In the early 1950s the United States initiated a more activist policy toward Egypt often in contrast with British policies. Israel feared that this policy, which encouraged Britain to withdraw its military forces from the Suez Canal, would embolden Egyptian President Nasser's military ambitions towards Israel. Israel first sought to influence this policy through diplomatic means but was frustrated. [3]
In the summer of 1954 Colonel Binyamin Gibli, the chief of Israel's military intelligence, Aman, initiated Operation Suzannah in order to reverse that decision. The goal of the Operation was to carry out bombings and other acts of violence in Egypt with the aim of creating an atmosphere in which the British and American opponents of British withdrawal from Egypt would be able to gain the upper hand and block the withdrawal.
According to historian Shabtai Teveth, who wrote one of the more detailed accounts, the assignment was "To undermine Western confidence in the existing [Egyptian] regime by generating public insecurity and actions to bring about arrests, demonstrations, and acts of revenge, while totally concealing the Israeli factor. The team was accordingly urged to avoid detection, so that suspicion would fall on the Muslim Brotherhood, the Communists, 'unspecified malcontents' or 'local nationalists'." [1]
The top-secret cell, Unit 131, which was to carry out the operation, had existed since 1948 and under Aman since 1950. At the time of Operation Susannah, Unit 131 was the subject of a bitter dispute between Aman {military intelligence} and Mossad {national intelligence agency} over who should control it.
Unit 131 operatives had been recruited several years before, when the Israeli intelligence officer Avram Dar arrived in Cairo undercover as a British citizen of Gibraltar called John Darling. He had recruited several Egyptian Jews who had previously been active in illegal emigration activities and trained them for covert operations.
Aman decided to activate the network in the spring of 1954. On July 2, they firebombed a post office in Alexandria, and on July 14, they bombed the U.S. Information Agency libraries in Alexandria and Cairo and a British-owned theater. The homemade bombs, consisting of bags containing acid placed over nitroglycerine, were inserted into books, and placed on the shelves of the libraries just before closing time. Several hours later, as the acid ate through the bags, the bombs would explode. They did little damage to the targets and caused no injuries or deaths.
Before the group began Israeli agent Avraham Seidenberg (Avri Elad) was sent to oversee the operations. Seidenberg assumed the identity of Paul Frank, a former SS officer with Nazi underground connections. Avraham Seidenberg allegedly informed the Egyptians resulting in the Egyptian Intelligence Service following a suspect to his target, the Rio Theatre, where a fire engine was standing by. Egyptian authorities arrested this suspect, Philip Natanson, when his bomb accidentally ignited prematurely in his pocket. Having searched his apartment, they found incriminating evidence and names of accomplices to the operation. Several suspects were arrested, including Egyptian Jews and undercover Israelis.
Colonel Dar and Seidenberg had managed to escape. One suspect {Yosef Carmon} was tortured to death in prison and Hungarian born Israeli Meir Max Bineth committed suicide. The trial began on December 11 and lasted until January 27, 1955; two of the accused (Moshe Marzouk and Shmuel Azar) were condemned to execution by hanging and two acquitted with the rest receiving lengthy prison terms. The trial was widely criticized as a show trial, and there were allegations that evidence had been extracted by torture. [4]
Two of the imprisoned operatives, Meir Meyuhas and Meir Za'afran, were released in 1962, after having served seven year jail sentences. The rest were eventually freed in February 1968, in a secret addendum to a prisoner of war exchange.
Soon after the affair, Mossad chief Isser Harel expressed suspicion to Aman concerning the integrity of Avraham Seidenberg. Despite his concerns, Aman continued using Seidenberg for intelligence operations until 1956, when he was caught trying to sell Israeli documents to the Egyptians. Seidenberg was tried and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. In 1980, Harel publicly revealed evidence that Seidenberg had been turned by the Egyptians even before Operation Suzannah.
2. Political aftermath
In meetings with prime minister Moshe Sharett, secretary of defense Pinhas Lavon denied any knowledge of the operation. When intelligence chief Gibli contradicted Lavon, Sharrett commissioned a board of inquiry consisting of Israeli Supreme Court Justice Isaac Olshan and the first chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, Yaakov Dori that was unable to find conclusive evidence that Lavon had authorized the operation. Lavon tried to fix the blame on Shimon Peres, who was the secretary general of the defense ministry, and Gibli for insubordination and criminal negligence. Sharett resolved the dilemma by siding with Peres, who along with Moshe Dayan testified against Lavon, after which Lavon resigned. Former prime minister David Ben-Gurion succeeded Lavon as minister of defense. A short time later, Sharett, who did not know about the operation in advance, and who had strongly denied Israel's involvement, resigned as Prime Minister and was replaced by Ben-Gurion.
In April of 1960, a review of minutes from the inquiry found inconsistencies and possibly a fraudulent document in Gibli's original testimony that seemed to support Lavon's account of events. During this time, it also came to light that Seidenberg (the Israeli agent running Operation Suzannah in Egypt), had committed perjury during the original inquiry. Seidenberg was also suspected of betraying the group to Egyptian authorities; though the charges were never proven, he was eventually sentenced to a jail term of 10 years. Ben-Gurion scheduled closed hearings with a new board of inquiry chaired by Chaim Cohen, a supreme court justice.
This inquiry found that the perjury indeed had been committed, and that Lavon had not authorized the operation. Sharett and Levi Eshkol tried to issue a statement that would placate both Lavon and those who had opposed him. Ben-Gurion refused to accept the compromise and viewed it as a divisive play within the Mapai party. After another investigative committee sided with the Cohen inquiry, Ben-Gurion resigned from his post as defense minister. This led to the expulsion of Lavon from the Histadrut labor union and an early call for new elections which changed the political structure in Israel.
It should be noted that the specifics of Operation Susannah were not public at the time of the political upheaval.
3. Legacy
Operation Suzannah and the Lavon Affair turned out to be disastrous for Israel in several ways:
* Israel lost significant standing and credibility in its relations with the United Kingdom and the United States that would take years to repair.
* The tactics of the operation led to deep-seated suspicion of Israeli intelligence methods, such as agents provocateurs and false flag operations.
* The political aftermath caused considerable political turmoil in Israel that affected the influence of its government.
In March 2005, Israel publicly honored the surviving operatives, and President Moshe Katsav presented each with a certificate of appreciation for their efforts on behalf of the state, ending decades of official denial by Israel. [2]
4. Notes
1. ^ S. Teveth, Ben-Gurion's spy: the story of the political scandal that shaped modern Israel. Columbia University Press, 1996, ISBN 0231104642, p.81.
2. ^ "After half a century of reticence and recrimination, Israel ... honored ... agents-provocateur. Reuters, 30th March 2005. Accessed 2nd July 2007.
3. Hahn, Peter L. United States, Great Britain, and Egypt, 1945-1956: Strategy and Diplomacy. UNC Press. pp. 187. ISBN 0807819425. "In late 1954, the Anglo-Egyptian base agreement and American plans to promote a Northern tier security arrangement generated tension between Israel and Egypt. Israeli officials feared that British troop withdrawal from the Canal zone ... would encourage Egyptial aggressiveness toward Israel and remove Western leverage to modify Egyptian behavior on issues such as Suez Canal restrictions"
4. "The Lavon Affair". Jewish Virtual Library. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/lavon.html. Retrieved 2008-10-29.
5. References
* Black, Ian and Morris, Benny (1992): Israel's Secret Wars: A History of Israel's Intelligence Services, Futura, ISBN 0802132863.
* Ostrovsky, Victor and Hoy, Claire: By Way of Deception. St. Martin's Press, 1991, ISBN 0-312-92614-6.
6. Further reading
* Aviezer Golan (Ninio Marcelle, Victor Levy, Robert Dassa and Philip Natanson (As told to Aviezer Golan) (Translated from Hebrew by Petretz Kidron) (Fwd by Golda Meir): Operation Susannah, Harper & Row, NYC, 1978 ISBN 0-060-11555-6
* Joel Beinin: Nazis and Spies The Discourse of Operation Susannah, ch 4 in The Dispersion Of Egyptian Jewry Culture, Politics, And The Formation Of A Modern Diaspora Berkeley: University of California Press, c1998. Amer Univ in Cairo Pr, 2005, ISBN 9774248902
* Joel Beinin: Egyptian Jewish Identities. Communitarianisms, nationalisms, nostalgias Stanford Humanities Review, 1996
7. External links
* The Lavon Affair - Israel and Terror in Egypt
* The Lavon Affair by Doron Geller, JUICE, The Jewish Agency for Israel, Education Department
* The Lavon Affair by David Hirst, Excerpts from his book: The Gun and the Olive Branch, 1977, 1984, Futura Publications
* The Lavon Affair including quotes from Moshe Sharett’s Diary
* List of books about the Lavon Affair
Categories: Articles lacking in-text citations from April 2009, All articles lacking in-text citations, Arab-Israeli conflict, Egypt-Israel relations, History of Egypt, False flag operations, Jewish Egyptian history, 1960 in Israel, 1960 in Egypt, Political scandals in Israel, Espionage scandals and incidents, Military scandals, Secret military programs
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Welcome to Gaza's Killing Fields where Palestinian Children live
by Wahida C. Valiante
December 26, 2009
So much has appeared in the international press and on the Internet that it would seem to be an exercise in redundancy to offer a perspective on the tragedy that befell the people of Gaza last year, especially the Gazan children. A devastating and colossal tragedy it certainly was; the Israeli attacks by sea, air and land were more brutal than anything the inhabitants of Gaza had ever endured previously.
The pictures that flooded television screens around the world showed a gruesome parade of young corpses and wounded children being loaded into and unloaded from the trunks of private cars that transported them to the only hospital in Gaza worthy of being called a hospital. People of conscience all over the world found these images horrifyingly explicit and they brought home to us both the magnitude of the death and destruction unleashed by Israel’s brutal assault against helpless and innocent Gazan children who had nowhere to run or hide. This latest orgy of air strikes and armed incursions by Israeli military forces turned the besieged and starved Strip into an unbearable inferno - literally into the Killing Fields of Gaza.
In November 2000, the Globe and Mail published my article "Who are the victims here?" in which I described the living conditions of Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip during my stay in the occupied territories in 1999:
"I recently observed the effects of the 'peace process’ when I visited the children of Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah, Gaza, Rafah and East Jerusalem. These children know first-hand the effects of military and economic oppression. There is hardly a family that has not experienced torture, imprisonment or economic hardship.
"Most of these children live in refugee camps in houses with corrugated roofs and cramped living spaces. Often, they do not have running water. The children lack adequate schools, health-care facilities, hospitals, social services, public parks, swimming pools, or recreation facilities. In the camps, the streets are their playgrounds, often with open sewers and waste flowing freely. They have seen no other reality."
It is sad that what seems so obvious to rest of the world escapes the minds of apologists for Israeli state terror.
Children make up more than half of crowded Gaza’s 1.4 million people and are the most defenseless victims of Israeli siege of Gaza. Israel's harsh security measures come at an enormous humanitarian cost and the stark reality is that under Israeli occupation, an entire generation of Palestinian children and youth have suffered a litany of horrific, traumatizing events for thirty years. In addition to almost-daily home demolitions, they have witnessed intimidation, humiliation, fear, insecurity, poverty, closures, and the menacing presence of armed settlers.
With all their healthy socializing structures destroyed by the Israeli military, these children have never known peace or security, or the freedom to roam the streets and playgrounds. Gaza’s children, like their parents, continuously face hardship in simply going about their lives; they are prevented from living in peace and security, going to school, or doing things that make up the daily fabric of most people's existence. Their parents have not known peace and freedom either, and cannot even dream about a safe and productive future for their children, and the children to come after them.
Ever since the moribund Oslo peace accord, they have been living in large prison camps. Now, locked up and besieged in Gaza by an Israeli army that happens to be one of the most powerful in the world, these children are under attack in their own land, in their own homes, and are being subjected to economic, psychological, physical and emotional terror from the air, sea and ground. Indeed all of Gaza has become a danger zone where children’s homes have been demolished, bombed, and shelled, killing children inside. Other children have been killed while riding in cars with their parents, while playing in the streets, while walking to school, visiting friends, and even while taking refuge in a UN Shelter.
Imagine the psychological and emotional terror experienced by children who grow up knowing that their parents cannot protect them from helicopter gunships, ground missiles, or snipers’ bullets. These children have no escape routes, no options, because the Israeli army and invading settlers are the ones who determine which child, which family, will be shot; which houses and trees will be bulldozed and uprooted; which street or alleyway will be hit by the sharpshooters. Their basic human rights are being trampled on by deliberate policies of the Israeli government whose obscene actions have denied these innocent children education, safety, health, economic well-being and all the amenities of normal life.
This nightmare of the children of Gaza is best described in the pages of Franz Kafka:
Lawrence Davidson in Counter Punch writes that, "In Kafka’s world, the prevailing theme is uncertainty and unpredictability. There are no set rules for behavior and the orders given by authorities seem arbitrary and even contradictory. You do not know what the laws are. The 'authorities’ in Kafka’s work sit in their fortresses and periodically intrude upon the lives of the confused and apparently helpless protagonists."
Similarly, nothing is predictable for Palestinians. Israel’s rules can change from one day to the next without notice or explanation. They live in an arbitrary environment, continuously adapting to circumstances they cannot influence and which increasingly reduce the range of their possibilities. No one really knows how many Palestinian children will continue to re- experience the horrors of conflict psychologically and emotionally throughout their lives.
Yet, as the world witnessed the organized, ruthless killing and maiming of these Palestinian children, there was only deafening silence from our "humane" Canadian government. If Prime Minister Harper so greatly respects the dignity of human life as he stated during his recent visit to China he would have asked Israel long ago to cease its murderous onslaught on the children of Gaza.
During my stay in the occupied territories, I was often asked by Palestinians why the world ignored their sufferings and their right to self-determination. I had no answer then. But today I can tell them that they are not alone; the world is outraged at what it witnessed in Gaza and for the "first time since the establishment of the State of Israel, an international campaign calling for sanctions against Israel for its innumerous violations of International Law has been very successful in drawing huge public attention and initiating a great number of mobilizations and initiatives around the world." (Michel Warschawski)
No amount of "anti-Semitic" or "self-hating" labels pasted on people of conscience who criticize the Israeli occupation can stifle that debate; it is a debate now spreading throughout the world, focusing unavoidable scrutiny on Israel and its brutal occupation of Palestinian territories.
When the dust settles, history will record that the atrocities repeatedly committed by Israel against defenseless Palestinian children in Gaza was a turning-point in the long ordeal of Palestine’s occupation. Things can never be the same again in Palestine because the world knows more of the truth about Israel’s’ cruel agenda than ever before.
----------------------------------------
(Mrs. Wahida Valiante is national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress. She is a retired professional family counselor who visited Palestine as part of a fact-finding medical team. While there, the team visited refugee camps, health care clinics, hospitals, orphanages, children’s schools, local and international charities and women's refugee centers, as well as speaking extensively with social workers and local Palestinian families.)
December 26, 2009
So much has appeared in the international press and on the Internet that it would seem to be an exercise in redundancy to offer a perspective on the tragedy that befell the people of Gaza last year, especially the Gazan children. A devastating and colossal tragedy it certainly was; the Israeli attacks by sea, air and land were more brutal than anything the inhabitants of Gaza had ever endured previously.
The pictures that flooded television screens around the world showed a gruesome parade of young corpses and wounded children being loaded into and unloaded from the trunks of private cars that transported them to the only hospital in Gaza worthy of being called a hospital. People of conscience all over the world found these images horrifyingly explicit and they brought home to us both the magnitude of the death and destruction unleashed by Israel’s brutal assault against helpless and innocent Gazan children who had nowhere to run or hide. This latest orgy of air strikes and armed incursions by Israeli military forces turned the besieged and starved Strip into an unbearable inferno - literally into the Killing Fields of Gaza.
In November 2000, the Globe and Mail published my article "Who are the victims here?" in which I described the living conditions of Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip during my stay in the occupied territories in 1999:
"I recently observed the effects of the 'peace process’ when I visited the children of Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah, Gaza, Rafah and East Jerusalem. These children know first-hand the effects of military and economic oppression. There is hardly a family that has not experienced torture, imprisonment or economic hardship.
"Most of these children live in refugee camps in houses with corrugated roofs and cramped living spaces. Often, they do not have running water. The children lack adequate schools, health-care facilities, hospitals, social services, public parks, swimming pools, or recreation facilities. In the camps, the streets are their playgrounds, often with open sewers and waste flowing freely. They have seen no other reality."
It is sad that what seems so obvious to rest of the world escapes the minds of apologists for Israeli state terror.
Children make up more than half of crowded Gaza’s 1.4 million people and are the most defenseless victims of Israeli siege of Gaza. Israel's harsh security measures come at an enormous humanitarian cost and the stark reality is that under Israeli occupation, an entire generation of Palestinian children and youth have suffered a litany of horrific, traumatizing events for thirty years. In addition to almost-daily home demolitions, they have witnessed intimidation, humiliation, fear, insecurity, poverty, closures, and the menacing presence of armed settlers.
With all their healthy socializing structures destroyed by the Israeli military, these children have never known peace or security, or the freedom to roam the streets and playgrounds. Gaza’s children, like their parents, continuously face hardship in simply going about their lives; they are prevented from living in peace and security, going to school, or doing things that make up the daily fabric of most people's existence. Their parents have not known peace and freedom either, and cannot even dream about a safe and productive future for their children, and the children to come after them.
Ever since the moribund Oslo peace accord, they have been living in large prison camps. Now, locked up and besieged in Gaza by an Israeli army that happens to be one of the most powerful in the world, these children are under attack in their own land, in their own homes, and are being subjected to economic, psychological, physical and emotional terror from the air, sea and ground. Indeed all of Gaza has become a danger zone where children’s homes have been demolished, bombed, and shelled, killing children inside. Other children have been killed while riding in cars with their parents, while playing in the streets, while walking to school, visiting friends, and even while taking refuge in a UN Shelter.
Imagine the psychological and emotional terror experienced by children who grow up knowing that their parents cannot protect them from helicopter gunships, ground missiles, or snipers’ bullets. These children have no escape routes, no options, because the Israeli army and invading settlers are the ones who determine which child, which family, will be shot; which houses and trees will be bulldozed and uprooted; which street or alleyway will be hit by the sharpshooters. Their basic human rights are being trampled on by deliberate policies of the Israeli government whose obscene actions have denied these innocent children education, safety, health, economic well-being and all the amenities of normal life.
This nightmare of the children of Gaza is best described in the pages of Franz Kafka:
Lawrence Davidson in Counter Punch writes that, "In Kafka’s world, the prevailing theme is uncertainty and unpredictability. There are no set rules for behavior and the orders given by authorities seem arbitrary and even contradictory. You do not know what the laws are. The 'authorities’ in Kafka’s work sit in their fortresses and periodically intrude upon the lives of the confused and apparently helpless protagonists."
Similarly, nothing is predictable for Palestinians. Israel’s rules can change from one day to the next without notice or explanation. They live in an arbitrary environment, continuously adapting to circumstances they cannot influence and which increasingly reduce the range of their possibilities. No one really knows how many Palestinian children will continue to re- experience the horrors of conflict psychologically and emotionally throughout their lives.
Yet, as the world witnessed the organized, ruthless killing and maiming of these Palestinian children, there was only deafening silence from our "humane" Canadian government. If Prime Minister Harper so greatly respects the dignity of human life as he stated during his recent visit to China he would have asked Israel long ago to cease its murderous onslaught on the children of Gaza.
During my stay in the occupied territories, I was often asked by Palestinians why the world ignored their sufferings and their right to self-determination. I had no answer then. But today I can tell them that they are not alone; the world is outraged at what it witnessed in Gaza and for the "first time since the establishment of the State of Israel, an international campaign calling for sanctions against Israel for its innumerous violations of International Law has been very successful in drawing huge public attention and initiating a great number of mobilizations and initiatives around the world." (Michel Warschawski)
No amount of "anti-Semitic" or "self-hating" labels pasted on people of conscience who criticize the Israeli occupation can stifle that debate; it is a debate now spreading throughout the world, focusing unavoidable scrutiny on Israel and its brutal occupation of Palestinian territories.
When the dust settles, history will record that the atrocities repeatedly committed by Israel against defenseless Palestinian children in Gaza was a turning-point in the long ordeal of Palestine’s occupation. Things can never be the same again in Palestine because the world knows more of the truth about Israel’s’ cruel agenda than ever before.
----------------------------------------
(Mrs. Wahida Valiante is national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress. She is a retired professional family counselor who visited Palestine as part of a fact-finding medical team. While there, the team visited refugee camps, health care clinics, hospitals, orphanages, children’s schools, local and international charities and women's refugee centers, as well as speaking extensively with social workers and local Palestinian families.)
Monday, December 28, 2009
One Day We’ll All Be Terrorists
By Chris Hedges
December 28, 2009 "Truthdig" -- Syed Fahad Hashmi can tell you about the dark heart of America. He knows that our First Amendment rights have become a joke, that habeas corpus no longer exists and that we torture, not only in black sites such as those at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or at Guantánamo Bay, but also at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan. Hashmi is a U.S. citizen of Muslim descent imprisoned on two counts of providing and conspiring to provide material support and two counts of making and conspiring to make a contribution of goods or services to al-Qaida. As his case prepares for trial, his plight illustrates that the gravest threat we face is not from Islamic extremists, but the codification of draconian procedures that deny Americans basic civil liberties and due process. Hashmi would be a better person to tell you this, but he is not allowed to speak.
This corruption of our legal system, if history is any guide, will not be reserved by the state for suspected terrorists, or even Muslim Americans. In the coming turmoil and economic collapse, it will be used to silence all who are branded as disruptive or subversive. Hashmi endures what many others, who are not Muslim, will endure later. Radical activists in the environmental, globalization, anti-nuclear, sustainable agriculture and anarchist movements—who are already being placed by the state in special detention facilities with Muslims charged with terrorism—have discovered that his fate is their fate. Courageous groups have organized protests, including vigils outside the Manhattan detention facility. They can be found at www.educatorsforcivilliberties.org or www.freefahad.com. On Martin Luther King Day, this Jan. 18 at 6 p.m. EST, protesters will hold a large vigil in front of the MCC on 150 Park Row in Lower Manhattan to call for a return of our constitutional rights. Join them if you can.
The case against Hashmi, like most of the terrorist cases launched by the Bush administration, is appallingly weak and built on flimsy circumstantial evidence. This may be the reason the state has set up parallel legal and penal codes to railroad those it charges with links to terrorism. If it were a matter of evidence, activists like Hashmi, who is accused of facilitating the delivery of socks to al-Qaida, would probably never be brought to trial.
Hashmi, who if convicted could face up to 70 years in prison, has been held in solitary confinement for more than 2½ years. Special administrative measures, known as SAMs, have been imposed by the attorney general to prevent or severely restrict communication with other prisoners, attorneys, family, the media and people outside the jail. He also is denied access to the news and other reading material. Hashmi is not allowed to attend group prayer. He is subject to 24-hour electronic monitoring and 23-hour lockdown. He must shower and go to the bathroom on camera. He can write one letter a week to a single member of his family, but he cannot use more than three pieces of paper. He has no access to fresh air and must take his one hour of daily recreation in a cage. His “proclivity for violence” is cited as the reason for these measures although he has never been charged or convicted with committing an act of violence.
“My brother was an activist,” Hashmi’s brother, Faisal, told me by phone from his home in Queens. “He spoke out on Muslim issues, especially those dealing with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His arrest and torture have nothing to do with providing ponchos and socks to al-Qaida, as has been charged, but the manipulation of the law to suppress activists and scare the Muslim American community. My brother is an example. His treatment is meant to show Muslims what will happen to them if they speak about the plight of Muslims. We have lost every single motion to preserve my brother’s humanity and remove the special administrative measures. These measures are designed solely to break the psyche of prisoners and terrorize the Muslim community. These measures exemplify the malice towards Muslims at home and the malice towards the millions of Muslims who are considered as non-humans in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
The extreme sensory deprivation used on Hashmi is a form of psychological torture, far more effective in breaking and disorienting detainees. It is torture as science. In Germany, the Gestapo broke bones while its successor, the communist East German Stasi, broke souls. We are like the Stasi. We have refined the art of psychological disintegration and drag bewildered suspects into secretive courts when they no longer have the mental and psychological capability to defend themselves.
“Hashmi’s right to a fair trial has been abridged,” said Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “Much of the evidence in the case has been classified under CIPA, and thus Hashmi has not been allowed to review it. The prosecution only recently turned over a significant portion of evidence to the defense. Hashmi may not communicate with the news media, either directly or through his attorneys. The conditions of his detention have impacted his mental state and ability to participate in his own defense.
“The prosecution’s case against Hashmi, an outspoken activist within the Muslim community, abridges his First Amendment rights and threatens the First Amendment rights of others,” Ratner added. “While Hashmi’s political and religious beliefs, speech and associations are constitutionally protected, the government has been given wide latitude by the court to use them as evidence of his frame of mind and, by extension, intent. The material support charges against him depend on criminalization of association. This could have a chilling effect on the First Amendment rights of others, particularly in activist and Muslim communities.”
Constitutionally protected statements, beliefs and associations can now become a crime. Dissidents, even those who break no laws, can be stripped of their rights and imprisoned without due process. It is the legal equivalent of preemptive war. The state can detain and prosecute people not for what they have done, or even for what they are planning to do, but for holding religious or political beliefs that the state deems seditious. The first of those targeted have been observant Muslims, but they will not be the last.
“Most of the evidence is classified,” Jeanne Theoharis, an associate professor of political science at Brooklyn College who taught Hashmi, told me, “but Hashmi is not allowed to see it. He is an American citizen. But in America you can now go to trial and all the evidence collected against you cannot be reviewed. You can spend 2½ years in solitary confinement before you are convicted of anything. There has been attention paid to extraordinary rendition, Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib with this false idea that if people are tried in the United States things will be fair. But what allowed Guantánamo to happen was the devolution of the rule of law here at home, and this is not only happening to Hashmi.”
Hashmi was, like so many of those arrested during the Bush years, briefly a poster child in the “war on terror.” He was apprehended in Britain on June 6, 2006, on a U.S. warrant. His arrest was the top story on the CBS and NBC nightly news programs, which used graphics that read “Terror Trail” and “Web of Terror.” He was held for 11 months at Belmarsh Prison in London and then became the first U.S. citizen to be extradited by Britain. The year before his arrest, Hashmi, a graduate of Brooklyn College, had completed his master’s degree in international relations at London Metropolitan University. His case has no more substance than the one against the seven men arrested on suspicion of plotting to blow up the Sears Tower, a case where, even though there were five convictions after two mistrials, an FBI deputy director acknowledged that the plan was more “aspirational rather than operational.” And it mirrors the older case of the Palestinian activist Sami Al-Arian, now under house arrest in Virginia, who has been hounded by the Justice Department although he should legally have been freed. Judge Leonie Brinkema, currently handling the Al-Arian case, in early March, questioned the U.S. attorney’s actions in Al-Arian’s plea agreement saying curtly: “I think there’s something more important here, and that’s the integrity of the Justice Department.”
The case against Hashmi revolves around the testimony of Junaid Babar, also an American citizen. Babar, in early 2004, stayed with Hashmi at his London apartment for two weeks. In his luggage, the government alleges, Babar had raincoats, ponchos and waterproof socks, which Babar later delivered to a member of al-Qaida in south Waziristan, Pakistan. It was alleged that Hashmi allowed Babar to use his cell phone to call conspirators in other terror plots.
“Hashmi grew up here, was well known here, was very outspoken, very charismatic and very political,” said Theoharis. “This is really a message being sent to American Muslims about the cost of being politically active. It is not about delivering alleged socks and ponchos and rain gear. Do you think al-Qaida can’t get socks and ponchos in Pakistan? The government is planning to introduce tapes of Hashmi’s political talks while he was at Brooklyn College at the trial. Why are we willing to let this happen? Is it because they are Muslims, and we think it will not affect us? People who care about First Amendment rights should be terrified. This is one of the crucial civil rights issues of our time. We ignore this at our own peril.”
Babar, who was arrested in 2004 and has pleaded guilty to five counts of material support for al-Qaida, also faces up to 70 years in prison. But he has agreed to serve as a government witness and has already testified for the government in terror trials in Britain and Canada. Babar will receive a reduced sentence for his services, and many speculate he will be set free after the Hashmi trial. Since there is very little evidence to link Hashmi to terrorist activity, the government will rely on Babar to prove intent. This intent will revolve around alleged conversations and statements Hashmi made in Babar’s presence. Hashmi, who was a member of the New York political group Al Muhajiroun as a student at Brooklyn College, has made provocative statements, including calling America “the biggest terrorist in the world,” but Al Muhajiroun is not defined by the government as a terrorist organization. Membership in the group is not illegal. And our complicity in acts of state terror is a historical fact.
There will be more Hashmis, and the Justice Department, planning for future detentions, set up in 2006 a segregated facility, the Communication Management Unit, at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. Nearly all the inmates transferred to Terre Haute are Muslims. A second facility has been set up at Marion, Ill., where the inmates again are mostly Muslim but also include a sprinkling of animal rights and environmental activists, among them Daniel McGowan, who was charged with two arsons at logging operations in Oregon. His sentence was given “terrorism enhancements” under the Patriot Act. Amnesty International has called the Marion prison facility “inhumane.” All calls and mail—although communication customarily is off-limits to prison officials—are monitored in these two Communication Management Units. Communication among prisoners is required to be only in English. The highest-level terrorists are housed at the Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, known as Supermax, in Florence, Colo., where prisoners have almost no human interaction, physical exercise or mental stimulation, replicating the conditions for most of those held at Guantánamo. If detainees are transferred from Guantánamo to the prison in in Thomson, Ill., they will find little change. They will endure Guantánamo-like conditions in colder weather.
Our descent is the familiar disease of decaying empires. The tyranny we impose on others we finally impose on ourselves. The influx of non-Muslim American activists into these facilities is another ominous development. It presages the continued dismantling of the rule of law, the widening of a system where prisoners are psychologically broken by sensory deprivation, extreme isolation and secretive kangaroo courts where suspects are sentenced on rumors and innuendo and denied the right to view the evidence against them. Dissent is no longer the duty of the engaged citizen but is becoming an act of terrorism.
Chris Hedges, whose column is published on Truthdig every Monday, spent two decades as a foreign reporter covering wars in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. He has written nine books, including “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” (2009) and “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” (2003).
Copyright © 2009 Truthdig, L.L.C.
December 28, 2009 "Truthdig" -- Syed Fahad Hashmi can tell you about the dark heart of America. He knows that our First Amendment rights have become a joke, that habeas corpus no longer exists and that we torture, not only in black sites such as those at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or at Guantánamo Bay, but also at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan. Hashmi is a U.S. citizen of Muslim descent imprisoned on two counts of providing and conspiring to provide material support and two counts of making and conspiring to make a contribution of goods or services to al-Qaida. As his case prepares for trial, his plight illustrates that the gravest threat we face is not from Islamic extremists, but the codification of draconian procedures that deny Americans basic civil liberties and due process. Hashmi would be a better person to tell you this, but he is not allowed to speak.
This corruption of our legal system, if history is any guide, will not be reserved by the state for suspected terrorists, or even Muslim Americans. In the coming turmoil and economic collapse, it will be used to silence all who are branded as disruptive or subversive. Hashmi endures what many others, who are not Muslim, will endure later. Radical activists in the environmental, globalization, anti-nuclear, sustainable agriculture and anarchist movements—who are already being placed by the state in special detention facilities with Muslims charged with terrorism—have discovered that his fate is their fate. Courageous groups have organized protests, including vigils outside the Manhattan detention facility. They can be found at www.educatorsforcivilliberties.org or www.freefahad.com. On Martin Luther King Day, this Jan. 18 at 6 p.m. EST, protesters will hold a large vigil in front of the MCC on 150 Park Row in Lower Manhattan to call for a return of our constitutional rights. Join them if you can.
The case against Hashmi, like most of the terrorist cases launched by the Bush administration, is appallingly weak and built on flimsy circumstantial evidence. This may be the reason the state has set up parallel legal and penal codes to railroad those it charges with links to terrorism. If it were a matter of evidence, activists like Hashmi, who is accused of facilitating the delivery of socks to al-Qaida, would probably never be brought to trial.
Hashmi, who if convicted could face up to 70 years in prison, has been held in solitary confinement for more than 2½ years. Special administrative measures, known as SAMs, have been imposed by the attorney general to prevent or severely restrict communication with other prisoners, attorneys, family, the media and people outside the jail. He also is denied access to the news and other reading material. Hashmi is not allowed to attend group prayer. He is subject to 24-hour electronic monitoring and 23-hour lockdown. He must shower and go to the bathroom on camera. He can write one letter a week to a single member of his family, but he cannot use more than three pieces of paper. He has no access to fresh air and must take his one hour of daily recreation in a cage. His “proclivity for violence” is cited as the reason for these measures although he has never been charged or convicted with committing an act of violence.
“My brother was an activist,” Hashmi’s brother, Faisal, told me by phone from his home in Queens. “He spoke out on Muslim issues, especially those dealing with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His arrest and torture have nothing to do with providing ponchos and socks to al-Qaida, as has been charged, but the manipulation of the law to suppress activists and scare the Muslim American community. My brother is an example. His treatment is meant to show Muslims what will happen to them if they speak about the plight of Muslims. We have lost every single motion to preserve my brother’s humanity and remove the special administrative measures. These measures are designed solely to break the psyche of prisoners and terrorize the Muslim community. These measures exemplify the malice towards Muslims at home and the malice towards the millions of Muslims who are considered as non-humans in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
The extreme sensory deprivation used on Hashmi is a form of psychological torture, far more effective in breaking and disorienting detainees. It is torture as science. In Germany, the Gestapo broke bones while its successor, the communist East German Stasi, broke souls. We are like the Stasi. We have refined the art of psychological disintegration and drag bewildered suspects into secretive courts when they no longer have the mental and psychological capability to defend themselves.
“Hashmi’s right to a fair trial has been abridged,” said Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “Much of the evidence in the case has been classified under CIPA, and thus Hashmi has not been allowed to review it. The prosecution only recently turned over a significant portion of evidence to the defense. Hashmi may not communicate with the news media, either directly or through his attorneys. The conditions of his detention have impacted his mental state and ability to participate in his own defense.
“The prosecution’s case against Hashmi, an outspoken activist within the Muslim community, abridges his First Amendment rights and threatens the First Amendment rights of others,” Ratner added. “While Hashmi’s political and religious beliefs, speech and associations are constitutionally protected, the government has been given wide latitude by the court to use them as evidence of his frame of mind and, by extension, intent. The material support charges against him depend on criminalization of association. This could have a chilling effect on the First Amendment rights of others, particularly in activist and Muslim communities.”
Constitutionally protected statements, beliefs and associations can now become a crime. Dissidents, even those who break no laws, can be stripped of their rights and imprisoned without due process. It is the legal equivalent of preemptive war. The state can detain and prosecute people not for what they have done, or even for what they are planning to do, but for holding religious or political beliefs that the state deems seditious. The first of those targeted have been observant Muslims, but they will not be the last.
“Most of the evidence is classified,” Jeanne Theoharis, an associate professor of political science at Brooklyn College who taught Hashmi, told me, “but Hashmi is not allowed to see it. He is an American citizen. But in America you can now go to trial and all the evidence collected against you cannot be reviewed. You can spend 2½ years in solitary confinement before you are convicted of anything. There has been attention paid to extraordinary rendition, Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib with this false idea that if people are tried in the United States things will be fair. But what allowed Guantánamo to happen was the devolution of the rule of law here at home, and this is not only happening to Hashmi.”
Hashmi was, like so many of those arrested during the Bush years, briefly a poster child in the “war on terror.” He was apprehended in Britain on June 6, 2006, on a U.S. warrant. His arrest was the top story on the CBS and NBC nightly news programs, which used graphics that read “Terror Trail” and “Web of Terror.” He was held for 11 months at Belmarsh Prison in London and then became the first U.S. citizen to be extradited by Britain. The year before his arrest, Hashmi, a graduate of Brooklyn College, had completed his master’s degree in international relations at London Metropolitan University. His case has no more substance than the one against the seven men arrested on suspicion of plotting to blow up the Sears Tower, a case where, even though there were five convictions after two mistrials, an FBI deputy director acknowledged that the plan was more “aspirational rather than operational.” And it mirrors the older case of the Palestinian activist Sami Al-Arian, now under house arrest in Virginia, who has been hounded by the Justice Department although he should legally have been freed. Judge Leonie Brinkema, currently handling the Al-Arian case, in early March, questioned the U.S. attorney’s actions in Al-Arian’s plea agreement saying curtly: “I think there’s something more important here, and that’s the integrity of the Justice Department.”
The case against Hashmi revolves around the testimony of Junaid Babar, also an American citizen. Babar, in early 2004, stayed with Hashmi at his London apartment for two weeks. In his luggage, the government alleges, Babar had raincoats, ponchos and waterproof socks, which Babar later delivered to a member of al-Qaida in south Waziristan, Pakistan. It was alleged that Hashmi allowed Babar to use his cell phone to call conspirators in other terror plots.
“Hashmi grew up here, was well known here, was very outspoken, very charismatic and very political,” said Theoharis. “This is really a message being sent to American Muslims about the cost of being politically active. It is not about delivering alleged socks and ponchos and rain gear. Do you think al-Qaida can’t get socks and ponchos in Pakistan? The government is planning to introduce tapes of Hashmi’s political talks while he was at Brooklyn College at the trial. Why are we willing to let this happen? Is it because they are Muslims, and we think it will not affect us? People who care about First Amendment rights should be terrified. This is one of the crucial civil rights issues of our time. We ignore this at our own peril.”
Babar, who was arrested in 2004 and has pleaded guilty to five counts of material support for al-Qaida, also faces up to 70 years in prison. But he has agreed to serve as a government witness and has already testified for the government in terror trials in Britain and Canada. Babar will receive a reduced sentence for his services, and many speculate he will be set free after the Hashmi trial. Since there is very little evidence to link Hashmi to terrorist activity, the government will rely on Babar to prove intent. This intent will revolve around alleged conversations and statements Hashmi made in Babar’s presence. Hashmi, who was a member of the New York political group Al Muhajiroun as a student at Brooklyn College, has made provocative statements, including calling America “the biggest terrorist in the world,” but Al Muhajiroun is not defined by the government as a terrorist organization. Membership in the group is not illegal. And our complicity in acts of state terror is a historical fact.
There will be more Hashmis, and the Justice Department, planning for future detentions, set up in 2006 a segregated facility, the Communication Management Unit, at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. Nearly all the inmates transferred to Terre Haute are Muslims. A second facility has been set up at Marion, Ill., where the inmates again are mostly Muslim but also include a sprinkling of animal rights and environmental activists, among them Daniel McGowan, who was charged with two arsons at logging operations in Oregon. His sentence was given “terrorism enhancements” under the Patriot Act. Amnesty International has called the Marion prison facility “inhumane.” All calls and mail—although communication customarily is off-limits to prison officials—are monitored in these two Communication Management Units. Communication among prisoners is required to be only in English. The highest-level terrorists are housed at the Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, known as Supermax, in Florence, Colo., where prisoners have almost no human interaction, physical exercise or mental stimulation, replicating the conditions for most of those held at Guantánamo. If detainees are transferred from Guantánamo to the prison in in Thomson, Ill., they will find little change. They will endure Guantánamo-like conditions in colder weather.
Our descent is the familiar disease of decaying empires. The tyranny we impose on others we finally impose on ourselves. The influx of non-Muslim American activists into these facilities is another ominous development. It presages the continued dismantling of the rule of law, the widening of a system where prisoners are psychologically broken by sensory deprivation, extreme isolation and secretive kangaroo courts where suspects are sentenced on rumors and innuendo and denied the right to view the evidence against them. Dissent is no longer the duty of the engaged citizen but is becoming an act of terrorism.
Chris Hedges, whose column is published on Truthdig every Monday, spent two decades as a foreign reporter covering wars in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. He has written nine books, including “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” (2009) and “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” (2003).
Copyright © 2009 Truthdig, L.L.C.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Overlooked 150 Year Old Household Cleaner a Remedy for Swine Flu?
Posted by: Dr. Mercola
December 15 2009
In today’s modern world of medicine the FDA just will not let companies that sell products make medical claims about them unless they have been tested at great expense, and approved as a drug. But this was not always the case.
In a 1924 booklet published by the Arm & Hammer Soda Company, the company starts off saying, “The proven value of Arm & Hammer Bicarbonate of Soda as a therapeutic agent is further evinced by the following evidence of a prominent physician named Dr. Volney S. Cheney, in a letter to the Church & Dwight Company:
“In 1918 and 1919 while fighting the ‘Flu’ with the U. S. Public Health Service it was brought to my attention that rarely any one who had been thoroughly alkalinized with bicarbonate of soda contracted the disease, and those who did contract it, if alkalinized early, would invariably have mild attacks.”
Recommended dosages from the Arm and Hammer Company for colds and influenza back in 1925 were:
* During the first day take six doses of half teaspoonful of Bicarbonate of Soda in glass of cool water, at about two hour intervals
* During the second day take four doses of half teaspoonful of Bicarbonate of Soda in glass of cool water, at the same intervals
* During the third day take two doses of half teaspoonful of Bicarbonate of Soda in glass of cool water morning and evening, and thereafter half teaspoonful in glass of cool water each morning until cold is cured
Sources:
Sodium Bicarbonate November 30, 2009
Dr. Mercola's Comments:
Follow me on facebook
Baking soda (also known as sodium bicarbonate), popularized by Arm & Hammer some 155 years ago, is derived from a natural occurring mineral, and is one of the safest and most versatile substances around. In fact, if you search for “baking soda” on my site, you’ll find a number of articles detailing its potential uses, including using it as a:
* Household cleaner
* Sunburn remedy
* Alternative to toxic antiperspirants
* Sports performance enhancer
Few people realize, however, that baking soda also has potent medicinal properties. Taken internally, it helps maintain the pH balance in your bloodstream. This is likely the basic premise behind its recommended uses against both colds and influenza symptoms, and even cancer.
WARNING!!!
Many believe that Arm and Hammer Baking Soda is contaminated with aluminum even though the company that makes it claims it does not. We have been able to confirm that there are aluminum free baking sodas like Bob's Red Mill Baking Soda. If you have any information on this please add it to the comment section below.
Baking Soda as an All-Natural Cold Remedy
In their booklet “Arm & Hammer Baking Soda Medical Uses,” published in 1924, Dr. Volney S. Cheney recounts his clinical successes with sodium bicarbonate in treating cold and flu:
“In 1918 and 1919 while fighting the ‘flu’ with the U. S. Public Health Service it was brought to my attention that rarely anyone who had been thoroughly alkalinized with bicarbonate of soda contracted the disease, and those who did contract it, if alkalinized early, would invariably have mild attacks.
I have since that time treated all cases of ‘cold,’ influenza and LaGripe by first giving generous doses of bicarbonate of soda, and in many, many instances within 36 hours the symptoms would have entirely abated.
Further, within my own household, before Woman’s Clubs and Parent-Teachers’ Associations, I have advocated the use of bicarbonate of soda as a preventive for “colds,” with the result that now many reports are coming in stating that those who took “soda” were not affected, while nearly everyone around them had the “flu.”
According to the Materia Medica by Walter Bastedo, sodium bicarbonate taken internally can soothe your mucous membranes and dissolve thick mucus.
It’s worth noting that I have personally never tried this cold remedy, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it worked, as maintaining proper acid-alkalinity balance in your body will have a beneficial impact on your natural immune system function.
If any of you have experience using baking soda as a cold remedy, I’d love to hear about it.
The administration is easy enough, and is harmless even if you should not experience relief from your cold symptoms. Simply dissolve the recommended amount of baking soda in a glass of cold water and drink it.
Recommended dosages from the Arm & Hammer Company for colds and influenza back in 1925 were:
* Day 1 -- Take six doses of ½ teaspoon of baking soda in glass of cool water, at about two hour intervals
* Day 2 -- Take four doses of ½ teaspoon of baking soda in glass of cool water, at the same intervals
* Day 3 -- Take two doses of ½ teaspoon of baking soda in glass of cool water morning and evening, and thereafter ½ teaspoon in glass of cool water each morning until cold symptoms are gone
Further dosing recommendations and instructions for taking sodium bicarbonate can be found in Mark Sircus’ book Sodium Bicarbonate – Rich Mans Poor Mans Cancer Treatment, which is also available in Kindle edition.
According to Arm & Hammer’s dosing instructions, do not exceed seven doses of ½ teaspoon per day, or three doses of ½ teaspoon daily if you’re over the age of 60. In addition, do not use the maximum dosage for more than two weeks.
The Potent Healing Power of Baking Soda
Dr. Tullio Simonici and Mark Sircus, Ac, OMD both advocate using baking soda for even the most serious of diseases – cancer!
Unfortunately, despite all the evidence showing that baking soda indeed has enormous potential as an effective and non-toxic cancer treatment, conventional medicine is refusing to take notice, as baking soda will never be a huge profit center for any drug company.
Even worse, the industry tries to discredit or downright destroy those who dare bring inexpensive treatment options like baking soda to the forefront. Make no mistake about it, cancer treatment is big business, and for all the promises to find a cure, there seems to be an unwritten law somewhere stating it will only be studied and accepted if there’s big profits to be had.
Dr. Simoncini, who is an oncologist (cancer specialist), was ousted from the medical community when he refused to use conventional cancer treatment methods and elected instead to administer sodium bicarbonate.
This despite the fact that he’s been able to show that 99 percent of breast- and bladder cancer can heal in just six days, entirely without the use of surgery, chemo or radiation, using just a local infiltration device (such as a catheter) to deliver the sodium bicarbonate directly to the infected site in your breast tissue or bladder!
You can watch actual before and after footage of the treatment working in this video.
In his book Winning the War on Cancer, Dr. Sircus writes:
“Sodium bicarbonate is the time honored method to 'speed up' the return of the body’s bicarbonate levels to normal. Bicarbonate is inorganic, very alkaline and like other mineral type substances, supports an extensive list of biological functions.
Sodium bicarbonate happens to be one of our most useful medicines because bicarbonate physiology is fundamental to life and health.”
Many chemotherapy treatments actually include sodium bicarbonate to help protect the patient’s kidneys, heart and nervous system. It’s been said that administering chemotherapy without bicarbonate could possibly kill you on the spot.
Could it be that while mixing chemo poisons with baking soda, any improvements seen are the result of the baking soda, and not the toxic poisons? Dr. Sircus believes that may be the case.
“There are no studies separating the effects of bicarbonate from the toxic chemotherapy agents, nor will there ever be,” he says.
Final Thoughts
If you keep an open mind, you will quickly learn that there are numerous ways to support your body in healing that have nothing to do with toxic drugs, vaccines, or surgery, even when it comes to a serious condition like cancer.
For my Top 12 all-natural cancer prevention strategies, please review my previous article, Winning the War on Cancer.
As for preventive measures against cold and flu, please read through the three articles listed below. They’re all chockfull of helpful tips and guidelines to make cold and flu symptoms a thing of the past.
Related Links:
How to Prevent the Flu -- as Easy as 1, 2, 3...
Avoid Flu Shots With the One Vitamin that Will Stop Flu in Its Tracks
Top 12 Foods for Healthy Immune Response
December 15 2009
In today’s modern world of medicine the FDA just will not let companies that sell products make medical claims about them unless they have been tested at great expense, and approved as a drug. But this was not always the case.
In a 1924 booklet published by the Arm & Hammer Soda Company, the company starts off saying, “The proven value of Arm & Hammer Bicarbonate of Soda as a therapeutic agent is further evinced by the following evidence of a prominent physician named Dr. Volney S. Cheney, in a letter to the Church & Dwight Company:
“In 1918 and 1919 while fighting the ‘Flu’ with the U. S. Public Health Service it was brought to my attention that rarely any one who had been thoroughly alkalinized with bicarbonate of soda contracted the disease, and those who did contract it, if alkalinized early, would invariably have mild attacks.”
Recommended dosages from the Arm and Hammer Company for colds and influenza back in 1925 were:
* During the first day take six doses of half teaspoonful of Bicarbonate of Soda in glass of cool water, at about two hour intervals
* During the second day take four doses of half teaspoonful of Bicarbonate of Soda in glass of cool water, at the same intervals
* During the third day take two doses of half teaspoonful of Bicarbonate of Soda in glass of cool water morning and evening, and thereafter half teaspoonful in glass of cool water each morning until cold is cured
Sources:
Sodium Bicarbonate November 30, 2009
Dr. Mercola's Comments:
Follow me on facebook
Baking soda (also known as sodium bicarbonate), popularized by Arm & Hammer some 155 years ago, is derived from a natural occurring mineral, and is one of the safest and most versatile substances around. In fact, if you search for “baking soda” on my site, you’ll find a number of articles detailing its potential uses, including using it as a:
* Household cleaner
* Sunburn remedy
* Alternative to toxic antiperspirants
* Sports performance enhancer
Few people realize, however, that baking soda also has potent medicinal properties. Taken internally, it helps maintain the pH balance in your bloodstream. This is likely the basic premise behind its recommended uses against both colds and influenza symptoms, and even cancer.
WARNING!!!
Many believe that Arm and Hammer Baking Soda is contaminated with aluminum even though the company that makes it claims it does not. We have been able to confirm that there are aluminum free baking sodas like Bob's Red Mill Baking Soda. If you have any information on this please add it to the comment section below.
Baking Soda as an All-Natural Cold Remedy
In their booklet “Arm & Hammer Baking Soda Medical Uses,” published in 1924, Dr. Volney S. Cheney recounts his clinical successes with sodium bicarbonate in treating cold and flu:
“In 1918 and 1919 while fighting the ‘flu’ with the U. S. Public Health Service it was brought to my attention that rarely anyone who had been thoroughly alkalinized with bicarbonate of soda contracted the disease, and those who did contract it, if alkalinized early, would invariably have mild attacks.
I have since that time treated all cases of ‘cold,’ influenza and LaGripe by first giving generous doses of bicarbonate of soda, and in many, many instances within 36 hours the symptoms would have entirely abated.
Further, within my own household, before Woman’s Clubs and Parent-Teachers’ Associations, I have advocated the use of bicarbonate of soda as a preventive for “colds,” with the result that now many reports are coming in stating that those who took “soda” were not affected, while nearly everyone around them had the “flu.”
According to the Materia Medica by Walter Bastedo, sodium bicarbonate taken internally can soothe your mucous membranes and dissolve thick mucus.
It’s worth noting that I have personally never tried this cold remedy, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it worked, as maintaining proper acid-alkalinity balance in your body will have a beneficial impact on your natural immune system function.
If any of you have experience using baking soda as a cold remedy, I’d love to hear about it.
The administration is easy enough, and is harmless even if you should not experience relief from your cold symptoms. Simply dissolve the recommended amount of baking soda in a glass of cold water and drink it.
Recommended dosages from the Arm & Hammer Company for colds and influenza back in 1925 were:
* Day 1 -- Take six doses of ½ teaspoon of baking soda in glass of cool water, at about two hour intervals
* Day 2 -- Take four doses of ½ teaspoon of baking soda in glass of cool water, at the same intervals
* Day 3 -- Take two doses of ½ teaspoon of baking soda in glass of cool water morning and evening, and thereafter ½ teaspoon in glass of cool water each morning until cold symptoms are gone
Further dosing recommendations and instructions for taking sodium bicarbonate can be found in Mark Sircus’ book Sodium Bicarbonate – Rich Mans Poor Mans Cancer Treatment, which is also available in Kindle edition.
According to Arm & Hammer’s dosing instructions, do not exceed seven doses of ½ teaspoon per day, or three doses of ½ teaspoon daily if you’re over the age of 60. In addition, do not use the maximum dosage for more than two weeks.
The Potent Healing Power of Baking Soda
Dr. Tullio Simonici and Mark Sircus, Ac, OMD both advocate using baking soda for even the most serious of diseases – cancer!
Unfortunately, despite all the evidence showing that baking soda indeed has enormous potential as an effective and non-toxic cancer treatment, conventional medicine is refusing to take notice, as baking soda will never be a huge profit center for any drug company.
Even worse, the industry tries to discredit or downright destroy those who dare bring inexpensive treatment options like baking soda to the forefront. Make no mistake about it, cancer treatment is big business, and for all the promises to find a cure, there seems to be an unwritten law somewhere stating it will only be studied and accepted if there’s big profits to be had.
Dr. Simoncini, who is an oncologist (cancer specialist), was ousted from the medical community when he refused to use conventional cancer treatment methods and elected instead to administer sodium bicarbonate.
This despite the fact that he’s been able to show that 99 percent of breast- and bladder cancer can heal in just six days, entirely without the use of surgery, chemo or radiation, using just a local infiltration device (such as a catheter) to deliver the sodium bicarbonate directly to the infected site in your breast tissue or bladder!
You can watch actual before and after footage of the treatment working in this video.
In his book Winning the War on Cancer, Dr. Sircus writes:
“Sodium bicarbonate is the time honored method to 'speed up' the return of the body’s bicarbonate levels to normal. Bicarbonate is inorganic, very alkaline and like other mineral type substances, supports an extensive list of biological functions.
Sodium bicarbonate happens to be one of our most useful medicines because bicarbonate physiology is fundamental to life and health.”
Many chemotherapy treatments actually include sodium bicarbonate to help protect the patient’s kidneys, heart and nervous system. It’s been said that administering chemotherapy without bicarbonate could possibly kill you on the spot.
Could it be that while mixing chemo poisons with baking soda, any improvements seen are the result of the baking soda, and not the toxic poisons? Dr. Sircus believes that may be the case.
“There are no studies separating the effects of bicarbonate from the toxic chemotherapy agents, nor will there ever be,” he says.
Final Thoughts
If you keep an open mind, you will quickly learn that there are numerous ways to support your body in healing that have nothing to do with toxic drugs, vaccines, or surgery, even when it comes to a serious condition like cancer.
For my Top 12 all-natural cancer prevention strategies, please review my previous article, Winning the War on Cancer.
As for preventive measures against cold and flu, please read through the three articles listed below. They’re all chockfull of helpful tips and guidelines to make cold and flu symptoms a thing of the past.
Related Links:
How to Prevent the Flu -- as Easy as 1, 2, 3...
Avoid Flu Shots With the One Vitamin that Will Stop Flu in Its Tracks
Top 12 Foods for Healthy Immune Response
Shas party spiritual leader on Muslims: “Their religion is as ugly as they are.”
by Yaniv Reich
December 14, 2009
An outrageously large number of Israeli politicians express violently racist sentiments in public. What must they say in private?
Today’s case study in Israeli racism toward Arabs/Palestinians/Persians/Muslims (aren’t they all the same anyway?) comes from Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who is the spiritual leader of Shas, a right-wing, religious party in Israeli with 11 Knesset seats (out of 120). It is the fifth largest political block at the moment and sits in PM Netanyahu’s coalition government. Its party members currently hold four cabinet posts, including Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior. In other words, Shas is not some fringe group of outpost settlers (although settlers are, of course, duly supported by them), but rather an integral part of Israeli government and society.
This is what their spiritual leader had to say about Muslims:
"They’re stupid. Their religion is as ugly as they are."
(Thanks to Coteret for initially posting this article.)
December 14, 2009
An outrageously large number of Israeli politicians express violently racist sentiments in public. What must they say in private?
Today’s case study in Israeli racism toward Arabs/Palestinians/Persians/Muslims (aren’t they all the same anyway?) comes from Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who is the spiritual leader of Shas, a right-wing, religious party in Israeli with 11 Knesset seats (out of 120). It is the fifth largest political block at the moment and sits in PM Netanyahu’s coalition government. Its party members currently hold four cabinet posts, including Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior. In other words, Shas is not some fringe group of outpost settlers (although settlers are, of course, duly supported by them), but rather an integral part of Israeli government and society.
This is what their spiritual leader had to say about Muslims:
"They’re stupid. Their religion is as ugly as they are."
(Thanks to Coteret for initially posting this article.)
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Pakistan withdrawing troops from Balochistan
Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:12:19 GMT
Pakistan is withdrawing its troops from parts of the country's southwestern Balochistan province that has been rocked by ethnic unrest in recent years.
The withdrawal, which was ordered by Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Reza Gilani, started on Wednesday morning.
Islamabad says the move is part of a Balochistan Rights Initiative package.
However, the head of a Pakistani opposition political party says Baloch leaders have rejected the package altogether.
The Chairman of the Sindh Taraqi Pasand Party (STP) accuses Islamabad of being hypocritical.
Qadir Magsi says the Pakistani government is supporting terrorists while at the same time it is launching operations against militants.
In 2004, the Baloch rebels took up arms against the federal government, demanding autonomy for the province and greater shares from the region's natural resources.
Pakistan is withdrawing its troops from parts of the country's southwestern Balochistan province that has been rocked by ethnic unrest in recent years.
The withdrawal, which was ordered by Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Reza Gilani, started on Wednesday morning.
Islamabad says the move is part of a Balochistan Rights Initiative package.
However, the head of a Pakistani opposition political party says Baloch leaders have rejected the package altogether.
The Chairman of the Sindh Taraqi Pasand Party (STP) accuses Islamabad of being hypocritical.
Qadir Magsi says the Pakistani government is supporting terrorists while at the same time it is launching operations against militants.
In 2004, the Baloch rebels took up arms against the federal government, demanding autonomy for the province and greater shares from the region's natural resources.
Egypt's iron wall to block Gaza tunnels
Wed, 09 Dec 2009 09:54:32 GMT
Egypt is building a massive iron wall along its border with the Gaza Strip to disrupt the tunnels Palestinians use to transfer food and other basic needs into the blockaded territory.
The wall which will be 9 to 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) long, and will go as deep as 20 to 30 meters into the ground, Haaretz reported.
The structure is made of huge slates of steel, and will be impossible to cut or melt, the daily quoted Egyptian sources as saying.
The barrier wall is the latest move by the Cairo government in assisting Israel with its crippling siege on the Hamas-run coastal enclave since the closure started in June 2007.
The Egyptian forces demolish tunnels or fill them with gas almost every week, often with people still inside them, resulting in Palestinian casualties in the tunnels which are also regularly pounded by Israeli planes.
Joint American-Egyptian patrols have been seen in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah as they try to detect tunnels using underground sensors.
Palestinians say the tunnels are the only resort to provide food and other basic needs for the starving population in the impoverished territory.
Egypt is building a massive iron wall along its border with the Gaza Strip to disrupt the tunnels Palestinians use to transfer food and other basic needs into the blockaded territory.
The wall which will be 9 to 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) long, and will go as deep as 20 to 30 meters into the ground, Haaretz reported.
The structure is made of huge slates of steel, and will be impossible to cut or melt, the daily quoted Egyptian sources as saying.
The barrier wall is the latest move by the Cairo government in assisting Israel with its crippling siege on the Hamas-run coastal enclave since the closure started in June 2007.
The Egyptian forces demolish tunnels or fill them with gas almost every week, often with people still inside them, resulting in Palestinian casualties in the tunnels which are also regularly pounded by Israeli planes.
Joint American-Egyptian patrols have been seen in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah as they try to detect tunnels using underground sensors.
Palestinians say the tunnels are the only resort to provide food and other basic needs for the starving population in the impoverished territory.
Christians, Muslims warn of moves against Al-Aqsa
Wed, 09 Dec 2009 03:28:53 GMT
Christian and Muslim figures have warned that Israel intends to impose a fait accompli at the Al-Aqsa Mosque as part of its Judaization campaign that targets East Jerusalem Al-Quds.
During an emergency meeting held in Jerusalem Al-Quds on Monday, the attendees stated that such serious moves against the Al-Aqsa Mosque will raise the ire of the Muslim world and cause an international crisis, according to the Palestinian Information Center.
The meeting also addressed the Israeli decisions to prevent a number of Palestinian scholars, preachers, and national figures from entering the Al-Aqsa Mosque and to impose a ban on the Muslim prayer call at Jerusalem Al-Quds mosques and elsewhere in occupied Palestine.
In a joint statement issued at the end of the meeting, the participants emphasized the importance of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the Muslim faith, adding that the mosque and its entire premises belong to all Muslims.
Muslims consider the frequent Israeli attacks on the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound as part of a Judaization campaign that targets the holy city of Jerusalem Al-Quds.
MP/HGL
Christian and Muslim figures have warned that Israel intends to impose a fait accompli at the Al-Aqsa Mosque as part of its Judaization campaign that targets East Jerusalem Al-Quds.
During an emergency meeting held in Jerusalem Al-Quds on Monday, the attendees stated that such serious moves against the Al-Aqsa Mosque will raise the ire of the Muslim world and cause an international crisis, according to the Palestinian Information Center.
The meeting also addressed the Israeli decisions to prevent a number of Palestinian scholars, preachers, and national figures from entering the Al-Aqsa Mosque and to impose a ban on the Muslim prayer call at Jerusalem Al-Quds mosques and elsewhere in occupied Palestine.
In a joint statement issued at the end of the meeting, the participants emphasized the importance of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the Muslim faith, adding that the mosque and its entire premises belong to all Muslims.
Muslims consider the frequent Israeli attacks on the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound as part of a Judaization campaign that targets the holy city of Jerusalem Al-Quds.
MP/HGL
Imitating non-Muslims and taking part in their celebrations
Muslims celebrating Christmas
Question
Can a Muslim celebrate Christmas? Is there any Aalim who tells that it is Haram to celebrate? If so who? Is there any Fatwa about celebrating Christmas? Is it written in the holy Qur'an about Christmas?
Fatwa
Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the World; and blessings and peace be upon our Prophet Muhammad and upon all his Family and Companions.
A Muslim should be thankful to Allah for His great blessings upon him. He Who Guided him to the right path. So he should keep on supplicating Allah to make him steadfast on this path which is the path of blessed people and to keeping him away from the path of those who deserve His Anger and of those who went astray.
The Kuffars spare no efforts to draw the Muslims away from the straight path and to cut their relation with their true religion. Allah Says (interpretation of meaning): {Many of the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians) wish that if they could turn you away as disbelievers after you have believed, out of envy from their ownselves, even, after the truth (that Muhammad sallallaahu `alayhi wa sallam ( may Allaah exalt his mention ) is Allâh's Messenger) has become manifest unto them. But forgive and overlook, till Allâh brings His Command. Verily, Allâh is Able to do all things.}[2:109].
We the Muslims are proud of our religion that was revealed to us by Allah and are thankful that Allah has chosen us for his religion.
Allah Says (interpretation of meaning): {… This day, I have perfected your religion for you, completed My Favour upon you, and have chosen for you Islâm as your religion. …}[5:3].
The Kuffars' celebrations such as the second millenium, Christmas Day, etc. are among the falsehoods that a Muslim should avoid. Allah Says (interpretation of meaning): {And those who do not witness falsehood, and if they pass by some evil play or evil talk, they pass by it with dignity.}[25:72].
Many known ancestors made clear that the "falsehood" in the above verse means feasts of Kuffars. Imam Ahmad in his book of Hadith al-Musnad and Imam Tirmizi in his book of Sunan reported on the authority of Anas who said that the Prophet came to Madinah while people there had two days in which they played. The Prophet asked, "What are these two days?" They said, "These are two days we used to play in, in our Jahiliyyah! The Prophet said, "Allah has replaced them with two better days. Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr".
A person came to the Prophet and said: "I have taken a vow to sacrifice a camel at Buwanah. The Prophet (peace be upon him) asked: Did the place contain any idol worshipped in pre-Islamic times? They (the people) said: No. He asked: Was any pre-Islamic festival observed there? They replied: No. The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: Fulfil your vow, for a vow to do an act of disobedience to Allah must not be fulfilled, neither must one do something over which a human being has no control."
No doubt celebrating such feasts is actually imitating unbelievers. The companion of the Prophet Abdullah Bin Amar bin al-'Aas said: 'Whoever celebrates the Persian New Year's Day or their carnival and imitates them till his death he will be resurrected with them on the Day of Judgment'.
The Prophet said as reported in a sound Hadith: "Who imitates non-Muslims he is one of them" [Imams Ahmad and Abu Dawood].
Therefore, a Muslim is neither allowed to celebrate the Christmas Day nor is he allowed to congratulate them. Nor, does a Muslim celebrate any of their other feast days. A Muslim celebrates only the Islamic Eid days.
Many times Allah has mentioned the details of the birth of Jesus in the Qur'an but He did not mention any celebration to be done on this occasion.
Please read the Fatwa: 82006.
Allah knows best.
Question
Can a Muslim celebrate Christmas? Is there any Aalim who tells that it is Haram to celebrate? If so who? Is there any Fatwa about celebrating Christmas? Is it written in the holy Qur'an about Christmas?
Fatwa
Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the World; and blessings and peace be upon our Prophet Muhammad and upon all his Family and Companions.
A Muslim should be thankful to Allah for His great blessings upon him. He Who Guided him to the right path. So he should keep on supplicating Allah to make him steadfast on this path which is the path of blessed people and to keeping him away from the path of those who deserve His Anger and of those who went astray.
The Kuffars spare no efforts to draw the Muslims away from the straight path and to cut their relation with their true religion. Allah Says (interpretation of meaning): {Many of the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians) wish that if they could turn you away as disbelievers after you have believed, out of envy from their ownselves, even, after the truth (that Muhammad sallallaahu `alayhi wa sallam ( may Allaah exalt his mention ) is Allâh's Messenger) has become manifest unto them. But forgive and overlook, till Allâh brings His Command. Verily, Allâh is Able to do all things.}[2:109].
We the Muslims are proud of our religion that was revealed to us by Allah and are thankful that Allah has chosen us for his religion.
Allah Says (interpretation of meaning): {… This day, I have perfected your religion for you, completed My Favour upon you, and have chosen for you Islâm as your religion. …}[5:3].
The Kuffars' celebrations such as the second millenium, Christmas Day, etc. are among the falsehoods that a Muslim should avoid. Allah Says (interpretation of meaning): {And those who do not witness falsehood, and if they pass by some evil play or evil talk, they pass by it with dignity.}[25:72].
Many known ancestors made clear that the "falsehood" in the above verse means feasts of Kuffars. Imam Ahmad in his book of Hadith al-Musnad and Imam Tirmizi in his book of Sunan reported on the authority of Anas who said that the Prophet came to Madinah while people there had two days in which they played. The Prophet asked, "What are these two days?" They said, "These are two days we used to play in, in our Jahiliyyah! The Prophet said, "Allah has replaced them with two better days. Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr".
A person came to the Prophet and said: "I have taken a vow to sacrifice a camel at Buwanah. The Prophet (peace be upon him) asked: Did the place contain any idol worshipped in pre-Islamic times? They (the people) said: No. He asked: Was any pre-Islamic festival observed there? They replied: No. The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: Fulfil your vow, for a vow to do an act of disobedience to Allah must not be fulfilled, neither must one do something over which a human being has no control."
No doubt celebrating such feasts is actually imitating unbelievers. The companion of the Prophet Abdullah Bin Amar bin al-'Aas said: 'Whoever celebrates the Persian New Year's Day or their carnival and imitates them till his death he will be resurrected with them on the Day of Judgment'.
The Prophet said as reported in a sound Hadith: "Who imitates non-Muslims he is one of them" [Imams Ahmad and Abu Dawood].
Therefore, a Muslim is neither allowed to celebrate the Christmas Day nor is he allowed to congratulate them. Nor, does a Muslim celebrate any of their other feast days. A Muslim celebrates only the Islamic Eid days.
Many times Allah has mentioned the details of the birth of Jesus in the Qur'an but He did not mention any celebration to be done on this occasion.
Please read the Fatwa: 82006.
Allah knows best.
Monday, December 7, 2009
A Message From The Taliban Who Is Responsible for the Anarchy in Afghanistan?
By Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan
December 06, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- Dec, 04, 2009 -- Obama’s new strategy which is the result of the same mentality that wants to continue the occupation of Afghanistan by military means, will add to the anarchy prevailing in the country. In fact, Americans are responsible for the chaotic situation. They handed over power to notorious warlords, venal officials and mafia-linked governors;
But still, they claim that they want a clean government in Kabul while their convoys of logistics are escorted by some murderous militias involved in kidnapping and extortion of arbitrary taxes. There are hundreds of private unregistered militias in Afghanistan under the name of security guards who carry heroin in official vehicles. These militias have links with warlords who have hold over high government positions. They carry out their criminal activities with impunity.
The warlords usurp government and people’s lands and buildings. No one can ask them why. A government land in Shirpur, located to the north-east of the Kabul city is a good example on hand. Once a property of the Ministry of Defense, now it is a posh area usurped by the warlords who have built luxurious houses there. Karzai himself has granted 6000-7000 acres of lands to his favorites. Many drug-smugglers who had been sentenced to prison by court have been released by decrees of the President.
General Khudaidad, Minister of the Narcotic Campaign of the Kabul Administration has acknowledged in a press conference that US military officers had hands in drug trafficking. Abdul Jabbar Sabit, former attorney-general of the Kabul Administration, says he was not able to lay his hand on some notorious governors involved in drug-trafficking and bribery because they were protected by high-ups in the government. Ultimately, Abdul Jabar Sabit was forced to resign. American Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, many times has referred to Afghanistan as a Mafia State but she did not say that the Mafia State was their handiwork.
Independent analysts around the world believe that USA wants to keep a corrupt government installed in Kabul because this will provide a justification to maintain American military presence in the country. Similarly, on the one hand, the White House Security Advisor James Jones says there are fewer than 100 Al-qaeda members in Afghanistan and on the other hand, Obama sends 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. This high gap between words and deeds shows that America has other colonialist objectives in Afghanistan and in the region, ostensibly under the name of the so-called War on Terror. Furthermore, they claim that they want to resolve the Afghan issue through negotiation and reconciliation; but practically, they want Mujahideen to lay down arms and accept the Constitution conceived and framed by America and want to keep their bases in Afghanistan for a longer period. Thus under the ploy of negotiation, the White House wants to find a pretext to continue their occupation of Afghanistan.
The Afghans, particularly the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, has no agenda of meddling in the internal affairs of other countries and is ready to give legal guarantee if the foreign forces withdraw from Afghanistan. But the Mujahideen are not ready to allow foreign bases in Afghanistan or trade on the independence of the country. Ironically, after American invasion of Afghanistan, the country has been turned into a battle ground of rival intelligence agencies which are linked with the regime in Kabul and have hidden agendas against surrounding countries.
Bomb blasts in public places are the work of these agencies. The more the foreign troops stay in Afghanistan, the more such gruesome events will take place. In the present time, the Mujahideen are the only force which wants to release the Afghans and the country from being hostage in the cobweb of foreign agencies. With the victory of Mujahideen in Afghanistan, the whole region will take a breath of relief and the current bloodshed will come to an end. But it is responsibility of all who have free conscious to morally help Mujahideen to free the region from the vortex of the colonialist machinations.
Official website of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban).
December 06, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- Dec, 04, 2009 -- Obama’s new strategy which is the result of the same mentality that wants to continue the occupation of Afghanistan by military means, will add to the anarchy prevailing in the country. In fact, Americans are responsible for the chaotic situation. They handed over power to notorious warlords, venal officials and mafia-linked governors;
But still, they claim that they want a clean government in Kabul while their convoys of logistics are escorted by some murderous militias involved in kidnapping and extortion of arbitrary taxes. There are hundreds of private unregistered militias in Afghanistan under the name of security guards who carry heroin in official vehicles. These militias have links with warlords who have hold over high government positions. They carry out their criminal activities with impunity.
The warlords usurp government and people’s lands and buildings. No one can ask them why. A government land in Shirpur, located to the north-east of the Kabul city is a good example on hand. Once a property of the Ministry of Defense, now it is a posh area usurped by the warlords who have built luxurious houses there. Karzai himself has granted 6000-7000 acres of lands to his favorites. Many drug-smugglers who had been sentenced to prison by court have been released by decrees of the President.
General Khudaidad, Minister of the Narcotic Campaign of the Kabul Administration has acknowledged in a press conference that US military officers had hands in drug trafficking. Abdul Jabbar Sabit, former attorney-general of the Kabul Administration, says he was not able to lay his hand on some notorious governors involved in drug-trafficking and bribery because they were protected by high-ups in the government. Ultimately, Abdul Jabar Sabit was forced to resign. American Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, many times has referred to Afghanistan as a Mafia State but she did not say that the Mafia State was their handiwork.
Independent analysts around the world believe that USA wants to keep a corrupt government installed in Kabul because this will provide a justification to maintain American military presence in the country. Similarly, on the one hand, the White House Security Advisor James Jones says there are fewer than 100 Al-qaeda members in Afghanistan and on the other hand, Obama sends 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. This high gap between words and deeds shows that America has other colonialist objectives in Afghanistan and in the region, ostensibly under the name of the so-called War on Terror. Furthermore, they claim that they want to resolve the Afghan issue through negotiation and reconciliation; but practically, they want Mujahideen to lay down arms and accept the Constitution conceived and framed by America and want to keep their bases in Afghanistan for a longer period. Thus under the ploy of negotiation, the White House wants to find a pretext to continue their occupation of Afghanistan.
The Afghans, particularly the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, has no agenda of meddling in the internal affairs of other countries and is ready to give legal guarantee if the foreign forces withdraw from Afghanistan. But the Mujahideen are not ready to allow foreign bases in Afghanistan or trade on the independence of the country. Ironically, after American invasion of Afghanistan, the country has been turned into a battle ground of rival intelligence agencies which are linked with the regime in Kabul and have hidden agendas against surrounding countries.
Bomb blasts in public places are the work of these agencies. The more the foreign troops stay in Afghanistan, the more such gruesome events will take place. In the present time, the Mujahideen are the only force which wants to release the Afghans and the country from being hostage in the cobweb of foreign agencies. With the victory of Mujahideen in Afghanistan, the whole region will take a breath of relief and the current bloodshed will come to an end. But it is responsibility of all who have free conscious to morally help Mujahideen to free the region from the vortex of the colonialist machinations.
Official website of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban).
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Swine flu vaccine side effects: Miscarriages and more
Swine flu vaccine alert: Many pregnant mothers are reporting miscarriages shortly after taking the swine flu vaccine. Various websites and blogs are receiving disturbing reports of miscarriage and other dangerous side effects which occurred within hours to days after individuals received the vaccine. Yet these reports are receiving little to no press coverage.
Here a a few of the many examples of miscarriages from comments posted after a short article on about.com: Sue says: "I had the H1N1 vaccination and 24 hours later had a miscarriage." Linda Hill says: "My daughter in law was 10 weeks pregnant and had the H1N1 vaccine on Friday. That night she miscarried." EBWashington: "I was so excited to be pregnant after trying for a year. Last Monday, I got the H1N1 vaccine. On Tuesday morning, I started cramping and on Wednesday I started bleeding heavily. I was almost 6 weeks along. I am an emotional wreck."
In his informative article on these miscarriages, the highly respected Dr. Mercola also states, "the package inserts for the swine flu vaccines actually say that the safety of these vaccines for pregnant women has not been established." Another woman posts, "If you read the novartis or baxter pkg insert available on the web you will find that ... its not recommended for children under 2. Is not a fetus a child under 2?"
Some might argue that miscarriages happen in 15% of pregnancies, but do they happen within hours to days after taking a vaccine? Read the comments at the first link above to see how many women reported miscarriages not long after getting the swine flu shot on one this one webpage alone. Imagine how many other women that represents who have lost the precious life growing in their bellies. Most doctors are not reporting these cases, so unfortunately there is no accurate tracking of this devastating side effect.
I tried yesterday to access the VAERS website, the government's official website for reporting swine flu vaccine side effects at www.vaers.hhs.gov, to see how a miscarriage would be reported. Strangely, the website was down all day and is still down today as I post this. As the most important means of monitoring vaccine side effects, why is it down? How many people have tried to report disturbing side effects and were unable to access the website? For a revealing list of many reported damaging side effects from the vaccine on a popular health website, click here.
Though the swine flu has turned out to be little more damaging than the regular flu, the pharmaceutical companies have made literally billions of dollars from our tax money on their heavily pushed vaccines. And did you know that after the avian flu scare several years ago, The Independent, a leading newspaper in the U.K. reported that Donald Rumsfeld alone made $5 million in profit from sales of Tamiflu at the time. Many don't know that Rumsfeld was the chairman of the board of Tamiflu producer Gilead before he became U.S. secretary of defense. The massive amounts of Tamiflu purchased by the government at the time will soon expire, thus wasting many millions of our tax dollars.
Where there are large sums of money to be made, there is almost certainly corruption. For an article by the former editor in chief of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine exposing massive corruption in the health care industry, click here. For lots more on the risks and dangers of the swine flu vaccine by the president of the National Vaccine Information Center, read her well researched article available here. And to learn how blatant fear mongering in the 1976 swine flu scare killed at least hundreds and paralyzed many thousands more, click here.
The box below provides several ideas on what you can do to further educate yourself and spread the word on the risks and dangers of miscarriage and other side effects from the swine flu vaccine. We also invite you to comment below and let us know what you think. Should the government be promoting vaccines for pregnant women when the safety of the vaccines is not tested?
What you can do:
* To read other reliable, eye-opening articles that other media won't report on various aspects of the swine flu, including swine flu vaccine side effects, click here.
* Inform your media and political representatives of this vital information. To contact those near you, click here. Urge them to learn about swine flu vaccine risks and to stop drug companies from promoting legislation which puts profits above public health.
* Read concise summaries of revealing media reports on the flu scares available here.
* Learn more key information of vital importance to the health of you, your family, and your loved ones in the powerful online lesson on health available here.
* Explore inspiring ideas on how we can build a brighter future for all by reading this short essay.
* Spread this news to your friends and colleagues, and bookmark this article on key news websites using the "Share This" icon on this page, so that we can fill the role at which the major media is sadly failing. Together, we can make a difference.
Fred Burks served as personal language interpreter to Clinton, Bush, Cheney, Gore, and other top dignitaries in secret meetings. As part of an international network of researchers and news analysts, Fred obtains and disseminates key, reliable information about powerful, yet little-known forces which shape our world. For more, see articles and links in the right column of this page.
Here a a few of the many examples of miscarriages from comments posted after a short article on about.com: Sue says: "I had the H1N1 vaccination and 24 hours later had a miscarriage." Linda Hill says: "My daughter in law was 10 weeks pregnant and had the H1N1 vaccine on Friday. That night she miscarried." EBWashington: "I was so excited to be pregnant after trying for a year. Last Monday, I got the H1N1 vaccine. On Tuesday morning, I started cramping and on Wednesday I started bleeding heavily. I was almost 6 weeks along. I am an emotional wreck."
In his informative article on these miscarriages, the highly respected Dr. Mercola also states, "the package inserts for the swine flu vaccines actually say that the safety of these vaccines for pregnant women has not been established." Another woman posts, "If you read the novartis or baxter pkg insert available on the web you will find that ... its not recommended for children under 2. Is not a fetus a child under 2?"
Some might argue that miscarriages happen in 15% of pregnancies, but do they happen within hours to days after taking a vaccine? Read the comments at the first link above to see how many women reported miscarriages not long after getting the swine flu shot on one this one webpage alone. Imagine how many other women that represents who have lost the precious life growing in their bellies. Most doctors are not reporting these cases, so unfortunately there is no accurate tracking of this devastating side effect.
I tried yesterday to access the VAERS website, the government's official website for reporting swine flu vaccine side effects at www.vaers.hhs.gov, to see how a miscarriage would be reported. Strangely, the website was down all day and is still down today as I post this. As the most important means of monitoring vaccine side effects, why is it down? How many people have tried to report disturbing side effects and were unable to access the website? For a revealing list of many reported damaging side effects from the vaccine on a popular health website, click here.
Though the swine flu has turned out to be little more damaging than the regular flu, the pharmaceutical companies have made literally billions of dollars from our tax money on their heavily pushed vaccines. And did you know that after the avian flu scare several years ago, The Independent, a leading newspaper in the U.K. reported that Donald Rumsfeld alone made $5 million in profit from sales of Tamiflu at the time. Many don't know that Rumsfeld was the chairman of the board of Tamiflu producer Gilead before he became U.S. secretary of defense. The massive amounts of Tamiflu purchased by the government at the time will soon expire, thus wasting many millions of our tax dollars.
Where there are large sums of money to be made, there is almost certainly corruption. For an article by the former editor in chief of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine exposing massive corruption in the health care industry, click here. For lots more on the risks and dangers of the swine flu vaccine by the president of the National Vaccine Information Center, read her well researched article available here. And to learn how blatant fear mongering in the 1976 swine flu scare killed at least hundreds and paralyzed many thousands more, click here.
The box below provides several ideas on what you can do to further educate yourself and spread the word on the risks and dangers of miscarriage and other side effects from the swine flu vaccine. We also invite you to comment below and let us know what you think. Should the government be promoting vaccines for pregnant women when the safety of the vaccines is not tested?
What you can do:
* To read other reliable, eye-opening articles that other media won't report on various aspects of the swine flu, including swine flu vaccine side effects, click here.
* Inform your media and political representatives of this vital information. To contact those near you, click here. Urge them to learn about swine flu vaccine risks and to stop drug companies from promoting legislation which puts profits above public health.
* Read concise summaries of revealing media reports on the flu scares available here.
* Learn more key information of vital importance to the health of you, your family, and your loved ones in the powerful online lesson on health available here.
* Explore inspiring ideas on how we can build a brighter future for all by reading this short essay.
* Spread this news to your friends and colleagues, and bookmark this article on key news websites using the "Share This" icon on this page, so that we can fill the role at which the major media is sadly failing. Together, we can make a difference.
Fred Burks served as personal language interpreter to Clinton, Bush, Cheney, Gore, and other top dignitaries in secret meetings. As part of an international network of researchers and news analysts, Fred obtains and disseminates key, reliable information about powerful, yet little-known forces which shape our world. For more, see articles and links in the right column of this page.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)