xxdr_zombiexx

I am now working with a specialized private program providing community based treatment to adults with chronic mental illness.

Among many of my duties is the assessment and diagnostic impression of people newly admitted to the program. Many are folks who have been in prison, the homeless people you see, or in institutions because they have serious mental illnesses that, despite surface appearances, have not been really "treated". Please believe me when I tell you I hear a lot of stories. I just met a fascinating individual and I think you should know his story. The names and certain events are altered, of course, to maintain confidentiality.

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Carolyn Bennett

"I used to listen to how people talk about hating wars, about all the pain it leaves in their hearts and souls. War is very cruel and we, the Palestinian refugees, have witnessed the cruelty of war more than once. This time, it is the cruelest of all. There is no mercy, no difference between a child, an old man or even an innocent, unborn fetus. All are criminals and deserve to die according to Israel. I stopped hoping for an end. My children have stopped feeling after seeing the photos broadcasted on the news. Children, families—are all the victims of the Israeli hate and inhumanity. Life became meaningless not only for us but also for our children. We, therefore, only wait our turn to join the list, as an additional number, nothing more, but just a number. Our only wish is to die together as one family so no one of us has to live through the bitterness of losing the other."— Najwa Sheikh, Nusierat Camp, Gaza Strip; “From a meaningless life to a meaningless death” Letters from Gaza—

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Chris Hedges

Fire and smoke from Israeli miltary operations light up the
night sky over Gaza City. AP photo / Abdel Kareem Hana

The incursion into Gaza is not about destroying Hamas. It is not about stopping rocket fire into Israel. It is not about achieving peace. The Israeli decision to rain death and destruction on Gaza, to use the lethal weapons of the modern battlefield on a largely defenseless civilian population, is the final phase of the decades-long campaign to ethnically cleanse Palestinians. The assault on Gaza is about creating squalid, lawless and impoverished ghettos where life for Palestinians will be barely sustainable. It is about building ringed Palestinian enclaves where Israel will always have the ability to shut off movement, food, medicine and goods to perpetuate misery. The Israeli attack on Gaza is about building a hell on earth.

This attack is the final Israeli push to extinguish a Palestinian state and crush or expel the Palestinian people. The images of dead Palestinian children, lined up as if asleep on the floor of the main hospital in Gaza, are a metaphor for the future. Israel will, from now on, speak to the Palestinians in the language of death. And the language of death is all the Palestinians will be able to speak back. The slaughter—let’s stop pretending this is a war—is empowering an array of radical Islamists inside and outside of Gaza. It is ominously demolishing the shaky foundations of the corrupt secular Arab regimes on Israel’s borders, from Egypt to Jordan to Syria to Lebanon. It is about creating a new Middle East, one ruled by enraged Islamic radicals.

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