Griper Blade: World Refugee Day

As holidays go, today isn't one of the fun ones. Today, June 20, is World Refugee Day. Around the world, people are displaced by genocide, famine, natural disaster, and war. Being a refugee is mainly a matter of bad luck on the part of person and poor planning on the part of the government. Hurricane Katrina showed us that anyone can become a refugee. But it's a problem that mostly haunts the poor.

This year wasn't an extremely good one for refugees. The United Nations tells us we're in a 'World Refugee Crisis,' with refugees up 14% from 2005 and no break in sight. They come from Darfur and Somalia and Afghanistan and Iraq and every refugee's story begins the same way -- something unimaginable happens, you grab the kids and whatever you can carry, and you run like hell. The only destination you have is 'away.' Often, you run from hell to a lesser hell -- hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of iraqis have found themselves in refugee camps in Iran.

In fact, the two crises driving this larger refugee crisis are ethnic cleansing in Sudan and the war in Iraq...

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