(Ghaith Abdul-Ahad/Getty Images. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company.)

The face of war....

I just read this story in the NYT this morning.

My heart goes out to this little boy and his mother!!! To his entire family.

Sitting at my desk afterwards, I look around at my neat, clean, air-conditioned office. Co-workers sit busy at their desks, tapping on keyboards, murmuring on phones, working as part of a much larger team that daily amasses hundreds of thousands of Euro profit for our South African investment banking employers. Below us, through floor-to-ceiling plate glass, Monday morning’s customary swarm of motor and foot traffic clogs Dublin’s city streets.

This is madness! Continuing on with business as usual while two time zones away, the Israeli air force rains down terror on fleeing families. The two worlds, Lebanon and Ireland, are not unconnected. What is happening there is a direct consequence of a series of actions, some of which undoubtedly flow through Dublin. Only through our collusion—all of us, every single average working person in Britain, the US, Ireland, France, Germany, the world over—does this carnage continue. Every one of us performing our little part of the bigger picture.

Were we to stop work, put down our pens, hang up our phones, leave our office buildings, refuse to continue to produce the profits that enable the so-called “world leaders” to perpetrate this immoral outrage, it would have to stop.

Without our continuing on with business as usual, this would have to stop.

NYT story here.