retraction and apology

[barbara100 at jps.net]

Jbor wrote:
"But seeing as you've brought up the topic of spreading misinformation and
false data, how about a retraction and apology for all your '7 and a half
million Afghanis are as good as dead' rants?"

Absolutely not.  Are you crazy?  It's a long way from being over.   There's
still bombing going on.  The aid's still not moving in fast enough.  Winter
hasn't even officially started.  And apologize to *you* Jbor?  What have you
to do with starving Afghans that I should apologize to you?

Here, read the latest:



7.5 Million Starving

By Alouette Mayer
Nov 16


It is difficult to grasp, and thus care about, that many people starving.
Maybe it could help us to fathom this if we were able to imagine one person
starving, our own self perhaps. What does it feel like to be hungry, really
hungry, for many days? And many weeks? And longer. It's easy to imagine the
beginning symptoms like weakness, shakiness, irritability, fatigue. But what
happens when those aren't remedied by food? Is it painful when the organs
begin shrinking as they do in starvation? It must be. And as the immune
system loses force, how does one endure the cramping, combined with the
weakness, combined with the lowering body temperature, combined with the
overall bloating as the body retains fluid?

Can you imagine yourself feeling that terrible? Now expand it to your
family. Your daughter. Your tiny son whose tummy is distending and who cries
with headaches. Your grandmother, coughing and scared and silent. What would
it feel like to watch a toddler, your toddler, weaken and beg for what you
can't give?

So we're not at 7.5 million people yet. We're at about 10. And already the
misery is profound and unbelievable. Now add all your closest friends to
those hungering, and you not being able to help them or be helped by them.
And you watch the gaunt stares as the body fails because its cells haven't
the nutrients they need to make the brain work well. Add your neighbors, all
of them. All of them. Are we at 100 people yet?

Millions left to go. Farther than the eyes could see, thousands upon
thousands upon thousands of weakening hungry people who want something that
exists in great abundance all over the world - food. And if hunger and its
related illnesses is bad enough and already hard to wrap your mind around,
add the other unthinkables that the Afghani families are enduring today,
right this second as you read this. No running water, no toilets, huddled in
refugee camps miles and miles long, And its getting cold. It's going to get
really, really cold and wet heavy snows are coming. And you're so terribly
hungry.

Imagine the stench and disgusting danger of raw sewage, of the infectious
diarrhea that comes from that. And there are already dead bodies to be
dragged away to be buried or burned by weak hungry men. How does a frail
starving man dig a grave for his neighbor, his friend, or his tiny son? The
nights must be endless, filled with prayers for a warm morning sun.

And can it possibly get worse than our imaginings so far? Yes. There are
bombs dropping in the distance, and they are so loud, and the ground shakes
and you are already shivering. Those bombs are so loud and the planes
dropping them come one after another after another. And you just wish you
could have the food that that pilot will be having later. And don't forget
to add the land mines that make every step a roulette. Two of your younger
brothers stepped on them. One died after a few days of untold pain without
any medicine and the other one lost his leg just past his knee. It's so hard
for your body to heal when you can't feed it. This gets so hard to fathom.

Please try. This is all real, and all happening right now in a place only a
plane flight away from you. What would it be like to starve?







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