Tag The Independent

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Toxic legacy of US assault on Fallujah ‘worse than Hiroshima’

Aug 25, ’10 7:39 PM

Amer­ica, kick­ing ass:

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

Dr Busby says that while he can­not identify the type of arma­ments used by the Mar­ines, the extent of genetic dam­age suffered by inhab­it­ants sug­gests the use of uranium in some form. He said: “My guess is that they used a new weapon against build­ings to break through walls and kill those inside.”

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You can’t trust the BBC on the Middle East

Apr 17, ’09 8:37 AM

Robert Fisk, writ­ing for The Independent:

… why is it that Haaretz’s1 top cor­res­pond­ents — Amira Hass and Gideon Levy — write so much more cour­ageously about the human rights abuses of Israeli troops (and war crimes) than the BBC has ever dared to do? Whenever I’m asked by lec­ture audi­ences around the world if they should trust the BBC, I tell them to trust Amira and Gideon more than they should ever believe in the wretched broad­cast­ing station.

I can cer­tainly advise view­ers to turn to Sky TV’s infin­itely tougher cov­er­age of the Middle East and … I can recom­mend the cour­age with which Al-Jazeera Eng­lish cov­ers Gaza and the rest of the Palestinian-Israeli war.

My exper­i­ence is that you can’t trust the BBC on the Middle East either. While I was in Iraq on the human shield action, the BBC — some­what to my sur­prise — turned out to be one of the most fac­tu­ally incor­rect and least object­ive news source report­ing on the action. In fact I remem­ber at one point read­ing more object­ive stor­ies on the Fox News web­site, a pro­pa­ganda chan­nel for the Repub­lican Party of the U.S.

I doubt any­thing will change there until the place is cleansed of people like the mor­ally cor­rupt Mark Thompson, the BBC’s dir­ector general.

Notes:
  1. Haaretz is Israel’s old­est daily news­pa­per. [↩]
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Jade Goody showed the brutal reality of Britain

Mar 23, ’09 10:54 PM

Johann Hari: Jade Goody showed the bru­tal real­ity of Bri­tain.

In her short life, Jade showed how as Bri­tain has spir­alled into one of the most unequal and immob­ile soci­et­ies on earth, we have begun to openly jeer and sneer at the people trapped at the bottom.

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