this diary is dedicated to all who suffer because of war and other disasters

cross-posted at DailyKos, Booman Tribune, European Tribune, and My Left Wing.

this is a retrospective of the first 299 diary posts at dKos in the series. images for days 201-250 and selected poems below the fold.

Days 1-50 here.

Days 51-100 here.

Days 101-150 here.

Days 151-200 here.

Note – Several images depict graphic scenes of death and mutilation.

Day 201
Day 202

Day 203

Day 204

Day 205

Day 206

via Juan Cole:

These are the names of the victims as released
at the moment, rearranged in alphabetical order by me but quoting the
wire service descriptions. Please take a moment to read the names:
Ciaran Cassidy, 22, of London, believed to have died on the bus;

Elizabeth Daplyn, 26, of London is believed to have been aboard the Piccadilly Line train;
Jamie Gordon, 30, was identified by officials as being killed on the bus;
Richard Gray, 41, a tax manager and father of two from Ipswich died while travelling on a tube;
Miriam Hyman, 31, of Barnet, north London. Believed to have died on the bus;
Shahara Islam, believed to have died on the bus;

Helen Jones, 28, hasn’t been formally identified, but her family on Sunday said they believed she was killed on the Piccadilly Line train;
Susan Levy, 53, mother-of-two from Cuffley, north of London. Levy was travelling on a London Underground Piccadilly Line train;
Jennifer Nicholson, 24, of Bristol, died in the Edgware Road bomb;
Miheala Otto, 46, of Mill Hill, north London. Believed to have died on the bus, identity released by police;
Shyanuja Parathasangary, believed to have died on the bus;

Philip Stuart Russell, 29, who worked for finance firm JP Morgan and lived in London;
Fiona Stevenson, 29, a lawyer from London, apparently died in the attacks, her family said yesterday;
William Wise, believed to have died on the bus;
Gladys Wundowa, 51, a cleaning service employee with London’s University College, died on the bus.
Audrey Gillan’s sensitive profile in the Guardian of Muslim victim Shahara Islam gave me tingles:

“She was a thoroughly modern Muslim, a girl who loved her Burberry
plaid handbag and fashionable clothes while at the same time respecting
her family’s wishes that she sometimes wore traditional shalwar kameez
at home. She went shopping in the West End of London with friends but
would always be seen at the mosque for Friday prayers. Shahara Islam,
just 20 years old, was a second-generation Bengali who made her family
proud when she left Barking Abbey school with a clutch of A levels and
went off to take a job as a cashier at the Co-operative Bank.”

Day 207

Day 209

Day 210

Day 211

Day 212

Day 213

Distraught Iraqi soldier Cpt Wsam Abdul Wahab, 24, lies in a hospital bed wounded after his wedding party was attacked by unknown gunmen killing his wife Saly Salam, 22, and wounding two others, Friday, July 22, 2005, in Baghdad, Iraq. Gunmen fired on the car carrying the newlyweds who were married on Wednesday and their families, killing Saly while wounding her mother, groom and driver in the southern Dora neighborhood, of Baghdad according to police and medical officials. At the time the images were made, Wahab did not know the fate of his wife.(AP Photo/Mohammed Uraibi)

Day 214

Day 215

Day 216

Day 217

Day 218

Day 219

Day 220

Day 221
images: Snapshots taken by Iraqi children and US soldiers.

This daily witness is dedicated mitt schlagg und madd props to Damnit Janet, who pointed me to the site featuring these photos.
(((((DJ)))))

I urge you to visit Baghdad Stories: Picture From Iraq, the project of German photographer and reporter Phillipp Abresch, who distributed 170 single-use cameras to Iraqi children and teens, as well as to US soldiers, in the relatively quiet days immediately following the initial phase of the invasion and occupation in March, 2003. Abresch planned to exhibit the photos in Baghdad in April, 2004, but the ongoing violence made that impossible.

Day 222

Day 223

Day 224

Day 225

Day 226

Day 227

Day 228

Day 229

Day 230

Day 231

Day 232

“Man’s search for meaning is a primary motivation in his life, and not a secondary rationalization of instinctual drives. This meaning is unique and must be fulfilled by him alone.”
Viktor Frankl
Psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor

Day 233

Day 234

Day 235

Day 236

Day 237

Day 238

Day 239

Day 240

Day 241

Day 242

Day 243

Day 244

Day 245 – Several diaries include or focus on the victims of Hurricane Katrina

Day 246

Day 247

Day 248

Day 249

Day 250

From Day 210

A Dirge
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Rough Wind, that moanest loud
Grief too sad for song;
Wild wind, when sullen cloud
Knells all the night long;
Sad storm, whose tears are vain,
Bare woods, whose branches strain,
Deep caves and dreary main,
Wail, for the world’s wrong!

From Day 216

from Things I Didn’t Know I Loved
by Nazim Hikmet
translated by Mutlu Konuk (1993)

it’s 1962 March 28th
I’m sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
night is falling
I never knew I liked
night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain
I don’t like
comparing nightfall to a tired bird

I didn’t know I loved the earth
can someone who hasn’t worked the earth love it
I’ve never worked the earth
it must be my only Platonic love

and here I’ve loved rivers all this time
whether motionless like this they curl skirting the hills
European hills crowned with chateaus
or whether stretched out flat as far as the eye can see…

I never knew I loved the sun
even when setting cherry-red as now
in Istanbul too it sometimes sets in postcard colors
but you aren’t about to paint it that way
I didn’t know I loved the sea
except the Sea of Azov
or how much

I didn’t know I loved clouds
whether I’m under or up above them
whether they look like giants or shaggy white beasts

moonlight the falsest the most languid the most petit-bourgeois
strikes me
I like it

I didn’t know I liked rain
whether it falls like a fine net or splatters against the glass my
heart leaves me tangled up in a net or trapped inside a drop
and takes off for uncharted countries I didn’t know I loved
rain but why did I suddenly discover all these passions sitting
by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
is it because I lit my sixth cigarette
one alone could kill me
is it because I’m half dead from thinking about someone back in Moscow
her hair straw-blond eyelashes blue

the train plunges on through the pitch-black night
I never knew I liked the night pitch-black
sparks fly from the engine
I didn’t know I loved sparks
I didn’t know I loved so many things and I had to wait until sixty
to find it out sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
watching the world disappear as if on a journey of no return

From Day 225

Winter landscape, with rocks
by Sylvia Plath

Water in the millrace, through a sluice of stone,
plunges headlong into that black pond

where, absurd and out-of-season, a single swan
floats chaste as snow, taunting the clouded mind
which hungers to haul the white reflection down.

The austere sun descends above the fen,
an orange cyclops-eye, scorning to look
longer on this landscape of chagrin;
feathered dark in thought, I stalk like a rook,
brooding as the winter night comes on.

Last summer’s reeds are all engraved in ice
as is your image in my eye; dry frost
glazes the window of my hurt; what solace
can be struck from rock to make heart’s waste
grow green again? Who’d walk in this bleak place?

From Day 242

from 11. Coffee & Dolls
by April Bernard
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been looking

for a narrative in which suffering makes sense.
I mean, the high wail of the woman holding her dead child,
the wail that filled the street. I mean the sudden
fatal blooms on golden skin. I mean the crack deaths,
I mean the ice-cream truck that cruised the alphabets
and sold crack to the same deedle-dee-dee tune as fudgsicles.
I mean the raw scabs of the beaten mastiff, and many other
   things.

– – –

view the pbs newshour silent honor roll (with thanks to jimstaro at booman.)

take a private moment to light one candle among many (with thanks to TXSharon)

support veterans for peace
support the Iraqi people
support the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC)
support CARE
support the victims of torture
remember the fallen
support Gold Star Families for Peace
support the fallen
support the troops
support the troops and the Iraqi people
read This is what John Kerry did today, the diary by lawnorder that prompted this series
read Riverbend’s Bagdhad Burning
read Dahr Jamail’s Iraq Dispatches
read Today in Iraq
witness every day