WW3? Ukraine/US vs. Donbass/Russia

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/RT_com/status/1638962885815844869

https://www.rt.com/russia/573481-ukr...llite-specops/

Ukrainians getting military targets from CIA satellite – Times

Soldiers of Ukraine’s ‘Thor’ special operations group are using satellite data provided by the CIA to choose targets when conducting drone strikes against Russian forces, the unit’s commander told The Times.

The 27-man group, which is formally a police special operations unit, functions independently from the Ukrainian army and works in close collaboration with the country's military intelligence, the GUR, which provides them with ammunition and intel. According to The Times, the unit has complete license to select its missions, where it barracks and when it fights.

The unit’s commander, whose name is said to also be Thor, claims he uses a special application on a tablet that is synced to a CIA satellite to select potential targets for their attacks.

“We select targets in the program, and targets can be placed there both by the CIA satellite and by our own satellite, which our volunteers pay for. Information is collected from all kinds of sources there. We choose, then we arrive and conduct our own reconnaissance,” Thor told the outlet.

US spies concerned about Russia escalation risk READ MORE: US spies concerned about Russia escalation risk
Another member of the group told the Times that Thor also intentionally uses drones to maim – rather than kill – Russian servicemen. “These ones are to wound the Russians,” Aleksander, 30, told The Times as he armed a 3D-printed drone with mining explosives. “Take an arm or a leg, he will be a burden on the state forever,” he said.

According to the Times, all members of Thor are veterans of Ukraine’s 2014 military operation against anti-Kiev rebels in the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. Both territories, along with the Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, were incorporated into Russia last year following public referendums.

Moscow has long accused the US and its allies of being directly involved in the Ukraine conflict and essentially waging a “proxy war” against Russia by continuing to provide Kiev’s forces with increasingly advanced weaponry, ammunition and intelligence.

[ExomatrixTV]

[rgray222]

Turkey ratifies Finland NATO bid, but awaits final parliament approval



he Turkish parliament’s foreign affairs commission approved a bill ratifying Finland’s bid to join NATO Thursday, according to state broadcaster TRT Haber. The bill is still waiting on approval from the parliament’s general assembly.

The move comes as Finnish President Sauli Niinistö formally sealed the Nordic nation’s historic bid to join the military alliance, Thursday, signing into law the required national legal amendments needed for membership of NATO.

Source and to read the full story: https://www.euronews.com/2023/03/23/...ament-approval

[gnostic9]

Ukraine’s new digital transformation program JUST started, we are next.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=rBkxoKdSWww

Love peace and joy to all!

[Miller]

Posted by Bruce G Charlton (here)

...As if whether radioactive contamination being primary or secondary that made any significant difference!

I am sure that the only reason UB shells are being sent by the UK is specifically in order to escalate the war; by calculatedly provoking retaliation to panic the UK population into supporting full-on engagement. All out, unrestrained, massively-destructive global war is the true objective behind such policies.

Why? Because (IMO) such policies derive not from humans, but from supernatural (demonic) spirits who are personally unaffected by such destruction, indeed they feed upon the fear, hatred and despair that they have engendered.

Agree 100%. The UK is pushing, pushing, pushing for retaliation from Russia and the UK being first in the firing line - with nuclear bombs 3,000 times more powerful than that dropped on Hiroshima - is not an outcome any of us want. Wondering why they're not taking out individuals tbh, or have I been watching too much James Bond? It's almost as though we're saying " If the West can't be World Leader then neither can you."

[Bill Ryan]

A small tragi-comic story. (At least no-one gets killed in this video. ) A hapless Ukrainian soldier is deliberately left behind by his fleeing comrades in the tracked vehicle. The Russians are watching all this from a drone camera in real time, and they can't stop laughing.

https://t.me/intelslava/46180

[Vicus]

Sending Depleted Uranium Munitions To Ukraine Is A War Crime Against The Ukrainian People


Depleted uranium is the gift that keeps on killing. Just ask the people of Iraq. Cancer rates and birth defect rates both went up exponentially after the U.S. military systematically defiled their air, water and soil with depleted uranium. And it doesn’t go away. 10 years after the invasion of Iraq, a team of scientists “detected high levels of uranium contamination in soil samples at three sites in the province of Nineveh”, and those high levels were being directly blamed for “dramatically increasing rates of childhood cancers and birth defects at local hospitals”. Under no circumstances should depleted uranium munitions ever be used in warfare, and our leaders know this. But now the western powers will be sending depleted uranium munitions to Ukraine, and this is nothing less than a war crime against the Ukrainian people.


Baroness Goldie, the UK’s Minister of State at the Ministry of Defence, created quite a stir when she publicly answered a question about depleted uranium munitions on Monday…

I cannot even begin to describe how morally wrong it is to do this.

Yes, these munitions will be used to strike Russian forces, but it is the Ukrainian people that will really suffer in the long run.

If you doubt this, just go to Google images and do a search for “depleted uranium Iraq birth defects”.

What you will see will make you want to vomit.

The same deformities will happen to countless numbers of Ukrainian children if we do not find a way to stop this.

Needless to say, the Russians clearly understand the threat. In fact, earlier this year one Russian official publicly stated that sending depleted uranium munitions to Ukraine would be the equivalent of using “dirty nuclear bombs against Russia”…

continue:

https://endoftheamericandream.com/se...ainian-people/

[Ravenlocke]

" As a result, the radiation situation in the city of Fallujah was much worse than in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the nuclear bombing by the United States. This city is still called the second Chernobyl.

It is necessary to recall the use of depleted uranium ammunition by NATO forces during the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. In total, about 40 thousand armor-piercing aircraft shells with a total amount of depleted uranium of more than 15 tons were used on the territory of this country.

As a result of the impact of a munition with depleted uranium, a mobile hot cloud of finely dispersed uranium-238 aerosol and its oxides are formed, which, when exposed to the body in the future, can provoke the development of serious pathologies.

The main radiation hazard from depleted uranium occurs when it enters the body in the form of dust.

Fluxes of alpha radiation from small particles of uranium that have settled in the upper and lower respiratory tract, lungs and esophagus cause the development of malignant tumors. Accumulating in the kidneys, bone tissue and liver, uranium dust leads to a change in internal organs. "

https://telegra.ph/Tezisy-brifinga-n...llova-o-03-24…

I highly recommend reading this report from Russia MoD (you will need to translate it from Russian to read)


https://twitter.com/DefensePolitics/...17335860080640

https://twitter.com/GeromanAT/status...79346757128195

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/spriter99880/sta...47397070315530

https://twitter.com/spriter99880/sta...47402963402753

https://twitter.com/spriter99880/sta...47287192133634

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/colonelhomsi/sta...62885505302528

[ExomatrixTV]

• Global Crisis: Nato's Plan To Deploy 300,000 Troops On Russia/Poland Border!

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ujP3zFDEfQ8

Patrick Henningsen, independent journalist and geopolitical analyst examines the WWIII build up with NATO announcing its plan to bring 300,000 troops to the Russia/Poland border. Patrick analyses the events and increased rhetoric towards a global conflict.

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/PeImeniPusha/sta...79056235966464

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/spriter99880/sta...37110016602114

[Ravenlocke]

[url]https://twitter.com/RT_com/status/1639688355993534467

https://www.rt.com/russia/573589-nuc...orage-belarus/

Russia will place nuclear weapons in Belarus – Putin

Russian tactical nuclear weapons might arrive in Belarus as early as this summer, Russian President Vladimir Putin revealed on Saturday. Moscow is completing the construction of a specialized storage facility for such arms, amid repeated calls by Minsk to deploy them on its soil, he added.

The site in Belarus will be ready by July 1, Putin told Russia 24 TV. The president also said that Moscow does not plan to hand over control of any tactical nuclear weapons to Minsk and that it would only deploy its own arms to Belarus. He did not specify when exactly the weapons would be transported to the new site.

The move was prompted by the UK’s decision to provide Kiev with depleted uranium munitions, Putin explained. The UK announced earlier in March that it plans to send the shells to Ukraine for use with Challenger 2 battle tanks. Moscow blasted the move as a sign of “absolute recklessness, irresponsibility and impunity” on the part of London and Washington.

The US dismissed Russia’s concerns by calling depleted uranium shells a “commonplace type of munition” that has “been in use for decades.” The Russian Defense Ministry then warned that their use could trigger nothing short of a radioactive disaster in Ukraine, citing the aftermath of the use of such munitions by NATO in Iraq.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has repeatedly raised the issue of threats posed to his nation by nuclear weapons deployed by the US to EU countries. In October 2022, he pointed to “nuclear sharing” talks between Washington and Warsaw, warning that nuclear weapons could be placed in Poland, which borders Belarus.

Minsk needs to take “appropriate measures” to address this threat, Lukashenko said at that time, adding that he would discuss the matter with Moscow.

Currently, US nuclear weapons are deployed in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Türkiye. In 2021, Russia called on the weapons to be repatriated as part of its security proposals, but the US and NATO refused.

[ExomatrixTV]

• Till The Last Ukrainian [Documentary]:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=wcn3_V2_rJ0

Part I: Berlin (00:00)
Part II: The End of History (Again) - (11:02)
Part III: Warsaw (18:17)
Part IV: Darth Vader vs The Avengers (26:42)
Part V: The Monroe Doctrine (44:52)
Part VI: Prague (49:26)
Part VII: Prelude to War (01:03:20)
Part VIII: Budapest (01:15:37)
Part IX: Endless War (01:26:20)
Part X: End Credits (01:43:30)

Essential for the writing of this documentary is the book: How the West Brought War to Ukraine: Understanding How U.S. and NATO Policies Led to Crisis, War, and the Risk of Nuclear Catastrophe

• Get it at GoodReads

• How the West Brought War to Ukraine

1. Many predicted Nato expansion would lead to war. Those warnings were ignored
2. Many Predicted NATO Expansion Would Lead to War. Those Warnings Were Ignored
3. Ukraine war follows decades of warnings that NATO expansion into Eastern Europe could provoke Russia
   
4. EU bans RT, Sputnik over Ukraine disinformation
5. Ukraine war: Russia throttles social platforms as Big Tech bans RT and Sputnik state media
6. Why a push to exclude Russian state media would be problematic for free speech and democracy
7. Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault
   
8. The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin
   
9. John J. Mearsheimer
10. Welcome to Ukraine, the most corrupt nation in Europe
11. Ukrainian president’s rule becomes increasingly corrupt, authoritarian
12. Ukrainian President Zelensky deepens alliance with far right
13. Current Ukrainian leader’s ex-financial advisers named as brokers in transactions linked to $1.5bn fraud of predecessor.
14. A Ukrainian comedian-turned-president is embroiled in Trump’s impeachment mess
    
15. Meet Volodymyr Zelensky.
16. Bne IntelliNews: IMF ranks Ukraine as Europe’s poorest country
17. FPRI BMB Ukraine: Ukraine has more politicians in Pandora Papers than any other country in the world
18. Hate crimes against LGBT people in Ukraine: “The attacks have become more and more organized”
19. Ukraine’s Nazi problem is real, even if Putin’s ‘denazification’ claim isn’t
    
20. Not acknowledging this threat means that little is being done to guard against it.
21. Ukraine’s Deadly Profession: Three Journalists Attacked in July
22. Melinda Haring: Ukraine’s deadly profession – three journalists attacked in July
23. Stop telling people they shouldn’t have a crush on Zelensky
24. Zelensky: The TV president turned war hero
25. I have a ‘crush’ on Zelensky. I’m pretty sure everybody does
26. How Zelensky Gave the World a Jewish Hero
27. The world’s sexiest man alive? Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky becomes unlikely sex symbol
28. How Ukraine President Zelensky Became an Unlikely Internet Sex Symbol
29. Ukraine’s Hero President Z.
30. President Zelensky is becoming a respected war hero and a cultural icon — but says ‘I’m not iconic. Ukraine is iconic.’
31. The Margin: President Zelensky is becoming a respected war hero and a cultural icon — but says ‘I’m not iconic. Ukraine is iconic.’
32. Women go wild for ‘thirst trap’ Ukrainian President Zelensky on TikTok
33. After Justin Trudeau, fans swoon over Volodymyr Zelensky
34. Zelensky Thirst Is Making Liberals Look Like Absolute Clowns
    
35. Maybe lay off the horny commentary. Do they not remember how it turned out with Michael Avenatti or Andrew Cuomo?
36. crisisgroup.org/content/conflict-ukraines-donbas-visual-explainer
37. Ukrainians Will Write Your Message on Munitions Aimed at Russians for Donations
38. Pulitzer winner Seymour Hersh claims US Navy behind Nord Stream 2 pipeline explosion
39. Biden ordered destruction of Nord Stream pipelines, claims renowned journalist Seymour Hersh
40. Former Polish foreign minister thanks US for damaging Nord Stream pipeline
41. Former Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski thanks US for damaging Nord Stream
42. Only 2% of Poles view Russia favourably, lowest of any country in global study
43. Hungary’s mail-in poll on Russia sanctions dismissed by Brussels
44. Opposition Poll Shows Declining Support for Sanctions in Hungary
45. Almost all Hungarians oppose sanctions on Russia – survey
46. Hungarian Ambassador summoned to Ukrainian Foreign Ministry after Prime Minister Orban’s words that Ukraine is a “no man’s land”
47. Hungary’s ‘pro-Russia’ stance was inevitable
    
48. The posture is the result of historical and recent political factors, many of which have been shaped by Orbán himself.
49. 25 pc of Hungarians think Russia is only defending itself in Ukraine
50. Hungarian Voters Don’t Sympathize With Russia, nor With Ukraine, but They Like the EU
51. Orbán says Hungary is ‘exempt’ from the conflict: tell that to his friend in Moscow
52. Hungary’s Orban treads fine line with supporters over Russia stance
53. How Viktor Orban Tried To Numb 10 Million Hungarians To Putin’s War Next Door
54. Mayor of Budapest: “I Do Feel Shame Orban’s Hungary Seen as Country Siding With Russia”
55. Those calling for the EU to expel Hungary should think again
56. Hungary PM slams migrant ‘rebellion’, U.N. warns of millions more refugees
57. Hungary’s Viktor Orban to defy EU over immigration law Published21 December 2021
58. Hungary’s Stop Soros law that criminalises helping asylum seekers ‘infringes EU law’
59. EU’s Immigration Anarchy Is Spilling Over to Hungarian Streets
60. JULY 10, 2018
    
61. Is Hungary Experiencing a Policy-Induced Baby Boom?
62. It’s time the EU plays hardball with Hungary
    
63. It’s time to stop coddling the autocrat in Budapest for the sake of self-preservation.
64. Hungary not at war with anyone
65. Sergey Poletaev: Russia, Ukraine, the EU and the US have something in common – their illusions were shattered in 2022
66. Israeli FM must offer ‘substantial aid’ to get meeting with Zelensky – Kyiv official
67. Ukraine’s Zelensky Sends Love Letter to US Corporations, Promising ‘Big Business’ for Wall Street
68. Hungary’s Foreign Ministry Summons Ukraine’s Ambassador Over ‘Offensive Comments’
69. EU state slams Kiev over ‘brutal’ military draft from ethnic minority
70. Defense chiefs fail to resolve dispute on tanks for Ukraine
71. Military registration abroad: is the deportation of men to Ukraine real
72. George Soros Urged Use Of Eastern European Soldiers To “Reduce The Risk Of Body-Bags For NATO Countries” In ‘New World Order’ Article
73. ‘Opportunity in crisis,’ Poland bids to turn Ukraine into its vassal state
74. Commentary: The pro-Putin fifth column in the Czech Republic, what it wants and how it plans to seize power
75. Thousands rally in Prague against pro-Western government
76. In the Czech Republic, the social crisis has awakened pro-Russian forces
    
77. From the far right to the Communist Party, the Czech Republic First movement is taking advantage of fears about rising energy prices to demonstrate against the pro-Western government of Petr Fiala.
78. Tens of thousands protest government in Prague
    
79. 09/03/2022September 3, 2022
    
80. Around 70,000 people gathered in central Prague to protest against the Czech government’s foreign and economic policies. Prime Minister Petr Fiala said the protesters did not have the country’s best interests at heart.
81. The War in Ukraine Weakens East European Economies
82. Are Czechs Russophiles?
    
83. In the public domain, Czechs are considered one of the more pro-Russian nations in Europe. Upon closer inspection, however, this portrait is not so black and white.
84. Amid war in Ukraine, Czechia sees a worrying rise in Russophobia
85. Czech-Russian relations and the perception of Russia by the Czech population
86. Czechs and Russians: A love-hate relationship
87. Monroe Doctrine
88. US military spending in Ukraine reached nearly $50 billion in 2022 – but no amount of money alone is enough to end the war
89. Military Spending by Country 2023
90. Volodymyr Zelensky, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink agree to help rebuild Ukraine
91. How Marvel fans are turning Ukraine’s plight into dark ‘entertainment’
    
92. Fanboys have turned a bloody, real-world conflict into memes and TikTok videos.
    
93. It’s a frightening development in the propaganda war
94. Pensioner ‘shot down £74,000,000 Russian jet over his home with antique rifle’
95. Ukraine Citizen Who ‘Destroyed’ Russian Su-34 Jet With Rifle Given Medal
96. The Impact of the Transcarpathian Conflict on Hungary-Ukraine Relations
97. Ethnic cleansing? Hungarians being rounded up and conscripted into Ukrainian army after massive losses in the east
98. EU bans RT, Sputnik over Ukraine disinformation
99. EU imposes sanctions on state-owned outlets RT/Russia Today and Sputnik’s broadcasting in the EU
100. Putin says Russia could be fighting in Ukraine for a long time
101. Send your message to the Russian Invaders!
102. Ukrainians Will Write Your Message on Munitions Aimed at Russians for Donations
103. What to Know About the Corruption Scandals Sweeping Ukraine’s Government
104. EXCLUSIVE: Shameless ‘traitors’ get rich as they steal cash while brave Ukrainian soldiers fight
105. Ukrainian journalists are uncovering Ukrainian corruption
106. Ukraine corruption scandal: Police raid oligarch, officials and tax authorities
107. Ukraine corruption scandal: US promises ‘rigorous monitoring’ of aid
108. Ukrainian Officials Raid Zelensky-Linked Billionaire’s Home Amid Corruption Crackdown
109. Ukraine: Corruption can undermine the trust of allies and reawaken divisions in the country
     
110. COLUMN
111. Wall Street has its eyes set on Ukraine
112. Biden says he’ll back Ukraine as long as it takes. But some take aim at the price tag
113. Corruption concerns involving Ukraine are revived as the war with Russia drags on
114. With a Ukrainian flying ace, ‘Ghost of Kyiv’ manga a big hit in Ukraine
115. How Ukraine’s ‘Ghost of Kyiv’ legendary pilot was born
116. Ukraine admits the ‘Ghost of Kyiv’ isn’t real, but the myth was potent for a reason
     
117. Last weekend, the Ukrainian Air Force Command admitted the pilot was a “superhero legend whose character was created by Ukrainians.”
118. Ukrainian pensioner ‘shoots down £74million Russian Su-34 jet with a RIFLE and is awarded a medal for his heroism’
119. Pensioner ‘shot down £74,000,000 Russian jet over his home with antique rifle’
120. Ukraine’s birth rate was already dangerously low. Then war broke out
121. Hungarian Ambassador summoned to Ukrainian Foreign Ministry after Prime
     
122. Minister Orban’s words that Ukraine is a “no man’s land”
123. EU’s Immigration Anarchy Is Spilling Over to Hungarian Streets

• much more sources here ...

[Michel Leclerc]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
A small tragi-comic story. (At least no-one gets killed in this video. ) A hapless Ukrainian soldier is deliberately left behind by his fleeing comrades in the tracked vehicle. The Russians are watching all this from a drone camera in real time, and they can't stop laughing.

https://t.me/intelslava/46180

(re: highlighted quote)

Maybe not in the video Bill, but in reality quite probably.

I cannot see what is comic in this film. It is deeply tragic and although my political stand in this conflict is clear, I’m afraid I have to state that it does not honour the "Russian servicemen” to laugh at this poor soldier – in front of a screen transferring images taken by a robot, hardly commendable for bravery.

[ExomatrixTV]

[ExomatrixTV]

• U.S. Would NOT Arrest Putin For War Crimes! – Admits Sec. Of State:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=22jWd7TwNR8

The United States government is entirely in favor of the International Criminal Court charging Russian President Vladimir Putin with war crimes, as long as we don’t have anything to do with it, that is. As Secretary of State Antony Blinken pointed out to Lindsey Graham during a recent Senate committee hearing, the U.S. isn’t a signatory to the ICC, so if Putin were to come to the United States, we wouldn’t be in a position to detain him and turn him over.

[Tintin]

Source: War Monitor

The main points from Putin's interview to Pavel Zarubin:

▪️ About depleted uranium shells for Ukraine:
Shells with such uranium do not belong to the category of weapons of mass destruction, but they generate radiation dust and pollute crop areas. Russia has something to answer - we have hundreds of thousands of such shells, but so far we have not used them.

▪️ On tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus: We agreed, without violating the START Treaty, to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. On July 1, the construction of a storage facility for it will be completed there. This is not unusual - the United States has been deploying nuclear weapons in NATO countries for a long time.

▪️ About the talks with Xi Jinping:
The leader of China is well prepared, it was interesting to talk with him, he knows the details about his country and the world economy. Xi Jinping paid much attention to Beijing's peace plan for Ukraine. But the main focus of the talks was on the economy.

▪️ About the terrorist attacks on Nord Stream:
The president fully agrees with the conclusions of journalist Seymour Hersh about the involvement of the US intelligence services. Denmark responded in a streamlined way to Russia about a joint survey of the Nord Stream lines, that it does not need help, and even now this survey no longer makes sense

▪️ About analogies between pension reforms in France and Russia:
In Russia, all preferential early retirement regimes have been preserved, but not in France, citizens there consider this approach to be excessively harsh. But the protests in France are an internal affair of this country.

https://twitter.com/WarMonitors/stat...77541530189829

[Ravenlocke]

Douglas Macgregor: The Future of Warfare is Devastation

Col Douglas Macgregor Straight Calls - Analysis of breaking news and in-depth discussion of current geopolitical events in the United States of America and the world.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z2KZ8hJ4U7c

[Ravenlocke]

https://thecradle.co/article-view/22906

Washington used 300 tons of depleted uranium in Iraq: Moscow

The Commander of the Russian army’s Radiological, Chemical, and Biological Protection Forces, Igor Kirillov, on 24 March accused the US of using “no less than 300 tons of depleted uranium” during the early years of the Iraq war.

“In 2003-2004, the USA extensively used such munitions in strikes on targets in Iraqi cities: Amarah, Baghdad, Basra, Karbala, Fallujah. According to the UN, the US used no less than 300 tons of depleted uranium in Iraq,” Kirillov told reporters on 24 March.

He added that the resulting radioactive fallout in Fallujah alone was “worse than what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

“This city is still called the second Chernobyl,” the Russian official stressed.

A 2018 investigation by Al Araby shows Iraq recorded the highest rate of congenital malformations in the world over the previous decade. These rates were worse in Fallujah, which was showered in depleted uranium and white phosphorus by US coalition forces.

“According to the Iraqi government, in 2005, the incidence of cancer in the country due to the use of depleted uranium munitions increased from 40 to 1,600 cases per 100,000 citizens. In this regard, Baghdad filed an official lawsuit with the International Court of Arbitration in Stockholm on December 26, 2020, against Washington, claiming compensation for the damages sustained,” Kirillov added.

In 2014, the Dutch peace group Pax revealed that US jets and tanks fired nearly 10,000 depleted uranium rounds in Iraq, many of which were fired in or near populated areas.

The Kremlin official made his statement on Friday in response to the UK government saying earlier this week they will provide Ukraine with armor-piercing rounds containing depleted uranium.

Depleted uranium is a byproduct of creating enriched uranium used in nuclear fuel and weapons. Although it can not generate a nuclear reaction, depleted uranium is higher in density than lead, making it highly attractive as a projectile.

“It’s so dense, and it’s got so much momentum that it just keeps going through the armor – and it heats it up so much that it catches on fire,” Edward Geist, a nuclear expert at research organization RAND, told Al Jazeera on Thursday.

US officials backed London’s decision, claiming the ammunition is “not anywhere close to going into” the sphere of nuclear weaponry.

“This is a commonplace type of munition … If Russia is particularly concerned about the welfare of their tanks and their tank soldiers … they could just take them across the border back into Russia,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.

The UN Environment Program described depleted uranium ammunition as “chemically and radiologically toxic heavy metal.” A 2001 World Health Organization (WHO) report concluded that depleted uranium could accumulate at the ground surface and enter the food chain, while uranium dust can be inhaled and retained in the lungs.

London’s plan to send the radioactive arms to Ukraine came to light as the twentieth anniversary of the Iraq invasion passed. Last December, the US navy named a next-generation warship the ‘USS Fallujah.’




https://merip.org/2020/09/birth-defe...f-war-in-iraq/


Birth Defects and the Toxic Legacy of War in Iraq


Forthcoming in MER issue 296 “Nature and Politics"

In Iraq, birth defects are a visible embodiment of the enduring toxic legacy of war for future generations and the environment. The Falluja Hospital’s birth defects Facebook page, where medical staff catalogue cases, reveals the striking diversity and quantity of congenital anomalies.[1] Babies in Falluja are born with hydrocephaly, cleft palates, tumors, elongated heads, overgrown limbs, short limbs and malformed ears, noses and spines.

The accompanying case reports are brief and often incorporate prognoses like “incompatible with life” or “stillborn.” The reproductive history of the mother is sometimes included as well. While most of these children do not survive, some live for weeks, months or years, often in pain and with grave disabilities.

Samira Alaani, a pediatrician at the Falluja General Hospital, is among several doctors who started noticing a wide range of uncommon birth defects among the infants delivered after the start of the US occupation in 2003. Not only were birth defects high in number, they were also new and unusual in kind. Alaani and her colleagues were among the first to sound international alarm by publishing reports documenting the high rate of birth defects observed in hospitals in Falluja and Basra. In 2013, Alaani stated in an interview with the BBC:

We began logging these cases in October 2009 and we have determined that 144 babies are born with a deformity for every 1000 live births. We believe it has to be related to contamination caused by the fighting in our city, even now, nearly ten years later. It is not unique to Falluja; hospitals throughout the Anbar Governorate and many other regions of Iraq are recording spiraling increases.[2]

The Falluja Hospital’s birth defects Facebook page, initiated in 2011, posts these cases for a reason. As an archive, the bodies of children become evidence of a much broader story about the toxic legacy of war in Iraq. The country has suffered consecutive decades of war, bombing campaigns, burn pits, sanctions and other military interventions that not only shatter the public infrastructures necessary for health and well being, but also trigger cascades of environmental degradation.

War Ecologies

Environments that bear the scars of political violence, and whose preservation in some form serves as testimony to that violation, are called evidentiary ecologies.[3] Birth defects in Iraq are part of an evidentiary ecology of war brought to political and moral attention through the practices of archiving and documenting.

Birth defects in Iraq are part of an evidentiary ecology of war brought to political and moral attention through the practices of archiving and documenting.When Iraqi scholars and doctors catalogue incidences of birth defects and note that their rates exceed that of Hiroshima, or when epidemiologists conduct studies to mark where, when and how a population experiences birth defects, they highlight the connections between militarism and public health, global inequalities and environmental racism.[4] Majid, a physician who treats children with heart defects in Falluja, said in an interview, “When people see birth defects, there is no avoiding the issue. Birth defects say, ‘Something is wrong here,’ in a way that other medical problems do not.”[5]
Applied to the Middle East, the term ecologies of war often refers to environments transformed by decades of intensive militarism. In Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Syria, such ecologies are not always accidental side effects of military operations but are instead central components of military strategy.[6] For example, Iraqi president Saddam Hussein drained the marshes of southern Iraq as a direct counterinsurgency tactic to suppress the Marsh Arabs, whom he accused of disloyalty during the Iran-Iraq war (1980 –1988).[7] When the Iraqi marshes were reflooded in the name of ecological restoration after 2003, it was part of a broader restructuring of Iraq’s environment and economy, alongside other mechanisms of spatial control like the use of T-walls (portable concrete walls).[8]

Beyond deliberate spatial and social transformations, chemical pollution also shapes Iraq’s war ecologies. While living and working with internally displaced farming families from Anbar province in 2014 and 2015 I witnessed plant crops and livestock with malformed parts or tumorous growth. Many farmers kept photographs and told stories of destroyed irrigation systems, contaminated water and hypersalinized soil. Infertility, cancers and birth defects prevented them from having and raising healthy children. They described birth defects as just one consequence of the environmental damage they witnessed in all aspects of their lives.

Many Iraqis I spoke to described these enduring environmental maladies as intentional. Ahmed, the father of a child who died within a few hours of her birth from multiple birth defects, said, “The Americans wanted this. If they didn’t, they would have cleaned up from their wars. They starved us during the sanctions; now they are poisoning us.”[9] When Ahmed speaks of being poisoned, he refers to both the enduring life of toxic war materials embedded and abandoned in Iraq’s landscape and the destruction of the human resources needed to cope with public health crises.

US military intervention heavily damaged Iraqi infrastructure and ecologies that sustain human survival, especially during the initial invasion in 2003 but also later during the occupation (2004–2011). Adhering to a “shock and awe” strategy, the United States launched 800 cruise missiles within the first 48 hours of the invasion in March 2003 —more than double the number of missiles launched in the entire Gulf War.[10] Between 2002 and 2005 alone, the US armed forces expended 6 billion bullets—roughly 200,000-300,000 bullets per individual killed in Iraq.[11] This number of shells, full of lead and mercury, does not include larger ordinances or other metal remnants from after 2005, or from previous wars: the Iran-Iraq war (1980–1988), the First Gulf War (1990–1991), the sanctions era (1991-2003) and the 2003 occupation’s instigation of a further decade of militia warfare. The most recent military intervention in Iraq was accompanied by unprecedented waste abandonment and waste burning: discarded vehicles, excess weapons, discarded clothing and much more were all left in Iraq’s land, water or air.

Given the onslaught of military toxic dumping in Iraq, from spent bombs and bullets to base-making, burn pits and junkyards, it is no surprise that widespread cancers and congenital anomalies, along with other major health issues in the civilian population, abound.
Given the onslaught of military toxic dumping in Iraq, from spent bombs and bullets to base-making, burn pits and junkyards, it is no surprise that widespread cancers and congenital anomalies, along with other major health issues in the civilian population, abound. The medical resources to cope with cancers and birth defects, however, are also impacted by the enduring effects of total war—the targeting of an entire population and their environment, rather than military installations alone. Hospitals in Falluja, for example, have been targeted repeatedly by multiple entities, including by the United States in 2008 and by the Iraqi government in 2014 and 2015.[12] Additionally, medical doctors remain in short supply, since many were assassinated by militias or displaced by militia threats to their families: By 2008, only 9,000 doctors were living in Iraq.[13]

Toxic Legacies

Despite specific epidemiological attempts to pin down the causes of birth defects in Iraq, there is not just one. Studies based in Falluja, which sustained extensive damage during US assaults between 2004 and 2008, show a high rate of congenital malformations (15 percent of all births), higher than expected rates of cancer and infant death and an anomalous ratio of males to females in children under age five. In 2010, Chris Busby, a British scientist studying the health effects of radiation, released a study that showed a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in Falluja since the 2004 attacks.[14]

Another study found that newborns with birth defects carried a level of lead three times higher, and a level of mercury six times higher, than average children in Iran, who have traces of lead and mercury just slightly higher than in European countries.[15] In the Iraqi village of Hawija, levels of magnesium and titanium in children with birth defects were nearly double the average of their counterparts in Iran, while alarmingly high levels of cadmium and arsenic were found in samples taken from children with symptoms resembling cerebral palsy. These metals can account for a large number of neurological problems and underdevelopment in fetuses by causing folate depletion and subsequent underdevelopment of vital tissues.[16]

Depleted uranium is one of the most widely discussed contaminants in relation to birth defects. The World Health Organization released a report in 2003 entitled “Potential Impact of Conflict on Health in Iraq,” which suggested that depleted uranium might be related to reports of increased cancers, birth defects, reproductive health problems and renal diseases in the Iraqi population since 2003.

US bases in Iraq used burn pits to incinerate everything from computers to tires in large open-air pits that burned day and night for years. International activists accused the US Department of Defense of negligence for using a weapon in Iraq that distributes toxic waste to where civilians live, grow food and draw water. Studies of American veterans hit by friendly fire with depleted uranium shrapnel have also demonstrated links between uranium and perturbations in reproductive hormones, including infertility.[17]
Additionally, US bases in Iraq used burn pits to incinerate everything from computers to tires in large open-air pits that burned day and night for years. They released high levels of dioxin and innumerable other toxins that are known to cause health problems, from birth defects to neurological issues.

Burn pits are also linked to US veteran illnesses and sit at the root of campaigns for veteran healthcare.[18] For Iraqis living near burn pits, serious consequences for their long-term and intergenerational health continue to emerge. For example, some Iraqi babies born near Tallil Air Base were found to have neurological problems, congenital heart disease, paralyzed or missing limbs and elevated thorium in their bodies. The closer to the base, the higher their levels.[19]

Ecologies of war are not all the same, nor are their implications. Specific environmental conditions shape exposure to war toxins. For example, dust storms in Iraq are common, as is extreme high heat, which increases the distribution of toxins. A history of sanctions and long-term war shapes the way Iraq’s medical community is equipped to document and respond to a public health crisis.[20] Iraq’s environment has been transformed by many decades of Western military intervention, from British colonialism to US bombing; from sanctions to counterinsurgency and militia warfare.

The Body Count

Over time, bodily harm becomes more difficult to ascribe directly to war, even as the actual harm may increase. Birth defects are strong, visible indicators of what so many Iraqi people face amid broader toxic conditions of daily survival. Almost everyone I met in Iraq identified the high prevalence of birth defects as a post-2003 phenomenon directly related to war. Many women described having healthy children before 2003, and either many miscarriages or children with severe birth defects later. It was not uncommon for a family to line up their children by age so I could witness the visible line of before-and-after the US invasion.

In my interview with Majid, I learned that many doctors are now advising women with a birth history of multiple birth defects to simply stop conceiving children. In a country where terminating pregnancies remains illegal, and where resources for research, testing and treatment are limited, women can face a lifetime of perpetual physical and emotional turmoil as they repeatedly carry and bear children who cannot survive. Some of the women I lived and worked with from Anbar province felt strongly that precluding the possibility of reproduction was evidence of genocidal intentions by the United States. Dina, who experienced several miscarriages, expressed the desire to have her miscarried children counted among those who died from war. “But of course,” she noted, sarcastically mimicking an American man’s voice, “The US does not keep a body count!”[21]

As Omar Dewachi writes, the toxic legacies of militarism call us to “expand our analytical perspectives to rethink what an archive of war history would include.”[22] Certainly, in Iraq, an archive of war includes the bodies of children whose forms and futures are irretrievably shaped by Iraq’s war ecology.

[Kali Rubaii is an assistant professor of anthropology at Purdue University.]
Endnotes

[1] Fallujah Hospital birth defects Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/fallujahhospital2012/

[2] BBC, “Doctors in Basra Report Rise in Birth Defects,” March 21, 2013.

[3] Kristina Lyons, “Chemical Warfare in Colombia, Evidentiary Ecologies and Senti-Actuando Practices of Justice,” Social Studies of Science, 48/3 (2018).

[4] Patrick Cockburn, “Toxic Legacy of US Assault on Falluja ‘Worse than Hiroshima,’” The Independent, July 24, 2010.

[5] Majd is a pseudonym. Interview by the author, Iraq, spring 2015.

[6] Vasiliki Touhouliotis, “Weak Seed and a Poisoned Land: Slow Violence and the Toxic Infrastructures of War in South Lebanon,” Environmental Humanities 10/1 (May 1, 2018). Drake Logan, “Toxic Violence: The Politics of Militarized Toxicity in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 101/3 (2011). Andre Vltchek, “The Ecology of War: Imperial Power, Permanent Conflict and Disposable Humans,” Ecologist, April 28, 2017.

[7] Ariel Ahram, “Development, Counterinsurgency, and the Destruction of the Iraqi Marshes,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 47/3 (August 2015).

[8] Kali Rubaii, “Tripartheid: How Sectarianism Became Internal to Being in Anbar, Iraq,” Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 42/1 (April 11, 2019).

[9] Ahmed is a pseudonym. Participant observation by the author in Iraq, spring 2015.

[10] Catherine Lutz and Andrea Mazzarino, eds. War and Health: The Medical Consequences of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (New York: NYU Press, 2019).

[11] Andrew Buncombe, “US Forced to Import Bullets from Israel as Troops Use 250,000 for Every Rebel Killed,” Independent, January 10, 2011.

[12] Ross Caputi, Richard Hill, Donna Mulhearn, The Sacking of Fallujah: A People’s History (Amhearst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2019). Human Rights Watch, “Iraq: Government Attacking Fallujah Hospital,” May 27, 2014.

[13] Merrill Singer and Derrick Hodge, The War Machine and Global Health: A Critical Medical Anthropological Examination of the Human Costs of Armed Conflict and the International Violence Industry (Rowman and Littlefield, 2010) p. 138. Sadeer Al-Kindi, “Violence Against Doctors in Iraq,” The Lancet, Sept 13, 2014.

[14] Chris Busby, et al. “Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Falluja, Iraq 2005–2009,” International Journal of Environmental Research: Public Health 7 (2010).

[15] Al-Sabbak, M. et al. “Metal Contamination and the Epidemic of Congenital Birth Defects in Iraqi Cities,” Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology 89 (2012).

[16] Mozghan Savabieasfahani, “Environmental Poisoning of Iraq: Why Academics Must Speak Out,” Turner Auditorium, University of Washington, October 24, 2014.

[17] Patricia Doyle, et al. “Reproductive Health of Gulf War Veterans,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B, Biological Sciences 361(1468) March 24, 2006.

[18] Kenneth LacLeish and Zoe Wool, “US Military Burn Pits and the Politics of Health,” Medical Anthropology Quarterly (August 1, 2018).

[19] Mozghan Savabieasfahani, et al. “Living Near an Active US Military Base in Iraq is Associated with Significantly Higher Hair Thorium and Increased Likelihood of Congenital Anomalies in Infants and Children,” Environmental Pollution 256 (January 2020).

[20] Joy Gordon, “The Enduring Lessons of the Iraq Sanctions,” Middle East Report 294 (Spring 2020).

[21] Dina is a pseudonym. Interview by the author, Iraq, 2014.

[22] Omar Dewachi, “Iraqibacter and the Pathologies of Intervention,” Middle East Report 290 (Spring 2019).