Citizen Power

Tungsten is a powerful contaminant and toxin that is in a lot of regular things, like jewelry and lightbulbs. When used in bombs for war, it’s a nightmare material that produces terrible and strange wounds, and is both a danger to humans and to the environment. (See: ‘Tungsten bombs’ leave Israel’s victims with mystery wounds”)

Tungsten was used extensively in DIME bombs used by Israel, (allegedly) supplied by the United States, in their brutal attacks on Gaza recently. Hundreds of DIME bombs were used by Israel for weeks in the attacks.

Tungsten will be a serious environmental toxin for years to come in the Gaza strip, as a result. It may also stunt the growth of plants that grow there and negatively affect reproduction. Here is a recent article from Scientific American explaining the problems with tungsten.

“Scientists this week urged further research on tungsten, the metal used to make light bulb filaments, shotgun shells, electrical wires and even wedding bands, to rule out possible health risks to humans and the environment in the wake of studies showing that it may cause reproductive problems in earthworms and stunted growth in sunflowers.

In an article published this week in Chemical & Engineering News, researchers suggest that not enough is known to determine whether tungsten is safe, and that studies need to be conducted to assess how much is in drinking water and the soil – and whether it poses dangers for humans, animals and plants.

Experts say that tungsten is safe when used in its pure form in light bulb filaments, jewelry, and electrical devices. But researchers quoted in the article and interviewed by ScientificAmerican.com say that when tungsten gets into the soil (through, say, light bulbs in landfills), it reacts with substances such as oxygen, forming new chemicals such as polytungstates that may cause growth and reproduction problems in plants and animals. Studies show that sunflowers grown in soil spiked with tungsten powder grow shorter roots, stalks, and leaves and “start looking sickly,” says David Johnson, a toxicologist with the Environmental Laboratory of the U.S. Army Engineer Research & Development Center (ERDC) in Vicksburg, Miss.

He adds that it’s also “a pretty potent reproductive toxin” in earthworms, noting that worms exposed to even minute levels of tungsten (700 milligrams of tungsten per 1 kilogram of soil) become infertile. Johnson says that the effects of tungsten on earthworm reproduction are “comparable” to that of lead in humans, which has been linked to neurological problems in fetuses and children.

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When the door hits President Bush in the tush on the way out the door next week, he will have accomplished a nice long list of failures. It’s such a long list, it would be very hard to pick out the worst failures, lies, schemes and illegal manuevers, so I won’t. It’s no secret that I despise many if not most Washington D.C. Republicans due to their greed, love of war, hate for the environment, and complete dishonesty (and many are Neocons) but I reserve a special haven of disgust for our errant soon-to-be ex-president.

GW has lied, cheated, stolen, and terrorized not only people in Iraq but people right here in America. He has used false threats of terrorism to pass many egregious laws, such as the Military Commissions Act, which actually gave him a sort of legal power to pardon himself or war crimes. He must hate America, the way he has stirred up foreign nationalist hate towards the U.S., and increased terrorism around the world. And he lies to us, even in his “farewell” speech, where he claimed he has kept us safe. Nonsense! President Bush hasn’t kept us safe from terrorism any more than he has prevented super volcanos from erupting or giant asteroids from hitting the earth. Sometimes a man just gets lucky, and there is no one luckier than Bush. Georgie hasn’t saved us from a darn thing. In fact, quite the opposite — 9/11 happened on his watch!

So it was not surprising that besides the list of 935 lies that led us into the Iraq war, there also exists several other lists. I like to try to educate people about what the Republicans and Bush’s administration in particular have done to us as a country. Just look at the economy! Bush and his GOP party have made government bigger and more wasteful than at any time in history, and what do we have to show for it? A 10+% or more unemployment rate and businesses going bankrupt, right and left. Thousands of foreclosed homes and inflation, soon to be followed by deflation. Bush has nearly destroyed our economy and left us sinking in the deepest debt in history.

As a parting good-riddance tribute to Bush the Horrible, I’d like to just list one single solitary broken failure he has committed while president, out of the many hundred. Maybe I’ll cover the other ones later on, because it’s very very important that we never get another president like George Bush again, and part of making sure that never happens is telling people what he’s done. First of all, here are the 935 lies that he told us and Congress to get us into a war we didn’t need to be a part of: The War Card.

It’s very neatly categorized and straightforward. Second, here is the Broken Government site, also neatly and factually categorizing Bush’s many failures as president. And here is but one example: Remember Hurricane Katrina? Now there was a bad weather event. Bush was having birthday cake in Arizona with John McCain while people were drowning in New Orleans.

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We did it! We made it this far, 8 years after the biggest error our Supreme Court ever made — appointing George Bush the President of the U.S. And what a catastrophic error it has been! But most of us have survived. A million Iraqis, sadly, did not. Tens of thousands of Afghans, sadly did not. You know that old saying: “Fish and bad presidents start to stink after a few years”. In the case of Bush, he’s been reeking for at least five. It seems like it’s been decades. Here are some of the more humorous (most unintentionally humorous) moments of the Bush regime.

Just remember: it’s easy to laugh at his behavior and mangling of the English language, but never forget the terrible things he has done. Here is one brand new example: a secret FISA court ruled last fall that telecommunications companies are forced to provide emails and other personal communications data if someone is suspected of being a terrorist. Does the Decider make that call? This is absolutely amazing.

“Court Affirms Wiretapping Without Warrants
By JAMES RISEN and ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: January 15, 2009

WASHINGTON — In a rare public ruling, a secret federal appeals court has said telecommunications companies must cooperate with the government to intercept international phone calls and e-mail of American citizens suspected of being spies or terrorists.

The ruling came in a case involving an unidentified company’s challenge to 2007 legislation that expanded the president’s legal power to conduct wiretapping without warrants for intelligence purposes.

But the ruling, handed down in August 2008 by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review and made public Thursday, did not directly address whether President Bush was within his constitutional powers in ordering domestic wiretapping without warrants, without first getting Congressional approval, after the terrorist attacks of 2001. “

I just hope that President Obama can undo even half the damage that Bush has done, in the next four years.

And this list from Rolling Stone and other lists will remind us for years of what we are missing.
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The Israeli government is turning into the very thing that they are supposedly fighting against. They are not just targeting civilians inside the Gaza strip in this war of aggression, they are also targeting the UN and reporters and even warehouses of food aid. They prevented foreign journalists from entering Gaza, and now they are seemingly trying to finish off the ones who are there! (The United States military did the same thing at the start of the Iraq war, killing foreign journalists and even seeming to target them.) When will someone stop the Israeli terrorism? It doesn’t matter if someone is using a suicide bomb or a high-tech plane dropping bombs, — killing people and terrorizing them with threat of harm or death in order to manipulate them politically is terrorism, and that’s what Israel is currently doing. In this case, it’s to completely control an entire 1.5 million people in the teriory of the Gaza strip. These are clearly people who will not be controlled. And ironically, it’s the media that is failing to point out that Hamas was democratically elected and should have been negotiated with, not attacked.

“Israeli military asked to explain how Gaza media building came to be hit by explosion

15 January 2009– Reporters Without Borders calls on the Israeli military to investigate and explain exactly how a 16-storey building in Gaza City that houses several news organisations including Reuters came to be hit by an explosion this morning.

An Abu Dhabi TV journalist and a Reuters cameraman were injured in the blast that shook the Al-Shurouq Tower. It was not immediately known whether the explosion was the result of a missile or a shell fired by a tank.

Reuters said an Israeli army spokesman contacted the news agency’s Jerusalem bureau shortly before the explosion to verify the location of its Gaza bureau. Reuters had informed the Israeli army of the exact location at the start of the war and was assured by the Israelis on several occasions that it would not be a target.

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This was a little-covered protest in Washington, a protest asking President Obama to change U.S. policies towards Gaza and the Israel Palestine conflict.

President Obama needs to realize that people see him as the man who will end unnecessary wars and overt aggression, as we are seeing in the Gaza strip, and we expect him to do that. Peace marches against Israeli violence and American violence are valuable for a lot of reasons. They are a perfect example of Citizen Power! Today, Sunday, there was a small peace protest for Palestinians, outside a Solidarity with Israel event in Minneapolis. I wish I could have been there with them. We are sick of war and that includes this slaughter of Palestinians going on in the Gaza Strip right now.

There is widespread support for Israel’s anti-peace acts of aggression, as seen in my local media, including TV stations. Yes, I know they don’t know their back ends from their brains, but they are still sitting in those anchor chairs telling everyone that my state supports Israel no matter what dumb idiotic thing they do. They did this tonight on their “news” broadcast. They showed a “solidarity” event “packed to standing-room only” and of course the solidarity was with Israel and their “right” to “defend themselves”. Nevermind that this “defend itself” excuse is BS.

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According to the most benign independent journalists I can find, everyone in this conflict has an agenda so we are to trust people on both sides about equally. Not in this case. The American media is massively biased against Gaza to the point of absurdity. They won’t listen to reason or history, they are firmly on the side of Israel no matter what, a country that claims the terror perpetrated on them must end. So this did this: Graphic video of Israel’s attack on Gaza civilian market. I won’t put the video here because it’s too horrible. It was apparently taken with a cell phone and most of the victims are clearly civilians. This is Israel’s self-defense? What follows is an eye-witness story of what happened the night Israel invaded, and the follow-up, from a reporter with sources inside Gaza. The source is a blog called KABOBfest.

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Today, on the first day of 2009, I’m publishing a guest post by a writer for one of my other websites. He’s a student of Israel-Palestine issues, and does a lot of reading on the issues involved in their conflicts. He writes regularly for some other websites also, including Lew Rockwell and the Atlantic Free Press. Here is his latest article about Israel’s latest war with Gaza. The odd thing about Israel attacking Gaza like this is that they do this every few years. I was looking for some background material for something on this war last night, looking for a story of how the US recently blocked a UN resolution for an immediate ceasefire (a ceasefire other countries are still working on.) I found this article on Breitbart which says in part:

“The United States vetoed a UN draft resolution that would have called for an end to Israeli attacks and “disproportionate use of force” in the Gaza Strip as well as for the release of a kidnapped Israeli soldier.

The Security Council resolution received 10 votes, one against from the United States with four abstentions, French Ambassador Jean-Marc de la Sabliere, the council president for July, announced.

Explaining his negative vote, US Ambassador John Bolton described the text as “unbalanced” and was “not only untimely but also outmoded” because of the attacks against Israel by Lebanese Hezbollah militants and UN chief Kofi Annan’s decision to send a crisis team to the region.

He said adoption of the resolution would have exacerbated tensions in the region. . . . “

It’s dated July 13 2005! One vote against it — the United States.  So the names have changed, but the problems are still nearly exactly the same. Hamas flings some home made rockets at Israel that usually hurt no one. Israel responds with tanks and days of Air Force bombings that kill hundreds. It seems rather ridiculously unbalanced, doesn’t it? Tonight the death toll in Gaza is 440, with reports that Israel bombed a school yesterday filled with kids. I get most of my up-to-the-minute information on this war from Twitter. I’m following several Palestinians there and in other countries, in touch with their connections who are there, so they are reporting the news that CNN won’t. (You can follow me on Twitter at this link).

Here is the article about Israel’s latest war by Tom Chartier.

Israel’s Iron Fist
By Tom Chartier

We hold that Zionism is moral and just. And since it is moral and just, justice must be done,
no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmet agree with it or not.
There is no other morality.

Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky- Founder of the Israeli Right – Nov. 4, 1923

In his historic essay The Iron Wall Russian immigrant to Palestine Vladimir Jabotinsky succinctly outlined the Zionist plan of colonization. His logic was nearly impeccable as was his honest assessment of the challenges Zionism faced in coming to an agreement with the indigenous Arab population. Only behind an Iron Wall of brute force and oppression destroying any hope would the Arabs ever agree to peaceful co-existence with the flood of Jewish immigrants seeking a Jewish National Homeland.

Jabotinsky was brutally honest in his logic, however twisted. Where his assertion that “Zionism is moral and just” comes from I can only speculate. Since when has colonization of another people’s land been moral and just? Jabotinsky made a frightening statement implying a divine right where the end justifies the means. Where is the morality or justice in this?

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