3CF93AA15751C0A9629C8B63
| Quote: |
Denouncing U.N., Iraq Cuts Oil Sales Used to Buy Food
*
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
Published: November 23, 1999
Iraq today unexpectedly began to cut off the oil it is allowed to export in exchange for food and other basic supplies, after the Security Council extended the program for only two weeks.
Fred Eckhard, the United Nations spokesman, said independent experts reported this morning that Iraq had cut the flow of oil to the Turkish port of Ceyhan and was preparing to stop shipments from the Iraqi port of Mina al Bakr on Tuesday. Those ports are Iraq's main export poin |
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E00E6DD113CF930A15752C1A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
| Quote: |
he United States sponsored a program that allows Iraq to sell
oil for food and medicine, but Saddam has been slow to
distribute goods to his people, Cohen charged. Last month, the
U.N. Security Council reported Saddam is storing more than half
the medicine and medical supplies purchased.
"That he would hold up and store in warehouses almost $300
million worth of medical supplies and then complain that the
Iraqi people are going without medicine is the height of
hypocrisy," Cohen said.
The U.N. report also said that only about 40 percent of the
equipment received for water treatment and sanitation, and 50
percent of the agricultural chemicals, have been distributed.
"So the question is, why is Saddam hoarding goods and not
helping his people?" Cohen said.
The Iraqis claim they don't have enough trucks to distribute
these goods, but they always seem to have enough trucks to move
troops and military equipment, he said. "It is clear that Saddam
Hussein cares more about weapons than welfare."
|
http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/program/news99/n03151999_9903153.htm
Also for the record
Von SponecK is a guy who wanted to free Saddam from all sanctions.
| Quote: |
blished on Tuesday, July 2, 2002 in the Toronto Globe & Mail
Too Much Collateral Damage:
'Smart Sanctions' Hurt Innocent Iraqis
It's time to dispense with the mirage of mitigation
by Hans von Sponeck
On May 14, the United Nations Security Council passed a ninth revision of its 1990 resolution on economic sanctions against Iraq. In the face of mounting international concern and a "this or nothing" U.S. veto threat, the so-called "smart sanctions" passed unanimously, with its U.S. and British proponents suggesting that the resolution would expedite the import of civilian goods into Iraq.
For the sake of the Iraqi people, one can only hope it will. But will increased imports resolve the humanitarian crisis? Are smart sanctions "smart" enough? As UN co-ordinator of the oil-for-food program from 1998 to 2000, I write from privileged experience into humanitarian conditions in Iraq. |
Same with Dennis Haliday.
Both of them also opposed US no fly zones on Iraq.
And as we all know Pilger supports the Iraqi insurgents.
| Quote: |
ONY JONES: John Pilger, do you still maintain that the world depends on what you call "the Iraqi resistance" to inflict a military defeat on the coalition forces?
JOHN PILGER: Well, certainly, historically, we've always depended on resistances to get rid of occupiers, to get rid of invaders.
And what we have in Iraq now is I suppose the equivalent of a kind of Vichy Government being set up.
And a resistance is always atrocious, it's always bloody.
It always involves terrorism.
You can imagine if Australia was occupied by the Japanese during the Second World War the kind of resistance there would have been, and so on.
We've seen that all over the world.
Now, I think the situation in Iraq is so dire that unless the United States is defeated there that we're likely to see an attack on Iran, we're likely to see an attack on North Korea and all the way down the road it could be even an attack on China within a decade, so I think what happens in Iraq now is incredibly important.
TONY JONES: You mean defeated militarily?
JOHN PILGER: Yes..... |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
cerulean808
Joined: 14 Mar 2006
Location: Seoul
|
| Posted: Sat Feb 09, 2008 11:06 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Roo
| Quote: |
| History has proven you and Pilger wrong |
No, History has proven American Crazies like you to be wrong. Which is why you lie so much:
Myth:
| Quote: |
"That he would hold up and store in warehouses almost $300
million worth of medical supplies and then complain that the
Iraqi people are going without medicine is the height of
hypocrisy," Cohen said.
The U.N. report also said that only about 40 percent of the
equipment received for water treatment and sanitation, and 50
percent of the agricultural chemicals, have been distributed.
"So the question is, why is Saddam hoarding goods and not
helping his people?" Cohen said.
|
Reality:
| Quote: |
The medicines which, says Hain [ and others ], "lie in warehouses" are there because, as UN officials tirelessly explain, the World Health Organisation has instructed Iraq to maintain emergency buffer stocks and actually wants these increased. Because of the delays in New York, they say, supplies arrive erratically: for example, IV fluids frequently turn up ahead of equipment, without which they are useless." John Pilger, New Statesman 20 March 2000
|
Keep on posting those lies, Roo, it's fun calling you on them.
By the way you can't comment on the original article's content? Instead you launch into a smear campaign against the journalist. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
|
| Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 12:43 am Post subject: |
|
|
[quote="cerulean808"]Ro
it has proven that you and Pilger lie
Reality:
| Quote: |
The medicines which, says Hain [ and others ], "lie in warehouses" are there because, as UN officials tirelessly explain, the World Health Organisation has instructed Iraq to maintain emergency buffer stocks and actually wants these increased. Because of the delays in New York, they say, supplies arrive erratically: for example, IV fluids frequently turn up ahead of equipment, without which they are useless." John Pilger, New Statesman 20 March 2000
|
Saddam had biillions and open boarders.
| Quote: |
Keep on posting those lies, Roo, it's fun calling you on them |
.
| Quote: |
By the way you can't comment on the original article's content? Instead you launch into a smear campaign against the journalist. |
cause Pilger is a left wing fascist. who supports anyone who is against the US
Anyway.
Reality
| Quote: |
Inspections With Teeth
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: September 20, 2002
Rigorous inspections are worth a try, because Saddam is a shrewd survivor. Indeed, it's a tribute to his survival talent that he's outmaneuvered the U.N. and rebuilt Iraq since the gulf war -- and that many Iraqis seem to blame Americans for a decade of sanctions and suffering, rather than him. In any case, there is no longer any sign of war damage, and the bazaars are bustling with Pepsi, Tom-and-Jerry school bags, Barbie coloring books, and 50-cent pirated videodiscs for movies like ''Unfaithful,'' ''Rush Hour'' and ''Snow Dogs.''
The booming economy (the C.I.A. says the Iraq economy grew 15 percent in 2000) reflects smuggling, illegal oil surcharges and the eclipse of effective sanctions. Indeed, I came in from Damascus on a sanctions-busting flight, which shouldn't exist under the U.N. rules. But it was a Boeing 747, and every seat was full. That's not to say it was smooth: the plane had started down the runway when the crew realized that they had forgotten to close one door. They stopped, closed the door, and then we all chanted ''Allahu Akbar'' three times and took off. |
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0DE0DF1130F933A1575AC0A9649C8B63
Reality
| Quote: |
raqi smugglers net oil bonanza
By Robin Allen in Dubai
Published: October 3 2000 17:37GMT | Last Updated: October 3 2000 21:52GMT
UN Iraq flag image
Iraq is smuggling out $2bn of oil a year in spite of the United Nations economic embargo and spending the proceeds on weapons and luxuries for Saddam Hussein's inner circle.
The smuggling bonanza is benefiting officials in Iraq and Iran, together with shareholders of small Gulf-based oil trading companies, according to oil traders in the United Arab Emirates.
The scale of the smuggling, and the blind eye turned by regional authorities, they say, make a mockery of the UN embargo, as well as claims by Iraqi leaders that the UN embargo causes widespread public hardship and malnutrition.
According to these traders, more than $600m a year is being shared among senior Iraqi officials, including President Saddam's cronies, with the money going on imports of "cigars, whisky and weapons".
According to the United Nations, Iraq's daily oil production is between 2.6m and 2.8m barrels, worth between $16bn and $20bn a year. Seventy per cent of the revenue goes to the oil-for-food programme and 25 per cent to the UN's Gulf war compensation fund.
Estimates by oil traders of the value and volume of Iraqi oil smuggling suggest 10m tonnes a year of oil products are being sold on the open market at an average $200 a tonne. Two-thirds of this traffic is fuel oil fetching $160 a tonne when Dubai spot crude sells at $32 or $33 a barrel, and a third is diesel and gas oil selling at more than $300 a tonne.
The traffic, which started in earnest four years ago when sanctions were making it harder for President Saddam to pay off key constituents, has been "hot and heavy" for the past year as prices for fuel oil and middle distillates such as diesel have risen.
The sanctions-busting covers a variety of land and sea routes, with pay-offs to various third parties. There is even a "ring" among many trader-smugglers who agree not to bid against each when buying back their own confiscated oil.
Iraqi beneficiaries use some of the proceeds to buy more than 10,000 bottles of whisky and 50m cigarettes a week, plus quantities of cash-counting machines. At the same time, Iraq is exporting grain, other food and medical equipment overland to Jordan and Syria and by sea through the Gulf.
About a third of smuggled Iraqi oil products go by road into central and northern Iran. Traders call it Iranian "displacement" oil because it replaces products from Iran's own refineries in the south of the country, where products are often blended with Iraqi contraband.
But the bulk of Iraq's smuggled oil traffic goes through Gulf ports, with more than half finding its way to the UAE.
The journey for smuggled products starts at the Iraqi ports of Fao and Umm Qasr in the Khawr Az-Zubair channel, where it is loaded into old, small and environmentally hazardous vessels. Smugglers pay Iraqis between $60 and $95 a tonne for all types of oil products.
Once they leave Iraqi ports, the vessels steam into Iranian coastal waters, putting in at Iranian ports where officials of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) take $50 to $60 per tonne of products in exchange for "authentic" bills of lading. To put pressure on the smugglers for more money, the IRGC occasionally intercepts their ships, while simultaneously demanding financial assistance from the UN to defray the cost of intercepting the smugglers.
If US naval ships, which comprise 95 per cent of UN surveillance forces, are being particularly vigilant, the smugglers avoid making the cross-Gulf journey. Instead they lay up in Iranian ports, including the free zones of Kish, Qeshm and Chah Behar, where additional demurrage and customs "fees" are paid to port officials.
Last year the US navy stopped and questioned more than 2,400 ships, boarded 700 of them, and arrested 19 which were taken to Gulf Arab ports, with both ship and cargo being confiscated before being sold at public auction.
Most of the arrested ships have been taken to Abu Dhabi, where this month six sanction-busting vessels were sold off for Dh4m ($1.1m). Their cargoes of diesel and fuel oil were sold about $20 a tonne below the market price, fetching $3m, a drop in the ocean compared with the total scale of the traffic.
The sanctions-busting vessels are registered in Panama, Belize and other flag-of-convenience countries.
Their owners frequently operate through "brass-plate" companies and UAE-based agents under the benignly neutral eye of the authorities. Owner/agents frequently buy back their own confiscated oil. The buyers of seven vessels auctioned in Abu Dhabi last May were all Dubai-based businessmen and companies.
UAE businessmen insist the US could, if it really wanted to, completely block the Gulf maritime smuggling routes. That it does not, they argue, is evidence that it is in Washington's wider regional interests to keep Mr Saddam in power and "locked up in his cage".
This argument is rejected by senior British and US diplomats, who say western officials have no right to supervise the enforcement of international law inside other countries' jurisdiction.
As one trader put it: "On the one hand you have a regime [in Iraq] determined to stay in power no matter the cost. That's politics. On the other, at $65 a tonne clear profit, a vessel has paid for itself after only two successful trips, so entrepreneurs are prepared to take a risk. On both fronts, there is complete cynicism." |
http://web.nps.navy.mil/~relooney/3040_3088.htm |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
cerulean808
Joined: 14 Mar 2006
Location: Seoul
|
| Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 2:40 am Post subject: |
|
|
Roo
| Quote: |
t has proven that you and Pilger lie
|
More of your garbled nonsense. You going to edit your post now to clean up your mess like you did before? 
You haven't responded to my rebuff of your lie about Saddam holding back medical and food supplies to make the USA driven sanctions look bad. Why not? Because you know you've been busted.
Instead you desperately cling to another lame excuse. If Saddam was able to smuggle enough in to keep himself and his cronies sweet, that only proves the failure of sanctions to do what the enforcers claimed justified them.
The idea that the regime could have smuggled in everything it needed to maintain a modern infrastructure for an entire country is ludicrous.
And you're still avoiding the original article and its assertions. Falling back on smear tactics instead, predictable American Crazy behaviour. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
|
| Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 5:36 am Post subject: |
|
|
| arjuna wrote: |
| Suharto: 'One of the greatest mass murderers of the 20th century' |
Let's not forget that Suharto also essentially committed genocide in East Timor where 200,000 of its 600,000 residents died in the independence struggle against his brutal regime, but he only began that invasion after getting the green light from Ford and Kissinger.
Incredibly, the article doesn't even mention East Timor.
Last edited by bacasper on Tue Feb 26, 2008 9:51 am; edited 1 time in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
