A report released by Cluster Munition Coalition members IKV Pax Christi (Netherlands) and Netwerk Vlaanderen (Belgium) has found that 138 financial institutions worldwide still provide over $20 billion to the producers of cluster bombs.

The report’s findings show that in the UK, 15 banks and financial institutions are investing in cluster bomb producers. Barclays, HSBC and the Royal Bank of Scotland, between them provide loans and investments to the tune of some £800 million. This means that some of the UK’s most prominent high street banks are providing some form of financial support to these shamefull and indiscriminate weapons.

Taken directly from Amnesty International UK, for more information visit http://www.amnesty.org.uk/actions_details.asp?ActionID=667

Opium, Rape and the American Way

By Chris Hedges
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23884.htm
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November 03, 2009 “Truthdig” — The warlords we champion in Afghanistan are as venal, as opposed to the rights of women and basic democratic freedoms, and as heavily involved in opium trafficking as the Taliban. The moral lines we draw between us and our adversaries are fictional. The uplifting narratives used to justify the war in Afghanistan are pathetic attempts to redeem acts of senseless brutality. War cannot be waged to instill any virtue, including democracy or the liberation of women. War always empowers those who have a penchant for violence and access to weapons. War turns the moral order upside down and abolishes all discussions of human rights. War banishes the just and the decent to the margins of society. And the weapons of war do not separate the innocent and the damned. An aerial drone is our version of an improvised explosive device. An iron fragmentation bomb is our answer to a suicide bomb. A burst from a belt-fed machine gun causes the same terror and bloodshed among civilians no matter who pulls the trigger.

“We need to tear the mask off of the fundamentalist warlords who after the tragedy of 9/11 replaced the Taliban,” Malalai Joya, who was expelled from the Afghan parliament two years ago for denouncing government corruption and the Western occupation, told me during her visit to New York last week. “They used the mask of democracy to take power. They continue this deception. These warlords are mentally the same as the Taliban. The only change is physical. These warlords during the civil war in Afghanistan from 1992 to 1996 killed 65,000 innocent people. They have committed human rights violations, like the Taliban, against women and many others.”

“In eight years less than 2,000 Talib have been killed and more than 8,000 innocent civilians has been killed,” she went on. “We believe that this is not war on terror. This is war on innocent civilians. Look at the massacres carried out by NATO forces in Afghanistan. Look what they did in May in the Farah province, where more than 150 civilians were killed, most of them women and children. They used white phosphorus and cluster bombs. There were 200 civilians on 9th of September killed in the Kunduz province, again most of them women and children. You can see the Web site of professor Marc Herold, this democratic man, to know better the war crimes in Afghanistan imposed on our people. The United States and NATO eight years ago occupied my country under the banner of woman’s rights and democracy. But they have only pushed us from the frying pan into the fire. They put into power men who are photocopies of the Taliban.”

Afghanistan’ s boom in the trade in opium, used to produce heroin, over the past eight years of occupation has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to the Taliban, al-Qaida, local warlords, criminal gangs, kidnappers, private armies, drug traffickers and many of the senior figures in the government of Hamid Karzai. The New York Times reported that the brother of President Karzai, Ahmed Wali Karzai, has been collecting money from the CIA although he is a major player in the illegal opium business. Afghanistan produces 92 percent of the world’s opium in a trade that is worth some $65 billion, the United Nations estimates. This opium feeds some 15 million addicts worldwide and kills around 100,000 people annually. These fatalities should be added to the rolls of war dead.

Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), said that the drug trade has permitted the Taliban to thrive and expand despite the presence of 100,000 NATO troops.
“The Taliban’s direct involvement in the opium trade allows them to fund a war machine that is becoming technologically more complex and increasingly widespread,” said Costa.

The UNODC estimates the Taliban earned $90 million to $160 million a year from taxing the production and smuggling of opium and heroin between 2005 and 2009, as much as double the amount it earned annually while it was in power nearly a decade ago. And Costa described the Afghan-Pakistani border as “the world’s largest free trade zone in anything and everything that is illicit,” an area blighted by drugs, weapons and illegal immigration. The “perfect storm of drugs and terrorism” may be on the move along drug trafficking routes through Central Asia, he warned. Profits made from opium are being pumped into militant groups in Central Asia and “a big part of the region could be engulfed in large-scale terrorism, endangering its massive energy resources,” Costa said.

“Afghanistan, after eight years of occupation, has become a world center for drugs,” Joya told me. “The drug lords are the only ones with power. How can you expect these people to stop the planting of opium and halt the drug trade? How is it that the Taliban when they were in power destroyed the opium production and a superpower not only cannot destroy the opium production but allows it to increase? And while all this goes on, those who support the war talk to you about women’s rights. We do not have human rights now in most provinces. It is as easy to kill a woman in my country as it is to kill a bird. In some big cities like Kabul, some women have access to jobs and education, but in most of the country the situation for women is hell. Rape, kidnapping and domestic violence are increasing. These fundamentalists during the so-called free elections made a misogynist law against Shia women in Afghanistan. This law has even been signed by Hamid Karzai. All these crimes are happening under the name of democracy.”

Thousands of Afghan civilians have died from insurgent and foreign military violence. And American and NATO forces are responsible for almost half the civilian deaths in Afghanistan. Tens of thousands of Afghan civilians have also died from displacement, starvation, disease, exposure, lack of medical treatment, crime and lawlessness resulting from the war.

Joya argues that Karzai and his rival Abdullah Abdullah, who has withdrawn from the Nov. 7 runoff election, will do nothing to halt the transformation of Afghanistan into a narco-state. She said that NATO, by choosing sides in a battle between two corrupt and brutal opponents, has lost all its legitimacy in the country.

The recent resignation of a high-level U.S. diplomat in Afghanistan, Matthew Hoh, was in part tied to the drug problem. Hoh wrote in his resignation letter that Karzi’s government is filled with “glaring corruption and unabashed graft.” Karzi, he wrote, is a president “whose confidants and chief advisers comprise drug lords and war crimes villains who mock our own rule of law and counter-narcotics effort.”

Joya said, “Where do you think the $36 billion of money poured into country by the international community have gone? This money went into the pockets of the drug lords and the warlords. There are 18 million people in Afghanistan who live on less than $2 a day while these warlords get rich. The Taliban and warlords together contribute to this fascism while the occupation forces are bombing and killing innocent civilians. When we do not have security how can we even talk about human rights or women’s rights?”

“This election under the shade of Afghan war-lordism, drug-lordism, corruption and occupation forces has no legitimacy at all,” she said. “The result will be like the same donkey but with new saddles. It is not important who is voting. It is important who is counting. And this is our problem. Many of those who go with the Taliban do not support the Taliban, but they are fed up with these warlords and this injustice, and they go with the Taliban to take revenge. I do not agree with them, but I understand them. Most of my people are against the Taliban and the warlords, which is why millions did not take part in this tragic drama of an election.”

“The U.S. wastes taxpayers’ money and the blood of their soldiers by supporting such a mafia corrupt system of Hamid Karzai,” said Joya, who changes houses in Kabul frequently because of the numerous death threats made against her. “Eight years is long enough to learn about Karzai and Abdullah. They chained my country to the center of drugs. If Obama was really honest he would support the democratic-minded people of my country. We have a lot [of those people]. But he does not support the democratic-minded people of my country. He is going to start war in Pakistan by attacking in the border area of Pakistan. More civilians have been killed in the Obama period than even during the criminal Bush.”

“My people are sandwiched between two powerful enemies,” she lamented. “The occupation forces from the sky bomb and kill innocent civilians. On the ground, Taliban and these warlords deliver fascism. As NATO kills more civilians, the resistance to the foreign troops increases. If the U.S. government and NATO do not leave voluntarily, my people will give to them the same lesson they gave to Russia and to the English who three times tried to occupy Afghanistan. It is easier for us to fight against one enemy rather than two.”

Chris Hedges, whose column is published on Truthdig every Monday, spent two decades as a foreign reporter covering wars in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. He has written nine books, including “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” (2009) and “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” (2003).

Jar of jam?

We took a quick flight from Siem Reap to Vientiane ($120) on Lao Airlines (possible motto: It is not as bad as you think). The plane was new and the flight went smoothly. Actually, security at the Cambodian Siem Reap Airport was very thorough.  They carefully went through Alexa’s carry-on bag, even checking her book to see if it hid anything, looked in the pack of cards, and finally took away our tweezers.

Our last day in Siem Reap we visited the land mine museum, run by Aki Ra, a former Khmer Rouge child soldier who has a lifetime of experience setting and now removing mines. Most of the mines and other nasty handmade traps using explosives demonstrated a gruesome creativity in setting traps designed to kill and maim. In a country that has seen so much warfare in the last century, maybe something as seemingly harmless as a set of tweezers can be used as a weapon when in the hands of a creative and dedicated killer. We had seen cruder explosive devices at the mine museum, so we let them keep the tweezers without any protest and got on the plane.

Along the Mekong

In Vientiane we visited the U.S. Embassy to get extra pages in our passports (we are lucky enough that our passports are close to full of stamps and visas from all of our travels) and walked around the capital city of Laos, located on the banks of the Mekong River. We visited some nice wats (temples), museums in the city and rented a motorbike to drive along a dirt track next to the Mekong River and through farm fields outside of the capital city.

Jason also visited a Mines Advisory Group (MAG) office in Vientiane that serves as an information center and central office for their work in Laos. We have seen MAG de-mined areas in Vietnam, where unexploded ordnance (UXO) removal groups are working to make areas safe for farmers and children. If you lived in Laos and also mistook the object in the photo above as a jar of jam or anything else, you could have suffered from a blinding explosion and received a face full of shrapnel and a blown off hand (at best) for guessing wrong. We had never seen cluster bomblets before and had no idea what they looked like, but in the museums of SE Asia, they are common sight. The scary thing is that they do not look like normal bombs or explosives.

Laos UXO map

According to MAG, 80% of the UXO they have cleared in Laos is from cluster bombs. For those that don’t know, cluster bombs are large bomb canisters that are dropped in order to disperse roughly 100 to 1,000 bomblets (submunitions) that fall over a wide area. These bomblets have an internal fuse intended to ensure that they detonate either in the air, upon reaching the ground, or in a delayed mode with the goal of killing all of the enemy in the area. Unfortunately, MAG estimates that up to ⅓ of the most commonly used cluster bomb submunitions dropped in Laos by the United States did not explode. The CBU-24 was the main type of cluster bomb dropped on Laos by the U.S. in the late 1960s and 1970s and one CBU-24 bomb contained 670 bomblets. With up to 30% of the bomblets not exploding (and a total of 250 million submunitions dropped from 1965-1973), many areas of the country are still littered with these deadly devices.

Buddha statues

In Cambodia (and Vietnam), it was common to see young children who had lost arms, legs and eyes from UXO accidents. While touring the ruins of Angkor Wat, we were serenaded by traditional musicians who had set up near the temples to provide Khmer music as people wandered the ruins in the hopes of receiving tips from tourists. Many of these musicians were UXO victims. At one restaurant in the tourist section of Siem Reap, we had over five different children or young adults who had lost limbs and eyes from UXO accidents come to our table to beg. Trust us, it is difficult to ignore an injured child beggar who has been horribly maimed while trying to enjoy a meal. What do you do, do you give a dollar to each (and there are many) of the maimed panhandlers? To assuage our conscience we chose to give a lump sum to MAG in the hope that more UXO will be removed and fewer children will be maimed in the future.

Vientiane wat

In 2008, 100 countries signed a treaty to ban the use and manufacture of cluster munitions. The Bush administration, along with China and Russia, refused to sign the treaty. Maybe the new Obama administration will take a new stance on these weapons that have such a tragic long-term effect for civilians, mainly farmers and children. According to our guidebook, 40% of the victims of UXO accidents in Laos are children.

As we head north into the remote areas of the country of Laos, we will tread lightly and keep to well-traveled areas. Next stop is the tourist loony-land of Vang Vieng.

***click to enlarge photos***

Aerial 'gifts'

Temple complex

Bombe cluster: anche IntesaSanpaolo tra i finanziatori delle ditte produttrici / Notizie / Home – Unimondo.

I thought I would have a quick look around at the innovative ways our government “leaders” and international financiers were finding to invest all the money we have given them to sort out our many woes. So what notable items have hit the press in the last week or so ?

Let’s start with all that bailout money… You know, in Europe the three trillion Euros that were given to banks over the last couple of years that were supposed to stimulate loans, etc… to restart the economy. Well, not only have banks refrained from making loans more accessible to the little people – quite the contrary in fact – they have used most of the bailout money to buy other weaker banks, thus consolidating power across the whole financial sector, giving them even more powerful monopolies to exploit more effectively the rest of us. Vast sums have been spent on buying real estate and businesses at rock-bottom recession prices all over Europe and the US. Huge assets and ressources have changed hands the world over and are owned by a smaller and smaller group of oligarchs, while, as usual, the people at the bottom of the social scale are left with barely the shirts on their backs.

Just to add insult to injury – and later injury to insult – the world’s biggest banks have just loaned 20 billion to weapons manufacturers to build cluster bombs ! These horrendous weapons are in the process of being banned because they result in the deaths of far more women and children than enemy soldiers, due to their propensity to lie around waiting to be stepped on for decades after being dropped – they are extensively used by all of our “peacemongering” powers because not only do they slaughter “soft targets” when dropped, they also act as a minefield until cleared through a lengthy and dangerous process. They cause many infant deaths and disabilities because they look like pretty colourful ping-pong balls, so kids pick them up, usually losing at least an arm in the process. Soon to be used in a neighbourhood near you…

According to this Oxfam report, irresponsible arms sales are so prevalent and destructive to developing countries that the result is them not attaining their development goals, thus staying in absolute poverty and continuing to be a burden on the international community.

More absolute proof that these entities will in no way help humanity evolve towards a civilised and advanced civilisation, from it’s current thinly disguised feudal state, as long as they can make billions from death, suffering and control.

We are currently told that by installing vast bureaucracies in the US and Europe will be the cure-all for all our problems, that the vast sums of money amassed by these institutions allow them to act on the macro-scale for the benefit of all, and keep the banks in line while they are at it. Unfortunately the numbers seem to contradict them very regularly. The EU for example, that from the very beginning has used vast amounts of tax payer’s money to promote it’s own existance (illegal for a political party in any country, but the EU is above the law, because now it IS the law !) seems to have a history of squandering public funds. Take, for example the latest scandal in France, where a previous president is up for massive corruption as a backdrop, and the current “Emperor Sarko” has just been caught wasting millions of EU funds, including 250,000 pounds on a “presidential shower” he never even used…

How anyone can believe for one minute that these soulless, self-serving parasites can help us at all ? The world is in need of societal and economic change of an extreme nature in order to avoid a new Dark Ages and neo-feudalism that these organisations are all pushing us into with gleeful enthusiam.

The simplest solutions (that will not be implemented of course by them) to keep these modern day ogres in check:

-create a “citizen oversight” body – including a training structure – with a pool of anonymous auditors allocated randomly to ALL the different organisms, banks, NGO’s etc and regularly rotated to avoid corruption. Fully using internet and database technology, such a body could be set up very fast. Many jobs would be created as a side effect…

-Introduce a global “ethics tax” (everything else is taxed – why is a Tobin tax resisted so adamantly ?). Simply put, when the oversight body determines a bank loan is being given for destructive reasons (armament, etc…) it should incur a massive tax, to compensate the destruction of ressources, society and progress. In a similar way, projects that are determined to be totaly positive for humanity should receive tax breaks and even subsidies or free credit – payed for by the previous tax.

The result would be a reversal of the current ethics of money. Benefitting mankind and the planet would be rewarded and lead to huge profits. Death and destruction could still be meeted out by those that revel in it, but it would be a hell of a lot harder for the psychopaths to generate a profit from their fun !

So voila ! Don’t let anyone tell me that the solutions to most of our global problems are not simple and cheap – it is the will to apply them for the benefit of the general public that is totaly lacking.

Our current economic system is so destructive, costly in human and environmental terms, and downright evil, we can hardly do worse !

Hence my call to start a global peaceful insurgency movement to pressure the big boys into doing something benevolent for a change – if they are actually capable of it – something I’m starting to doubt. Otherwise they’ll have to go…

A new report from IKV Pax Christi and Netwerk Vlaanderen was recently release that might give more cause for rage directed at US banks. The report is entitled “Worldwide investments in Cluster Munitions: A Shared Responsibility.” One of the more revealing aspects of this report was the fact that some of the US-based banks that were bailout out by taxpayers last year are also financing the production of Cluster Bombs.

The report found that since January 2007 at least 138 financial institutions from 16 different countries have invested in eight producers of cluster munitions. These companies include: Alliant Techsystems ATK (USA), Hanwha (South Korea), L-3 Communications (USA), Lockheed Martin (USA) Poongsan (South Korea), Roketsan (Turkey), Singapore Technologies Engineering (Singapore) and Textron (USA).

Banks and other financial investment companies were found to be involved in the Cluster Munitions industry in three ways:

• Investment banking services to companies producing cluster munitions: HSBC, Goldman Sachs, Merril Lynch, Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan Chase provided the largest amount of investment banking services since Jan. 2007
• Loans to companies producing cluster munitions: Twelve of the largest banks provided 58% of the loans. Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Barclays and Goldman Sachs provided the largest amount of loans since Jan. 2007
• Asset management services that invest in companies producing cluster munitions: Fidelity, Vanguard Group, AXA, BlackRock and T Rowe Price Group provided the largest asset management services based on their portfolio (by summer 2009).

The US banks and other financial institutions that benefited from the taxpayer bailout last year and are funding cluster bomb munitions are Goldman Sachs, Merril Lynch, Bank of America, Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase. Many of these same institutions also gave their CEO’s huge bonuses, despite the taxpayer bailout and now it is documented that they are war profiteers as well.

We mentioned in a posting last week about the US use of Cluster Bombs in the occupation of Afghanistan, despite the fact that over half of the world’s nations are signatories to the Convention on Cluster Bombs. As of now, the US is not a signatory to that convention.

Phyllis Bennis, with the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, spoke at Western Michigan University last night. The occasion for her talk was the 28^th annual Peace Week Celebration that has been taking place on campus in Kalamazoo. The focus of the night was on the US Occupation of Afghanistan.

Bennis began her talk by saying, “9/11 was a crime against humanity, but it was not an act of war. No nation attacked the US.” She continued by acknowledging that this war that began 8 years ago is called the “Good War,” even though it was never that. “After 8 years, it has now become Obama’s war,” Bennis said, “What he has called a war of necessity.” Then Bennis pointed out that those of us in the peace movement can’t claim he didn’t tell us, because he said during his campaign that this would be the war he would focus on.

Bennis criticizes the fact that 21,000 troops were sent by the Obama administration earlier this year before they determined a strategy. “Now they are discussing a strategy, but it is narrowly focused.” The author/speaker said that within the current strategic discussions there are two main options are: 40 – 80,000 additional troops or maintain the current 68,000-troop level and use more un-manned drones. Gen. McChrystal, Obama’s top military advisor on Afghanistan, is advocating a troop increase to engage in a major counter-insurgency campaign. McChrystal is saying that while we need to “win hearts and minds,” we also have to hunt down and kill the terrorists.

For Bennis, having an exit strategy is not enough, because there needs to be a plan for massive reparations – for all the destruction the US occupation has done. And this cannot be done while the US is occupying the country. She says that early on there was a major bombing campaign, in 2001 and early 2002. One of the weapons used were cluster bombs, which are bombs, which when explode send out thousands of smaller bomblets. Many will not explode and remain on the ground as mines, which civilians and particularly children are at risk of picking up. The US has still not signed on the international ban on cluster bombs.

Thousands of people were instantly turned into refugees because of the US bombing in 2001-02. The only response by the US government to this humanitarian crisis was the airdrop food, which was essentially a photo op, according to Bennis. The food packages were only in English, Spanish & French and they were also yellow, which made them look a lot like the cluster bombs. The speaker said that the military would not change the color of the packages because “too many of them were made and had to be used.”

Bennis went on to says that 54-57% of the US population is now opposed to the US occupation of Afghanistan, according to recent polling. There has been a 10% drop of public support in the last month alone. “Yes, he promised escalation, but we need to tell the administration that the occupation will not work and the human cost is too great.”

Bennis also said that part of the counter-insurgency strategy is to get the people to support the local government. The problem is that the US has been backing Karzai, who is a “thug” and “corrupt.” Karzai is often referred to as the “Mayor of Kabul,” because he doesn’t really control much else of the country.

Another justification for the US occupation Bennis said, was that the US needs to be there to save the women of Afghanistan. But this is a myth, since the very misogynist sectors in Afghanistan are remnants of the Mujahideen, that the US trained and funded in the 1980s. The worst could be Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who as a student through acid on a woman’s face to voice his opposition to women in the university. These are facts that women’s groups like RAWA and the Afghan Women’s Mission continue to point out.

Bennis continued by saying that US troops deaths have increased and Afghani deaths have in the tens of thousands. “In addition, the monetary cost of the war has been tremendous.” Phyllis gives the breakdown of how much money has come from Kalamazoo to fund the war in Afghanistan, based on the data provided by the National Priorities Project. “Money could have been spent on health care and education, but instead it is to fund this brutal war,” Bennis said.

Then there is the amount of money that has been committed to Pakistan as part of this war. The Obama administration bragged about sending $7 billion in humanitarian aide, but failed to mention the $100 billion sent for military purposes.

Bennis said, “We need an exit strategy, which means a couple of things. There needs to be real diplomacy, which involves the surrounding countries, like Iran and China.” Those governments have to have something to say about what happens in Afghanistan, so there really needs to be a regional strategy. Bennis also said that the impact of the US policies in Iraq and its support for Israel also impact how these regional countries view the US. “Ask people who saw US made and US supplied weapons bombing Gaza earlier this year. The planes, the helicopters, the bombs, the white phosphorous, are all from the US. So how do you think those people view the US?”

Bennis points out that both the outgoing Bush administration and incoming Obama administration have promised $30 Billion to Israel. Obama has asked for a freeze to Israeli settlements, several times, but Israel has consistently said no and has said they don’t feel pressured by the Obama administration. “These are the things that we have to think about when dealing with the war in Afghanistan, because the rest of the world thinks about this.”

“There are some legislative bills pending, which are calling for an exit strategy before doing anything else, but those members of Congress who are calling for this have not been included in the discussion with the administration on the Afghanistan strategy,” said Bennis. “We need to get the US out of Afghanistan and to pay massive reparations for the damages done. We need to speed up the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, we need to stop US support for Israel. This is the task of the US Peace Movement.”

Outspoken anti-war and democracy campaigner Malalai Joya was suspended from the Afghan parliament in 2007 for speaking out against corruption and the domination of the country by warlords. US current affairs weradio show Democracy Now has called her “the bravest woman in Afghanistan”. Below is an abridged statement from Joya to Australian anti-war campaigners. The statement was read out at the national protests against the Afghanistan war on October 7. *****

Link

Posted by realistic bird under Politics Tags: 2006 war, children, cluster bombs, education, Israeli crimes, Israeli policies, Lebanon, news, Politics, south Lebanon

Cluster bomb victim

By Andrew Wander in southern Lebanon, Al Jazeera

September 30, 2009

“He was picking grapes when he died,” says Khalil Kassem Terkiya, glancing at his wife as he recalls the day their son was killed by a cluster bomb in southern Lebanon.

Greying and slight, Terkiya looks older than his 46 years: “A cluster bomb was caught in the vine and it exploded. It was the day after the war finished. He was 19.”

His wife walks away without speaking, her head bowed. The couple’s son, Ali, was one of the first post-war victims of the estimated one million cluster bombs fired by Israel into southern Lebanon during a month-long conflict with Hezbollah in 2006.

Because so many of them failed to detonate on impact, Ali was not to be the last victim.

Since the end of the war, more than 350 people in Lebanon have been killed or injured by unexploded cluster bombs acting as de facto land mines, and every month that figure slowly increases.

Terkiya lives in the village of West Zawtar, at the heart of a swathe of land south of the town of Nabatiyeh that was badly hit during the war.

Large areas of southern Lebanon became a no-go area as a result of the cluster bomb-strikes; farmers were cut off from their land and schools forced to close their playgrounds.

‘Yesterday’s war’

While more than half of this land has now been declared safe, de-mining progress is stalling.

The crucial donations that pay for cluster bomb clearance are drying up as new crises deflect attention away from what has become “yesterday’s war” and the global recession puts pressure on foreign aid budgets.
The result has been a dramatic cut in de-mining capacity in the country.

“In 2007 there were 114 clearance teams working here,” says Lt Col Mohamed el Cheikh of the Lebanese Mine Action Centre (LMAC), a military body set up to co-ordinate the clearance with the various civilian de-mining agencies that work in the country.

“At the beginning of this year we had 46 teams left. Now there are just 20.”

At current capacity, LMAC estimates that it will take at least another three-and-a-half years to finish the job, although that time could be cut to just 18 months if new donations are made.

Danish Church Aid (DCA), one of the clearance agencies working in Lebanon, predicted earlier this month that the delay would lead to “many more” civilian casualties.

As clearance organisations pack up their equipment and pull out, LMAC is expanding its efforts to educate the civilian population, particularly children, about the risks posed by the deadly devices.

Officials say mine risk education and bomb-clearance go hand in hand- they are the two most essential components of efforts to avoid further casualties. But with clearance work faltering, the education programmes have taken on a new significance; people are going to have to live the bombs for longer than they thought.

“Since we don’t have enough money for clearance, we have to increase the mine risk education campaigns,” Cheikh says. “It’s logical. We have to keep reminding people of the danger – particularly children.”
Children at risk

Almost a third of the post-war cluster bomb casualties have been under the age of 18.

Children are particularly at risk, experts say, because they often play in remote areas and are curious about strange objects they come across. In August alone, six children were hurt in cluster bomb explosions in Lebanon, according to DCA.

The mine-risk education programme has been devised to maximise children’s exposure to mine safety messages while providing incentives for them to pay attention.

Soldiers give presentations in community halls and schools across southern villages, distributing school bags and stationery emblazoned with the “golden rules” for dealing with unexploded ordnance: “Don’t approach, don’t touch, telephone immediately.”

For younger children there are colouring books with cluster bombs in the pictures, stickers featuring their favourite cartoon characters warning them to take care and even a game based on Monopoly, all aimed at driving home safety messages.

The gifts are popular with children in the south.

Soldiers educate children

In Yohmor, a small village perched on a hillside near Beaufort Castle, they seem to be educating as well as entertaining.

“I’ve never seen a cluster bomb,” says eight-year-old Aya, as she watches a soldier carrying a display case filled with inert explosives in preparation for an education session.

“If I did, I wouldn’t touch it. I would tell my parents about it.”

She is clutching a copy of the colouring book. Other children are busy swapping stickers. At the back of the room, parents look on as the soldiers prepare to distribute more stationary items, drawing names out of a basket to see who gets what. There are not enough supplies for everyone.

“These are poor people,” Cheikh explains. “If you give the children school bags and pencil cases, it saves the family money and it spreads the message to the children.”

This month more than 10,000 children from southern Lebanon will have attended LMAC’s mine-awareness presentations and the programme is to be expanded in coming years, as the Lebanese army look to take on more dedicated de-mining staff.

Back in West Zawtar, Khalil Terkiya looks on as the hall fills up with chattering children who have come to the village’s LMAC presentation.

He believes the education sessions are important, but he knows the only way the children will be truly safe is if the cluster bombs are cleared.

“The olive groves here are still polluted with cluster-bombs,” he says. “They are still a threat to all of us.”

Andrew Wander, a media fellow with legal charity Reprieve, works on Al Jazeera’s Public Liberties and Human Rights Desk.

Link

Posted by realistic bird under Politics Tags: 2006 war, children, cluster bombs, education, Israeli crimes, Israeli policies, Lebanon, news, Politics, south Lebanon

Cluster bomb victim

By Andrew Wander in southern Lebanon, Al Jazeera

September 30, 2009

“He was picking grapes when he died,” says Khalil Kassem Terkiya, glancing at his wife as he recalls the day their son was killed by a cluster bomb in southern Lebanon.

Greying and slight, Terkiya looks older than his 46 years: “A cluster bomb was caught in the vine and it exploded. It was the day after the war finished. He was 19.”

His wife walks away without speaking, her head bowed. The couple’s son, Ali, was one of the first post-war victims of the estimated one million cluster bombs fired by Israel into southern Lebanon during a month-long conflict with Hezbollah in 2006.

Because so many of them failed to detonate on impact, Ali was not to be the last victim.

Since the end of the war, more than 350 people in Lebanon have been killed or injured by unexploded cluster bombs acting as de facto land mines, and every month that figure slowly increases.

Terkiya lives in the village of West Zawtar, at the heart of a swathe of land south of the town of Nabatiyeh that was badly hit during the war.

Large areas of southern Lebanon became a no-go area as a result of the cluster bomb-strikes; farmers were cut off from their land and schools forced to close their playgrounds.

‘Yesterday’s war’

While more than half of this land has now been declared safe, de-mining progress is stalling.

The crucial donations that pay for cluster bomb clearance are drying up as new crises deflect attention away from what has become “yesterday’s war” and the global recession puts pressure on foreign aid budgets.
The result has been a dramatic cut in de-mining capacity in the country.

“In 2007 there were 114 clearance teams working here,” says Lt Col Mohamed el Cheikh of the Lebanese Mine Action Centre (LMAC), a military body set up to co-ordinate the clearance with the various civilian de-mining agencies that work in the country.

“At the beginning of this year we had 46 teams left. Now there are just 20.”

At current capacity, LMAC estimates that it will take at least another three-and-a-half years to finish the job, although that time could be cut to just 18 months if new donations are made.

Danish Church Aid (DCA), one of the clearance agencies working in Lebanon, predicted earlier this month that the delay would lead to “many more” civilian casualties.

As clearance organisations pack up their equipment and pull out, LMAC is expanding its efforts to educate the civilian population, particularly children, about the risks posed by the deadly devices.

Officials say mine risk education and bomb-clearance go hand in hand- they are the two most essential components of efforts to avoid further casualties. But with clearance work faltering, the education programmes have taken on a new significance; people are going to have to live the bombs for longer than they thought.

“Since we don’t have enough money for clearance, we have to increase the mine risk education campaigns,” Cheikh says. “It’s logical. We have to keep reminding people of the danger – particularly children.”
Children at risk

Almost a third of the post-war cluster bomb casualties have been under the age of 18.

Children are particularly at risk, experts say, because they often play in remote areas and are curious about strange objects they come across. In August alone, six children were hurt in cluster bomb explosions in Lebanon, according to DCA.

The mine-risk education programme has been devised to maximise children’s exposure to mine safety messages while providing incentives for them to pay attention.

Soldiers give presentations in community halls and schools across southern villages, distributing school bags and stationery emblazoned with the “golden rules” for dealing with unexploded ordnance: “Don’t approach, don’t touch, telephone immediately.”

For younger children there are colouring books with cluster bombs in the pictures, stickers featuring their favourite cartoon characters warning them to take care and even a game based on Monopoly, all aimed at driving home safety messages.

The gifts are popular with children in the south.

Soldiers educate children

In Yohmor, a small village perched on a hillside near Beaufort Castle, they seem to be educating as well as entertaining.

“I’ve never seen a cluster bomb,” says eight-year-old Aya, as she watches a soldier carrying a display case filled with inert explosives in preparation for an education session.

“If I did, I wouldn’t touch it. I would tell my parents about it.”

She is clutching a copy of the colouring book. Other children are busy swapping stickers. At the back of the room, parents look on as the soldiers prepare to distribute more stationary items, drawing names out of a basket to see who gets what. There are not enough supplies for everyone.

“These are poor people,” Cheikh explains. “If you give the children school bags and pencil cases, it saves the family money and it spreads the message to the children.”

This month more than 10,000 children from southern Lebanon will have attended LMAC’s mine-awareness presentations and the programme is to be expanded in coming years, as the Lebanese army look to take on more dedicated de-mining staff.

Back in West Zawtar, Khalil Terkiya looks on as the hall fills up with chattering children who have come to the village’s LMAC presentation.

He believes the education sessions are important, but he knows the only way the children will be truly safe is if the cluster bombs are cleared.

“The olive groves here are still polluted with cluster-bombs,” he says. “They are still a threat to all of us.”

Andrew Wander, a media fellow with legal charity Reprieve, works on Al Jazeera’s Public Liberties and Human Rights Desk.

The Guardian/Courrier International

Par Peter Beaumon

Le président américain Barak Obama a déjà franchi un grand pas dans la lutte contre les BASM en interdisant leur exportation. Il doit désormais aller plus loin en signant le traité d’Oslo.

Les Etats-Unis ont franchi une nouvelle étape vers l’interdiction totale des bombes à sous-munitions (BASM) et de leur exportation, avec la signature par Barack Obama d’une nouvelle loi susceptible de rendre pratiquement impossible la vente par les Etats-Unis des ces armes controversées. Cette décision a été saluée par les opposants aux BASM comme un “tournant majeur de la politique américaine” désavouant l’appel du Pentagone en faveur de la poursuite de ces exportations.

Le nouveau texte de loi, annexé à une importante loi de finance, a été adopté au début du mois de mars 2009. Il impose de telles restrictions à l’usage des bombes à sous-munitions – interdisant notamment leur vente dans des régions où elles pourraient servir contre des civils – que les Etats-Unis semblent condamnés à devoir renoncer à leur exportation.

Selon les spécialistes, les Etats-Unis auraient fourni à 28 pays des centaines de milliers de bombes à sous-munitions, soit des dizaines de millions de petites bombes aussi peu fiables que peu précises. La nouvelle réglementation américaine exige que les armes utilisées par les forces aériennes et par l’artillerie pour disperser des centaines de sous-munitions présentent un risque de non-explosion inférieur à 1 %, ce qui est loin d’être le cas des BASM vendues par les Etats-Unis.

La nouvelle loi entre en vigueur au moment où le Congrès intensifie ses pressions pour une interdiction complète des BASM, même pour les militaires américains. L’opposition aux BASM, qui tuent et mutilent des populations civiles longtemps après avoir été dispersées dans le cadre d’un conflit, a rapidement mobilisé les opinions publiques du monde entier depuis que l’on a appris que l’armée israélienne en avait largué plus de 1 million dans le sud du Liban lors de la guerre de 2006 contre le Hezbollah. L’année dernière, un traité limitant l’usage des bombes à sous-munitions a été signé par 95 pays, dont la plupart des pays membres de l’OTAN alliés de l’Amérique, mais pas par les Etats-Unis.

Dans les faits, le traité de 2008 a considérablement réduit les débouchés pour les munitions fabriquées aux Etats-Unis, mais l’année dernière, le Pentagone a publié une note officielle demandant l’autorisation d’exporter des BASM pour les dix prochaines années.

“Cette interdiction permanente de l’exportation de BASM est un tournant majeur dans la politique américaine”, a déclaré Steve Goose, directeur de la division Armes de Human Rights Watch, qui milite contre l’usage des BASM. “Cela rapproche Washington du sentiment partagé par le reste du monde vis-à-vis de ces terribles munitions.”

“L’adoption de cette loi est également le signe que le président devrait demander un rapport complet de la politique américaine concernant l’usage de ces armes. S’il est inacceptable que les militaires d’autres pays utilisent ces munitions, qu’est-ce qui permet à l’armée américaine de le faire ?”

En juillet 2008, le secrétaire à la Défense, Robert Gates, a publié une directive de trois pages décrivant les BASM comme “des armes légitimes présentant une utilité militaire incontestable”. Selon les termes de cette directive, les Etats-Unis pourront continuer à utiliser des bombes à sous-munitions jusqu’en 2018, date à partir de laquelle ils ne devront plus employer que des armes présentant un taux de non-explosion inférieur à 1 %.

En décembre 2008, un porte-parole du gouvernement de transition de Barack Obama a indiqué que le nouveau président “examinerait attentivement” le traité d’interdiction des bombes à sous-munitions et souhaitait “coopérer étroitement [avec] nos amis et alliés afin de garantir que les Etats-Unis font le maximum pour promouvoir la protection des populations civiles”.

“L’interdiction des exportations de BASM rapproche un peu plus les Etats-Unis de la position adoptée par une centaine d’autres pays, notamment ses alliés de l’OTAN, qui ont signé le traité d’interdiction des BASM”, a déclaré Goose. “La signature de ce traité par le nouveau président américain serait un signal clair de son engagement en faveur de la diplomatie et du multilatéralisme.”

La décision d’interdire l’exportation des BASM a également été saluée par la coalition regroupées au sein de la Campagne américaine pour l’interdiction des mines antipersonnel (USCBL). “Ce qui est important, c’est la prise de conscience du caractère inacceptable de ces armes”, déclare Lora Lumpe, une des coordinatrices de USCBL. “L’époque des bombes à sous-munitions est révolue. L’année dernière, lorsque la Géorgie et la Russie ont utilisé des bombes à sous-munitions en Ossétie du Sud, leurs deux gouvernements s’en sont vivement défendus car ils ont compris à quel point l’usage de ces armes est devenu inacceptable aujourd’hui.”

Risking life and limb to visit the mysterious jars

It’s not often when a visit to a tourist attraction comes with the risk of maiming or death, but the Plain of Jars (just outside Phonsavan in Laos) is no ordinary tourist attraction. Quite apart from the mysterious origins of the plains’ thousand namesake stone jars (no one knows how, where or when the jars were made) the place is notorious, and possibly unique among locations of historic interest, for being riddled with UXO (unexploded ordnance).

The UXO, which is largely made up of parts of cluster bombs known as ‘bombies’, is not just confined to the Phonsavan area but found over two thirds of Laos’ land, where it was dropped by the US Army in the 1960s and early 1970s during the so-called ‘Secret War’.

Despite being legally required to respect the Laotian neutrality in the Indochina (Vietnam) war, as ratified by the Geneva Conference of 1954, American military chiefs led as many as 13,000 bombing raids a month over Laos during this time. Their rationale while they were involved in the war in Vietnam was ostensibly that the Vietcong were using the Ho Chi Minh Trail down the eastern border of Laos to transport goods and men. More often than not, the bombs that landed on Laotian targets were just those that pilots failed to drop on Vietnamese targets because of bad weather or other problems. They would rather dump them on Laos villages than deal with the hassle of returning to base with ammo on board.

How the US managed to carpet bomb a whole country without being found out is an even bigger mystery than the jars' origin

How the US military managed to hide the fact that they were dropping bombs on Laos from everyone – US citizens, congress, and the rest of the world – is mind boggling. The level of carpet bombing that happened here is shown on Laos maps as red splodges – many areas are completely covered. Practically, that meant that thousands of villages were destroyed, many people lived in caves for up to 10 years, and huge numbers of refugees fled to the south and Thailand.

Over two million metric tons of ordnance was dropped on the people of Laos – 2 tons for every person. An estimated third of this did not explode and is still out in the fields and villages of the countryside now.

The particular bombs that the US used in those days (and have used since in other wars like Iraq and Afghanistan) are cluster bombs, used solely as anti-personnel weapons, ideal killing machines. Each fist-sized ‘bombie’ (which are packed 600 or so to an artillery shell) is filled with about 300 ball bearings that, when the bomb is armed, are designed to explode out of it on impact at speeds of about 2,200ft a second, tearing through flesh and bone.

Theoretically the bombs, which leave the artillery shell in mid-air, should become armed on their way to the ground as they rotate and explode on impact. However, many of these bombs failed to rotate enough to be properly armed or didn’t explode because they landed too softly or in water and got buried. These have lain there for 40 years, just waiting for a child to pick one up or a farmer to thrust his hoe or spade into the earth above it.

A Mines Advisory Group image of Laos children looking at one of the unexploded bombies

The bombs, even now, claim more than 500 lives a year. Hundreds more people lose limbs, eyesight or suffer severe and permanent damage. Many of the victims are children who think that the small round ‘bombies’ are toys or fruit and pick them up to play with.

In a society where 90 per cent of the population makes its living from the soil, the problem is a daily worry. Wives worry for their farmer husbands, their small children. The birth rate has risen here since the war and 40% of all Laos people are under 18 so new areas of land are constantly having to be ploughed for food, meaning the farmers must risk life and, literally, limb to grow enough rice for their families.

Bomb disposal charities like the Mine Advisory Group (MAG), made famous by Princess Diana, have stepped in to train local people here in safe bomb disposal. They also go into villages to help locals map known bombies and avoid them until they can be blown up (some villages still continue to find bombs after as many as 20 clearance visits). However the work of these charities is just the tip of the iceberg: currently 100,000 bombies are safely exploded every year but with an estimated 10,000,000 bombies still out there it will be 100 years before Laos land is safe to farm and live.

Over the last 20 years, since Laos opened its borders, tourism and development has brought new money and hope to the country. The government aim to get the country off the UN’s Least Developed Country list by 2020 would seem an achievable aim but for the UXO, which makes building roads and other infrastructure a virtual impossibility without a huge amount of money for bomb clearance. The whole country is still being held back by the consequences of a war that it never waged or fought.

Laos countryside is tainted: will it be more than a century until its people are free?

Worst of all, this type of bomb is still being used by US and British troops in wars today. Cluster bombs are not anti-tank weapons or heavy artillery, they are purely designed to kill and maim people and their effects linger on decades after war has ended.

The US army have now acknowledged the Secret War and, to be fair, have tried to make amends by sending a small amount of aid and many metal detectors. The Laos government refuse their aid as they don’t trust them – who would? – any gesture of remorse is seen as ‘too little too late’. If they really cared they would stop using cluster bombs now and stop other countries from enduring the same legacy of pain.

NB: Laos has been chosen to host the first Convention on Cluster Munitions in 2010. If you would like to learn more about cluster bombs please visit www.maginternational.org or www.stopclustermunitions.org

By Mark Morford

September 9, 2009

And then along comes one of those stories that makes you cringe down to your very core, that makes you see our semi-fine nation and the world around it through a bleak and unforgiving lens indeed. No matter how hard you try and how you spin the story and flip it around and try to forcibly shape it into something less slightly nauseating, all you can do is realize that sometimes ugliness and violence win the day, the year, the planet.

So it is that a new report has just emerged, announcing with a sort of drab and bitter capitalistic glee that America is once again the number one weapons dealer in the world. It’s true: We sell more guns, more major weaponry, tanks and rocket launchers, fighters and Gatling guns and all sorts of brutal devices specifically designed to destroy human life and induce fear and dread and all manner of sadistic horror, than any other developed nation on the planet. By a long shot.

But that’s not all. Despite the bleak economy, despite what you might expect to be a major downturn in such transactions, sales of American-made guns and weapons of mass annihilation worldwide are actually way up. As far as U.S.-made weapons are concerned, it appears to be a boom time for war and death and conflict. Isn’t that fun to swallow with your hopes and dreams for a peaceful and calmly evolving future?

So far ahead in weapons sales to the world are we, it’s not even a contest. We own the game. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, while overall weapons sales were indeed down due to global economic blight, sales of U.S. weaponry rose more than 50 percent in a single year, totaling about $37 billion, up from $25 billion the year before.

Translation: the U.S. now owns a whopping 68 percent of the arms games worldwide. We’re just like Wal-Mart, if Wal-Mart sold Browning M2s and Stingers and flamethrowers. Isn’t that reassuring?

Sure, you can water it down a bit, maybe propose to your exhausted soul that we only sell said weapons to our friendly, peace-seeking allies so they may protect themselves from various evildoers and swarthy terrorists whom we also detest and wish death and hate upon, or you could tell yourself that most of said weaponry is really for defense and for shielding babies and puppies and virgins from the darker nature of man.

You can even go so far as to suggest that our arms deals are not promoting war, per se, but actually promoting peace, in that inverse, bad-is-good, multiple-wrongs-make-a-right sort of way. It’s the classic, ridiculous NRA argument: if everyone owns a few thousand warheads, no one will shoot anyone simply because they don’t want to get shot themselves. It’s pathetic nonsense, but hey, whatever gets you through, right?

Sad fact is, capitalism trumps all rational arguments, all notions that we are out only to promote good in the world, and we will sell weapons to just about anyone anywhere short of Al Qaeda itself. Guerrillas? Dictators? Drug lords? If they somehow serve our global agenda, hell yes. We sell billions in arms to our pals in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, for example, regimes second only in oppression and totalitarianism to the Taliban. We buy their oil, we turn around and sell them fighter jets and grenades and sniper rifles. It’s a win-win, where everybody loses.

Of course, it’s all nothing new. America has always been the world’s foremost arms dealer. Who can forget one of the classic hypocrisies of all time, Bush’s pathetic wail that we must stop the development of weapons of mass destruction in countries we do not like, when of course the United States owns more WMD than any developed nation on the planet? We argue it’s all about intent, all about protecting our vital interests. Which may be partly true. The other truth is, it’s also all about profit, ethics and morals bedamned.

I can’t help but recall that cute little scene in Iron Man, when Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark character, a cocky, heartless arms dealer, finally realizes the horrible human consequences of his trade, what sort of mayhem and death he has helped promote, and decides to turn his life around and fight for justice and help save the world.

Isn’t that a charming little cartoon fable? Isn’t that just ridiculous, ultraviolent fantasy? Don’t we nevertheless love to rub such childish ideological balm all over ourselves and think that’s really what America is all about, that selling death to oppressive regimes is merely a necessary evil and, gosh golly, if we could, we’d put a stop to all such sales tomorrow in favor of ensuring a peaceful and utopian future? Sure we do. In many ways, such a mass delusion is the only way we can really get out of bed in the morning.

I’m not exactly certain how you counterbalance such bleak data. I’m not sure where to look for an equally powerful story to battle the dour fact that we are, at heart, a rather ruthless capitalist military juggernaut that will gladly sell a sharpening stone to an axe murderer if it serves our purposes and makes Lockheed Martin a tidy profit.

Where do you look for proof that $37 billion in weapons sales does not, in fact, exert a simply massive downward thrust on the desire to imagine humanity is moving in an ultimately positive, hopeful, nonviolent direction? The green movement? Solar power? Hybrid cars? As if.

Maybe you don’t look at all. Maybe there is no such story, no way to offset the fact that war and violence are a major engine of capitalism, and always will be. Maybe you only swallow it whole, hope it doesn’t tear a permanent gash in your spirit, and eagerly await Iron Man 2.

Source

Weapons that do things like in the two links below

Each link contains numerous links. Seeing what these weapons do should be enlightening.

America promotes wars. They do it for profit. Politicians take donations at election (bribes) to help promote wars all over the world.

Some Politicians have stocks in the war industry. Profits for them as long as there is war.

If not that they have stocks in oil and gas companies, or like Cheny’s Haliburton.  All war profits in their pockets. Corruption running rapid for profit.

All this at the expense of the innocent victims who die, the destruction of countries and the theft of their resources.

The war machine is also one of the main polluter on the planet leaving behind things like radiation from DU, cluster bombs, land mines etc. The list goes on an on for an eternity.

Then American companies go in and take over anything and everything they possibly can. More profit.

Stop war starve the war machine.

(Afghanistan 1) A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words

Gaza (1): A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

War “Pollution” Equals Millions of Deaths

US Raided Afghan Hospital

Indexed List of all Stories in Archives

Last Day of an Epic War 

            This is Monday August 14, 2006 of my diary.  The war has been going on for 32 days so far; Israel has destroyed all Lebanon’s infrastructure seaports, airports, highways, and polluted our sea with mazout. At 8 a.m. Israel decided to stop the military activities.  Last night, Israel poured its last minutes of vengeance and hatred on Lebanon by dropping thousands of various bombs and rockets on southern Beirut, the Bekaa and Akkar districts.  There are many indications that Israel used bombes that spread thousands of tiny bombs against individuals (cluster bombs); a few cases of injuries happened this morning when children manipulated these tiny booby bombs.        

            Israel dropped leaflets warning that it will target Beirut if missiles are activated. Israel pronounced that it will maintain air, water, and ground blockades until the multinational forces take over. The UN and the Lebanese army have warned our citizens not to touch or approach suspicious objects.

            The Lebanese refugees are on the move back to their home towns in the south by the thousands; they are carrying their mattresses and blankets stacked high over their cars.  They did not wait for any kind of permissions from anyone; they did not wait for the army to lead the way, and certainly, they did not wait for Israel to give the green light to their return. They are the heroes after the cease fire that clenched our total victory over the despicable enemy.  The locals at the nearby destroyed bridges and roads are repairing as best they can and facilitating the convoys of the returnees.  It would take months for the Israeli citizens to return to their targeted settlements at the urge and plenty of incentive from their government.  The nation that won the war is the one whose citizens returned promptly to their lands.

            My niece Adreas, helped by 5 of the neighbors’ kids, cleaned the basement where William sleeps and rearranged the living room so that they can meet and play.  This place is supposed to become their meeting harbor before they disperse for outdoor activities. I guess they intend to bring their daily food supplies and they were dreaming of sleeping overnight too.

            The IDF (Israel “Defense” Forces) has vacated the town of Marjeyoun. The war is going on in the south; Hezbollah killed seven Israeli soldiers and wounded 17.  It looks like the agreement of April in 1996 all over again, after the first Qana massacre; this agreement stated that guerilla warfare is legitimate and the civilians should be are spared.  If the Lebanese government is steadfast behind the resistance fighters, it will not take four years for Israel to retreat to the Blue Line but merely one week.

            I took my youngest niece Chelsea of nine around 7 p.m. to Beit Chabab to celebrate the Eve of the Virgin Mary Day and meet a few of her friends.  This event had strong local flavors before the start of the civil war in 1975. It represents mid summer vacation and parents start worrying about the first instalement to private schools. This was no celebrations this year; though it would have been most appropriate because of the end of the cease fire and our victory.  Chelsea bought herself a hair band and another cheap toy and ate “mankouchi”. While visiting my aunt Montaha, Nasr Allah was delivering his powerful speech.  We returned about 9 p.m. and I watched the interview with our minister of Defense.

Note: This year too, Hassan Nasr Allah delivered a lengthy and powerful victory speech at the same time and date.  The Secretary General of Hezbollah said that the frequent threats of Israel for the last two months only chased away the tourists visiting northern Israel. Israel would love to wage another offensive war but it is too apprehensive to even think about it.  Hezbollah has no intention of escalating the tensions but it is not scared at all for another war. This time around the missiles of Hezbollah can reach any where in Israel and the resistance will respond in kinds.)

Suited for cluster-bomb clearing in Tibnin, Lebanon

One of the most enjoyable things about being a reporter in Lebanon is the access it affords.

You want to speak to the Interior Minister? Sure, here’s his mobile and home phone number. You need a quote from the Head of the Internal Security Forces? Go ahead, he’ll call you after lunch and tell you, in perfect English, what it is you’re after.

Last week, I wanted to speak with UNIFIL troops in the south of the country, and file a dispatch from Tibnin on how the cluster-bomb clearing operation is going three years after the Summer War of 2006.

After a few phonecalls and correspondence with a charmingly eccentric Italian UN General, I was on the way to the south, a few kilometers from Israel, a state against which Lebanon is still officially at war.

Then the red tape catches up with you. You want to go south of Sidon in a professional capacity? Go ahead, but you need the Army’s permission and this takes 15 days. I know you want to go this week, but there is nothing I can do, there’s a procedure to follow, after all.

15 days turned rapidly into 2 as our terrier of a receptionist battered through this pointless beauracracy, yet I still found myself sitting in a stifling mobile in the LAF’s Sidon barracks. Calls in Arabic, made with not the slightest tinge of urgency. Paperwork. Sighs and queue-jumping. Eventually I get passed a hand-written slip, containing precisely three digits and a signature cast in childish scrawl. Next time, I will forge the pass myself.

Once in Tibnin, I get greeted by Lt Monnoyer and a half-hour health and safety blurb. We patrol an area of sparse shrubland, the earth parched from the baking sun which beats relentless down as the mine clearers get to work.

In the last 72 hours of the 2006 war, Israel dropped more than a million cluster bomb M42 submunitions, so that – according to many Lebanese – they could continue killing for the next 30 years. Hundreds have been killed or maimed by these de facto landmines (an estimated 40 percent of the bomblets didn’t explode upon contact with the ground).

I speak later with someone from Lebanon’s Mines Advisory Group. She tells me that the Israelis, knowing that a ceasefire was imminent, deliberately dropped weapons on Lebanon that were well past their use-by date.

We’ve found bomb casings with ‘use by 1978′ on them. They knew what they were doing.

The day I file my dispatch, there is news of two Syrian farmers who are obliterated the moment they step on a cluster bomb particle. These deaths will keep being reported, with a seemingly inescapable sense of ennui. This is a scandal. But people have grown used to this and the general malaise and lack of funding which now engulfs Lebanon’s landmine clearing operations.

Back in Beirut, I report on a prison break, involving a Fatah al-Islam inmate being held on terrorism charges. Want to speak to the head of the Army? Here’s his direct line.

this week’s ‘can’t believe’ post  looks at the use of cluster bombs on civilian targets

Cluster bombs are nasty little bastards! They are explosive weapons that eject smaller submunitions – like bloody huge grenades with hair triggers.

If dropped from planes they are fitted with parachutes to slow their decent down. This it to make sure the planes gets out of the way before the mother of all explosions occurs!

According to wiki: ‘Because cluster bombs release many small bomblets over a wide area they pose risks to civilians both during attacks and afterwards. During attacks the weapons are prone to indiscriminate effects, especially in populated areas. After a conflict unexploded bomblets can kill or maim civilians long after a conflict has ended. Unexploded submunitions are costly to locate and remove.’ So in addition to peppering an entire area with lots of little bombs, cluster bombs may not all actually explode until some kid finds them, years later, and loses a face!

They are horrible weapons of war which were prohibited in 2008. The funny thing about these kinds of prohibitions is that only the countries that agree to the ban are required to comply with it. Gotta love that! Talk about preaching to the choir!

There have been several incidents of cluster bombs being used in war, but for me the worst confirmed incident was on Beirut, Lebanon. It is certainly the incident which resulted in the most civilian deaths; and seems like a gross over reaction.

In 2006, Israel responded to the kidnapping of 2 Israeli soldiers by bombing the crap out of Beirut – using cluster bombs. 44 civilians died including 15 children. In 2009 the maps of where the bombs were dropped were finally handed over by Israel.

That means that in addition to the 44 people killed immediately, civilians have been living around unexploded bombs for 3 years. The United Nations thinks there may be as many as 100 000 lurking, waiting to explode!

I don’t care about the historical elements of the battle between Hezbollah guerrillas and Israel; I do not care to entertain argument about who was right or wrong or entitled or started it. What I find deeply shocking is that ANY human being would use weapons like that against any other human being. Whether or not we are ‘legally entitled to’, the argument Israel used to defend their action, is beside the point. That we are so depraved a species that we would even consider the legality and never even mention the morality of this kind of action is what I simply can’t believe

….can’t believe!……

Singapore Senior Minister, MR Goh Chok Tong was quoted at the inaugural Asia-Middle East Media Roundtable that this is currently a good time for the former to expand its trade and cultural relations in the Middle East (instead of viewing it as a place for sourcing energy and exploiting its oil-fields).

It appears that the Senior Minister has quite forgotten that the Middle East is not just Qatar , Abu Dhabi (which was mentioned in a Channel News Asia article) or even Israel, which Singapore has close relations with. Based on that report, ‘Economic crisis an opportunity for Asia, Mideast to grow ties‘, Mr Goh Chok Tong has forgotten the Middle East is a region with complex geopolitical issues.

In Iraq for example, we are witnessing an illegal invasion  (under international law) which has caused an atrocious number of displacements, sectorian unrests, deaths and property to destruction, conveniently termed as ‘collateral damage’ by the US forces. That the Singapore government sees itself fit to be part of the coalition is therefore morally questionable.

In 2006, the war in Lebanon waged by Hizbollah and Israel generated the same kind of quagmire while leaving behind a trail of unexploded cluster munitions. Singapore has refused to attend the international conference  on such weapons nor signed and ratified the treaty to ban them.

Lets not forget the military campaign and continuing economic blockade in Gaza (2 years but who’s counting) as well as the illegal building of settlements and Separation Wall in West Bank by Israel which the Singapore government has turned a blind eye to.

How about the its muted response to the Iranian’s rage and street protest in the recent Presidential elections which saw a large-scale crackdown on activists and journalists?

Even if we can look beyond these specific human rights atrocities, which occurred within the last few years (with the exception of the Occupied Territories) can Singapore justify its ongoing relationships with repressive regimes the likes of Saudi Arabia or Egypt where the former’s denigratory treatment of women and secretive executions; and the latter’s crackdown on the opposition is notoriously well-documented?

This business whereby states sees itself as equals (or normatively speaking, at least) in building  trade or cultural relationships with other states is part of international relations. Nothing unusual about it. However, that should not come at the expense of ignoring blatant human rights violations which are often clearly in contravene of international human rights laws.

Even if one can begrudgingly look beyond these issues and argue that Singapore has little capacity to influence the Middle East, it cannot say of the same with regards to the Burmese military regime.

To add insult to injury, Mr Goh Chok Tong said in the CNA article that Aung San Suu Kyi is part of the problem because she sees herself as part of the government. One could infer from his statement that the lady is not a legitimate representative of Burma despite her party’s electoral victories more than two decades ago but was denied of coming into power because of the generals. The country’s vast resources has since been pillaged by overseas corporations including Singaporean-based investors while ASEAN advocates a nonchalance attitude towards large-scale injustices ranging from the suppression of the Saffron uprising to Aung San Suu Kyi’s arrests and sham trial; and the ongoing killing, imprisonment and torture of Burmese activists

Even his suggestion to Aung San Suu Kyi in terms of offering concessions is illogical. It is precisely the Western sanctions (not including the oil corporations) that is limiting the junta’s ability to gain revenue in oppressing its people. Normalising trade with Burma is very likely to give the military more resources and justification to continue its illegitimate rule as it enhances its repressive practices (think China or even Singapore).

International relations is far from perfect or fair  in many circumstances. That however does not justify state practices that are at odds with our shared and broad sense of human morality.  Some atrocities cannot be simply explained by jingoistic language such as following a ‘roadmap to democracy’ or realism. In the conducting of foreign affairs, is it morally justified for a state to focus on trade issues while ignoring the other equally if not, more important areas such as human rights norms or laws on war? What is one’s moral obligations towards others  besides one’s own countrymen? Should one care about foreign affair and international relations even if it appears to be the domain of the state?