Linked with John Pilger – Australia & England, with Keith McHenry – USA, and with C.T. Lawrence Butler – USA.
Felicity Arbuthnot lives in London. She has written and broadcast widely on Iraq, one of the few journalists to cover Iraq extensively even in the mid-1990’s during the sanctions. She with Denis Halliday was senior researcher for John Pilger’s Award winning documentary: Paying the Price – Killing the Children of Iraq (see its video, 03/06/2000 ITV, 75 min. runtime). She is also the author, with Nikki van der Gaag, of recently published Baghdad in the educational Great Cities of the World Series for World Almanac Library. (on Selves and Others).
See also this videos: Mumia Abu-Jamal, When War BackFires! The Message Stupid – Iraq’s Bastille Day, 6.21 min., from Suryu, by Felicity Arbuthnot, Added on August 03, 2007 … and: Iraq: The Hidden War, 05/29/06, 49 min. runtime (this video contains images that should only be viewed by a mature audience) … and: Gaza’s Reality, 5 min. runtime … and more videos, scroll down and click in the window on the wanted title …
Criminals’ literary profits, Open Letter to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Nov. 20, 2007.
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Felicity Arbuthnot – England
Look at the whole blog: between two rivers.
She writes: This was my 18th visit to Iraq since the Gulf War. The last four have been very close together: last October, January/February, I went back at the end of March and then again in May. Each time I am struck by the deterioration. Each time there is another horror. In March it was the daily bombing of the infrastructure. The electricity has just died. Many people can’t afford candles and use makeshift lamps. People put a wick in a bottle with oil and quite often the bottle explodes. The injuries have soared. The burns are horrendous and there is no treatment, not even cling film as an emergency measure to cover the wounds. There are no painkillers. There is no plastic surgery. There were two other things I noticed. Like with every embargo in history, there was a small amount of profiteering in money dealing. You have a fraction of the population at the top of the regime who have family abroad sending in dollars. There are restaurants springing up. You can get Christian Dior sunglasses, absolutely anything. Yet 98 percent of the population don’t have a way of sterilising burns. The other thing that struck me was the breakdown in the spirit of these very brave people. They feel that it is never, ever, going to end. Yet when I became ill on this trip, they were so concerned. I suddenly collapsed in the hotel foyer in Mosul and was virtually unconscious. My interpreter and my driver kept letting themselves into my room, touching me on the head and saying: “Are you all right? Shall we get a doctor? » They were saying, “You keep coming back here and Iraq has made you so ill ». (full long text on iraqchat.com, not dated).
Tony Blair: The Quartet’s ‘ Peace Envoy’, Discredited, Deluded, Disgraced, by Felicity Arbuthnot, July 10, 2007.
She writes also: If the scale of the unimaginable tragedy the British have wrought in Basra was not of the historical enormity which it is and for which the UK will never be forgotten and likely, never forgiven, world wide (only second to the Americans, of whose accountability for unspeakable atrocities, words temporarily fail) with Prime Minister Gordon Brown again trying to dress up defeat as victory, as the British ‘left’ the city last week, it would be laughable. The British actually slunk off from their illegally inhabited palace in central Basra in September, to cower in a base well outside the town, spent, redundant and now with the loss of one hundred and seventy four tragically wasted lives, for UK government lies … (full long text, scroll down to December 22, 2007).
Iraq: Looking Back : ‘Internationally Sponsored Genocide’, Nov. 28, 2007.
She says: « The horrors inflicted on Gaza and Iraq and threatened elsewhere in the Middle East are encapsulated for me by a young doctor. She had the skills but was denied the facilities and medications so she watched helplessly as her young patients died. ?There is a hole where my heart should be,? she said. In the name of our common humanity, as Eid, the Jewish Festival of Light and Christmas are celebrated, ENOUGH! ». (full text, scroll down, Dec. 19, 2007).
Iraq: A Bush Family Jihad? by Felicity Arbuthnot, Sept. 25, 2007.
… In context, should anyone doubt the absolute disregard of parliamentary ‘democracies’ for the lives of their own citizens, yet alone other humanities, expendable for oil, gas pipelines, minerals, metals, gemstones, one only has to consider yet another October stunt. On the weekend of October 18-19, 1980, a former and future CIA head, met with Iranian officials in Paris. In an act of treason (US private citizens negotiating with a foreign government without official authorization) with calculated, cold, callous ruthlessness, the pair cut a deal with Ayatollah Khomeini’s clerics, to ensure that the fifty two American hostages held in Tehran, stayed hostage until after the upcoming election between President Jimmy Carter and Republican challenger Ronald Reagan. The Americans in question were George Herbert Walker Bush, the former CIA Director and William Casey, the future one … (full text, Dec. 22, 2007).
Die furchtbaren Auswirkungen der Wirtschaftssanktionen auf den Irak.
She says also: … The swathe of “household names”, from the Reagan era, are now in the Bush Administration and the American Enterprise Institute. The Armageddonists are back. The world should be very afraid – or should the physicians in white coats move in? (full long text).
Die britische Journalistin Felicity Arbuthnot äußert sich zum Irak.
And she says: « Even in the bloodshed and turmoil of post-invasion Iraq, the kidnapping of Margaret Hassan, head of Care International in Iraq, is incomprehensible. Margaret Hassan fell in love with Iraq more than 30 years ago, when she travelled there as a young bride with her Iraqi husband Taheen Ali Hassan. They had met while studying in London and the former Margaret Fitzsimmons, from Dublin in the « land of a thousand welcomes », fell in love for a second time with Baghdad – formerly Madinat al Salam: City of Peace – and the land known through time as « the cradle of civilisation ». She learned Arabic and took Iraqi citizenship ». (full text).
Her publications or quotations: on WSWS; on Global Research.ca; on Selves and Others; on Brussels Tribunal; on Find Articles; on her blogspot-site; on Google Blog-search; on Google Book-search; on Google Scholar-search; on Google Groups-search.
Arbuthnot explained how US troops are helping to stoke enormous resentment in the Iraqi people: “If these young soldiers had been given a crash course on the culture of this place… Iraq has been invaded like so many countries in the region for thousands of years. If they had walked down the streets that they are patrolling, and they had been taught a little bit of Arabic, and they had not gone there with Kuwaiti interpreters or Iraqis who had not been back into the county for 30 years or had been born abroad… This is a huge, huge cultural mistake”. (full text).
Rambling round the “Croughton balls”, with a photo gallery, Oct 7, 2006.
And she writes: Roger Helbig, a man with an unhealthy obsession: he believes that depleted uranium (DU) waste from the nuclear fuel cycle, which is used in munitions and bullets – is safe. I received an unsolicited email from him, entitled ‘The Real Doug Rokke’ in response to an article I had written for The Brussels Tribunal. It read: ‘I see that you have been taken in by Doug Rokke, who really does not know much about anything, let alone depleted uranium. It is sad that a Phd has so little real knowledge. I also see you claim to be a journalist. What newspapers, radio stations or TV stations have you actually worked for, or are you like Bob Nichols, a self-described journalist with no actual journalistic experience?’ His tirade continued: ‘Rokke’s military records and part of his PhD thesis are attached. You will note he has no real expertise in depleted uranium and his claims about the Middle East are pure fantasy, yet you inflame the Arab street with them. You ought to learn more about what is before telling the world all about it’. I had written in the article: ‘Depleted uranium from shells fired by British and American forces during the Balkan wars has found its way into the food chain and has been detected amongst the civilian populations of Kosovo and Bosnia. A study of the local population in three locations in the two Balkan regions has found samples of the highly radioactive particles in the urine of all those tested’. (full text, 02/16/07).
Her Bio on Brussels Tribunal.
Felicity Arbuthnot: APPEAL FROM MINISTRY OF HEALTH – GAZA.
Links:
Iraqi Shiite Cautions on Armed Groups, by HAMID AHMED, Dec 21, 2007;
Isn’t it great? It’s 2008;
Terrorist war on terror, by Shanie, Dec. 12, 2007;
global research.ca, relevant writings;
The New Rulers of the World (Paperback), by John Pilger (& dedicated to Felicity Arbuthnot);
So Why Do They Hate Us? by Hashmat Moslih, 12/3/2007;
Sanctions On Iraq’s Links-Files;
Das Archiv der WSWS World Socialist Web Site.