DEMOCRATIC WORLD FEDERALISTS
PEACEFUL | JUST | SUSTAINABLE | WORLD
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Articles in this Issue:
Russia Warns U.S. Delivery of Depleted Uranium Arms to Ukraine Would Be Akin to Use of Nukes
Brett Wilkins
More Shame for America: REMEMBER FALLUJAH, Scorched Earth
Beyond Hiroshima - The Non-Reporting of Fallujah's Cancer Catastrophe
David Edwards and David Cromwell
World's Refugee Crises Mostly Caused by U.S. Aggression
US Actions Produced Majority of World's Refugees
Eric Zuesse
Will UN Reform Happen This Year?
Don't Hold Your Breath
Evelyn Leopold
Earth Constitution: Only A Democratic
World Federal Government Is Realistic
Roger Kotila
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Russia Warns U.S. Delivery of Depleted Uranium Arms to Ukraine Would Be Akin to Use of Nukes
Brett Wilkins
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U.S. Army Bradley Fighting Vehicles fire weapons systems—which can include depleted uranium munitions—during a November 2014 training exercise in Grafenwöhr, Germany. (Photo: Capt. John Farmer/U.S. Army/flickr/cc) |
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"We would regard it as the use of 'dirty nuclear bombs' against Russia, with all the consequences that entails," a Russian official said as the U.S. and Germany prepare to send tanks and armored vehicles capable of firing depleted uranium munitions to Ukraine.
A Russian official this week responded to the Biden administration's refusal to rule out sending depleted uranium anti-tank munitions to Ukraine by warning that deployment of such weapons—which have been linked to birth defects, miscarriages, and cancer—would be regarded by Moscow as use of "dirty nuclear bombs."
According to a White House transcript published after a Wednesday press call, an unnamed senior Biden administration official would not say when a reporter repeatedly asked whether the United States would
provide armor-piercing depleted uranium (DU) ammunition for the Bradley Fighting Vehicles that are part of a recently announced $2.85 billion aid package to Ukraine. The Bradleys, as well as the U.S. Abrams and German Leopard tanks and Marder infantry fighting vehicles Ukraine, is set to receive, can fire armor-piercing shells with uranium cores. READ MORE
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More Shame for America: REMEMBER FALLUJAH, Scorched Earth
Beyond Hiroshima - The Non-Reporting of
Fallujah's Cancer Catastrophe
David Edwards and David Cromwell
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EXCERPTS:
American documentary film-maker Mark Manning told of “American forces deploying – in violation of international treaties – napalm, chemical weapons, phosphorous bombs, and ‘bunker-busting’ shells laced with depleted uranium. Use of any of these against civilians is a violation of international law.” (Nick Welsh, ‘Diving into Fallujah,’ Santa Barbara Independent, March 17, 2005,
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US troops launched a major attack on Fallujah in March 2004 and then joined with British forces to storm the city in a much bigger offensive, Operation Phantom Fury, in November of the same year. On November 30, 2004, the UN’s Integrated Regional Information Network reported the aftermath:
“Approximately 70 percent of the houses and shops were destroyed in the city and those still standing are riddled with bullets.” (‘Fallujah still needs more supplies despite aid arrival,’ www.irinnews.org, November 30, 2004)
In January 2005, an Iraqi doctor, Ali Fadhil, reported of the city:
“It was completely devastated, destruction everywhere. It looked like a city of ghosts. Falluja used to be a modern city; now there was nothing. We spent the day going through the rubble that had been the centre of the city; I didn’t see a single building that was functioning.” (Fadhil, ‘City of ghosts,’ The Guardian, January 11, 2005)
On March 3, 2005, Aljazeera reported:
“Dr. Khalid ash-Shaykhli, an official at Iraq’s health ministry, said that the U.S. military used internationally banned weapons during its deadly offensive in the city of Fallujah.” The official reported evidence that US forces had “used… substances, including mustard gas, nerve gas, and other burning chemicals in their attacks in the war-torn city.” (‘US used banned weapons in Fallujah – Health ministry,’ March 3, 2005, http://www.aljazeera.com)
One month earlier, the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, a leading medical journal, published a study, ‘Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009,’ by Chris Busby, Malak Hamdan and Entesar Ariabi. As Noam Chomsky has commented, the study’s findings are “vastly more significant” than the Wikileaks Afghan ‘War Diary’ leaks (http://www.zcommunications.org/wikileaks-and-coverage-in-press-by-noam-chomsky). After all, the cancer crisis reported in the study is impacting thousands of people in one of Iraq’s largest cities and is so severe that local doctors are advising women not to have children.
In the Independent, Patrick Cockburn wrote:
“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.”
“The creators and editors of Medialens, David Edwards and David Cromwell, have had such influence in a short time that, by holding to account those who, it is said, write history’s draft, they may well have changed the course of modern historiography. They have certainly torn up the ‘ethical blank cheque’, which Richard Drayton referred to, and have exposed as morally corrupt ‘the right to bomb, to maim, to imprison without trial…’. Without Media Lens during the attack on and occupation of Iraq, the full gravity of that debacle might have been consigned to oblivion, and to bad history.” (John Pilger, foreword, David Edwards and David Cromwell, Guardians Of Power – The Myth Of The Liberal Media, Pluto Press, 2006, p.x) READ MORE
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World's Refugee Crises Mostly Caused by U.S. Aggression
US Actions Produced Majority of World's Refugees
Eric Zuesse
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EXCERPTS
According to figures from the United Nations refugee agency, the
majority of refugees in the world today — and ever since the start of this century — have been fleeing from countries that were sanctioned, couped, and/or invaded, by the U.S. Government.
A question arises, in light of this, as to whether the news media have been sufficiently reporting on what has been the main cause of the world’s refugee problem, and how to fix it. Within nations, there is much public resistance to accepting new refugees. Would the public’s attitude be different if were well known, from news reports such as this one, what had actually caused most of these refugees? Would national policies in the EU and in the U.S. be affected if the cause were publicized? Should it be publicized? [To DWF NEWS editor: Will you publish this? If not: why not? YES, DWF NEWS WILL PUBLISH THIS ARTICLE...BECAUSE THE PUBLIC HAS A RIGHT TO KNOW. -- R. Kotila READ MORE
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Will UN Reform Happen This Year?
Don't Hold Your Breath
Evelyn Leopold
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In a UN Security Council session on the rule of law, from left: US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Swiss President Ignazio Cassis and the country’s UN ambassador, Pascale Baeriswyl, Jan. 12, 2023. For decades, negotiations on expanding the Council have produced no results, though in the last year, voices for reform have grown more vehement. That may stem from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a year ago and President Biden’s kick-starting the topic last fall in his General Assembly speech. JOHN PENNEY/PASSBLUE |
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EXCERPTS
Everyone talks about reforming the United Nations Security Council but change remains elusive after decades of debates. This past year, the voices for expanding the Council became louder, yet few can agree on how to do it. And they were not expected to do so during meetings that began last week.
Called the intergovernmental negotiations, the war in Ukraine has spurred numerous countries into action, but their positions vary on the number of seats for changing the Council and its veto powers, which is held by the five permanent members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States. Russia’s frequent veto on the war in Ukraine is often backed by China
“To propose that the intergovernmental negotiations continue as they have over the last 14 years would be similar to asking the orchestra on the Titanic to continue playing music as the ship has started to sink,” said Brazilian envoy Ronaldo Costa at a November debate on Council reform.
The president of the General Assembly, Csaba Korosi, a Hungarian, said the debate had been going on for 43 years, not just 14, since Council reform first appeared on the Assembly’s agenda. “A choice is at hand: Does the Assembly continue its annual repetition of well-known positions or, moved by these crises, does it swing into action to find common ground and achieve breakthroughs?” READ MORE
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Earth Constitution: Only A Democratic World Federal Government Is Realistic
Roger Kotila
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The Constitution for the Federation of Earth (aka Earth Constitution) is a blueprint to build an emerging democratic world federal government -- an
Earth Federation movement led by the World Constitution & Parliament Association (WCPA) to replace the United Nations system stymied with its obsolete and fatally flawed Charter.
World federalists generally agree that world federal government is our only realistic hope to end wars between nations, or to eliminate weapons of mass destruction. Because the United Nations Charter is not a world federal government and is not constitution-based, it has repeatedly failed in its main purpose -- to end war.
For the reasoning to explain that only world government can save our world I recommend "Einstein on Peace" and "The Psychology of Nuclear Disarmament: Only A Democratic World Federal Union is Realistic" (Academic Council on the UN System, Earth Federation NEWS 2/2/21).
If the UN is unable, or unwilling, to transform itself into a democratic world federation, then the WCPA's Earth Federation/Earth Constitution movement must fill the void. Its strategic advantage is that it need not wait for approval from the nation-states, important as they ultimately will be, to build an alternative world organization parallel to, but independent of, the United Nations.
The Earth Federation strategy is far more than an attempt to build a viable democratic world federation. Its Earth Constitution is the heart and soul of a new vision for our world, where idealism is encouraged and supported while the path to good government is concrete and practical.
The Earth Federation's Provisional World Parliament outlaws weapons of mass destruction and war itself. There is a brilliantly designed World Judiciary System with Enforcement powers so that Bully nations whose leaders are responsible for world crimes are no longer above the Law.
Professor Glen Martin, a WCPA leader, declares that the Earth Federation "invites in all and excludes no one." "It recognizes every human being as a citizen, and invites every nation to be a member, with all the rights, privileges, and benefits that apply under the Constitution."
Should social activists just keep doing what they're doing -- networking; reacting to this crisis, then that crisis; protesting this war, then that war; lamenting loudly over poverty and human rights abuses? Isn’t complaining loudly, but with no permanent solution, a "Sisyphean experience"? The Earth Federation/Earth Constitution/World Parliament strategy could change all of that.
We'd all like UN reform to succeed. But if the UN remains with its present failed Charter, then it's just common sense to have a replacement strategy waiting in the wings. Tell the UN General Assembly that the Earth Constitution is ready to go.
Roger Kotila, PhD
Psychologist (ret.)
Co-editor, DWF NEWS
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