An editorial in the Sunday, October 28, 2007, Toronto Star, Comment section, page 22, urges a diplomatic resolution of the American/Iranian showdown over Iran's nuclear capabilities:
PRESSING IRAN TO DISARM
Having branded Iran an "axis of evil" soon after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, U.S. President George Bush seems determined not to lave the White House without taking one last kick at his nemesis.
His recent dire warning that Iran might trigger "World War III" if it acquires nuclear weapons has many wondering whether the United States or a proxy is preparing to bomb Iran's reactors. And the economic sanctions Bush has just imposed on Iran's Revolutionary Guards, defence ministry and banks are being read by some as a ploy to give Washington political cover for such an attack.
Yet while Iran's two-decade-old nuclear ambitions, support for terror and hostility to Israel are hugely worrying, Bush cannot realistically expect to turn all this around before he quits office, with or without a military strike. Reining in Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and those who think like him is a huge challenge best tackled by the United Nations Security Council, acting collectively.
That's something Prime Minister Stephen Harper seems to understand. Reacting to Bush's sanctions, an Ottawa official noted Canada has not followed the U.S. in designating the Revolutionary Guards as terrorists, and looks to the Security Council for its cues. That is a prudent approach, with Canada backing UN efforts to defuse tension.
Realistically, if Iran's nuclear ambitions are to be reined in, it will be through a complex grand bargain" involving the Security Council, the U.S. and Iran. Tehran will want guarantees that Washington will stop threatening military action and will lift sanctions that have been in place since the Islamic revolution of 1979. As well, Iran will seek approval to retain civilian reactors, if it suspends or scraps military ones.
Ottawa should support UN efforts, including progressively harsher sanctions, to prod Tehran to that bargain. We should also urge the U.S. to negotiate, not threaten. It will be hard to make much progress before Bush and Ahmadinejad bow out. But we needn't provoke a crisis.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Darfur: Keeping Hope for the Future Alive
From the Wednesday, September 12, 2007, Toronto Star, Comments section, page AA6:
KEEPING HOPE ALIVE IN DARFUR
Pablo Recalde
It's not difficult to picture the misery caused by war. You probably see it every day on the news: thousands of people crammed together in makeshift camps, waiting under the beating sun for help from the international community.
I live in Darfur, and that's an image I know well. The town of El Geneina, from where I run the UN World Food Program's operation in West Darfur, is swollen with "internally displaced people" (IDP) who have lost family, their homes, their livestock, their livelihoods.
But there's another thing I see every day that rarely makes it into the media: I see children smiling. I see people producing, creating, selling and buying things inside the camps - keeping a semblance of normality within the conflict. It doesn't match the popular image of the victims of violence, but it's the face of Darfur that I remember when I go to bed at night. And it is what I see when I wake up.
Thanks to the efforts of thousands of dedicated humanitarian workers - many of them so young - children all over Darfur are alive. They're fed. Many are going to school, and hopefully, when peace comes to Darfur, they will ready to help rebuild their communities.
Since 2004, when the international community flooded into Darfur, 12,000 humanitarian workers have been on the ground there, providing food, shelter, health care, water and sanitation, agricultural tools and seeds and other necessities of life.
[The UN World Food Program is the] largest humanitarian agency working in Darfur. Our main job is to feed people. And against all odds we get the job done.
In July, 3.1 million people received food rations from WFP, distributed with the assistance of the many charities and non-governmental organizations working in Darfur. This is the biggest WFP operation in the world, with a budget of $684 million this year. It wouldn't be possible without the generosity of the citizens of Canada - the third largest donor to WFP Sudan, with a contribution of $22 million (U.S.) in 2007.
I'm not writing to tell you the crisis is over. Far from it. Violence has continued - in fact, it has increased. We truck food across the length of Sudan - 3,000 kilometres from the Red Sea coast to the little town where I live. Once the food is out in the field, our staff and their colleagues from other agencies often travel by helicopter to the distribution sites because the roads are just too dangerous.
And unfortunately, every month, there are pockets of Darfur where we are unable to reach people, and malnutrition can quickly set in. In July, 60,000 went without a ration because we couldn't get to them. Often, it is many more.
The people of Darfur are frustrated. They're demoralized by a crisis that seems to have no end. They are angry to see their children born and growing up in camps, rather than at home, in peaceful villages. Still, they keep on struggling to regain their dignity. Life has always been hard in the tough climate of Darfur, but surviving in war is much worse.
Now, more than ever, it is the support of average citizen[s] and their governments that is making the difference between survival and complete disaster. Your support is literally making the difference between life and death. It is helping us to hold the line.
People often ask me whether I think the international efforts will work. Put simply: they must. But regardless of how or when, my colleagues and I will be here, doing the job of holding the line.
No one would wish for their children to be born and to grow up inside the confines of an IDP camp.
But it's important to realize that until a solution to the crisis is found, the humanitarian community is working in Darfur amid challenges and severe risks, to help keep the hope of a future alive.
KEEPING HOPE ALIVE IN DARFUR
Pablo Recalde
It's not difficult to picture the misery caused by war. You probably see it every day on the news: thousands of people crammed together in makeshift camps, waiting under the beating sun for help from the international community.
I live in Darfur, and that's an image I know well. The town of El Geneina, from where I run the UN World Food Program's operation in West Darfur, is swollen with "internally displaced people" (IDP) who have lost family, their homes, their livestock, their livelihoods.
But there's another thing I see every day that rarely makes it into the media: I see children smiling. I see people producing, creating, selling and buying things inside the camps - keeping a semblance of normality within the conflict. It doesn't match the popular image of the victims of violence, but it's the face of Darfur that I remember when I go to bed at night. And it is what I see when I wake up.
Thanks to the efforts of thousands of dedicated humanitarian workers - many of them so young - children all over Darfur are alive. They're fed. Many are going to school, and hopefully, when peace comes to Darfur, they will ready to help rebuild their communities.
Since 2004, when the international community flooded into Darfur, 12,000 humanitarian workers have been on the ground there, providing food, shelter, health care, water and sanitation, agricultural tools and seeds and other necessities of life.
[The UN World Food Program is the] largest humanitarian agency working in Darfur. Our main job is to feed people. And against all odds we get the job done.
In July, 3.1 million people received food rations from WFP, distributed with the assistance of the many charities and non-governmental organizations working in Darfur. This is the biggest WFP operation in the world, with a budget of $684 million this year. It wouldn't be possible without the generosity of the citizens of Canada - the third largest donor to WFP Sudan, with a contribution of $22 million (U.S.) in 2007.
I'm not writing to tell you the crisis is over. Far from it. Violence has continued - in fact, it has increased. We truck food across the length of Sudan - 3,000 kilometres from the Red Sea coast to the little town where I live. Once the food is out in the field, our staff and their colleagues from other agencies often travel by helicopter to the distribution sites because the roads are just too dangerous.
And unfortunately, every month, there are pockets of Darfur where we are unable to reach people, and malnutrition can quickly set in. In July, 60,000 went without a ration because we couldn't get to them. Often, it is many more.
The people of Darfur are frustrated. They're demoralized by a crisis that seems to have no end. They are angry to see their children born and growing up in camps, rather than at home, in peaceful villages. Still, they keep on struggling to regain their dignity. Life has always been hard in the tough climate of Darfur, but surviving in war is much worse.
Now, more than ever, it is the support of average citizen[s] and their governments that is making the difference between survival and complete disaster. Your support is literally making the difference between life and death. It is helping us to hold the line.
People often ask me whether I think the international efforts will work. Put simply: they must. But regardless of how or when, my colleagues and I will be here, doing the job of holding the line.
No one would wish for their children to be born and to grow up inside the confines of an IDP camp.
But it's important to realize that until a solution to the crisis is found, the humanitarian community is working in Darfur amid challenges and severe risks, to help keep the hope of a future alive.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Iraq, Now Iran? There is Another Option: Peace
There was an article in the World & Comment section of the Monday, November 5, 2007, Toronto Star, about how the U.S. administration is ratcheting up its rhetoric about Iran, as if there was no other choice in the world available to the U.S., but to lay siege to yet another country (which keeps arms manufacturers happy and the oil corporations happy, but not the families of those soldiers and civilians who are killed and wounded.
Why are Americans and the Democratic contenders standing behind yet another war, after the last and still current disaster - the war in Iraq. Another war, more human rights abuses - just what the U.S. needs. (See Amnesty International's Country Report on the U.S.: http://thereport.amnesty.org/eng/Regions/Americas/United-States-of-America.)
The Iraq war and all the other hundreds of military installations around the world are bankrupting the country. The gap between rich and poor is widening. The environmental legislation has been pushed back 30 years and nothing is being done about climate change and the Kyoto agreement. Corporations at home and abroad are doing whatever they like, because of massive campaign donations to each American party, and their lawyers and lobbyists and PR army are doing the rest. It is a great time to be a millionaire and billionaire and not very good to be a poor working stiff whose children are not covered for medical care.
Is Iran supposed to take the country's mind off the hundreds of thousands of displaced Iraqi's, many of them refugees?
Is it supposed to take everyone's mind off the tens of thousands of civilian deaths and the several thousand deaths of American soldiers?
Why is everyone supporting the very administration that lied about having evidence to support the reason behind the Iraqi war. They knew very well before the war that there were no weapons of mass destruction. And yet they still sent American soldiers to die there in the thousands and other soldiers to kill thousands of civilians and displace tens of thousands more.
So how does it make sense to leave troops fighting there and starting a new war somewhere else?
Are the sanctions against the Iranian people going to take our minds off the terrible sanctions against the Iraqi people, which caused countless civilian deaths, most of whom were young children?
There is no requirement for the U.S. (except empire building, oil, supporting arms and rebuilding corporations)to feel it must intervene everywhere, making enemies of selective Middle East countries. Wasn't Osama a Saudi? And the U.S. protected the extended Bin Laden family in the U.S. in the days after September 11th, and sent the entire family out of the U.S. on an American military plane? The Saudi Royal princes are dictatorships and Saudi Arabia has a horrible record of human rights abuses - look up their Amnesty International country report. The U.S. is fast friends with the Saudis; therefore supporting an extremely repressive regime. http://thereport.amnesty.org/eng/Regions/Middle-East-and-North-Africa/Saudi-Arabia
Who died and made George W. king of the world? Or for that matter, who died and made previous presidents kings of the world? There is no need for an aggressive successor, someone else who can only see the way to peace through waging war. See the Amnesty International's report on the human rights abuses and the United States. There is no moral authority behind a country with such a human rights record.
What does the world need? Peace. Ethical and moral leaders who will deal with problems involving people and the environment - the most pressing problems the world faces. Developed countries need to provide at least the amount of foreign aid they have committed to but not paid, for poverty, AIDS, malaria, and the Millenium goals.
Developed countries need to show leadership where climate change is concerned not only at home, but in assisting developing nations to deal with the challenges of adapation and mitigation.
The world does not need any more wars right now. Instead of showing up for wars, how about withdrawing soldiers from all the military installations worldwide, and helping the United Nations deal with food collection and distribution to take care of the starving, getting drugs to those suffering from malaria and HIV/AIDs, and building or providing training for others to build infrastructure for clean drinking water, latrines, schools and providing small loans so the extreme poor can work their way out of poverty.
See Jeffrey D. Sach's book, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time. Jeff Sachs is an American-born economist and internationally renowned for his work as economic advisor to governments around the world. He was a Special Advisor ton the Millenium Development Goals to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan from 2002 to 2006 and is a Special Advisor to the current Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon. He is a professor and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is also known for his work with international agencies on problems of poverty reduction, debt cancellation and disease control, especially HIV/AIDS, in the developing world.
It is not naive to turn from war to doing what is right in the world. It is the only thing to do. Thousands are dying every day from starvation and diseases that are easily curable. We don't need to arm soldiers to kill anybody else.
I hope, as most Americans in polls, want peace, that they will not be drawn in to yet another war. You cannot get peace and security by going to war (as Afghanistan and Iraq should demonstrate clearly).
As Gandhi said: "There is no way to peace. Peace is the way." Now, where is the American leader with enough independence, courage, conviction and true moral authority to choose peace for Americans and the rest of the world?
Why are Americans and the Democratic contenders standing behind yet another war, after the last and still current disaster - the war in Iraq. Another war, more human rights abuses - just what the U.S. needs. (See Amnesty International's Country Report on the U.S.: http://thereport.amnesty.org/eng/Regions/Americas/United-States-of-America.)
The Iraq war and all the other hundreds of military installations around the world are bankrupting the country. The gap between rich and poor is widening. The environmental legislation has been pushed back 30 years and nothing is being done about climate change and the Kyoto agreement. Corporations at home and abroad are doing whatever they like, because of massive campaign donations to each American party, and their lawyers and lobbyists and PR army are doing the rest. It is a great time to be a millionaire and billionaire and not very good to be a poor working stiff whose children are not covered for medical care.
Is Iran supposed to take the country's mind off the hundreds of thousands of displaced Iraqi's, many of them refugees?
Is it supposed to take everyone's mind off the tens of thousands of civilian deaths and the several thousand deaths of American soldiers?
Why is everyone supporting the very administration that lied about having evidence to support the reason behind the Iraqi war. They knew very well before the war that there were no weapons of mass destruction. And yet they still sent American soldiers to die there in the thousands and other soldiers to kill thousands of civilians and displace tens of thousands more.
So how does it make sense to leave troops fighting there and starting a new war somewhere else?
Are the sanctions against the Iranian people going to take our minds off the terrible sanctions against the Iraqi people, which caused countless civilian deaths, most of whom were young children?
There is no requirement for the U.S. (except empire building, oil, supporting arms and rebuilding corporations)to feel it must intervene everywhere, making enemies of selective Middle East countries. Wasn't Osama a Saudi? And the U.S. protected the extended Bin Laden family in the U.S. in the days after September 11th, and sent the entire family out of the U.S. on an American military plane? The Saudi Royal princes are dictatorships and Saudi Arabia has a horrible record of human rights abuses - look up their Amnesty International country report. The U.S. is fast friends with the Saudis; therefore supporting an extremely repressive regime. http://thereport.amnesty.org/eng/Regions/Middle-East-and-North-Africa/Saudi-Arabia
Who died and made George W. king of the world? Or for that matter, who died and made previous presidents kings of the world? There is no need for an aggressive successor, someone else who can only see the way to peace through waging war. See the Amnesty International's report on the human rights abuses and the United States. There is no moral authority behind a country with such a human rights record.
What does the world need? Peace. Ethical and moral leaders who will deal with problems involving people and the environment - the most pressing problems the world faces. Developed countries need to provide at least the amount of foreign aid they have committed to but not paid, for poverty, AIDS, malaria, and the Millenium goals.
Developed countries need to show leadership where climate change is concerned not only at home, but in assisting developing nations to deal with the challenges of adapation and mitigation.
The world does not need any more wars right now. Instead of showing up for wars, how about withdrawing soldiers from all the military installations worldwide, and helping the United Nations deal with food collection and distribution to take care of the starving, getting drugs to those suffering from malaria and HIV/AIDs, and building or providing training for others to build infrastructure for clean drinking water, latrines, schools and providing small loans so the extreme poor can work their way out of poverty.
See Jeffrey D. Sach's book, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time. Jeff Sachs is an American-born economist and internationally renowned for his work as economic advisor to governments around the world. He was a Special Advisor ton the Millenium Development Goals to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan from 2002 to 2006 and is a Special Advisor to the current Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon. He is a professor and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is also known for his work with international agencies on problems of poverty reduction, debt cancellation and disease control, especially HIV/AIDS, in the developing world.
It is not naive to turn from war to doing what is right in the world. It is the only thing to do. Thousands are dying every day from starvation and diseases that are easily curable. We don't need to arm soldiers to kill anybody else.
I hope, as most Americans in polls, want peace, that they will not be drawn in to yet another war. You cannot get peace and security by going to war (as Afghanistan and Iraq should demonstrate clearly).
As Gandhi said: "There is no way to peace. Peace is the way." Now, where is the American leader with enough independence, courage, conviction and true moral authority to choose peace for Americans and the rest of the world?
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Somalia: Witness to War
From the Autumn 2007 issue of University of Toronto Magazine, pages 20-25, here is a fascinating story about an inspiring young woman, a doctor and activist for children affected by war, who set up War Child Canada.
After you've read the article if you want further information on War Child Canada or UNICEF, their websites are http://www.warchild.ca/ and http://www.unicef.org/.
WITNESS TO WAR
While visiting Somarlia in 1995, doctor and U of T professor Samantha Nutt experienced the hardship and rawness of bloodshed. Now, the founder of War Child Canada says she's "driven every day" to help children harmed by conflict
By Stacey Gibson
In the early 1990s, Western journalists dubbed Baidoa, Somalia, the "City of Death." The city, like the rest of Somalia, had been ravaged by ongoing civil war, exhausted by drought and cripped by a famine that killed hundreds of thousands.
It was just outside Baidoa in 1995 that Dr. Samantha Nutt made her first descent into a war zone. Touching down in the six-seat plane, she and other UNICEF volunteers landed on a desert airstrip teeming with men armed with machine guns, AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. The aid workers exited the plane in flak jackets and helmets, and were drive into the city in a Land Cruiser protected by four teenagers with guns. The cruiser also carried munitions; on one sharp turn, grenades rolled out from under the back seat, then back and forth under Nutt's feet. "That was my first experience in a war zone. I went from zero to 100 in five seconds flat," sayd Nutt, who was 25 at the time.
As a member of UNICEF's maternal and children's health team, Nutt - who now holds post-graduate degrees in both community medicine and family medicine from U of T - visited clinics throughout Somalia. The landscape was riddled with signs of despair: drumbling buildings were punctured with bullet holes; women stood in line feeding clinics cradling children, many near death and some of whom had died during the wait; and guns were ubiquitous, slund from the shoulders of both national soldiers and civilians. "War is always an unfathomable harship to bear witness to," says Nutt, now 37 and an assistant professor in U of T's department of famiy and community medicine. "And it's everything about it: it's the stories that you hear compounded with the devastation that you're witnessing and the hardships. Anyone who has experienced war and the rawness of it, and the absolute horror of it, can't ever go back to being the same person. You're driven every day to do something about what you've seen."
What Nutt was driven to do was start War Child Canada. The non-profit organization, which she founded in 1999 and now runs with her husband, Dr. Eric Hoskins, offers long-term humanitarian support to children and families in a dozen war-ravaged countries including the Congo, northern Uganda, Iraq, Sri Lanka and Darfur. The program fosters independence, and emotional and financial security, in adolescents and their families.
One of War Child Canada's programs is the Ethiopian Development Project, for which Nutt is travelling to Ethiopia in October. The beleaguered country has about three million people living with HIV-AIDS and the world's third-highest rate of infection. The crisis filters down to the youngest generation: about 1.5 million children have lost their parents to AIDS. Typically, the eldest child of the orphaned family is thrust into the role of financial provider, taking on responsibility for supporting several younger siblings. To buy food, he or she is often forced to beg on the street or engage in prostitution - putting the adolescent at risk of contracting HIV. Nutt and her organization, along with a local partner, work with 300 AIDS orphans from 53 families. They provide all of the children's basic needs, and offer schooling and counselling while ensuring that the eldest child also receivees job training. Once the eldest child has secured employment, they putthe next-eldest through job training in an effort to break the cycle of poverty and disease.
Singer/songwriter Chantal Kreviazuk is giving the Ethiopian project a boost by filing field reports with Entertainment Tonight Canada. Partnerships with musicians are a common anthem in War Child Canada projects. Concerts raise funds and awareness and can be stadium-sized events; a 2000 concert in Winnipeg featuring The Tragically Hip and rapper Maestro drew 80,000, the largest audience the city has ever seen. Small-scale Keep the Beat music marathons typically feature local groups at bars and concert halls. In 2003, War Child Canada released the Peace Sons CD, which features artists such as Avril Lavigne, David Bowie, the Barenaked Ladies and Elvis Costello. Rock stars, perennial lodestones to the young, have an unrivalled ability to make youth stop and listen - and when their message is legitimate, to foster action. "Music is the root of activism," says Nutt. "It inspires and agitates. It speaks to people, it motivates people. And it's a creative vehicle that reaches a broad audience."
One of War Child Canada's most successful projects is Musicians in the War Zone, a documentary that first aired on MuchMusic in 2001 and featured Canadian musicians exploring human-rights issues in Iraq and Sierra Leone, and at the Thai-Burmese border. Denise Donlon - a former president of Sony Music Cnada - first met Nutt and Hoskins in 1998, when when she was MuchMusic's vice-president and general manager. The couple came in to discuss Sierra Leone's civil war and its impact on children. (While the war ended in 2002, conflicts fuelled by the illegal trade of blood diamonds still cause much turmoil in the country.) Nutt and Hoskins proposed working on a project to galvanize support the country's children. "I think Sam had this magical, hypnotic power over me," says Donlon. "Before I knew it, I was in Sierra Leone wondering,'What in heaven's name am I doing here? I should be editing a Madonna special.'"
Donlon, who was a field producer of Musicians in the War Zone, recalls a day in Sierra Leone when the group, which included hip-hop band Rascalz, visited a camp for amputees. (Revolutionary United Front rebels often severed their victims' limbs, and the camp was filled with close to a thousand casulties.) She remembers seeing Nutt with a mother - an amputee and rape victim - holding her baby on her lap. The baby had a distended belly, and Nutt quickly discrened that he had a parasite and sought the requisite antibiotic. "Sam went immediately into medical mode," says Donlon. "It's one thing to be a humanitarian and another to have that ability to shift gears and immediately be hands-on with the baby, comforting the mother, trying to assess the baby's condition.... It gave me a perspective on her that I hadn't seen before. I knew that she was an activist, I knew that she was just full of vigour and passion and commitment and experience, and yet, she was able to wander through both those worlds and back into being practising medical doctor. You know, it was amazing."
Nutt also effectively shatters the hackneyed image of the war-zone doctor as a strapping, Hemingwayesque type. Donlon says,"Here she is having spent time in some of the most dangerous places on the planet, like the Sudan, and she's 5 foot 4, has blonde hair, and I constantly have to introduce her to people as Doctor Samantha Nutt because most people think she's my children's babysitter. She looks like she's 16 and has the experience of someone who may be 600."
Born in Toronto, Nutt lived near the town of Durban, South Africa, from the ages of one through six, before she and her family returned to the city. Her father was a children's shoe designer, and his work took the family to Brazil for six months when Nutt was in her early teens. Her experiences in different countries fostered an independent streak. "I grew up with a strong sense of different people and different cultures, and possibly a little sense of adventure," she says. "Not afraid to travel, not afraid to move. Not afraid to get by in a foreign environment."
After finishing high school, Nutt studied drama in England, although she says, "I can't sing and I can't dance." She adds: "I know it sounds like a real departure to go from studying drama to attending medical school, but here's my reasoning for why it's not: I think that drama teaches you the ultimate expression of empathy. It's the complete absorption of another person's life experience, to the point where you're trying to emulate that person. And medicine to me is about empathy. If you're not interested in understanding some else's experience, and how that manifests itself in terms of illness and in the interpretation of illness, then I think you're going to be severely limited in terms of your ability to practise, and to be a compassionate human being. And, you know, every actor likes a soapbox, and I found mine."
Nutt returned to Canada to pursue an undergraduate degree in the Special Arts and Science Program, with an emphasis on international studies, at McMaster University in Hamilton. She also earned a degree in medicine there. During those years - with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War - Nutt became intensely engaged in social and political issues. The 1991 Gulf War profoundly affected her, and she participated in peace marches on campus.
In her final year of medical school, Nutt applied for a Rhodes Scholarship in the hope of pursuing a doctorate in international human-rights issues. Throughout the application process, people kept marvelling over how much she had in common with Dr. Eric Hoskins. A physician, humanitarian and former Rhones Scholar, Hoskins had worked in war zones in Sudan and Iraq. "At one point someone said to me, 'You have to meet Dr. Eric Hoskins because you are the female version of him.' And I was so annoyed," says Nutt. "I've always been kind of feisty, so I was like, What do you mean? I have all these ideas, all these things I want to do, and some guy I've never met apparently has already done them."
But Nutt was curious about Hoskins, so she attended a slide show he was giving on his work in Iraq. Hoskins had been the co-ordinator of the International Study Team, and helped produce the first comprehensive assessment of the impact of the 1991 Gulf War and sanctions on Iraqi children. "He walked in to the room, and I looked over and I was like, Oh, there he is," she says, with mock gruffness. "And then I thought, Oh, he's really cute."
I approached him afterwards, and we just had an instant connection. It was like some cheesy Nora Ephron movie. As soon as I met him, I just knew. That was it. And that was 14 years ago." The couple now has a two-year-old son, Rhys.
While Nutt was a runner-up for a Rhodes Scholarship, the British Council did award her a prestigious Chevening Scholarship that enabled her to study at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. There, she earned a master's in public health and in developing countries - which led to the opportunity to work with UNICEF in Somalia. Nutt went on to earn two postgraduate degrees in community medicine and family medicine, with a sub-speciality in women's health, from the University of Toronto.
Nutt started War Child Canada because she wanted to work directly with local people and organizations in war-ravaged countries, empowering them to create long-term change in their communities. She also wanted to create a model that had a strong domestic component, which would educate North Americans about global justice issues and help them get involved. While most organizations focus on either advocay or program implementation, War Child does both.
The philosophy appeals to Nike Adebowale (BA 2007 UTM), who entered U of T's master's program in international relations this year. As a summer youth outreach officer at War Child Canada, she led presentations and workshops for young people, educating them about the financial and human costs of war, and how they can make a difference. Adebowale, 23, lived in Nigeria until the age of 11. She remembers well her parents picking her up at school because riots, stemming from widespread poverty and political unrest, were flaring up."I always feel like, 'Oh my God, how can we not do anything?' You realize how privileged you are once you see a different side of things."
In May 2004, Nutt set out to do a second documentary, this one with rock group Sum 41 in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Congo's civil war was considered to be the worst in African history, resulting in more than three million deaths. Nutt wanted to educate young people about the impact of civil war on the Congo's citizens and North America's connection to it. The war had been financed almost exclusively through the Congo's natural resources - particularly coltan, an element used in the manufacture of electronics devices such as computers, cellphones and video grame consoles. Rebel groups and foreign armies still control many ofthe mines and are implicated in creating much of the country's instability.
A tenuous UN-brokered peace accord had been in place in the Democratic Republic of Congo for almost two years, leading the group to believe it was safe to visit. They stayed in Bukavu, near the Rwandan border. The trip started off as planned: the rock group talked to a coltan dealer - "the best-dressed man in the Congo," according to one band member - who hired children to work in his mines. They visited a rehabilitation centre for war-affected youth, including former child soldiers, as well as a shelter for girls cast out of their homes by their families who deemed them witches, responsible for the hardships suffered during the war.
It was on the sixth night that, as bass guitarist Cone McCaslin says in the documentary, "All hell broke loose." At the Orchid hotel, around midnight, the four bandmates were chatting outside when gunfire erupted. The shocked McCasling looked over at drummer Steve Jocz, and the group, in near silence, amde its way inside. Soon, the air became heavy with the crackle of gunfire, followed by the deep baritone of a rocket-propelled grenade detonating.
A skirmish had broken out at the Congolese-Rwandan border, about one kilometre from the hotel. Nutt, Hoskins, Sum 41 and the other hotel residents listened fearfully as the fighting, between Rwandan-backed rebels and the Congolese military, drew closer. Over the next day-and-a-half, 100,000 rounds of bullets were fired and rocket-propelled grenades were lobbed about 30 to 40 metres from the hotel.
When the gunfire erupted, all of the notel residents - which included 15 foreigners and 35 Congolese - enclosed themselves in two rooms. Later, they hunkered down in the basement. "I wasn't concerned about bullets flying through windows. I wasn't even all that concerned about a mortar hitting our location, although that was a possibility," says Nutt. "I was more concerned that Mai-Mai Congolese [child] soldiers were going to show up in the hotel armed to the teeth with their semi-automatic weapons and start killing people or raping people... That's what you worry about. Because you don't want to be stuck with a 12-year-old pointing a gun at you. You just don't."
The gunfire flared up, then stopped - giving the group hope that the fighting had abated. Then it erupted again, at closer range. Then came the mortars: one landing so close that the building shook and the ceiling began to crumble. Chuck Pelletier, a United Nations peacekeeper who had made his way to the hotel, said,"We've all got to get out." He contacted UN headwuarters on his walkie-talkie and stated, 'We need an evacuation. We need tanks to come.'"
"We were all scared," says Hoskins, "and you'd be lying if you said you weren't scared, but despite that I remember Sam saying we were there with a rock band who had never been to Africa, nor had their management, nor had the film crew that we brought with us, and we were responsible for them."
Nutt used her conflict-zone experience to help prepare the group for the escape to the tanks. She primed them to run in a zigzag, for example, because it's harder to hit a target that's moving erratically rather than in a predictable straight line. "She's gathered a lot of street smarts along the way," says Hoskins. "And surviving in a war zone is more about street smarts than it is about anything else." As the hotel residents evacuated the building and ran toward the tanks, two mortar rounds exploded."
In the documentary, lead singer Deryck Whibley admits that when the first mortar hit near the hotel and Pelletier called for evacuation, he thought: "Now it's over. This is how we're going to die."
In fact, Whibley and the other Orchid hotel residents reached the armoured personnel carriers safely. They were driven to Manuak, a UN compoud, five minutes away. The next day, the group, including Nutt and Hoskins, took a chartered plane to neighbouring Uganda. They paid for their commercial airline tickets, showed their Canadian passports and boarded their flight. They landed in Toronto, and went home to their families.
In Bukavu, thousands of Congolese fled their homes due to the fighting. Homes were looted. Families were separated. And 350 civilians did die.
"There are times when you can feel, in those situations, extremely afraid because of what's happening," says Nutt. "But at the end of the day, I always think it's really indulgent for me as a Canadian with a Canadian passport to say, 'Oh my God, I was almost killed and that was really horrible,' because I still have the luxury - and it is a luxury - of getting on a plane and coming hom, and having a period that's determined by me of normalcy. And that's the guilt I feel very much."
What keeps Nutt using her Canadian passport to enter war zones is, perhaps, the very fact that she has one. She fights to make people understand that what happens here, affects what happens there - in Somalia, Sierra Leone and the Congo. Those vague, indistinct regions over there may be out of our sightlines, yet they're acutely visible in our video game consoles and cellphones. "Whether you're looking at conflict diamonds, whether you're looking at oil, whether you're looking at coltan, whether it's our policies or arms arms exports, we are implicated in war," says Nutt. "In addition to that, we have, I think, as human beings an ethical and moral responsibility to protect the vulnerable, and to protect civilians, in warfare. And so for me, it's really about creating a climate that will support involvement in global issues."
"Because Lord knows, I don't want to hear another person say to me, 'War has nothing to do with me.'"
Stacey Gibson is the managing editor ofU of T Magazine.
After you've read the article if you want further information on War Child Canada or UNICEF, their websites are http://www.warchild.ca/ and http://www.unicef.org/.
WITNESS TO WAR
While visiting Somarlia in 1995, doctor and U of T professor Samantha Nutt experienced the hardship and rawness of bloodshed. Now, the founder of War Child Canada says she's "driven every day" to help children harmed by conflict
By Stacey Gibson
In the early 1990s, Western journalists dubbed Baidoa, Somalia, the "City of Death." The city, like the rest of Somalia, had been ravaged by ongoing civil war, exhausted by drought and cripped by a famine that killed hundreds of thousands.
It was just outside Baidoa in 1995 that Dr. Samantha Nutt made her first descent into a war zone. Touching down in the six-seat plane, she and other UNICEF volunteers landed on a desert airstrip teeming with men armed with machine guns, AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. The aid workers exited the plane in flak jackets and helmets, and were drive into the city in a Land Cruiser protected by four teenagers with guns. The cruiser also carried munitions; on one sharp turn, grenades rolled out from under the back seat, then back and forth under Nutt's feet. "That was my first experience in a war zone. I went from zero to 100 in five seconds flat," sayd Nutt, who was 25 at the time.
As a member of UNICEF's maternal and children's health team, Nutt - who now holds post-graduate degrees in both community medicine and family medicine from U of T - visited clinics throughout Somalia. The landscape was riddled with signs of despair: drumbling buildings were punctured with bullet holes; women stood in line feeding clinics cradling children, many near death and some of whom had died during the wait; and guns were ubiquitous, slund from the shoulders of both national soldiers and civilians. "War is always an unfathomable harship to bear witness to," says Nutt, now 37 and an assistant professor in U of T's department of famiy and community medicine. "And it's everything about it: it's the stories that you hear compounded with the devastation that you're witnessing and the hardships. Anyone who has experienced war and the rawness of it, and the absolute horror of it, can't ever go back to being the same person. You're driven every day to do something about what you've seen."
What Nutt was driven to do was start War Child Canada. The non-profit organization, which she founded in 1999 and now runs with her husband, Dr. Eric Hoskins, offers long-term humanitarian support to children and families in a dozen war-ravaged countries including the Congo, northern Uganda, Iraq, Sri Lanka and Darfur. The program fosters independence, and emotional and financial security, in adolescents and their families.
One of War Child Canada's programs is the Ethiopian Development Project, for which Nutt is travelling to Ethiopia in October. The beleaguered country has about three million people living with HIV-AIDS and the world's third-highest rate of infection. The crisis filters down to the youngest generation: about 1.5 million children have lost their parents to AIDS. Typically, the eldest child of the orphaned family is thrust into the role of financial provider, taking on responsibility for supporting several younger siblings. To buy food, he or she is often forced to beg on the street or engage in prostitution - putting the adolescent at risk of contracting HIV. Nutt and her organization, along with a local partner, work with 300 AIDS orphans from 53 families. They provide all of the children's basic needs, and offer schooling and counselling while ensuring that the eldest child also receivees job training. Once the eldest child has secured employment, they putthe next-eldest through job training in an effort to break the cycle of poverty and disease.
Singer/songwriter Chantal Kreviazuk is giving the Ethiopian project a boost by filing field reports with Entertainment Tonight Canada. Partnerships with musicians are a common anthem in War Child Canada projects. Concerts raise funds and awareness and can be stadium-sized events; a 2000 concert in Winnipeg featuring The Tragically Hip and rapper Maestro drew 80,000, the largest audience the city has ever seen. Small-scale Keep the Beat music marathons typically feature local groups at bars and concert halls. In 2003, War Child Canada released the Peace Sons CD, which features artists such as Avril Lavigne, David Bowie, the Barenaked Ladies and Elvis Costello. Rock stars, perennial lodestones to the young, have an unrivalled ability to make youth stop and listen - and when their message is legitimate, to foster action. "Music is the root of activism," says Nutt. "It inspires and agitates. It speaks to people, it motivates people. And it's a creative vehicle that reaches a broad audience."
One of War Child Canada's most successful projects is Musicians in the War Zone, a documentary that first aired on MuchMusic in 2001 and featured Canadian musicians exploring human-rights issues in Iraq and Sierra Leone, and at the Thai-Burmese border. Denise Donlon - a former president of Sony Music Cnada - first met Nutt and Hoskins in 1998, when when she was MuchMusic's vice-president and general manager. The couple came in to discuss Sierra Leone's civil war and its impact on children. (While the war ended in 2002, conflicts fuelled by the illegal trade of blood diamonds still cause much turmoil in the country.) Nutt and Hoskins proposed working on a project to galvanize support the country's children. "I think Sam had this magical, hypnotic power over me," says Donlon. "Before I knew it, I was in Sierra Leone wondering,'What in heaven's name am I doing here? I should be editing a Madonna special.'"
Donlon, who was a field producer of Musicians in the War Zone, recalls a day in Sierra Leone when the group, which included hip-hop band Rascalz, visited a camp for amputees. (Revolutionary United Front rebels often severed their victims' limbs, and the camp was filled with close to a thousand casulties.) She remembers seeing Nutt with a mother - an amputee and rape victim - holding her baby on her lap. The baby had a distended belly, and Nutt quickly discrened that he had a parasite and sought the requisite antibiotic. "Sam went immediately into medical mode," says Donlon. "It's one thing to be a humanitarian and another to have that ability to shift gears and immediately be hands-on with the baby, comforting the mother, trying to assess the baby's condition.... It gave me a perspective on her that I hadn't seen before. I knew that she was an activist, I knew that she was just full of vigour and passion and commitment and experience, and yet, she was able to wander through both those worlds and back into being practising medical doctor. You know, it was amazing."
Nutt also effectively shatters the hackneyed image of the war-zone doctor as a strapping, Hemingwayesque type. Donlon says,"Here she is having spent time in some of the most dangerous places on the planet, like the Sudan, and she's 5 foot 4, has blonde hair, and I constantly have to introduce her to people as Doctor Samantha Nutt because most people think she's my children's babysitter. She looks like she's 16 and has the experience of someone who may be 600."
Born in Toronto, Nutt lived near the town of Durban, South Africa, from the ages of one through six, before she and her family returned to the city. Her father was a children's shoe designer, and his work took the family to Brazil for six months when Nutt was in her early teens. Her experiences in different countries fostered an independent streak. "I grew up with a strong sense of different people and different cultures, and possibly a little sense of adventure," she says. "Not afraid to travel, not afraid to move. Not afraid to get by in a foreign environment."
After finishing high school, Nutt studied drama in England, although she says, "I can't sing and I can't dance." She adds: "I know it sounds like a real departure to go from studying drama to attending medical school, but here's my reasoning for why it's not: I think that drama teaches you the ultimate expression of empathy. It's the complete absorption of another person's life experience, to the point where you're trying to emulate that person. And medicine to me is about empathy. If you're not interested in understanding some else's experience, and how that manifests itself in terms of illness and in the interpretation of illness, then I think you're going to be severely limited in terms of your ability to practise, and to be a compassionate human being. And, you know, every actor likes a soapbox, and I found mine."
Nutt returned to Canada to pursue an undergraduate degree in the Special Arts and Science Program, with an emphasis on international studies, at McMaster University in Hamilton. She also earned a degree in medicine there. During those years - with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War - Nutt became intensely engaged in social and political issues. The 1991 Gulf War profoundly affected her, and she participated in peace marches on campus.
In her final year of medical school, Nutt applied for a Rhodes Scholarship in the hope of pursuing a doctorate in international human-rights issues. Throughout the application process, people kept marvelling over how much she had in common with Dr. Eric Hoskins. A physician, humanitarian and former Rhones Scholar, Hoskins had worked in war zones in Sudan and Iraq. "At one point someone said to me, 'You have to meet Dr. Eric Hoskins because you are the female version of him.' And I was so annoyed," says Nutt. "I've always been kind of feisty, so I was like, What do you mean? I have all these ideas, all these things I want to do, and some guy I've never met apparently has already done them."
But Nutt was curious about Hoskins, so she attended a slide show he was giving on his work in Iraq. Hoskins had been the co-ordinator of the International Study Team, and helped produce the first comprehensive assessment of the impact of the 1991 Gulf War and sanctions on Iraqi children. "He walked in to the room, and I looked over and I was like, Oh, there he is," she says, with mock gruffness. "And then I thought, Oh, he's really cute."
I approached him afterwards, and we just had an instant connection. It was like some cheesy Nora Ephron movie. As soon as I met him, I just knew. That was it. And that was 14 years ago." The couple now has a two-year-old son, Rhys.
While Nutt was a runner-up for a Rhodes Scholarship, the British Council did award her a prestigious Chevening Scholarship that enabled her to study at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. There, she earned a master's in public health and in developing countries - which led to the opportunity to work with UNICEF in Somalia. Nutt went on to earn two postgraduate degrees in community medicine and family medicine, with a sub-speciality in women's health, from the University of Toronto.
Nutt started War Child Canada because she wanted to work directly with local people and organizations in war-ravaged countries, empowering them to create long-term change in their communities. She also wanted to create a model that had a strong domestic component, which would educate North Americans about global justice issues and help them get involved. While most organizations focus on either advocay or program implementation, War Child does both.
The philosophy appeals to Nike Adebowale (BA 2007 UTM), who entered U of T's master's program in international relations this year. As a summer youth outreach officer at War Child Canada, she led presentations and workshops for young people, educating them about the financial and human costs of war, and how they can make a difference. Adebowale, 23, lived in Nigeria until the age of 11. She remembers well her parents picking her up at school because riots, stemming from widespread poverty and political unrest, were flaring up."I always feel like, 'Oh my God, how can we not do anything?' You realize how privileged you are once you see a different side of things."
In May 2004, Nutt set out to do a second documentary, this one with rock group Sum 41 in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Congo's civil war was considered to be the worst in African history, resulting in more than three million deaths. Nutt wanted to educate young people about the impact of civil war on the Congo's citizens and North America's connection to it. The war had been financed almost exclusively through the Congo's natural resources - particularly coltan, an element used in the manufacture of electronics devices such as computers, cellphones and video grame consoles. Rebel groups and foreign armies still control many ofthe mines and are implicated in creating much of the country's instability.
A tenuous UN-brokered peace accord had been in place in the Democratic Republic of Congo for almost two years, leading the group to believe it was safe to visit. They stayed in Bukavu, near the Rwandan border. The trip started off as planned: the rock group talked to a coltan dealer - "the best-dressed man in the Congo," according to one band member - who hired children to work in his mines. They visited a rehabilitation centre for war-affected youth, including former child soldiers, as well as a shelter for girls cast out of their homes by their families who deemed them witches, responsible for the hardships suffered during the war.
It was on the sixth night that, as bass guitarist Cone McCaslin says in the documentary, "All hell broke loose." At the Orchid hotel, around midnight, the four bandmates were chatting outside when gunfire erupted. The shocked McCasling looked over at drummer Steve Jocz, and the group, in near silence, amde its way inside. Soon, the air became heavy with the crackle of gunfire, followed by the deep baritone of a rocket-propelled grenade detonating.
A skirmish had broken out at the Congolese-Rwandan border, about one kilometre from the hotel. Nutt, Hoskins, Sum 41 and the other hotel residents listened fearfully as the fighting, between Rwandan-backed rebels and the Congolese military, drew closer. Over the next day-and-a-half, 100,000 rounds of bullets were fired and rocket-propelled grenades were lobbed about 30 to 40 metres from the hotel.
When the gunfire erupted, all of the notel residents - which included 15 foreigners and 35 Congolese - enclosed themselves in two rooms. Later, they hunkered down in the basement. "I wasn't concerned about bullets flying through windows. I wasn't even all that concerned about a mortar hitting our location, although that was a possibility," says Nutt. "I was more concerned that Mai-Mai Congolese [child] soldiers were going to show up in the hotel armed to the teeth with their semi-automatic weapons and start killing people or raping people... That's what you worry about. Because you don't want to be stuck with a 12-year-old pointing a gun at you. You just don't."
The gunfire flared up, then stopped - giving the group hope that the fighting had abated. Then it erupted again, at closer range. Then came the mortars: one landing so close that the building shook and the ceiling began to crumble. Chuck Pelletier, a United Nations peacekeeper who had made his way to the hotel, said,"We've all got to get out." He contacted UN headwuarters on his walkie-talkie and stated, 'We need an evacuation. We need tanks to come.'"
"We were all scared," says Hoskins, "and you'd be lying if you said you weren't scared, but despite that I remember Sam saying we were there with a rock band who had never been to Africa, nor had their management, nor had the film crew that we brought with us, and we were responsible for them."
Nutt used her conflict-zone experience to help prepare the group for the escape to the tanks. She primed them to run in a zigzag, for example, because it's harder to hit a target that's moving erratically rather than in a predictable straight line. "She's gathered a lot of street smarts along the way," says Hoskins. "And surviving in a war zone is more about street smarts than it is about anything else." As the hotel residents evacuated the building and ran toward the tanks, two mortar rounds exploded."
In the documentary, lead singer Deryck Whibley admits that when the first mortar hit near the hotel and Pelletier called for evacuation, he thought: "Now it's over. This is how we're going to die."
In fact, Whibley and the other Orchid hotel residents reached the armoured personnel carriers safely. They were driven to Manuak, a UN compoud, five minutes away. The next day, the group, including Nutt and Hoskins, took a chartered plane to neighbouring Uganda. They paid for their commercial airline tickets, showed their Canadian passports and boarded their flight. They landed in Toronto, and went home to their families.
In Bukavu, thousands of Congolese fled their homes due to the fighting. Homes were looted. Families were separated. And 350 civilians did die.
"There are times when you can feel, in those situations, extremely afraid because of what's happening," says Nutt. "But at the end of the day, I always think it's really indulgent for me as a Canadian with a Canadian passport to say, 'Oh my God, I was almost killed and that was really horrible,' because I still have the luxury - and it is a luxury - of getting on a plane and coming hom, and having a period that's determined by me of normalcy. And that's the guilt I feel very much."
What keeps Nutt using her Canadian passport to enter war zones is, perhaps, the very fact that she has one. She fights to make people understand that what happens here, affects what happens there - in Somalia, Sierra Leone and the Congo. Those vague, indistinct regions over there may be out of our sightlines, yet they're acutely visible in our video game consoles and cellphones. "Whether you're looking at conflict diamonds, whether you're looking at oil, whether you're looking at coltan, whether it's our policies or arms arms exports, we are implicated in war," says Nutt. "In addition to that, we have, I think, as human beings an ethical and moral responsibility to protect the vulnerable, and to protect civilians, in warfare. And so for me, it's really about creating a climate that will support involvement in global issues."
"Because Lord knows, I don't want to hear another person say to me, 'War has nothing to do with me.'"
Stacey Gibson is the managing editor ofU of T Magazine.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Keep U.S. From Attacking Iran
After Iraq, I can't credit why anyone in the U.S. would get behind the Bush administration's desire for war against Iran.
But, gee, there is still a year before the next election and that is plenty of time to get into another war, have more civilian and military casualties, further devalue the dollar against other currencies, spend billions and billions more on the military, causing a huge debt with nothing to show for it except death, destruction, and at the end, probably civil war (jus
.Here is an article from the Tuesday, September 18, 2007, World section, Toronto Star, page AA3:
UN NUCLEAR CHIEF TELLS IRAN CRITICS TO COOL 'HYPE'
Vienna - The chief UN nuclear inspector urged Iran's harshest critics yesterday to learn from the Iraq invasion and refrain from "hype" about a possible military attack, saying force was an option of last resort.
Mohamed ElBaradei also called on nations critical of his last-ditch effort to entice Iran into revealing past nuclear activities that could be linked to a weapons program to wait until the end of the year - when the deadline for Iran to provide answers runs out.
"By November or December we will be able to know if Iran is acting in good faith or not," he said, suggesting that was the time to think of tougher diplomacy if needed - but not military action."
ElBaradei, speaking outside a 144-nation meeting of his International Atomic Energy Agency, invoked the example of Iraq in urging an end to the threats of force against Iran - most recently by France.
"I would not talk about any use of force," said ElBaradei, noting that only the Security Council can authorize such action.
"I do not believe at this stage that we are facing a clear and present danger that require we go beyond diplomacy," ElBaradei said, adding that his agency had no information "the Iran program is being weaponized."
"We need not to hype the issue," he told reporters.
On Sunday, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner warned the world should prepare for war if Iran obtains nuclear weapons.
He said European leaders were considering their own economic sanctions against the Islamic country.
Kouchner, on RTL radio, said that if "such a bomb is made ... we must prepare ourselves for the worst."
Associated Press
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Anti-Vietnam War Speech
Here is the web address for the full speech of Martin Luther King, Jr., anti-Vietnam war speech, given forty years ago on April 4, 1967, to a meeting of the Clergy and Laity Concerned at the Riverside Church, New York City: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm.
He speaks about the difficulty of speaking out against his country. He also speaks about the fact that the time comes when "silence is a betrayal".
In these days when so many people have grave doubts about what is being done in Iraq, particularly with so many civilians and soldiers having been killed, and with millions of Iraqis having fled their homes or their country, as displaced people or refugees, you may find it helpful to see what thoughts Martin Luther King, Jr., had in opposing the Vietnam war.
The text and audio of the speech are from the American Rhetoric, Top 100 Speeches website.
He speaks about the difficulty of speaking out against his country. He also speaks about the fact that the time comes when "silence is a betrayal".
In these days when so many people have grave doubts about what is being done in Iraq, particularly with so many civilians and soldiers having been killed, and with millions of Iraqis having fled their homes or their country, as displaced people or refugees, you may find it helpful to see what thoughts Martin Luther King, Jr., had in opposing the Vietnam war.
The text and audio of the speech are from the American Rhetoric, Top 100 Speeches website.
War in Iraq; Refugees; Civilian Deaths; What Can You Do
If you are frustrated with the sheer chaos and death and destruction of the Iraq war, particularly when most of us know now the war was based on evidence the Bush administration knew to be false, let your political representatives know. If you Google their names, you will be able to find their email addresses or mailing addresses. If you do not know who represents you at the federal level of government, you can find that out over the internet as well.
Have a look at the United Nations' related websites to learn more about what is being done by the different agencies in Iraq. I don't know about the other agencies, but I know UNICEF takes donations and that is one of the websites on my list of links. A number of countries, including the United States and Canada, are making donations to a United Nations related rehabilitation fund.
When you write to your political representative, you may want to suggest that your country make donations to any of the United Nations agencies working in Iraq or the countries where a significant number of Iraqi refugees have gone.
If you are a Canadian or American, you may also wish to let your representative or Prime Minister/President know that you want the amount of money spent on the military and wars to be reduced, and that you want Canadians and Americans withdrawn from Afghanistan and/or Iraq. If you are from another country, let your representative know you want your country to pressure Canada and the United States to get out of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Another way to speak out and influence others is to write a letter or email to the editor or if you are a blogger, you can blog about the refugee situation in Iraq and getting Canada out of Afghanistan and the U.S. out of Iraq.
Another way to make your opinions count, is to take part in an anti-war protest when one is organized where you live.
It isn't always easy to speak out, but you will gain some satisfaction from doing what you know is right.
As Martin Luther King, Jr., said in a speech he gave about opposing the war in Vietnam:
"I join you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal."
If you wish to hear the speech read, or read the text of the speech, the web address is: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm.
Have a look at the United Nations' related websites to learn more about what is being done by the different agencies in Iraq. I don't know about the other agencies, but I know UNICEF takes donations and that is one of the websites on my list of links. A number of countries, including the United States and Canada, are making donations to a United Nations related rehabilitation fund.
When you write to your political representative, you may want to suggest that your country make donations to any of the United Nations agencies working in Iraq or the countries where a significant number of Iraqi refugees have gone.
If you are a Canadian or American, you may also wish to let your representative or Prime Minister/President know that you want the amount of money spent on the military and wars to be reduced, and that you want Canadians and Americans withdrawn from Afghanistan and/or Iraq. If you are from another country, let your representative know you want your country to pressure Canada and the United States to get out of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Another way to speak out and influence others is to write a letter or email to the editor or if you are a blogger, you can blog about the refugee situation in Iraq and getting Canada out of Afghanistan and the U.S. out of Iraq.
Another way to make your opinions count, is to take part in an anti-war protest when one is organized where you live.
It isn't always easy to speak out, but you will gain some satisfaction from doing what you know is right.
As Martin Luther King, Jr., said in a speech he gave about opposing the war in Vietnam:
"I join you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal."
If you wish to hear the speech read, or read the text of the speech, the web address is: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm.
Iraq: Humanitarian Crisis; This is One Reality Show You Won't See on TV
From the Thursday, November 1, 2007, Toronto Star, World section, page AA2, comes this deeply disturbing article on the full extent of the humanitarian crisis in Iraq:
IRAQ'S LITTLE-KNOWN HUMANITARIAN CRISIS
Haroon Siddiqui
Amman, Jordan - It is said that Iraq is the world's best-known conflict but the least well-known humanitarian crisis.
In the United States, where public attention span is low but the capacity for denial high, Iraq's daily carnage no longer commands headlines. American public discourse long ago shifted to the domestic political implications of Iraq for George W. Bush et al.
Those who do think of Iraq think mostly of the murderous sectarianism of the Sunnis and Shiites. If Muslims are killing each other, there's not much America can do. Iraq being another Yugoslavia - once the iron grip of Saddam Hussein or Josep Tito was gone, all the old animosities re-emerged.
But in Iraq, there was no such suppressed hatred. Shiites and Sunnis had always lived in harmony. Inter-marriage was common. The bombed-out Shiite shrine in Samara was in a Sunni neighbourhood.
The more apt parallel is with the 1947 partition of British India that precipitated a mass migration and a massacre among Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs who had lived in harmony for centuries.
When the state abrogates its most basic role of maintaining social order, anti-social forces and criminals can send scare people into a frenzy of primitive behaviour.
What's happening in Iraq is the direct result of American war-mongering and criminal incompetence.
Since the 2003 U.S. invasion, between 75,000 and 1.2 million Iraqis have been killed (depending on who's counting). This is in addition to the 1 million Iraqis, half of them children under 5, who died slow deaths during the U.S.-led United Nations economic sanctions (a UNESCO estimate).
More than 4 million Iraqis have been displaced. Half have fled to Syria, Jordan, Egypt and elsewhere.
This is the largest forced migration of people in the Middle East since 1948, according to UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency.
Nearly 8 million Iraqis - one in three - are in need of humanitarian aid.Nearly half of the internally displaced people do not have access to the Public Distribution System of ration cards and permits.
Only a third of Iraqis can access safe drinking water. The drug distribution system has broken down. The sewage system has collapsed and only a fifth of Iraqis have access to a functional sanitary system.Three-fourths of the internally displaced are either women (28 per cent) or children (48 per cent).
"Ninety per cent of those who die violent deaths are men, leaving huge numbers of widows and orphans without support," according to a special Iraq edition of Forced Migration Review, a Publication of the Refugee Studies Centre of the University of Oxford (fmre-view.org/Iraq).
"In the short term, there appears to be no way to address the protection vacuum in much of Iraq. Multinational Force Iraq and the Iraqi Security Forces are incapable of protecting civilians."
Prostitution is on the rise. "Young girls are increasingly obliged to contribute to family incomes. Consequently, the incidence of sexual and gender-based violence is on the rise," says Jose Riera and Andrew Harper, of UNHCR (unhcr.org/irq). "Child labour and other means of exploitation are increasingly reported."
UNICEF estimates that 4.5 million children are under-nourished. One child in 10 is under-weight. One in five is short for their age. In some areas, up to 90 per cent of children are not in school.This is one reality show you won't see on your television.
Haroon Siddiqui, the Star's editorial page editor emeritus, appears Thursday and Sunday. Email: hsiddiq@thestar.ca
IRAQ'S LITTLE-KNOWN HUMANITARIAN CRISIS
Haroon Siddiqui
Amman, Jordan - It is said that Iraq is the world's best-known conflict but the least well-known humanitarian crisis.
In the United States, where public attention span is low but the capacity for denial high, Iraq's daily carnage no longer commands headlines. American public discourse long ago shifted to the domestic political implications of Iraq for George W. Bush et al.
Those who do think of Iraq think mostly of the murderous sectarianism of the Sunnis and Shiites. If Muslims are killing each other, there's not much America can do. Iraq being another Yugoslavia - once the iron grip of Saddam Hussein or Josep Tito was gone, all the old animosities re-emerged.
But in Iraq, there was no such suppressed hatred. Shiites and Sunnis had always lived in harmony. Inter-marriage was common. The bombed-out Shiite shrine in Samara was in a Sunni neighbourhood.
The more apt parallel is with the 1947 partition of British India that precipitated a mass migration and a massacre among Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs who had lived in harmony for centuries.
When the state abrogates its most basic role of maintaining social order, anti-social forces and criminals can send scare people into a frenzy of primitive behaviour.
What's happening in Iraq is the direct result of American war-mongering and criminal incompetence.
Since the 2003 U.S. invasion, between 75,000 and 1.2 million Iraqis have been killed (depending on who's counting). This is in addition to the 1 million Iraqis, half of them children under 5, who died slow deaths during the U.S.-led United Nations economic sanctions (a UNESCO estimate).
More than 4 million Iraqis have been displaced. Half have fled to Syria, Jordan, Egypt and elsewhere.
This is the largest forced migration of people in the Middle East since 1948, according to UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency.
Nearly 8 million Iraqis - one in three - are in need of humanitarian aid.Nearly half of the internally displaced people do not have access to the Public Distribution System of ration cards and permits.
Only a third of Iraqis can access safe drinking water. The drug distribution system has broken down. The sewage system has collapsed and only a fifth of Iraqis have access to a functional sanitary system.Three-fourths of the internally displaced are either women (28 per cent) or children (48 per cent).
"Ninety per cent of those who die violent deaths are men, leaving huge numbers of widows and orphans without support," according to a special Iraq edition of Forced Migration Review, a Publication of the Refugee Studies Centre of the University of Oxford (fmre-view.org/Iraq).
"In the short term, there appears to be no way to address the protection vacuum in much of Iraq. Multinational Force Iraq and the Iraqi Security Forces are incapable of protecting civilians."
Prostitution is on the rise. "Young girls are increasingly obliged to contribute to family incomes. Consequently, the incidence of sexual and gender-based violence is on the rise," says Jose Riera and Andrew Harper, of UNHCR (unhcr.org/irq). "Child labour and other means of exploitation are increasingly reported."
UNICEF estimates that 4.5 million children are under-nourished. One child in 10 is under-weight. One in five is short for their age. In some areas, up to 90 per cent of children are not in school.This is one reality show you won't see on your television.
Haroon Siddiqui, the Star's editorial page editor emeritus, appears Thursday and Sunday. Email: hsiddiq@thestar.ca
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