I believe Kelly is thinking about Mark Jones, whose death was announced today on another list. Sincere thanks, Kelly, for your consideration.
I might also have been thinking of Tom Hurdell, the ISM volunteer who is reportedly brain-dead today in a Khan Younis hospital after being shot in the head by an Israeli soldier who was aiming at some Palestinian children and hit Hurdell by mistake or maybe not. Or I might have been thinking about the al- Kindi hospital, which has been visited numerous times by IPT volunteer Kathy Kelley of Chicago, which two days ago was overwhelmed by dead and suffering civilians, all of whom, including the children, have now been evicted, the hospital having been looted to the bare walls and now serving as base for an armed Shi'ite force from Najaf, at last report.
At the time I wrote my little note, though, I was actually thinking about the shopkeeper. If Mark could give us a message from beyond the grave, I think he would be telling us in his customarily outraged tone to forget about him and focus on the devastation which the US is creating in Baghdad at the moment. It appears to be their policy to utterly destroy the economy of Iraq on the storefront level, and to reduce it to the Afghan level, without hospitals, without typewriters, without money. The oil wells will function. The cities are superfluous. The shopkeeper with a gun in his hand becomes a military target.
There is plenty of death and awfulness to go around this week.
LP