“I don’t walk about belief – whether or not we should have started this war. Rather, I walk because we shouldn’t live our lives as if all is normal. People are suffering every moment because of this war – U.S. Soldiers and their families, Iraqi soldiers and civilians and their families – and this question of what we can do to end this suffering should be with us every day.”
a Concord (MA) area resident – in a letter to the editor regarding their own participation in a public vigil each Friday morning at the town center – ‘We Walk for All Who Suffer Because of War.’
this diary is dedicated to all who suffer because of war and other disasters
we honor courage in all its forms
cross-posted at DailyKos, Booman Tribune, European Tribune, and My Left Wing.
image and poem below the fold
Iraci Carvalho Barbosa (R), mother of Corporal Felipe Carvalho Barbosa, is comforted by her son Andre Carvalho Barbosa at the graveside service for her son and Andre’s brother at Floral Garden Memorial Park Cemetery in High Point, North Carolina February 6, 2006. Felipe Carvalho Barbosa, a Brazlian native who recently became a U.S. citizen, was serving as an infantryman with the 2nd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment of the U.S. Marine Corps when he was killed in Iraq on January 28, 2006
REUTERS/Ellen Ozier
What Can I Say
by Brandi Carlile
Look to the clock on the wall,
Hands hardly moving at all.
Can’t stand the state that I’m in
Sometimes it feels like the walls closing in
O Lord what can I say
I am so sad since you went away
Time time ticking on me
Alone is the last place I wanted to be
Lord what can I say
Try to bury my troubles away
Drown my sorrows the same way
Seems that no matter how hard I try
It feels like something’s just missing inside
O Lord what can I say
I am so sad since you went away
Time time ticking on me
Alone is the last place I wanted to be
Lord what can I say
Oh Lord what can i say
How many rules can I break
How many lies can I make
How many roads can I turn
To find me a place where the bridge doesn’t burn
O Lord what can I say
I am so sad since you went away
Time time ticking on me
Alone is the last place I wanted to be
Lord what can I say
– – –
put a meaningful magnet on your car or metal filing cabinet
read Ilona’s important new blog – PTSD Combat
view the pbs newshour silent honor roll (with thanks to jimstaro at booman.)
take a private moment to light one candle among many (with thanks to TXSharon)
support Veterans for Peace
support the Iraqi people
support the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC)
support CARE
support the victims of torture
remember the fallen
support Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors – TAPS
support Gold Star Families for Peace
support the fallen
support the troops
support Iraq Veterans Against the War
support Military families Speak Out
support the troops and the Iraqi people
read This is what John Kerry did today, the diary by lawnorder that prompted this series
read Riverbend’s Bagdhad Burning
read Dahr Jamail’s Iraq Dispatches
read Today in Iraq
witness every day
Click on the candle to copy the image into your own comment (you can leave it on my server), and/or rate this one – not for mojo, but to leave a small mark after taking this moment.
” I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.”
from Dirge Without Music
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
The crusaders have ordered the puppet government to place most of the people in Iraq under house arrest. They call it a “daytime curfew.”
This is just a warm-up fpr what we can look forward to if we stand up to this adm. and whatwe will have in our faces if we decide to demonstrate as a whole as a country. Beware! it is on its way for us too…so if you ahve not ever likes curfews, better snap to..or else…says geew.
Curfew stalls Iraq bloodshed
Impeach now!
from the bush
again war drums sound
louder each hour
may courage flow
into those who could
silence them
and to all who cannot
Peace
“We may have all come on different ships,
but we are all in the same boat now.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
Light A Candle For
Peace, Tolerance, Understanding
and For The Children – Innocence Lost!
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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We Know Where The Blame Lies, But 'ALL' Of Us Are Responsible For What Has Happened and What May Happen!!!!!
On The Brink In Iraq
by Bob Dreyfuss, TomPaine.com
The die has been cast. Bush must take the blame for destroying Iraq.
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Men do less than they ought, unless they do all that they can. — Thomas Carlyle
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There is No One that can Convince Me that the Repug Leadership, in Congress, Had NO IDEA About this Deal, and also some of the Rubber Stamp Congressional Reps!!
Fearmonger In Chief
by William Greider, The Nation
President Bush sowed the hysteria he is now reaping in the form of the UAE ports controversy.
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He who allows oppression, shares the crime. — Erasmus Darwin
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Pass It On: The Bushevik Revolution In Pictures
by Kirktoons
Check out posters of the Great Leap Forward Bush-style.
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Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral. — Paulo Freire
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Posted on Thu, Feb. 23, 2006
FBI memos reveal allegations of abusive interrogation techniques
By Drew Brown
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - Military interrogators posing as FBI agents at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, wrapped terrorism suspects in an Israeli flag and forced them to watch homosexual pornography under strobe lights during interrogation sessions that lasted as long as 18 hours, according to one of a batch of FBI memos released Thursday
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Pentagon Told to Release Gitmo Transcripts
By BEN FOX
Associated Press Writer
February 23, 2006, 7:30 PM EST
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — A federal judge ordered the Pentagon on Thursday to release the identities of hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo Bay to The Associated Press, a move which would force the government to break its secrecy and reveal the most comprehensive list yet of those who have been imprisoned there.
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In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade-unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade-unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up. -- attributed to Rev. Martin Niemoller
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Fiore presents: Destroyer Dick
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Number Of Iraqi civilians Slaughtered In America's War 100,000 +
Number of U.S. Military Personnel Slaughtered (Officially acknowledged) In Bush's War 2287
The War in Iraq Costs $243,000,413,187 See the cost in your community
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George Bush, protector of Arab rights?
Molly Ivins – Creators Syndicate
02.23.06 – AUSTIN, Texas — So, aside from the fact that it’s politically idiotic and at least theoretically presents a national security risk, just what is wrong with the Dubai Ports deal?
As President George W. Bush actually said, “I want those who are questioning it to step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a Great British company. I’m trying to conduct foreign policy now by saying to the people of the world, we’ll treat you fairly.”
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"All experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for thir future security." : The Declaration of Independence (1776)
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Published on Thursday, February 23, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
The Pencil Warrior: Lewis Powell’s Memorandum Was A Blueprint for Corporate Takeover
by Dave Wheelock
The bumper sticker has growing relevance: “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” As many corporations report record profits and our president announces with a straight face the economy is sound, the gap between the very rich and the rest of us continues to widen, the number of U.S. citizens without health insurance passes 45 million (equivalent to the populations of the eight northeastern states), and the level of American jobs outsourced to cheap labor markets worldwide reaches farther up into the middle class. For the first time in generations the economic outlook of our children is dimmer than that of their parents.
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CIVIC (Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict) is a Washington-based nonprofit organization founded by Marla Ruzicka, who was killed on April 16, 2005 by a suicide bomb in Baghdad while advocating for the families of Iraqi civilians killed and injured in the conflict. CIVIC believes that civilian casualties should be counted and their families assisted by the governments responsible, and is working to identify victims and help their families.
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“Never again shall one generation of veterans abandon another.”
The VA, The Government Of Which Is The PEOPLE!!
Gulf War Veteran Gets Placebos Instead Of Real Medicine
POSTED: 4:13 pm EST February 23, 2006
UPDATED: 5:33 pm EST February 23, 2006
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“Never again shall one generation of veterans abandon another.”
Children’s mental health affected by insecurity, say specialists
Children increasingly at risk of suffering from mental illness, survey says
Looking at this little girl’s smile is heartbreaking.
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Reminds me of US PR initiative with shill reporting about the feel good campaign of spreading freedom and democracy by the Bush cabal. Doesn’t meet the facts on the ground with all the collateral damage, as Riverbend writes every week in Baghdad Burning.
Supporting website: Boker Tov, Boulder!● Lt C: “Diarhea of the mouth and mind”
“But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
…and the more I look at the boy’s face, there seems a certain sense of disbelief and nervousness mixed with anticipation of something happening that he hasn’t seen or felt in so long….being happy…if even for a few moments.
Curse the monsters who’ve killed the bodies and the spirits of all these children.
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BAGHDAD (NPR-Morning Edition) January 10, 2006 · Steve Inskeep speaks to an Iraqi journalist whose home was raided in the middle of the night by U.S. forces because of mistaken identity. Ali Fadhil was detained for the night in Baghdad. Fadhil was working for British media on a documentary about the alleged misuse of millions of dollars intended for Iraqi reconstruction.
American troops in Baghdad forced their way into the home of Ali Fadil, who is working with the British TV Channel 4, and fired shots into the room where he was sleeping with his wife and children.
He was taken away by the American troops and released a few hours later, but videotapes he had produced were confiscated and not returned.
“It is simply not acceptable to burst into a journalist’s house, shoot off a few rounds and justify terrorizing a family on the back of a so-called hunt for insurgents, particularly when it concerns a reporter who is asking serious questions about corruption in high places,” said Aidan White, the IFJ secretary general, in a statement.
At the end of last year Fadil was presented the UK Foreign Press Association Young Journalist of the Year award.
Continuano gli attentati in Iraq RAI News24● Is This What They Call Democracy?
“But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY