Validated Independent News: Human Health

By Project Censored

Campaign to Fluoridate America Corporate media obscure an ongoing battle over water fluoridation in the U.S. While a recent New York Times editorial cites the Center for Disease Control’s claim that fluoridation is one of the top accomplishments in public health over the past century, James Tracy reports that fluoridating the nation’s water supply appears to have been a carefully coordinated plan designed to shield major aluminum and steel producers from liabilities for the substantial fluorine pollution their plants generated. Thus American industrial interests, supported by public relations firms, have been the chief forces behind water fluoridation.

Cow Hormones in Water Supply A May 2012 study published by the journal Environmental Science & Technology reported that large dairy farms are a “primary source” of estrogen contamination in the environment. Researchers found three primary estrogens in the wastewater, and further analysis revealed that, because of the rapid conversion from one form estrogen to another, these hormones do not degrade, but persist in the environment.

Potential of African-led Health Research A 2011 study conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Bank and USAid found that investing an additional $21-$36 per person on healthcare in sub-Saharan Africa would save more than 3 million lives in the year 2015. 90% of those saved would be women and children. Such an investment would also generate $100 billion in economic benefits.

Wireless Technology a Looming Health Crisis As a multitude of hazardous wireless technologies are deployed in homes, schools and workplaces, government officials and industry representatives continue to insist on their safety despite growing evidence to the contrary. A major health crisis looms that is only hastened through the extensive deployment of “smart grid” technology.

Corporate Hypocrisy in Fight against Breast Cancer Each year in October, corporations such as General Mills and Johnson & Johnson adorn their products in pink to raise awareness and money for breast cancer research; however, many of these companies’ products contain cancer-linked chemicals and toxins. As Brittany Shoot reports, “Food manufacturing giants use packaging full of cancer-linked chemicals, yet partner with breast cancer organizations to funnel money toward research.” This “pink washing” may distract consumers from how these companies actual contribute to the problem.

U.S. Health Law May Curb Rising Maternal Deaths America’s mothers are dying in increasing numbers. The U.S. had the highest rate of maternal mortality of all developed nations in 2009 with 16.1 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, an increase from 6.6 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1987, according to the U.S Department of Health and Human Services. Definitive explanations for the rising maternal mortality rate are lacking, but some evidence suggests that hew health care laws, improving preventative care for pregnant women, could contribute to reversing the trend.

Should Childhood Vaccination be Mandatory? Childhood vaccines killed or injured 2,699 children last year in America, the US government has admitted – and 101 children developed autism after vaccination, even though researchers continue to insist that no link exists. Paul Offit advocates that, although vaccines are not free of risk, their benefits clearly outweigh their risks. If parents were well informed, they would choose to vaccinate their children. 

Missing Medicines in Malawi Malawi suffers from shortages of essential drugs. A 2012 Oxfam report found that only nine percent of local health facilities (54 of 585) had the full Essential Health Package list of drugs for treating 11 common diseases. 

China Acknowledges “Cancer Villages” In February 2013, China’s environmental ministry officially acknowledged the presence of cancer hot spots, known informally as “cancer villages,” throughout the country. Chinese media have reported 459 “cancer villages” throughout China, in every province and autonomous region except Qinghai and Tibet. Once a rare disease, cancer is now the biggest killer in both urban and rural China, with mortality rates as high as 80 percent in the last 30 years.

The Drugs in US Meat–We’re Eating What? Synthetic growth hormones routinely administered in the US to livestock are not listed on food package labels. Other drugs used to increase muscle mass in pigs and turkeys, including ractopamine, have been banned in 160 but remain in use in the US. A European scientific commission believes there is an association between steroid hormones and cancers, including breast and prostate cancers, and that meat consumption is the culprit. The US has the highest rates of both and also uses the most hormones in its meat production. Since 1989, Europe has banned most US meat.

Genital Mutilation in the US Although genital mutilation is concentrated in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, thousands of US girls living in immigrant communities are sent out of the country to places where genital mutilation is practiced, or relatives from practicing counties come to the US to do the procedure. The New York metropolitan area has the highest cases of female genital mutilation in the US; approximately 41,000 cases. These women face major complications to their health, including infections, post-traumatic stress disorder and painful menstruation cycles.

Routine Infant Circumcision: Exempt from American Medical Ethics The US is the only country in the world that circumcises male infants for non-religious reasons. This pro-circumcision bias of American culture is reflected in medical theory and policy. However, most proponents lack awareness of the health impact of circumcision.

South Africa “Over 25% Schoolgirls HIV Positive” About five million people in South Africa are HIV positive, which is about 10% of the total population. Those numbers are higher when looking at the school-age female population. Over 25% of school-aged girls are HIV positive, some as young as 10 years old. Many contract HIV as a result of sexual relations with older “sugar-daddies.” 

Private-Equity Firms Target the US Health-Care Industry

Private equity (PE) firms are targeting the US health-care providers. Growing PE interest in low profit or non-profit sectors like hospitals is expanding. PE investors are betting on new profit opportunities from the growing needs of the baby-boomer generation and from the Affordable Care Act, which will dramatically expand health-insurance coverage.

Federally Funded Health-Care Co-ops —Coming to Your Community With funding from the Affordable Care Act (ACA), communities are coming together to develop Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans—CO-Ops to operate community health care facilities or cooperative insurance plans. Unlike private health insurance companies, these co-ops are owned and democratically controlled by their members. Beginning in 2014, a first wave of co-ops will launch in 24 states, with an estimated 19 million previously uninsured Americans expected to use insurance exchanges to buy health coverage.

The US has left Iraq with an Epidemic of Cancers and Birth Defects After ten years of war in Iraq, Dahr Jamail reports, the US has left Iraq (and especially the city of Fallujah) with a rising epidemic of toxic contamination. After the US military used depleted uranium munitions in 2004, Iraqi medical officials have tracked twice number of cancer cases as in 1995.

Mozambique’s First HIV Vaccine Trial Heralds New Era in Local Research Mozambique’s Polana Cancio Centre for Research and Public Health has finished its first HIV vaccine trial and is preparing to start the second trial. According to the preliminary test, the vaccine is safe for use. According to Ilesh Jani, the studies mark an important step towards bolstering clinical trial and research capacity for diseases such as HIV and malaria. One goal of this research is to develop a vaccine that will be affordable in countries such as Mozambique.

Skyrocketing HIV/AIDS Rates in African American Women In August 2012 at the International AIDS Conference in Washington DC, HIV advocates met to discuss the skyrocketing HIV infection rates in black women that are increasing to levels found in sub-Sahara Africa. The recent growth in HIV cases among African-American women especially among youth has public health professionals concerned. In 2010, black women contracted 44 percent of new HIV infections. 

Background TV Poses Danger for Children A recent study conducted at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington (UNCW) sheds new light on the detrimental impact background television has on children’s neural development and social skills. The UNCW study shows that children exposed to more TV are more likely to develop problems with hyperactivity and antisocial behavior. When children accustomed to such high doses of daily television stop watching all together, depression has a tendency to develop.

US Veterans Prescribed Lethal Drugs to Treat PTSD A number of US war veterans were issued a variety of potentially deadly pharmaceuticals to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) including the dangerous antipsychotic drug Seroquel. Pleas from the families of deceased veterans finally persuaded the U.S. Central Command to remove the dangerous antipsychotic from the list of military PTSD treatments. Information about Seroquel and similar drugs is often kept hidden from the public, leaving consumers of generic brands unaware of corporate deceit and veteran deaths.

Antidepressant Drugs Pose Serious Health Concerns for Unborn Babies The world’s largest drug companies are encouraging pregnant women to take prescription drugs, get vaccine shots, and even have chemotherapy. Among these are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) or antidepressants, which are causing miscarriages and a variety of birth defects. Excessive prescription drug use in pregnant women is also linked to the increase of babies born with autism, preterm birth, newborn behavioral syndrome, persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn and longer-term neurobehavioral effects.

Pesticides May Lead to Cancer and Autism in Children Pesticides are harmful to the health and intelligence of America’s children, according to an October 2012 report released by the Pesticide Action Network of North America. Titled, “A Generation in Jeopardy,” the study notes how chemicals from pest control products are one key cause of a range of disorders such as ADHD, autism, cancer, disrupted metabolism, and even low IQs.

Laboratory Study of Rats Supports Dangers of GM Corn A study published in September issue of The Food & Chemical Toxicology Journal found that rats fed Monsanto’s genetically modified corn over several months showed significant health problems including premature death and tumors. The study found that over half of the male rats and 70 percent of the females who were fed a lifetime of Monsanto’s corn died prematurely with significant liver and kidney damage. Scientists also found the rats to contain cancerous tumors so large they blocked organ function. While numerous studies have examined their short-term impact, this is the first ever study to examine the long-term effects of GMO consumptions.

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Is war with Iran inevitable?

By Susanna Rustin

The Guardian

Former UK foreign minister Malcolm Rifkind fears Iran wants to develop nuclear weapons. Not so, says campaigner Abbas Edalat, who thinks western hawks want war.

As tensions between Iran and the west escalate, and US politicians call for regime change, Susanna Rustin talks to former foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Iranian-British academic Abbas Edalat, founder of the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran, about Iran's nuclear programme and the likelihood of war. 

Malcolm Rifkind: I do not advocate a military attack on Iran, but the International Atomic Energy Agency says Iran is failing to comply with agency requirements and UN security council resolutions and it is very difficult for the international community to say it doesn't matter. If Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapons capability, that has massive implications.

Abbas Edalat: Sixty years ago the British government was demonising the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh, and it is doing the same to the Islamic Republic. When sanctions failed then, it organised with the US the 1953 coup and brought back the Shah. And in Iraq the same unfounded allegations of weapons of mass destruction that we are seeing now were used to justify an illegal war. Western intelligence sources are feeding fabricated evidence to the IAEA, whose new head [Yukiya Amano] was disclosed by WikiLeaks to be a hardline supporter of the US. But the IAEA's latest report [last month] is disappointing for the western alliance because it says Iran has not diverted its declared nuclear material [to weapons].

MR: Many of us who believe the Iraq war was disgraceful also believe Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons. If it does, it is likely that Saudi Arabia and possibly Egypt and Turkey will follow. Even Russia and China have supported pressure on Iran. You are wrong if you think Iran has only the west to deal with.

AE: A couple of days ago the prime minister of the United Arab Emirates said they don't think Iran is building nuclear weapons. I think the international community has seen the catastrophic illegal invasion of Iraq and does not want that repeated. And you didn't mention the coup of 1953, for which Britain has never apologised. What is happening now is a re-run. Russia has said the latest sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran are illegal. The west is playing a game of hypocrisy and deception. President Obama wrote last year to the leaders of Brazil and Turkey, urging them to persuade Iran to deposit 1,200kg of low-enriched uranium in Turkey. Three weeks later Turkey and Brazil brokered a deal exactly on those terms. Did the White House welcome this breakthrough? No, it proposed new sanctions at the UN.

Susanna Rustin: Is there evidence last week's attack on the British embassy in Tehran was approved by the authorities?

MR: It is inconceivable an invasion of a foreign embassy by a large crowd could happen without government connivance.

AE: This allegation is contradicted by US vice-president Joe Biden, who said he has no evidence the attack was orchestrated by the Iranian leadership. When did it happen? Just after the UK imposed sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran.

MR: Most reasonable people will say, fortunately we have the IAEA. You say it is pressured by the US; that's an insult. Its latest report said Iran is taking action in its nuclear programme that is only consistent with a military purpose. We acknowledge mistakes were made in the past – you referred to the Mosaddegh affair and I can only give my personal view. I think that was a foolish mistake.

SR: Should the British apologise?

MR: I don't believe in demands for apologies. The question is why Iran, which has more oil and gas than almost any country, needs to give such a huge priority to nuclear energy. WikiLeaks quoted King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia calling for the head of the serpent – that was his phrase – to be cut off, meaning he wanted a military attack on Iran.

AE: There is no shred of evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. There is a fatwa by the supreme leader against weapons of mass destruction. And you quote King Abdullah, but the overwhelming majority of Arab people approve of Iran's nuclear programme.

SR: Does the discredited evidence of WMD in Iraq make tackling Iran harder?

MR: Much more difficult – the main beneficiary of the Iraq war was the Iranian government. Iraq traditionally was a sort of buffer but that has now disappeared because of the stupid policy of the US and Tony Blair's government.

SR: What do ordinary Iranians think?

AE: Sanctions will only unite them. Almost all the evidence in the most recent IAEA report is old, and Mohamed ElBaradei [former IAEA director] always said he had no confidence in allegations from the intelligence services of Israel and the US. The New York Times in 2004 questioned the provenance of the laptop from which these documents came.

MR: So everyone is wicked except Iran! Every piece of evidence is dismissed as fabrication. It's very depressing. Iran is a great country and ought to be playing a much more important role in the world. Instead, it has made itself a focus of antagonism. It is probably trying at the moment to produce the enriched uranium and missile technology that would enable it to stop for a period, then go to the final stage in months. Iran missed an opportunity when Obama came to power. He was willing to open up dialogue that could have led to normalisation of relations. And the Iranian government threw it back. The regime likes external enemies because it helps rally support at home.

AE: Old habits die hard, Sir Malcolm.

MR: Yours as well as ours!

AE: But we have not invaded another country for 250 years. When Iran was under attack by the western-backed invasion from Iraq, it did not respond in kind with chemical warfare. In October last year Sir John Sawers, the head of MI6, publicly said that the west should use covert operations to block Iran's nuclear programme. Since then two Iranian scientists have been assassinated. Why do you think Iranians believe MI6, Mossad and the CIA were behind that?

MR: I chair the Intelligence and Security Committee and can categorically say the UK does not support assassinations. The US, on occasion, has given authority for that to happen, so have the Israelis.

SR: Were the US or Israel behind the assassinations?

MR: I don't think the Americans were, I've no idea about the Israelis.

SR: How do you expect the situation to develop?

MR: It depends on the Iranian government. If the IAEA concludes at any stage there is no reason for concern, there is no way international action could be taken. 

AE: The US House foreign relations committee has produced a bill that would prevent Obama having dialogue with Iran for the first time in history. The current hawkish policy of western governments will lead to military conflict. And that will be a catastrophe.

For comments:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/09/is-war-with-iran-inevitable-nuclear-weapons

Obama, The Son of Africa, Claims a Continent’s Crown Jewels

By John Pilger

Global Research

On 14 October, President Barack Obama announced he was sending United States special forces troops to Uganda to join the civil war there. In the next few months, US combat troops will be sent to South Sudan, Congo and Central African Republic. They will only "engage" for "self-defence", says Obama, satirically. With Libya secured, an American invasion of the African continent is under way.

Obama’s decision is described in the press as "highly unusual" and "surprising", even "weird". It is none of these things. It is the logic of American foreign policy since 1945. Take Vietnam. The priority was to halt the influence of China, an imperial rival, and "protect" Indonesia, which President Nixon called "the region’s richest hoard of natural resources …the greatest prize". Vietnam merely got in the way; and the slaughter of more than three million Vietnamese and the devastation and poisoning of their land was the price of America achieving its goal. Like all America’s subsequent invasions, a trail of blood from Latin America to Afghanistan and Iraq, the rationale was usually "self defence" or "humanitarian", words long emptied of their dictionary meaning.

In Africa, says Obama, the "humanitarian mission" is to assist the government of Uganda defeat the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which "has murdered, raped and kidnapped tens of thousands of men, women and children in central Africa". This is an accurate description of the LRA, evoking multiple atrocities administered by the United States, such as the bloodbath in the 1960s following the CIA-arranged murder of Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese independence leader and first legally elected prime minister, and the CIA coup that installed Mobutu Sese Seko, regarded as Africa’s most venal tyrant.

Obama’s other justification also invites satire. This is the "national security of the United States". The LRA has been doing its nasty work for 24 years, of minimal interest to the United States. Today, it has fewer than 400 fighters and has never been weaker. However, US "national security" usually means buying a corrupt and thuggish regime that has something Washington wants. Uganda’s "president-for-life" Yoweri Museveni already receives the larger part of $45 million in US military "aid" – including Obama’s favourite drones. This is his bribe to fight a proxy war against America’s latest phantom Islamic enemy, the rag-tag al Shabaab group based in Somalia. The RTA will play a public relations role, distracting western journalists with its perennial horror stories.

However, the main reason the US is invading Africa is no different from that which ignited the Vietnam war. It is China. In the world of self-serving, institutionalised paranoia that justifies what General David Petraeus, the former US commander and now CIA director, implies is a state of perpetual war, China is replacing al-Qaeda as the official American "threat". When I interviewed Bryan Whitman, an assistant secretary of defence at the Pentagon last year, I asked him to describe the current danger to America. Struggling visibly, he repeated, "Asymmetric threats … asymmetric threats". These justify the money-laundering state-sponsored arms conglomerates and the biggest military and war budget in history. With Osama bin Laden airbrushed, China takes the mantle.

Africa is China’s success story. Where the Americans bring drones and destabilisation, the Chinese bring roads, bridges and dams. What they want is resources, especially fossil fuels. With Africa’s greatest oil reserves, Libya under Muammar Gaddafi was one of China’s most important sources of fuel. When the civil war broke out and NATO backed the "rebels" with a fabricated story about Gaddafi planning "genocide" in Benghazi, China evacuated its 30,000 workers in Libya. The subsequent UN security council resolution that allowed the west’s "humanitarian intervention" was explained succinctly in a proposal to the French government by the "rebel" National Transitional Council, disclosed last month in the newspaper Liberation, in which France was offered 35 per cent of Libya’s gross national oil production "in exchange" (the term used) for "total and permanent" French support for the NTC. Running up the Stars and Stripes in "liberated" Tripoli last month, US ambassador Gene Cretz blurted out: "We know that oil is the jewel in the crown of Libyan natural resources!"

The de facto conquest of Libya by the US and its imperial partners heralds a modern version of the "scramble for Africa" at the end of the 19th century.

Like the "victory" in Iraq, journalists have played a critical role in dividing Libyans into worthy and unworthy victims. A recent Guardian front page carried a photograph of a terrified "pro-Gaddafi" fighter and his wild-eyed captors who, says the caption, "celebrate". According to General Petraeus, there is now a war "of perception … conducted continuously through the news media".

For more than a decade the US has tried to establish a command on the continent of Africa, AFRICOM, but has been rebuffed by governments, fearful of the regional tensions this would cause. Libya, and now Uganda, South Sudan and Congo, provide the main chance. As WikiLeaks cables and the US National Strategy for Counter-terrorism reveal, American plans for Africa are part of a global design in which 60,000 special forces, including death squads, already operate in 75 countries, soon to be 120. As Dick Cheney pointed out in his 1990s "defence strategy" plan, America simply wishes to rule the world.

That this is now the gift of Barack Obama, the "Son of Africa", is supremely ironic. Or is it? As Frantz Fanon explained in Black Skin, White Masks, what matters is not so much the colour of your skin as the power you serve and the millions you betray.

For more information on John Pilger, visit his website at www.johnpilger.com

John Pilger is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by John Pilger

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27181

US Supreme Court Refuses to Allow Abu Ghraib Torture Victims to Sue Military Contractors

By Andy Worthington

With what can only come across as cynical timing, the US Supreme Court on Monday, the day after the UN International Day in Support of the Victims of Torture, declined without comment to take up a lawsuit filed on behalf of 250 Iraqis — formerly prisoners at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, home of the most significant scandal in the Bush administration’s “War on Terror,” which surfaced in April 2004 with the publication of photos showing the torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners in US custody at the prison. The prisoners were seeking to hold Titan Corporation, which provided Arabic translation services, and CACI International, which provided interrogators, accountable for their role in the torture and abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in 2003 and 2004.

Although a handful of serving US military personnel — eleven in total, referred to by President Bush as “a few bad apples” — were prosecuted for the abuse at Abu Ghraib, they were, in fact, scapegoated for implementing a policy that came from the highest levels of government, and which was designed to ensure that all aspects of the detention regime were dependant upon the whims of interrogators — as at Guantánamo, from where the system was exported by its commander, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who was sent to “Gitmoize” Abu Ghraib with the results that the world saw to its horror in April 2004.

The case that was shunned by the Supreme Court on Monday, Saleh v. Titan Corporation, was an important attempt to extend accountability from the military to the contractors who make up such a huge part of America’s post-9/11 war machine, and who, unlike their official military counterparts, appear to be as much beyond the law as the senior administration officials — and their lawyers — who implemented, approved and oversaw every aspect of the “War on Terror” that should have shocked the conscience — involving torture, “extraordinary rendition,” secret prisons and the miseries of arbitrary detention at Guantánamo. As Human Rights First explained, “Army investigations implicated at least five private contractors in similar crimes,” although “no contractor was ever charged.”

In dismissing the case, the Supreme Court has ensured that the final word on contractors’ responsibilities rests with the D.C. Circuit Court, the appeals court in Washington D.C. that is populated by several notable right-wing ideologues who have been steadily demolishing the habeas corpus rights of the Guantánamo prisoners over the last 18 months until the “Great Writ” has been rendered meaningless. The judges include Senior Judge A. Raymond Randolph, notorious for backing every piece of legislation relating to Guantánamo under the Bush administration that was subsequently overturned by the Supreme Court.

For the Abu Ghraib ruling, another of Randolph’s aged colleagues, Senior Judge Laurence Silberman — also responsible for outrageous outbursts about Guantánamo, masquerading as legal opinion — led a panel that ruled, by two votes to one in September 2009, that “claims against the contractors were precluded under a doctrine the two majority judges called ‘battlefield preemption,’” as the Christian Science Monitor described it, or, as Human Rights First put it, that “the contractors were involved in combat activities and therefore, should be protected from lawsuits.”

In the Circuit Court’s majority opinion, Judge Silberman wrote, “During wartime, where a private service contractor is integrated into combatant activities over which the military retains command authority, a tort claim [for damages] arising out of the contractor’s engagement in such activities shall be preempted.”

Silberman also regarded it as significant that, although the government acted swiftly to prosecute military personnel in connection with the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib, it failed to tackle contractors for their role. “This fact alone,” he wrote, “indicates the government’s perception of the contract employees’ role in the Abu Ghraib scandal.”

The Christian Science Monitor also explained:

The appeals court also ruled that the former Iraqi detainees were not empowered under the Alien Tort Statute to file a lawsuit in a US court seeking to enforce a violation of the law of nations. The judges said that although torture committed by a government is a violation of a settled international norms, the same act by a private contractor is not.

Judge Silberman claimed, “Congress has never created this cause of action,” stating that, although Congress had “empowered US residents to sue foreign governments for torture,” as the Christian Science Monitor described it, “federal law makers excluded from the law the possibility of filing a similar suit against American military officials overseas, or private individuals working with the US government overseas.”

In the important dissenting opinion, which should have provided an avenue for the Supreme Court to follow, Judge Merrick Garland noted that he would have allowed the Iraqis’ lawsuit to proceed against both Titan and CACI, declaring:

No act of Congress and no judicial precedent bars the plaintiffs from suing the private contractors –- who were neither soldiers nor civilian government employees. Neither President Obama nor President Bush nor any other executive branch officials has suggested that subjecting the contractors to tort liability for the conduct at issue here would interfere with the nation’s foreign policy or the executive’s ability to wage war. To the contrary, the Department of Defense has repeatedly stated that employees of private contractors accompanying the Armed Forces in the field are NOT within the military’s chain of command, and that such contractors ARE subject to civil liability.

Following the Circuit Court’s ruling in September 2009, Human Rights First’s International Legal Director Gabor Rona stated, “This decision, which was supported by the Obama administration, informs the world that the United States of America has no intention of obeying its moral and legal obligation to provide enforceable remedies to victims of sadistic acts of torture alleged to have been committed by military contractors.” Human Rights First also noted, “Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), the United States must provide ‘enforceable’ or ‘effective’ remedies to victims for acts of torture and serious abuse.”

In their brief urging the Supreme Court to take up the case, the Iraqis’ lawyers were, of course, aware of these issues, although they specifically made a point of mentioning how private contractors outnumber official US personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq, and how allowing the Circuit Court’s ruling to stand allows them to break the law with impunity.

“There are 217,832 contractor personnel providing services to the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, answering not to the military chain of command but to for-profit corporations who receive a total of over $5 billion annually for their services,” Vincent Parrett wrote in the brief to the court. “This is a case about the commission of war crimes by private actors who violated state, federal, and international law,” he added, pointing out, crucially, that the Circuit Court’s holding “has eviscerated one of the most effective means of deterring them from violating the law.”

In response to the Supreme Court’s dismissal of the case, which was largely ignored in the mainstream US media, Human Rights First issued a press release deploring the decision, and noting the unusual circumstances that preceded the decision, whereby, “[b]efore deciding whether or not to hear the case, the Supreme Court asked the US government, which is not a party to the suit, its opinion on the case,” and that the government, “[w]hile noting the shortcomings of the appellate court’s ruling … recommended that the Court should decline to hear the case, effectively denying victims a remedy.”

In a specific criticism of the Supreme Court decision, which I endorse fully, Gabor Rona stated:

Last week on the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, President Obama proclaimed that the United States “will remain a leader in the effort to end torture around the world and to address the needs of torture victims.” Nothing undermines the credibility of the United States as a voice for human rights and for respect for the rule of law more than its hypocritical dismissal of the suffering of torture victims at the hands of the US government and its agents.

Note: Also see Human Rights First’s amicus brief arguing that the decision by the D.C. Circuit to immunize the criminal conduct of private military contractors is incompatible with the United States’ international legal obligations, and Human Rights First’s letter to the Acting Solicitor General, in March this year, urging the government to advise the Court to hear the case and reverse the decision that denies victims a remedy.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, on tour in the UK throughout 2011, and available on DVD here — or here for the US), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2011/06/28/us-supreme-court-refuses-to-allow-abu-ghraib-torture-victims-to-sue-military-contractors/

Osama bin Laden is finally "officially" dead

An insider interview about military, secret ops, CIA, incompetent presidents and congress, criminal bankers and a lot more.

General Wesley Clark talking about oil and the Middle East wars

By Democracy Now!

John Perkins

Interview with a real insider from the top about economic hit men, oil, the building of Saudi Arabia, Iran, the Iraq war, Afghanistan, the roots of terrorism, the Panama Canal, geopolitics, assassins, jackals, Colombia, the building of an empire and some hope for the future. A must see even though it is a bit long, approximately 100 minutes. 

Major books by John Perkins on this specific issue: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (2004), The Secret History of the American Empire (2008), Hoodwinked (2010)

Depleted Uranium - the Trojan horse of nuclear war

By Leuren Moret

But what do oil, military partners, depleted uranium wars, and US foreign policy have to do with nuclear weapons? The answer came to me in 1991 when I became a whistleblower at the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Laboratory near San Francisco, California. Richard Berta, the Western Regional Inspector for the Department of Energy, told me "The Pentagon exists for the oil companies… and the nuclear weapons labs exist for the Pentagon."

The fact is that the United States and its military partners have staged four nuclear wars, "slipping nukes under the wire" by using dirty bombs and dirty weapons in countries the US needs to control. Depleted uranium aerosols will permanently contaminate vast regions and slowly destroy the genetic future of populations living in those regions, where there are resources which the US must control, in order to establish and maintain American primacy.

Described as the Trojan Horse of nuclear war, depleted uranium is the weapon that keeps killing. The half-life of Uranium-238 is 4.5 billion years, the age of the earth. And, as Uranium-238 decays into daughter radioactive products, in four steps before turning into lead, it continues to release more radiation at each step. There is no way to turn it off, and there is no way to clean it up. It meets the US Government’s own definition of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

After forming microscopic and submicroscopic insoluble Uranium oxide particles on the battlefield, they remain suspended in air and travel around the earth as a radioactive component of atmospheric dust, contaminating the environment, indiscriminately killing, maiming and causing disease in all living things where rain, snow and moisture remove it from the atmosphere. Global radioactive contamination from atmospheric testing was the equivalent of 40,000 Hiroshima bombs, and still contaminates the atmosphere and lower orbital space today. The amount of low level radioactive pollution from depleted uranium released since 1991, is many times more (deposited internally in the body), than was released from atmospheric testing fallout.

A 2003 independent report for the European Parliament by the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR), reports that based on Chernobyl studies, low level radiation risk is 100 to 1000 times greater than the International Committee for Radiation Protection models estimate which are based on the flawed Atomic and Hydrogen Bomb Studies conducted by the US Government. Referring to the extreme killing effects of radiation on biological systems, Dr. Rosalie Bertell, one of the 46 international radiation expert authors of the ECRR report, describes it as:

"The concept of species annihilation means a relatively swift, deliberately induced end to history, culture, science, biological reproduction and memory. It is the ultimate human rejection of the gift of life, an act which requires a new word to describe it: omnicide."

Nearly 700,000 American Gulf War Veterans returned to the US from a war that lasted just a few weeks. Today more than 240,000 of those soldiers are on permanent medical disability, and over 11,000 are dead. In a US Government study on post-Gulf War babies born to 251 veterans, 67 per cent of the babies were reported to have serious illnesses or serious birth defects. They were born without eyes, ears, had missing organs, fused fingers, thyroid or other malfunctions. Depleted uranium in the semen of the soldiers internally contaminated their wives. Severe birth defects have been reported in babies born to contaminated civilians in Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan and the incidence and severity of defects is increasing over time. Women in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq are afraid now to have babies, and when they do give birth, instead of asking if it is a girl or a boy, they ask ‘is it normal?’.

"Our collective gene pool of life, evolving for hundreds of millions of years has been seriously damaged in less than the past fifty. The time remaining to reverse this culture of ‘lemming death’ is on the wane. In the future, what will you tell our grandchildren about what you did in the prime of your life to turn around this death process?" (Rosalie Bertell, 1982)

You can find the original article in full here.

If you can bare more horror, you can also watch the documentary "Beyond Treason" on Youtube.

Paul Craig Roberts on the US military spending

China, Japan and OPEC indirectly financing the pointless wars of the US which are bankrupting America and serve only the military industrial complex.