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Dead by propaganda: Saddam Hussein's futile plea for peace and the pre-fabricated Persian gulf wars
February 24, 2011 § 6 Comments
There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator. Saddam's reign produced a long record of crimes against humanity: hundreds of thousands of Iranian soldiers and Kurdish dissidents died from the usage of forbidden chemical weapons during the savage eight-year Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988).
Dead by propaganda:
Saddam Hussein's futile plea for peace and the pre-fabricated Persian gulf wars
by Peter Arguriou
A less well-known fact however, is that Saddam Hussein was an ardent supporter of the US-Iraq friendship and that Hussein and consequently, the Iraqi people fell victims to the US war propaganda and its cynical, almost hostile stance towards the majority of the Arabic world, a stance highlighted by Henry Kissinger's famous statement on the Iran-Iraq war: "It is a pity they both can't lose."[1]
Indeed, it appears that the U.S. sought to establish a balance of terror in the region, funding and arming not only its implacable friend, Iraq but also their ally's foe, Iran.
U.S Middle East policies were dishonest, one might say even scandalous.
During the Iran-Iraq war, the U.S. administration covertly used an Italian Bank to make loans to the Hussein regime and subsequently attempted to disguise the case. The late Tom Landos, a Democratic member of the House of Representatives and a supporter of the first U.S. invasion in Iraq, sketched the details and the essence of a case that would be described as "Iraqgate":
"As the Saudi Ambassador, Prince Bandar, was urging Mr. Bush and Mr. Baker to buy the friendship of the Iraqi dictator in August 1989, the F.B.I. uncovered a huge scam at the Atlanta branch of the Lavoro Bank to finance the buildup of Iraq's war machine by diverting U.S.-guaranteed grain loans.
Instead of pressing the investigation or curbing the appeasement, the President (G.W. Bush) turned a blind eye to lawbreaking and directed another billion dollars to Iraq. Our State and Agriculture Department's complicity in Iraq's duplicity transformed what could have been dealt with as `Saddam's Lavoro scandal' into George Bush's Iraqgate.
The first element of corruption is the wrongful application of U.S. credit guarantees…
Second element of corruption is the misleading of Congress…
Third area of Iraqgate corruption is the obstruction of justice…
Policy blunders are not crimes. But perverting the purpose of appropriated funds is a crime; lying to Congress compounds that crime; and obstructing justice to cover up the original crime is a criminal conspiracy."[2]
During the Iran-Iraq war the U.S. would take sides. It would align themselves with the Iraqi dreaded dictator, Saddam Hussein. It would provide the Iraqi regime with information of strategic value, financial assistance and would equip Iraq with dual use vehicles and equipment.
At the same time, however, the U.S. would indirectly sell weapons to Iran through Israel. With the money amassed from the weapons sales to Iran, the US intended to fund the Honduras based paramilitary organization of the Contras, seeking to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The Contras have been accused several times of basic human rights violations. According to the human rights organization CIIR (The Catholic Institute for International Relations): "The record of the contras in the field, as opposed to their official professions of democratic faith, is one of consistent and bloody abuse of human rights, of murder, torture, mutilation, rape, arson, destruction and kidnapping."[3]
U.S. Iraqi policies are characterized by hypocrisy, duplicity and are determined exclusively by the U.S. Middle East agenda regardless of the Arabic's world stance, exhibiting a narrow-minded and monolithic U.S. approach. The Pro-American sentiments of the executed Iraqi dictator Hussein mattered not to U.S. Middle East policymaking.
A typical example of U.S. duplicity is how they treated Iraq in relation to the issue of global terrorism.
In 1982 the U.S. would remove Iraq from the list of "states sponsors of terrorism" so that they could provide it with armaments and financial "aid" in its war against Iran.
After the Iraqi invasion in Kuwait in 1990, Iraq would be redefined as a state that sponsors terrorism.
In 2004 Iraq, essentially under U.S. occupation, would be once more removed from the terror-states list.
Once more, it is crystal clear that the definition of terrorism is a geopolitical artifact. It also solely reflects the US geopolitical agenda and not the state of the world.
The U.S. policies double standards are not exhausted in terrorism definitions. They expand to the labeling of unquestionable facts: In March 1988, Iraq employed chemical weapons to attack the Kurds in Halabja. The death toll of this murderous attack is absolutely horrifying: 6800 Kurds died- most of them civilians.
The U.S. did not only turn a blind eye on the despicable attack; they also engaged in distorting and obscuring hard facts and in manipulating the international public opinion by deliberately and fraudulently involving Iran in a hideous war crime produced exclusively by the Iraqi regime. The U.S. created a smokescreen to confuse the international community regarding the true perpetrators of the Halabja atrocity, thus shielding their former ally Saddam Hussein against international condemnation.
The genocide committed by the Iraqis was shamefully turned by the U.S. propaganda into an incident where citizens were caught in a crossfire, an incident of collateral damage, into an unpleasant side effect of war.
The US covered genocide, deliberately and methodically.
According to Joost Hiltermann's article in the International Herald Tribune, the U.S. propaganda that claimed Iranian involvement in the Halabja massive war crime was prepared by the Pentagon and was circulated to U.S. allies by U.S. ambassadors who were instructed to promote the fable and avoid to discuss the details of the incident, details that could expose the U.S. propaganda for what it really was.[4]
The Halabja attack was a violation of human rights, a war crime and a genocide.
It was also a breach of the rules of engagement and of the chemical weapons convention. The U.S. condoned all of the aforementioned by protecting and supporting its strategic ally, Saddam Hussein.
It seems that treaties are made to be broken… The U.S. played down the use of chemical weapons by the Iraqi offenders during the Iran-Iraq war. More than a decade later, the US would all of a sudden evoke in their geopolitical memory the obsolete and by then crumbling Iraqi arsenal of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and use it as an excuse to invade Iraq.
In the chessboard of geopolitics, truth is often treated as a pawn to be exchanged for profits.
The U.S. knew all too well about the existence and the extend of the Iraqi WMDs because it was the U.S that provided Iraq the building blocks of its WMD arsenal.
The U.S. was probably the main supplier of materials the Iraq would use to develop its Weapons of Mass Destruction program, especially biological agents: in 1994 Senator Donald Riegle delivered a relevant report known as the "Riegle Report"[5]. According to its findings: "Records provided by the supplier show that, from at least 1985 through 1989, the period for which records were available, the United States government approved for sale to Iraq quantities of potentially lethal biological agents that could have been cultured or grown in large volume in an Iraqi biological warfare program. These exported materials were not attenuated or weakened and were capable of reproduction."
Among these materials were anthrax spores.
During the Iran-Iraq war, when the illegal WMD shipments took place, Donald Rumsfeld, US defense secretary during Gulf War II, was a member of the General Advisory Committee on Arms Control and at the same time a special envoy to the Middle East…
Not only did the U.S. encourage the bloody Iran-Iraq war, not only did they turn a blind eye on the horrific war crimes and the Iraqi WMD attack on Halabja, but they were also to blame for the development of the Iraqi arsenal of Weapons of Mass Destruction as they were instrumental in supplying materials for its creation, thus violating international disarmament treaties.
By the time the U.S. used the WMD threat claim to attack Iraq, the Iraq was financially wrecked and totally incapable of maintaining its WMD arsenal.
After the Iran-Iraq war and the "help" it received from its war buddies, Iraq found itself in a dire position. The war debt of Iraq to its Arab allies alone amounted to 130 billion U.S. dollars. Iraq owed to Kuwait alone about 14 billion dollars. Despite repeated Iraqi pleas, Kuwait refused to cancel the debt and lower the price of oil, thus depriving the staggering Iraqi economy from vital oil revenues. Kuwait's denial to recognize and soothe the Iraqi financial plight is perceived by Iraqi leadership as an act of economic war. Hussein is in despair. As evidenced by a recent wikileaks cable, Saddam Hussein in July 1990 dispatched a message of good will and an offer of friendship to the then President George W Bush. Saddam strived to explain Iraq's plight to the U.S. and exhibited a strong, yet unattainable commitment to maintain peace in the region. The then U.S. ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie, summarized Hussein's thesis', sketched his desire for US-Iraq friendship and communicated his plea to stop encouraging Kuwait's and the United Arab Emirates' (UAE) aggressive petroleum policies that were deeply hurting the exhausted from the war Iraqi economy to the US:
'Saddam wished to convey an important message to president Bush: Iraq wants friendship, but does the USG? Iraq suffered 100,000's of casualties and is now so poor that war orphan pensions will soon be cut; yet rich Kuwait will not even accept OPEC discipline. Iraq is sick of war, but Kuwait has ignored diplomacy. USG maneuvers with the UAE will encourage the UAE and Kuwait to ignore conventional diplomacy. if Iraq is publicly humiliated by the USG, it will have no choice but to "respond," however illogical and self destructive that would prove…
Saddam, whose manner was cordial, reasonable and even warm throughout the ensuing two hours, said he wished the ambassador to convey a message to president Bush. Saddam then recalled in detail the history of Iraq's decision to reestablish diplomatic relations and its postponing implementation of that decision at the beginning of the war, rather than be thought weak and needy. He then spoke about the many "blows" our relations have been subjected to since 1984, chief among them Irangate. It was after the faw victory, Saddam said, that Iraqi misapprehensions about USG purposes began to surface again, i.e., suspicions that the U.S. was not happy to see the war end.
Picking his words with care, Saddam said that there are "some circles" in the USG, including in CIA and the state department… who are not friendly toward Iraq-U.S. Relations[…]
[…]Iraq, the president stressed, is in serious financial difficulties, with 40 billion USD debts. Iraq, whose victory in the war against Iran made an historic difference to the Arab world and the west, needs a Marshall plan. But "you want the oil price down", Saddam charged.
Resuming his list of grievances which he believed were all inspired by "some circles" in the USG, he recalled the "usia campaign" against himself, and the general media assault on Iraq and its president.
Despite all these blows, Saddam said, and although "we were somewhat annoyed", we still hoped that we could develop a good relationship. But those who force oil prices down are engaging in economic warfare and Iraq cannot accept such a trespass on its dignity and prosperity.
The spearheads (for the USG) have been Kuwait and the UAE, Saddam said. Saddam said carefully that just as Iraq will not threaten others, it will accept no threat against itself. "We hope the USG will not misunderstand: Iraq accepts, as the state department spokesman said, that any country may choose its friends. but the USG knows that it was Iraq, not the USG, which decisively protected those USG friends during the war and that is understandable since public opinion in the USG, to say nothing of geography, would have made it impossible for the Americans to accept 10,000 dead in a single battle, as Iraq did."
Saddam asked what does it mean for the USG to announce it is committed to the defense of its friends, individually and collectively. Answering his own question, he said that to Iraq it means flagrant bias against the GoI.
Coming to one of his main points, Saddam argued that USG maneuvers with the UAE and Kuwait encouraged them in their ungenerous policies. The Iraqi rights, Saddam emphasized, will be restored one by one, though it may take a month or much more than a year. Iraq hopes the USG will be in harmony with all the parties to this dispute.
Saddam said he understands that the USG is determined to keep the oil flowing and to maintain its friendships in the gulf. What he cannot understand is why we encourage those who are damaging Iraq, which is what our gulf maneuvers will do.
Saddam said he fully believes the USG wants peace, and that is good. but do not, he asked, use methods which you say you do not like, methods like arm-twisting.
At this point Saddam spoke at length about pride of Iraqis, who believe in "liberty or death." Iraq will have to respond if the U.S. uses these methods. Iraq knows the USG can send planes and rockets and hurt Iraq deeply. Saddam asks that the USG not force Iraq to the point of humiliation at which logic must be disregarded. Iraq does not consider the U.S. an enemy and has tried to be friends.
As for the intra-Arab disputes, Saddam said he is not asking the USG to take up any particular role since the solutions must come through Arab and bilateral diplomacy.
Returning to his theme that Iraq wants dignity and freedom as well as friendship with the U.S., he charged that in the last year there were many official statements which made it seem that the U.S. does not want to reciprocate. How, for example, Saddam asked, can we interpret the invitation for Arens to visit at a time of crisis in the gulf? Why did the U.S- defense minister make "inflammatory" statements?
Saddam said that the Iraqis know what war is, want no more of it- "do not push us to it; do not make it the only option left with which we can protect our dignity."
President Bush, Saddam said, has made no mistake in his presidency vis-a-vis the Arabs. The decision on the PLO dialogue was "mistaken," but it was taken under "zionist pressure" and, Saddam said, is perhaps a clever tactic to absorb that pressure.
After a short diversion on the need for the U.S. to consider the human rights of 200,000 Arabs with the same vigor and interest as the human rights of the Israelis, Saddam concluded by restating that Iraq wants American friendship "although we will not pant for it, we will do our part as friends."[…]
[…]The ambassador thanked Saddam for the opportunity to discuss directly with him some of his and our concerns. president Bush, too, wants friendship, as he had written at the 'id and on the occasion of Iraq's national day[…]
[…]What is important is that the president has very recently reaffirmed his desire for a better relationship and has proven that by, for example, opposing sanctions bills. Here Saddam interrupted again. Laughing, he said there is nothing left for Iraq to buy in the U.S. Everything is prohibited except for wheat, and no doubt that will soon be declared a dual-use item- Saddam said (writer's note: Saddam is here referring to the dual use vehicles and equipment Iraq bought from US during the Iran-Iraq war, bitterly implying the military exploitation of Iraq by the US), however, he had decided not to raise this issue, but rather concentrate on the far more important issues at hand.
Ambassador said there were many issues he had raised she would like to comment on, but she wished to use her limited time with the president to stress first president Bush's desire for friendship and, second, his strong desire, shared we assume by Iraq, for peace and stability in the mid east. Is it not reasonable for us to be concerned when the president and the foreign minister both say publicly that Kuwaiti actions are the equivalent of military aggression, and then we learn that many units of the republican guard have been sent to the border?
Saddam said that was indeed a reasonable question. He acknowledged that we should be concerned for regional peace, in fact it is our duty as a superpower. "But how can we make them (Kuwait and UAE) understand how deeply we are suffering."The financial situation is such that the pensions for widows and orphans will have to be cut. At this point, the interpreter and one of the notetakers broke down and wept[…]
[…] "I told Mubarak," Saddam said, that "nothing will happen until the meeting," and nothing will happen during or after the meeting if the Kuwaitis will at last "give us some hope."'[6]
The Kuwaitis obviously gave Iraq none… A desperate Saddam, left with no options ,would engage in a war he knew all too well was going to turn out to be self-destructive…
Hussein's message to Bush was essentially an ultimatum. Iraq, impoverished by war, financially ravaged initially by war-loans and subsequently by the petroleum policies of its "implacable friends", was indirectly forced to yet another suicidal war. A few days after Saddam's message was delivered to US leadership and with no actions taken to avoid the foreworned aggression, or to sooth Iraq's plight, the Iraqis would invade Kuwait, one of the sacred oil cows of the U.S. The invasion marked the beginning of the end for the Iraqi dictator and initiated a new era of woes and suffering for the troubled Iraqi people.
The transatlantic axis reacted swiftly. U.S. petroleum interests were not to be challenged or threatened. U.S. and its allies possessed the means and the will to punish Iraq's insurance. The scene for the "Desert Storm" was set. All that was missing was political legalization for the predetermined war, a persuasive casus belli that would persuade the international public opinion of the imperativeness of war. Something that would move the masses. Something sensationalistic.
A Public Relations company would create that special something that the U.S. government was unable to find or fabricate: an excuse to attack the Iraqi forces. An alibi for a war that completely lacked any moral justification.
In October 1990 a fifteen-year Kuwaiti who became known as "nurse Nayirah", gave an oral testimony before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus that shook the world: according to her testimony, while she was volunteering in an Iraqi hospital's (Al Adan) maternity ward, she saw Iraqi soldiers grabbing Kuwaiti babies from their incubators, removing the incubators and leaving the babies to die on the cold hospital floor. The Iraqi occupation's horrors attracted a global outcry as expected.
A pro-war U.S. public opinion was shaped by Nayirah's chilling story.
Her story gave the coalition forces the pretense they needed to attack Iraq and secure their petroleum interests in the region. But Nayirah's story was just a story, a fable, a fabrication created not by a teenager's vivid imagination but –as publicly claimed- by the mind-swaying skills of a PR firm.
It was later revealed that the teenage volunteer, little miss Nayirah, nurse Nayirah, refugee Nayirah was none other than Nayirah Al-Sabah, daughter of the then Kuwaiti ambassador Saud bin Nadir Al-Sabah in the U.S.[7] – not a refugee, not a volunteer, not an eye-witness to atrocious Iraqi war crimes, but a politically instigated person, and thus an instigator herself. An instrument of propaganda. A tool for coercion. A girl who was schooled in order to manipulate nations and drag them into a war.
Nayirah Al-Sabah was neither a volunteer nor a nurse. Her war crime stories were inspired by her brief visitation at the hospital during which she saw one baby outside its incubator in an incident that lasted "no more than a moment"[8]
Nayirah deceived the world. Her feat was probably not an accomplishment of a pathological liar but that of a professional one.
Nayirah appears to have been instructed by a P.R firm, Hill and Knowlton. The firm was employed by the "NGO" Citizens For a Free Kuwait (CFK), a front for the Kuwait government. CFK, the showcase of the Kuwaiti government, paid Hill and Knowlton with the staggering sum of $11.5 million for their services[9]. Millions of U.S. dollars would generate a cheap, yet very effective lie that would get the Kuwait government the results it desired: in January 1991 U.S. and coalition forces started their operations against the Iraqis.
An imaginary infanticide claim for a war that cost thousands of lives. Although the war propaganda and its perpetrators were exposed no one would be held accountable, no one would take a fall for it.
Following the "Desert Storm" and the unavoidable defeat of the Iraqi forces, the victors of the war forced Iraq to pay Kuwait war compensations of billions of U.S. dollars, a sum which Iraq, in its miserable financial state, was totally incapable of paying.
The Iraqi failure to conform with the victors demands will lead to an international embargo against Iraq and to the implementation of a UN "humanitarian" program named "Oil for Food". The embargo would prostrate the Iraqi people and rob them of the means to survive, the humanitarian "aid" would humiliate them and rob them of their petroleum riches. Hundreds of thousands Iraqi children would die to the embargo and to the "humanitarian" program. In 1999, Dennis Halliday resigned his post as head of the UN "Oil for Food" humanitarian farce. Not only was he courageous enough to quit a well paid and prestigious job, he also had the courage to stand up against the international community, to condemn the U.N sanctions and insist that they were breaching the international laws: "Four thousand to 5,000 children are dying unnecessarily every month due to the impact of sanctions," he said. "We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that. It is illegal and
immoral."[10] Halliday however could not tell the combination of the sanctions and the "humanitarian program" for what it really was: an indirect and genocidal pillage of the Iraqi petroleum revenues and a blatant exploitation of the Iraqi people.
After the first Gulf War and the sanctions imposed that followed it, Iraq ceased to exist as an independent and sovereign country. The Iraqi nation would have to wait 12 agonizing years for the coup de grace to be delivered in 2003. The second Gulf War would place terminally the Iraqi people in the long list of the victims of corporatocracy as multinational companies would make huge profits out of arms deals and the reconstruction of a steamrolled Iraq.
The second Gulf War (Operation Iraqi Freedom is) had much in common with the first. The names of the key players were the same in both wars: Saddam Hussein, George W. Bush Sr, George W. Bush Jr, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney. Both wars lacked any real political justification. In both invasions the casus belli would be fabricated. The only thing different the second time around was that the son of the president who attacked the Iraqis in 1991 served a slightly different agenda. G.W.Bush religiously Jr followed the megalomaniac and militaristic policies that the neocon think tank named Project for the New American Century deemed necessary for US to extend their unchallenged world leadership into the whole of the 21st century. The man who called himself the "War President" would forever dissolve the delusion of the "Pax Americana", turning U.S. into a provocatively ultra-aggressive power in pursue of military world dominance, a policy that would deeply hurt the U.S. imperium and mark it as one of the most short-lived universal empires in human history. Iraq would be the second and the last victim of the U.S. military world dominance fallacy.
The U.S. government could not launch a war against Iraq without public opinion consent. And U.S. public opinion was won over by a terrorist attack in the heart of America, far less known than the twin towers attacks: the anthrax letters.
After the coup of September 11, G.W.Bush Jr and staffers embarked on a global terror campaign against terrorism, the so called "war on terror". Conveniently and favorably to that goal, a few days after 9/11, letters containing the dangerous anthrax bacillus were sent to several strategic points of U.S. public life. The bioterroristic letters resulted in seven deaths. The anthrax letter attacks created a political epidemic of panic and terror that surged the U.S. from end to end, crippling critical thinking, afflicting even the most democratic elements of the US political scene. ABC persistently runs an unsubstantiated by hard facts and thus arbitrary story of Iraq being the culprit, the creator and the source of the anthrax letters. The ABC anti-Iraqi propaganda succeeds in turning the bioterroristic fear into Iraq-focused anger. War-mongers would once again turn Iraq into a sacrificial lamb.
The ABC network systematically disseminated an unfounded claim: ABC claimed that the anthrax letters contain bentonite, a rather common chemical substance that can be also used as an anticoagulant for anthrax spores. It also claimed that bentonite was the trademark of the Iraqi biological weapon program, pushing the Iraq-is-to-blame story even further.
The detailed ABC's bentonite arguments were not only unverified and unfounded. They were also officially refuted.
The then spokesman for the White House Ari Fleisher categorically specified that no bentonite was found in the anthrax letters. This official statement cast a longer shadow on ABC's credibility, methods and intentions.
The sources of the Iraqi involvement story, sources that ABC never named, could have been no other than the selected few U.S. bioweapons experts entrusted by the U.S. government with analyzing the deadly anthrax letters, the same people who informed Fleisher that no bentonite was found in them, the only ones who had access to the anthrax letters, the only source responsible for giving out information on the anthrax contained in the bioterror letters.
Ironically enough, several years later, FBI, having completely ruled out the impossible claim of the Iraqi involvement, would close in on one of the bioweapons experts that the US government chose for examining the anthrax letters… A likely suspect of the anthrax letters attacks was the one examining the letters of death on behalf of the U.S. Government. It appears that the anthrax letters must have been one the greatest bloopers in U.S. investigational history.
The war lies were uncovered long after the Iraqi people suffered their consequences. As in the case of nurse Nayirah, in the anthrax letters case, the Iraqi Nation was falsely, malignly and deliberately accused of crimes it never committed and punished harshly as a result of purposeful fabrications, conspicuous propaganda and vicious machinations. And none among the propaganda masterminds and culprits faced the music for the wrongful deaths of hundreds of thousands Iraqis.
Despite official refutation, ABC stuck to its sad excuse of a story which was in turn instrumental in creating a war climate in the U.S. The U.S. citizens' take on the story ABC pushed was not irrational: ABC contested that Iraq had essentially attacked the U.S. with bioweapons, a claim which –in combination with the Twin Towers tragedy- had cumulative effects on the U.S. psyche and stirred up war sentiments in the rather peace-loving U.S. population. Regarding their pro-war sentiments, the U.S. citizens can only be accused of naivety and gullibility, for they swallowed a story that the media served them without questioning its credibility. They adopted a wrongful accusation without examining the outrageous media claims that shaped it. Once the US public opinion was deliberately coerced into believing that the U.S. was attacked by a foreign country, it had every right to defend itself with every means possible, even with an expansionary war. The only problem is that, in all likelihood, the U.S. was not attacked by a foreign country. Evidence leans toward a U.S. origin of the anthrax letters. The perpetrator must have been one or more U.S. insiders. Chances are that the actual perpetrator(s) was a U.S. bioweapons program insider. And though this type of evidence was available from the early days of the anthrax investigation, it was deliberately ignored to facilitate Bush' war agenda:
In December 2001 the FBI uncovered that the U.S. military (more specifically, the USAMRIID) produced, processed and possessed anthrax powder.[11] For the first time the army was forced into admitting that it possessed this form of anthrax, a clear violation of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. The U.S. army claimed that the anthrax strains it possessed were unrelated to the strains contained in the deadly anthrax letters, denying any involvement in the bioterror attack. The claim was untrue. In October 24 2001, the magazine New Scientist publicized the information that the strain of the anthrax letters was the Ames strain, a particular strain developed by the U.S. Army and USARMRIID.[12]
Through lies and propaganda, public opinion was turned.
The backdrop of war was already set up and the invasion in Iraq was already scheduled. Seven years later the FBI would tighten the investigation noose around Bruce Ivins, who was by then consider to be the prime suspect of the anthrax letters attacks. Ironically, Ivins was one of the key persons of the U.S. biodefence program and one of the few selected experts the U.S. Government employed to identify the strain of anthrax contained in the letters of death. A likely perpetrator was employed to unearth the actual perpetrators.
The anthrax investigation ended abruptly with Ivins suicide in 2008. From the onset of the anthrax letters investigation it was evident that the anthrax strain used was a trademark of the U.S. bioweapons program and that the anthrax letters attacks were an inside job. Still, up this day, there is no conclusive evidence of Ivins' guilt other than his psychological profile and his involvement in the U.S. bioweapons program. Prior to Ivins' incrimination, a colleague of his, Steven Hatfill suffered the burden of CIA suspicions to be acquitted and compensated.
Ivins might as well have been a scape goat. The dark players involved in the anthrax letters case might never be exposed. With Ivins dead and the case officially closed we may never learn of the actual perpetrators and instigators of an -in all likelihood- U.S. originating bioterrorist attack that changed the face of the world – for the worse.
After the anthrax letters attacks and the subsequent ABC propaganda, the U.S. public opinion was swayed, an insurmountable obstacle had been removed, yet Bush and his warlike gang had to make a strong case for war and present it to the international community as well. And the argument for war would be the imaginary threat posed to the global community by the Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). The claim of the Iraqi WMD threat was preposterous to say the least. The U.S. knew very well that Iraq's dilapidated economy was in no position to maintain its Weapons of Mass Destruction program, let alone modernize or expand. The WMD armory that Iraq developed during the 1980's with the aid of the US[13] (in 2002, the British learned of the U.S. involvement on the development of the Iraqi WMD as well[14]) was pretty much used up for the goal of the Iran-Iraq war. After a decade of international sanctions and Iraqi famine, the Iraqi regime had no means nor an ambition to rebuild it. Nevertheless and regardless of the fact that all that was left of the Iraqi WMD program were stray remnants, the neocons were determined to get their hands to Iraq, ruin its remaining infrastructures and hand it over to corporations that would make a huge profit out of the lucrative business of reconstructing a war-stricken nation.
Since no evidence of the essentially inexistent Iraqi WMD program could be found, the U.S. would use their intelligence services family to fabricate it.
In 2005, a series of documents, referring to 2002 events and crucial talks that preceded the invasion, collectively known as the "Downing Street memo"[15], exhibited that (obviously regardless of WMD findings) the invasion in Iraq was predetermined :
" […] C (Sir Richard Dearlove, head of the British Secret Intelligence Service) reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.
The Defence Secretary said that the US had already begun "spikes of activity" to put pressure on the regime. No decisions had been taken, but he thought the most likely timing in US minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections.
The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran […]" [16]
In 2003 the CIA claimed that it finally "found" in an Iraqi territory the long-sought excuse for war: the "incriminatory evidence" were two "mobile biological warfare labs". The CIA "findings" were politically exploited to the fullest. G.W.Bush Jr on January 28, 2003 and Colin Powell in his speech to the UN Security Council on February 5, 2003 relied on the mobile biological weapons laboratories allegation to make a "solid" case for war despite the fact that the CIA WMD findings were disputed and deemed unreliable, even absurd. If the UN Weapons Inspectors assessments about the extent and capacity of the Iraqi WMD armory are valid, the CIA claim of WND "findings" should have been immediately rejected. In June 2003 David Kelly, a very experienced bioweapons expert and a UN weapons inspector had the opportunity to see for himself and survey the alleged "mobile biowarfare laboratories". Dispirited from what he encountered he would later on relay -off the record- his sentiments to a British newspaper: "They are not mobile germ warfare laboratories. You could not use them for making biological weapons. They do not even look like them. They are exactly what the Iraqis said they were – facilities for the production of hydrogen gas to fill balloons."[17]
After being caught in a political maelstrom concerning the "sexing up" of the Iraqi dossier by the British government that damaged his reputation and cast doubt on his loyalty, Kelly would be found dead in the woods on July 18 2003. The previous morning he had informed The New YorkTimes' Judith Miller of "many dark actors playing games"[18] Like in the case of his US colleague Bruce Ivins, Kelly's death would be attributed to suicide.
It is true that lies can kill.
After the lies of the "Iraqi" anthrax letters and the fabrication regarding the Iraqi "mobile biological warfare laboratories", U.S. and coalition forces would invade an already worn out nation and tear it apart. None of the following weapons inspector reports confirmed or even hinted battle-worthy or even significant WMD Iraqi armaments. On January 23 2004, David Kay, the head of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) -a fact-finding team that was sent in Iraq after the invasion with the mission of tracking down the alleged Iraqi WMD stockpiles- would resign. A once strong supporter of Iraqi WMD allegations would be quickly disillusioned during his expedition: "I don't think they existed" Kay said. "What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last Gulf War and I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the nineties."[19]
The final report of the ISG, published on January 30, 2004 is in full accord with Kay's thesis': "ISG has not found evidence that Saddam Husain possessed WMD stocks in 2003"[20]
In 2005, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's longtime adviser and his chief of staff from 2002 to 2005 recalled a disarming and embarrassing phone call from the then CIA Director George Tenet to the then Secretary of State Colin Powell. The content of the phone discussion sounded like a prank- unfortunately it was not. According to Wilkerson, Tenet "actually did call the Secretary (Powell), and said, 'I'm really sorry to have to tell you. We don't believe there were any mobile labs for making biological weapons,'" [21]
In 2005, it was revealed that CIA official Tyler Drumheller had informed his superiors of the unreliability of the sole Iraqi WMD informant. Bush and Powell disregarded his warnings and went on with their war as planned (Powell later acknowledged that this information was never passed to him by the secret services). This was a war whose preparation and justification seemed like a contest of pathological liars. The winner of the contest would claim Iraq as his prize.
The war propaganda would gradually dissolve into its basic components: ill intentions, thin air and puppet mastering.
Some of its key players would later be honest enough to admit the dishonesty of the Iraq invasion.
On August 23, 2005, Wilkerson, Powell's trusted advisor would admit of his role in the decisive 2003 Colin Powell's presentation to the UN Security Council on Iraq's WMD: "I wish I had not been involved in it.." "I look back on it, and I still say it was the lowest point in my life."[22]
In September 2005, a regretful Colin Powell would express his feelings regarding his determination to back up the Iraq WMD allegations: "It will always be a part of my record. It was painful. It's painful now."[23]
And it would become increasingly painful, as the historic truth was gradually -and painfully- restored: in February 2011 the source of the fabricated Iraq mobile biowarfare labs claim confessed publicly that he was lying. The Iraqi defector, the source who provided the witness upon which a case for war was constructed, the informant under the codename Curveball, the guy which col. Wilkerson attempted to expose as unreliable, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, confessed that he was simply lying. The Guardian has the story:
'[…] Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi or "Curveball" as his US and German handlers called him, admitted fabricating evidence of Iraq's secret biological weapons program […]
"[…] In his adopted home of Germany, MPs are demanding to know why the BND, paid Curveball £2,500 a month for at least five years after they knew he had lied […]"
[…] Hans-Christian Ströbele, a Green MP, said Janabi had arguably violated a German law which makes warmongering illegal. Under the law, it is a criminal offence to do anything "with the intent to disturb the peaceful relations between nations, especially anything that leads to an aggressive war", he said […]
[…] On 5 February 2003, a month before the invasion, (Colin) Powell went before the UN security council to make the case for war. In his speech he referred to "firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails… The source was an eyewitness who supervised one of these facilities". It is now known that the source, Janabi, made up the story […]
[…] Colin Powell, the US secretary of state at the time of the Iraq invasion, has called on the CIA and Pentagon to explain why they failed to alert him to the unreliability of a key source behind claims of Saddam Hussein's bio-weapons capability[…]
[…] Curveball told the Guardian he welcomed Powell's demand. "It's great," he said tonight. "The BND [German intelligence] knew in 2000 that I was lying after they talked to my former boss, Dr Bassil Latif, who told them there were no mobile bioweapons factories. For 18 months after that they left me alone because they knew I was telling lies even though I never admitted it. Believe me, back then, I thought the whole thing was over for me.
"Then all of a sudden [in the run up to the 2003 invasion] they came back to me and started asking for more details about what I had told them. I still don't know why the BND then passed on my information to the CIA and it ended up in Powell's speech […]"
(Powell told the Guardian:) […] "It has been known for several years that the source called Curveball was totally unreliable. […] The question should be put to the CIA and the DIA as to why this wasn't known before the false information was put into the NIE sent to Congress, the president's state of the union address and my 5 February presentation to the UN […]"
[…] Further pressure on the CIA came from Lawrence Wilkerson, Powell's chief of staff at the time of the invasion. He said Curveball's lies raised questions about how the CIA had briefed Powell ahead of his fateful UN speech." '[24]
Another lie for yet another war.
The Guardian finally restored part of the historic truth: Curveball was Gulf War's II Nayirah. But in contrast to Nayirah Al-Sabah case what we still do not know about Janabi's case, is who his instigator was.
It was surely painful for a military man like Powell to realize that he was manipulated and played along with an orchestrated plot bent on occupying Iraq.
But the pain Powell choices caused to millions of Iraqis is incomparable: an estimated 109,000 Iraqi people died because of the Operation Freedom Iraq and the subsequent occupation. 109,000 Iraqi people died, among whom 66,000 were civilians[25]. And as long as the US and allies continue to occupy Iraq, the death toll will constantly be on the rise.
Within a time period of thirty years Iraq has known unthinkable sufferings: 100,000 Iraqis were killed during the Iran-Iraq war, 500,000 Iraqi children died because of the sanctions, 100,000 Iraqis dead because of the U.S. invasion and occupation.
Saddam Hussein, a cruel dictator had indeed committed genocide. He was executed for his crimes. U.S. corporate-driven expansionism has far exceeded Saddam's deeds. Yet, it is the Iraqi people and not the perpetrators who receive the cruelest of punishments.
In regard to the two Gulf wars, truth has been distorted. Justice has been distorted. And while historic truth will be gradually restored, by then it will be too late for justice to be served.
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/3619032/Irans-revolution-is-in-its-infancy-but-it-may-have-just-found-its-Stalin.html
[3] "Right to Survive: Human Rights in Nicaragua" The Catholic Institute for International Relations.
[5] United States Senate, 103d Congress, 2d Session
May 25, 1994
[9] ibid
[11] FBI uncovers US military production of anthrax powder, by Duncan Campbell, The Guardian, 14 December 2001,
[12] Anthrax bacteria likely to be US military strain, by Debora Mckenzie, New Scientist, 24 October 2001
[13] "The Riegle Report",United States Senate, 103d Congress, 2d Session
May 25, 1994
[14] House of commons, Hansard Debates for 26 February 2003
[15] The Sunday Times, 5 May 2005, the Los Angeles Times, 12 May 2005, the Star Tribune,13 May 2005 , Associated Press,7 June 2005.
[20] http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/2004/isg-final-report/isg-final-report_vol1_rsi-06.htm
[24] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/16/colin-powell-cia-curveball: The author took the liberty to rearrange the order of the Guardian excerpts to better suit his text. To avoid any misunderstanding of the author's intentions It is crucial that the reader refers to the original Guardian article
§ 6 Responses to Dead by propaganda: Saddam Hussein's futile plea for peace and the pre-fabricated Persian gulf wars
It is sad that History Repeats itself time and time again, and now Lybia must feel the brunt of the greed and power mad, so called Idustrial Nations
all the hell come from shia and zions
shia are jews and they are dealing with USA to killing Saddam Hussein
Khomeini's Iran and the day before the invasion of Iraq in order to spread Shiism, but the hero Saddam and stand against the Persian Alambrtaiwih which deceive and lie for the interests of religious
At that time, the United States and Saudi Arabia are considered Saddam a hero is a Persian occupation of Iraq, but when Iran agreed with the United States in the last war a Subht America sees as he mounted a war against humanity Shiite counterfeit
Shia hypocrites religion hypocrites in policy too


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Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnet Xxvi: I Lived With Visions - Poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I lived with visions for my company
Instead of men and women, years ago,
And found them gentle mates, nor thought to know
A sweeter music than they played to me.
But soon their trailing purple was not free
Of this world's dust, their lutes did silent grow,
And I myself grew faint and blind below
Their vanishing eyes. Then thou didst come--to be,
Belovèd, what they seemed. Their shining fronts,
Their songs, their splendors (better, yet the same,
As river water hallowed into fonts),
Met in thee, and from out thee overcame
My soul with satisfaction of all wants:
Because God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.
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Step-by-Step Process
Your doctor referred you for a sleep study… Now what?
- You will be contacted to schedule appointment for your overnight sleep study (night shift workers can be scheduled during the day).
- Prior to your study, a medical intake is required. This intake can be an office visit during which a complete sleep history is taken and a brief medical examination is performed, followed by a discussion of the findings. In addition, you will be educated about medical issues related to the treatment of sleep disorders.
- Sleep study appointment is usually scheduled as: 8:30 pm for young children and either 9:00 pm or 10:00 pm for older children and adults.
- A follow-up appointment will be scheduled with one of our physicians after your final sleep study to discuss the results with you.
*Please note: One of our doctors may call you to discuss the results of your sleep study with you in order to expedite the process.
- Follow-up appointments with our sleep physicians will be made on a regular basis to assist you with treatment and to address any concerns you may have.
What is a sleep study?
A sleep study monitors the stages of your sleep as well as physiological events that affect it. The following are recorded during your study:
- eye movements
- muscle tone and activity
- heart rate and EKG
- blood oxygen saturation
- brain activity
- respiration
- snoring
- leg and body movements
- body position
What you can Expect
- Private bedroom with private or semiprivate bathroom
- Courteous, attentive, professional staff members
- Comfortable, relaxing atmosphere
- Cable television
- Lights out by 11:00 p.m.; morning awakening around 5:30 a.m.
- Sensors will be secured to your head with a thick paste-like substance; others will be taped to your face and legs.
- Your sleep will also be monitored by a video camera. A microphone is present so that you may alert your technologist during the study if you have any questions, problems, or need to use the restroom.
How to Prepare for Your Sleep Study
- Avoid napping
- Eat dinner as you normally would
- Do not consume caffeine after noon; avoid alcohol consumption as well
- Take medications as you normally would unless otherwise directed by your physician
- Bring any medications with you that you may need during the night or first thing in the morning
- Bring pajamas or comfortable clothes to sleep in; bring personal hygiene items
- You may bring a pillow, extra blanket, or anything that makes you more comfortable
- Arrive at your scheduled time; arriving early does not gaurantee that a technologist can start your study sooner
- Shower/bather and wash your hair; do not use conditioners or facial creams
- Men need to be clean-shaven if they do not have beards or moustaches; women need to remove make-up and nail polish
Getting your Results
A sleep specialist can answer most of your questions about your sleep study. But only your sleep doctor or medical care provider can explain the results. Our sleep physician will interpret your study and the results will be sent to your doctor usually within a week. In order to expedite the process, if treatment is needed, a staff member may call you to discuss the preliminary results.


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There frequently comes a time when plano de aceleração do emagrecimento by concentrating on just your diet plan ends up being much less as well as much less efficient. Weight loss might delay and also you could locate it tougher to proceed shedding weight.
Weight loss could delay as well as you could locate it tougher to proceed shedding weight. Speeding up weight loss with routine cardio and also workout is the best as well as most all-natural method of shedding weight rapidly.
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There is just one reliable method to shed weight rapidly and also securely. To shed weight rapidly you must include weight training and/or cardio right into your day-to-day regimen while eating a healthy and balanced as well as nourishing diet plan made up of a calorie deficiency.
The sort of workout or cardio you prefer to carry out is completely to you however must preferably be one that you take pleasure in and also understand you could proceed doing. Whichever kind of workout you prefer to execute, bear in mind to begin progressively and also deal with developing your physical fitness degrees up. Accelerating weight reduction with routine cardio as well as workout is the most safe as well as most all-natural method of dropping weight rapidly.
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The great print that comes with a weight loss supplement commonly checks out 'finest outcomes are seen when you minimize your calories and also execute even more workout'. Minimizing calories in your diet plan and also doing routine workout is the ideal as well as most reliable approach of shedding weight in anyhow.
The objective of all weight loss supplements is to elevate the body's metabolic rate, which in turn could assist the body melt even more calories as well as shed weight quicker. Routine cardio or weight training will do this for you anyhow so is it sensible to acquire a weight loss supplement that may not also function?
Slimming down promptly could really threaten and also exhausting on the body and also could be connected with a variety of health and wellness threats that you actually wish to be preventing. By including normal cardio or workout right into your regimen along with a great diet plan, you will certainly shed a lot more calories, increase your body's metabolic process and also reduce weight quicker compared to the ordinary individual that disregards workout.
To shed weight rapidly you need to integrate weight training and/or cardio right into your everyday regimen while taking in a healthy and balanced and also healthy diet regimen made up of a calorie shortage.


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Board & Officers / Odbori
Managing board / Upravni odbor:
Stipe Grgas, President
Sanja Runtić, Vice President
Jelena Šesnić, Secretary
Marko Lukić
Sven Cvek
Supervisory board / Nadzorni odbor:
Lovorka Gruić-Grmuša
Nikica Gilić
Gordan Matas
— — —
Stipe Grgas (1951) is Full Professor and acting chair of the American Studies program at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. Before 2005 he taught at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zadar but was also a guest lecturer at various departments of other Croatian universities (Split, Rijeka). He has published three books, edited a collection of papers and written some hundred articles on American, Irish and British literature and culture as well as on topics having to do with the interdisciplinary field of human spatiality. He was guest lecturer at a number of European universities (Odense, Aarhus, Leipzig, Genoa) and has presented his work at numerous international conferences. He spent the academic year 1994-1995 as a Fulbright scholar at Yale University and was again awarded a Fulbright scholarship for the 2011 summer semester which he spent at Cornell University.
Sanja Runtić is Assistant Professor of English, Chair of English Literature and Director of the Undergraduate Program in English Language and Literature at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Osijek. She teaches surveys of early and nineteenth century American Literature and specialized courses in American Realism/ Naturalism, Contemporary American Women Writers, Native American Literature and Multicultural Literature in English. Her recent scholarly work focuses on the field of American Indian Studies with special emphasis on American Indian Literature, Art and Independent Cinema. Her research interests also include Postcolonial Literature and Theory, Theories of Globalization, Postmodernism, Women's Studies, and American Realism and Naturalism.
Jelena Šesnić is an assistant professor in the Department of English, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb, Croatia. She teaches courses in American literature and culture, with special emphasis on nineteenth-century and US ethnic literatures. She has been awarded several grants (Fulbright, European Association for American Studies, JF Kennedy Institute library grant), and has contributed to Croatian and English-language literary journals. In 2008 she participated in Dartmouth Institute "Futures of American Studies." Her research interests focus on recent methodologies in American studies, feminist and gender theory, and psychoanalytic and postcolonial approaches. She is a co-founder of the Croatian Association for American Studies, and is on editorial board of two journals of literary criticism and theory.
Marko Lukić, PhD is a teaching assistant in the Department of English at the University of Zadar, Croatia. He is the acting Chair of the American Studies program and teaches various courses in American literature and culture. His research interests include violence and trauma in contemporary American fiction, human spatiality and space in literature, and the contemporary horror genre. He is the Editor in Chief of [sic] – A Journal of Literature, Culture and Literary Translation, director/organizer of the international conference Re-Thinking Humanities and Social Sciences, and the co-founder of the Centre for Research in Social Sciences and Humanities.
Sven Cvek works as assistant professor in the American Studies program of the English Department at the University of Zagreb. His primary field of study is contemporary US literature and popular culture. He has published one book, Towering Figures: Reading the 9/11 Archive (Rodopi, 2011), and several articles in reviewed journals or collections.
Lovorka Gruić-Grmuša is an assistant professor at the English Department, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Rijeka, Croatia. She teaches courses in American literature and culture, with special emphasis on contemporary literature. She has been awarded several grants (Fulbright: UCLA; Program in Literature Grant: DUKE; Grad Rijeka library grant: Institut für Amerikanistik, Graz), co-edited a collection of papers: Space and Time in Language and Literature, and has contributed to Croatian and English language literary journals. Her research interests focus on interdisciplinary approach to temporality and space-time (literature, science and technology), postmodernism, and media studies.
Nikica Gilić (1973), graduated in Comparative literature and English language and literature in Zagreb, and presently works as Assistant Professor, Chair, Film Studies at the Department of Comparative literature, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (University of Zagreb). He is a member of the Council of Animafest, world festival of animated film (Zagreb) and artistic advisor for documentary film in Croatian Audio-Visual Centre (HAVC). He often teaches courses on American cinema on postgraduate and graduate level. He was the supervisor for Rajko Petković's doctoral thesis on the American independent cinema of the 1980s, and currently he is supervising a doctoral thesis on the cinema of Clint Eastwood. He is the editor-in-chief of Hrvatski filmski ljetopis (Croatian Cinema Chronicles), a Croatian journal for cinema studies. He won the award of the Faculty of humanities and social sciences for his two books published in 2007, as well as the film critics' award "Vladimir Vuković" for his book on Croatian cinema first published in 2010. He is a huge jazz fan and occasionally writes short essays on the subject.
Gordan Matas is an assistant professor in the Department of English, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Split, Croatia. He teaches courses in American literature and culture, with special emphasis on African American as well as US and Canadian ethnic literatures. He has received several grants for research in the United States (Fulbright award), Canada, Norway and Sweden. His research interests include American and Canadian ethnic literature, multiculturalism, hybridity, postcolonial and gender studies. He has edited two books and published articles in reviewed journals.
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text: New Hanover Township SchoolStudent Assistance ProgramJoining together to make a difference!Team MembersKatherine McCandlessLara SondayAnn FunckDiana SchummChristine ContiDavid BramleyS.A.P. Mission Statement:It is the mission of the New Hanover Township Student Assistance Program to identify, intervene, and make the appropriate referrals for youth in and out of school and to follow through with at-risk youth in the areas of attendance, academics, health, and behavior.S.A.P. Purpose and Goals:Our committee has been designed to assist all students in meeting their potential, as required by NJAC Subchapter 8-6a:16-8. School staff, parents, and community members work together to help meet the needs of our students.We strive to assist teachers in providing meaningful learning experiences for all our students. We work with teachers, parents, and students to identify the barriers to learning, implement interventions, and monitor progress. We work together to provide a safe, productive, learning environment for all students.S.A.P. Process:Referrals can be initiated by teacher or parent. Contact your child's teacher.Schedule: To be announced


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Cher still has a thing or two to learn about Twitter. The 70-year-old music legend apologized to fans on Wednesday after tweeting about the terror attacks at the Istanbul airport that have taken the lives of 42 victims so far.
WATCH: Cher, 70, Shows Off Her Enviable Figure While Vacationing in Italy — See the Pics!
In her now-deleted tweet, Cher wrote, "WE ALL PRAY FOR INNOCENT PPL IN TURKEY AIRPORT" and then used a bomb emoji and an explosion emoji. Many fans felt the emojis were off-color and insensitive.
Cher followed that post with another, writing, "Been thinking about my Poorly Placed, Insensitively Timed 'bomb Emoji'. No Excuse," she wrote using a broken heart emoji. "I'm Used 2 Using Emoji 2Help Say More Than 140 Letters. Sorry."
WATCH: Cher, 70, and Mom, 90, Look Absolutely Flawless -- and One of Them Went Makeup-Free!
Hours later, she explained her unusual social media silence, writing, "No Twts 2day, Cause, Wanted2 Think About Sensitivity. Meant No Disrespect, But That's Not Enough. DOWN A FEW PEGS, IS OK #WalkAMileInTheirShoes."


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Editor's Comment: This study demonstrates that even short-term changes in dietary habits can radically alter gut flora. After only two days of a meat-based diet, there was a decrease in the number of bacteria that normally help digest plant-based foods. There was also an increase in bacteria that have been linked to inflammatory bowel disease.
Diet rapidly and reproducibly alters the human gut microbiome
By Lawrence A. David et al.
The animal-based diet increased the abundance of bile-tolerant microorganisms (Alistipes, Bilophila and Bacteroides) and decreased the levels of Firmicutes that metabolize dietary plant polysaccharides (Roseburia, Eubacterium rectale and Ruminococcus bromii). Microbial activity mirrored differences between herbivorous and carnivorous mammals, reflecting trade-offs between carbohydrate and protein fermentation. Foodborne microbes from both diets transiently colonized the gut, including bacteria, fungi and even viruses.
Finally, increases in the abundance and activity of Bilophila wadsworthia on the animal-based diet support a link between dietary fat, bile acids and the outgrowth of microorganisms capable of triggering inflammatory bowel disease. In concert, these results demonstrate that the gut microbiome can rapidly respond to altered diet, potentially facilitating the diversity of human dietary lifestyles.


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The Devil Had a Mobile Phone
The Adventures of Monsieur de Mailly by David Lindsay
The Adventures of Monsieur de Mailly, published in 1926 (1927 in the US, as A Blade for Sale), is usually regarded as the exception among David Lindsay's writings. Dismissed as a potboiler, it's passed over quickly, if it's mentioned at all, in any examination of Lindsay's more serious novels. It is, as J B Pick says, "the only book of Lindsay's without metaphysical overtones", and it's those "metaphysical overtones" which tend to draw readers of A Voyage to Arcturus on to Lindsay's other works. But if, like me, you're interested in Lindsay as a writer, rather than a philosopher or metaphysician — and despite the serious themes in his works, it's the human dramas at their core which bear the weight of meaning, so The Haunted Woman, Sphinx, The Violet Apple and Devil's Tor aren't novels by accident, nor are they merely philosophical tracts candied up into stories — then de Mailly is an interesting book, if only because it presents a side of Lindsay not to be found in any of his other works.
As to its being a potboiler, it is. Or, it tries to be. And it's perhaps in its failings as a potboiler that it's the most interesting.
At the same time as Lindsay was writing de Mailly, he was also writing his third published novel, Sphinx, which contains some thoughts on potboiling. Central to Sphinx is the character of composer Lore Jensen, who once created works of great profundity (including the piece which gives the novel its name), but, through having to write more popular music to earn a crust, has become creatively bankrupt. Accused of potboiling, she bursts out with: "But if I don't boil my own pot, are you going to boil it for me? I suppose you think it's bad art to have a pot!" But her drug-taking and dissolute lifestyle give the lie to any pretence she's just following the demands of her muse; something has gone rotten within her. In a rather subtle little irony, Lindsay has her briefly engaged to a music critic — the ultimate symbol of the composer wedding herself to the demands of public taste!
But I don't think anyone can blame Lindsay for attempting a potboiler — I certainly don't. If it had funded another "metaphysical" novel, I'd have quite happily had a shelf-full of de Maillys. The trouble was, even though it was the first of his novels to be republished abroad, de Mailly didn't result in financial success.
The key to the sort of novel Lindsay was aiming for in de Mailly is that it should be closer to a wish-fulfilling daydream than to real life. It should have heroes & baddies, adventures & romance, danger & derring-do. In his lead character, Gaston de Mailly, Lindsay may have been trying to create a series character of the sort popular at the time (new Sherlock Holmes stories were still being published in the 1920s, and de Mailly has some similarities to Holmes). To start with, the novel is episodic, and might even have been intended as a series of short stories. The first episode, for instance, lasts just two chapters, the second lasts three. After that, though, the episodes get longer. The third "story" lasts six chapters, while the fourth spans the whole of the remainder of the book — more than half its 319 pages. This could, of course, have been Lindsay's intention — to warm up with a few short stories then extend to a novelette — but I think there's another explanation, which lies in the sort of stories Lindsay was telling.
The Adventures of Monsieur de Mailly is set in the France of Louis XIV, in 1700, and thus slap-bang in the middle of the longest recorded reign of any European monarch. It is an age of wit and sophistication, politics and diplomacy, but also of warfare and swordplay. Gaston de Mailly, our hero, declares himself firmly allied to the latter path. A gentleman by birth (though he starts the novel in financially straitened circumstances), he's a soldier by trade:
"For my part, I am not a politician… I care nothing for this dry paper warfare where we fight at invisible range, and where the beaten enemy will come to life again the next day."
His adventures, though, rarely require him to resort to his blade; his wits are his main weapon. (In the longest action sequence in the book, near the end, de Mailly combines cunning and swordplay to neatly defeat multiple opponents.) The best example of de Mailly in action is to be found in the second episode of the novel, in which our hero makes his first ever visit to the Court of the Sun King at Versailles. Initially, he's out of his depth, and in danger of becoming the butt of a reputation-ruining practical joke. Brought before the King to explain himself, though, he manages to turn the situation around, to make the jokers the victims of their own joke, and ends up gaining himself a cool eight thousand crowns, not to mention the respect of the King.
de Mailly's wit, then, is as sharp and nimble as his blade, and the main appeal of his adventures is seeing how he applies his cunning to the various situations he finds himself in. At times, his deductions from a few clues are almost Holmesian (at one point, for instance, he deduces the nature of the plot he's entangled in from the mere fact that his sword has been stolen and swapped with another), and he even indulges in a soliloquised pean to "Divine Logic":
"'Tis truly astonishing what a load logic will bear when compelled! … It is to follow a thread through chaos… There is even beauty in it. To the divine sciences of astronomy, music, poetry, and philosophy, we must assuredly add logic as a fifth. 'Tis a picture of the soul struggling through the gross appetites and passions of the world. Pulled down on all sides by material considerations, she is ignorant of her destination, which is heavenly; but she deduces it from her own resources, and this deduction possesses more of certitude than all the flesh, blood, and gold of the visible cosmos!"
That "picture of the soul" passage is almost A Voyage to Arcturus in miniature, though with a slightly higher dose of optimism, and is evidence, perhaps, of Lindsay's more serious authorial DNA showing through.
Heroes who survive on their wits were popular at the time de Mailly was being written. I've already mentioned Sherlock Holmes; Agatha Christie's first novels were being published in the twenties, too, and detective stories in general (of the era, anyway) were all about the triumph of deductive intelligence over the messy world of the passions. So it seems that choosing to make his hero a derring-do swashbuckler with the keen logic of a Holmes or a Poirot was a shrewd move on Lindsay's part, or certainly one in keeping with the times. There were two problems with Lindsay's use of his hero, though.
The first, more minor, problem, was in the way Lindsay introduces de Mailly. In the first episode, our hero tries to help a nobleman at risk of losing his inheritance because a widow is intent on marrying his rich, bachelor uncle, to whom he is sole heir. de Mailly comes up with the perfect plan — the young nobleman should marry the widow himself! — but is immediately thwarted when the widow kidnaps the uncle and whisks him off in carriage, with a priest in tow. So, in this first adventure, where you'd expect the newly-introduced hero to prove his credentials, de Mailly in fact fails, despite coming up with a clever stratagem. This wrongfoots the reader from the start. It's as if Lindsay can't quite sustain the daydream level of the pulp adventure, but has to bring in the messiness and unpredictability of real life, in which no clever plan, however clever, can be a sure success. In fact, of the four adventures of Monsieur de Mailly we have in the novel, our hero only succeeds in two; in the others, his clever planning comes to nothing (in both cases, by the sudden intrusive action of a woman, which could perhaps be taken to represent Lindsay's scornful muse, bursting in to destroy his hero's house-of-cards faith in logic).
The second problem lies in the complexity of the final adventure in the novel. de Mailly finds himself caught in a night-time scheme to assassinate a minister, but every person involved in the plot seems to have conceived a way of twisting it to their own ends. Thus, de Mailly has to disentangle himself from not one, but many plots and counterplots, and also has to come up with a stratagem of his own to ensure he comes out on top, too. (This is one admirable aspect of de Mailly — in making his protagonist a "hero of wit", Lindsay doesn't then set him up against idiots, but against people as capable of thinking and rethinking their way through a plot as de Mailly himself.)
The point about this problem with de Mailly is best summed up by J B Pick:
"A writer who is more interested in theme and purpose than in plot tends to overdo the elaboration and intricacy of any story in which plot is a major consideration. De Mailly has so many twists and turns that the reader is eventually lost in the maze."
It's as if, by the fourth episode, Lindsay has already tired of the daydream aspect of his hero's adventures, and has had to resort to incredibly complicated plot convolutions to sustain his own interest. This fourth episode is readable, and enjoyable, though not in that easy-reading way you'd expect from a pulp-style adventure. It's more like a tightly-played chess game between not two but a handful of opposing players.
Taken as an attempt at writing a pulp-style series of adventures, then, de Mailly is flawed, but is not a total failure by any means. The second episode, in the Court of the Sun King, is a perfect little story of the triumph of de Mailly's wit, while the fourth episode is a sort of Bach Fugue of interweaving plotlines whose sharp about-turns, plots and counterplots have an almost breathtaking elegance, if only you can hold each individual character's wants, expectations, understandings and misunderstandings in your head. But when it comes down to it, it seems that Lindsay just couldn't quite sacrifice his integrity towards his own (often pessimistic, certainly difficult) worldview, in which the gaining of what one wishes for is a struggle that wrenches the very soul, not just something that takes a little wit and swordplay. In addition, when the lower-intensity storytelling of de Mailly began to drag, Lindsay had to amuse himself with increasingly complicated plots.
In writing de Mailly, Lindsay took some pains with regards to historical accuracy — he mentions, to give one instance, the fact that calling a married woman "madame" was only, in 1700, a practice of the nobility, yet to filter down to the middle classes — but he by no means shoves his research down the reader's throat. Generally, the tone of the book is one of witty adventure, more along the lines of The Three Musketeers, or a Grey Mouser episode from Fritz Leiber, with Gaston de Mailly's dry, cynical wit being one of the key pleasures along the way. I end with a few examples:
"In politics, as elsewhere, there are nine pedants to one man of resource." — (an early version of Sturgeon's Law)
"You are a lawyer, Fleurus; which is to say, an animal trained out of noble sentiments."
"He who has a bad wife is dipped in the Styx against all other calamities."
Witch Wood by John Buchan
I bought James Cawthorn & Michael Moorcock's Fantasy: The 100 Best Books in a sale back in 1992, and have carried on a sort of book-by-book conversation with it ever since. I don't know if I intend to read every one of its suggested hundred — I've just ticked off my 59th with John Buchan's Witch Wood — but I'm often referring to it, wondering if this or that title has made the Cawthorn & Moorcock grade, or browsing it for reading suggestions. One thing I have come to learn is that their definition of fantasy is not necessarily mine (Moby Dick, for instance), nor is their definition of best (L Sprague de Camp's Tritonian Ring, for instance), but that's the fun of such lists. They're only annoying if you forget they're just one (or in this case two) person's opinion and expect them to be in some way definitive.
Witch Wood (published in 1927) was Buchan's favourite of his own novels (The Thirty-Nine Steps being everyone else's). It's set in the mid-seventeenth century, in rural Scotland, where a young minister, David Sempill, has just taken up a post in the kirk of Woodilee. There's plenty of thick Scots dialogue ("Haste ye, sir, and help me off wi' thae Babylonish garments, and that weskit o' airn — what for sud folk gang to the smith for cleading and no to a wabster?"), and plenty of Scots Jacobean religio-politics. The edition I read had a three-page glossary at the back to help with some of the dialect, but as often as not it didn't have the words I was looking up. (The second part of the above line, by the way, translates as: "why should folk go to a smith for their clothing, and not to a weaver?") The politics, which I tried to skim past at first, eventually required a brief trip to Wikipedia to get through — Buchan was, after all, of that educated class that expected its readers to understand Latin, and have a far more detailed knowledge of the country's history than modern readers (and I'm shamefully ignorant of everything Blue Peter never taught me). But the story itself was compelling, though it wasn't till the penultimate chapter that it really clicked what type of story it was. And knowing what type of story is being told is key, really, to enjoying a book.
So, what type of story is Witch Wood? It earned its place in Cawthorn & Moorcock's list because of the new minister's discovery that, as well as attending kirk every Sabbath, a good portion of his parishioners disappear into the wood (the wonderfully named Melanudrigill, or just "the Wud" to the locals, who fear to name it) to take part in Devil-worshipping rites around an old pagan altar. The new minister learns of this practice when, having got lost one night in an attempt to overcome his fear of a place that a man with God on his side ought not to fear, witnesses his flock, masked as animals, dancing round the altar and, in Buchan's own delicate phrasing, kissing "some part of the leader's body, nozzling him like dogs on the roadside". Yes, we all know where witches are supposed to kiss the Devil, thank you very much.
Sempill sets about trying to uncover and denounce the coven, but soon finds himself set against both the superstitious fear of his parishioners, and the bigotry of his kirk elders. This may make it sound like a sort of proto-Wicker Man or historical Devil Rides Out, but although Witch Wood is definitely in the ancestry of both those stories, its emphasis is different. It's not really a horror novel (though it contains some wonderfully atmospheric description of the Wud at night: "The clouds had thinned and the struggling moon showed Melanudrigill before them, rising and falling like an ocean of darkness."), nor is it a fantasy novel (part of its denouement could be taken as an act of God, but it might just as well be the effect of conscience, or superstition, and there are no really fantastic occurrences). As well as the Devil-worship plot, there's a pretty much separable love story, and a subplot involving David Sempill's agonising over his political allegiances — all of which, for the bulk of the novel, are kept separate, meaning the Devil-worship subplot lies fallow for whole chapters at a time. It was only in the penultimate chapter, when the effect of these three strands come crashing down on the young David Sempill that the book clicked for me and I realised it was really the story of an idealistic young man learning to see the world's hypocrisy, superstition, and sheer human pig-headedness in all its disillusioning glory. Not a vicar-versus-witches adventure story, then, but something more psychological.
And at this point, it became quite powerful. The previously ingenuous, and often slightly soft-spined Sempill gained a new, dark hardness, which allowed him at last to face up to his foes and deal with them in his own way. (But not, as in another devil-worship-in-rural-Britain story — Blood On Satan's Claw — by wielding a huge sword. Sempill uses words alone.)
So, not a fantasy book, though certainly one that may appeal to fantasy or horror readers. I'm certainly glad I read it. One more to tick off my Cawthorn & Moorcock list.
Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny & Girly
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Yes, but what about mad families? What about psychotic serial killer families? Tolstoy didn't think of that one, did he? Ever since reading about Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny & Girly in Harvey Fenton & David Flint's Ten Years of Terror (an encyclopaedic look at 70s British horror which introduced me to many films I'd never heard of, and some I realised I ought to be glad I hadn't) in 2001, I've been dying to see it, but aside from rumours that Redemption held the rights (there were obviously too many Nazi-nuns-in-bondage films to release first), there was no hint of it coming out on DVD. Then I did one of those wildly hopeful Amazon searches last week and found it had just been released. Watching it last night, I was amazed it'd taken so long, as it's just the sort of warped filmic fare to appeal to cinephiles, particularly cult cinephiles. I'd go so far as to say that watching it was as bizarre and rewarding an experience as my first viewing of The Wicker Man, where, once I'd got over the shock of people singing, I realised this was one of the most distinctive and subtle of horror films, of precisely the sort that transcends the genre and becomes so much more than merely horrific. MNS&G might not have the awe-inspiring power of that final scene of The Wicker Man, but in a slightly whackier way it is just as distinctive, just as not-quite-horror-though-it-is, and though it couldn't exactly be described as subtle (it's as subtle as an eight-year-olds' jelly-throwing contest), neither is it as over-the-top as you might expect. It's also as distinctively British a film as they come, in a Mad Dogs and Englishmen kind of way.
Based on a 1966 play, "Happy Family", by Maisie Mosco (who is more well-known for her multi-generational family saga about Jewish immigrants living in Manchester, Almonds and Raisins (1979), Scattered Seed (1980) and Children's Children (1981)), MNS&G's action takes place almost exclusively in a rotting, rambling Victwardian pile of a house, inhabited by a family whose members are only ever known as Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly. Sonny and Girly, obviously in their late teens, dress and act as clichés of the sort of naughty-but-loveable children that only ever existed in nostalgic fiction. But their gleeful gameplaying and chanting of horrid nursery rhymes is a thin mask for a family-wide psychosis. The children go outside the house's extensive grounds to gather "New Friends" — mostly drunks from the park (though, as the film begins, we're told Mumsy is fed up with drunks from the park, so the children make a fateful decision to gather a slightly higher class of inebriate) — whom they forcibly involve in their twisted, childish games, where the most important rule is "Play the Game". New Friends who don't play the game suffer the consequences, by having the darker side of nursery rhymes literalised — as in the "Humpty Dumpty Game", which of course ends with someone falling from a great height, and not being able to be put back together again. But their newest New Friend proves to be more up to the mark, and once he's learned to adjust to the madness of the situation, he begins to play games of his own, manipulating the subtle undercurrent of sexual jealousy that lurks beneath the family's rule-entrenched power structure. With, as they might say, grisly consequences.
Though, not as grisly as you'd think. For a film slap bang in the middle of a British horror boom (and directed by Freddie Francis, the man responsible for Hammer's The Evil of Frankenstein, and Amicus's Tales from the Crypt and Dr Terror's House of Horrors — though he was also cinematographer on David Lynch's Elephant Man, Dune, and Straight Story), there's remarkably little explicit horror. The goriest the film gets is a pricked thumb (hastily kissed better), though there is a corpse in a bed, not to mention the very brief glimpse of a (non-gory) severed hand. So much more is implied than shown, which may be why the film hasn't dated. MNS&G shows its real power in a scene near the end, in the kitchen, where the viewer will already have realised that the big pot boiling away on the stove contains something that outdoes Fatal Attraction 17 years before Fatal Attraction. You never actually get to see what's in the pot, but the cutting between its lifted lid and the horror on people's faces is enough to make you think you have.
The film's strength really lies in the mix between its characters' schizoid gameplaying and the darker, messier psychology ready to break through that thin but overbright surface. Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly are always telling their New Friends that theirs is a happy family — but the fact they insist on this so much, and that "happy families need rules", immediately gives it the lie.
So what is MNS&G about? It's possible to enjoy it just for its weird mix of mad glee and nursery-rhyme darkness, but I think it has a power that goes beyond that. It's of course about family. The thing about the MNS&G ménage is that, although it is sociopathic, psychopathic, not to say outright murderous, it works. It works not because of or in spite of its madness, but because the family have agreed to share a madness. And that may be the thing that transcends Tolstoy's theory of happy and unhappy families: all families, to work as families, must be a shared form of madness — benign, in the case of happy families, less benign in the case of unhappy ones — but you know they work because the family stays together. That's, in the end, what makes them a family.
MNS&G was released in the US as Girly, a title which, while it obviously makes the most of the film's most striking visual asset (ahem):
…does miss the point a bit about this being, after all, a family film. Though not, obviously, a film for all the family.


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Vater Morgan Rose Alien Freak
Vater Morgan Rose Alien Freak,Hickory Drum Sticks, Wood Tip, Length 16", Diameter 0.610", A truly unique model with no taper or tip made from "dark" hickory. This double butt-end stick has no finish or lacquer, which leaves a comfortable sanded finish. The Alien Freak design, weight and size gives a powerful and solid feel with a huge amount of volume from around the kit. Hickory.
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The squid parsnip shuddered as the impact shattered the dawn. The dungeon had irrupted into the life of the —valley.
49 Peon's Journey – Inktober 2017
Peon gazed upon the crumbling tower. Perhaps this time it would be different. Inktober 2017 has begun I'm participating for the first time, and with several other DIY OSR INDY WINDY RPG art types, we're playing with this prompt: I … more >>>


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Kids, Ready Made Bedroom Curtains
All our children's curtains are ready made and there are two matching curtains per pack. The majority have a pencil pleat heading which requires a curtain track or pole and the relevant hooks, which are not supplied. Our most popular ranges have a choice of two sizes - 66 inch wide with either a 54 inch or 72 inch drop, although a few curtains do differ - please carefully check the description. All are machine washable being a poly cotton mix or 100% cotton.
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- Worldwide Rank #20,175,942
- Follower/Following Ratio 1.15
- Daily New Followers 0
きょんそ Twitter Stats
@0127Kyong - Tracking きょんそ Twitter profile since October 23, 2013
朝鮮大学校 経営学部 3年生 バスケ部
きょんそ's story
きょんそ, also known as @0127Kyong has a reasonably significant presence on Twitter and is ranked by us in the 40% percentile for account strength. Active on Twitter since October 2013, きょんそ made it to having a respectable 592 Twitter followers and to being ranked 20,175,942 for number of followers among all Twitter users.
Uh-oh... seems like someone has fallen asleep while on duty and is dropping in social relevance. The plot thickens when considering きょんそ's follower-to-following ratio, which is 1.15. That's a healthy ratio.
Tweeting is apparently one of @0127Kyong's favorite pastimes, with an average of 0 tweet(s) per day in the past 30 days. That's pretty consistent with a total of 1,854 since @0127Kyong joined Twitter.
This account is tracked by us for quite some time now, actually since October 2013. As of August 18 2018 we track 290722354 Twitter accounts, so feel free to search for other accounts you're interested in and reveal their Twitter story!
きょんそ Tweets
@0127Kyong has posted 0 tweets in the last 30 days, which translates to an average of 0 tweets per day.
きょんそ Twitter Followers
@0127Kyong has 592 followers on Twitter.
This account is #20,175,942 in the worldwide rank of the most popular Twitter users.
きょんそ Following on Twitter
@0127Kyong is following 517 Twitter accounts.
Last month this account followed 435 users.
きょんそ Predictions & Milestones
@0127Kyong will hit 594 followers in the next 3 months, and 601 in one year.
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Trouble with the neighbours
In 1066 King Harold was defeated by William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings.
This marked the end of the Anglo-Saxon era and the start of Norman rule in England. The English aristocracy were replaced by new Norman Lords including Roger Montgomery who was given most of western Sussex. He built a castle in Arundel and another in Chichester, using the City Walls as part of the castle enclosure.
Chichester became the market centre for West Sussex and eventually received civic status. In the years that followed it grew to be one of the most important cities on the south coast.
But this was also a period of great uncertainty with England in and out of war with France. The south coast was vulnerable so the walls were repaired in readiness for a French invasion.
The middle ages ended with the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII, resulting in the sale of two large monastic precincts in the City. The Cathedral, now Church of England, continued to dominate the South West quadrant.


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Patience, Grasshopper
Just a quick note: I am back from vacation, and I have been reading Ernie's most recent post in our discussion and some of the other pages Ernie referenced. I have also been fighting with the plumbing in our laundry area and getting really frustrated with our computer (or actually, with Norton Internet Security, which I think is about to get the boot). I also just had to finish the book I started reading while on vacation. So, I will be putting together a response for Ernie once I clear up my backlog of other stuff.


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I still can't stop blaming myself for screwing up my mocks. Why was I panic??? Though it's just Mocks and it's not important since I had already got my forecast results, still every exam is very important to me.
I seriously feel very stress when I know that others are better than me and yes, this is pure kiasu. Maybe this is the main reason that make me panic, another reason is because I feel that I had not prepared enough and kept on thinking negatively that I will screw my exam. Plus, parents have high expectations in my results and this really put me under great pressure.
Nichelle just reminded me a thing that Mr. Goh told us before:
"Life follows the sine graph, once u are at the top at a certain period, u will deteriorate."
I guess I am at the lowest point of the graph now and I need to work real hard to get back to the highest point. I also need to put a capacitance and a full wave rectifier to make the graph smoother to make sure that I won't drop to the minimum point and maintain at a certain level.
What I need to do now is study more and practice more, must read through everything for at least 3 times. I guess it's possible??? =P
Anyway, I just wanna thank my friends especially my darling, Nichelle and dear for listening to me. I know I am kinda stubborn for not listening to what you all told me over and over. I hope I really learned my lesson this time.
P/S: Vern, do not complain that my blog is all about studies again o. 'Cos my life is really revolving around books. Haha.


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Datum Mobile Cart; Basic File Cart, 2 Shelves, Light Gray
Item #: 901-BFC2T47
Model #: BFC-2-T47
Brand: Datum
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$269.99 Each
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|Height in Inches : 33
|Depth in Inches : 16
|Width in Inches : 35
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