Some interesting things for the last day of the Conflux Festival in Williamsburg.The Lucky Cat
245 Grand St
Brooklyn 11211
718.782.0437
http://theluckycat.com/
4:00 pm–4:45 pm
Wooster Collective street art talk . Wooster Collective . The Lucky Cat .
4:45 pm–5:30 pm
Bubble Project . Ji Lee . The Lucky Cat .
5:30 pm–6:15 pm
RU Sirius Show #64 (Live Panel): 9/11 - Considering All Claims
In a live panel discussion, Fred Burks and Joel Schalit join with hosts RU Sirius and Jeff Diehl to discuss whether 9/11 was “an inside jobâ€, and the impact of the movement that insists that it was.
Burks publishes the Want To Know website and is a former foreign language interpreter who worked with Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush. Schalit is a Managing Editor at Tikkun.
Master of the improvisational sax, trumpet and flute. I ran into him on Houston Street as he was on his way to a gig.
December 20, 1983 shortly after the Poison Gas attacks for which Saddam is currently on trial.
(full video, no sound)
By the summer of 1983 Iran had been reporting Iraqi use of using chemical weapons for some time. The Geneva protocol requires that the international community respond to chemical warfare, but a diplomatically isolated Iran received only a muted response to its complaints . It intensified its accusations in October 1983, however, and in November asked for a United Nations Security Council investigation.
The U.S., which followed developments in the Iran-Iraq war with extraordinary intensity, had intelligence confirming Iran’s accusations, and describing Iraq’s “almost daily” use of chemical weapons, concurrent with its policy review and decision to support Iraq in the war. The intelligence indicated that Iraq used chemical weapons against Iranian forces, and, according to a November 1983 memo, against “Kurdish insurgents” as well.
Soon thereafter, Donald Rumsfeld (who had served in various positions in the Nixon and Ford administrations, including as President Ford’s defense secretary, and at this time headed the multinational pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle & Co.) was dispatched to the Middle East as a presidential envoy. His December 1983 tour of regional capitals included Baghdad, where he was to establish “direct contact between an envoy of President Reagan and President Saddam Hussein,” while emphasizing “his close relationship” with the president. Rumsfeld met with Saddam, and the two discussed regional issues of mutual interest, shared enmity toward Iran and Syria, and the U.S.’s efforts to find alternative routes to transport Iraq’s oil; its facilities in the Persian Gulf had been shut down by Iran, and Iran’s ally, Syria, had cut off a pipeline that transported Iraqi oil through its territory. Rumsfeld made no reference to chemical weapons, according to detailed notes on the meeting.
