escalator over the hill

Warning this Post Get Up Stand Up …stand up for their [child] rights [You can fool some of the people some of the time but You can’t fool all the people all of the time] contains images that you [should] find disturbing.

The link above is to Bob Marley there is another version further down and at the foot of the page.

The Article has been written utilising a base of material from truthout a progressive self funded independent group of Journalists. I make a small regular monthly donation. It is worth it.

I decided to add reshape and  Aussie-fy an original article by Chris Hedges

Again due to the unfurling of events in North Africa and the bombing of Gaza by the Israelis.  LAST WEEK  while all eyes have been on Libya Israel was bombing Gaza .I felt compelled to make a plea on behalf of children caught in Iraq  Afghanistan and in the increasingly likelihood of  in the hydra  of War in Libya, to make sure no invasion takes place  in the name of freedom but in reality in the gain of minerals and oil.

We have watched mothers and fathers keening in grief over the frail corpses of their children in hospitals in Gaza and rural villages in Sri Lanka El Salvador, Bosnia and Kosovo. The faces of these dead children, their bodies ripped apart by shrapnel fragments or bullets tumbling end over end as they pass through their small, delicate frames, appear  daily like faint and sadly familiar ghosts.

The frailty and innocence of your children make these images difficult to bear.

A child a day dies in war-related violence in Afghanistan. Children die in roadside explosions.

They die in air strikes.

They die after militants lure them to carry suicide bombs, usually without their knowledge.

They die in firefights. They are executed by the Taliban after being accused, sometimes correctly, of spying for the Afghan National Army NATO or the US.

They are tiny pawns in a futile and endless war.

They are robbed of their childhood.

They live in fear and surrounded by the terror of indiscriminate everyday violence and clumsy bombing.

The United Nations, whose most recent report on children in Afghanistan covered a two-year period from 1 Sept  2008 -30 Aug 2010, estimates that in the first half of 2010 at least 176 children were killed and 389 more wounded.

But the real number is probably much, much higher. There are big parts of the country where research can no longer be safely carried out. Unless you are willing to rise up as have state workers in Wisconsin and citizens on the streets of Arab capitals.

We will only stop this slaughter of innocents by stopping the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Repeated and sustained acts of civil disobedience are our weapons that we must use to save the continual slaughter of the children.

While the world of passive onlookers eagerly encourages the struggle of the popular uprisings in  North Africa, little do they realise how they are being misled by the corporate controlled press, the Republican propaganda machine and Fox News.

Are we are YOU willing to accept personal discomfort, to put YOUR bodies in the way of the machinery of not only the despotic and the tyrant, but also the manipulators of the oil interested states.

It is time to expose the lies of war and blunt the abuse by corporate profiteers and to stop the needless killing of innocent children requires all Australians to act. Through my tweets I am trying to raise the conscience of family and humanitarian Australians.

Being new to twitter Facebook and this blog my reach is very poor. If you are indeed reading this I ask you to network this message to your friends. I do not ask that you agree with my analysis of what I believe is going on in North Africa. All I ask is that you act swiftly to save more children dying.

Tomorrow as you read this blog post another child will be dead in Afghanistan. To do nothing, to refuse to act, to sit idly by, is to be an agent of injustice and to be complicit in the murder of children and their Mothers.

A U.N. report [ Sept  2008 – Aug 2010] estimates  almost 1,800 children were killed or injured in conflict-related violence.  The  numbers can not illustrate the reality of the Human suffering. Just stop to consider the burial of you child or perhaps all of your children. It is too terrible to contemplate isn’t it? About the image above. Latvian People stood idly by while this crime above was committed. Never again we say but children are still dying there are still onlookers and we still seek justification for acts of brutality to children. Yes we do so long as we allow ourselves to be hood winked by a contradictory ABC and not challenge the bias of all the other NEWS channels. I single out the ABC as I only listen to Radio National (At night the BBC)

Here is how a child drew the bombing of civilians in a town in Spain in 1937. It seems we will if we don’t act  see these images again.

March 19 is the 8th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. In the US across from the White House there will be a *coalition of U.S. military veterans from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. What will you be doing or thinking on this day.

The *size of the turn out doesn’t matter  What does matter is that people stand together if the cause is right irrespective of how few there are. This could apply to Sydney and to all Australian Cities. Don’t you think its time after fully 3 weeks of misinformation about Libya; It is time to stand up for the rights of the innocent child.

You shout you twitter you blog about the murderer Gaddafi but you say nothing about the children of the Gaza. You call for the violent overthrow of Gaddafi but will not support the over throw of an illegal occupier in West Papua. We hear arguments that Gaddafi has trodden on his people for over 41 years but the European powers including the UK and as recently as 2007 were happy to do business for Libyan oil.

IT IS  argued that Gaddafi has robbed his people of their wealth. Well neither I nor you can know this yet  What we do know is health care was free, power was free, education including University was free, and the internet was free. We say he has pocketed the cash Of course Australians we forget quickly that our first Australians live in 4th world conditions. Who do you think they think has pocketed all our cash? Do we expect sanctions to be placed around Australia?

We forget the huge profits that the mining barons extract from our earth, the earth that originally belonged to our first Australians.  If  profit from oil in North Africa is robbery  the west have been willing partners. If it’s mineral extraction in the  west of Australia its called good business. If we want to tax it,  to share only a small portion of the wealth we are the robbers.  Who cares about the poverty of the aboriginal…do you? I don’t hear cries about the child mortality in our outback communities. I don’t hear the cry from Australians to freeze the assets of the miners. If the indigenous rise up as they have done once in Redfern it is called a riot . I don’t recall the so called rioters being encouraged as “protesters” . They weren’t were they? Did the U.N.security council care about them. What would Australians say if the world was to apply sanctions against us for our mistreatment of the first Nations of this land?

It does not matter if a protest does not work. It does not matter if we are 500 or 50 or 5 perhaps it will be me alone. It does not matter if the event is or my words are not covered in the press. What does matter is that those of you so vocal in your tweets, so vocal in your support of the people of Egypt, so vocal in your condemnation of Libya, so vocal in your abhorrence of the increasing violence in Libya…..is that YOU Get Up Stand up stand up for their rights.

What does matter is that you recognise  the threat of yet another invasion in the name of “enduring Freedom” What does matter is that children are not harmed by the escalation of another a western inspired act of war. Come out from behind the curtain of safety and speak out on behalf of the children across the Globe. Imagine it is your child. It seems to me in the past 3 weeks  the recently bombed children of the Gaza,  of the west Bank, those of Baghdad and Kabul have become the “forgotten ones”

Ask yourself do you truly believe in the rule of law?

Do you find the organised machinery of sadism in war and militarism repugnant ?

Do you believe in the sanctity of  life?

If you do …..surely you must shout it out!

*I promised myself no profanities when I started this blog but sometimes you have to break the rules. I often do.

If these virtues are not defended like  many Mothers children they will be extinguished.  No one in power will defend them for us. Every little bit helps. Yes as twitter and social media has shown every little piece of “single person action” counts. Egypt has shown us this. You have the power. *So start to Fucking use it

Protests are challenging the fabric of the U.S.-backed dictatorships in Tunisia, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt and Libya. Protests are coming to life in the U.S. in states like Wisconsin. And they are beginning to again convulse Iraq. As the confused US prepares for a possible invasion of Libya  [ though as I predicted via twitter last week it seems to be backing away] as the popular challenge(s) to Gaddafi falters be mindful of the bog of “enduring freedom” in Iraq. The Iraqis have endured eight years of war and an occupation that has brought nothing but misery and death.

Not withstanding that the crime there is directed at the people of Iraq, there is  the equally callous crime of sending our young men and women to die for a falsehood. An Australian family lost another son, no doubt a beautiful boy. I can’t begin to imagine the grief felt by the families of the young boys and girls of the US military and Nato countries killed in the name of “enduring freedom”  I am so glad I don’t. They are not only victims of the war but also victims of the violence of unemployment and poverty in the Worlds richest nation; The United States.

Do you cry out for them?  Yes you do but perhaps for the wrong reasons.

In the US TODAY in Wisconsin protesters ( professional thugs if you watch Fox) are surrounding government buildings to denounce their “democratic” government. They are rising up to demand jobs, the right for collective bargaining  and basic services including electricity.

These protesters are Americas true patriots, not the hired thugs that are paid to repress them.

Its a waste

The US  LOSES  US$700 million  a day to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  This is all the while their teachers, firefighters and police lose their jobs. The US spends this while  basic assistance programs for the poor, children and the elderly are slashed or stopped.

Children are used to fight as well. Again some images from history.

Killing children and War  creates misery it solves nothing.

1 in 6 American workers are unemployed

3 million people being pushed from their homes by foreclosures and bank repossession.

These wars have taken hundreds of thousands of lives. They have pushed millions into refugee or displacement camps. They have left young men and women severely crippled and maimed. They have turned the US nation into an isolated pariah, fueling the very terrorism it UK and Australia  seeks to defeat. Afghanistan is a war that cannot be won .

The sooner we leave  Afghanistan the sooner we will save the lives of children , ours and theirs. We already have veterans who carry with them physical and emotional wounds of great magnitude, who remain crippled by the dead hand of war, who never sleep well, who struggle in the black pit of depression and with post-traumatic stress disorder. The result of another adventure with our allies in Vietnam.  These  vets and those from Iraq who will bear the cross that war inflicted upon them until they find the eternal peace.

They walk their trail of tears everyday.

If you care about children in war don’t let it be your child or your neighbours child or the children that used to play down the street.  Hugh Thompson, the helicopter pilot who one day while flying a helicopter in Vietnam saw the killings of unarmed Vietnamese civilians. He landed his chopper in a village during the slaughter. He spotted a group of about 10 civilians, including children, running toward a homemade bomb shelter. Soldiers from the 2nd Platoon, C Company, were chasing the civilians.

Thompson, quickly climbed from the cockpit, putting  himself between the civilians and the soldiers. He ordered his gunner to open fire on the Americans if they began to shoot the villagers or him. The Village was Mai Lai . His fight for justice and fairness was ugly

A certain Maj. Colin Powell led the official investigation [whitewash] of My Lai, Thompson, dissatisfied persued for justice.  He  received death threats. Mutilated animals were tossed on his doorstep. He was unsung for decades and forgotten until shortly before his death in 2006.

He exhibited real courage, moral courage, the kind of courage governments detests, the kind of courage for which they do not mint medals.

All Quiet on the Western Front

It is quite remarkable that those who are opposed to the injustices of war and its futility are attacked.The film all Quiet on the Western Front made in 1929  focuses on the short lives of 5 German School boys who go off to the 14-18 War. The film demonstrates the futility of it all. It also highlights the irony of a democracy (Australia) and a dictatorship ( Nazi Germany) having the same policy to pacifism. It was banned in both countries.

Though the Films director Lewis Milestone  received the Academy award for Best Director (for the film) in 1929; it was banned in Australia from 1930-1942 In Nazi Germany from 1934 – the fall of the third Reich.Yes it was banned for almost an equal length of time in both countries. To our shame it was banned longer in Australia than in Nazi Germany.

A perfect example of what strange bed fellows one can have.

Today Bradley Manning, who allegedly downloaded thousands of documents and videos ( modern day AQTWF ) that confirmed the futility, the hypocrisy and war crimes by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and passed them on to WikiLeaks, is being held solitary confinement in a military Gaol. His crime was to highlight the deceptive and misleading conduct of our leaders. he has murdered no one and certainly no children. Get Up stand up for your rights You can fool some people sometimes but YOU cant fool all the people ALL the time

Bradley Manning a Mothers sonHe is kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. For the past 9 months he has been denied exercise, a pillow or sheets. Bradley Manning is a child too. His prolonged isolation is designed to break him physically and psychologically. The documents published by WikiLeaks detailed for the world the widespread use of torture by Iraqi and Afghan security forces and the silent complicity of Washington.

Warning the images from this point are very graphic.

Someone actually questioned today did I really need to use such horrific images. I thought about it and decided to post several more today 5 march.

They confirmed that civilians, including children, are routinely murdered by occupation forces and that the killings are not investigated. The documents seen through wikileaks lifted the veil on the undeclared,  war in Pakistan, including drone strikes that have killed more than 900 civilians . These deaths have occurred since Obama took office. Wikileaks shed light on the gross corruption, drug trafficking and crimes committed by the Afghan president and the reign of terror carried out by the Afghan National Army. Yesterday 12 boys ages 9-15 were gunned down by a US helicopter as they collected fire wood. They were mistaken for “insurgents” who the military must have thought had been collecting the wood to make bows and arrows.

Here are some images that show little has changed over the years when it comes to the murder of children Latvia 1940. Sri Lanka 2009