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9 de Mayo, 2008
Our Death Will Be Inside Our Homes
Categorized under El Malestar Pálido , Guerra , Iraq the Casbah , Parenting , Política Estados Unidos , Violencia | Tags: Iraq, The Petroleum Wars, War, War Crimes, war on terror
AND IN THE LAND THAT FLOATS UPON OIL, U.S. Forces and their subordinates are murdering the children of Iraq at the fastest rate possible. Though it's not quite fast or deadly enough to save them from the looming WMDs that endanger them all—the ones that required our military to invade and bomb and get mired down in urban warfare. Now that the flowers and candy have all been electrocuted and sodomized into giving up their secrets, "Iraq Security Forces" are asking parents to leave the town so that their children will be easier targets for the bombs and bullets that still—after FIVE YEARS—seek them.
Baghdad - Iraqi security forces, after more than 40 days of intense fighting, on Thursday told residents to evacuate their homes in the northeast Shiite slum of Sadr City and to move to temporary shelters on two soccer fields.The military's call indicated the possibility of stepped-up military operations and came as Iraqi security forces raided a radio station run by backers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr. In the southern port city of Basra, militants launched rockets that struck a coalition base, killing two contractors and injuring four civilians and four coalition soldiers.
Sadr City has been a battleground since late March, enduring U.S. airstrikes, militia snipers and gunbattles between U.S. and Iraqi forces and the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to Sadr. [..]
Um Mohammed, 48, ignored the Iraqi soldiers calling over loudspeakers for residents to leave their homes on Thursday. Earlier this week the Iraqi army dropped fliers around her home that asked residents to turn over Mahdi Army militiamen and cooperate with the government.
"The residents here are laughing at the government," she said. "Their demands are very strange. Either hand over our sons or leave our houses to live in small tents."
Um Mohammed will stay in her home, she said, even though her neighborhood is beset by gunbattles and sporadic airstrikes.
"We refuse to leave," she said. "Our death will be inside our homes."
In most of Sadr City, people haven't had food rations for more than a month and a half, and the Red Crescent has distributed thousands of food packs, 100 tons of flour and supplied four tons of medical supplies to the two main hospitals. Five hundred to 1,000 people have been killed in more than 40 days of fighting.
Our death will be inside our homes. And it will, ma'am. Your life stands between the USA and a huge, pretty, profitable Green Zone. Your kids stand in between the USA and petroleum. And in that context, you and your family mean nothing at all. Know that. Not even your newborn's life. Nor your husband's. Nor your mother's. Nor your father's. Nor your neighbors'.
And this war? And my nation's insistence that it should go on? And my congress? And our purported national right to torture and invade? And nationalism in the name of America?
These things mean even less to me. I say God Damn America. As a non-pastor and non-politician, I say it. As a citizen with a heart and hands stained with blood I scream it. For taking innocent lives. For pretending she doesn't know what truth is. For slaughter in the name of greed, a slaughter so cowardly it dare not state its real reasons for being. For all this and for the comfort that cushions us from confronting what we have created and maintain, I say God damn us, every one.
Until the day we decide we are not that nation. And change direction. And drastically.
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Comentarios (9)
Lord Baltimore dijo:
You are always on point, my friend. Keep up the wonderful work.
- LB
Palabras por Lord Baltimore spat forth on el 10 de Mayo, 2008 at 01:33 PM
Horace dijo:
You're one sick bastard.
Palabras por Horace spat forth on el 10 de Mayo, 2008 at 05:46 PM
nezua
dijo:
yes...because i value life above a flag, and would hold us accountable for what benefits us. because i feel deeply for humans who suffer at the hands of our lies and our greed. because i want to see liars uncovered and weaker people protected. because i live in a world where sickness is often lauded as progress, and sanity as subversiveness. and if that makes me sick...what does it say about the land i live in?
--
thank you, LB.
Palabras por nezua
spat forth on el 10 de Mayo, 2008 at 05:51 PM
Elaine Vigneault dijo:
Wow, that image is powerful. Well done.
Palabras por Elaine Vigneault spat forth on el 10 de Mayo, 2008 at 07:12 PM
peasant dijo:
It IS confusing Nez. When we use terms like civilization and terrorism, accept and allow only the good words for ourselves, and assign evil words for others, we are indeed blinded by ourselves.
Our culture uses another word religiously, Democracy. Perhaps we should hold a worldwide referendum and vote on who the top 3 rogue nations might be? A vote of several billion would be a pretty good sample. It might even allow us to see ourselves as others see us. N-a-a-a-h.....we don't believe in THAT much Democracy.
Palabras por peasant spat forth on el 11 de Mayo, 2008 at 09:43 AM
Reality Check dijo:
I understand your frustration and pain,but let me pose a question. When in the history of mankind has the powerful ever thought of themselves as other than magnanamous,rightous,caring and justified? To damn an intire contry or culture only perpetuates the rebirth of a new power with the same views. The final answere is the nature of mankind as an imperfect group and the nature of a single man to find and share those moments outside of themselves that give goodness to another.Hate is the consequence of real or perceived injustice and we all have felt injustice. A final question, is there anyway to change the cycle of mankind? I hold no hope, we are after all,human.
Palabras por Reality Check spat forth on el 11 de Mayo, 2008 at 06:29 PM
nezua
dijo:
i don't mean so sound rude, "Reality Check," but when i weigh your statement altogether and test it for meaning and contradiction and strip it off phrasing that decorates and nothing more, it seems to make no sense at all to me! forgive my lack of understanding. and feel free to say it another way in hopes that i might understand better.
you say you have no hope, and i do wish you some sort, even if not for such an optimistic agenda as "changing mankind." founded even on nothing more than the fragile threads of imagination, hope remains the one essential requirement of a worthwhile life, without which we are condemned to a hell while here.
Palabras por nezua
spat forth on el 11 de Mayo, 2008 at 07:20 PM
nezua
dijo:
and understand. my condemnation is an outpouring of love. love for righteousness and kindness and truth—these be the antithesis of what i condemn.
Palabras por nezua
spat forth on el 12 de Mayo, 2008 at 07:23 AM
Uncle B dijo:
Go to Oshawa, Canada and interview the General Motors workers, whom after serving the corporate interests for their best working years have been sorrowfully deserted, and shamefully treated. The American middle classes and lower are about to receive the same shame, now that they have been replaced by the Chinese as cheaper labor by the ultra - rich, and Mexicans are leaving the U.S.in droves because of harder times and higher prices. Every now and then in history a rrich ruling class emerges, and socialism rears its ugly head and devours it, leaving the average citizen holding the bag. When will a political force emerge that can save us from this destructive cycle. Democracy was supposed to do the job, but in the U.S. it has been bribed by the likes of Mr. Abrams and various congressmen like Mr. DeLay in powerful lobbies, neutering any benefits democracy may have had. We lose again!
Palabras por Uncle B spat forth on el 11 de Junio, 2008 at 07:53 AM