Sending a Better Message to the People of Iraq
Today is World Refugee Day. Yesterday the House passed an Iraq Supplemental with no deadlines for withdrawal and with funding for the occupation into next year.
Every day in Iraq, the Iraqi Red Crescent workers put their lives on the line to bring food, water, and medical care to their fellow Iraqis. Scores of these humanitarian workers have been kidnapped, murdered and harassed by death squads. Reports of raids on Red Crescent offices by our forces are frequent. Yet they keep on working – doing all they can to bring relief to internally displaced Iraqis and to their neighbors across Iraq. IRC is the only organization still bringing such aid to every region of Iraq and across all sectarian lines.
A number of us thought today was a very good day to flood the IRC with donations – and even if you can only donate a little, they will put every bit to work. This is one small way we can show our opposition to the occupation and our concern for the devastation our country is causing the Iraqi people.
To send a donation, click here and select “Iraq Humanitarian Response” in the “I want my contribution to go here” box. 100% of your donation will go directly to assisting Iraq Red Crescent’s work. Here's what your donation will buy:
Every 15 days, Iraqi Red Crescent networks deliver food rations that include flour, rice, sugar, vegetable oil, tomato paste, salt, jam, spaghetti, lentils, tea, sardines, and cheese. The $33.50 USD cost per family ration covers the expense of the food, distribution, transport and security. (These rations are delivered to 200,000 families.)
A share of non-food items contains 4 blankets, a cooking stove, lantern, 2 jerry cans, a kitchen set and thermos, which are distributed every three months at a cost of $99.50 USD per family.
(These supplies are delivered to 50,000 families.)
Sending a donation to support these efforts seems the least we can do as our Congress continues to approve funds for the very occupation that leads to these conditions.
Firedoglake, EENR Progressive Blog, Main and Central, Florida Speaks, Slobber and Spittle, and Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation will be joining in - let us know of any other links we can add to this list.
Two good posts for background can be found at A Refugee Story (h/t Laura) and at Cujo's Iraq's Refugees Eight Months Later.
this is a great initiative.
also, does anyone know if there are any micro-loan services (like KIVA) operating in the ME?
another great idea: letting the iraqis control their own resources, like, ummm, oil
Go Red Crescent!!
Done. Thanks for the link.
So happy that U.S. forces are raiding offices of the Red Crescent. I guess they must be the bad guys since they have a blood-red crescent for their insignia instead of a X-tian cross.
How about putting Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, Rove, Kristol, et al on trial for war crimes, sell it on pay-per-view and donate the proceeds to Iraqi relief ? The country would be back on it's feet in a week .
Look, I dont AGREE what the spineless Democrats are doing by approving the supplemental with no deadlines- but I clearly UNDERSTAND it. They need to occupy the Whitehouse to really make a change- pure and simple. It's the perception game that is the problem: if they do whats right, and de fund the war, it'll be spun too hard by the Republicans as defeat and putting the troops at risk, thus ensuring they LOSE the Whitehouse altogether, and then we ( and more specifically, the troops) will truly s-t out of luck. The Right wing smear machine is simply too strong.
What we have done to this country and those people is sinful. There is now way we can make it up to them other than to just get out.
Steve @ 6:
That's because we live in a capitalist nation. The government looks out for the corporations through tax cuts and immunity bills, while the corporations keep the politicians in business. Why do you think McCain is getting WAAAAY less scrutiny than Obama?
The same applies to voters in this country. They are conditioned by the media, on what to think, what's important, how to think and why. The result is that you've got a system that's run by big business, and the dumb sheeple American still thinks he/she live in a free democratic country.
Ask yourself, why is it that Americans live in an intellectual bubble? Why is it that the average American knows very little about what goes on outside their borders? It's because they were conditioned to think they live in the greatest country on earth and that the rest of the world doesn't matter.
If you want real change, you need to change perceptions. To change perceptions you need to look into changing your kids education, what they learn, what they watch on TV, what "garbage" they are told is good for them (re: American Idol).
It's no easy task. But it starts at home. That's the easiest way to approach this because you and I don't have billions of dollars to change the media in this country.
The War in Iraq Costs $341.4 million per day.
Where is this very serious, clockwork like, transfer of wealth going to?
Apparently NOT to the people were supposed to be helping or liberating.
Contributions or volenteers. Without them, huge numbers would die needlessly, from the total lack of the basics of life.
Just, how has this war, in ANY way, supposedly helped or is helping the people, when they must depend on nothing BUT contributions of the shear basics of life? All they got is death and suffering, worse than they had before.
It makes me truely sick how the people over there, and even over here, after every disaster, man made or natural, must ALWAYS depend on volenteers and contributions to stay alive, despite the mega-trillions of tax dollars being collected for that purpose.
WTF are we paying them for, if we ALL still have to depend on contributions? Excuses? To help them maintain and exceed their record breaking privatized profits for the quarter? Then what we the people are paying for, IS NOT WORKING, in any sense of the way.
Maybe the military industrial complex should have to depend on contributions and volenteers to build there killing machines.
NWO=POFSLLMF
500,000 Innocent Iraqi Kids killed by Clintons sanctions according to Unicef. Now its time to give back. I support this call for donations.
So the Dem Congress have passed more funding for the Iraq War and also passed Warrantless wiretaps in the same week. And Liberals call the GOP Liars lol? Look at the evidence .
Reports of raids on Red Crescent offices by our forces are frequent.
That is filthy. It's becoming harder and harder to stay optimistic with this going on.
Dennis D @ 10:
Yep - and more, how many now are stunted with uranium poisoning - not to mention the adults. Your point about the Clinton administration's strangling of Iraq through the UN is what's been going around in my head around all of this. I wonder what Al Gore thought about it all. Funny how we set up 'heros' (Clinton, Gore, whoever) when really they are just part of the filthy money machine that will do anything to achieve it's objectives.
Pat J @ 7:
That's true, but of course that's not going to happen. The US is now controlling the water in the region - the plan is all set for a big future for vested interests.
Of course, even if the US left now, a hell of a lot of Iraqis will die slow lingering deaths and children will be born deformed, with two heads and no arms or whatever from the depleted uranium that's been sprayed everywhere. The country has got to be radioactive by now - god, what those troops will be suffering from - the Iraqis, well, they're just Iraqis.... terrible isn't it?
Lynda: How this government sleeps at night, and I am including both Dems and Repubs, is troubling. Going to bed on full stomaches, attending parties with friends and families, going about your everyday business without a thought that true suffering is taking place in another part of the world that you helped create is astounding. And the saddest part of all is that whoever wins in November won't change conditions very much.
Pat J @ 15:
Could not agree more, Pat J.
I gave $ 100 , dumb perhaps , being on food stamps , having had 2 heart attacks , need to lie about being employable , yet what little I have , is much more than they have and I can only hope it goes to those that need it . Because if it dosnt then someone just bought a huge can of whoopass , I mean to tell you , if this is fucked up , karma , oh yea ! .
So how long before the bushies and their enablers brand the IRC as a terraristic organization and go after people who donate to them? Not trying to be an arse about it, just asking as I wouldn't put it past them, remember the bombing of Al Jazeera in Iraq?
David N @ 17:
A Tibetan once said: "Only those who have experienced a harsh winter know the warmth of the sun".
This world needs more altruistic, courageous and caring people like you, sir. May you get well and be blessed. I'll keep you in my thoughts.
Ajar ,
it is world wide , it is crazy , what country is at peace ? , these are such great times , what we now know about life , will be forgotten when we are dead .l
Bush has 35+ death squads controling Basra and it's oil, 40+ in Baghdad - the 500,000 exiles each year like the tiny amount of help they get from the U.S. but would really prefer it if Bush stoped paying those death squads and told them to stop killing the Iraqi people.
Everything in Iraq is controled by the death squads, they run the green zone, they are the government, the Iraqi army and police to - and they have a lot of ethnic cleansing of other part voters to do so that they have a better chance in the comeing "democratic" "elections" Bush is pushing down their throats.
There are over 4 million orphans in Iraq now, no one can help them untill those death squads are stopped from makeing orphans. The aid organizations in Iraq are run by death squads to, the Iraqi ministery of "health" kills patianst of the "wrong" type on their beds, and their ambulances are for death squad use - the original aid organizations Iraq were great and helped many out side Iraqi to, now they are run by death squads to.
Stoping the death squads would be be much nicer and a "better message" to the people of Iraq, till then the only thing Iraqis see are those little gifts John "death squad" Negroponte left for them.
@Steve.
you wrote :
Not good enough reason. Political expediency should never transcend moral obligation. To sustain the "Torturist in Command" with funds for his war crimes in order to win the coming election might seem like e good idea but in fact makes the democratic caucus complicit in Bush and Cheney's crimes against humanity
Comments are closed on this entry