Photo:Iraqi police stand guard outside the St. Ephrem Syriac Orthodox Church on Christmas eve in the northern city of Kirkuk, 240 kms (150 miles) from Baghdad. Twenty-seven people were killed and more than 100 wounded in a string of attacks across Iraq on Thursday ahead of Christmas and the Shiite commemoration ceremonies of Ashura.(AFP/Marwan Ibrahim)
In Amman, Iraqi Christians are continuing the traditional celebrations of Christmas – trees, nativity scenes, church services, and presents – but they are far from feeling festive.It is estimated that over a million Christians were in Iraq when the US invaded, and that number has been halved.Many are refugees in Syria and Jordan.They face the same hardships as other refugees – lacking jobs, facing poverty, missing their homeland and their families.
“Christmas is the new birth but we are not happy. We do not feel it is Christmas,” said the Iraqi, who did not want to give his name.
…..“I did not leave my home in Baghdad because I wanted to. They [armed men] forced me to. They shot at us at home and threw a sound bomb in the kitchen,” he said.His Christmas blues are a feeling shared by many Iraqi Christians. In the past six years, large numbers were either killed, kidnapped or threatened while several churches were bombed, and their clergy murdered.
Inside Iraq, two churches and a church school were bombed earlier this week.Violence in Iraq still continues, and a lot of it is directed towards religious minorities.
"Instead of performing Christmas Mass in this church, we will be busy removing rubble and debris," Hazim Ragheed, a priest at the church, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.
The church, called MarTomaChurch, or the Church of St. Thomas, is more than 1,200 years old.It is located in Mosul.Clearly, there was no significant animosity towards Christians in Iraq before the US military showed up.The age of the church proves that fact.Since the US invasion in 2003, there have been repeated attacks on the Christians in Iraq.
And due to the violence, the celebrations in Iraq itself will be quiet ones.One bishop in Basra called for no public festivities, and several churches have canceled their typical Christmas mass or Christmas services. They are afraid.
In Kirkuk, a sign on the door of the Kirkuk Cathedral for Chaldean Christians read, in part: "We apologize to all the brothers for not conducting celebrations or accepting greetings or guests, but we pray for peace and security in Iraq. We cannot celebrate because of our grief over the victims of the bombings in Mosul and Baghdad."
….Hundreds of thousands of Christians remain in Iraq, but many live in isolated enclaves, according to church officials. Sako, the Chaldean archbishop, said that 10,000 Christians have fled Kirkuk in the past three months, and church officials in Basra have reported that the Christian community there has halved to about 2,500 people because of militia attacks.
"Psychologically, we cannot have a celebration," said Qais Aboudi, a 56-year-old carpenter and member of a Baghdad Chaldean parish. "But we cannot deny we are Christians. It is our religion, and we are proud of it."
"I used to celebrate Christmas with many people, with joy, with visits, with guests," said the pastor at the Virgin Mary church. "Now I am staying here alone."
“I’m very sad that we are not able to have our rituals for Christmas this year and not have a sermon, but we do not want any Christians to be harmed,” said Edward Poles, a Christian priest at Sa’a Church in Mosul, which was bombed last week, though no one was killed.
“There will be no celebration or anything of that sort,” said Duraid Issam, a 41-year-old clerk. “We will keep it quiet because things are really bad. We are not targeted only at churches, but even in our houses because they will plant bombs outside our homes as well.”
“Our celebrations will not be open and will be restricted to going to the church in the morning,” said Naeil Victor, a 58-year-old teacher in the southern city of Basra. “My children are upset because they have been waiting for this Christmas for a year now, but my wife and my father understand what is going on around them.”
“We have moved the rituals for Christmas to the town of Qereqush, fearing that the Christians might be harmed in this insecure and unsafe city,” said the Rev. Behnam Asaad of QahiraChurch. “We have distributed cards and fliers to the Christian families of this church informing them about the time and place where we will have the celebration, but we fear that assassinations might take place even after Christmas.”
“They are targeting not only us, but all Iraqis,” said Ann Benjamin, 26, after she walked through a phalanx of security personnel to attend Mass this week at Al Qaleb Al Aqdas (Sacred Heart) Church in the Karada district of Baghdad. “I am not afraid of going to church — even if I die there, I will be happy to die in God’s home.”
All of this came about because of the US war and occupation, where we brought them the freedom of the grave and the democracy of death.
December 2009: Of more immediate concern, those under siege in Gaza face another winter of intense personal suffering. I visited Gaza after the devastating January war and observed homeless people huddling in makeshift tents, under plastic sheets, or in caves dug into the debris of their former homes. Despite offers by Palestinian leaders and international agencies to guarantee no use of imported materials for even defensive military purposes, cement, lumber, and panes of glass are not being permitted to pass entry points into Gaza. The US and other nations have accepted this abhorrent situation without forceful corrective action.– President Jimmy Carter
It started snowing on Friday, late morning. Came down fast, and we had 12 inches on the ground by nightfall (maybe more). On Saturday, it snowed a bit more. Streets were in terrible shape. I just stayed home. On Sunday, Meeting for worship was canceled, except for those who were walking..... the parking lot was full of snow. Sunday afternoon had better streets, but nothing was opened that I wanted to go to, and events had been canceled. Today, I finally went out. Streets are fine, but the drivers are nutso. Even worse, the pedestrians are acting like idiots! They are walking in the middle of the streets because the sidewalks or shoulders are snow covered. Looked like a good way to get hurt.
We had a total of 12 to 16 inches, and today it started to really melt. Tomorrow, I am back to work. Sure am grateful that I did not lose power. Below are some photos I took.
And today, I got a present from my brother Bill - it is a 7" TV that picks up digital signals out of the air - no cable connection needed! It also plugs up in the car, so I can take it camping. It is the coolest little thing, and I get five channels, including three UNC channels (PBS). It is the coolest present I have gotten in a while! Thanks, Bill!
“Why do German people behave so apathetically in the face of all these abominable crimes, crimes so unworthy of the human race? ...The German people slumber on in their dull, stupid sleep and encourage these fascist criminals; they give them the opportunity to carry on their depredations; and of course they do so. Is this a sign that the Germans are brutalized in their simplest human feelings, that no chord within them cries out at the sight of such deeds, that they have sunk into a fatal consciencelessness from which they will never, never awake? It seems to be so, and will certainly be so, if the German does not at last start up out of his stupor, if he does not protest wherever and whenever he can against this clique of criminals, if he shows no sympathy for these hundreds of thousands of victims. He must evidence not only sympathy; no, much more: a sense of complicity in guilt. For through his apathetic behaviour he gives these evil men the opportunity to act as they do; he tolerates this ‘government’ which has taken upon itself such an infinitely great burden of guilt; indeed, he himself is to blame for the fact that it came about at all! Each man wants to be exonerated of a guilt of this kind, each one continues on his way with the most placid, the calmest conscience. But he cannot be exonerated; he is guilty, guilty, guilty!”
It happened in Iraq.The responsible party is the United States.
Riyadh Mohammed starts his piece by saying how at the end of the year, we tend to reminisce about old friends and look back on good times and bad times with them.But for this Iraqi man, the end of the year means a time to update his list of the dead.He started with the American invasion in 2003.In his own words:
Since the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, I had kept a list of every relative or friend killed in violence. As of late 2006, I counted 124 deaths. Suddenly I stopped. No. 125 was my father.
He said he did not cry at his father’s funeral.He had lost the ability to feel pain and sorrow at that point.The latest name on his list is his ex-girlfriend.Here is how he found out:
When I received messages on my cellphone from friends saying, “Please accept my condolences,” I asked one of them, “What happened?” Another message came that explained that my ex-girlfriend was killed in the Dec. 8 bombings in Baghdad.
She was injured in the bombing, and then crushed to death under the feet of the terrified government employees trying to escape the inferno and the carnage.
His list, which has not been updated since late 2006, is kept in this manner:
When I look at my personal phone book now, I read: “X: killed in Al Mustansiriya University bombings in 2007. Y: missing in western Baghdad in 2005. Z: killed in the Justice Ministry 2009. It keeps going on like that for the most of the book. The ones who left Iraq were the only ones who survived. I lost my last friend when he went to the United States as a refugee in June 2009. I have no living friends in Iraq now.
If he does update his list, he will have to add scores of names of people he knew - friends, neighbors, relatives, co-workers - who have died since the end of 2006.
Holy mother of God, we have really committed some serious and deep evil.We have committed genocide on the citizens of Iraq.
This man felt on April 9, 2003 that Iraq would have a new beginning….. and as time went by, the reality of what the US had started became the “new” Iraq.As he put it:
For millions of Iraqis, it was the death of a nation.
It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed in the violence set off by the violence of the US invasion and occupation.Millions more fled the country as permanent refugees, and millions more are internally displaced inside Iraq.The vast majority of them are desperately poor, while Americans citizens do not notice or care.The rate of cancer in the country of Iraq is exploding.The number of serious birth defects is significantly higher than they have ever been in the modern history of Iraq.The US, both it’s government and it’s citizens, ignore this reality and do nothing to help.Our media enables this by also ignoring the reality.
I tried, like millions of Americans, to stop this invasion and carnage from ever starting.I failed.I tried, ever since the invasion, to get our troops out of there.I failed.Today, we have 120,000+ troops in Iraq, and even more contractors.
In the years 2003 and 2004, I felt frantic trying to get the US troops out of there before the place was destroyed.It seemed that a large number of Americans felt they should stay to “fix” the problems our invasion caused.This is huge pile of horseshit.The point of our military is to kill people and to break things.They are needed to kill our enemy and destroy the enemy’s ability to hurt us.The problem is – Iraq and Iraqis were never our enemy.But we killed them and destroyed their culture, educational system, infrastructure, health care system and even their history.
In my eyes, we are a monstrously evil country.
Today, the US has been in Afghanistan for over 8 years.
The onset of winter means freezing nights, cold-related diseases and more problems for the children at an informal settlement of internally displaced people (IDPs) in the western outskirts of Kabul city. “They lack access to adequate food, shelter, healthcare, safe drinking water and sanitation, education, and are vulnerable to forced labour, sexual exploitation and many other problems,” Paola Retaggi, the coordinator of a Child Rights Consortium (CRC) led by Switzerland’s Terre des Hommes in Kabul, told IRIN.
We did not go into Iraq or Afghanistan to help the native people who already lived there.That is total and complete horseshit.That has never been true, and the crap about how bad the Taliban or Saddam is/was, is nothing but a sick, perverted excuse for our monstrous behavior.Our evil far outstripped Saddam’s evil as far as the Iraqi people are concerned.And soon, IF WE DO NOT GET OUT OF AFGHANISTAN IMMEDIATELY, our evil will far outstrip the evil done by the Taliban or the warlords prior to our arrival.
And since our citizens are deaf, dumb and blind to the actual reality in Afghanistan (just like they are in Iraq) and are not rising up against our politician’s EVIL decisions to escalate the war and occupation in Afghanistan, one day we will be reading about how some decent man in Kabul made a list of his friends, family, co-workers and acquaintances who were killed by violence as a direct result of our evil intervention.
It is too late for Iraq, but not for Afghanistan.WE MUST GET OUT OF AFGHANISTAN NOW.
Bagram prison has long had a reputation for torture by US agents in the forms of sleep deprivation, beatings, and sexual humiliation.The movie “A Taxi to the Dark Side” covers how one innocent detainee was tortured and killed at Bagram.It is a very ugly picture.The movie “Road to Guantanamo” also shows the horrific criminal reality that US agents have created.Oh, and there was no real accountability for these crimes, as usual.
The Geneva Convention just didn’t apply.
It is now confirmed that torture continues under the Obama administration.And the media still like to call it “abuse”.Obama has spoken out against this, but he has also stopped the release of photos that show our history of torture, and that stopped any accountability or justice for the victims of torture under the Bush administration.
There are hardly any photos from inside Bagram prison, and journalists are not allowed in there.
Azar, who is originally from Lebanon, is the manager of a construction company. He was on his way to CampEggers, the American military base near the presidential palace, when 10 armed FBI agents suddenly surrounded him.The men, all wearing bulletproof vests, put him in handcuffs, tied him up and pushed him into an SUV. Two hours later, they unloaded Azar at the Bagram military prison 50 kilometers (31 miles) northeast of Kabul.
As Azar later testified, he was forced to sit for seven hours, his hands and feet tied to a chair. He spent the night in a cold metal container, and he received no food for 30 hours. He claimed that US military officers showed him photos of his wife and four children, telling him that unless he cooperated he would never see his family again. He also said that he was photographed while naked and then given a jumpsuit to wear.
On that day, April 7, 2009, President Barack Obama had been in office for exactly 77 days.
This man was later ‘renditioned’ to the USA.That was covered in a post I wrote the other day.
Also ‘renditioned’ was a Lebanese-American named Ms. Cobos.She lived in Lebanon with her daughter, but was stripped searched, shackled, hooded, had ear phones to mask noise put on her and flown back to the US.She was treated in much the same manner as the man mentioned above, and in court papers, her attorney calls it psychological torture.She had no idea why she was being detained and was repeatedly pressured into a confession.She was not allowed to call her young daughter for several days.She has since been accused of fraud, which is not a terrorism crime.This information came from her court papers.
Bagram is reportedly worse than Guantanamo.They have no right to an attorney; they live in cages that hold 20-25 men, with one toilet behind a curtain per cage.It smells horrible, according to released inmate’s reports. (Some are now being moved to the new facility.) Some men have been held there for years without knowing why.
Hundreds of prisoners at the US-run Bagram jail in Afghanistan are refusing basic privileges to protest about their basic rights, officials say.Inmates have refused to participate in a project which allows prisoners to talk to their families via video phone, the Red Cross says.….The prisoners are reported to be protesting against what they say are a lack of basic rights such as access to lawyers or independent reviews of their status.
….. A number of former detainees alleged they had been beaten, deprived of sleep and threatened with dogs at the base.Of 27 ex-inmates the BBC spoke to around the country over two months, only two said they had been treated well.
None said they had been tortured, though they said they heard sounds of abuse going on and certainly felt humiliated and roughly used. “They beat up other people in the black jail, but not me,” Hamidullah said. “But the problem was that they didn’t let me sleep. There was shouting noise so you couldn’t sleep."
I would think I was being tortured if I was not allowed to sleep.
Other prisoners do claim that they were tortured at Bagram at the ‘black site’.As usual, the NYT terms this as ‘abuse’ when it is done by Americans, and for other countries they call it ‘torture’.
Two Afghan teenagers held in U.S. detention north of Kabul this year said they were beaten by American guards, photographed naked, deprived of sleep and held in solitary confinement in concrete cells for at least two weeks while undergoing daily interrogation about their alleged links to the Taliban.
The accounts could not be independently substantiated. But in successive, on-the-record interviews, the teenagers presented a detailed, consistent portrait suggesting that the abusive treatment of suspected insurgents has in some cases continued under the Obama administration, despite steps that President Obama has said would put an end to the harsh interrogation practices authorized by the Bush administration.
One of them also made the claim that he was forced to look at pornography alongside a photo of his mother.Another one claimed he was stripped naked and underwent a medical evaluation in front of about six US soldiers, who laughed at him and touched him inappropriately.(Why are there so many sexual perverts in the US military?I guess it is just a reflection of our society.)
Several activists groups are petitioning the Obama administration to stop covering up torture that was done under the Bush administration.They say it is a violation of international law for the Obama administration to suppress the release of photos of torture.
"Your actions ... indicate a troubling willingness to sweep torture under the rug, rather than openly address our nation’s regrettable recent history," the letter (PDF) tells Obama.
It appears, at this time, that the reason for sweeping torture under the rug is to allow torture to continue.Our president, Secretary of Defense and Congress are enabling this.They are suppressing the evidence so that there will be no prosecution under the Obama administration, and it appears that torture will continue under the Obama administration.
Maybe with the next administration we will get some accountability and a return to the rule of law.
No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture. . . Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law.
We are still running secret prisons, at least in Afghanistan.This news came out just last month.The prisoners are being held without access to the International Committee of the Red Cross.This was confirmed by human rights researchers, according to the NYT.They are held in cells without windows with a single light bulb that is on all day and all night.Their only human contact is with the people who are interrogating them.They were all accused of being Taliban.
“The black jail was the most dangerous and fearful place,” said Hamidullah, a spare-parts dealer in Kandahar who said he was detained there in June. “They don’t let the I.C.R.C. officials or any other civilians see or communicate with the people they keep there. Because I did not know what time it was, I did not know when to pray.”
Yes, Obama said he was going to shut down ‘black sites’ run by the CIA, but this particular ‘black site’ is run by the US military by Special Operation forces.And there are no plans to close it.Supposedly, they can only be held for two weeks in these ‘black sites’ under a new policy, but it is not been confirmed that this regulation is actually being followed.How would we know?They are SECRET.
The NYT article (linked above) tells the story of three detainees.Two were captured under the Bush administration, one under the Obama administration.All three were released without charges after being held for up to five or six weeks in the ‘black site’ and for months or years afterwards in Bagram prison.All of them said the worst part of their detention was that their families did not know that they were even alive.One detainee’s family spent a fortune trying to find him.None of them were given any compensation for this months or years of detention.
“Holding people in what appears to be incommunicado detention runs against the grain of the administration’s commitment to greater transparency, accountability, and respect for the dignity of Afghans,”
The ‘black site’ is separate from the larger Bagram prison, which now holds 700 detainees (watch that number grow in the upcoming months and years!).The Bagram prison has a reputation among Afghans as a symbol of US abuse.They are building a new prison at Bagram to house the detainees, which is costing the US taxpayers $60 million.We’re not going to leave that country any time soon. Not all the prisoners are Afghans either – some were brought there from other countries.
The secret sites and the mistaken detention of non-Taliban for months and years will continue…… which, I predict, will increase the number of Taliban.That’s human nature.
Digging a little deeper, I found this comment about secret prisons in an article talking about kidnapping (rendition):
One provision in one of Obama's orders appears to preserve the CIA's ability to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects as long as they are not held long-term. The little-noticed provision states that the instructions to close the CIA's secret prison sites "do not refer to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis."
How very hideous of them.The secret prisons will continue, as long as they are not ‘long-term’ and no one will know where these kidnapped people are held.If they die there, I am assuming the body will just be dumped somewhere.
This past August, human rights groups ask the UN to investigate the case of a disappeared Spanish citizen.The ACLU filed the request.They had gone to the UN because the US would not answer any of their requests for information.He was forcibly disappeared four years ago, and has not been heard from since.He is either dead or in a secret prison to this day.
In June 2009, responding to a request from a Spanish judge for information on Nassar's whereabouts, the FBI stated it was not holding him in the United States but failed to address whether Nassar was being held in U.S. custody elsewhere. Asserting that the information is classified, the U.S. government has also refused to answer direct requests for information about Nassar's whereabouts made by his wife, Spanish citizen Helena Moreno Cruz.
So, what happened to this man?Is he still in a secret site, even though the secret sites are supposed to be short-term under the Obama administration?Or is he dead, with his body disappeared?I suspect this prisoner is a violent criminal, but if our country is to stand for the rule of law, then it has to apply to everyone, even criminals.Injustice to one is injustice to all.
Yesterday I covered RENDITION CONTINUES, and tomorrow I will cover TORTURE CONTINUES.
We all, of course, know that rendition (kidnapping) continues under the Obama administration. He told us he would do so. But he also promised to be extra careful about the rendition prisoners and make sure that they were treated properly, and if sent to another country, get ‘diplomatic assurances’ that were would be no torture. He promised more oversight.
That last promise has not held up. No surprises there. More about that later.
But, even if it had, why does this Constitutional scholar think it is okay to kidnap people from around the world and take them into detention? This is a violation of the Geneva Convention, which means it is a violation of the US Constitution. Human rights groups, and all people of conscience, have condemned this decision by Obama to continue this odious and immoral practice that was started by Clinton and used extensively by Bush. It has been condemned as illegal by the European Parliament.
In an article in Foreign Affairs in the summer of 2007, Mr. Obama wrote, “To build a better, freer world, we must first behave in ways that reflect the decency and aspirations of the American people.” Mr. Obama continued, “This means ending the practices of shipping away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far-off countries, of detaining thousands without charge or trial, of maintaining a network of secret prisons to jail people beyond the reach of the law.”
But the Obama administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush administration's war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard. The decision underscores the fact that the battle with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups is far from over and that even if the United States is shutting down the prisons, it is not done taking prisoners.
"Obviously you need to preserve some tools -- you still have to go after the bad guys," said an Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing the legal reasoning. "The legal advisors working on this looked at rendition. It is controversial in some circles and kicked up a big storm in Europe. But if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice."
It is not acceptable to me.
As far as I know, there has been only one case of rendition by the Obama administration so far. (Of course, how would we know? It’s a secret!) Surprisingly, it was not a terror suspect at all, but rather a fraud suspect. And it is from this one case that we know the ‘promise of oversight’ is not being kept, because this man (who was never transferred to a foreign country or entity) was tortured. And if Obama cannot prevent torture to rendition subjects while in American hands, you can be sure he cannot prevent it in foreign hands. I will cover that story under a post called TORTURE CONTINUES. Here is the story of his rendition, or kidnapping:
Azar was in Kabul on business. His company had signed contracts with the Pentagon worth $50 million (€34 million) for reconstruction work in Afghanistan. On April 8, Azar was placed onto a Gulfstream and flown to the US state of Virginia to face charges. He was accused of having bribed his US Army contact to secure military contracts for his company, and he was later found guilty of bribery.
It was a classic case of corruption, which is not the sort of crime for which a suspect is normally sent to a military prison. No one can explain to Azar why he was taken to Bagram, where the US military treated him like a terrorism suspect. Here’s a bit more detail on his kidnapping (rendition).
Why such aggressive and dramatic techniques were used in connection with the apprehension of a man suspected of a small-scale white collar crime remains entirely unclear.
According to court papers, on April 7, 2009, Azar and a Lebanese-American colleague, Dinorah Cobos, were seized by "at least eight" heavily armed FBI agents in Kabul, Afghanistan, where they had traveled for a meeting to discuss the status of one of his company's U.S. government contracts.
Of course, if you are going to have kidnapping, then you probably need to have ‘black sites’ to put your kidnapping victims into, even though this rendition that we know about did not involve a black site. I will have a post on SECRET PRIONS CONTINUE tomorrow and one on TORTURE CONTINES the day after.
Malalai Joya (born April 25, 1978) is an Afghan politician who has been called "the bravest woman in Afghanistan."[2] As an elected member of the Wolesi Jirga from Farah province, she has publicly denounced the presence of what she considers warlords and war criminals in the parliament. In May 2007, Joya was suspended from the parliament on the grounds that she had insulted fellow representatives in a television interview.
She clearly calls it as she sees it - no matter who she is addressing. So what does this brave and honest Afghan women say about Obama's surge?
In doing so he will be making something worse than a mistake. It is a continuation of a war crime against the suffering people of my country.
I have said before that by installing warlords and drug traffickers in power in Kabul, the US and Nato have pushed us from the frying pan to the fire. Now Obama is pouring fuel on these flames, and this week's announcement of upwards of 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan will have tragic consequences.
After eight years of war, the situation is as bad as ever for ordinary Afghans, and women in particular. The reality is that only the drug traffickers and warlords have been helped under this corrupt and illegitimate Karzai government. Karzai's promises of reform are laughable. His own vice-president is the notorious warlord Fahim, whom Brad Adams of Human Rights Watch describes as "one of the most notorious warlords in the country, with the blood of many Afghans on his hands".
So please, all you fools out there who think we are there to help Afghan women gain some basic human rights...... give it up! It is a false claim.
And that is simply due to the fact that wars and occupations bring out the worst in everyone, and allow corruption to grow like out of control weeds.
And that is what has happened in both Afghanistan and Iraq.... corruption is rampant. Iraq's elections hold more legitimacy, but there is still vast corruption. Afghanistan's recent election shows world-class corruption.
And that is the basic reason why the Afghan people like Malalai Joya no longer want the "help" of the occupation forces.
It will not be easy, but if we have a little bit of peace we will be better able to fight our own internal enemies – Afghans know what to do with our destiny. We are not a backward people, and we are capable of fighting for democracy, human and women's rights in Afghanistan. In fact the only way these values will be achieved is if we struggle for them and win them ourselves.
RAWA is making the same stand - they have been fighting for woman's rights in Afghanistan since 1985, and have paid with their lives for their efforts. They also want the occupation troops to leave and are opposed to the surge.
Karzai and the warlords want the occupation troops to stay.
One more statement from Malalai Joya:
Like many around the world, I am wondering what kind of "peace" prize can be awarded to a leader who continues the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and starts a new war in Pakistan, all while supporting Israel?
Photo:Thousands of children whose parents were exposed to the leak have suffered birth defects [Reuters]
Twenty five years ago today, the city of Bhopal, India was hit by a deadly chemical leak from Union Carbide.I remember being appalled at the time – that they would let such a horrific thing happen.Hundreds died right away, and between 8,000 and 10,000 died in the next few days.Many thousands more have died horrible painful deaths since then.
According to this Al Jazeera news report, 25,000 later died from the effects.And another 500,000 were exposed and affected by the chemical release.And it has left a toxic legacy.Many have suffered from birth defects and many have suffered from chronic illnesses because of the chemical leak.
The clean up of the site has not been fully done, even to this day.Tons of toxic waste still contaminates the ground and the water.
The UK-based charity Bhopal Medical Appeal (BMA) said on Tuesday that there was evidence that "high levels of toxic chemicals" remained in the drinking water supply in 15 communities near the plant.Tests at Swiss and British laboratories indicated concentrations of some toxins were actually rising "as the chemicals leach through the soil and into the aquifer", it said.
…..A separate study also released on Tuesday by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), showed a hand-pump 3km from the former Union Carbide plant contained 110 times the maximum concentration of the pesticide carbaryl deemed safe in Indian bottled water.
At the time this happened, I was working in an ER in Cincinnati.I remember one of the young doctors there saying that these people injured or killed by this should not be reimbursed as well as Americans would, for the simple fact that they were not Americans.It seemed to me that she was saying that their lives were not worth as much.This upset me a great deal.I felt ever last victim should be taken care of for the rest of their lives.That never happened, and today the victims are protesting to get their medical needs met and the site cleaned up.
I don’t know how a doctor could be so insensitive to the plight of the victims.I hope she never had any kids.
The state government claims that the residual chemicals are harmless.
Union Carbide (now part of Dow Chemical) paid out a total of $470 million to the victims and never did clean the site up properly.The victims say that only part of this compensation reached the victims.And Dow Chemical today says it has no responsibility for this horrific disaster.
I hope these victims get a just compensation one day – the ones still alive, that is.I don’t know how Dow Chemical can just turn their back on these people.
Demonstrator and Iraq veteran Matthis Chiroux, center, is arrested for disorderly conduct at Thayer gate at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point N.Y. Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2009, as President Barack Obama outlined plans to deploy more troops to Afghanistan in a speech at the academy.
