Here’s another example of the emancipatory largesse of US-NATO troops in Afghanistan: two laborers at a coal dump outside Kabul working without a stitch of protective clothing in an industry where silicosis has been recognized as an occupational disease for over 400 years. Silicosis has many symptoms which must wreak havoc with already malnourished & war-stressed workers: fatigue, weight loss, coughing, chest pain, fever, blue skin, heart disease, susceptibility to TB, & you can’t friggin breathe.
To the achievements of the US-NATO war we can add lack of worker’s rights to child labor, massive homelessness, thousands of amputees from land mines, indiscriminate massacres of civilians, political repression, & millions of refugees. That lone beauty parlor in Kabul repeatedly cited by war propagandists as evidence of women’s new freedoms in Afghanistan is taking quite a beating by comparison. Somehow manicured toenails don’t compensate for a husband or son or brother who can’t breathe.
There are antiwar protests coming up this fall in cities around the world. Make a placard demanding “US out of Afghanistan!” “US out of Iraq!”--& hope you don’t have to add “US out of Syria!”
No US-NATO war! Out now!
(Photo by Mohammad Ismail/Reuters)
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