Thomas Paine's version of "you didn't build that":
"Separate an individual from society,and give him an island or a continent to possess,and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end,in all cases,that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore,of personal property,beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice,of gratitude,and of civilization,a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came"
Submitted by Leah
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How many Iraqis have died as a result of the invasion 15 years ago? Some credible estimates put the number at more than one million. You can read that sentence again.
The invasion of Iraq is often spoken of in our country as a “blunder,” or even a “colossal mistake.” It was a crime.
Those who perpetrated it are still at large. Some of them have even been rehabilitated thanks to the horrors of a mostly amnesiac citizenry. (A year ago Mr. Bush was on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” dancing and talking about his paintings.) The war criminals, Bush,Cheney,Rice,Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Powellwho sold us the war still go on doing what they do.
Iraq is now far worse than it was during Saddam’s reign. And that is what America’s war achieved and bequeathed to Iraqis.
Shaima Naif’s daughter, Jannat, who was killed in Mosul
We condemned children to death, some after many days of writhing in pain on bloodstained mats, without pain relievers. Some died quickly, wasted by missing arms and legs, crushed heads. As the fluids ran out of their bodies, they appeared like withered, spoiled fruits. They could have lived, certainly should have lived – and laughed and danced, and run and played- but instead they were brutally murdered. Yes, murdered!
The war ended for those children, but it has never ended for survivors who carry memories of them. Likewise, the effects of the U.S. bombings continue, immeasurably and indefensibly.
The war in Yemen has entered its fourth year. The campaign by the Saudi-led coalition against the Houthi rebels has seen more than 16,633 air raids launched across the country since March 26, 2015.
The attacks have devastated Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the Middle East.
“My parents and all three sisters were killed by an air strike in our neighbourhood. I don’t know if the world is aware of what is going on here,” said Abu Bakr, a 17-year-old in Yemen’s coastal city of Hodeidah.
“I miss them too much. They are always on my mind. This area has turned bleak without them.”
A third of air raids have targeted non-military sites, with at least 1,491 air raids targeting residential areas.
More than 10,000 people have been killed. With at least 1,600 schools damaged or destroyed in the attacks, more than four million Yemeni children have been unable to attend school.
More than 10,000 people have died in the Yemen war which has now entered its fourth year.
The ruins of a neighborhood in Aleppo last March.Credit Joseph Eid/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A conversation with Rania Abouzeid, author of “No Turning Back: Life, Loss, and Hope in Wartime Syria” (W.W. Norton & Company, 2018)
Much of war is crime, a series of depredations and abuses — some calculated, others opportunistic, many a matter of routine — that participants cloak with sanctimony, euphemism and lies. The war in Syria serves as an example for our times, even as it continues to unfold.
Since unrest spread in Syria in 2011, Rania Abouzeid, a freelance journalist who is fluent in Arabic, has been one of the most courageous and committed foreign observers of the war, examining its horrors and complexities by journeying within it. Along the way, she developed an enviable array of sources on many sides. Her first book, “No Turning Back: Life, Loss, and Hope in Wartime Syria,” taps this network to trace the conflict’s escalation from uncertain protests to intractable regional war, all told through characters that imbue the account with a personal tone.
“War arrives suddenly, uninvited, and brings with it a new normal,” Abouzeid writes. “It has its own cadence, its own logic. It is the mundane experienced through heightened, sometimes supercharged emotions. The daily rhythm of life goes on, as it must, but with a constant undercurrent of tension, a baseline permanently shifted with the knowledge that a single abrupt event at any time — a knock on the door, an artillery shell, a sniper’s bullet — can upend everything. The commonness of death cheapens life.”……………..
A schoolgirl walking past damaged buildings in the town of Maaret al-Numan, Idlib Province, in October 2015.Credit Khalil Ashawi/Reuters
Many of your stories are testaments to courage, like that of Hanin, the asthmatic Alawite child, who chose to remain a hostage so others could go free. In seven years of this war, what have you learned about Syrians?
The incredible resilience of ordinary people. Hanin was a prisoner. She was asleep one night when rebels entered her home and took her and her siblings and her mother hostage. The biggest lesson for me was the way people can adapt, the way they can survive, the way they can persist and the way they can continue, in some cases, even to have hope and to still be able to forgive and to still believe in a Syrian-ness that transcends politics.
Thousands of Syrian rebel fighters and civilians are being bussed from Eastern Ghouta after two rebel groups reached a withdrawal deal with the Syrian government.
The enclave is close to the capital, Damascus, and residents – who have lived under siege for five years – have suffered intense bombardment by Russian-backed Syrian government forces in recent weeks.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres described conditions there as “hell on Earth”.
GENEVA (Reuters) – War crimes investigators and activists have amassed an “overwhelming volume” of testimony, images and videos documenting atrocities committed by all sides during Syria’s war, a U.N. quasi-prosecutorial body said in its first report.
The team, led by former French judge Catherine Marchi-Uhel, said it is preparing case files and has engaged with war crimes investigative units of various states including in Europe, whose courts can exercise universal jurisdiction to prosecute.
In the future, an existing body – such as the International Criminal Court – or a new court could be given jurisdiction for Syria, according to the report.
The team expects to finaliZe an agreement soon with the Commission of Inquiry (COI) on Syria on getting access to testimony and evidence collected by that separate team of U.N. investigators for the past six years, the report said.
“The volume of videos and other images – as well as the role played by social media – is unprecedented in any other accountability process with respect to international crimes to date,” said the report by Marchi-Uhel’s team.
“…It is not possible to prosecute all of the crimes committed, given their vast number,” it added.
But there is a need to sure “fair representation” by prosecuting crimes committed on all sides, and sexual and gender-based crimes, as well as violations against children, will be a priority, said the report, released on Monday……………Marchi-Uhel’s team said its work would proceed independently of any Syrian peace process and be based on the principle that no amnesty can be granted for “core international crimes”.
ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey’s military killed 11 Kurdish militants in its southern Hatay province bordering Syria overnight, the governor’s office said on Tuesday, and the army said two of its soldiers were killed in a blast in Syria’s Afrin region.
Backed by air support, Turkish security forces opened fire and killed the militants after spotting them in Hatay’s Arsuz district, near the Mediterranean Sea, the governor’s office said in a statement.
It said the military seized the bodies of six of militants, along with M-16 rifles, a rocket launcher and ammunition. The group was believed to be behind several attacks in the province last year, it said.
Turkey has fought an insurgency with Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants since 1984 and more than 40,000 people have been killed in the fighting, which is largely focused in Turkey’s southeast, hundreds of kilometers (miles) east of Hatay.
In January, Turkey’s army and its Syrian rebel allies began a military offensive against the Kurdish YPG militia in Syria’s Afrin, bordering Hatay, and gained full control of the region at the weekend, according to a military source.
BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq’s prime minister says he has ordered the military to take full control of the country’s borders amid escalating tensions and Turkish threats of an incursion into Iraq.
Haider al-Abadi says troops will prevent Turkey’s Kurdish rebels from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, to use Iraq for cross-border attacks against Turkey.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday if PKK do not vacate Iraqi regions of Sinjar and Qandil, it would be “inevitable” for Ankara to remove them.
Al-Abadi’s statement says he reassured his Turkish counterpart, Binali Yildirim, in a telephone conversation that he rejects any “violation” against Turkey through Iraqi territory.
It says Yildrim assured al-Abadi that Turkey won’t “launch operations without Iraqi government consent.”
PKK, which has been fighting Ankara since 1984, maintains bases in northern Iraq.
Mosul (IraqiNews.com) Eighteen Islamic State members, including foreign leaders, were killed in a security operation, south of Mosul, an Iraqi military source said on Monday.
“Iraqi troops killed, today, 18 IS members, including two Russian nationals and a Turkish members, during an operation against Kan’ous village in Hammam al-Alil region, south of Mosul,” Brig. Gen. Mohamed al-Jabouri, official spokesperson for the Nineveh Operations Command, said.
Moreover, Jabouri said troops confiscated missiles at the rest houses of IS in Owainat village on borders with Syria.
On Sunday, Maj.Gen. Saad Maan, spokesperson for the Interior Ministry, said troops arrested five IS members in al-Tanak district, west of Mosul, while two others were arrested in ambushes set in Qayyarah and Hammam al-Alil regions, south of Mosul.
Thousands of IS militants as well as Iraqi civilians were killed since the government campaign, backed by paramilitary troops and the coalition was launched in October 2016 to fight the militant group, which declared a self-styled “caliphate” from Mosul in June 2014.
ISLAMABAD — The Taliban has destroyed a major electricity tower in northern Afghanistan, disrupting imported power supply to five provinces, including Kabul.
The pre-dawn insurgent subversive action occurred in the province of Baghlan, plunging a vast area into darkness, including much of the Afghan capital.
Residents, businesses and offices in Kabul, a city of nearly five million people, faced frequent power cuts Monday and used private generators to run essential operations.
Provincial governor, Abdul Hai Naimati, told VOA a team of technicians was at the site and repair work was underway.
Afghanistan imports about 300 megawatts of electricity for these provinces from neighboring Central Asian states of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Officials at state-run De Afghanistan Breshna Shirkat electricity providing authority told VOA the Taliban attack disrupted supply to Kabul, Parwan, Maidan Wardak, Ghazni and Ningarhar provinces.
A United States Army veteran who served two tours of duty in Afghanistan was deported to Mexico after his application for citizenship was denied because of a felony drug conviction, his lawyer and immigration officials said.
Miguel Perez-Montes, 39, was flown on Friday from Gary, Ind., to Brownsville, Tex., where he was escorted across the border to Mexico, Nicole Alberico, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman, said in a statement.
Mr. Perez-Montes, who came to the United States legally when he was 8 years old, was convicted in 2010 for delivering cocaine to an undercover officer, a felony drug charge, and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He was placed into removal proceedings in 2012, while behind bars in Illinois, and had been in ICE custody since Sept. 23, 2016, Ms. Alberico said.
Mr. Perez-Montes’s case rose to prominence after Senator Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois and an Iraq war veteran, appealed to the Department of Homeland Security on Friday to stay his deportation and review his case.
“This is a deplorable way to treat a veteran who risked his life in combat for our nation,” she wrote in a letter to the secretary of homeland security, Kirstjen Nielsen…………………Seven years later, in 2011, the Department of Veterans Affairs diagnosed him with PTSD related to his service, the senator said. “Without proper V.A. care, he self-medicated with drugs and alcohol to cope with his PTSD, which eventually resulted in his drug conviction,” she added, calling his deportation a “shocking betrayal.”
Asked about Senator Duckworth’s letter, the Department of Homeland Security said Monday that its Citizenship and Immigration Services division had denied Mr. Perez-Montes’s request for naturalization on March 15 because of the felony conviction.
The local officials in eastern Kunar province are saying that the cross-border shelling from the other side of Durand Line continue as dozens of artillery shells were fired in the latest wave of the shelling. According to the local security officials, more than 100 artillery shells have landed in various parts of Dangam district in
Pakistan’s Charge d’Affaires in Kabul was summoned in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Afghanistan amid persistent artillery shelling on eastern parts of Afghanistan by the Pakistani military. The Ministry of Foreign Affiars (MoFA) in a statement said the artillery shelling in eastern parts of Afghanistan along the Durand Line continues despite the Afghan government
President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani warned the regional countries regarding the growing menace of terrorism posing threats to Afghanistan and other regional countries as he called for joint cooperation to implement the strategy against terrorism. Speaking during the Tashkent Conference on Afghanistan, President Ghani said the terrorist groups do not recognize any geography. He said the
The Department of Defense announced today the deaths of seven airmen who were supporting Operation Inherent Resolve. They died March 15 when an HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter crashed in western Iraq. The cause of the crash is under investigation.
Captain Mark K. Weber, 29, of Colorado Springs, Colorado. He was assigned to the 38th Rescue Squadron at Moody Air Force Base, Georgia.
Captain Andreas B. O’Keeffe, 37, of Center Moriches, New York.
Captain Christopher T. Zanetis, 37, of Long Island City, New York.
Master Sergeant Christopher J. Raguso, 39, of Commack, New York.
Staff Sergeant Dashan J. Briggs, 30, of Port Jefferson Station, New York.
Master Sergeant William R. Posch, 36, of Indialantic, Florida.
Staff Sergeant Carl P. Enis, 31, of Tallahassee, Florida.
Both were assigned to the 308th Rescue Squadron, Air Force Reserve, at Patrick Air Force Base, Florida. For more information, media may contact the 920th Rescue Wing public affairs office at 321-615-0329.
The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Inherent Resolve.
Sgt. 1st Class Maitland Deweever Wilson, 38, of Brooklyn, New York, died March 7 in Landstuhl, Germany from a non-combat related incident. The incident is under investigation.
Wilson was assigned to the 831st Transportation Battalion, 595th Transportation Brigade, Manama, Bahrain.
All VA Medical Centers provide PTSD care, as well as many VA clinics.Some VA’s have programs specializing in PTSD treatment. Use the VA PTSD ProgramLocator to find a PTSD program.If you are a war Veteran, find a Vet Center to help with the transition from military to civilian life.
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