Like Canaries in a coal mine, we die

The title is an allusion to the 19th century practice by coal miners described below:

"Early coal mines did not feature ventilation systems, so miners would routinely bring a caged canary into new coal seams. Canaries are especially sensitive to methane and carbon monoxide, which made them ideal for detecting any dangerous gas build-ups. As long as the canary in a coal mine kept singing, the miners knew their air supply was safe. A dead canary in a coal mine signalled an immediate evacuation."
-Michael Pollick

The expression in mainstream culture refers to the sacrifice of one's life serving others. Perhaps most disturbing about that analogy is that the act of sacrifice is involuntary, non-consensual and abrupt. One minute you are singing happily, the next minute you're dead and serving as a warning for others. Your death, ironically serves a purpose more profound than all your life contribution put together. The contrast between the fragile beauty, grace and music radiating from our feathered friend, set against the backdrop of the harsh coal mining environment, is astounding.

Living like Canaries in a Coal Mine is how I imagine anyone stuck in Iraq today that is considered a weaker life form, i.e. lower on the food chain. If you are a child, woman, gay, transgendered or part of a religious minority, you are especially vulnerable. The situation in Mesopotamia plays out like an experiment in social Darwinism gone awry. The savagery that propels individuals, without any prospect of gains to throw acid on a 5-yr old child until his face melts to the bone (full story on CNN), or stone a pre-adolescent girl to death for "lewd" behavior (video is on youtube) or setting a trans-gendered woman (formerly a singer/entertainer during Saddam's regime) on fire then dragging her charcoaled corpse into the street for the curious to inspect her burnt genitals. This is Iraq today, nothing short of barbaric.

Yet, they speak of progress. 6 years after the war, the accomplishments include holding a democratic election, where people unanimously voted to make Islamic Sharia the source of legislation (making stonings and beheadings closer to becoming a reality nation-wide), and changing the flag, by highlighting in green the words "Allah Akbar" (God is Great) on the same red, white and black background of old. The wording of the human rights protection clauses in the constitution was changed to specifically name homosexuals as humans excluded from those rights. This is done by a U.S. backed government in a U.S occupied territory.

In one of the most under reported news stories and one of the most telling, a young Afghani journalist has been sentenced in Afghanistan to death for being caught with articles (which he didn't write) that criticize Islam. A man is going to be sentenced to death by a court of law by a U.S propped government in a country under full U.S military control, for questioning Islam?

When the U.S forces occupied Germany after WWII, Germans were forced to change their constitution, forced to free the Jews in concentration camps, forced to rewrite their school textbooks, forced to eliminate hate speech and propaganda from their media outlets. None of those changes were negotiable. No one ever talked about respecting the "cultural sensitivities" of Nazi Germans. The ideology itself that produced the barbarity we saw in Western Europe was banned altogether, along with Hitler's memoir. Germany underwent extreme Social Engineering under the U.S administration of the time to rehabilitate the country to "rejoin the ranks of world nations" so to speak. Same for Japan: the allied forces wrote a new constitution, granting women the right to vote and abolishing "Shinto" as a state religion, and that was still 1945. Why is it different for Iraq? Why are they allowing them to imbed hate-speech and discrimination in their new constitution? Or is occupation reduced to killing innocent civilians on the street? We are setting in motion a system that will undoubtedly be more repressive than anything Iraq has seen under Saddam.

Today, virtually all dictatorships the world round are backed by the U.S government. In Saudi Arabia, women can't even drive or sign a legal document or walk/travel alone. To do virtually anything besides eating and breathing requires the consent and chaperoning of her legal guardian. It goes without saying that they aren't allowed the right to vote and their statements are inadmissible in court. There is no minimum age for marriage, because the prophet married Aisha when she was 6. Gay men are beheaded sporadically, and so are atheists. Yet Saudi is the U.S.'s biggest ally in the region. How?

None of these governments would survive a day without supplies from the U.S Arms industry. The very technology that Saudi uses to filter internet content nation-wide (censorship in its most extreme form, you cannot access any website in the kingdom unless the government approves it) is provided by an American company. This complicity is criminal.

Like canaries in a coal mine, we die – men, women and children who aren't tough enough to survive in the harsh Middle Eastern social landscape – unbeknownst to us that the very sympathetic lads that brought us with them to the coal mine to entertain are the ones responsible for our eventual demise.

I refuse to die.