The Great IRAQ!

Saturday, August 21, 2004

AN IMPORTANT ARTICLE ABOUT THE FALLUJAH MASCRE IS PUBLISHED ON WHITETOWN SITE, I AM REPUBLISH PART OF IT DUE TO ITS IMPORTANCE. IF YOU ARE INTERESTED AND WANT TO READ ALL OF IT, VISIT THE SITE.. AND IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN THE ARABIC TRANSLATION .. CLICK ON THIS LINK
WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?
"But independent journalists reporting from Fallujah have described a scene consistent with the one broadcast by Al Jazeera. Rahul Mahajan, a U.S. journalist in Fallujah, estimated that of the 600 Iraqis killed in Fallujah, 200 were women and 100 young children, with many of the adult male casualties also non-combatants. He reported witnessing "a young woman, 18 years old, shot in the head" and "a young boy with massive internal bleeding" at a clinic (CommonDreams.org, 4/12/04). Mahajan recounted that during the "cease-fire," "Americans were attacking with heavy artillery but primarily with snipers"-- with ambulances among the targets. The sniper activity was also reported by U.S. journalist Dahr Jamail (NewStandardNews.net, 4/11/04): "Fallujah residents say Marines are opening fire randomly on unarmed civilians and have attacked clearly marked ambulances."(Source: Common Dreams)
The real world is complicated. It's not monolithic, an easy slab of moral certainty and ethical imperatives.
But sometimes, you must draw your own line in the sand. You must say, "This far and no further."
If you're reading this, you're relatively privileged. Since most people in the world live four hours walk away from their water supply, let alone modern telecoms, you're doing quite well.
That's a danger of the net: we become blasé to the reality that us "netizens" are merely modern-day Marie Antoinettes, gossiping on our forums and whining in our Livejournals while the peasants stare hungrily through the gates.
Simply put, we're rich because we keep most of the world poor.
Look at the amount of pollution issued by the West and you'll see why the US and EU have issues with the Kyoto treaty. We rape the world of its resources and then wag our fingers at any "developing" country impudent enough to build a factory or two. How dare you chop down your rainforests - you must maintain them as a carbon sink for all our big fuck-off cars and aircon.
This is our arrogance, the double standard of our "civilised" nations.
The illegal invasion of Iraq is simply a continuation of this mindset. Our yellow media whipped up a beautiful moral panic, spreading Butcher Blair's propaganda without question. We had to liberate the people of Iraq! They wanted us to go in there, anything is better than Saddam, our media said. And remember all those fucking ridiculous WMD claims from Bush and Blair? Now they're irrelevant, we should all just "move on" and forget about it all.
But what is the reality? This is what's happening in Fallujah:
"These [casualties] include the mother of six-year-old Haider Abdel-Wahab, shot and killed while hanging out laundry; his father, shot in the head; Haider himself, and his brothers, crushed but dug out alive after a US missile struck their house. They include children who died of head wounds. They include an old woman with a bullet wound - still clutching a white flag when aid workers found her. They include an elderly man lying face down at the gate to his house - while inside terrified girls screamed "Baba! Baba!" They include ambulance crews fired on by US troops - and four-year-old Ali Nasser Fadil, wounded during an air strike. The New York Times reporter who found the infant in a Baghdad hospital described him lying in bed, "his eyes wide and fixed on a spot in the ceiling". His left leg had been crudely amputated. The same reporter found 10-year-old Waed Joda by the bedside of his gravely wounded father. "American snipers shot at us as we were trying to flee Falluja," said Waed... at least 350 of the dead in Falluja have been women and children.(Source: The Guardian)

¶ 3:57 AM