An Ongoing Nakba: The Plight of Palestinian Refugees in Iraq

An Ongoing Nakba: The Plight of Palestinian Refugees in Iraq

by Tom Charles

Image from Tom Charles February 6, 2012 In September 2011, the month that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud 'Abbas submitted Palestine’s statehood bid at the United Nations, Qusai Abdul-Raouf of the Lebanon-based Palestinian Human Rights Foundation was undertaking the task of documenting the increasing number of attacks against Palestinians in the Al Baladiyyat neighbourhood of Baghdad. As he toured the neighborhood three gunmen, reportedly wearing Interior Ministry uniforms, abducted him. No one has seen him since. Palestinians in Iraq had numbered approximately thirty five thousand (although some estimates run as high as ninety thousand) before the 2003 US/UK invasion. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) only thirteen thousand remained in 2009. This figure now stands at approximately seven thousand. The threat to Palestinians in Iraq has grown to the extent that their continued presence in the country is now under serious threat. Palestinian refugees in Iraq are stateless, vulnerable and forgotten. They are a small segment of the three quarters of the global population of eleven million Palestinians, who are denied their right of return. The word nakba, literally translated as catastrophe, commonly refers to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homeland in 1948. But for Palestinians, the nakba never ended and their dispossession continues. Palestinian refugees are scattered around the world, but eighty-eight percent remain close to their land in Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. Many of them live in abject conditions with little sign of an end to their suffering. This perpetual crisis, despite its scale and its significant impact on international relations, is heavily marginalized in Western news consumption and parliamentary debate.Central to Palestinian life is the refugees’ right to return to their homes, enshrined in international law and codified in UN resolutions. For Palestinian refugees this right of return is systematically denied, alongside their rights to safety, freedom of movement, work, shelter and food which are routinely violated. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has described the plight of the Palestinian refugees more generally as "by far the most protracted and largest of all refugee problems in the world today." This is the broader context of the Palestinian refugee situation in Iraq. Nakba phase one: 1948 and 1967 Palestinians went to Iraq in several waves, each time fleeing war. The first group were from Haifa and surrounding villages in what is now Israel. They resisted initial Zionist attacks on their villages during the 1948 War, but later fled to Jenin where the Iraqi army was situated. Under the protection of Iraqi forces, women and children were evacuated to Iraq and the men were incorporated into a special unit of the Iraqi army, the Karmel Brigade. When the Iraqi Army left Palestine in 1949, these villagers (numbering approximately four thousand) retreated with it. After the 1967 war, a second major wave of Palestinians arrived in Iraq. A third influx entered in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, when most Palestinians were expelled from Kuwait and many, particularly those from the Gaza Strip, had nowhere else to go. Unlike Palestinian refugees in the Occupied Territories, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, those who lived in Iraq did not fall under the jurisdiction of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Iraq refused UNRWA permission to operate on its territory when it was initially established in the late 1940s. Palestinians in Iraq were issued special travel documents, had the right to work and had full access to health care, education, and other governmental services. They also lived in government-owned housing or paid subsidized rent in privately-owned houses. This was certainly better than the appalling living conditions in camps, but the refugees were not offered citizenship, nor were they allowed to own houses or land. They became a source of simmering resentment in the 1980s and 1990s for sections of Iraq’s population, who believed that Palestinians were getting preferential treatment. This ill feeling further escalated with the Iraqi regime’s policy, particularly after the start of the second intifada in 2000, of sending money to families of martyrs in Palestine, despite Iraq’s economic hardship. Palestinians in Iraq, like the rest of Iraqi society, were then subjected to the most comprehensive sanctions regime in history. Introduced by the UN in August 1990, the sanctions were described by the former United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq, Denis Halliday in 2000 as "genocide." They also suffered alongside the Iraqis as the United States continued to bomb the country throughout the period from the end of the first Gulf war to the start of the 2003 invasion. The ongoing nakba: 2003 The precariousness of the Palestinian refugees’ situation was exposed after the US-led invasion in 2003. As Iraqi society suffered under the weight of decades of war, sanctions, and their own conditions of internal displacement, resentment at Palestinians’ perceived preferential treatment made them targets for reprisals. The Palestinian community was extremely vulnerable, with no armed group to protect them, and unlike Iraqi citizens, Palestinians bearing Iraqi travel documents were generally unable to seek refuge neighboring countries. As a result thousands fled to inhospitable camps in the border areas with Jordan, where they had the choice of remaining under Jordanian police guard in fenced off camps, or returning to persecution in Baghdad. Some Palestinians with family connections in Jordan were allowed to enter the country, but were barred from working. The Palestinian Authority repeatedly stated its willingness to accommodate the Palestinians fleeing Iraq in the Gaza Strip, but Israel was able to block this due to its control of Gaza’s borders. In the Al-Hol, Al-Tanaf, Al-Ruweished, and Al-Waleed refugee camps in the scorpion-infested desert, refugee health deteriorated due to a lack of access to medical services. José Riera and Andrew Harper of UNHCR reported in 2007: "They have fled death threats and the murder of family members only to face a deadly environment of searing heat and regular sandstorms." The Palestinians of Iraq had gone full circle, living in tents, just as they did after the ethnic cleansing of 1948. Syria eventually accepted hundreds of the displaced under the auspices of UNRWA. Jordan accepted a small number able to demonstrate a link to the country, such as through marriage to a Jordanian citizen, but a greater number were only allowed them to stay in the border desert in "internment like conditions." Many of the families eventually resettled as far away as Brazil, Canada, India and New Zealand. The remaining Palestinians live in the At-Tweija, Al Za’faraniyya, Al Doura, and Al Hurriyya neighbourhoods of Baghdad. According to the Palestinian Ambassador in Iraq Daleel Al Qassous they are "living in extreme poverty due to high living costs and the lack of work. The UN provides some services to them but their situation is very miserable." After the overthrow of the Baathist regime, landlords were no longer obliged to grant Palestinians subsidized housing in return for a small government payment as they had been under Saddam Hussein’s rule. These landlords evicted hundreds of Palestinian families. Palestinians in Iraq then had to endure hostile bureaucracy as the Ministry of the Interior chose to treat them as non-resident foreigners rather than as recognized refugees, which was the situation under Saddam Hussein’s regime. As a result Palestinians are required to obtain short-term residency permits of one to two months.  Most Palestinian refugees in Iraq were born in the country and had lived their entire lives there, yet had to regularly apply for residency without guarantee of receiving it. A lack of valid residency documents in today’s Iraq puts refugees at risk of arrest at checkpoints. Since Palestinians’ status has changed after the invasion (with such shifts as having to regularly renew their residency), they have become increasingly vulnerable and subject to harassment and humiliation. As the political situation in Iraq deteriorated under occupation, Palestinians have increasingly been harassed and threatened by armed militias who see them as remnants of the Baathist regime. And as the Sunni insurrection grew, sections of the Iraqi media attempted to connect Palestinians to bombings. They were an easy target for those looking for a "foreign" element to blame. Scores of Palestinians in Iraq have been murdered, tortured, taken as hostages and imprisoned by mainly Shia militant groups. Many were expelled from their homes and initially took shelter in tents in the Haifa stadium in Baghdad. For those remaining in their homes, their situation has become desperately insecure following the spike in Iraqi security forces’ attacks in 2011. In September 2011, while international attention focused on 'Abbas’s manoeuvring at the United Nations, attacks by unknown militants and interior ministry officers against Palestinians increased. The violence was such that many were desperate enough to attempt to flee to an already unsafe country: Syria. In coordination with the United Nations’ refugee agencies the Syrian government agreed to provide temporary shelter to Palestinian refugees at its Al-Hol camp in early 2010 while the UNHCR worked to arrange more suitable relocations in other countries. The principal invaders of Iraq; the United States and United Kingdom, have failed to uphold basic democratic principles and defend Palestinians. Security for Palestinians in Iraq has been progressively getting worse, even after the installment of a new government, further disclosing the flimsiness of US-UK claims of "democracy promotion" in justifying their invasion and subsequent destruction of Iraqi society. There have been attempts to reduce the suffering of the refugees, as different elements of Iraqi society and religious leaders from the Shiite and Sunni communities have met with Ambassador Al Qassous to try and find a solution. These leaders included Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the highest ranking Shiite religious reference in Iraq. Despite such goodwill gestures, the fact remains that Palestinian refugees in Iraq are extremely vulnerable. They, like all Palestinian refugees in the diaspora, have no voice in the policies and decisions of the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian leaders have been more than willing to abandon the right of return, save for a symbolic number. Such weakness will always be taken advantage of by stronger parties looking for political gain. With no voice and no economic power, refugees will not assume their rightful place in the media or on political agendas in the West unless serious steps are taken, from grassroots to government levels, to highlight their plight and comprehend the importance of delivering justice. In Iraq, like in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the wider diaspora, the nakba is not a historic event, but a daily and ongoing reality. Starting with the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in the 1940s Palestinian refugees have been trapped in a vicious cycle. Violence and intimidation lead to expulsion and temporary resettlement. This is followed by yet more insecurity and more violence with no resolution in sight. This pattern can only end through the implementation of the right of return. Following this logical path would lead to the simultaneous ending of the Zionist dream of a solely Jewish state in historic Palestine. This is an inconvenient reality for many. Yet any attempt to solve the Middle East conflict that does not tackle this reality head on, outlining a clear strategy for the refugees’ enfranchisement and return to their land, is doomed to fail.

Truth, lies and Afghanistan

Truth, lies and Afghanistan
How military leaders have let us down

By LT. COL. DANIEL L. DAVIS

February 6, 2012 I spent last year in Afghanistan, visiting and talking with U.S. troops and their Afghan partners. My duties with the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force took me into every significant area where our soldiers engage the enemy. Over the course of 12 months, I covered more than 9,000 miles and talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces. What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground. Entering this deployment, I was sincerely hoping to learn that the claims were true: that conditions in Afghanistan were improving, that the local government and military were progressing toward self-sufficiency. I did not need to witness dramatic improvements to be reassured, but merely hoped to see evidence of positive trends, to see companies or battalions produce even minimal but sustainable progress. Instead, I witnessed the absence of success on virtually every level. My arrival in country in late 2010 marked the start of my fourth combat deployment, and my second in Afghanistan. A Regular Army officer in the Armor Branch, I served in Operation Desert Storm, in Afghanistan in 2005-06 and in Iraq in 2008-09. In the middle of my career, I spent eight years in the U.S. Army Reserve and held a number of civilian jobs — among them, legislative correspondent for defense and foreign affairs for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas. As a representative for the Rapid Equipping Force, I set out to talk to our troops about their needs and their circumstances. Along the way, I conducted mounted and dismounted combat patrols, spending time with conventional and Special Forces troops. I interviewed or had conversations with more than 250 soldiers in the field, from the lowest-ranking 19-year-old private to division commanders and staff members at every echelon. I spoke at length with Afghan security officials, Afghan civilians and a few village elders. I saw the incredible difficulties any military force would have to pacify even a single area of any of those provinces; I heard many stories of how insurgents controlled virtually every piece of land beyond eyeshot of a U.S. or International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) base. I saw little to no evidence the local governments were able to provide for the basic needs of the people. Some of the Afghan civilians I talked with said the people didn’t want to be connected to a predatory or incapable local government. From time to time, I observed Afghan Security forces collude with the insurgency. From Bad to Abysmal Much of what I saw during my deployment, let alone read or wrote in official reports, I can’t talk about; the information remains classified. But I can say that such reports — mine and others’ — serve to illuminate the gulf between conditions on the ground and official statements of progress. And I can relate a few representative experiences, of the kind that I observed all over the country. In January 2011, I made my first trip into the mountains of Kunar province near the Pakistan border to visit the troops of 1st Squadron, 32nd Cavalry. On a patrol to the northernmost U.S. position in eastern Afghanistan, we arrived at an Afghan National Police (ANP) station that had reported being attacked by the Taliban 2½ hours earlier. Through the interpreter, I asked the police captain where the attack had originated, and he pointed to the side of a nearby mountain. "What are your normal procedures in situations like these?" I asked. "Do you form up a squad and go after them? Do you periodically send out harassing patrols? What do you do?" As the interpreter conveyed my questions, the captain’s head wheeled around, looking first at the interpreter and turning to me with an incredulous expression. Then he laughed. "No! We don’t go after them," he said. "That would be dangerous!" According to the cavalry troopers, the Afghan policemen rarely leave the cover of the checkpoints. In that part of the province, the Taliban literally run free. In June, I was in the Zharay district of Kandahar province, returning to a base from a dismounted patrol. Gunshots were audible as the Taliban attacked a U.S. checkpoint about one mile away. As I entered the unit’s command post, the commander and his staff were watching a live video feed of the battle. Two ANP vehicles were blocking the main road leading to the site of the attack. The fire was coming from behind a haystack. We watched as two Afghan men emerged, mounted a motorcycle and began moving toward the Afghan policemen in their vehicles. The U.S. commander turned around and told the Afghan radio operator to make sure the policemen halted the men. The radio operator shouted into the radio repeatedly, but got no answer. On the screen, we watched as the two men slowly motored past the ANP vehicles. The policemen neither got out to stop the two men nor answered the radio — until the motorcycle was out of sight. To a man, the U.S. officers in that unit told me they had nothing but contempt for the Afghan troops in their area — and that was before the above incident occurred. In August, I went on a dismounted patrol with troops in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province. Several troops from the unit had recently been killed in action, one of whom was a very popular and experienced soldier. One of the unit’s senior officers rhetorically asked me, "How do I look these men in the eye and ask them to go out day after day on these missions? What’s harder: How do I look [my soldier’s] wife in the eye when I get back and tell her that her husband died for something meaningful? How do I do that?" One of the senior enlisted leaders added, "Guys are saying, 'I hope I live so I can at least get home to R&R leave before I get it,’ or 'I hope I only lose a foot.’ Sometimes they even say which limb it might be: 'Maybe it’ll only be my left foot.’ They don’t have a lot of confidence that the leadership two levels up really understands what they’re living here, what the situation really is." On Sept. 11, the 10th anniversary of the infamous attack on the U.S., I visited another unit in Kunar province, this one near the town of Asmar. I talked with the local official who served as the cultural adviser to the U.S. commander. Here’s how the conversation went: Davis: "Here you have many units of the Afghan National Security Forces [ANSF]. Will they be able to hold out against the Taliban when U.S. troops leave this area?" Adviser: "No. They are definitely not capable. Already all across this region [many elements of] the security forces have made deals with the Taliban. [The ANSF] won’t shoot at the Taliban, and the Taliban won’t shoot them. "Also, when a Taliban member is arrested, he is soon released with no action taken against him. So when the Taliban returns [when the Americans leave after 2014], so too go the jobs, especially for everyone like me who has worked with the coalition. "Recently, I got a cellphone call from a Talib who had captured a friend of mine. While I could hear, he began to beat him, telling me I’d better quit working for the Americans. I could hear my friend crying out in pain. [The Talib] said the next time they would kidnap my sons and do the same to them. Because of the direct threats, I’ve had to take my children out of school just to keep them safe. "And last night, right on that mountain there [he pointed to a ridge overlooking the U.S. base, about 700 meters distant], a member of the ANP was murdered. The Taliban came and called him out, kidnapped him in front of his parents, and took him away and murdered him. He was a member of the ANP from another province and had come back to visit his parents. He was only 27 years old. The people are not safe anywhere." That murder took place within view of the U.S. base, a post nominally responsible for the security of an area of hundreds of square kilometers. Imagine how insecure the population is beyond visual range. And yet that conversation was representative of what I saw in many regions of Afghanistan. In all of the places I visited, the tactical situation was bad to abysmal. If the events I have described — and many, many more I could mention — had been in the first year of war, or even the third or fourth, one might be willing to believe that Afghanistan was just a hard fight, and we should stick it out. Yet these incidents all happened in the 10th year of war. As the numbers depicting casualties and enemy violence indicate the absence of progress, so too did my observations of the tactical situation all over Afghanistan. Credibility Gap I’m hardly the only one who has noted the discrepancy between official statements and the truth on the ground. A January 2011 report by the Afghan NGO Security Office noted that public statements made by U.S. and ISAF leaders at the end of 2010 were "sharply divergent from IMF, [international military forces, NGO-speak for ISAF] 'strategic communication’ messages suggesting improvements. We encourage [nongovernment organization personnel] to recognize that no matter how authoritative the source of any such claim, messages of the nature are solely intended to influence American and European public opinion ahead of the withdrawal, and are not intended to offer an accurate portrayal of the situation for those who live and work here." The following month, Anthony Cordesman, on behalf of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote that ISAF and the U.S. leadership failed to report accurately on the reality of the situation in Afghanistan. "Since June 2010, the unclassified reporting the U.S. does provide has steadily shrunk in content, effectively 'spinning’ the road to victory by eliminating content that illustrates the full scale of the challenges ahead," Cordesman wrote. "They also, however, were driven by political decisions to ignore or understate Taliban and insurgent gains from 2002 to 2009, to ignore the problems caused by weak and corrupt Afghan governance, to understate the risks posed by sanctuaries in Pakistan, and to 'spin’ the value of tactical ISAF victories while ignoring the steady growth of Taliban influence and control." How many more men must die in support of a mission that is not succeeding and behind an array of more than seven years of optimistic statements by U.S. senior leaders in Afghanistan? No one expects our leaders to always have a successful plan. But we do expect — and the men who do the living, fighting and dying deserve — to have our leaders tell us the truth about what’s going on. I first encountered senior-level equivocation during a 1997 division-level "experiment" that turned out to be far more setpiece than experiment. Over dinner at Fort Hood, Texas, Training and Doctrine Command leaders told me that the Advanced Warfighter Experiment (AWE) had shown that a "digital division" with fewer troops and more gear could be far more effective than current divisions. The next day, our congressional staff delegation observed the demonstration firsthand, and it didn’t take long to realize there was little substance to the claims. Virtually no legitimate experimentation was actually conducted. All parameters were carefully scripted. All events had a preordained sequence and outcome. The AWE was simply an expensive show, couched in the language of scientific experimentation and presented in glowing press releases and public statements, intended to persuade Congress to fund the Army’s preference. Citing the AWE’s "results," Army leaders proceeded to eliminate one maneuver company per combat battalion. But the loss of fighting systems was never offset by a commensurate rise in killing capability. A decade later, in the summer of 2007, I was assigned to the Future Combat Systems (FCS) organization at Fort Bliss, Texas. It didn’t take long to discover that the same thing the Army had done with a single division at Fort Hood in 1997 was now being done on a significantly larger scale with FCS. Year after year, the congressionally mandated reports from the Government Accountability Office revealed significant problems and warned that the system was in danger of failing. Each year, the Army’s senior leaders told members of Congress at hearings that GAO didn’t really understand the full picture and that to the contrary, the program was on schedule, on budget, and headed for success. Ultimately, of course, the program was canceled, with little but spinoffs to show for $18 billion spent. If Americans were able to compare the public statements many of our leaders have made with classified data, this credibility gulf would be immediately observable. Naturally, I am not authorized to divulge classified material to the public. But I am legally able to share it with members of Congress. I have accordingly provided a much fuller accounting in a classified report to several members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, senators and House members. A nonclassified version is available at www.afghanreport.com. [Editor’s note: At press time, Army public affairs had not yet ruled on whether Davis could post this longer version.] Tell The Truth When it comes to deciding what matters are worth plunging our nation into war and which are not, our senior leaders owe it to the nation and to the uniformed members to be candid — graphically, if necessary — in telling them what’s at stake and how expensive potential success is likely to be. U.S. citizens and their elected representatives can decide if the risk to blood and treasure is worth it. Likewise when having to decide whether to continue a war, alter its aims or to close off a campaign that cannot be won at an acceptable price, our senior leaders have an obligation to tell Congress and American people the unvarnished truth and let the people decide what course of action to choose. That is the very essence of civilian control of the military. The American people deserve better than what they’ve gotten from their senior uniformed leaders over the last number of years. Simply telling the truth would be a good start. AFJ

The plutonium injections - The most monstrous, horrendous and appaling abominable medical crime of the 20th Century (4)

Plutonium Injections – Patient HP-9

27 July 2009, 1:00 pm

This biography is in honor of one of the patients that were injected with plutonium in Rochester, NY during WWII.
Frederick C. Sours was born 18 Aug. 1881 to Henry Lowell and Mary J. (Wilson) Sours. An online source says that Henry Sours died of tuberculosis on 3 Nov. 1885. The same online source says that Fred Sours was baptized 4 Sept. 1881 at Our Lady of Victory Church as “Clarence Frederick Sours.” Fred also had a sister, Edna E., born in 1884. She was a stenographer until her untimely death on 3 Sept. 1914.

Fred Sours

Fred lived with his widowed mother until her death on 25 May 1927. The first time that Fred shows up in the Rochester city directories was in 1901 and he was a manager at the Armstrong Piano Company. He worked there until 1908. Then in 1909 he is a clerk at Ryan and Sours Saloon on West Main Street in Rochester. The “Sours” that owned the saloon was Fred’s uncle, William H. Sours, who also owned the Newport House on Irondequoit Bay. In 1913 the saloon was changed to Sours and Sours Liquor Store. The owners in this case were Fred with his uncle William. This business only survived until 1920 when it had to be closed because of national prohibition. From 1922 to about 1941, Fred owned and operated Young’s Shell Oyster and Fish Market on West Main Street in Rochester.
Fred was married to Lulu A. Ryan in 1928 in Rochester. They moved to Chili Avenue in Gates soon after that. It was also about time that Fred took an interest in politics. He was first a member of the Highway Committee. Then as the Republican candidate he was elected as the Supervisor of the Town of Gates; a position that he would hold from Jan. 1936 and for the rest of his life. The picture  of Fred is him opening, for the first time, a new Gates Town Hall on Buffalo Road in December 1939.
He was a life member of Rochester Lodge of Elks and a member of the Grange, the Gates Exempt Fireman’s Association, the Rochester Exempts and the Men’s Club of St. Helen’s Church.

Tombstone for Fred & his sister

Fred was admitted to Strong Memorial Hospital with a history of general dermatitis and weakness. Then on 3 April 1946 he was injected with .386 microcuries of plutonium. That would be 55 times the amount of radiation that a person would receive in the average lifetime. Fred would remain sick until he died 2 July 1947 at aged 65 of bronchopneumonia at Strong Memorial Hospital. His funeral was held at St. Helen’s Church and he was buried in the family plot of Section D of Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Rochester. His widow, Lulu, survived until 7 Oct. 1969.
Then on 18 May 1978 Fred’s body was exhumed. The cemetery was closed and employees were forced to leave during the exhumation. It would July or August 1981 before Fred’s remains were returned to Holy Sepulchre Cemetery where he still rests peacefully.
http://rochistory.com/blog/?p=279
-------------------------------------------------

Plutonium Injections – Patient HP-10

28 July 2009, 1:00 pm

This biography is in honor of one of the patients that were injected with plutonium in Rochester, NY during WWII.

Daniel Nelson

Daniel H. Nelson was born 31 Oct. 1893 in Rochester, NY. He was the son of John W. Nelson. In the 1900 census Daniel, aged 7 was living with his father, John at 1 Pine Alley in Rochester. The father was aged 42 and born in Georgia. Also living them was John’s wife, Fannie (age 36). The census record states that they were only married 5 years so Fannie is probably Daniel’s step-mother. John Nelson died 15 July 1904 of consumption aged 41 and was buried on 17 July in the Single Grave section of Mt. Hope Cemetery in Rochester. Fannie Nelson died 12 Jan 1909 at age 43.
Daniel served in the Army during WWI as a PFC from 3 Aug. 1918 until 19 Jan. 1919. He would find that military service valuable later in life.
From 1919 to 1945 Daniel lived mostly in Newark, NJ working as a cook according to later government records. His family says that he was a janitor and plasterer. While in Rochester in March 1946 to visit family members, he suffered a heart attack and was admitted to Rochester Municipal Hospital and moved on 7 July to Strong Memorial Hospital. Daniel was injected on 16 July 1946 with .374 microcuries of plutonium. That is 53 times the amount of radiation that a person receives in a lifetime. When discharged 15 Aug. 1945 from the hospital, he had no place to convalesce so he went to a veteran’s facility at Mount McGregor, NY.
------------------------------------------

Plutonium Injections – Patient HP-11

29 July 2009, 1:00 pm

This biography is in honor of one of the patients that were injected with plutonium in Rochester, NY during WWII.
Harry W. Slack was born 29 Jan. 1877 in Waterloo, NY as the only child of Edward and Adelia (Cooper) Slack.
Harry enlisted in the Army 17 June 1898 in Rochester, NY for the Spanish-American War. He served as a Private in Co. A in the 3rd NY Infantry. He was discharged on 30 Nov. 1898 in Rochester, NY.
Harry married on 22 Aug. 1900 in Rochester. She was known as Louise in many Rochester city directory records but the online Rochester marriage index says that her name was Minnie F. Colby of Alexander, NY. Her parents were listed as Frank E. Colby and Alice Nelson.
Going through the Rochester directories there are many times when Harry and Louise are not listed and they seem to move around Rochester often. Plus Harry’s occupation changed almost as often. He is a grocer on his marriage record, driver in 1898, clerk in 1902, actor in 1904, ticket clerk in 1912 and a driver again in 1914. Then from 1917 to 1924 he is working for a railroad; first as a baggageman and then as a messenger. By 1930 Harry and Louise have moved to the Sea Breeze area of Irondequoit, NY. From 1935 to 1946 they would be living at 99 Lake View Ave. in Sea Breeze.

Harry's tombstone

When Harry was admitted to the hospital, his records state that he was a janitor at the YMCA suffering from malnutrition, alcoholism and cirrhosis of the liver. He was injected on 20 Feb. 1946 with .398 microcuries of plutonium at Strong Memorial Hospital. That is 56 times the radiation that a person would receive in a lifetime. Harry was the last of the patients that were injected in Rochester and he lived the shortest amount of time after the injection. Harry died on 26 Feb. 1946 at aged 60 of bronchopneumonia. He is buried in a veteran’s section of Irondequoit Cemetery, Irondequoit, NY.  His obit in the newspaper says he leaves a wife, Louise.
-------------------------------------------------

The plutonium injections - The most monstrous, horrendous and appaling abominable medical crime of the 20th Century (3)

Plutonium Injections – Patient HP-6

24 July 2009, 1:00 pm

This biography is in honor of one of the patients that were injected with plutonium in Rochester, NY during WWII.

Rose & John

John B. Mousso was born 14 Nov. 1901. He was one of 12 children of Peter and Laura Mousso. In the 1920 census John is age 15 and living with his parents at 805 Garfield St. in East Rochester, NY. It was about that time that John began working at the car shops in East Rochester and he worked there for 20 years.
In 1922 John married Rosalia C. “Rose” Winterhalter (born 23 Nov 1901) in Rochester. They lived on West Ivy Street in East Rochester. They only had one son that was born in 1937.
John liked to hunt and fish and played cards with the neighbors. He also volunteered at the Fire Department and in 1936 was the Assistant Chief. Somewhere around 1940 he began working at the piano factory in East Rochester.
John was admitted to Strong Memorial Hospital suffering from Addison’s disease. Then he was injected on 1 Feb. 1946 with .325 microcuries of plutonium. That dosage is 46 times the amount of radiation a person would receive in a lifetime. John would return to Strong from 21 June to 1 July 1973 for follow-up studies. It appears that he never was told of his injections. John continued working and in 1960 he is a maintenance man for the Village of East Rochester.
http://rochistory.com/blog/?p=258
--------------------------------------------------

Plutonium Injections – Patient HP-5

23 July 2009, 1:00 pm

This biography is in honor of one of the patients that were injected with plutonium in Rochester, NY during WWII.

Paul Galinger

Paul R. Galinger was born 4 Jan. 1889 to Henry and Elizabeth Galinger. Paul had a younger sister Mable E. Galinger. The family is living in Waterloo, NY in the 1900 census. Also living with the family is Elizabeth’s mother Elizabeth Sharp, aged 67.
About 1910, Paul marries Allena B. —–, born about 1891. They have just one son, Paul A. Galinger that was born about 1912 and was said to be handicapped.
Paul and his family first show in the Rochester City directories in 1919 as living at 483 Lyell Ave. The 1920 census states that they lived in a rear apartment at that address. Paul is first a mechanic and then a foreman in the machine shop of American Laundry Machine on Buffalo Road. About 1926 they move to a home on Glide Street. The young Paul A. Galinger dies on 14 Aug. 1944.
In 1945 Paul is admitted to Strong Memorial Hospital suffering from pneumonia and ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease). He was described as a tall, thin man with trembling hands and slow speech. Then on 30 Nov. 1945 he was injected with .31 microcuries of plutonium. That was 44 times the amount of radiation that a person receives in their lifetime. Paul was released but didn’t live much longer. He died on 29 April 1946 at aged 57 of bronchopneumonia as a complication of his ALS. He is buried in Waterloo, NY. In 1973, Paul’s next of kin (probably his widow) refused government permission to have him exhumed.
------------------------------------------

Plutonium Injections – Patient HP-7

25 July 2009, 1:00 pm

This biography is in honor of one of the patients that were injected with plutonium in Rochester, NY during WWII.

A young Edna

Edna J. (Mayne) Bartholf was born 7 May 1886 to John W. and Phoebe M. Mayne. John was born in England and Phoebe was born in NY State.
Edna graduated from Geneseo Normal School (now SUNY Geneseo) and was listed as a teacher in the 1910 census but she was still living with her parents in the hamlet of Morganville (Town of Stafford), Genesee County, NY
About 1923 Edna married James H. Bartholf (born 22 Mar 1885). James’ father, Louis, was born in NY State and his mother, Matilda, was born in England.
Edna was active in the Morganville Congregational Church, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, the Ladies’ Aid Society an other civic groups.

James & Edna's tombstone

Edna was admitted to the hospital suffering from rheumatic heart disease and thyroid problems. Her husband, James, was told that Edna would be undergoing an experimental procedure but not what it was. Edna was injected on 8 Feb. 1946 with .386 microcuries of plutonium at Strong Memorial Hospital. That is 55 times a normal lifetime dosage of radiation.
Edna died on 27 Oct. 1946 at aged 60 in Stafford, NY of pulmonary failure. She was buried in the Morganville Cemetery, Town of Stafford, NY. Next of kin refused exhumation in 1973 and 1977. That was probably her husband, James, as he died in Dec. 1980. He is also buried in the Morganville Cemetery.
----------------------------------------------------

Plutonium Injections – Patient HP-8

26 July 2009, 1:00 pm

This biography is in honor of one of the patients that were injected with plutonium in Rochester, NY during WWII.

Janet Stadt

Janet J. (Joseph) Stadt was born 9 Sept. 1904 to Max and Rebecca Joseph. The parents were both born in Russia.
Janet married Emmett J. Stadt in 1925 in Rochester. He was born 24 Mar 1899. His parents, Charles and Alvina lived in Webster, NY. Emmett and Janet first show together in the 1925 Rochester directory. Emmett was first a mechanic and then worked as a “truckman.” For some reason, Emmett and Janet are not living together in the 1930 census. Emmett is living with his mother in Webster. Janet is living in Greece with her sister, Rose, and her husband Louis J. Gandy. Emmett and Janet had one son, Milton C. (1 July 1934 – 25 May 2009). In 1935 Emmett and Janet are living on Dewey Avenue in Greece. They lived there for many years before moving to Stonewood Park, also in Greece. Emmett was a chauffeur for a while in the 1930s and then after that worked for Rochester Gas and Electric. Janet shows up in the Rochester directory in 1940 as a hairdresser on East Main Street in Rochester.
Janet went to Strong Memorial Hospital in 1946 suffering from scleroderma, a chronic skin disease.

Emmett & Janet's tombstone

Then on 9 March 1946 she was injected with .396 microcuries of plutonium. That is 56 times the radiation that a person just in an average lifetime. She refused to take part in follow-up studies in the 1970s.
Emmett died in September 1975 in Rochester and was buried 9 Sept. 1975 in Range 7 of Mt. Hope Cemetery in Rochester. Janet died just a few months later on 22 Nov. 1975 in Rochester of malnutrition caused by cancer of the larynx.  She was buried next to her husband.
-------------------------------------------

The plutonium injections - The most monstrous, horrendous and appaling abominable medical crime of the 20th Century (2)

Plutonium Injections – Patient HP-3

http://rochistory.com/blog/?p=241

21 July 2009, 1:00 pm

This biography is in honor of one of the patients that were injected with plutonium in Rochester, NY during WWII.

A young Eda Lach

Eda Wilhelmina (Lach) Schultz Charlton, born 1 April 1897, is the youngest of four daughters born to August Lach and Henrietta Olsowsky. August and Henrietta were probably married in Germany and came to the US in the late 1890s. They were living in Geneva, NY in 1920 but couldn’t be found in earlier census records.
Eda married Luther F. Schultz about 1917 (1930 census) and they had only son, Luther Frederick Schultz Jr. who was born 4 Mar 1920 (SSDI). He was almost always referred to as Fred Schultz. The family was living in Geneva in 1920 and 1930.  They show up in the 1941 Rochester city directory living at 387 Sawyer Street and with Luther as a tool maker. In 1942 they are living at 899 Chili Avenue and Luther is listed as an inspector. They don’t show up in any Rochester directories after that but family members say that Luther died in 1944 and that after he died Eda worked for a short time at Kodak.

Eda

Eda was admitted to the Strong Memorial Hospital suffering from a rash, hepatitis and hypoproteinemia (a condition with very small amounts of protein in blood plasma). In the medical records, she is described as having dark eyes and wavy brown hair. She was injected 27 Nov. 1945 with .30 microcuries of plutonium. That is 43 times the radiation that a normal person would get in their lifetime. She was released from the hospital 20 Dec. 1945. On 25 July 1946 she fell down her basement steps and suffered from vertigo for the rest of her life.
------------------------------------------

Plutonium Injections – Patient HP-4

22 July 2009, 1:00 pm

Jean Daigneault

This biography is in honor of one of the patients that were injected with plutonium in Rochester, NY during WWII.
Jean E. Daigneault was born 9 Feb. 1927 to Ulysses L. and Ethel M. Daigneault. The parents were both born in Rhode Island. Jean’s older brother, Robert, and older sister, Ruth, were both born in Rhode Island. The family moved to Rochester about 1924 where Ulysses was a gold plater. The family would move to a new address every couple of years. Eventually the family would move to Geneseo in Livingston County.
As a teenager, Jean had won the western NY women’s breast stroke championship. Then she contracted Cushing’s syndrome which made her face take on an oval shape plus she gained weight. Doctor’s would put her on a diet of rice and raisins to lose weight. The diet would do nothing except make her frustrated.
Jean was the youngest of the patients to be injected with plutonium at Strong Memorial Hospital. She was only 18 when on 27 Nov. 1945 she was injected with .30 microcuries of plutonium. That is 43 times the amount of radiation that a normal person would receive in their lifetime.
Jean would only live a year and a half more. She died 29 April 1947 of Cushing’s syndrome and was buried in the Temple Hill Cemetery in Geneseo, NY. On her tombstone is the inscription; “A Martyr to Medical Science.”
In 1973 the older sister, Ruth, was asked if Jean’s remains could be exhumed. She thought that was to help on research into Cushing’s syndrome. She wasn’t told anything about plutonium even at that time so she approved the exhumation. On 24 Sept. 1973 Jean’s remains were exhumed and sent to Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago, Illinois. She would not be returned until July 1975.
When I went to the Temple Hill Cemetery to take a photo of her tombstone, the man in the office said that there were two people buried there by the name of Jean Daigneault. In fact it was Jean being buried twice; once in 1947 and again in 1975.

A Martyr to Medical Science

-------------------------------------------------

The plutonium injections - The most monstrous, horrendous and appaling abominable medical crime of the 20th Century (1)

1.  When medicine went wrong: how Americans were used illegally as guinea pits

 
by Judith Braffman-Miller*
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1272/is_n2598_v123/ai_16805720/

*Ms. Braffman-Miller is a free-lance journalist whose articles have appeared in Consumer Reports, The Humanist, Ms., Science Digest, New York, and USA Today.

IN JANUARY, 1946, a four-year-old Australian, Simeon Shaw, was diagnosed as having a highly malignant form of bone cancer. In a desperate effort to save the boy's life, his parents decided to bring him to the U.S. for further diagnosis and treatment. The family had been referred to the University of California Hospital in San Francisco.

Once in America, Simeon did not receive the life-saving medical treatment his parents desperately sought. Instead, he was ensnared in a hush-hush, extremely unethical medical experiment. Simeon was one of 18 supposedly dying patients injected with deadly, radioactive plutonium by scientists working for the Manhattan Project, the organization that produced the atomic bomb. Concerned about the dangers of radioactive material on nuclear workers, U.S. government officials wanted to discover how the human body eliminated plutonium.

Simeon was two months short of his fifth birthday when he was injected on April 26, 1946, with 0.169 microcuries of plutonium 239, a dose of radiation nearly 24 times what the average person receives in 50 years. About a week later, bone, blood, and tissue samples were taken from the child. Samples were collected at other times as well. Simeon Shaw died eight months after the injection.
Many unsuspecting Americans were exposed to radiation in experiments which provided no medical benefit to the subjects. In the years following the atomic bombings of the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the U.S. military and nuclear weapons production industry sought data concerning the biological effects of plutonium and radioisotopes of the fallout resulting from atmospheric nuclear tests. Plutonium injections in human subjects, such as Simeon Shaw, had no purpose other than providing information for determining safety standards for weapons production. Plutonium has no medical uses.

According to Rep. Philip R. Sharf (D.-Ind.), former chairman of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Power, "For the public at large, the evidence that some of these experiments were scientifically and ethically irresponsible is chilling. Today, as in the 1940s, there are few settings in which any of us is more vulnerable than in dealing with the medical establishment."

Some human radiation experiments were conducted in the U.S. in the 1940s and 1950s, but others were performed during the supposedly better enlightened 1960s and 1970s. It is possible that the program involved more than 1,000 people. These experiments were conducted by the Manhattan Project, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), and the Energy Research and Development Administration, all predecessor agencies of the Department of Energy.

During 1945-47, as part of the Manhattan Project, patients who were diagnosed as having diseases that gave them life expectancies of less than 10 years were injected with plutonium. Besides the University of Califomia Hospital, such studies were carried out at the Manhattan District Hospital, Oak Ridge, Tenn.; Strong Memorial Hospital, Rochester, N.Y.; and the University of Chicago. Despite the original diagnoses, seven of the 18 patients lived longer than 10 years and five survived for more than 20. Internal investigations by the AEC found that informed consent was not granted in the initial experiments, since even the word "plutonium" was classified during World War II, and living patients were not informed that they had been injected with plutonium until 1974.

On July 18, 1947, three doctors and a nurse entered Ward B at the University of California Hospital and injected plutonium into 36-year-old Elmer Allen's left leg. Three days later, the leg was amputated at mid-thigh. His hospital chart states that the limb was sent to pathology for radiological study. Allen had been misdiagnosed as having a pre-existing bone cancer. In fact, he had fallen from a train in the late summer of 1946 and had injured his left knee. Hence, his condition was far from terminal. Allen lived until June 10, 1991, with horrible complications resulting from the plutonium experiment. He suffered from alcoholism, epileptic seizures, and eventually was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic, which his family doctor believes resulted from his feelings about how he had been exploited in the plutonium experiment.

Most of what the public now knows about the plutonium experiments was uncovered by Albuquerque Tribune reporter Eileen Welsome, who won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting on April 12, 1994. Welsome spent more than six years tracking down victims whose names long had been classified as top secret.

In 1987, she chanced upon a brief reference to the plutonium experiment involving human objects in a footnote to a declassified report on animal experimentation at what was called the Weapons Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, N.M. According to Welsome: "I was stunned by the idea that human beings had been injected with plutonium and began gathering as much available information as I could.... I wanted to learn more. Who were these people?"

Unearthing the secret

Fighting the government all the way, Welsome looked for the patients who were known only by such code numbers as "CAL-3," "HP-3," and "CHI-1." She sought help from historians, genealogists, and cemetery employees. "Eventually, I identified five of the 18 plutonium patients. They were a homemaker, a laborer, a house painter, a railroad porter, and a minor political official in upstate New York. Since our series was published in mid November [1993], two other names have been identified. NBC's `NOW' uncovered the name of Simeon Shaw.... Valerie Williams, a reporter for WFAA in Dallas, fin early 19941 uncovered the identity of Arthur B. Hubbard, a Texas man injected with plutonium in the 1940s at Billings Hospital at the University of Chicago."

A November, 1986, Congressional Report, American Nuclear Guinea Pigs: Decades of Radiation Experiments on U.S. Citizens, revealed that there were 31 experiments in which there was "the frequent and systematic use of human subjects as guinea pigs for radiation experiments.... The chief objectives of these experiments were to directly measure the biological effects of radioactive material; to measure doses from injected, ingested, and inhaled radioactive substances; or to measure the time it took radioactive substances to pass through the human body." The report further notes: "Human subjects were captive audiences or populations that experimenters might frighteningly have considered expendable': the elderly, prisoners, hospital patients suffering from terminal diseases or who might not have retained their full faculties for informed consent. For some human subjects, informed consent was not obtained or there is no evidence that informed consent was granted. For a number of these same subjects, the government covered up the nature of the experiments and deceived the families of deceased victims as to what had transpired."

According to Christine K. Cassel of the University of Chicago Department of Medicine and past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, "Every major ethicist writing about human research argues that it is dangerous to the moral fabric of society to consider potential social goals as higher values than respect for the individual, especially in the framework of research potentially affecting the physical or psychological integrity of the person. Individuals are called on to relinquish autonomy in society for goods such as civic government, education, and public health standards. Becoming the subject of someone else's experiment, however, is such a dramatic infringement on personal civil rights, that it may only be done ethically in the context of fully informed consent and voluntary altruism."

During the Cold War, the U.S. military wanted to know, in the event of a nuclear detonation, how much radiation a soldier could endure before becoming disabled. The Pentagon turned to the University of Cincinnati for help. There, from 1960 to 1971, radiologist Eugene L. Saenger and his associates tried to answer the Pentagon's question by performing experiments on 88 cancer patients aged 9-84, exposing them to massive doses of radiation and then recording their physical and psychological responses.

The Cincinnati study probably resulted in more deaths than any other government-sponsored experiment. Saenger's patients were given the highest doses of whole body radiation, and it is believed that more than 20 patients died as a result. Furthermore, the Cincinnati study selected subjects who were uneducated, had low intelligence, did not know how to follow instructions, had tumors that were resistant to radiation therapy, and were of relatively good nutritional status. Sixty-two of the Cincinnati patients were black.

One of Saenger's subjects was William L. Larkins, who died in 1971. According to his son, Joe Larkins, who was 30 years old when his father died, "I know that my father knew something was very wrong with the treatments being given to him at Cincinnati General. He even asked me, `Son, what are they doing to me? They're trying to kill me!' That's how bad the pain he endured was. He suffered so needlessly."

What angers Joe Larkins is that the Pentagon contacted the doctors and hospital in order to test the effects of radiation on the human body. "Everyone realizes that Cincinnati General Hospital, now the University of Cincinnati Hospital, treated many low-education, low-income patients. I guess they felt that, in some way, the fact that these patients were not rich, upperclass citizens, gave them the right to experiment with them."

A 1972 report by three University of Cincinnati faculty members who evaluated the experiment noted that as many as 25% of the patients died of radiation poisoning. The experiment finally was stopped in 1972, after the details were publicized extensively and Sen. Edward Kennedy (D.-Mass.) started investigating it.

Assistant professor of English Martha Stephens was one of the faculty members. After Edward Gall, director of the university's medical center, reluctantly released the desired documents to Stephens to be reviewed by the Junior Faculty Association, she went back to campus and "read for about an hour, and ... it was as if I could hardly recognize what was around me. Everything I saw looked different to me. I was used to reading in plays and novels about tragic deaths, full of pity and sorrow, but I was not used to this pity, this sorrow. I felt that these experiments had to be stopped."

Although the medical school claimed that the cancer patients they used were terminal and expected to live only a few months, Stephens notes: "This does not appear to be the case. The patients who survived the radiation often lived several years. One woman with cancer of the tongue was irradiated in 1961 and lived at least five years after the radiation. The exact cause of her death is uncertain. A later group of subjects were chosen specifically because they were in relatively good shape, were not elderly, and could be interviewed in their homes and workplaces about coming in for this `treatment.' They were working, eating normally, with good blood counts. They were definitely not bed-ridden, extremely feeble, or about to die." Medical researchers from the 1930s through the 1950s at several centers, including

Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York, already had determined that whole body radiation (WBR), such as that used in Saenger's studies, was not effective in the treatment of most cancers. Hence, the medical usefulness of Saenger's study was questionable and misrepresented. Even though Saenger and his colleagues contended that cancer treatment was the purpose of their study, the researchers themselves described another purpose for their experiments in their reports to the Department of Defense: "To provide knowledge of combat effectiveness of troops and to develop additional methods of diagnosis, prognosis, prophylaxis, and treatment of these injuries."

An examination of the so-called "treatment" methods used by Saenger in his studies reveals much about the true purpose of the experiments. Patients received treatment while sitting with legs raised and head tilted slightly forward. This position mimics that of a soldier in a protective fetal position. The powerful single doses that each of the cancer patients received resembled the dose rate of a nuclear blast. In fact, the researchers wrote in 1969: "Whenever possible indirectional radiation will be attempted since this type of exposure is of military interest." This procedure was not the way physicians used radiation in therapeutic applications.

Moreover, in real cancer therapy, the ill-effects of successful irradiation consist of symptoms from the radiation, as well as from the widespread destruction of tumor cells. Saenger's irradiated cancer patients had radioresistant tumors, allowing researchers to be sure that the symptoms they suffered were caused by the radiation only, not complicated by the effects of the tumor destruction.

In addition, the Cincinnati researchers denied the patients treatment for the nausea and vomiting that resulted from WBR. This was apparently so abhorrent to the hospital staff, used to caring for patients, that the researchers had to concoct a special form to ensure that the doctors, nurses, and other personnel would not perform their habitually compassionate job of caring for the sick. The form instructed hospital staff to ignore their normal feelings of humanity and not ask Saenger's patients about the signs and symptoms of radiation poisoning. It stated: "Do not ask the patient whether he has these symptoms." The form went on to order the staff to record the time, duration, and severity of these symptoms, but the researchers offered no treatment.

Isolating patients

According to another Defense Department report, the researchers sought to isolate the patients psychologically. The subjects resided in the psychiatry unit instead of the tumor ward. The report states: "The environment is far more attractive and there are no other patients receiving radiation therapy with whom the patient can exchange experiences."

The patient population chosen by Saenger probably was incapable of giving informed consent and was not told about the experimental risks. In their 1969 paper, the researchers stated that pre-irradiation analysis of the experimental subjects revealed that they would have difficulty obtaining true informed consent from the study's unknowing participants because "Relevant intellectual characteristics of the patient sample were as follows: a low educational level ... and a strong evidence of cerebral organic deficit in the baseline [preirradiation] measure of most patients."

Stephens noted that "We are a class-ridden country, and eventually it should not surprise us when our class conflict results in grievous actions like those of the [Cincinnati] doctors, actions, that is, of one potent and protected class against another that is powerless. It is a question here of conflict between wealthy doctors and administrators--in a public institution insulated against public accountability-and common working people who could not afford doctors of their own choosing."

One of the most repugnant of Cold War era experiments was carried out on mentally retarded children at the Fernald State School, Waltham, Mass., during the 1940s and 1950s. Nineteen boys believed they were members of a science club, but they actually were drinking radioactive milk. Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary had this to say about such experiments after declassifying the reports: "The nation has now begun to debate important questions raised by some of these experiments--questions about the role of secrecy in a democratic society as well as the need to have proper safeguards in place to ensure the rights of individuals to determine their own fates. We must prevent anyone in America--whether they are uneducated or poor or mentally retarded or incarcerated--from being used as guinea pigs."

Christine Cassel points out that "the ethical principles of scientific research were not invented yesterday. The Nuremberg Principles arising from the trial of Nazi war criminals for crimes including human experimentation were well-known to all American scientists as soon as they were published."

Furthermore, in 1958, the United Nations adopted Article 7 of the draft Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It stated that "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In particular, no one shall be subjected without his free consent to medical or scientific experimentation."

However, during 1945-75 in the U.S., there appears not to have been clear standards or monitoring of the process of informed consent and its documentation. Doctors were considered trustworthy, and when complete disclosure was not provided, rationalizations about the "patient's peace of mind" or "minimal risk" were given. In some cases, "national security" was considered over-all permission for secrecy and even deception in research practices. According to Cassel, "Foregoing the Nuremberg Principles was done with a `larger good' in mind. For these reasons, when the individual studies are examined, particularly those with clear military sponsorship and purpose, it may be difficult to establish their compliance with Nuremberg Principles."

In January, 1994, the White House launched a full-scale investigation into these Cold War radiation studies. Pres. Clinton issued an executive order to establish an Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. Composed of outside-government experts in medicine, science, and ethics, it provides advice and recommendations on human radiation experiments conducted by the U.S. government since the 1940s. This is part of a wider push by the Clinton Administration to open aspects of the government to the public and declassify some Cold War mysteries. Recommendations by the Administration's task force could lead to proposals for compensation of nuclear victims.

As Martha Stephens asks, "if sacrifices were necessary, why could not the investigators have experimented on other doctors or on themselves?"

Bibliography for: "When medicine went wrong: how Americans were used illegally as guinea pits"

Judith Braffman-Miller "When medicine went wrong: how Americans were used illegally as guinea pits". USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education). FindArticles.com. 06 Feb, 2012.
COPYRIGHT 1995 Society for the Advancement of Education
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
---------------------------------

2. ACHRE Report (OFFICIAL) SEE HERE http://www.hss.energy.gov/healthsafety/ohre/roadmap/achre/index.html

-------------------------------

S.Africa: Chinese South Africa

S.Africa: Chinese South Africa

Date Posted: Thursday 12-Jan-2012

As the year 2011 draws to a close we need to sit-up and consider what lies ahead in 2012. Now I don't care whether you're a conspiracy theorist believing the world is ruled by Jews and ugly old men attending Free Mason meeting in dark little rooms, whether you believe the Chinese are colonising Africa (or the world for that matter) and supporting the radical terrorist movements in driving the whites from Africa, whether you're Christian, a Muslim or an Atheist. Frankly I do not care whether you consider yourself a Boer a Dutchman, an Afrikaner or a proud white South African, whether your home language is Portuguese, German, Dutch, Afrikaans or English. I don't care if you came here five years ago or whether your forefathers came here 300 years ago. I also do not care whether you're a liberal, an appeaser or a conservative fundamentalist right-winger.

What we should care about is that we consider where we are living today. We are living in a black majority ruled African country, whether we like it or not. If we thought 2011 was bad, 2012 will be MUCH, MUCH worse in every respect.

Dr. Myles Munroe says that if you walk down the street and run into some guy you haven't seen in five years and the man starts talking to you about the same stuff he spoke about when you last saw him five years ago, turn around and walk away, because the man is stagnated in the past. If you don't know who Myles Munroe is, its time to found out who he is, because irrespective of whether you're a Christian, a Muslim, an Atheist or a Pagan he is worthy of respect, you could actually learn something from him.

Now living by that rule we should probably turn around and walk away from many people we know, because so many people are stuck in the past, stagnated to suffocation and so much so that they are not worthy of your time. South Africa is riddled with stagnant people, zombies that cannot think beyond 1652, 1838, 1902, 1910, 1961, 1994, etc, yet we're living in 2011 going on 2012.



I read books in 1970 and I did not read them again in 2010, because I read them in the 1970's when they were appropriate to read, while they still applied. Books written in the 1950's were written because they were relevant to that time. Those books were based on what went before, leading up to the 1950's and as things stood in the 1950's. When reading such books today one should realise this and not try and read it as if it was happening today, because we are not living in the 1960's, we're living in 2011. The World never stopped turning and it won't do so in our lifetime either.

"Everytime you look into the future it changes, because everytime you see it, it changes everything in it" - Nicholas Cage in 'Next". Living in the 1960's people had a particular view of the future based on their experiences of the past and the present, but today we should have a completely different view of the future, based on where we stand today. We are closer to the view of the future people had in the 1920's and 1030's, just much worse.

It does not matter how powerful the influence over someone, the direction of a government changes with every new leadership. Some have more guts and are more principled than others. Everytime a new Government and a new President come into power in a country, surely the predictions and the previously held view of the future should change, because they are human and all humans have their own minds, own opinions, their own ideals and dreams.

There is a polar shift taking place, but not the kind you're thinking of. The west has withdrawn from South Africa and the East has been moving in. Rather than fight it, the west chose to run and leave the New SA to the Chinese. While South Africa used to be part of the west, it is now fast becoming part of the east, the polar shift. While the west may be run by various groupings of sinister old men controlling the banks, the east, China in particular, has its own agenda, far removed from the ideals of the control-freaks of the west. The west may think they are in control, but they're only in control of themselves, to an extent, because the agenda of the east is far superior to that of the west. The economies of the west had fallen to the cheap production costs of the east.

While all of this has been taking place at a level far above our heads, things have been happening on the ground, all around us. While we could continue allowing ourselves to be manipulated and blinded by the stagnated rhetoric of the conspiracy theorists, we should wake up to the realities of today. According to conspiracy theorists the world never changes, the future is never altered from what they perceive it to be. Conspiracy theorists live in the time of Adam Weishaupt and Pyotr Rachkovsky while caught up in the world according to Matvei Golovinski. Supremacist Muslim Nazi's confused by Helena Blavatsky's definition of the "Aryan root race". Conspiracy theorists are the objects, the tools of mass manipulation. They keep people occupied with their stagnant theories so as to keep them from realising what really is happening right here, right now.

I've always maintained that if one wants to achieve something without drawing attention to the actual agenda, the most valuable tool to use is the gullibility of the conspiracy theorists. Start a rumour either in the parallel or opposite direction and allow the conspiracy theorists to run with it. They would keep everyone so occupied with it, that you'd be allowed all the time and freedom in the world to push your agenda. I could probably list a thousand examples. Whenever the media, the majority of people and the conspiracy theorists keep harping on a particular subject always look for the underlying hidden truth in the opposite direction. When they steer you away from something, move towards it, because there is something underneath hidden behind it.

We could also choose to continue living in the dreams and ideals of yesteryear as if Hendrik Verwoerd was still running the country and Hendrik vd Bijl was building our industries. We could imagine ourselves regaining the Boer Republics and winning the referendum with a "No" vote, but unfortunately life does not work that way.

We are not living in the proud powerful first world Republic of South Africa ruled by PW Botha, we are living in the New South Africa, the failed democratic capitalistic ideal of the west and hailed Marxist-Leninist communist success of the east. We can no longer depend upon the support of a Margaret Thatcher or a Ronald Reagan, because the current regime takes their guidance from the likes of Hu Jintao - Paramount Leader of the People's Republic of China, Raúl Castro - Cuban revolutionary President of the Council of State of Cuba and others.

The west did everything in their power to oust the National Party and replace it with a government that owed them and that they could control and dictate to, but unfortunately they lost the plot due to their naive ignorance. The west has little to no control over the New SA today, because they cut their losses, took their money and ran, leaving us to the dogs of the east.

Dream as you wish, but no one from the west will come to our aid, they have run away. They got what they wanted while it lasted and they have no intention of ever returning. South Africa officially became a member nation of the BRICS group of countries on December 24, 2010, after being formally invited by the BRIC countries to join them. (BRICS = Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa)

While we may wish for many things like a volkstaat, the reclaiming of the Boer Republics, protection and intervention of western countries, reality dictates something very different. As was the case in so many eastern communist countries we may even see the banning of western New World Order structures like the Free Masonry and many other structures that would please the conspiracy theorists and make their day, but sadly, what they forgot to think about is that under such systems and to please their new masters this Marxist-Leninist Regime may also need to consider banning the Christian and other religions in future and the end result of it all would mean no foothold for any western movement in this country in future. The ANC owes many people, the SACP, COSATU and virtually every other black movement in this country owes many, but particularly the communists of the east. They are indebted to their necks and they cannot serve two gods and they have already chosen the gods of the east.

I've stopped bothering with people striving for secession and independent homelands, because its a waste of time and as one particular person here on Facebook said to a friend of mine, I'm old-guard, from the old school and I cannot open my mind to such new ideas. Unfortunately when she was still in diapers I was already involved in the fight for a volkstaat, before 1994. I KNOW it will never happen anymore and I was busy writing an article explaining exactly why it will not happen, but I decided against it, because as long as they keep working at it, it keeps them out of our way, so its better to let them continue with what they're doing.

The same applies to the fight against the Jews and the Free Masons and the Zionists, etc. I have now decided to just let them be. Let them continue fighting their war against the evil masters of the west they think they're still living in, while we know we have been shifted across the poles to the east and we have new threats to contend with. There was a time when people like Henry Kissinger had an influence in Africa, when they could influence their thinking and direction. They lost that opportunity when they sunk the National Party and forced them into the hands of the Marxist-Leninist ANC. The one stronghold that existed in Africa was sold for the wrong reasons, due to naivety and greed. The NWO, the Jews, the great financial powers of the west have withdrawn from South Africa, they took their money and ran. Many South African and western companies have sold out to Chinese companies or to ANC communists trained by the east. The last major sign of this was when MacDonalds sold out, lock, stock and barrel. Since they withdrew the withdrawal took a major swing and gained a new momentum. The west has forsaken this country, because they lost their foothold in this country, they are of so little concern in SA that they are not worthy of our attention.

This world does not only consist of civilised westerners with a western way of thinking. This world consists of the west, of Africa and of the East. Those are three completely different worlds, its not one and the same thing and one cannot view, approach and handle those three worlds the same way.

Is this shift to the east necessarily a bad thing? Well to the conspiracy theorists they'd be rid of the Free Masons and the zionists and the Jews, etc, so to them its a good move. To them Gaddafi was a hero and rightfully so, because from the perspective of the conspiracy theorists, being part of the west it makes sense that they should cheer Gaddafi for having pioneered the onslaught and resistance to the NWO. Unfortunately while supporting the Muslim Nazi's they do not realise that the one evil is being replaced with another evil. While the NWO may have big plans and may strive towards total control they do not control the east, whether they want to believe it or not. The east has its own agenda and that agenda has been working so effectively that the NWO and the west lost the plot completely. Today everything you buy in the west is made in the east, the economies of the west are wholly dependent upon the east. The car manufacturers of the west are sinking, because the east have flood the market with good and cheep rubbish, killing the west's vehicle manufacturing industry, for but a few still standing. Italy is sinking because their markets have been flooded by better, cheaper vehicles from the east. Just they made the fatal mistake of choosing Rockefellers above the Rothchilds, an irreversible mistake they could never recover from, so too did they continue to back the wrong horse in every move they made, tagging the conspiracy theorists along with them.

So while our world has been rolling east, the conspiracy theorists of the west stagnated, the world kept turning underneath their feet. We living here in South Africa cannot afford to be held back in our thinking and in our perception of our environment by stagnated conspiracy theorists. Allow them their freedom to be stuck in the past ideologies and writings of the likes of Golovinski. Let them continue their fight against Free Mason Boys Club, let them continue fighting their fight against the Jews now living in Canada rather than in South Africa, but we, we have to survive, we have to open our bloody eyes and wake up to the reality of our situation, we cannot afford fighting the nightmares of our childhood, we have to face what's coming and what is right here, right now, because we are living in the here and the now.

If the Chinese move in as intended, the whites in South Africa would be made redundant, because they would no longer be needed. If they could import two or three millions Chinese the SA whites would no longer be needed. It has been suggested that China wished to shift 300 million of their people to Africa. This was an idea proposed by Britain and it serves as proof that the NWO was behind this Chinese invasion and colonisation of Africa. The west also financed and supported Saddam Hussain, the Muslim Brotherhood, Syria, Iran and even Gadaffi at various stages, didn't they and it came back to bite them in the rear, didn't it? The naive British may have planted the idea in the minds of China, but thats where their role ended, the west does not control China and they never will.

The other aspect to this is that religion may find itself in serious trouble, because the Chinese do not really like religion and neither do they like the Media and so many other institutions, movements and ideologies.

Yet with all the seemingly negative aspects to China's intended occupation of South Africa, they may just be South Africa's saving grace, because they could invest so strongly in the SA economy that we may escape the global collapse. The other advantage is that the Africans do not really know who they are dealing with. To this end the Africans are not much different to the conspiracy theorists, the liberals and even the right-wing conservatives that think they can negotiate with the Africans. The other thing we need to consider is that the Chinese do not wish to go to war with the SA whites, because they are of the opinion that neither Germany nor the SA whites ever did them harm and they have no reason or wish to go to war with those two nations. While China has never deployed its armed forces outside of their own borders, they have indicated that they would be willing to defend their interests in foreign countries like Africa, should the need arise. China is active and has been active throughout Africa for a long time.

Right now people are being raped, murdered, high-jacked, abducted and robbed in this country. Irrespective of whether China does come in or not, we do not know how it will pan out for us, the few remaining whites in Africa. We living here, confronted with this threat need to identify the reasons, the causes, the source and the possible future direction and development of this situation. We need to adapt our thinking or die. Like I said earlier the blacks know less about the Chinese than the conspiracy theorists do and they are going to learn a lesson so hard that they will never recover from it. Thabo Mbeki saw this coming, he was educated at Sussex University, UK among others. He was able to keep the Chinese at bay and prevented them in a very diplomatic way from getting a foothold in SA, but his follower Zuma had other ideas, because he saw money and power. While Mbeki had an African dream, Zuma has a personal dream, which is very dangerous. Mbeki understood the NWO plans and ideals, Zuma ignores it. Zuma is not the only one involved n the opening of our doors to China, there is much more behind this than we realise, because its an African thing. With the help of China Africa for the first time sees a future for itself. They want China here and they dislike and distrust the west.

Where does this leave us? It leaves us with much more to consider and prepare for. Life as we know it is changing and it is about to change beyond recognition. China does not want to get rid of the SA whites, China wants to get rid of the western influence in SA and hopefully all of Africa. It is a known fact that China has Africa in its sights, it wants Africa to be their next province, where they could shift their people to. This is becoming Chinese territory, territory they would be willing to defend. Africa consists of people China could control, because they know how and they have the means to do so. This is a "Screw the NWO, we have the Chinese" situation and we better deal with it. While the west / NWO like to control the minds of the people, the Chinese control the people, their behaviour, their likes and dislikes, their movement and everything about them.

Personally I am of the opinion that the Chinese also bit off more than they can chew. They will not get directly involved, they never have and there is no reason for them to do so now. They may however get involved indirectly by supporting those that support them, but who are those really? Is it Malema, the man that has been their pawn all along, is it Zuma & co that officially led them in or is it someone else behind the scenes? If they back the wrong group they're doomed and there is no such thing as the right group. In SA we do not have only one or two tribes, we have at least thirteen different tribes and groups to contend with. In SA we have unresolved friction and hatred between groups and tribes spanning centuries. We have rebel groups, revolutionaries, disgruntled loyalists, political parties with different political ideologies, we have blacks hating blacks, blacks hating whites, whites hating blacks, coloureds hating blacks and we have whites hating whites. We have Asians, Portuguese, Afrikaners, Boers, Greeks, Italians, Germans, Dutch, British, etc. We have churches hating each other and different religions hating each other. South Africa is a country thriving on hate and discrimination from all directions. It is the most most diverse, most divided country on earth. According to psychologists South Africans are the most aggressive people in the world. They certainly are the most judgemental and most hypocritical of all. South Africans judge you because you belong to the wrong church, speak the wrong language, live in the wrong suburb, wear the wrong clothes, etc. They judge those that left the country and those that left judge those that stayed behind. This is the most screwed and most screwed-up nation on earth and China is about to learn it the hard way.

Bottom line is that at the end of it all the Chinese will also withdraw, but by that time our total population will be much smaller than it is now. In the meantime China is going to invest much more than it already has and it will increase its physical presence much more. There will be a massive influx of Chinese over the next few years and more and more small businesses will be replaced by Chinese vendors.

In the coming year we shall hopefully see the end of the ANC, but along with it we'll experience hardship like never before. We are about to enter the worst time of our lives. SA will erupt and explode in many different directions, while the rest of the world collapse economically and launch WW3, leaving us to fend for ourselves. Things will get much worse, than we could even begin to imagine. Like I've said so many times before however bad we imagine it may be, we should multiply it by at least a thousand times over. The dreams of most will be destroyed and even the agendas of global powers like China will be drowned as they enter what lies ahead for themselves.

The economic collapse, WW3, earth and climate changes will destroy the agendas of virtually every individual, nation, country and organisation in the world.

Source Url: http://toxinews.blogspot.com/2011/12/chinese-south-africa.html#more