[casi] Fwd: [du-list] Felicity Arbuthnot´s speech at Holy Innoncents day service

[Jo Baker <jobak17@DELETETHISyahoo.co.uk>]

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--- davey garland wrote: >
To: du-watch@yahoogroups.com,
> nucnews@yahoogroups.com,
> abolition-caucus@yahoogroups.com,
> pandora-project@yahoogroups.com,
> du-list@yahoogroups.com
> From: davey garland
> Date: Wed, 1 Jan 2003 11:30:38 +0000 (GMT)
> Subject: [du-list] Felicity Arbuthnot´s speach at
> Holy Innoncents day service
>
> If folk can circulate this amongst their lists then
> that would be grand, as Felicity is having "trouble"
> getting out articles etc.
> cheers
> davey (pandora)
>
>
>
> Felicity Arbuthnot - address at:
>
> St Martin¹s in the Fields Church, Trafalgar Square,
> London - Holy
> Innocents
> Day Service, 28th December 2002. Dedicated to the
> Children of Iraq.
>
> Last year in Athens, I spoke at a Conference to mark
> the start of the
> International Decade for the Culture of Peace and
> non-violence for the
> Children of the World (2001 2010) a decade clearly
> quickly forgotten.
>
> I talked particularly of Basra, Iraq¹s beautiful,
> battered second city,
> from
> where Sinbad departed for his magical journeys and
> the
> Biblical Tigris
> and
> Euphrates rivers meet at the Shat Al Arab. Basra, in
> the eye of Desert
> Storm
> in 1991 has an unimaginable childhood cancer and
> leukaemia rate and
> birth
> deformities equally unique, which have been linked
> to
> the depleted
> uranium
> weapons (DU) used by the US and UK, during the Gulf
> war.
>
> The chemically toxic and radioactive DU dust which
> has
> entered the
> water
> table and fauna and flora in Iraq, former Yugoslavia
> and now Afganistan
> will
> still be polluting our earth when the sun goes out:
> it
> has a half life
> of
> four and a half billion years.
>
> In response to what I had said an extraordinary
> political lyricist,
> David
> Rovics* wrote a song, which says in three verses,
> more
> than I could say
> in a
> million words, it is called ŒSong for Basra¹:
>
> If I could sing a song for every bomb that flies
> I'd sing each and all the days
> If there were to be a verse for every dying child's
> cries
> For every helpless father's gaze
> If I wrote a love letter to each corpse as it is
> carried
> I'd never still my pen
> If I had to stop a moment for each one that's been
> buried
> I'd never move again
> And the stocks are going up somewhere in America
> Sing a song for Basra
>
> If I could shed a tear for every home that bombs
> destroy
> I'd never stop crying
> If every broken brick were a heart of a little girl
> or
> boy
> All the world's children would be sighing
> If I could hold each shattered body, each baby
> stilled
> at birth
> I'd have no time for loneliness
> I'd spend all my time embracing the people of this
> savaged earth
> Feeling the poisoned wind's caress
> And the billionaires are laughing in some safe place
> in America
> Sing a song for Basra
>
> If each barren pharmacy were a woman's shining eyes
> I'd fall in love forever
> If every bombed-out kindergarten were a factory in
> disguise
> Wouldn't that be clever
> But bricks are only bricks, and dust is only dust
> And death is all around
> Each day another missile falls and sometimes the
> only
> thing to trust
> Is the shaking of the ground
> And they're loading up the warplanes in some safe
> place in America
> Sing a song for Basra
>
> About an hour¹s drive from Basra Is Ur, believed
> birth place of
> Abraham,
> father or Prophet of Judaism, Christianity and Islam
> whom legend has,
> was
> suckled on two fingers, one which gave forth milk
> and
> the other honey -
> thus
> Œland of milk and honey¹. Nearby is Qurna, believed
> site of the Garden
> of
> Eden and not far away, Babylon, where the site of
> the
> Hanging Gardens
> can
> still be visited. In the talk which has over taken,
> of
> weapons of mass
> destruction and Saddam, we forget that Iraq -
> Mesapotamia is all our
> common
> heritage.
>
> The great ziggurat at Ur is pockmarked by shrapnel
> from the British and
> American missiles which bomb the region on an almost
> daily basis
> (illegal
> bombings for which there is no UN mandate) - two
> professed Christian
> leaders, bombing Abraham¹s birth place......
>
> But I learned about reconcilliation at Ur. Two years
> ago I had agreed
> to
> travel with a group from Sheffield Against Sanctions
> on Iraq and to
> devise
> an itinery for them. On the way to Ur, I failed to
> find the correct
> turning
> and we drove up and down the main road a number of
> times, past
> moonscape
> scenes of recently bombed buildings, homes, power
> stations, a water
> purification plant, grain stores, resultant from the
> UK and US sorties.
>
> I suggested to the driver that we return to an army
> checkpoint and ask
> the
> way. One of the soldiers said he was coming off duty
> and lived near the
> Ur
> turning, in exchange for a ride home, he would show
> us
> the road. The
> group
> had brought leaflets in Arabic, a mission statement
> saying they were
> against
> sanctions and has come in friendship and to learn.
> Should we give him
> one?
> They whispered to me - he a soldier, we from
> countries
> responsible for
> the
> decimation of his home region we were so graphically
> witnessing.
> ŒAbsolutely¹. I said.
>
> He took the leaflet and read it slowly and
> carefully,
> then re-read it.
> Then
> he turned to us, nine is all, and said: ŒIt is
> incumbant upon us, here
> in
> the south, to offer hospitality to travellers. My
> home
> is simple, but I
> have
> five chickens, you will eat well.¹ The next day was
> the end of Ramadan
> and
> the great Muslim Feast of Eid and we knew what those
> chickens¹ destiny
> was -
> yet he was prepared to sacrifice them for
> representatives of Œthe
> enemy¹ who
> had attempted to put out the hand of friendship.
> (Needless to say, we
> made
> excuses and declined, moved beyond words.)
>
> Another abiding memory of the reality of bombings is
> from February
> 1998,
> when the world was convinced Iraq would be bombed
> again. I was in
> Baghdad
> and had gone to talk to a woman with yet another
> heartbreaking story to
> tell. I talked to her in a large, previously well
> appointed, but now
> empty
> living room. In common with many, she had sold all
> her
> furniture to
> provide
> and survive.
>
> As we talked, the room began to fill up with
> children.
> A stranger is a
> rare
> treat in isolated Iraq and they crept in, sitting on
> the floor, quiet
> as
> mice, watching my every move, heads following my pen
> as if at a mini
> tennis
> match. Dusk was falling as I left and they followed
> me out in a small
> wave
> as I went to the battered car, perhaps fifty of
> them,
> between about
> three
> and thirteen.
>
> As we drew away, they ran alongside, laughing,
> waving,
> blowing kisses.
> When
> they could no longer keep up, I looked back and they
> were standing
> together
> in the road, still laughing and blowing kisses. It
> was
> February 23rd,
> the
> night the military planners estimated would be Œthe
> darkest night¹, the
> one
> the most optimum for bombing. I went back to my
> hotel,
> lay on the bed
> and
> wept.
>
> In the event, Iraq was not bombed that February,
> instead it was bombed
> in
> time for Christmas, with Prime Minister Blair
> standing
> in front of his
> resplendent tree outside Downing Street, announcing
> the onslaught.
> Forty six
> percent of Iraq¹s population is sixteen or under.
> Those who were just
> four
> years old when the embargo was implemented and
> resultantly have had
> their
> entire childhood snatched away, are now just old
> enough to be drafted
> into
> Iraq¹s army and end their fledgling lives as cannon
> fodder in George
> Bush¹s
> war for oil.
>
> And make no mistake, this will be a nuclear war, we
> are looking into
> the
> abyss. In 1991, at a press conference in Tel Aviv,
> the
> Israeli military
> spokesman was asked what would happen if Iraq sent
> missiles to Israel
> in the
> impending Gulf war. Without missing a beat he
> responded: ŒWe will turn
> Baghdad into a sheet of glass.¹ The last Bush
> Administration restrained
> Israel, this one will not - Defence Secretary
> Rumsfeld
> has made it
> clear he
> has no hesitation in using nuclear weapons.
>
> Imagine the unimaginable - wiping out the country
> which brought the
> world
> writing, the first fomestic laws nearly two thousand
> years before
> Christ,
> algebra, mathematics; which had the first irrigation
> systems twelve
> thousand
> years ago, invented the first time piece, used
> Pythagoras theorum
> seventeen
> hundred years before Pythagoras. The world¹s first
> College of
> Pharmacology
> was established in Baghdad. Astronomy was
> established
> in Iraq - the
> three
> wise men learned how to follow the star from
> Mesapotamia¹s teaching.
> For
> twelve hundred years, Baghdad (Dar Es Salaam - City
> of
> Peace) was
> regarded
> as one of the most refined, civilized and festive
> cities on earth. Iraq
> is
> not Saddam - it is our common heritage - a world
> heritage site.
>
> William Blum, in his new book: ŒRogue State¹ (and he
> is not referring
> to
> Iraq ..) offers a new way to conflict resolve, he
> writes: ŒIf I were
> President, I could stop terrorist attacks ... in a
> few
> days.
> Permanently. I
> would first apologise to all the widows and orphans,
> the tortured,
> impoverished and all the many millions of other
> victims of American
> imperialism. Then I would announce, in all
> sincerity,
> to every corner
> of the
> world, that America¹s global interventions have come
> to an end ... I
> would
> then reduce the military budget by at least ninety
> percent and use the
> savings to pay reparations to the voctims. There
> would
> be more than
> enough.
> One year¹s military budget of three hundred and
> thirty
> billion dollars
> is
> equal to more than eighteen thousand dollars an hour
> for every hour
> since
> Jesus Christ was on earth.
>
> ³That¹s what I would do in my first three days as
> President. On the
> fourth
> I¹d be assassinated¹, concludes Blum. Friends,
> somehow
> we must attempt
> to
> force our reckless, feckless leaders to strive to do
> just this.
>
> Perhaps I can finish with two memories. One is from
> way back in 1993,
> walking round a hospital in Baghdad with film maker
> Miriam Ryle and a
> young
> doctor, who was lucidly explaining the conditions of
> her young patients
> -
> and that each one of them was unlikely to survive,
> for
> the want often
> of the
> simplest medications. Suddenly her composure cracked
> and she simply
> said:
> ŒThere¹s a hole, where my heart should be.¹ I think
> there is a hole in
> the
> heart of anyone who visits Iraq and sees for
> themselves.
>
> The last words are those of a young father, in
> October
> this year, who
> was
> helplessly watching his ten year old son die of
> leukaemia. If he could
> send
> a message to Prime Minister Blair and President
> Bush,
> I asked him, what
> would it be?Tears welled in his eyes and he said:
> ŒPlease, just tell them: stop this slaughter of
> innocents.¹
>
> Thank you.
>
> *www.davidrovics.com (or
> http://members.aol.com/drovics/home.htm)
> www.folkweb.com/davidrovics
> www.mp3.com/davidrovics
>
>
>
>
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