Huge humanitarian crisis unfolding

["marco rodrigues" <machetero_ngola@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

It's not often that I use the "g" word.  To over-use this word would, in a way, 
weaken its meaning, and make it easier for those who wish to ignore it do so.  
It has happened before on this earth, and still happens today.  It happened and 
continues to happen to Native Americans, Africans, and Palestinians, to name a 
few.  What is this word I speak of?

Genocide.

Friends, I write this with an increasing sense of urgency and despair.  I think 
that even many of us in the anti-war movement don't quite realize what is going 
on here.

Many of the Afghani people had been getting by on UN-provided aid, including 
food, medicine, doctors, etc.  When the horrendous, terrorist bombing of 
Afghanistan began, the UN had to pull out all aid.

What is the consequence of this?

Numbers are floating around from several sources, including the UN itself, that 
hundreds of thousands, if not millions of peopel are at dire risk of dying in 
the coming months in Afghanistan.  Due to the termination of food and medical 
aid and the huge refugee crisis, all directly resulting from the US bombing, 
the Afghani people are in an impossibly difficult situation.

Infant mortality is predicted to rise dramatically.  Food is scarce and many 
face starvation.  Refugees, the overwhelming majority of which are women and 
children, flood across the Pakistani border, not knowing where they will go or 
what they will do.  Bombs are "accidentally" landing on hospitals and 
residential areas.  The Afghani winter is extremely harsh and under these 
conditions could take many lives, especially among the young, the elderly, and 
the sick.

What is the official US response to this?  In my opinion, one of the most 
repulsive, insulting, yet sickly efficient campaigns of propaganda, mind 
control, and manufacture of consent that i have ever seen or heard of.  We are 
told that our armed forces are there to "save" the Afghani people, that only 
bombs that are super accurate are being used on only "military targets."  We 
are told that our food drops are helping the people, and that America is 
"humane."  To quote the asshole, for lack of a better word, who is our 
"president,"  "they don't see how good we are."

No, Mr. Bush, the world sees exactly how "good" you are.  Thankfully, the rest 
of the world is not subjected to the massive totalitarian corporate propaganda 
system that exists in the US.  Many people in this world outisde of the US, and 
many within its borders who have become aware and who get their information 
from alternate sources, do not see how "good" you are at all.  They see what is 
actually going on:  a war of genocide against the Afghani people, a war 
motivated by the most vile racism, xenophobia, nationalism, and economic greed.

How do you save a people by bombing them?  How can you call yourself humane as 
you drop cluster bombs on villages, trapping people in their own homes because 
they are afraid to go out and detonate a "bomblet" from the cluster bomb that 
has yet to explode, as if Afghanistan did not have a serious land mine problem 
already.  How could you be hitting only military targets when you have dropped 
thousands upon thousands of bombs upon a country with little actual 
infrastructure?  After all those bombs, what can they possibly be bombing?  
What good are food drops if the people they are meant for have run away to 
escape your bombs?  Who are you trying to feed?  Empty land mine fields?  The 
Taliban?

The situation in Aghanistan as I see it and as I'm sure many other people see 
it is getting worse by the day and is heading toward total catastrophe.  The 
arrogance and the contempt for human life that the ruling class of the United 
States is showing is frankly disgusting, not to mention enraging.  We must make 
out voices heard, NOW.  And if they choose not to hear our voices, we will have 
to resort to other means to prevent this genocide.

==
"We must always remember that people do not fight for ideals or for the things 
on other people's minds. People fight for practical things: for peace, for 
living better in peace, and for their children's future. Liberty, fraternity 
and equality continue to be empty words for people if they do not mean a real 
improvement in the conditions of their lives"
(Amilcar Cabral. Seminario de quadros, Conakry, 1969)

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