(warning: graphic images)
The United States may be finished dropping bombs on Iraq, but Iraqi bodies will be dealing with the consequences for generations to come in the form of birth defects, mysterious illnesses and skyrocketing cancer rates.
Al Jazeera’s Dahr Jamail reports that contamination from U.S. weapons, particularly Depleted Uranium (DU) munitions, has led to an Iraqi health crisis of epic proportions. “[C]hildren being born with two heads, children born with only one eye, multiple tumours, disfiguring facial and body deformities, and complex nervous system problems,” are just some of the congenital birth defects being linked to military-related pollution.
In certain Iraqi cities, the health consequences are significantly worse than those seen in the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Japan at the end of WWII.
As we mourn the tenth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, the establishment media elite seem to agree that the Iraq war was a mistake. But that is about as far as they will go in their criticism.
Meanwhile, the mainstream rarely reports on the suffering of the Iraqi people or the U.S.-led pillaging of their resources and infrastructure. The press can’t even get the number of Iraqi deaths right despite knowing the exact amount of US soldier’s killed. And I have yet to see any establishment voices use the words “illegal” or “war crime” to describe the mass slaughter that was launched in 2003. In fact, much of the focus over last few days has been on whether or not the war was “worth it” for the United States.
So, for those interested in what the media isn’t saying about the Iraq war, I highly recommend checking out Muftah’s special Iraq war issue, featuring articles by some of my favorite writers. Read More
The worst is not yet behind the young woman who was raped by two Steubenville High football players in the football obsessed town of Steubenville, Ohio.
CBS News reports that just one day after her rapists, Trent Mays and Ma’Lik Richmond, were convicted, two teens have been arrested for threatening to kill her. Surprisingly, her female peers were behind the threats. Read More
Independent journalist Ryan Devereaux interviewed 39-year-old Tishana King, the only known eyewitness to the police killing of 16-year-old Kimani Gray in East Flatbush last weekend, revealing new and disturbing details about Gray’s last moments of life. Read More
Touré Neblett, host of MSNBC’s The Cycle, wrote an excellent piece about Kimani Gray, the 16-year-old Brooklyn teen shot dead by the NYPD last weekend for adjusting his waistband “suspiciously”. Police say they were forced to shoot because Gray pointed a gun at them, a claim witnesses dispute. Protests have since erupted every night in Gray’s East Flatbush neighborhood, highlighting the pent up frustration of routine police violence in communities of color.
Touré rightly points out that the encounter between Gray and the officers who killed him “is part of the culture of stop-and-frisk where young black men are treated as suspicious until proven not.” I couldn’t agree more and I’m thrilled to see someone with such a wide audience talk about it.
That being said, I can’t help but notice the hypocrisy in Touré’s position on extrajudicial killings. Given his vehement condemnation of the brutal force dished out to young black men by police in the United States, you would think he’d similarly denounce targeted killings abroad. Instead, he has shown himself to be an ardent defender of President Obama’s self-proclaimed authority to assassinate suspected terrorists without due process or a shred of evidence, a program that terrorizes poor brown communities in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, much like domestic policing terrorizes black communities here at home. Read More
Jonathan Watkins with his baby girl, Jonylah. (Facebook)
Jonylah Watkins, just 6-months-old, was shot on Monday, March 11, on Chicago’s South Side as her dad changed her diaper in the front passenger’s seat of their minivan. Read More
Activists are reporting over social media that at least a hundred people (I heard one activist being interviewed over the livestream explain there were 250 people) gathered for a vigil turned protest against the weekend police killing of 16-year-old Kimani Gray in the East Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn tonight. Gray was shot 11 times by plaine clothes officers on Saturday night who claim they approached the teen because he was suspiciously adjusting his waistband. They say he pointed a gun at them forcing them to shoot. Read More
An investigation by the Chicago Sun-Times reveals that 90 percent of students affected by public school closings in Chicago are African American, a rate that doesn’t match up with the city’s racial demographics (only 41.7 percent of the district’s student population is black).
School closings are the latest trend among privatization and charter school advocates who seek to dismantle public education (and teachers unions) to turn a profit. So far they’ve been largely successful because it’s happening on the backs of poor black communities who the national press have all but ignored since their inception (think great migration and white flight). Read More
Recent Comments