A friend turned me on to an article in the NY Times detailing the post-Iraq life of Shaheen Khan, a Pakistani woman who is now paralyzed after a few months as a laundry worker in the Green Zone in Baghdad. KBR, formerly known as Kellogg, Brown, and Root, and recently delinked from Halliburton’s family, is supplying non-Iraqi contract labor to create another kind of army, one that is without the privilege of combat training, ultra protective gear, tanks, and guns. Perhaps the only shield besides the vest and other government issue nominal gear that Shaheen has is the color of her skin, easily blending in with Iraqis. But in the Green Zone, I’m not sure it makes a difference.

Shaheen is living in a nursing home, and her insurance provider, AIG, is not willing to provide her enough to cover moving out of the nursing home and being cared for at home. This has strained her marriage. This has made life in Houston so different than anything she could have ever imagined. She was asked, “What are you looking forward to?” and she responds with a blankness with the words “nothing” flitting off her lips. When reading, I stopped for a moment to think about those being contracted out to Iraq, and realized its as if the American dream can be found in the Green Zone, that everything that is used to lure immigrants to the United States – the clean homes, suburbs, grocery stores with aisles of fresh food, the calm parks and sunny shores – are maintained by war and oppression abroad. Working for KBR is a chance to see first hand what it takes to maintain the America everyone knows and loves.

And I looked it up – how many jobs does it take to show people what America is all about? As of this post, there are exactly 1019 jobs available in Iraq through KBR. Electricians, IT folks, laundry workers, truck drivers. Salaries are not listed. But everyone knows that you can get a pretty penny. I know because someone close to me works for KBR.

This got me thinking about the level of influence that we have, and what we are influenced by.

I’ve realized that one’s life is filled to the brim with influence, and if one isn’t careful, it can be swayed by corporations like KBR, AIG, Halliburton, and any others. By Starbucks. By Microsoft. By any product we buy that holds a brand. Of course, many of us don’t have much choice; Shaheen was in loads of debt when she signed up to clean the underpants of the US Army. And it wasn’t her fault that both KBR and AIG screwed her over, and vicariously the US Government for generating and stoking the fire that is Iraq. But the corporations that saturate the landscape of the American and Global economy have sway over our daily lives to an extent that we likely won’t be able to realize until years from now. Unfortunately for Shaheen the influence the corporations had on her lives were horribly negative and violent, emptying her of the hope that led her to cross an ocean once again in pursuit of an economic dream.

For me, I have always had a distrust of corporations, beginning from the first time my father was laid off by a company, forcing our family to uproot to a different state, a different set of strangers to try and befriend. The distrust multiplied each time the pink slip would arrive. It got to the point where I would remain distant from those around me so I could easily pack my bags and jet off when the lay off would come.

Although not as violent, but perhaps as disturbing is the recent iPhone phenomenon, when I saw the man who slept and shat outside the Manhattan Apple Store for a week, and whose exuberance at shelling out obscene amounts of money was matched by another kind of obscenity, with him yelling “This is amazing! I can’t believe it!” when interviewed by the media mob. People were dressing their kids up as iPhones. The media fed at the trough provided by Apple, forgetting that bombs are dropping in Baghdad, Gaza, Kabul. That HIV is eating South African families alive. That the courts are chiseling away desegregated schools.

I am trying hard not to forget that which is important.

Israel continues its grossly disproportionate blood bath by an equally machismo war machine.

There is certainly no justification for this incursion. I’ve been wondering what has made Israel come to this, to nearly destroy Lebanon. They’ve done a decent job of destroying Palestine, and I think their military is loving this raucous display of their brute force. And the question remains, are these actions actually helping secure the Israeli soldiers? Or the Israeli people?

Its quite clear that these actions are not. Israel has taken this as an opportunity to clean out Hezbollah. But haven’t they learned that taking out a guerrilla force cannot be done with ultra modern tanks and other brute elements of statecraft?

200 Lebanese dead. 24 Israeli dead. Everytime another Israeli citizen dies, it makes its way into the news. 200 Lebanese have died, and I only hear that solitary statistic, occasionally updated, but nonetheless, the lives of the Lebanese are not worthy enough to be individualized, personalized.

Don’t forget, though, if you get really mad about it and want to curse about it, you may be caught on tape and broadcast to the rest of the world. Especially if you’re, well, at some important meeting and talking to some equally important person. But then again, if you’re someone who is a habitual expletive producer, then no camera will likely stop you.

In other news, there has not been a single documented case of a Hindu attacking a Muslim in Bombay after the bomb blasts last week. Everyone was thinking about it, about where it would start, where shops would first close down and curfews first enforced. Tensions exist, no doubt, and the police is taking up anyone with a beard and a cap. But the worst hasn’t happened, and I hope it stays this way.

Of course, he’s being held, probably against his will, somewhere in Palestine. But is anyone curious about what he’s thinking, what runs through the 19-year old’s mind when the city of Gaza is blockaded from food and other critical supplies?

Something is rotting.

I wonder if he even knows that the only power plant in Gaza was blown up by bombs? If you’ve ever had to deal with a blackout, its annoying enough, but try stumbling around in the dark while your ears, and body, grow sensitive to the discreet feel of bombs and the sonic booms of missiles landing all around you?

All this for the sake of a soldier. Targeting people, infrastructure, everything in Gaza. Israel’s actions are often a playground for interpretation, because its actions so often outweigh the harm done to the only nation in the world whose borders are constantly shifting, usually growing.

A teeming city, potentially on the verge of a humanitarian crisis. It is an infrastructure war. What is happening in Gaza, no matter how hard I try to rationalize, doesn’t make sense. There is no justification for what they are doing.

It boggles the mind.

Stop Collective Punishment in Gaza.