Seamaire

aliyahloves:

leptiir:

theneighbourhoodsuperhero:

Omar Khadr, a sixteen year old Guantanamo Bay detainee weeps uncontrollably, clutching at his face and hair as he calls out for his mother to save him from his torment. “Ya Ummi, Ya Ummi (Oh Mother, Oh Mother),” he wails repeatedly, hauntingly with each breath he takes.

The surveillance tapes, released by Khadr’s defence, show him left alone in an interrogation room for a “break” after he tried complaining to CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) officers about his poor health due to insufficient medical attention. Ignoring his complaints and trying to get him to make false confessions, the officers get frustrated with the sixteen year old’s tears and tell him to get himself together by the time they come back from their break.

“You don’t care about me. Nobody cares about me,” he sobs to them.

The tapes show how the officers manipulated Khadr into thinking that they were helping him because they were also Canadian and how they taunted him with the prospect of home (Canada), (good) food, and familial reunion.

Khadr, a Canadian, was taken into US custody at the age of fifteen, tortured and refused medical attention because he wouldn’t attest to being a member of Al Qaeda, even though he was shot three times in the chest and had shrapnel embedded in his eyes and right shoulder. As a result, Khadr’s left eye is now permanently blind, the vision in his right eye is deteriorating, he develops severe pain in his right shoulder when the temperature drops, and he suffers from extreme nightmares.

He has been incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay since 2002, suffering extremely harsh interrogations and torture (methods), and is now 25 years old.

If you want to be updated with Omar Khadrs case, then please like this Facebook page dedicated to him.

This just makes me cry.That could be my own son.

mohandasgandhi:

floridabq:

mohandasgandhi:

AJE: Child labour rampant in Afghanistan

Many children in Afghanistan are among the most exploited members of society, being forced to work almost as soon as they can walk.

This brick factory where young boys work to pay off their family’s debts is just one of many examples of child labour in the country.

Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith reports from Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province.

“The people here are victims of a country that struggles to function, that fails even to provide the most basic protection to its most vulnerable citizens.”

When 1 in 4 children in Afghanistan between the ages of 7 and 14 works, either in addition to, or instead of going to school, you know the “liberational” Afghan war was a success.

Afghanistan under the Taliban was a place of perpetual warfare and abuse of women. The Taliban systematically and viciously persecuted the Shiite minority. The end of the Taliban as a sovereign force in Afghanistan has been an improvement. No honest person would say otherwise.

I’m not arguing Taliban rule would be better. What I’m saying is that the United States deserves ZERO credit for “liberating” Afghanistan because we’ve done nothing to make conditions better. No credible justification of the U.S. war in Afghanistan exists.

From a previous post of mine:

• Afghanistan is the world’s 3rd poorest country with a GDP of $27.01 billion.
• The poverty rate in Afghanistan is 36%, unemployment, 35%, and inflation, 30.5%.
• The population’s life expectancy is 44.4 years.
• The death of each Taliban fighter costs between $50-100 million. That’s, at the very least, $1 billion per 20 Taliban fighters.  The best estimate of Taliban killed annually by coalition forces is roughly 2,000.  Killing the estimated 35,000 Taliban fighting the occupation would cost $1.75 trillion.
• Nearly 6,000 civilians have died since 2006 and over 2,000 have died this year alone.
• Over the last year the number of child casualties has risen by 55%.

In addition:

• 92% of Afghan men polled don’t know why the United States is in Afghanistan or are even aware of 9/11. “The survey also suggests that Afghans are skeptical of their own government’s ability to protect them, and have little regard for the fledgling democratic institutions the country is building. Fully 43% could not name one positive aspect of democracy, and nearly two-thirds — 61% — said they didn’t think Afghan forces would be able to keep up the fight against the Taliban if and when Western forces withdrew.”
• A significant number of Afghans actually prefer rule under the Taliban as opposed to Karzai.
• According to a 2009 study from the U.S. Army in Kandahar, 94% of residents support reconciliation between the Afghan government and the Taliban.
• Further support for the Taliban has been fostered due to serious abuses by the U.S.-backed Afghan Local Police, partially trained by the LAPD, including abuses such as “killings, rape, arbitrary detention, abductions, forcible land grabs, and illegal raids by irregular armed groups.”
• According to a UN report, corruption and bribes account for nearly 25% of Afghanistan’s GDP.
• According to the Red Cross, the situation in Afghanistan has worsened for “civilian casualties, internal displacement and health care access and all of it is ‘against the background of a proliferation of armed actors’” since the overthrow of the Taliban. 
• At least 71% of Afghan residents say they want U.S. and NATO forces to leave. 
• Human rights in Afghanistan remain dismal and its economy very weak.
• The war in Afghanistan has devastated the country’s environment.
• Also, the Pentagon spends billions each year on PR to sell the Afghan war.

How have we improved conditions in Afghanistan?

anticapitalist:

peace-love-justice:

Here is a series of photos I have received from the Jewish Peoples’ Liberation Organization about very disturbing Jewish settler graffiti in Hebron targeting Palestinians and those who support them. Most disturbing. If these statements were targeting Jews there would be headlines. But since these are done by Jews targeting Palestinians. Silence. The pictures have originally come from the Christian Peacemaker Team in Hebron. 

Be reminded this is graffiti which Israel does not remove. 

israel can fuck itself.