Terrorism and Horror in Iraq and Afghanistan: reports from Yanar Mohammed and Arundhati Roy

This is an older video still of Yanar Mohammed appearing on Democracy Now! She now lives and works in Iraq. The image is from here.

image of Arundhati Roy is from here

This post's links detail why 'First World'-only justice movements, for people in the First World, are anti-woman if they don't center the experiences of women around the world enduring injustices and horrors not generally experienced by privileged women, and men, in the First World.

For me, a white male from the misnamed First World, seeing images is going to be as bad as it gets. I won't endure the experience of holding a baby with horrifying birth defects, nor will I be a woman who lives in a country where these birth defects, rape, military invasion, and white, patriarchal, imperialist terrorism are, together, committed by the military from the U.S. I can suffer from seeing images and hearing stories, but that's quite different from being the terrorised, horrified person in them.

The U.S. war on Iraq began ten years ago this week. Democracy Now! has been reporting on this war's crimes against humanity, and what U.S. media will not tell us about it. We must, collectively, require accountability and justice from the U.S. for these war crimes.

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/20/dahr_jamail_returns_to_iraq_to

Here, Yanar Mohammed speaks about the atrocities facing women:

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/20/right_to_heal_iraqi_civilians_join

An excerpt of the transcript:

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And what do you see has happened in Iraq in these last 10 years?

YANAR MOHAMMED: It’s just getting worse. We are again in a police state. We have armies, police and all kinds of intelligence institutions around us. We have SWAT. We have anti-riot. It’s all kinds of security institutions around us.

And on top of that, I see the women in my country getting much weaker. I see an epidemic rise in certain kinds of birth defects. And when we try to organize women—we sent women from my organization to a town in Haweeja. We were surprised to see hundreds of children that had birth disabilities. We see things in Iraq that we’ve never seen in our lives.

I also see young women, orphans of war, female orphans of war, that are being trafficked. And the state absolutely has no obligation towards them. The young women who are being trafficked come to our organization and to our shelters. They don’t even have the right to citizenship in Iraq. We are speaking here about tens of thousands of orphans of war who are absolutely not being taken care of. Neither the Iraqi government nor the U.S. experts in Iraq do anything about it.

Here, Arundhati Roy speaks out about the complete psychosis of U.S. leaders in thinking things are better for women in Afghanistan now than ten-plus years ago:

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/18/arundhati_roy_on_iraq_wars_10th

Below is an excerpt from the transcript:

We are dealing with a psychopathic situation. And all of us, including myself, we can’t do anything but keep being reasonable, keep saying what needs to be said. But that doesn’t seem to help the situation, because, of course, as we know, after Iraq, there’s been Libya, there’s Syria, and the rhetoric of, you know, democracy versus radical Islam. When you look at the countries that were attacked, none of them were Wahhabi Islamic fundamentalist countries. Those ones are supported, financed by the U.S., so there is a real collusion between radical Islam and capitalism. What is going on is really a different kind of battle.

And, you know, most people are led up a path which keeps them busy. And in a way, all of us are being kept busy, while the real business at the heart of it—I mean, apart from the people who suffered during the war. Let’s not forget the sanctions. Let’s not forget Madeleine Albright saying that a million children dying in Iraq because of the sanctions was a hard price but worth it. I mean, she was the victim, it seems, of the sanctions; you know, her softness was called upon, and she had to brazen herself to do it. And today, you have the Democrats bombing Pakistan, destroying that country, too. So, just in this last decade, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria—all these countries have been—have been shattered.

You know, we heard a lot about why—you know, the war in Afghanistan was fought for feminist reasons, and the Marines were really on this feminist mission. But today, all the women in all these countries have been driven back into medieval situations. Women who were liberated, women who were doctors and lawyers and poets and writers and—you know, pushed back into this Shia set against Sunnis. The U.S. is supporting al-Qaeda militias all over this region and pretending that it’s fighting Islam. So we are in a situation of—it is psychopathic.

Speaking Out Against U.S. Wars on Afghanistan and Iraq

image is from here

First, a video about the above action:  

Global Day of Listening to Afghans

What follows are two cross-posted pieces from progressive media sources. What that means is that women's experience and feminist analysis will not be brought to bear on the matter of war, militarism, and any other U.S. foreign terrorism.

From WarIsACrime.org:

We Want You Out: an open letter from the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers and Afghans for PeaceSubmitted by davidswanson on Wed, 2010-12-15 15:11

• Afghanistan

As the Obama administration releases its December Review of U.S. war in Afghanistan, the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, along with Afghans for Peace, have issued a review of their experiences. To express support for their letter, follow this link.

We Want You Out: an open letter from the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers and Afghans for Peace

To all the leaders of our world, the leaders of the US-led coalition, the Afghan government, the ‘Taliban/Al-Qaeda’ and regional countries,

We are intolerably angry.

All our senses are hurting.

Our women, our men and yes shame on you, our children are grieving.

Your Afghan civilian-military strategy is a murderous stench we smell, see, hear and breathe.

President Obama, and all the elite players and people of the world, why?

America’s 250-million-dollar annual communications budget just to scream propaganda on this war of perceptions, with its nauseating rhetoric mimicked by Osama and other warlords, is powerless before the silent wailing of every anaemic mother.

We will no longer be passive prey to your disrespectful systems of oligarchic, plutocratic war against the people.

Your systems feed the rich and powerful. They are glaringly un-equal, they do not listen, do not think and worst, they do not care.

We choose not to gluttonize with you. We choose not to be trained by you. We choose not to be pawned by you.

We henceforth refuse every weapon you kill us with, every dollar you bait us with and every lie you manipulate us with.

We are not beasts.

We are Afghans, Americans, Europeans, Asians and global citizens.

Yes, you have the false, self-appointed power to arrest us over expressing the public opinion of ordinary folk, students, farmers, shepherds, labourers, teachers, doctors . . . , people who now have nowhere to turn and nowhere to hide. ( Open Letter to our World Leaders )

This world public opinion against the Afghan war has been clearly expressed and is larger than any number of Wikileaks you seek to suppress. So, come arrest us all as we civilly disobey you. Come arrest us all. ( See excerpt below from Wikipedia’s ‘International public opinion on the war in Afghanistan’ )

Yes, you have the army, police and apparatchik to smother us and to bribe those who are Pavlov-reflexed to money, but you cannot stop us from restoring our voice.

We refuse to prostitute our hearts and minds.

We refuse you.

Not you the human person, but you the greedy system of self-interested power.

Again and again here in Afghanistan, we have seen a hope for non-violence light up; every day we see a yearning for humane relationships, and because of this, love is how we now firmly take our stand.

We will listen to the People on December 19th, on the Global Day of Listening to Afghans and we invite every one of you to pick up your phone to call us, to share one another’s pain, and to call our world to urgent reconciliation. We invite the world public opinion to overwhelm us! (email youthpeacevolunteers@gmail.com to arrange a call).

We wish to invite all the people of the world because when the powers are not listening to the people, listening becomes an act of love, it becomes a solidarity of non-violent resistance.

How can we do any less?

14-year-old Abdulai’s father was killed by the ‘Taliban’ and so, like every other human being, he copes with sorrow, hate, fear and anger.

But, he wakes up to the chronic war days in his land sensing that ‘something is very wrong with the world I’m caught up in’, ‘these elders of the world are not getting it…..’.

How does trillion-deficit killing, followed by the strategy of escalated killing and yet another review for more killing, work?

How does it make anyone safer?

How does it solve the incorruptible corruption, unequalled inequality and inviolate violence we face daily?

Your policies, skewed-ly ‘diagnosed’ and ‘reviewed’ in a cold clinical manner divorced from reality, have been deaf to the concerns and needs of the people, thus we endeavour to have a People’s Afghanistan December Review, because that’s what ordinary people can do.

We would try not to ‘throw’ our shoes at you. We would try to recognize the better side of all human beings and thus continue to serve our commoner’s tea and bread to one and all. But we do ask, plead and demand that you stop your unsustainable, superpower militarism.

We want peace.

We want you out.

With singular sincerity,

Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers

Afghans for Peace

Notes :

“My people, the suppressed millions, are my heroes. They are the real source of any positive change in Afghanistan and their power is stronger than anything else. And anti-war protesters around the world, those who are standing against the destructive policies of world powers. There is a superpower in the world besides the US government -- world public opinion.” Malalai Joya

Excerpts from Wikipedia:

International public opinion is largely opposed to the war in Afghanistan.
The 25-nation Pew Global Attitudes survey in June 2009 reported that majorities or pluralities in 18 out of 25 countries want U.S. and NATO to remove their military troops from Afghanistan as soon as possible.
Despite American calls for NATO allies to send more troops to Afghanistan, there was majority or plurality opposition to such action in every one of the NATO countries surveyed: Germany (63% opposition), France (62%), Poland (57%), Canada (55%), Britain (51%), Spain (50%), and Turkey (49%).
In Europe, poll after poll in France, Germany and even Britain show that the European public want their troops to be pulled out and less money spent on the war in Afghanistan
ABC News/BBC/ARD/Washington Post poll of 1,691 Afghan adults from Oct. 29-Nov. 13, 2010
Afghans indicated they were more pessimistic about the direction of their country, less confident about U.S.-led coalition troops providing security and more willing to negotiate with the Taliban than a year ago.
More than half of Afghans interviewed said U.S. and NATO forces should begin withdrawing from the country in mid-2011 or sooner.

“There are the occupation forces from the sky, dropping cluster bombs and depleted uranium, and on the ground there are the fundamentalist warlords and the Taliban, with their own guns. If I should die, and you should choose to carry on my work, you are welcome to visit my grave. Pour some water on it and shout three times. I want to hear your voice.” Malalai Joya

*          *          *

Next, from DissidentVoice.org,

The United States of War Criminals

by Mickey Z. / December 15th, 2010

People from poorer places and poorer countries have to call upon their compassion not to be angry with ordinary people in America.
– Arundhati Roy

More than half (53.3%) of US tax dollars go to a criminal enterprise known as the US Department of Defense (sic), a.k.a. the worst polluter on the planet. We hear about tax cuts this and budget that and all kinds of other bullshit from the US government and the corporations that own it…but the reality remains: Roughly one million tax dollars per minute are spent to fund the largest military machine (read: global terrorist operation) the world has ever known.

What do we get for all that money? To follow, is but one tiny example that mostly slipped through the cracks earlier this year.

On July 23, 2010, Tom Eley at Global Research wrote:

“According to the authors of a new study, ‘Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009,’ the people of Fallujah are experiencing higher rates of cancer, leukemia, infant mortality, and sexual mutations than those recorded among survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the years after those Japanese cities were incinerated by US atomic bomb strikes in 1945.”

For those unfamiliar with the US attacks on Fallujah, first of all: You should be fuckin’ ashamed of yourselves. Secondly, here’s Patrick Cockburn’s basic description:

US Marines first besieged and bombarded Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, in April 2004 after four employees of the American security company Blackwater were killed and their bodies burned. After an eight-month stand-off, the Marines stormed the city in November using artillery and aerial bombing against rebel positions. US forces later admitted that they had employed white phosphorus as well as other munitions. In the assault US commanders largely treated Fallujah as a free-fire zone to try to reduce casualties among their own troops. British officers were appalled by the lack of concern for civilian casualties.

Of crucial importance is this: A high proportion of the weaponry used by the US in the assault contained depleted uranium (DU).

And you and I paid for it all.

The aforementioned study found that the cancer rate “had increased fourfold since before the US attack” and that the forms of cancer in Fallujah are “similar to those found among the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb survivors, who were exposed to intense fallout radiation.”

Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Yeah, Americans paid for those bombs, too.

In September 2009, Fallujah General Hospital had 170 newborn babies:

• 24 percent were dead within the first seven days • 75 percent of the dead babies were classified as deformed

Cockburn writes of a “12-fold increase in childhood cancer in under-14s. Infant mortality in the city is more than four times higher than in neighboring Jordan and eight times higher than in Kuwait.”

Dig this: After 2005, thanks to this “major mutagenic event” (DU), the proportion of girls born in Fallujah has increased sharply likely because “girls have a redundant X-chromosome and can therefore absorb the loss of one chromosome through genetic damage,” explains Eley.

And you and I paid for it all.

“The impact of war on civilians was more severe in Fallujah than anywhere else in Iraq because the city continued to be blockaded and cut off from the rest of the country long after 2004,” adds Cockburn. While I could go on with the gory details, I’d much rather you ask a few questions:

• Now that you know these facts (and they are just the tiniest proverbial tip of a massive proverbial iceberg), how do you feel and what are you going to do about it? • Is it time you stop buying military video games, hanging yellow ribbons, and allowing our hard-earned money to finance mass murder? • Can enjoy “the holidays” while women in Fallujah are petrified to have children? • Are you still able to insulate yourself with all those cute puppy videos on YouTube? • Are you ready to stop believing there’s a difference between the two wings of the same corporate/military party and start accepting that they’re all accessories to heinous crimes? • Will you still “support” the volunteer mercenaries as “heroes” or will you recognize them as willing—and paid—accomplices to war crimes? • Are you okay with 85.1% of US wealth being owned by the top 20% while 53.3% of your tax dollars subsidize atrocities, torture, oppression, occupation, and the literal destruction of the planet’s eco-system? • What is your threshold? Which taxpayer-funded horror story is the one that will finally make you scream “enough”? • When you’ve screamed “enough,” what can/will you do and how soon will you start doing it?

You don’t have to tell me your answers. I’m a co-conspirator just like you.

Save your answers for the children of Fallujah. I’m sure they’re wondering why the fuck we all choose to remain silent and inactive.

Mickey Z. is probably the only person on the planet to have appeared in both a karate flick with Billy "Tae Bo" Blanks and a political book with Howard Zinn. He is the author of 9 books—most recently Self Defense for Radicals and his second novel, Dear Vito—and can be found on the Web. 

850 Afghan Children Dead: If Yemen Killed 850 U.S. Children on U.S. land, what do you think the response would be from the U.S.?

this exceptionally disturbing photograph of U.S. warfare-murdered children in Afghanistan is from here If the U.S. military murders anyone at all, it is never, ever "terrorism" not matter how terrifying the assaults and invasions are on human beings. When any aggression, or threats of aggression, or possibilities of explosives being on planes headed to the U.S., our media will call it "terrorism" even while no one was terrorised, raped, bombed, or murdered. Does that make any sense to you? What follows is from WarIsACrime.org.    Another Day, Another 850 Afghan Children Dead Submitted by davidswanson on Fri, 2010-10-29 16:48 Afghanistan Bamiyan Diaries – Day Five By David Smith-Ferri “Is This Normal?” In a small storage shed at the edge of town, we watched as fourteen-year-old Sayed Qarim signed a simple contract agreeing to borrow and repay a no-interest, 25,000 afghani loan (roughly $555). Daniel from the Zenda Company, the loan originator, counted out the crisp bills and handed them to Qarim, who smiled broadly and shook hands. Qarim, whose family farms potatoes and wheat, plans to use the funds to purchase a cow and her calf. “There are great benefits of owning a cow,” Qarim explains. “Our family gets to use the milk, and we can sell the calf for a good profit.” No one walking by outside on the narrow dirt road would have known an important business transaction had just occurred, one that could in fact help a young man and his family gain economic traction and greater security. The transaction didn’t take place in a bank. No village leaders were present. Only a fourteen-year-old boy, the representative of a private business company, and a witness. And while the signed agreement constitutes a business relationship, the Zenda Company sees it as primarily personal. Qarim was recommended for a loan by Faiz and Mohammad Jan, two other young men who live in his village and who have themselves recently received and repaid loans. Following this recommendation, Zenda spent much time getting to know Qarim, meeting with him, assessing his knowledge, his resources (such as access to grazing land), and his character, answering his questions, and describing to him his responsibilities as a borrower. Now that the transaction is complete, Qarim is required to send a picture of the cow and her calf as “proof” that the money was used as agreed. In addition, Hakim, another Zenda Company representative living in Bamiyan, who is fluent in Dari, the local language, will visit Qarim periodically. Along with Faiz and Mohammad Jan, he will try to provide whatever support Qarim needs to succeed. Eighteen months ago, Mohammad Jan borrowed funds to purchase a cow and her calf. Three times in the intervening months, he has fattened the cow, raised the calf, sold them and used the money from their sale to purchase another cow and calf. He has repaid the loan in full and netted a profit thus far of nearly 7,000 afghanis. Faiz has been equally successful, using borrowed funds to purchase lambs; he repaid his loan, took out another, and now owns ten sheep and two goats, prized locally both for their meat and for their fleeces. Zenda Company’s small business loan program has evolved gradually through trial and error in Bamiyan, and Hakim, a Singaporean medical doctor and ex-pat living now in an outlying village, is central to its success. Hakim (a name given to him by local people which means “learned one”) originally came from Singapore to Quetta, Pakistan, on the Afghanistan border, where he worked for two years with Afghan refugees. “I essentially lived within a refugee settlement, and I was treated as a local.” While there, however, Hakim wanted to do more than treat the symptoms of war. Six years ago, he came to Bamiyan as a development worker with an international Non-Governmental Organization (NGO). Today in Afghanistan, NGOs involved in development work are as thick as wheat stalks in a field, and their presence and operation has a significant impact in the country. But Hakim found that “the NGOs, too, have problems. They hold all the aid power, because they have all the money.” Because of this, says Hakim, despite their intentions, despite their mission, despite even their best efforts, international NGOs in Afghanistan often have a colonial relationship with Afghan communities, encouraging dependence rather than local initiative and sovereignty. And then there is the intractable question of results. As one Afghan person told us, “The world says it is helping us. Where is this help? None of it reaches the people who need it. Here in Afghanistan it has been going on so long that we have to joke and laugh in order to manage our anger and disappointment.” Seven months ago, Hakim left his position with the NGO. When he first arrived in Bamiyan, he was invited to visit and later to move into a small village. “The villages are very conservative. The only way to enter the community, even for a visit, is to be invited.” Hakim has been in the community now for six years, living as people in the village do, eating only what people in the village have to eat. Like a member of the family, he participates in work. “I help in the fields, too,” he says with a self-effacing laugh, “but I’m not very good at it. I cannot work nearly as long or as fast as others. “With time,” he says, “I’m realizing what it takes to practice what a young Afghan boy once told me, that without peace, life is impossible.” As he sees it, “morality, democracy, and intellectual honesty are dying. Here we have forty-three countries (in the ISAF) trying to solve the problem of violence in Afghanistan. How can we allow these countries to say that more violence will solve the problems of violence, without asking them for evidence, for results? Where is intellectual inquiry? Moral skepticism? Why is war always the next solution? Why not reconciliatory talks; who dictates that talks are impossible for human beings? Why are we so willing to accept that violence and terror are the norm? If ordinary people don’t question this, academics at least should, but they don’t. A local shepherd boy knows this is not normal.” In a country where villagers typically do not farm enough land to actually subsist, where malnutrition and stunted growth are in fact the norm, and where the situation is worsening as land is divided and passed on to children, Hakim began to realize that peace cannot be pursued separately from economic security and food security. With this in mind, Hakim took his current position with Zenda Company. Through Zenda’s revolving loan fund, dozens of Afghan individuals have borrowed money for business start-up. These businesses include not only loans to villagers for livestock purchase, but also loans to shop owners, and a number of loans to existing street vendors, who might, for example, benefit from having the funds to purchase a cart as well as additional inventory. The repayment terms on these loans are simple: one half due at the end of one year, and the full amount due at two years. People interested in applying for a loan do so by supplying a simple handwritten proposal. At present, Zenda has received requests for loans totaling far more than it has funds to lend. According to the United Nations, during the period 2005-2010 in Afghanistan, life expectancy at birth was less than forty-four years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy). Child mortality (before the age of five) is the highest in the world, and mortality for women in childbirth is among the highest. 850 children die daily in Afghanistan. According to UNICEF, in the 2003-2008 period, an astounding 59% of Afghan children under the age of five are considered “stunted,” and for 9% of Afghan children under five, malnutrition is so severe it is considered wasting. “Is this normal?” Hakim asks. Kathy Kelly, Jerica Arents, and David Smith-Ferri are Co-Coordinators of Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org). They are currently traveling in Afghanistan.

To President Obama: War--What is it Good For? Absolutely Nothing (except financially profiting the rich white men who control your decisions while destroying the lives of everyone else)

U.S. WAR accomplishes a few things well: mass murdering people of color. Raping and otherwise terrorising women. Sending primarily poor and working class women and men from the U.S. to other countries to be blown to bits and traumatised for the rest of their lives, however short they are.

Now YOU TELL ME, President Obama: WHY ARE YOU PERMITTING OUR TROOPS TO BE IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN TODAY, TOMORROW, AND NEXT WEEK?

Make the MORAL argument PUBLIC, please, for U.S. War on the World. (Especially U.S. and NATO Forces AGAINST Asia.)

An In-Fidelity Update: Fidelity Investment Company apparently is stubbornly and willfully invested in Maintaining Genocide

 [image is from here]

For this and other related reading and news, please see *here*. When you hear about people having large stock portfolios, day-trading, and being millionaires, what gender and race comes to mind? In my mind, and in my experience with few exceptions, the gender is man and the race is white. That is not a lucky break for white men, at all. It's entirely a function of the sexist and racist politics of corporate capitalism, "oppressive-and-lethal-not-free" trade, and globalisation.

Investors Against Genocide

Draw the line at investing in genocide

Dear friends of IAG, We are proud to let you know that our colleagues at the Unitarian Universalist Association announced on Friday that they will be moving their $178 million in retirement funds from Fidelity to TIAA-CREF as part of their commitment to genocide-free investing.  This important move is a leading example of the fact that Americans do not want their savings tied to genocide and that the market now provides clear mainstream choice for individuals and organizations that wish to be genocide-free. All of the details and news related to this announcement, including the UUA press release and a news article from Reuters are posted at this link: investorsagainstgenocide.org/UUAleavesFidelity We are very excited about this important step forward for genocide-free investing and thank you for your ongoing support. If you know of other groups that are moving, or have moved, their money to genocide-free options, please let us know.

WAYS YOU CAN HELP Consider moving your investments to American Funds or TIAA-CREF, the two mainstream investment firms that have human rights policies and have taken substantial action in support of those policies.  If you decide to do so after reviewing how the funds meet your personal financial and non-financial criteria, please write the company you are leaving as well as the company receiving your money to let management know why you have made this important decision.  Click here for details on the divestment by American Funds and TIAA-CREF. Volunteer to submit a shareholder proposal to mutual funds you've held for over a year and in which you have at least $2,000 invested.  The successes with American Funds and TIAA-CREF demonstrate that our shareholder resolutions are effectively pressuring mutual fund companies since both companies changed their policies only after receiving shareholders proposals from IAG volunteers.  Now we need more volunteers to submit our recently updated and strengthened proposal to companies like Vanguard, Fidelity, and Franklin Templeton that continue to hold large investments in problem companies.  We've made the submission process easy and confidential. Click here for details. Thanks so much all you've done and continue to do for the cause of genocide-free investing.

Eric, Susan, Bill, Mary and Shana The Investors Against Genocide Team

Women's Day in Australia: Malalai Joya Announces that Sec. of State Hillary Clinton Lied to Afghan Women in Order to Continue Pres. Obama's Military Massacres in and Occupation of Afghanistan. Girls as Young as 11 are Being Raped by U.S. and NATO Men: WHERE'S THE OUTRAGE??!!

[image of Hillary Clinton is from here]

What follows is from here]

Hillary lies again to Afghan women

Posted on 15 May 2010

Secretary of State Mrs. Hillary Rodham-Clinton has once again lied to Afghan women. She said that America will not abandon Afghan women. It already has. America has not kept its promises to the women of Afghanistan.

The youngest woman in the Afghan parliament has used International Women’s Day to slam the “disastrous conditions” for women in her country and ask Australians to help bring change.

Afghanistan’s Bravest Woman Malalai Joya:

• “Taliban are logistically & militarily growing stronger as each day dawns.”
•  “Afghan women and men are not ‘liberated’ at all”
• Woman Among the Warlords: The extraordinary story of an Afghan who dared to raise her voice
• Diary of Malalai Joya: ‘Raising My Voice’ against occupation of Afghanistan
• Malalai Joya: Afghanistan’s angry conscience
• “Afghanistan is getting progressively worse. We are caught between two enemies: Taliban and US/NATO forces” — Malalai Joya

Malalai Joya, 28, told a conference at Sydney’s Darling Harbour today there has been “no fundamental change in the plight of Afghan people” since the US removed the Taliban five years ago.

“Afghan women and men are not ‘liberated’ at all,” Joya said. “When the entire nation is living under the shadow of gun and warlordism, how can its women enjoy very basic freedoms?”

Joya said the women’s rights situation was as “catastrophic” as it was under the Taliban.

She gave the death of 18-year-old Samiya, who hanged herself before she was to be sold to a 60-year-old man, and the rape of children as young as 11 by the US and international troops as examples.

“No nation can donate liberation to another nation,” Joya said. “If Australian policy makers really want to help Afghan people and bring positive changes, they must allign their policies according to the aspirations and wishes of Afghan people, rather than becoming a tool to implement the wrong policies of the US government.”

Joya, who survived an assassination attempt after speaking out againgst Afghan warlords, said the suicide rate of Afghan women was at an all-time high. As many as 1.9 per cent of women die during childbirth.

To celebrate International Women’s Day in Sydney, festivals are underway in Liverpool and Cabramatta to mark the day. Female MP tells of rights ‘catastrophe’. Email Print Normal font Large font Yuko Narushima. March 8, 2007 – 1:04PM

Afghanistan’s Bravest Woman Malalai Joya: “Taliban are logistically & militarily growing stronger as each day dawns.” “Afghan women and men are not ‘liberated’ at all”

Malalai Joya is an angry woman. She’s angry about the war being carried out by the international coalition in her country, Afghanistan, angry about the UN bombs that are killing civilians in their villages, angry about calls for reconciliation with the Taliban and the war lords. “Stop the massacres in my country. Withdraw your foreign troops so we can stop Talibanization,” is what the young Afghan deputy tells Western public opinion.

WASHINGTON: Women’s rights will not be sacrificed in any settlement between the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Taliban militants, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said late on Thursday.

Clinton ruled out US support, or at least her own, for negotiations with anyone who would roll back advances for Afghan women achieved since the militant Islamic Taliban movement was ousted from power in 2001.

“There are certain conditions that have to be met,” to hold talks with insurgents about laying down arms, Clinton said during an appearance with Karzai. Karzai and a large delegation of government ministers and advisers, including several women, were finishing four days of talks in Washington.

Among the conditions for peace talks, midlevel Taliban leaders would have to renounce violence, cut ties with al-Qaeda and its affiliates and abide by Afghanistan’s laws and constitution, Clinton said.

“And on a personal note they must respect women’s rights.” Karzai nodded beside her but did not mention the women’s rights aspect of possible talks with the Taliban. The other conditions apply, he said.

The Taliban regime forced women to wear a traditional head-to-toe covering called a Burqa, forbade school for girls and beat women seen walking without being accompanied by a man. The Taliban has surged back over the past several years to become a persistent insurgency seeking Karzai’s overthrow. Insurgents and their sympathisers routinely intimidate or attack women who work outside the home, wear Western dress or try to attend school.

Clinton, whose bid for president in 2008 got further than any American woman before her, made a similar point when she met with Afghan women earlier Thursday at the State Department.

“We will not abandon you; we will stand with you always,” Clinton told three senior female Afghan officials who were part of Karzai’s delegation. The trip ends on Friday with Karzai’s visit to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, home of the 101st Airborne Division that is deploying en masse to Afghanistan.

Clinton said it was “essential that women’s rights and women’s opportunities are not sacrificed or trampled on in the reconciliation process.”

Karzai sought US blessing this week for wider talks with the Taliban when the time comes. President Barack Obama seemed noncommittal during a White House news conference with Karzai on Wednesday. Saturday, May 15, 2010

Here’s how Joya sums it up in her own words:

“The people of Afghanistan are fed up with the occupation of their country and with the corrupt, Mafia-state of Hamid Karzai and the warlords and drug lords backed by NATO…. It is clear now that the real motive of the U.S. and its allies, hidden behind the so-called “war on terror,” was to convert Afghanistan into a military base in Central Asia and the capital of the world’s opium drug trade. Ordinary Afghan people are being used in this chess game, and western taxpayers’ money and the blood of soldiers is being wasted on this agenda that will only further destabilize the region….Afghan and American lives are being needlessly lost.

“Afghans live under the shadow of the gun with the most corrupt government in the world.”– Malalai Joya

• The US occupation has not brought security to Afghan women
• Total collapse in Afghanistan:-Chasing the ghosts of the “Ho Chi Minh” …
• Afghanistan’s Bravest Woman Malalai Joya: “Taliban are logistically & m…

JOYA’S SOLUTION: “Withdraw All Foreign Troops”

Malalai Joya: “Some people say that when the troops withdraw, a civil war will break out. Often this prospect is raised by people who ignore the vicious conflict and humanitarian disaster that is already occurring in Afghanistan. The longer the foreign troops stay in Afghanistan, the worse the eventual civil war will be for the Afghan people. The terrible civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal certainly could never justify… the destruction and death caused by that decade-long occupation.” (p 217)…Today we live under the shadow of the gun with the most corrupt and unpopular government in the world. (p 211)

Protestors Gather and March in Washington D.C.: End The Wars In Afghanistan and Iraq!

 [image is from here]

What follows is from *here*, from A.N.S.W.E.R.: Act Now to Stop War and End Racism.

Images of the protest may be seen here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/48631321@N07/sets/72157623547774567/show/


Thousands take to the streets to demand:
 U.S. out of Afghanistan and Iraq now!

On Saturday, thousands of people converged at the White House for the March 20 March on Washington—the largest anti-war demonstration since the announcement of the escalation of the Afghanistan war. By the time the march started at 2 p.m., the crowd had swelled up to 10,000 protesters.

Transportation to Washington, D.C., was organized from over 50 cities in 20 states. Demonstrators rallied and marched shoulder to shoulder to demand “U.S. Out of Iraq and Afghanistan Now,” “Free Palestine,” “Reparations for Haiti” and “No sanctions against Iran” as well as “Money for jobs, education and health care!”

Speakers at the Washington rally represented a broad cross section of the anti-war movement, including veterans and military families, labor, youth and students, immigrant right groups, and the Muslim and Arab American community.

Following the rally, a militant march led by veterans, active-duty service members and military families made its way through the streets of D.C. carrying coffins draped in Afghan, Iraqi, Pakistani, Somali, Yemeni, Haitian and U.S. flags, among those of other countries, as a symbol of the human cost of war and occupation. Coffins were dropped off along the way at Halliburton, the Washington Post, the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs and other institutions connected to the war profiteering, propaganda, and human suffering. The final coffin drop-off was at the White House—the decision-making center of U.S. imperialism.

The demonstration received substantial media coverage. It was featured in a major story on page A3 on the Sunday Washington Post (click here to read it). An Associated Press article on the March on Washington was picked up by a large number of newspapers and media outlets in the United States and abroad.

Joint demonstrations in San Francisco and Los Angeles drew 5,000 protesters each.

In San Francisco, the demonstration included the participation of UNITE HERE Local 2 hotel workers, who are presently fighting for a contract; students, teachers and parents who have been organizing against education budget cutbacks; and community members and activists who have been engaged in a struggle to stop fare hikes and service cuts.

In Los Angeles, demonstrators marched through the streets of Hollywood carrying not only coffins but also large tombstones that read “R.I.P. Health care / Jobs / Public Education / Housing,” to draw attention to the economic war being waged against working-class people at home in order to fund the wars abroad. Essential social services are being slashed to pay for the largest defense budget in history.

The March 20 demonstrations mark a new phase for the anti-war movement. A new layer of activists joined these actions in large numbers, including numerous youth and students from multinational, working-class communities. A sharp connection was drawn between the wars abroad and the war against working people at home. Though smaller than the demonstrations of 2007, this mobilization was larger than the demonstration last year—the first major anti-war action under the Obama administration. The real-life experience of the past year has shown that what we need is not a change in the presidency, but a change in the system that thrives on war, militarism and profits.

These demonstrations were a success thanks to the committed work of thousands of organizers and volunteers around the country. They raised funds, spread the word through posters and flyers, organized buses and other transportation, and carried out all the work that was needed on the day of the demonstration. We took to the streets in force even as the government tried to silence us with tens of thousands of dollars in illegal fines for postering in Washington, D.C., and felony charges against activists for postering in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

We want to especially thank all those who made generous donations for this mobilization. Without those contributions, we could not have carried out this work.

March 20 was an important step forward for the anti-war movement. We must continue to build on this momentum in the months ahead. Your donation will help us recover much-needed funds that helped pay for this weekend's successful demonstration, as well as prepare for the actions to come. Please make a generous donation to support the anti-war movement.

And Will The U.S. Het Male Troops Who Did, for Years, and who Are, and who Will Rape Afghan Women Ever Be Charged With Crimes Against Humanity?

That is the question I wish for you to ask yourselves as you read about the following atrocity and horror, that no government, it seems, will recognise as such. And no government, so far, will say that there is a war by het men, against all women. "Revenge rapes" appears to be a term used to describe crimes against womanity by men who take what they want when they want it in order to purposefully harm, degrade, violate, and humiliate women and girls.

As a U.S. citizen, it appears to me that most rape is an act of het male entitlement, expressing, in atrocity, het men's sense of right, entitlement to take what they want when they want it, regardless of the impact or effect or damage to the female humans beings, and yes, also sometimes to boys and men--with het men raping other men only when there are no females around.

What follows has some historic and cultural location. And the experiences of these women and girls is bound up with that history and location.

But het men's savage rape of women is not bound by region or era. As noted, in the U.S. the most raped population of females is American Indian women and girls, by predatory white het men. One in three, people. One in three. Not always by white men, but at least eight of every ten rapists are white, which tells you a lot about who the savages are and have always been in the United Rapes of Amerikkka. But this is a story particular, in some ways, to Afghanistan, and some of those particulars are made clear here. After you are done reading this, return to the heading of this post, and ask yourself: what are the chances that U.S. Troops, men, who rape Afghan and Iraqi women, will ever be brought to justice by any government? Because when stories like the one below are put into the U.S. media, it is to pretend that "only those Afghan men are callous brutes", and it is time to realise, we produce them here, in great quantity, and almost none of them are ever brought before a court for being rapists, and almost none of those that do enter a courtroom for that time see any time in prison. And of those who go to prison, the sentence is years, not a lifetime. Never mind that for many survivors of sexual assault, if not all, the time it will take us to get over the violation and humiliation and other physical and psychic harm is a lifetime, or longer.

What follows is from *here*.

“In My Father’s House They Gathered All the Women into One Room”

Visiting the victims of Afghanistan's revenge rapes.

BY ANNA BADKHEN

Kampirak, Amir Jan, and Qulyambo

O, daughters of Balkh! Your unrivaled beauty is the stuff of legends. One of your own has enchanted Alexander the Great with her pulchritude. And the violence you have suffered under the breast-shaped clay roofs of your Baktrian homes is unspeakable, unspoken, and unpunished. 

In late 2001, after helping kick the Taliban out of northern Afghanistan, two militias allied with the United States raped and plundered their way through your villages. One was the ethnic Uzbek militia of General Abdul Rashid Dostum; the other was made up of ethnic Hazara followers of the warlord Muhammad Mohaqiq. They killed your men, slaughtered and stole your livestock, pillaged your homes, and violated your sisters, mothers, and daughters. Some of them took the time to explain why they had picked you as their victims: Because you are Pashtun, the ethnic group that made up most of the Taliban. 

They were victorious; they were in the mood to avenge the rapes and massacres Taliban fighters had committed against their own wives, sisters and daughters. In the evolution of warfare, swords replaced javelins and guns replaced swords -- but rape has remained just as efficient a weapon as it was when the Achaemenid armies lay waste to this land, 2,600 years ago. You, daughters of Balkh, were the latest targets of the latest revenge cycle that swept through your country. Wheat in your fields has shuddered at the anguished screams of generations of your foremothers. 

Eight years ago, four Pashtun women told me of their assailants, three fighters from Dostum's militia, Junbish-e-Milli-e-Islami who took turn raping them all night. Technically, only one of them, Nazu, was a woman; her daughters were 10, 12, and 14. The youngest, Bibi Amina, was playing with the fringe of the giant red scarf that covered her head and smiling. It seemed to me that she had not understood what had been done to her. The local police chief, an ethnic Tajik, said at the time that his men were too few, and too poorly armed, to hunt down the assailants. He was waiting for reinforcements. 

Years passed; the militiamen who ravaged the Pashtun villages in Balkh remained free. Their warlords became government ministers; their lower-ranking commanders received posts in parliament; many of the rank-and-file fighters joined the police and thearmy. Their victims stopped talking about the crimes they had endured: Rape in Afghanistan carries a mark of unutterable disgrace.

Under their breast-shaped roofs - perfect hemispheres that face the limpid clay sky and virescent fields of wheat -- the women grieve quietly, and alone. They knead their tragedies into the golden sundials of nan they bake in smoky tandoor ovens in their impoverished courtyards; they weave them into the oil-black braids of their young, beautiful daughters; they immure them into the crumbling house walls they mend with fistfuls of straw and mud. When they do speak of those terrible days after the Taliban fell, they equivocate. 

"They touched all the women and the teenage girls," one widow, whose cheeks and forehead are dotted with deep-blue marks of tribal tattoos, whispers to me in the corner of her dust-choked house.

"They dragged us out of our homes. Women and girls are ashamed to talk about what happened then," says another, modestly covering her face with a tatteredscarf the color of ripe wheat. 

In my father's house they gathered all the women in one room," says the third. Her amber eyes bore through me. "We will never forgive these crimes. Until we die." 

Last month, the Afghan government confirmed that it had signed into force the National Stability and Reconciliation Law -- and what a tragic misnomer that is. The law effectively amnesties all warlords and fighters responsible for large-scale human rights abuses in the preceding decades. "Their view," says Farid Mutaqi, a human rights worker in Mazar-e-Sharif, "is that justice should be the victim of peace." 

You know what this means, daughters of Balkh: This means your rapes will never be punished. Perhaps, in some future iteration of war that has been rolling back and forth through these green wheat fields almost incessantly for millennia, they will be avenged -- through some other rapes, of some other women.

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URL for news «“In My Father’s House They Gathered All the Women into One Room”»

http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2010/04/17/in-my-fathers-house-they-gathered-all-the-women-into-one-room.html

News Archive of the «Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan» (RAWA)

President Obama, How Clear Does the Message Have to Be For You to Listen?! Memo to [U.S.] America: Stop Murdering My People, by Malalai Joya

What follows is a cross post from *here*. It may also be found at ZNet, *here*.

 

Memo to America: Stop Murdering My People

by Malalai Joya

Malalai Joya, now 31, was the youngest member of the Afghan Parliament, elected in 2005. In 2007 she was suspended from Parliament because of her consistent criticism of the warlords and other human rights abusers in the Karzai regime. Joya has survived five assassination attempts to date, and has written her life story in the book A Woman Among Warlords (with Derrick O’Keefe, Scribner, 2009). She writes from Kabul, Afghanistan.

 

Tauseef Mustafa, AFP / Getty Images  

Amid increasing civilian deaths and resurgent warlordism, Afghan women's leader Malalai Joya writes that Hamid Karzai and the U.S. are losing credibility in Afghanistan day by day.

Almost every day, the NATO occupation of our country continues to kill innocent people. Each time, it seems, military officials try to claim that only insurgents are killed, or they completely deny and cover up their crimes. The work of a few courageous journalists is the only thing that brings some of these atrocities to light.
For instance, it was only after the reporting of Jerome Starkey of the Times of London that officials admitted to the brutal Feb. 12 murder of two pregnant women, a teenage girl, and several young men in a night raid at a home where a family was celebrating the birth of a child.

We can no longer bear the killing of our pregnant mothers, the killing of our teenagers and young children, the killing of so many Afghan men and women. We can no longer bear these “accidents” and these “apologies” for the deaths of the innocent. 

Night raids, air raid “mistakes,” firing on civilian buses and cars at checkpoints—the occupation finds many ways of killing the people of Afghanistan. The excuses and lies for these deaths are like salt in our wounds, and it is no wonder that protests against the U.S. military are growing. The Afghan people have had enough.
In recent weeks, there has been much talk about Hamid Karzai’s threats to join the Taliban and about his supposed differences with the American government. But for Afghans, Karzai long ago lost all credibility. The joke among our people is that Karzai doesn’t do or say anything without consulting the White House first. No amount of nationalistic rhetoric or demagoguery on his part will change this perception.

Everyone in Afghanistan knows that Karzai was placed into power with the backing of the United States and its allies, and to this day he relies on their support. His regime would not last a day without it. And Afghans know too well the reality of his corrupt government: It has delivered nothing to the country’s poor other than sorrow and destitution, while filling the pockets of drug traffickers, warlords, and its own corrupt officials.

Afghanistan has had puppet leaders before, rulers who served only the interests of foreign occupiers, whether British or Soviet. But Karzai may be the most hated puppet in our history; he has empowered some of the most brutal internal enemies of ordinary Afghans, warlords of the Northern Alliance like Sayyaf, Dr. Abdullah, Rabbani, Mohaqiq, Ismael Kahn, Dostum and many others. Even his two vice presidents, Fahim Qasim and Karim Khalili, are notorious fundamentalist warlords. The president’s brother in Kandahar, Ahmed Wali Karzai, is another thug in power whose links to the drug trade and the CIA have been widely reported.

Karzai made headlines by threatening to “join the Taliban,” but the reality is that for more than eight years he has had no problem working with fundamentalists who are the ideological brothers of the anti-women Taliban. In fact, Karzai himself used to support the Taliban when he was a minor tribal leader in Kandahar in the 1990s, and for years he has been negotiating to bring Taliban leaders into his puppet regime. Some of them are already serving in his regime, and the U.S. government has been encouraging these negotiations by creating the false categories of "moderate" and "extremist" Taliban.

He has also been reaching out to that most brutal warlord and criminal, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a mujahideen leader known for killing civilians and currently designated a terrorist by the U.S. government. Karzai recently appointed Abdul Hadi Arghandewal, an infamous leader of Hekmatyar’s party, as his minister in charge of the economy. These negotiations and flexible alliances by Karzai and the U.S. government are nothing new. For three decades, the U.S. has backed these criminals: Hekmatyar, al Qaeda and other fundamentalists in the 1980s, the Taliban in the 1990s, and now Karzai and his warlord allies.

An Open Letter to President Barack Obama in response to your Proclamation Against Sexual Assault in the U.S.

 

[image of U.S. President Barack Obama is from here]

Dear President Obama,

I am concerned that actions that can lead to a decrease in sexual assault, particularly against populations most vulnerable in our free society, are not being accomplished, and are not even being advocated by the Leader of this land.

As you well note, Native American women are at particular risk for rape, at double the rate of the rape of women across race in the U.S. And as you may know, over 80% of the rapists of Native women are white men. Will you support amnesty for any Native American person living on reservation land, within the boundaries of their own Nation, to use their authority and agency as citizens of their Nations to shoot to kill any white man who trespasses as an illegal alien, as a terrorist, onto Indian land without prior permission and expressed reason to cross onto the land of a community with a specific destination that is not "in order to rape a Native American woman"?

Are you willing to state that rape functions normally and systematically as a form of male supremacist terrorism against female human beings, that rapists are terrorists, so that we can begin to note that inside and outside of police forces, inside and outside of the military, and inside and outside of women's homes and various workplaces and institutions of learning and prayer, white men are the demographic that ought to be stigmatised as terrorists, if any group ought to be. Can you instruct the media to make this clear, so that white U.S. folks more clearly understand that Arab-American Muslim men or women living in the U.S. are no longer mistakenly designated as terrorists against other U.S. citizens? Can you similarly instruct the media to report that the gender, race, and religious identity of "the terrorist on U.S. soil" is usually a white Christian-identified heterosexual husband or boyfriend of a woman, or the father figure of a girl; it is that demographic which statistically and in practice, threatens the lives, the human rights and health, of the women and girls white heterosexual men systematically sexually abuse?

Another particularly vulnerable population to rape and other sexual assault are women and girls who are being pimped, trafficked, and sold into sexual slavery. Are you willing to take leadership to criminalise the acts of U.S. citizens procuring women anywhere in the world for the purposes of obtaining sexual acts in exchange for money? Will you also decriminalise the acts of pimped, trafficked, and enslaved women seeking money from procurers, so that when they are raped they are not deterred from reporting the rape to the police out of fear of being arrested, harassed, and further assaulted?

Another at risk population is what this country terms "immigrants" and "migrants", among other more pejorative terms, like "illegal aliens". Are you willing to make it law that any person currently existing, working, residing, or living within the boundaries of U.S. territories who is raped or otherwise sexually assaulted by a U.S. citizen, is free to report the rape and obtain medical attention and other survival services as needed, and not be charged with trespass or sent back to their country of origin? And that the rapists' and assaulters' rights to reside within the U.S. as a free citizen are revoked?

With regard to children, are you willing to have a one strike policy for child molesters and adult incest perpetrators, so that they may not be allowed to continue to reside in free society; that they will, necessarily, suffer the consequence of loss of freedom should they sexually assault a child? Are you willing to publicly note that it is men within the family who are the most likely people to commit sexual assault, and that it is women and girls within families that nurture and care for predators who are the majority of victims of sexual assault? Are you willing to make it law that no father or grandfather who has committed any act of child molestation or child sexual assault be allowed visitation of any of his biological children or grandchildren, adopted children, step-children, or any other children in his family or the families of those with whom he associates?

With regard to Catholic priests and other ordained clergy: are you willing to devote resources for making sure that those clergy who abuse children are put away behind federal prison bars, not merely transported to another district or church congregation to reoffend? Are you willing to make a public statement of outrage to Pope Benedict and all the cardinals, bishops, and other leaders within the Catholic Church's organisational structure, declaring the criminals who are aiding and abetting terrorists within a terroristic institution that specifically and with structurally approved provisions and policies, regularly places known male sex offenders in proximity of children and women? Are you supportive of preventing known sex offenders from congregating and worshiping with their victims? Will you offer leadership in declaring as moral, good, and right, doing whatever is lawfully necessary to stop religiously-protected perpetrators from serially committing sex crimes against humanity?

What steps are you planning to take to ensure that the sexual harassment and assault of girls by boys, inside and around public school systems, is made an actionable offense resulting in expulsion, so that those victimised are safe to go to school the days following being harassed and assaulted without being further abused, humiliated, and degraded?

Will you publicly promote and advocate for women and children to defend themselves against family members who are serial sexual predators and sexual assault perpetrators, such that it becomes fully legal and not criminal for the victims to employ strategies against their perpetrators, to any degree that is appropriate and necessary to make survivable the process of safely escaping conditions of systematic sexual or gendered terrorism within the family home, including the use of premeditated lethal force by those victims?

Afghan and Iraqi citizens--women, as a matter of common practice if not overt policy, are raped as well as terrorised through other militaristic means by U.S. troops--men. Are you willing to be personally, ethically, and legally responsible for men's rapes and deaths of women and girls? What is your justification for allowing this militarised political predation to continue? If for no other reason that to stop U.S. male soldiers from raping Afghan and Iraqi women and girls, will you please remove our troops from our wars against the Iraqi and Afghan people, as you were instructed to do by those citizens who elected you into the office you now hold?

Finally, will you identify the crimes of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment as male supremacist hate crimes against women, given that these crimes, as you note, are overwhelmingly committed by men against women, and by adolescent and teen boys against girls? Do you support these crimes being legally framed, understood, treated, and prosecuted as such under federal law?

Toward a more just, safe, and humane world in which children and women can live with men in peace, not war.

I look forward to your reply.

Julian Real, a residing citizen of the U.S.A.

*          *          *

For those who have not yet read it, this is President Obama's official statement:

NATIONAL SEXUAL ASSAULT AWARENESS MONTH Proclamation, 2010

04/02/2010 THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release April 1, 2010

NATIONAL SEXUAL ASSAULT AWARENESS MONTH, 2010

- - - - - - -

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

Every day, women, men, and children across America suffer the pain and trauma of sexual assault. From verbal harassment and intimidation to molestation and rape, this crime occurs far too frequently, goes unreported far too often, and leaves long-lasting physical and emotional scars. During National Sexual Assault Awareness Month, we recommit ourselves not only to lifting the veil of secrecy and shame surrounding sexual violence, but also to raising awareness, expanding support for victims, and strengthening our response.

Sexual violence is an affront to our national conscience, one which we cannot ignore. It disproportionately affects women -- an estimated one in six American women will experience an attempted or completed rape at some point in her life. Too many men and boys are also affected.

These facts are deeply troubling, and yet, sexual violence affects Americans of all ages, backgrounds, and circumstances. Alarming rates of sexual violence occur among young women attending college, and frequently, alcohol or drugs are used to incapacitate the victim. Among people with disabilities, isolation may lead to repeated assaults and an inability to seek and locate help. Native American women are more than twice as likely to be sexually assaulted compared with the general population. As a Nation, we share the responsibility for protecting each other from sexual assault, supporting victims when it does occur, and bringing perpetrators to justice.

We can lead this charge by confronting and changing insensitive attitudes wherever they persist. Survivors too often suffer in silence because they fear further injury, are unwilling to experience further humiliation, or lack faith in the criminal justice system. This feeling of isolation, often compounded with suicidal feelings, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder, only exacerbate victims' sense of hopelessness. No one should face this trauma alone, and as families, friends, and mentors, we can empower victims to seek the assistance they need.

At the Federal, State, local, and tribal level, we must work to provide necessary resources to victims of every circumstance, including medical attention, mental health more services, relocation and housing assistance, and advocacy during legal proceedings. Under Vice President Biden's leadership, the 2005 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act included the Sexual Assault Services Program, the first-ever funding stream dedicated solely to providing direct services to victims of sexual assault. To further combat sexual violence, my 2011 Budget doubles funding for this program. Through the Justice Department and the Centers for Disease Control, we are funding prevention and awareness campaigns as well as grants for campus services to address sexual assault on college campuses. The Justice Department has also increased funding and resources to combat violence against Native American women.

As we continue to confront this crime, let us reaffirm this month our dedication to take action in our communities and stop abuse before it starts. Together, we can increase awareness about sexual violence, decrease its frequency, punish offenders, help victims, and heal lives.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim April 2010 as National Sexual Assault Awareness Month. I urge all Americans to reach out to victims, learn more about this crime, and speak out against it.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this first day of April, in the year of our Lord two thousand ten, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-fourth.

BARACK OBAMA

Collateral Damage, Genocide, and U.R.A. White Men's Wars Against Humanity (That Means A White Male War Against Women of Color)

As should be obvious, U.R.A (United Rapes of Amerikkka) wars, since the beginning and founding of the U.R.A. are designed and determined to "take out" people of color. This is a blatant form of white supremacist policy, to keep our wars against people in countries of color ongoing, including against Indigenous Nations within the U.R.A., and against poor communities of color within the U.R.A. (again, meaning the U.S.A.).

Consider this: as many women are killed by their male partners each year in the U.S. as U.S.ers were killed in the attack by the Taliban operatives on "9/11". As MacKinnon has noted, murder by male batterers of women is women's annual "9/11".

Consider this list:

1950-1953	Korean War	United States (as part of the United Nations) and South Korea vs. North Korea and Communist China
1960-1975	Vietnam War	United States and South Vietnam vs. North Vietnam
1961	Bay of Pigs Invasion	United States vs. Cuba
1983	Grenada	United States Intervention
1989	US Invasion of Panama	United States vs. Panama
1990-1991	Persian Gulf War	United States and Coalition Forces vs. Iraq
1995-1996	Intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina	United States as part of NATO acted peacekeepers in former Yugoslavia
2001	Invasion of Afghanistan	United States and Coalition Forces vs. the Taliban regime in Afghanistan to fight terrorism.
2003	Invasion of Iraq	United States and Coalition Forces vs. Iraq

Now, consider that all U.R.A. covert operations, for example against people--disproportionately children and women in Central American countries, particularly but not only in the 1980s, are not listed. For a much more horrendously complete list, see here. Also, the WHS U.S.'s wars against people of color within the boundaries of the U.R.A. are not counted, such as the creation and maintenance of poverty; tangential to this: the U.S. government's commitment to on-going genocide against Indigenous Americans is not listed. Also, the Maafa is not listed. The war against Mexico's "illegal aliens", back onto Mexican war-taken land now illegally called "The Southwestern United States", is not included. The internment of Japanese Americans during WWII is not included.

What I'd like to state here is what the video title tells us, in an ungendered way: "collateral damage" always means the heinous murder of primarily women and children, and are also raped in any wars by men against men. This is to say, any and all wars by men against men are wars against women and children.

While what follows is not on the subject of the sexual politics of U.R.A. military policies and practices, I think it's important to see. With great thanks to one of BrownFemiPower's sites where I found this video. These opening remarks were found at one of her sites.

Wikileaks has obtained and decrypted this previously unreleased video footage from a US Apache helicopter in 2007. It shows Reuters journalist Namir Noor-Eldeen, driver Saeed Chmagh, and several others as the Apache shoots and kills them in a public square in Eastern Baghdad. ...

Here's a video about some of the damage done: