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Aleppo Syria
Bunks
Australia Veteran
Can anyone suggest anything we can do in a practical sense to stop these innocent people (little bloody kids!) being killed?
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In a practical sense look for where you can best lobby politicians, sign petitions, for your local government to increase the quota of refugees..This will in some small way, help some of these children and their families escape the blood shed and mayhem...At least you will be doing what you can...
Wars are driven by greed and egos, so there's a fat chance of this ending anytime soon...
But every little bit helps @Bunks...
Yeah, it's awful, and it makes me feel very powerless. The whole region is a horrible mess, and western interventions seem only to have made things worse.
I watched a TV documentary recently about how the Kurds were fighting ISIS and making some ground, but now Turkey is attacking the Kurds because they don't want them to have a establish an independent zone for themselves. And so it goes on, with no regard for the welfare of the civilian population.
It could have been avoided if all countries had agitated against Bush govt when he implemented war on Iraq.
Now only Europeans are being forced to share resources with refugees and UK And USA have closed boundaries to refuges from Syria and Iraq.
George Bush and the "axis of evil" offensive were certainly diabolical, but most of the children currently suffering in Aleppo hadn't been born at the time of that horrific lunacy. Looking back at the information now public about how that war was planned makes it pretty clear that Bush wanted a war. Could other countries have prevented it? Can Assad's violence be stopped now? Can the next war be prevented?
If not, then children being born today will suffer violence and die in a war that we can't predict the location of.
I have written to our Prime Minister and asked that he do everything in his power to stop the carnage.
Not sure what he can do but we have to try!
Yes, it is horrible. Most people around the world are against this kind of behavior, yet routinely the people we elect to run our countries are all for it. And then when someone goes off the rails we don't do much to help. It is very hard to understand. I read somewhere that 4500 children have died in the bombings in Syria alone (I'm not sure if that time frame is all of the war or a year or what). That is more than the population of our entire town. It is horrifying. And perhaps what horrifies me more than anything is how fast we move on when a story like Omran's or Aylan's comes to the forefront and then goes away in our fast-moving news cycles. Aylan was found almost a year ago. Nothing has changed. I suspect in another year, we will be in the same place. I write a lot of letters and emails, and I make phone calls. No one listens. I still do these things, but my focus is to try to raise my children with different mentality. I don't know what else to do.
To me, the crux of the problem is that the western world is always reactionary and nothing more. The root of the problems that create these wars and atrocities has to be addressed, but we put minimal effort into that because it is not as fun to build schools and educate as it is to design, build and fly new devices that blow shit up. The root of the problems on large scales is not much different than the roots of similar problems in our own cities. Poverty, lack of education and so on. All areas we choose to cut money from. We will never learn, apparently.
Yes I haz plan.
It is a long term plan found in many religions going back to the Buddha and before.
Nothing you can do - or perhaps rather, nothing you could do that would be palatable.
Barrel bombs are produced specifically to explode and kill people - the arms industry is estimated somewhere north of 2 trillion dollars - that's bigger than you, me and everyone and everything in Aleppo.
Agreed. Well done.
People seem overwhelmed by the enormity of dukkha. Innocent children especially. (Reincarnation is a shameful blame the child, teaching).
The enormity does not require personal monster levels of effort. What you are able to is fine. One thing is not to beat ourselves with indulgent emotions of helplessness over distant tragedies.
Also berating others over their lack of compassion is just another indulgence.
The industry and all of our politicians who have large, vested interests in them and get rich off all the bombs we drop and wars we fight. I don't think people who make decisions on war should be allowed to have connections to them.
For me, I don't feel "distant tragedies" are distant at all. If, as we discussed recently in another thread, we are all one drop of the ocean of humanity, what happens to the drop on the other side has some effect on us, even if it is not immediately tangible. The reason some of these things continue to happen is because too many of us consider them distant tragedies and therefore they are off our maps. We get sad over shared photos on social media for a day, until the next thing comes up that everyone shares.
We can only do what we can, for sure. In many of our countries, are voices are the most important thing we have. To talk with our decision making officials and to make better choices in those officials.
I have had too many tears coursing down my cheeks this year alone. In a way it's a comfort to know I am not inured to the tragedy some human beings inflict on others. Bt oh what I would give for some influence to make it stop.
as if natural disasters are not enough, we pile on the agony with warped and violent purpose.
Our voices have ripples and as Buddhists, for those that are, we are not Nihilists. I regularly solve all the worlds problems from my armchair. Most of the solutions center around a policy of kindness.
I would like the world to survive Trumpaggedon and the build up of stupidity. Like @karasti I engage with politicians, writing to them, providing feedback and encouraging a non-war mind set.
Others realise our oil dependancy means we need to sustain our supply from Islamic countries. Hence we go liberate them. We can encourage a more sustainable world.
So there are things I can do and things beyond my capacity/influence.
I prefer can do.
You have made far too many sensible posts lately @lobster
Yes, it's reassuringly disconcerting.....
@Bunks said:
Can anyone suggest anything we can do in a practical sense to stop these innocent people (little bloody kids!) being killed?
It is the poorest who have remained, they have no where to go. So what we can do is to get them out by huge trucks, all the innocent people who do not want to participate.
Get them in a safe home in another country where it is peaceful.
Whatever @lobster is smoking now, I want some
Politicians have a disturbing tendency to aggravate the cruelty by preventing this from happening. The disgusting governor of my state, Mike Pence, directed all state agencies to halt the settlement of Syrian refugees in Indiana. Similar cruelty is demonstrated by other politicians around the globe.