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POPSIsrael Using Cluster Bombs on Gaza Cluster bombs do not "target" militants tightly, urban areas especially. "Collateral damage" is absolutely guaranteed. More evidence that Israel is not making war on just Hamas, but Palestinians in their "collective punishment" tactics. The first pic was posted on Drudge. The last link in this clipmark has posted the CNN video showing general news of the Israeli attacks on Gaza which inadvertantly captured these bombs in action. 93 nations have banned them, except for US, Russia, and Israel.
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POPS100+ countries adopt cluster bomb ban in Dublin This despite the absence of the United States, China, Russia, Israel, India and Pakistan -- all major cluster bomb stockpilers and producers. Supporters said they hoped the treaty would pressure them to change track or shame them into not using cluster bombs. "We all know that there are important states not present, but I am convinced that we will have succeeded in stigmatising any future use of cluster munitions," Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin said.
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POPSU.S. Supports use of Cluster Munitions Cluster munitions are large weapons that release up to hundreds of smaller submunitions. "Air-dropped or ground-launched, they cause two major humanitarian problems and risks to civilians," writes the Cluster Munition Coalition. 1-their widespread dispersal means they cannot distinguish between military targets and civilians so the humanitarian impact can be extreme, 2-many submunitions fail to detonate on impact and become de facto antipersonnel mines killing and maiming people long after the conflict has ended Why does the U.S. want to continue the use of these inaccurate, indiscriminate, and unreliable bombs? We have 'smart' bombs and we use 'surgical strike' technology. Why do we insist on employing such barbaric weaponry? For a country that prides itself as a democratic and humanitarian state, how can the U.S. ignore the overwhelming mandate of such a large number of nations?
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POPSAmericanism: The good, the bad and the ugly The famous go-to-war-for “American way of life,” underlines America’s persistent claims of a monopoly on morality. What is it, this American morality? This righteousness? Is it our religious roots in the fable of the Puritan settlers, those super religious people who in their hardships were bigots, perhaps also practitioners of incest and racists soon morphing into dogmatic chauvinists who early-on labeled their dissidents and different-thinkers witches and demons. The same Americanism initiated then which today fosters the rights of the rich to become richer, the strong to trample the weak . Meanwhile, out in the empire, as long as it is distant, the Puritan legacy instills blindness to the use of cluster bombs from the stratosphere and hidden torture in places with foreign names like Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib . . . and while our neighbors in Haiti eat dirt, literally.
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POPSGone, for now, Leaving Death Behind. Like their rain of Cluster Bombs that they deliberately left behind as they scurried home with crap in their nappies from Lebanon in 2006, the inglorious IDF/IAF has left Gaza, for now, with the soiling of Palestinian land with unexploded US shells. Like the Nazis before them, they have left their calling card of children's deaths behind to prove that little men with big guns can boast to their wives and lovers how many kids that they maimed and killed. Brave brave men that kill defenceless kids, and animals
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POPSOpium, Rape and the American Way
Truth from the women in Afghanistan: (read the whole article for the real story) "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 o
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POPS111 Nations Ban Cluster Bombs; US Not Among Them The piece goes on: "The country that thinks of using cluster munitions next week should think twice, because it would look very bad," said Espen Barth Eide, Deputy Defense Minister of Norway, which began the negotiations last year and will host a treaty-signing ceremony Dec. 3. "We're certain that nations thinking of using cluster munitions won't want to face the international condemnation that will rain down upon them, because the weapons have been stigmatized now," said Steve Goose, arms control director of New York-based Human Rights Watch, who was involved in the talks. Maybe the next US admin. will be moved by this, but not Bush. Can't shame the shameless.
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POPSHa'aretz: "Sadly, Israel is no longer democratic" The long-term evidence of abuse by soldiers against civilians at the checkpoints - including repeated instances of expectant mothers who are forced to give birth in the middle of the road, surrounded by armed soldiers who laugh wickedly -is no secret either. Day after day, year after year, the most moral army in the world helps to steal lands , uproot trees, steal water, close roads - in the service of the righteous "Jewish and democratic" state and with its support. It's heartbreaking, but the State of Israel is no longer democratic. We are living in an ethnocracy under "Jewish and democratic" rule. Our sages have said: "Don't be overly righteous." And there is absolutely no question that dropping cluster bombs in an area populated by civilians, as we did in the Second Lebanon War, does not testify to great righteousness. The same thing can be said of using phosphorus bombs against a civilian population. ... Ha'aretz
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POPSA Weapon Out Of Control Clusterbombs - The *gift* that keeps on giving. More than 40 countries are calling for a ban on these munitions, that long after the conflict of war is over, remain lethal and dangerous and kill and maim countless civilians, but among others, the UK and the US are resisting such a ban.
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POPSNo more cluster bombs It's unconscionable that the USA, Russia and China use these and I wonder if the USA still use or sell these horrible civilian killers, Esp in Afghanistan?
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POPSLaos: U.S. war remains still killing 30 years after Vietnam War
More: The State Department has requested $1.4 million to fund efforts to clear unexploded ordnance in Laos in 2008, less than half the amount Washington provided this year. A U.S. diplomat in Vientiane, the Laotian capital, said he was told to expect only $900,000 next year U.S. B-52 bombers and other warplanes flew more than half a million missions over Laos and dropped between 2 million and 3 million tons of ordnance Nong lost his 18-year-old wife, Mee, in 1986 when the couple gathered with other villagers around a fire one night to chat about the day's big news, an attack by a wild pig. As they usually did for important gatherings, the women built a fire to warm a pot of rice wine. Problem was, one of the legs in the tripod was an unexploded rocket-propelled grenade, which blew up. As Nong, 50, recalled the day, several neighbors took seats on logs and stones in his dirt yard to show missing fingers, scarred legs and arms, and talk of the curse all around them.
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POPSBBC: Israel "indiscriminate and disproportionate" in Lebanon It called some of Israel's military actions in Lebanon during the war "indiscriminate and disproportionate". It particularly highlighted the attacks on United Nations observers and the dropping of more than 3.5 million cluster bombs (90% of the total) in the 72 hours after the UN Security Council passed the resolution which effectively ended the war.
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POPSMost War Crimes Were Israeli in Lebanon War
A shocking aspect of the war was Israel's firing of at least a million cluster bombs, old munitions supplied by the US with a failure rate as high as 50%, in the last days of fighting. The tiny bomblets, effectively small land mines, were left littering south Lebanon after the UN-brokered ceasefire, and are reported so far to have killed 30 civilians and wounded at least another 180. Israeli commanders have admitted firing 1.2 million such bomblets, while the UN puts the figure closer to 3 million. Israel's use of cluster bombs has been described as a war crime by human rights organizations. According to the rules, the bombs should have been used only in open and unpopulated areas – although with such a high failure rate, this would have done little to prevent later civilian casualties. A leaked army report to the Israeli media, discovered that the cluster bombs had been fired into Lebanese population centers in gross violation of international law.
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POPSbecoming what we seek to destroy we are morally no different from the psychopaths within the Taliban, who Afghans remember we empowered, funded and armed during the 10-year war with the Soviet Union-acid thrown in a girl's face or beheadings? Death delivered from the air or fields of shiny cluster bombs? this is the language of war. It is what we speak. It is what those we fight speak.
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POPS100 nations sign cluster-bomb ban US does not, along with Russia and China, all of which are manufacturers of them. Between 1964 and 1973, over Laos, the US air force dropped the equivalent of a fully-loaded B-52 bomber's payload of cluster bombs every 8 minutes for 9 years. Children still find them.
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