February 15, 2009

US: Complicit In Gaza "Death Experiment" ?

Reports of New Weapons Being Tested in Gaza.

New and ugly allegations have surfaced recently in connection to the recent Israeli onslaught on Gaza. The accusations are coming from many reliable sources and as such must be thoroughly investigated in order to determine their veracity.
According to a Norwegian MD who was working at a Palestinian hospital in Gaza during the recent war the type of injuries that were inflicted on war casualties ,during this campaign, were different than anything that he has seen before in a war theater and he has seen quite a few conflagrations over the past thirty years. Another Norwegian doctor named DR. Gilbert told the Oslo Gardermoen that "there is a strong suspicion that Gaza is now being used as a test laboratory for new weapons."

The suspicion as expressed by many medical doctors is the use of what the US Army calls DIME, Dense Inert Metal Explosive. This weapon was originally designed by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories to inflict severe damage on people but cause lighter destruction on buildings. Dr. Brommant , a German Doctor , who was also present in Gaza, describes the injuries that he has witnessed by saying that "It seems to be some sort of explosive or shell that disperses tiny particles that penetrate all organs, these miniature injuries, you are not able to attack them surgically." Those who are lucky to survive the initial injuries are most likely to develop RMS a deadly cancer related to the tungsten tiny particles.

Some observers had suspected the use of these weapons in the Lebanon war of 2006 but the intensity was no where close to what took place in Gaza during the first three weeks of January 2009. No one has yet accused the United States military of either deploying or using this type of a deadly weapon either in Iraq or Afghanistan but the question that begs to be asked is: Where did the IDF get these ammunitions from? If it can be shown that Israel has built its own DIME ammunition then we need to find out whether this development is purely coincidental or whether the US military supplied the Israeli government with the plans to build DIMEs.

Irrespective of whether Israel bought the weapons from the US or whether they obtained the right to manufacture them the US has clearly acted as a co-conspirator in this case. If it is to be shown that the Israeli forces did use DIME explosives in the Gaza campaign then it would be difficult not to view the US as an active partner in that war. What is even more unconscionable is the idea that the whole Gaza campaign might have been designed in order to test the effectiveness of this new killing device. It is to be noted that DIME weapons are not banned by the Geneva Convention but may I suggest that the weapons have not been banned simply because they have never been used before. Many are confident that once the use of these devices is established then their use will probably be prohibited.

Citizens of good will, the world over, must make their voices heard in order to demand a thorough investigation by the international community in order to establish clearly what weapons were used in Gaza, the origin of these weapons , how was the design for manufacturing them obtained by the IDF and whether the whole Gaza affair was nothing short of a camouflaged operation whose only purpose was to run an immoral and grotesque death experiment.

If the above hypothesis can be proven then, paradoxically, Hamas’s naiveté was even deadlier to their Palestinian brethren than what was originally thought.

February 09, 2009

Clean Wind Energy vs. Wasteful Spending

Part not apart from...

The Lebanese media has been abuzz recently with the news about the grandiose plans to construct an artificial island off the Damour coast in the shape of a Cedar Tree, as if the shape of such an environmental monstrosity is supposed to make it acceptable.

No country, rich or poor, can possibly justify spending precious human and environmental resources in order to create an artificial habitat whose only purpose is to cater to the whims of the rich and privileged. Homo sapiens, at least the variety in Lebanon, do not seem to have learned the most basic of ecological principles; we are part of nature and not apart from it. This implies that we have a moral obligation to respect other specie and not to act as if everything was created for our benefit. A basic environmental truth is that the more we do then the less we will have. All of that is made absolutely clear by the Second Law of Thermodynamics; entropy; which has been described by no less of an authority than Einstein as the supreme law of nature.

Lebanon is not the only country in the world that faces many challenges in practically all fields but yet it is a country whose challenges appear to be daunting whether one is to consider its political stability, economic progress, social coherence or ecological sustainability. Lebanon’s political existence is challenged daily both from within and from without but what is even more essential is the fact that its social structure is fractured , its economic modus operandi rests on inequality and exploitation, its political system is tribal and its ecology is unsustainable. Such a set of circumstances must relegate the destructive ideas of building small gardens within troubled areas as totally unacceptable and ultimately selfish. It looks that the invisible hand has demonstrated its shortcomings and grotesque failure the world over except in Lebanon where the idea of individual gain still trumps the common good and that is sad.

What is even more deplorable is the complicity of the Lebanese state in the promotion of these environmentally degenerate projects. The most ardent advocates of the free market enterprise system admit that in many instances the forces of the market fail to find the theoretical optimal allocation and the proverbial efficient solution. The name of the economist Pigou , a strong advocate of traditional mainstream economics during the early part of the 20th century, will always be associated with the notion of externalities that prevent the actual market forces from performing their magic. An equally important circumstance that prevents the free market from working efficiently is that of Public Goods.

The ultimate question in regards to the Cedar Island and the Hotel opposite Saint George in Beirut is that of ownership of the sea bed on which these projects are to be constructed. Who owns the sea bed? Obviously it is not individuals, nor corporations or a handful of politicians. The closest thing to an international law regarding the ownership of beaches and waterways is the Public Trust Doctrine which simply states that the citizens are the ultimate owners of these resources and that each and every one of us has the right to protect these natural endowments even if we have to sue on their behalf. The beaches are our natural patrimony and we have an obligation to protect them on behalf of the future generations.

What Lebanon needs, and very badly for that matter, is not a Hotel on stilts in the sea or an artificial island for the rich but a serious investment in clean and renewable energy that will cut down on our carbon footprint and yet supply us with the electricity that we need. We must ask those that are running for elections about their positions on these existential issues and vote accordingly. Good citizens have no choice but to act in a manner that will promote the integrity of the ecosystem as Aldo Leopold , the great environmental ethicist, has taught us.