Islamophobia for Dummies
War on Terror
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We usually try to show some humor when answering Islamophobia,
but the information we're presenting today is grave and extremely serious.
In our
Fitna
Geert Wilders videos, we presented the Islamic perspective of
terrorism, and today we'll be addressing the realities of the "War on
Terror". WHAT YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT THE WARS - www.Youtube.com/TheParadigmShift Sgt. Marshall Thompson : I'm proud of my service, but I am against the war in Iraq. ... if every soldier comes home and they just say that they're glad to be home, then no one's going to know the truth about what's going on in Iraq. Sgt. Matthis Chiroux : The U.S. Military as an institution is very corrupt and is built upon spreading death. To me the idea of having a force like the U.S. army participating in nation building is just asinine. I mean, we're nation destroyers. That's what we're trained to do. Jon Michael Turner - Winter Soldier 2008 : We were all congratulated after we had our first kills. My company commander personally congratulated me. This is the same individual who had stated that whoever gets their first kill by stabbing them to death will get a four day pass when we return from Iraq. Vincent Emanuele - Winter Soldier 2008 : I've heard numerous circumstances of civilians getting killed and then soldiers and marines subsequently placing weapons on their bodies or placing wire around them. Democracy Now, Amy Goodman : Army Private First Class LaVena Johnson would have turned 23 this month, but 3 years ago the African American teenager from Missouri was found dead in Balad, Iraq, just a few weeks short of her 20th birthday. Her body was found in a tent belonging to the private military contractor Kellogg Brown & Root. She had abrasions all over her body, a broken nose, a black eye, burned hands, loose teeth, acid burns on her genitals, a bullet hole in her head. The Army labeled LaVena Johnson’s death a suicide. They told her parents she died of "self-inflicted, non-combat injuries." Question: ... What was it like bein a guard there? Answer: A guard at Abu Ghuraib. ...As far as I'm concerned, they're all guilty. You know what, they should have kicked Saddam out themselves. Instead, we're there doin the (bleeping) job. (Bleep) them dude, anyone with a (bleepin) rag on their head is fair game. Girl, she was probably like 15 years old ...hadn't been touched yet, she was (bleepin) prime. ...guys, he started pimpin her out for $50 a shot. I think at the end of the day, he made like $500 before she hung herself. BBC Jane Peel : Four soldiers walked through the trees and approached this house. Here, according to specialist James Barker's statement, he and another soldier took it in turns to rape the 14 year old girl. In another room, the girl's parents and 5 year old sister were shot dead. Barker's statement said, after Green had killed the 2 adults and the little girl, he came into the room where the teenager was being sexually assaulted. He had an AK47 rifle in his hand. He said "They're all dead. I killed them." He put the weapon down, raped the 14 year old, and then shot her dead too. Before they left, they poured kerosene over the girl's body and set it alight. They returned to their checkpoint, and Barker said he grilled some chicken wings. Senator Al Franken : 4 years ago, at the age of 19, Ms. Jamie Lee Jones signed a contract to become an employee of KBR, then a Halliburton subsidiary. Ms. Jones arrived in Iraq in July of 2005, and was housed in barracks with 400 men, and only a few women. Four days after her arrival, Ms. Jones was drugged and gang raped. After Ms. Jones reported the rape to her supervisors, she was locked in a shipping container with an armed guard and prohibited any contact with the outside world. They locked her in a container. According to the Center for Defense Information, 51% of YOUR federal income taxes goes specifically to military spending, not healthcare or education, but WAR. ... Sky News, Lisa Holland : Why was her child one of an increasing number born with deformities since the war, like this: massive growth which was rapidly spreading across the little girl's face. Case after case of differing deformities without any real explanation, except their parents suspicions that the deformities were caused by chemicals, such as white phosphorous used by the Americans during the war. A Geiger counter will give a reading of between 5 and 15 pulses per minute in a typical environment. This depleted uranium round will trigger 10,000 pulses in about 40 seconds. This type of ammunition is radioactive because it is made of nuclear waste ... and its toxicity reveals itself as soon as particles are inhaled or ingested. Cancer and birth defects are the most common side effects. SPEECH DEDICATION, DR. DAHLIA WASFI - www.liberatethis.com Dahlia Wasfi : ...in particular this evening, this is for one of my cousins who lived in Baghdad. He's 21 years old and he's dying from brain cancer, and in my mind I cannot rule out that this was not our use of depleted uranium that has contributed to this. I speak to you today on behalf of relatives on my mother's side: Ashkenazi Jews who fled their homeland of Austria during Hitler’s Anschluss. It is for them that we say 'Never again.' I speak to you today on behalf of relatives on my father’s side: who are not living, but dying, under the occupation of this administration’s deadly foray in Iraq. From the lack of security to the lack of basic supplies, to the lack of electricity, to the lack of potable water, to the lack of jobs, to the lack of reconstruction, to the lack of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they are Much worse off now than before we invaded. 'Never again' should apply to them, too. Picture this in your mind: A humanitarian worker in Baghdad is quoted as recalling the scene after a bomb blast, "I saw a 4 year old boy sitting beside his mother's body which had been decapitated by the explosion. He was talking to her, asking her what had happened." There is no respite for Iraqis from the suffering inflicted by American weaponry and American racism. TRAGIC STATE OF IRAQ BEFORE THE INVASION Dahlia Wasfi : During the first gulf war, destruction of Iraq's electrical grids incapacitated the medical system, what had been a first class range of facilities known as the "Jewel of the Arab World". After January 1991, primary healthcare and preventative services ceased to exist, and with economic sanctions there were critical shortages of food and life saving drugs and equipment. Cholera became endemic in Iraq. Easily treatable diseases such as respiratory infections and diarrhea accounted for 70% of the deaths of children under 5 years old. THIS calamity was the tragic state of Iraqi society when the illegal Shock and Awe invasion came, and with it, a vastly increased number of patients. TRAGIC STATE OF IRAQ NOW Dahlia Wasfi : With the dissolution of law and order after our invasion came the looting of Iraq's hospitals. Today, lack of security delays the delivery of supplies, and no money is being distributed from the U.S. operated Ministry of Health. ... 68% of Iraqis lack access to safe drinking water. 81% are without proper sewerage. And the segments of the population who suffer the most whenever there is no law and order are women and children. Women have all but disappeared from their roles in the workforce. Once contributors to Iraqi society as teachers, judges, lawyers, doctors, engineers, traffic police, and more, the threat of violence and kidnapping now imprisons many women in their homes, but even there they are not safe from the terrorism of daily house raids by American soldiers and their subordinate Iraqi police. ... 800,000 Iraqi children are not in school due to the chaos, lack of security, and severe poverty. According to the "State of the World's Mothers Report" released last month by Save The Children, the chance that an Iraqi child will live beyond age 5 has plummeted faster in Iraq than anywhere else in the world since 1990. In 2005, 1 in 8 Iraqi children died of disease or violence before reaching the age of 5. Operation Enduring Freedom would more appropriately be named operation dead children for everyone involved. HYPOCRISY OF ACCUSING ISLAM Dahlia Wasfi : As millions of Iraqis suffer, and hundreds continue to die every day, it does not matter if you call it civil war, sectarian strife, or democracy, it is by design an American killing field. A smokescreen for stealing oil. Here at home, if we don't care about the welfare of returning veterans who make up 1/3 of our homeless population, how do we expect to care about the welfare of now over 4 million Iraqi refugees. If we're not caring for the physically and emotionally disabled soldiers at Walter Reed Army Hospital and the more than 200,000 veterans of this, our latest holocaust, seeking care through the VA system, how do we expect to care about dead and dying Iraqis. If we don't care about what happens to American women assaulted and humiliated by their brothers in Arms, how do we expect to care about 14 year old Abeer Hamza : raped, slain, and set on fire after her family was murdered by our men in uniform. THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA IGNORES THE TRUTH Democracy Now, Amy Goodman : Iraq and Afghanistan veterans gathered in Maryland this past weekend (March 2008) to testify at Winter Soldier. War veterans spoke of free-fire zones, the shootings and beatings of innocent civilians, racism at the highest levels of the military, sexual harassment and assault within the military, and the torturing of prisoners. Although Winter Soldier was held just outside the nation's capital, it was almost entirely ignored by the American corporate media. A search on the Lexis database found no major television network or cable news network even mention Winter Soldier ... Neither did the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, LA Times, or most other major newspapers in the country. Winter Soldier, Jon Turner : This just goes to show you that everyone sitting up here has these stories, and there's been over 1,000,000 troops that have gone in and out of Iraq. There's a term "once a Marine, always a Marine", but there's also the term " Eat the Apple, F*** the Corps " I don't work for you no more. Youtube.com/TheParadigmShift montage of Dahlia Wasfi Speech Conclusion Dahlia Wasfi : We have an obligation to every last victim of this illegal aggression because all of this carnage has been done in our name. Since World War II, 90% of the casualties of war are unarmed civilians. 1/3 of them children. Our victims have done nothing to us. From Palestine to Afghanistan to Iraq to Somalia to wherever our next target may be, their murders are not collateral damage, they are the nature of modern warfare. They don't hate us because of our freedoms. They hate us because EVERY day we are funding and committing crimes against humanity. The so-called "war on terror" is a cover for our military aggression to gain control of the resources of western Asia. This is sending the poor of this country to kill the poor of those Muslim countries. This is trading blood for oil. This is genocide, and to most of the world, we are the terrorists. In these times, remaining silent on our responsibility to the world and its future is criminal. And in light of our complicity in the supreme crimes against humanity in Iraq and Afghanistan, and ongoing violations of the U.N. Charter in International Law, how DARE any American criticize the actions of legitimate resistance to illegal occupation. Our so-called enemies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, our other colonies around the world, and our inner cities here at home, are struggling against the oppressive hand of empire, demanding respect for their humanity. They are labeled insurgents or terrorists for resisting rape and pillage by the white establishment, but they are our brothers and sisters in the struggle for justice. The civilians at the other end of our weapons don't have a choice, but American soldiers have choices, and while there may have been some doubt 5 years ago, today we know the truth. Our soldiers don't sacrifice for duty-honor-country, they sacrifice for Kellogg Brown & Root. They don't fight for America, they fight for their lives and their buddies beside them, because we put them in a war zone. They're not defending our freedoms, they're laying the foundation for 14 permanent military bases to defend the freedoms of Exxon Mobil and British Petroleum. They're not establishing democracy, they're establishing the basis for an economic occupation to continue after the military occupation has ended. Iraqi society today, thanks to American "help" is defined by house raids, death squads, check-points, detentions, curfews, blood in the streets, and constant violence. We must dare to speak out in support of the Iraqi people, who resist and endure the horrific existence we brought upon them through our bloodthirsty imperial crusade. We must dare to speak out in support of those American war-resisters, the REAL military heroes, who uphold their oath to defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, including those terrorist cells in Washington DC more commonly known as the Legislative, Executive & Judicial branches. ...( 1857, " If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress " ) Frederick Douglass said "Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are people who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both ... but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." Every one of us, every one of us must keep demanding, keep fighting, keep thundering, keep plowing, keep speaking, keep struggling until justice is served. NO justice, NO peace. |
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