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We have lost our humanity.

In 1982 during the siege of Beirut, Mother Theresa stopped a war long enough so that she could go in with the Red Cross and rescue 37 children trapped in a front line hospital. How many people remember this? And even more important, how many people have followed her lead? 


In the last month alone there has been ample opportunity for nations around the world to support such an act of humanity through the Red Cross, but they have failed to do so in spite of having at their disposal the wealth, the military capability and the expertise.


The United Nations in turn, is clearly a failed body in this regard. The suffering in Syria, Iraq, Gaza and the Donbass is left unattended and political rhetoric, inflammatory headlines and propaganda rule the day. 


There are many atrocities I could use as examples here, there are in fact far too many to choose from. So I will restrict myself to four. 


The first begins with a Nun. Sister Agnes Miriam. I will start at the end of this story rather than the beginning. After the Sarin Gas incident in Syria in 2013, Sister Agnes Miriam toured the UK to inform people of the suffering of the Syrian people at the hands of the "rebels,"who we now know today as ISIL. At one particular venue Jeremy Scahill was also one of the speakers, well known for his book Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield. One would think that these two people would have had much in common. Instead, Scahill cancelled his appearance as he did not want to be seen on the same platform as Sister Agnes Miriam. It seems that although the journalist sells himself under a humanitarian banner, that some humanitarian subjects are more politically correct than others. 


In all the headlines that screamed across the world, falsely I might add, that Asaad had gassed his own people, and the later retractions and corrections that it was in fact the "rebels,"who had done it, in small print on the back pages, the world lost it's humanity. Forgotten and ignored were the children who had been abducted by the "rebels," murdered and then used as a propaganda photo and you tube operation as the "victims" of Asaad's Sarin gas attack. 


Nowhere did the media interview the parents of these children, nowhere where the children mentioned in the correct context. This atrocity was buried under a hubris of political mudslinging and then eventually shelved and forgotten. When any society resorts to the killing of children, it has reverted back to barbarism and Moloch worship. 


In August 2014, we saw yet again the indiscriminate bombing of Gaza by Israeli forces. The pictures of dead and physically maimed children filled the Internet. A recent article by Dr. Franklin Lamb concluded that it would take 5 (FIVE) hospital ships to save Gaza's children. So where are they? Why has the international community through the Red Cross not already sent a flotilla to dock off the Gaza coastline and the UN negotiated safe passage for the children of Gaza to these floating hospitals? With all the Naval hardware in the Med, you cannot tell me that this is not possible. What are they waiting for? Or do we have to wait for another Nun? Instead these atrocities are buried under a hubris of political mudslinging. We have lost our humanity. 


Again in August, 40,000 members of the Yazidi sect, including women and children, took refuge on Mount Sinjar. The MP from the ancient Yazidi faith, Vian Dakhil, appealed in the Iraqi Parliament  to rescue the Yazidis of Iraq from being exterminated by the Wahhabi terrorist, the same group who had committed atrocities in Syria almost a year before. 


I have one word. Heli-cop-ter! You cannot tell me that with all the military hardware,  be it from Iraq, US or UK military in the region that a rescue operation could not have been organised to drop off food and water and to airlift these people out of there. Where was the Red Cross? Where was the UN? Or does it take three years to do the paperwork? We have lost our humanity. 


Again in August, a humanitarian disaster in the cities of Donetsk and Lugansk in the Donbass of Eastern Ukraine reached genocidal proportions. With almost 1 million refugees having fled to Russia, over 2,000 Innocent civilians killed by Kiev bombing of these cities with Grad missiles, their homes, schools and hospitals destroyed they have now run out of food, water and no longer have electricity. The insanity is that while these people are starving, farmers in the EU are burning and burying their produce. This while others starve? They have lost their humanity. 


In the case of Donbass, while Kiev, the UN, the US and the EU dragged their feet, delaying for over a week 280 trucks with humanitarian aid for the region coming from Russia, ( in spite of the cargo being inspected and accompanied by international monitors, Red Cross officials and international media) Putin defied insanity and political hubris. He chose humanity. 


The trucks went  in on Friday 22nd August, delivered much needed water, food, generators and medical equipment and returned to Russia by Saturday 23rd. These trucks were not, as the media screamed from the headlines, a military Russian invasion. 


It is time to defy inhumanity and demand that the Red cross and the UN put humanity before political expediency. If one Nun could stop a war in 1982 in order to save the lives of children, then we can do the same. 


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