Freedom and Democracy in Fallujah

"The total number of victims is still unknown. In fact, many of them are not born yet." IPS

 “Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.” Independent

Remember Iraq? That country that was crippled by Western sanctions and then mercilessly attacked, occupied and thrown into sectarian strife and civil war, remember? You don't hear much about it these days, never mind the the specific details of what life entails for the unfortunate souls of certain shattered cities in the country. The US government doesn't want you to know the truth about what happened in Fallujah. This video was repeatedly taken down from YouTube without any explanation. If the horrendous consequences of the use of depleted uranium by the US military in Fallujah became widely known and understood, more people might question future wars of conquest. The lost generation in Fallujah could easily be the lost generation of Bradford or Derry or Portland in years to come. Don't think they wouldn't use this weaponry against their own populations if things got out of hand. We're heading in that direction. On the periphery of Empire, the dark-skinned people can easily be sacrificed for imperial ends, all in the name of freedom and democracy, with the corporate media largely complicit in this rendering of innocents 'non-people'. They have the power to determine what is worthy of news and what is not. But this will come back to haunt the peoples of the West when they are on the receiving end of the tyranny to come. That is unless we speak out and act now.

With 'humanitarian intervention' on the rise again and the drum beats of war beating louder for an attack on Iran, opposition to Empire is more crucial than ever. Many were fooled by the propaganda on Libya that enabled that country to be attacked and carved up by western backed militias, often aided by al-Qaeda. Many more are fooled by the message that we 'need to intervene' in Syria, as if 'we' (i.e Western elites) were interested in anything but stealing other countries' resources and keeping their populations subjugated. Fallujah shows what happens to a place that dares offer resistance to the US when it has decided to occupy a foreign country. Afghanistan is still experiencing the same brutality. Drones have killed countless civilians on the borderlands with Pakistan. Fallujah is just one tragedy in a series of tragedies on an epic scale. Obama continues Bush's war of terror without looking back on the devastation in its wake. It is inevitable that this insatiable desire for never ending expansion and exploitation will result in the entire imperial edifice crashing down, as has happened with all empires, but this time the damage to the world could be apocalyptic given the multiple environmental, economic and social crises we face. We can't afford to ignore the continued expansion of the US Empire.

Top 25 Censored Stories for 2009

American website Project Censored has compiled a list of the top 25 Censored stories for 2009. If the press was truely free, these stories would receive more coverage but the mainstream media continues to churn out the same irrelevant nonsense to ensure people have more in common with mushrooms (kept in the dark and fed on shite) than they do with intelligent thinking beings.

Top of the list is the information from prestigious polling organisation Opinion Research Business that over one million Iraqi people have been killed as a result of the US occupation. Reliable research also concludes that up to 4 million Iraqis have been made refugees during the same period. Out of this, there are 1.5 million Iraqis in Syria alone. Where are the extensive media reports and interviews from the people suffering from this massive humanitarian disaster caused by imperialism? They don’t exist because for the mainstream media, the Iraqi people are non-people. The BBC for example spent most of one of its news programmes on the snowfall across Britain. By the way it was reported you’d think it was the start of the next ice age with the world as we know it coming to an end. Another example is the latest coverage about an ex-Big Brother celebrity who happens to be dying of cancer and getting married. I’m ashamed I even know about it, but you couldn’t escape it. That’s what people are paying their TV licences for. I can only imagine how angry and disturbed the average Iraqi is at everything that’s happened. Their country has been mercilessly ripped apart. I read an emotional article last week by an Iraqi woman, expressing some of this anger. You’d never be let hear anything as real as that on the BBC (or indeed, the RTE).

This top 25 list is a good reminder to anyone interested in knowing what’s actually happening in the world; real human stories effecting real humans. Massive government corruption, undercover ‘security’ agreements and general erosions of civil liberties are not new revelations to anyone regularly looking at independent media. This also goes for the stories about slavery (there are more slaves in the world today than at any other time in history) and the widespread oppression of indigenous peoples. I’m sure so much more could be added to the list – it’s just a snippet of underreported stories.