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Call it Ecocide
In the cradle of civilization, young women have become terrified about having children.
This is the news I take with me into Thanksgiving and the season of gratitude and family togetherness: that doctors in Fallujah, the Iraqi city we devastated in two military assaults in 2004, have begun documenting a startling rise in birth defects - about 15 times the pre-invasion occurrence of early-life cancers and brain and nervous-system abnormalities, according to the U.K.'s Guardian.
A group of British and Iraqi doctors have petitioned the United Nations to investigate the situation, which is clearly related to the U.S. invasion and occupation. According to their letter: "In September 2009, Fallujah General Hospital had 170 newborn babies, 24 percent of whom were dead within the first seven days (and) a staggering 75 percent of the dead babies were classified as deformed." In comparison, the letter said, in August 2002 - before the invasion - 530 babies were born; six of them died within the first week, with a single birth defect reported.
Young women in Fallujah, the doctors wrote, "are terrified of having children because of the increasing number of babies born grotesquely deformed, with no heads, two heads, a single eye in their foreheads, scaly bodies or missing limbs."
What might be causing this nightmare? The most likely factors are chemical or radiation poisoning, according to the Nov. 14 Guardian article, which noted: "Abnormal clusters of infant tumors have also been repeatedly cited in Basra and Najaf - areas that have in the past also been intense battle zones where modern munitions have been heavily used."
Finally, this is just another story about ecocide - the murder of a nation's ecosystem, both intentionally and as a predictable consequence of military actions - which is the true name for war. When the New York Times and all other mainstream outlets see the need to write about the future ecocide ventures we are now preparing for, or the current ones we are always in the process of throttling down or up, I wish they'd stop using the romantic word "war." The modern manifestation of this exercise in mutual and collective insanity is so toxic and destructive, its effects cannot simply be absorbed by the human race, the environment in which our lives are possible or even our DNA.
Whatever we think we're doing - defending ourselves, securing our interests, bringing democracy to the Third World - we are first and foremost committing ecocide, in collusion with our enemies, perhaps, but this hardly reduces our own responsibility for such consequences as widespread PTSD and, oh Lord, birth defects.
The craven defense from the military-industrial sector is that there's "no proof" . . . no proof that white phosphorous, for instance, or depleted uranium, two of the prime suspects in the Fallujah nightmare, cause birth defects.
There was also "no proof," for several decades, that Agent Orange, the defoliant containing dioxin, caused harm to American soldiers, much less the Vietnamese (3 million of whom, and/or their offspring, still suffer the consequences of their exposure to it). For 17 years, there was "no proof" that the toxic brew stirred up by Gulf War I - DU, insect repellant, anti-nerve gas medication, smoke from burning oil wells - was responsible for returning troops' array of horrific symptoms that were known as Gulf War Syndrome. And then, after years of study, stonewalling and damage control, lo and behold, proof, as they say, happened.
And proof will happen in regard to the hell being inflicted by the war on terror, but not now, not while its expansion is being debated. For now, there's "no proof" that white phosphorous does anything but burn the enemy's skin off; or that DU munitions, with their extraordinary penetrating prowess and vaporization upon impact, do anything except destroy tanks and promote freedom.
But if we called what we're doing in Iraq ecocide, maybe we could start tallying up the toxic - including the emotionally toxic - substances we're pumping into the country's air and water and earth and sand, and into the psyches of our own soldiers.
There's no controlling force on earth with less accountability and more impunity than the world's various military authorities, because their barbaric mandate is sheer dominance over declared or potential enemies, and all moral, social and ecological compunction is thrown into the breach as they pursue their agendas.
Is the endless movement of military traffic across the fragile desert ecosystem potentially harmful? Excuse me, but there's "no proof" that the ghastly increase in dust storms sweeping across Iraq, turning the Fertile Crescent into the Dust Bowl, as reported in July in the Los Angeles Times, is caused, or even partially caused, by the movement of U.S. military tanks and trucks, which have broken the desert's fragile crust of sand.
And there's "no proof" that the lung-clogging, almost daily dust storms - and the toxic and radioactive substances, including the microscopically fine power of spent depleted uranium ammunition, that are mixed in with the blowing sand - have anything to do with the increase in birth defects and early cancers in Fallujah. So let's wait at least a decade before we call it ecocide.
42 Comments so far
Show AllWe're in a self-replicating loop with a politics and economics of 'scarcity'.
What is valued is the rare (from land to water to diamonds to food). Even the singularity of who defines what an 'enemy' is an essential part of the dynamic. It is pride rather than dignity, singular rather than diverse. The former asserting 'self' in a context rather than a space for coexistance in dignity, which by nature is opened ended in the common ground for growth.
That is to say - The individual who internalizes the dynamic and points outward is expressing participation in the greater whole and is reaffirmed by doing so.
For example: Biodiversity (eg many varieties of grain) is being demonized as 'unproductive' in an outward pointing toward the starving blaming them for the failures of hundreds of years of colonialism now 'dependent' on a dynamic of export/import (concentration of the rare) to the detriment of sustainability that is by nature diverse.
That is, for example, monoculture (material singular > rare) generates apparent paradox (conceptual singular > rare) that only the paradigm of market (dynamic singular > rare) is permitted to speak to or act on (control singular > rare).
A similar dynamic is observable in the institution of religion as replacement for spiritual clarity - the rationale of killing in the name of the noumenal/god. A fear based 'reaction' because the dynamic cannot make sense of consideration of the rare not being the basis of existance.
Identity of individual to group relies on increasingly ostentatious exhibit of the symbols. A politics of the consumate fact that claims necessity of preemption to 'sustain' attrition considered necessary from the perspective of the rare.
It is also a tacit claim that technology must also be held as something rare when in fact it has been proven that conscientious broad based use of varieties of technology are part of the answer.
We're close to the nadir of the exclusionary dynamic.
you are really on a roll, today, brother...love this!
The city on the hill is built without a foundation.
The sooner it collapses, the better for the world.
"Call it Genocide" would have been a better title to this essay. "Ecoside" sounds too scientific, or too abstract, for the horror and cruelty of what we have done, first to Vietnam with agent-orange, then to Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan with depleted uranium munitions, and then to Gaza with tungsten munitions.
What does it mean when we damage the genes of a whole society? What does it mean when our actions cause people to stop having children? That means genocide. We should say out loud what it is we are doing to others.
“Ecocide” is easily defined as the destruction of an entire ecosystem, the delicate balance of which is necessary to sustain all life.
"Genocide," as defined by The Genocide Convention and approved by the United Nations in 1948, is, among other things, “deliberately inflicting on [a] group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part” with the intent “to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such.”
Though abhorrent to suggest, and clearly indicative of pathological evil, it is obvious now that in modern US imperial invasions of other nations such as Iraq and Afghanistan, ecocide has been adopted as a deliberate, insidious mechanism for bringing about genocide.
What if the slaves refused to have offspring, who then become the new slaves? Nature has made us (as well as other animals) with the urge to procreate. And its expression can greatly enrich our lives. What an ugly world we have created when offspring are regarded as a curse rather than a blessing, where children are destined to be slaves and/or live in dire poverty so that a few can possess much more than they could ever use. Perhaps, then, the ultimate sacrifice as well as rebellion is for the impoverished and oppressed to refuse to have children and provide new slaves for the 'Machine.' Just a thought.
I begged my daughter not to have kids. She had her husband had three who are the light of my life, but I am trying to figure out how to convince their parents to have all three sterilized at puberty.
The latest issue of ODE magazine is about a scientist named James Lovelock, the founder of the Gaia movement. He believes that as early as 2020 we will begin to suffer dramatic effects of global warming, and that by the end of the century 80% of all life on earth including human will be gone.
Our fragile governmental and financial structures will crumble overnight. All human life will join the rest of earth species in dying by the billions under the most painful conditions possible.
He says it is already too late and advocates nuclear energy to help us hang on a little longer, albeit under distinctly unfavorable circumstances.
"I am trying to figure out how to convince their parents to have all three sterilized at puberty."
That seems rather drastic, N. In my view, it's not up to their parents to decide that, and they are not ready at such a young age to make such an important decision either. Also, there are some reports of negative consequences of having a vasectomy and, of course, ectopic pregnancies stemming from tubal ligations. Maybe you can encourage them to have no more than one child, if they are to have children at all, which can lead to population reduction, and still allow them to fulfill nature's urge to procreate. A world without children would make it a much more barren place than it already is. Perhaps having less children and better parenting is what we need more of, rather than mass sterilization. The possible exception being when it's a forgone conclusion that a child will be born into dire poverty or economic 'slavery.'
It's about time serious people with serious funding started documenting these atrocities.
My ex-father-in-law while in the Navy was forced to stand on deck during an atmospheric nuclear test in the Pacific in the 1950s. The deck became covered with a fine white powder as he was forced to stand there. He became covered with that powder.
One of his daughters was born with a single kidney. His son was prone to unusual and very severe allergies. His great-grandson, my grandson, is autistic.
But, of course, this is only "anecdotal" evidence, like, you know, when you see your child born with no arms or an eye in the middle of the forehead!
This is being done in our name, people. Have we no shame? Not even Nuremburg was prepared to deal with the enormity of these crimes of ecocide. Depleted uranium has made much of Iraq as uninhabitable as those large areas downwind from Chernobyl. That was an accident. Iraq is not.
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Everybody is pissing into the pool and blaming everyone else for the quality of the water. Just saw an excellent program on FSTV about a couple who refused to pay taxes in an act of civil disobedience against war funding. Thought this was a wonderful act of 'non-cooperation.'
Thanks for that.
Everyone needs to look at the actual situation, and then take appropriate actions top resist social structures that are ecocidal.
Refusing to pay taxes seems like a no-brainer to me.
So do lots of other things, like not driving an internal-combustion engine.
Do not buy ANYTHING you do not truly need.
Unfortunately, the only form of war-tax resistance is to reduce your taxable income low enough so you pay no taxes. Voluntarily work for a low wage and give any excess to charity. Otherwise, the IRS will still get the money out of you. They will seize your savings, garnish your pay, impose a lien on your house, and charge you all fines interest and admin costs on top of it. You can't win.
Actually, three IRS liens against me timed out after 11 1/2 years of their futile collection attempts. A fourth unpaid tax debt was apparently too small for them to chase me, a waste of the IRS's resources.
Simple wide-scale frugality would do much to reduce the ecocide. Buy and use only what you absolutely need, repair what you can, and avoid shoddy, throw-away products. The indians knew how to live in harmony with the land, taking only what they needed. In a different universe, Thanksgiving would be in appreciation to them for teaching us how to do the same. Instead, we destroyed them while preaching the bible, and insisting upon our right to exploit others and destroy the earth. How sad and ironic.
It has been argued that we should stop referring to many of these military ventures as war, because war implies two groups battling. The fact is that there is usually only one side interested in fighting (usually to claim resources etc)-the occupiers.
Altruism 'in-built' in humans
By Helen Briggs
BBC News science reporter
These children are so young - they still wear diapers and are barely able to use language, but they already show helping behaviour
Felix Warneken
Infants as young as 18 months show altruistic behaviour, suggesting humans have a natural tendency to be helpful, German researchers have discovered.
In experiments reported in the journal Science, toddlers helped strangers complete tasks such as stacking books.
Young chimps did the same, providing the first direct evidence of altruism in non-human primates.
Altruism may have evolved six million years ago in the common ancestor of chimps and humans, the study suggests.
Just rewards
Scientists have long debated what leads people to "act out of the goodness of their hearts" by helping non-relatives regardless of any benefits for themselves.
Human society depends on people being able to collaborate with others - donating to charity, paying taxes and so on - and many scientists have argued that altruism is a uniquely human function, hard-wired into our brains.
The latest study suggests it is a strong human trait, perhaps present more than six million years ago in the common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans.
"This is the first experiment showing altruistic helping towards goals in any non-human primate," said Felix Warneken, a psychologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
"It's been claimed chimpanzees act mainly for their own ends; but in our experiment, there was no reward and they still helped."
'Astonishing'
Dr Warneken and colleague Professor Michael Tomasello wanted to see whether very young children who had not yet learned social skills were willing to help strangers.
Our closest living relative, the chimp, also shows rudimentary helping behaviour
The experimenters performed simple tasks like dropping a clothes peg out of reach while hanging clothes on a line, or mis-stacking a pile of books.
Nearly all of the group of 24 18-month-olds helped by picking up the peg or the book, usually in the first 10 seconds of the experiment.
They only did this if they believed the researcher needed the object to complete the task - if it was thrown on the ground deliberately, they didn't pick it up.
"The results were astonishing because these children are so young - they still wear diapers and are barely able to use language, but they already show helping behaviour," said Felix Warneken.
Lost spoon
The pair went on to investigate more complicated tasks, such as retrieving an object from a box with a flap.
Children and chimpanzees are both willing to help, but they appear to differ in their ability to interpret the other's need for help in different situations
Warneken at al
When the scientists accidentally dropped a spoon inside, and pretended they did not know about the flap, the children helped retrieve it. They only did this if they believed the spoon had not been dropped deliberately.
The tasks were repeated with three young chimpanzees that had been raised in captivity. The chimps did not help in more complex tasks such as the box experiment, but did assist the human looking after them in simple tasks such as reaching for a lost object.
"Children and chimpanzees are both willing to help, but they appear to differ in their ability to interpret the other's need for help in different situations," the two researchers write in Science.
Ugandan study
Further evidence of chimps' ability to cooperate was revealed in a separate study published in the same edition of the scientific journal.
Alicia Melis, at the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Uganda, found that chimps recognised when collaboration was necessary and chose the best partner to work with.
The chimps had to cooperate in reaching a food tray by pulling two ends of a rope at the same time.
"We've never seen this level of understanding during cooperation in any other animals except humans," she said.
But she said there was still no evidence that chimpanzees communicated with each other about a common goal like children do from an early age.
Yes, but Chimps are just "dumb animals" compared to us.
However, if we kill off all the chimps before we go extinct, then there will reduce the chances that a "humane" species can evolve.
Thanks for that Teddy,
By googling "Helen Briggs",altruism I found the original article at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4766490.stm
Now we need to study how we can help adults return to their original nature, and children how not to lose it.
This is interesting, Teddy. Seemingly, the young of just about any species are kinder and or 'gentler' than the adults. Are we talking about 'essence' or tendency here? Essence is the broader aspect that encompasses all species, meaning they reflect something 'broader' before conditioning sets in. Altruism, caring, kindness, and love might reflect the cosmos or nature's intent for all creation. Man seems to be able, more than any other species, to choose a different path. The purity of a child reflects this until 'negative conditioning' sets in, and one's essence is encapsulated. One loses touch with their essence (some mystics say 'true self'), and that essence is squelched in favor of egotistical and/or 'individual' pursuits. Thus, it becomes 'me' against the 'world.' [competitiveness]
Tendency, genetic or otherwise, tends to push one in a certain direction, whether considered a 'talent' or 'weakness,' but it does not necessarily determine the course a person will take. For example, an undeveloped talent, or not becoming an alcoholic (even if one contains the gene or tendency toward alcoholism).
I am so ashamed of my failure in o2 to block this war machine, I am so ashamed of my military for the wicked things it does. I am so ashamed at the dreadful FRAME UP of the shiite people, just men women and children like myself trying to make it through the day, trying to keep a covenant with god.
I knew this would happen, when i read about the depleted uranium, This monster is going to haunt us to the end of time. I do not DARE to even imagine the real cost of what we have done here. It is scaryer than all of our stupid horror films put together.
And it's real.
Perpatrated by a bunch of fat kids playing soldier...
It really hurts to think about at all, thank god for heroin. our soldiers will need it to block out what theyv'e done.
Jeevee
" 'MY' MILITARY"??
The Children of Iraq
http://www.gpln.com/childrenofiraq.htm
No one who makes the critical decisions can claim ignorance. Then there are those who know and remain silent or purposely work to keep others from knowing. Then there are those who don't want to know. Many who know and care, foolishly continue to vote for people who know and refuse to change (even as they claim to represent change). Despite all this, change is coming. Change is coming.
"Despite all this, change is coming."
Amen, brother. Amen.
Unfortunately, Mark
Most people DON'T know. You'll notice that Koehler's article is published originally with Common Dreams, not copied from another media source. I looked up, "birth defects",iraq, on Google news. Forty nine sites, and a cluster of 17 regarding Fallujah, which were mostly foreign and US countercultural.
It is OUR JOB to spread the news in whatever way we can - talk radio, letters to the editor, demonstrations, etc. Understanding, however, that American corporate media will, at best, bury the story.
But nevertheless, we must try to get out the word. Already a majority of Americans are against escalation in Afghanistan. If news of this repeated atrocity gets out, people will begin to understand that the US has no right to make war anywhere.
Somehow, we have got top find a way to organize ourselves so that we can reach the public.
"What chiefly governs the [U.S.] military budget is the need to spend enormous sums of money in a useless way. The allegedly powerful Pentagon is simply a receptacle for wasteful expenditure, just as a city dump is the receptacle for the refuse of a city."
Walter Karp
" They have pillaged the world. When the land has nothing left for men who ravage everything, they scour the sea. If an enemy is rich, they are greedy; if he is poor, they crave glory. Neither East nor West can sate their appetite. They are the only people on earth to covet wealth and poverty with equal craving. They plunder, they butcher, they ravish, and call it by the lying name of "empire." They make a desert and call it "peace"."
Roman historian Tacitus
That Tacitus guy is a really good writer!
"They are the only people on earth to covet wealth and poverty with equal craving."
What a brilliant insight...but who was he writing about?
Thucydides is good, too.
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The Roman Empire, and it was nothing compared to the US empire. Rome had the Persian empire to the North and Egypt to rival its power.
This is the first empire ever to truly dominate the entire world---temporarily.
This world was created by a monster.
An obscure Jewish sect believed the world was created by a god who was blind and insane.
Most of the gnostics also believed that the world was created by an evil god, the Demiurge. But then, they flourished in the time of the Roman Empire.
Gog and Magog.
Or the world later created that which became a monster by taking a 'wrong turn.'
There is a treasure trove of wisdom that has been passed down through the ages from the tongues and pens of men and women. For this we must be thankful.
What is tragic is that the ones who have devised and employed the systems such as corporate capitalism to grab political and economic power on this planet care not at all about truth, nor do they value the well-being of the natural envronment or other humans, even their own descendents.
These spoiled rich kids who have never grown up will wantonly ruin and destroy to fulfill their own immediate desires, which to them is all that really exists.
They have to have know of the toxic effects of DU weapons and whatever else that are using, but they used them anyway.
Someday, if humanity survives, historians will regard the actions of the US in Iraq, from 1991 to ???? as the greatest humanitarian atrocity ever. The utter destruction of an entire people and their land.
Mercury, lead and uranium are all highly toxic metals. These metals don't have to be radioactive to cause gross physical and neurological deformities, especially in developing fetuses and infants. Some of the effects of Minimata Disease, caused by pollution from the Chisso Chemical Company in Japan, would be similar to Fallujah's problems.
However, oxidized DU dust is radioactive.
I'm sorry, but Fallujah should be evacuated and never occupied by human beings in our lifetime. It should immediately become a dead city, like the city of Pripyat standing next to the Chernobyl reactors. Someday, robots (see the movie "Wall-E") should stabilize and clean out the toxic dust from the dead city.
This is the consequence of the USA's psychopathic agenda.
As much as I pity Americans in the grip of their pet monster the USA, Americans are going to have to pay.
They must capture their leaders. Send them to the ICC. Fix the mess. Americans are responsible. They would be amazed at the help they would get.
It is not the end of the world as some suggest. The solution is within our grasp. No wild science is needed. We can do it.
The decision is ours but until the Americans do what they have to do we are under the shadow of their guns. So at this stage we have to take them down.
What an "angry" article. Why is the Chicago Tribune letting its columnists spew venom at our beloved Military-Imperial-Complex?
How is the Chicago Tribune going to maintain its cozy relationship with the Chicago School of Economics, hosting the phantom evil laissez-faire capitalist Milton Friedman and his living disciples?
How is the Chicago Tribune going to maintain its cozy relationship with the Chicago Commodities Exchange, where uranium, phosphorus and other commodities of infant deformity/death are traded, inflated, and speculated?
How? Oh. Never mind. Next week the Tribune will publish something akin to the New York Times' "Poor William Kristol" columns, to "balance" things out, while the USA surges the ecocide in Afghanistan.
USans will be busy shopping.
...and we all continue on our days, oblivous, ignorant and... like dead poplulations walking...
I can't wait to hand this one out...
This is one that brings me to that conclusion that the government that represents me -doesn't, therefore, SHOULDNOT GET MEY TAX MONEY!!!! I'd love to get up the nerve to not pay. Of course, my husband would- well he wouldn't like it one bit, to put it ligthly. But maybe by handing this out I can stir up something... mmmmm, I wonder what it could be?
...and we all continue on our days, oblivous, ignorant and... like dead poplulations walking...
I can't wait to hand this one out...
This is one that brings me to that conclusion that the government that represents me -doesn't, therefore, SHOULDNOT GET MEY TAX MONEY!!!! I'd love to get up the nerve to not pay. Of course, my husband would- well he wouldn't like it one bit, to put it ligthly. But maybe by handing this out I can stir up something... mmmmm, I wonder what it could be?
theinitiate says:
the government that represents me -doesn't, therefore, SHOULDNOT GET MEY TAX MONEY!!!! I'd love to get up the nerve to not pay
right on, initiate...that is the whole point of a global day of change, a new way forward for the entire world: you would not be alone in your plight, nor your action...none of us would be able to stand up to the forces that be all by ourselves, but, together, we could...especially if we do it in a way that is more of a shutdown than a shootout...no one would pay taxes anymore...land would no longer be the basis of economic or industrial activity...it would be for all the living world to share...
Global Start Date: September 22, 2012...no more private ownership of property...
So,
I see a Trib copyright and CD publication.
I'd like to think the Trib went to print with this, but I am suspicious:
Did they? Anyone?
So the United States of America continues to make serially repeated crimes against humanity?.
And Obama gets a nobel price of Peace for the continued Profanity?
Surely this world is for many people now a hell so very scary
When every bad action is dressed up as well as the good fairy.