Clipmarks | Cluster bombs Clips

Opium, Rape and the American Way

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:46:51 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: 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

Clip Source: www.commondreams.org

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.

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.

Meet the People Who Were Passed Over for Obama

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 00:16:14 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: Kristol: Liberalism's Gorbachev?

RNC: 'What Has President Obama Actually Accomplished?'

Clip Source: www.weeklystandard.com

Sima Samar, women's rights activist in Afghanistan: "With dogged persistence and at great personal risk, she kept her schools and clinics open in Afghanistan even during the most repressive days of the Taliban regime, whose laws prohibited the education of girls past the age of eight.

Ingrid Betancourt: French-Colombian ex-hostage held for six years.

"Dr. Denis Mukwege: Doctor, founder and head of Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo.

Handicap International and Cluster Munition Coalition: "These organizations are recognized for their consistently serious efforts to clean up cluster bombs

"Hu Jia, a human rights activist and an outspoken critic of the Chinese government, who was sentenced last year to a three-and-a-half-year prison term for 'inciting subversion of state power.'"

"Wei Jingsheng, who spent 17 years in Chinese prisons for urging reforms of China's communist system. He now lives in the United States."

Posted by Mary Katharine Ham

Tags: "dr. denis mukwege, handicap international and cluster munition coalit, hu jia, ingrid betancourt, sima samar, wei jingsheng

The Fifty Top U.S. War Criminals Who Need To Be Prosecuted

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 19:53:15 GMT

clipped by: nuttyriv3r

Clip Source: pubrecord.org

By David Swanson
The Public Record
Aug 18th, 2009

The former Bush administration officials rank at the top of the list of the 50 most nortious war criminals living in the U.S.

The occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan have seen the United States target civilians, journalists, hospitals, and ambulances, use antipersonnel weapons including cluster bombs in densely settled urban areas, use white phosphorous as a weapon, use depleted uranium weapons, employ a new version of napalm found in Mark 77 firebombs, engage in collective punishment of Iraqi civilian populations — including by blocking roads, cutting electricity and water, destroying fuel stations, planting bombs in farm fields, demolishing houses, and plowing down orchards — detain people without charge or legal process without the rights of prisoners of war, imprison children, torture, and murder.

1. John Yoo:

counseled the White House on how to get away with war crimes,

2. Robert J. Delahunty

3. Patrick F. Philbin

4. Jay Bybee:

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Tags: bush administration, empire, global fascist amerika, invasion, john yoo, murder, robert j. delahunty, torture, tyranny, war crimes

Syria Tests New Scud Missiles

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 18:59:23 GMT

clipped by: ColoradoRight
clipper's remarks: Israel has made no secret of the fact that, in a future war with Syria, they estimate that there would be as many as 3,300 Israeli casualties (including up to 200 dead). That's if Syria just used its long range missiles armed with conventional warheads (high explosives or cluster bombs). If the Syrians used chemical warheads, Israeli casualties could be as high as 16,000. Over 200,000 Israelis would be left homeless, and it's believed about a 100,000 would seek to leave the country.

Clip Source: www.strategypage.com

August 17, 2009: Last week, Syria test fired two Scud type ballistic missiles. The guidance systems on both of them were not working properly. One of the missiles landed in the market place of a village near the Turkish border, killing twenty people and injuring at least sixty. At first, the government said it was a natural gas explosion, but the truth soon came out (it's kind of hard to hide the missile debris, and a Scud impact is quite different from a natural gas explosion.)

Syria has underground storage and launch facilities for its arsenal of over a thousand SCUD missiles. Armed with half ton high explosive and cluster bomb warheads, the missiles have ranges of 500-700 kilometers.

The Syrians have a large network of camouflaged launching sites for the mobile launchers. Iran and North Korea have helped Syria build underground SCUD manufacturing and maintenance facilities.

Tags: israel, syria, missiles

1 US base down 865 to go..

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 03:48:49 GMT

clipped by: beanz

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

New Battle on Vieques, Over Navy’s Cleanup of Munitions

VIEQUES, P.R. — The United States Navy ceased military training operations on this small island in 2003, and windows no longer rattle from the shelling from ships and air-to-ground bombings.

The Navy has begun removing hazardous unexploded munitions from its old training ground by detonating them in the open air. It also proposes to burn through nearly 100 acres of dense tropical vegetation to locate and explode highly sensitive cluster bombs.

The unexploded munitions lie on 8,900 acres of former Navy land on the eastern end of the island, including 1,100 acres of what was once the live impact area. The E.P.A. says the cleanup could take 10 years or more.

the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill who has studied the risks of adapting former training ranges. “There’s no way to make that land safe for reuse unless it’s very restrictive.”

Tags: us bases

EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Air Raid Victim Tells Obama to Leave Afghanistan

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 14:38:18 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: We are not delivering democracy or liberation or development. We are delivering massive, sophisticated forms of industrial slaughter. And because we have employed the blunt and horrible instrument of war in a land we know little about and are incapable of reading, we embody the barbarism we claim to be seeking to defeat.
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 into 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.

Clip Source: www.openleft.com

Here is a face of the war in Afghanistan. Najibullah, an air raid victim from the Malwand district of Kandahar, points to where three bombs shattered his home during a recent US airstrike. His message to President Obama: Withdraw US forces from Afghanistan at once. "They're going to leave anyway," Najibullah says. "It's better for them to leave Afghanistan on their own terms now rather than later. To leave our country voluntarily. We're all deformed, people are missing fingers. Look at my finger." He points to a missing index finger on his right hand. "Some people are missing eyes, some people are missing legs. Some are missing their arms. They destroyed the whole nation."

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

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Clip Source: www.openleft.com

This exclusive footage, which Brave New Foundation released today as part of the soon-to-be-released fourth segment of Rethink Afghanistan, stands as an unflinching testament to the rampant devastation wrought by recent US airstrikes in Afghanistan.

becoming what we seek to destroy

Wed, 13 May 2009 22:04:11 GMT

clipped by: doodleicious
clipper's remarks: 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.

Clip Source: www.truthdig.com

Afghan survivors carted some two dozen corpses from their villages to the provincial capital in trucks this week to publicly denounce the carnage. Some 2,000 angry Afghans in the streets of the capital chanted “Death to America!” But the grief, fear and finally rage of the bereaved do not touch those who use high-minded virtues to justify slaughter. The death of innocents, they assure us, is the tragic cost of war. It is regrettable, but it happens. It is the price that must be paid. And so, guided by a president who once again has no experience of war and defers to the bull-necked generals and militarists whose careers, power and profits depend on expanded war, we are transformed into monsters.

Becoming What We Seek to Destroy

Tags: war

Finally, Three Years and 300 Deaths Too Late ...

Wed, 13 May 2009 20:04:23 GMT

clipped by: ratcatcher2

Clip Source: www.france24.com

Israel hands over Lebanon cluster-bomb maps

Israel has given a UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon details of where it dropped cluster bombs in its war with Hezbollah in 2006, Lebanon's prime minister has said. The bombs often do not explode on impact, but can do so later at the slightest touch.

Prime Minister Fuad Siniora "received a phone call from the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) commander General Claudio Graziano informing him that Israel had provided details of the locations of cluster bombs it dropped in south Lebanon during the 2006 war," according to a statement issued by his office late on Tuesday night.

The United Nations has since 2006 repeatedly appealed to Israel to provide maps showing the location of over one million cluster munitions dropped by the Jewish state during its devastating air war against Lebanon, around 40 percent of which failed to detonate on impact, according to the United Nations.

300 civilians have since been killed or maimed by cluster bombs

Tags: lebanon, war, israel, un

Ha'aretz: "Sadly, Israel is no longer democratic"

Sun, 03 May 2009 14:26:26 GMT

clipped by: ratcatcher2
clipper's remarks: 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

Clip Source: commons.wikimedia.org

Clip Source: en.wikipedia.org

Amos Yadlin

Clip Source: www.notes.co.il

Clip Source: en.wikipedia.org

Asa Kasher

Clip Source: www.haaretz.com

"A just war of a democratic state,

Sadly, Israel is no longer democratic

Yadlin and Kasher definition of justice, in order to eliminate terrorists it is just to destroy, kill, expel and starve a civilian population that has no connection to the acts of terror and no responsibility for them

they would have tried to explain the reasons for the fury and intensity that brought about the shocking killing and destruction, and even apologized for the fact that these exceeded any reasonable necessity

after all, we are always right; moreover, these things were done by "the most moral army in the world," sent by the "democratic" Jewish state - and here is the meeting point of the two concepts in the title

the army operates with great efficiency against farmers who demonstrate against the theft of their lands, even when the demonstrations are not violent

army's morality

This is because the statistics on the destruction and harm to civilians in the Gaza Strip are familiar to everyon

Tags: israel, democracy, state, gaza

Iraqi Heavy Metal - music - not cluster bombs

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 13:47:15 GMT

clipped by: nedhamson1
clipper's remarks: International Rescue Committee helped them and it's a good story.

Clip Source: www.theirc.org

CRISIS WATCH | Special Report | Iraq | Iraqi Refugees

Iraqi Metal Band Reunited

Forced by death threats to split up and flee Iraq, the members of "Heavy Metal in Baghdad" band Acrassicauda lived as refugees in Syria and Turkey for nearly three years. When the United States offered them asylum, the International Rescue Committee brought the musicians back together and is helping them restart their lives in safety and freedom.

Tags: iraq, war, peace, humane, heavy metal

News from The Quakers--FCNL

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 13:47:26 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: I love these people who helped me in my youth to develop my CO status.

Clip Source: action.fcnl.org

No More Cluster Bomb Exports
Take the Next Step to Ban Cluster Bombs
Quote of the Week: Talking to Iran
Afghanistan: More Troops + Afghanistan = Catastrophe
From the Quakers' Colonel: Six Years Later in Iraq
Take Action: Urge Your Rep. to Work for Middle East Peace
Immigration: Keep the Border Control on the Border
Grassroots Tip: Where Do Your Members of Congress Stand?
War Is Not the Answer Photo of the Week: Lillian, Alabama

If these weapons are so bad we cannot export them, why should our soldiers use them? They shouldn't. Last week you generated more than 6,000 emails to the Senate in support of legislation to ban U.S. use of cluster bombs. Take the next step: Be part of a national call-in day to your senators on Monday, March 30.

Check out the video and spread the word that diplomacy and development, not war, are the answer in Afghanistan.

U.S. Bans Cluster Bomb Exports

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 14:01:32 GMT

clipped by: disenchantedcitizen
clipper's remarks: Excellent! It’s about time. What? Wait a minute, they’re still going to allow a . . . safer . . . indiscriminate killer?!? Are you kidding me? The U.S. will still use them IF they leave behind less than 1% of their submunitions. This is still unacceptable.

Oh, but wait. We have the word of the receiving country that these evil inventions won’t be used where civilians are known to be present. Oh, well then, that makes it okay?!?

I was seriously hoping that George Bush and his cronies would be grumbling at the loss of income these horrific weapons provide.

Clip Source: us.oneworld.net

Legislation signed into law on March 11, 2009 by President Obama will make permanent a ban on nearly all cluster bomb exports by the United States, Human Rights Watch said today. The United States should review its stance on joining the international treaty prohibiting cluster munitions in light of this action, Human Rights Watch said.

It brings Washington into closer alignment with international opinion on this terrible weapon

The passage of this measure is yet another indication that the president should initiate a thorough review of US policy with respect to cluster munitions

If it is unacceptable for foreign militaries to use these weapons, why would it be acceptable for the US military to use them?

Tags: military, weapons of indiscriminate destruction, cluster bombs, war profiteers

Terry Jones: Arms Manufacturer

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 14:05:50 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: Satire, of course, and brilliant!

Clip Source: lauraflanders.firedoglake.com

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Terry Jones, of Monty Python, on why he's becoming an arms manufacturer. The forecast is good he says. Sales are up. And it doesn't look like growth will slow any time soon. Think about it...by the time you finish watching this the United States will have spent an additional one million dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There couldn't be a better time to enter the business of manufacturing cluster bombs, missiles and the like.

Gone, for now, Leaving Death Behind.

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 09:19:31 GMT

clipped by: ratcatcher2
clipper's remarks: 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

Clip Source: www.ipsnews.net

Unexploded Bombs Hold More Deaths

44 children that live in the Zani family home in Beit Hanoun were wary of the unexploded F-16 rocket whose tail has protruded menacingly from their garden since it landed in the first week of the Israeli assaul

Now, they have grown used to it - playing excitedly near it and even building fires next to it, a relative says.

"This is our situation, and we have to live with it."

Zani says he has been calling Gaza's civil defence force, which was targeted in the invasion and is now located at a makeshift headquarters in the Al-Shifa hospital, to remove the missile.

Clip Source: www.edie.net

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Clip Source: portcities.hartlepool.gov.uk

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Gaza administration simply does not have the funds, equipment or know-how to discharge the weapons. "I don't know who else to call," Zani said. "It seems that nobody is able to help us."

an unknown number of unexploded munitions threaten to set off another wave of maiming and killing

"major threat" to its civilian population, the International Committee of the Red Cross

Two children were killed

in Shaaf

Tags: bombing, gaza, idf, children, death, israel, nazi

White Phosphorus

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 18:20:22 GMT

clipped by: katsteevns

Clip Source: www.brasschecktv.com

White Phospheros

What is white phospheros?

This video answers the question.

The only countries that seem to use it are the US, Russia and Israel (though Israeli war party spokesmen love to throw in the fact that Canada has used it too, probably in joint operations with the US.)

Is it moral, or even legal, to use it in densely populated areas?

Certainly not, so the US news media does its best to keep the reality that these weapons are being used this way at the level of a "rumor."

A rumor verified by video...

US, Russia and Israel are also the only countries that actively use cluster bombs.

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