6,5 millones de menores viven en la pobreza

Fuente: Rebelión

Foto: AFP

por Jhon Jairo Salinas
26 de febrero, 2010

Muchos menores ingresan al mundo del crimen desde los 7 a 8 años. “Yo comencé a robar a los 8 años porque mis padres no tenían empleo y me mandaban a la calle para que levantara la plata del arriendo”

La violencia de los jóvenes no contada. Las estadísticas sobre menores involucrados en hechos de violencia y delincuencia muestran la gravedad del problema. De acuerdo con Carlos Enrique Marín, quien trabajó entre 1995 y 1998 en el programa de Asesoría y Convivencia de Medellín, el 80 por ciento de las muertes en el país las pone el conflicto en las ciudades y no la lucha política. “En Medellín van más de 50,000 jóvenes muertos y el Estado no asume una política clara de juventud. Me da miedo que los jóvenes se armen como en Medellín, donde no se usa la “pate cabra sino los fusiles AK 47 y R 15″. Read the full story

Article published in Amauta with permission from the author

Untitled, by Jean Michel Basquiat

by Francis Shor

$2000 per dead child! That’s the amount of compensation offered by the Pentagon for the “collateral damage” which it has caused in Afghanistan. As the war escalates and more innocent victims of Washington’s aggressive actions accumulate in number, the US military calculates what it will take to placate grieving Afghan parents.

Eight years into a war deemed “necessary” by both Republican and Democratic Administrations, the death and destruction visited upon Afghan civilians seems reducible to neat and cheap compensation packages. And, yet, the real physical and psychological damage inflicted by the war-makers remains strangely abstract and without comprehension of the very real unintended consequences. The anger of Afghan families in the earliest days of US military intervention undoubtedly persists and may even fuel the continuing insurgency. According to a June 28, 2002 Los Angeles Times story about one Afghan who had lost his wife, mother and seven children to a US air attack, he bitterly lamented: “I put a curse on the Americans who did this. I pray that they will have the tragedy in their lives that I have had in mine.” Read the full story

Source: Rethink Afghanistan

At least 10 civilians, including 5 children, were killed by U.S. forces when they fired a so-called “precision-guided munition,” which landed 300 yards away from its intended target on a compound filled with civilians. NATO forces urged civilians to stay in Marjah during Operation Moshtarak, the largest military operation so far in the Afghanistan war. Because U.S. and allied forces encouraged civilians to stay in their homes during the attack, these forces have a special responsibility to avoid endangering civilians–an obligation NATO forces clearly failed to meet on Feb. 14.

Video Source: Democracy Now!

Muhammad Kinani (Rick Rowley/Bignoisefilms.org)

Source: The Nation

by Jeremy Scahill
January 28, 2010

Every detail of September 16, 2007, is burned in Mohammed Kinani’s memory. Shortly after 9 am he was preparing to leave his house for work at his family’s auto parts business in Baghdad when he got a call from his sister, Jenan, who asked him to pick her and her children up across town and bring them back to his home for a visit. The Kinanis are a tightknit Shiite family, and Mohammed often served as a chauffeur through Baghdad’s dangerous streets to make such family gatherings possible. Read the full story

Afghan children watch a US soldier in the mountains of Nuristan Province, December 19. Children are the biggest victims of the war in Afghanistan, with more than 1,050 people under 18 years old killed last year alone, according to an Afghan human rights watchdog. (AFP/File/Tauseef Mustafa)

Source: Agence France-Presse

by Lynne O’Donnell
January 7, 2010

KABUL – Children are the biggest victims of the war in Afghanistan, with more than 1,050 people under 18 years old killed last year alone, according to an Afghan human rights watchdog.

Taliban-linked militants caused around 64 per cent of all violent child deaths last year, the Afghanistan Rights Monitor (ARM) said in a report.

Children were also press-ganged, sexually exploited, deprived of health and education, and illegally detained by all sides in a war that is dragging into its ninth year since the U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban regime. Read the full story

versión en español abajo

Source: New America Media

Inas Hamed, 12, at her house in Falluja (Muhannad Fala'ah/Getty Images)

by Jalal Ghazi
January 6, 2010

Forget about oil, occupation, terrorism or even Al Qaeda. The real hazard for Iraqis these days is cancer. Cancer is spreading like wildfire in Iraq. Thousands of infants are being born with deformities. Doctors say they are struggling to cope with the rise of cancer and birth defects, especially in cities subjected to heavy American and British bombardment.

Here are a few examples. In Falluja, which was heavily bombarded by the US in 2004, as many as 25% of new- born infants have serious abnormalities, including congenital anomalies, brain tumors, and neural tube defects in the spinal cord. Read the full story

Source: Democracy Now!

January 6, 2010

In Afghanistan, hundreds have taken to the streets of Kabul and elsewhere to protest the US killing of civilians. The incident that has sparked the most outrage took place in eastern Kunar on December 27th, when ten Afghans, eight of them schoolchildren, were killed. According to the Times of London, US-led troops dragged innocent children from their beds and shot them during a nighttime raid. Afghan government investigators said the eight students were aged from eleven to seventeen, all but one of them from the same family.

Guest: Jerome Starkey, the Times of London correspondent in Afghanistan.
Website: JeromeStarkey.com

Civilian deaths cause widespread anger among Afghans exhausted by decades of war and are readily exploited in Taliban propaganda.(File: Getty Images)

Source: Agence France-Presse

December 28, 2009

KABUL – Ten civilians, mostly school children, have been killed during Western military operations in eastern Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai’s office said Monday, citing “initial reports”.

Karzai condemned the killings, which his statement said took place in Kunar province, which borders Pakistan, on Saturday.

“Initial reports indicate that in a series of operations by international forces in Kunar province… 10 civilians, eight of them school students, have been killed,” the statement said. Read the full story

(Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: zaxl4, Thom Watson)

Source: t r u t h o u t

by Evelyn Pringle
December 12, 2009

Prescriptions for psychiatric drugs increased 50 percent with children in the US, and 73 percent among adults, from 1996 to 2006, according to a study in the May/June 2009 issue of the journal Health Affairs. Another study in the same issue of Health Affairs found spending for mental health care grew more than 30 percent over the same ten-year period, with almost all of the increase due to psychiatric drug costs.

On April 22, 2009, the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality reported that in 2006 more money was spent on treating mental disorders in children aged 0 to 17 than for any other medical condition, with a total of $8.9 billion. By comparison, the cost of treating trauma-related disorders, including fractures, sprains, burns, and other physical injuries, was only $6.1 billion. Read the full story

Source: Common Wonders

Babies With No Heads, 2 Heads or Monstrous Deformities

by Robert C. Koehler
November 25, 2009

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. Read the full story