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US is lobbying nations to bring Cluster Bombs back "NO" would be my Answer
Ahmad picked up a bright metal object in a park where he was celebrating his 5th birthday in Lebanon. It was an unexploded cluster bomblet, which blew up in his face, killing him slowly in front of his family.
Three years ago, public pressure pushed through a ban of these cruel bombs. But now the US is lobbying nations to quietly sign a new law that allows their use — signing the death warrant for thousands of other children. Most countries are still on the fence on how to vote. Only if we raise the alarm across the world can we shame our governments to block this deadly decision.
Positions are being drawn up now. We only have days until countries meet to send our leaders a clear message: stand up for the cluster bombs ban and keep our children safe. Click below to sign the petition — it will be delivered directly to delegates at the Geneva conference:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/cluster_bombs_ii_b/?vl
Thousands of people — many of them children — have been maimed or killed by these bombs. When they are fired, they spray small "bomblets" over a wide area, many of which fail to explode. Years later, people disturb them in their fields or school playgrounds not knowing what they are, and they explode.
In 2008, over half of the world's governments outlawed these weapons by signing the Convention on Cluster Munitions. But now, shockingly, countries like France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and the UK, who all signed the Convention, are under pressure from the US, China and Russia to run rings round the ban by signing a separate agreement that would allow them to use cluster munitions. Only Norway, Mexico, Austria and a few others are fighting this horror.
Negotiators at the Convention on Conventional Weapons meet in Geneva next week. Most governments don't really want this protocol and have not said which way they will vote, but they are under severe pressure from the US to comply and will only object if the global public persuades them.
There's no time to lose — the conference starts on Monday. Let's call on our governments to reject this deadly and cynical US campaign to legalize cluster killing. Click below to sign the petition and forward this email widely — we've done it before, let's do it again:
Cluster bombs and land mines were banned because citizens raised the alarm across the world — with victims and survivors leading the way. For their sakes and to ensure no more lives are lost, let's not allow these cruel weapons back and join together now to demand a more peaceful world.
Fourth Review Conference of the Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Weapons:
http://www.unog.ch/80256EE600585943/%28httpPages%29/43FD798E7707CE5AC12578B20032B630?OpenDocument
UK backs bid to overturn ban on cluster bombs (The Independent):
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/uk-backs-bid-to-overturn-ban-on-cluster-bombs-6259139.html
CCW – the potential to cause more humanitarian harm than good (Stop Cluster Munitions.org):
http://www.stopclustermunitions.org/ccw/
The Past and Future of the CCW (Arms Control.org):
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2011_03/LookingBack
No backsliding on cluster bombs (The Indepedent):
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-no-backsliding-on-cluster-bombs-6259009.html
Raed Mokaled and the story of Ahmad (Handicap International):
http://www.handicapinternational.be/en/raed-mokaled
Please pass this on. And do take the time to sign it.
US to stockpile cluster bombs in Australia? Despite Australia having signed the convention against cluster munition, a US base may transport and stockpile munition.
Canada: Stop Harper's cruel crime bill
The Prison Industry in the United States Costs Taxpayers Billions
ICC to Probe NATO, NTC War Crimes in Libya War
on November 11, 2011 at 6:08 am Comments Off on US is lobbying nations to bring Cluster Bombs back "NO" would be my Answer
Tags: children, cluster bombs, death warrant, farmers, france, germany, governments outlawed these weapons, Italy, killed, lobbying nations, maimed, Sweden, UK, US wants Cluster Bombs back
UN Member States Must Demand Action Against NATO War Crimes
By Shenali Waduge
Why & how is it that international laws & international bodies & international public figures paid to maintain peaceful co-existence keep silent while even endorsing repeated NATO bombings that have killed thousands of innocent men, women & children & destroyed public & private property in a show of supremacy & arrogance over the nations they have targeted? NATO war crimes extend from Yugoslavia, to Iraq, to Afghanistan & now Libya. Why are international laws being manipulated to pressurize nations politically less powerful yet bountiful in natural resources or placed in influential economic routes? This simply explains why nations are invaded in the present context & how NATO has become above the law.
Were there terrorists in power plants, electricity grids, water supply networks? Were there terrorists among shops, universities & schools, stores, hospitals, farms & markets? These have been key targets of NATO in its endless bombing campaigns which totally violate its own Charter & the UN Charter. So if Justice is quiet what is the use of the International Criminal Court at The Hague? If the ICC is a tool, a manipulative organism that twists legal principles it is time the rest of the world knew about these duplicities, ambiguities & double standards & demand that it either stops the double standards or these members vote for another alternative.
NATO in Yugoslavia
The International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia formed in 1993 was only a means to justify Western intervention in the Balkans. It has no links to the International Court of Justice based in The Hague. The Tribunal is made up of US influenced appointees so will NATO crimes in Kosovo be investigated? Was it a surprise when the Tribunal branded President Milosevic a war criminal & the US is against the establishment of any international court that can charge US military & political personnel with war crimes?
What NATO is accused of is violating the UN Charter– it is a violation to attack a sovereign nation that was innocent of any aggression. NATO's Charter Article 1 & 7 has also been violated – NATO is supposed to function as a "DEFENSIVE organization, & only committed to force if ONE or MORE of its members are attacked! NATO Treaty in fact recognizes the UN Security Council to maintain international peace & security. NATO's violation of the Hague Convention Article 22 & 23, Geneva Convention Article 19, Nuremberg Principle VI a,b,c & the US Constitution Article 1 Section 8, Clause II is for "killing & injuring a defenseless population through Yugoslavia".
The usual excuse is given as "humanitarian" intervention & that was what the Clinton administration used, incidentally Mussolini used it to invade Ethiopia to save them from slavery & Hitler used it to occupy Sudetenland to save Germans.
If the US used the Nuremberg principles to charge Germany for "starting an unprovoked war" shouldn't the US be charged on similar grounds?
On 22 September, 2000 in the District Court of Belgrade, the President of the Court handed down guilty verdicts against government leaders of NATO countries for "war crimes". These defendants were Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroeder, Robin Cook, George Robertson, William Cohen, Hubert Vedrine, Alain Richard, Gerhard Schroeder, Joschka Fischer, Rudolf Scharping, Javier Solana and Wesley Clark. The sentence was for 20 years in a Yugoslav prison & thus arrest warrants were issued upon all charging each for crimes against humanity & breaches of international law, inciting an aggressive war, war crimes against civilians, use of weapons banned under international law, violating Yugoslavia's territorial sovereignty & attempting to murder Slobodan Milosevic, President of Yugoslavia between March 24 & June 10, 1999.
Former US President Bill Clinton was sent a verdict on April 18th, 2001 sentencing him in absentia to 20 years in prison for "crimes against civilians".
The entire West is not as inhuman as we think. The Commission of Inquiry of the International Action Coalition charged in 1999 Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, William Cohen for violating the Geneva Convention, the UN Charter, the Nuremberg Principles, Helsinki Accords & the US Constitution. The 19 charges included starting a war, deliberate targeting of civilians infrastructure & violating & destroying peacemaking role of the UN. One of the main arguments was that despite the Yugoslav parliament agreeing to NATOs demand of autonomy & armed UN peacekeepers in Kosovo why it was bombed! Instead of the mass graves that was similar to the WMD in Iraq, there were perhaps just 200 dead persons – the 100,000 dead Albanians that NATO & US were promoting as grounds to attack was just a lie.
NATOs air strikes in Serbia killed over 2000 civilians & wounded more than 7500. NATO has owned up to only 460 civilian deaths. The dead included farmers, city dwellers, reporters, diplomats, people traveling in public transport, patients in hospitals, the elderly & even children. That is the human factor – what about the enormous damages to the environment as a result of these NATO bombings – poisoning water supplies, loss of electricity that affects hospitals & other emergency requirements? There is evidence that some Spanish pilots refused to drop bombs on non-military targets.
Another accusation against NATO was the bombing of all bridges across the international waterway through Eastern Europe – the River Danube. Some of these bridges were bombed while civilians were on them. All that NATO leaders said were that the incidents were "accidents". This clearly violates the Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12th August 1949 & the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol 1) – 8th June 1977.
NATO strategy was to destroy the whole infrastructure of Yugoslavia – that was why it targeted public services, rail & road networks, waterways. The objective was always to detach Kosovo.
If one were to read the book (The White Book) published by the Yugoslav Ministry of Foreign Affairs, NATO crimes in Yugoslavia, the book will reveal the damage caused by NATO bombings & lists 400 civilian deaths & over 40 incidents involving civilian fatalities.
If NATOs actions were illegal under its own treaty, in particular since aggressive military action was taken without UN mandate the killings that ensued were war crimes.
What is clear is that the US & UK Governments deliberately waged war against Yugoslavia by building a propaganda campaign that would be internationally welcomed & accepted by their countrymen.
On 5th January 2000, Yugoslav Government stepped up pressure to indict NATO country leaders – US President Bill Clinton & UK Prime Minister Tony Blair for crimes against humanity in Yugoslavia in 1999. This followed a submission for instigating proceeds before the International Court of Justice in April 29, 1999 & ICC setting a deadline for legal action on 30th June 1999 & Yugoslavia meeting that deadline on 5th January 2000. "Yugoslavia demands that the Court declare these countries responsible for the violation of major international obligations, which ban the implementation of force against countries, interference into their internal affairs or the violation of their sovereignty, as well as other international obligations. The indictment also included the demand for confirming the responsibility of these countries for their failure to prevent the genocide against the Serb people and other non-Albanians in Kosovo and Metohija, in which way they violated the obligations stemming from U.N. Security Council Resolution 1244 and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide Crimes . . . Yugoslavia is also demanding that the Court instruct all countries, which are being sued to pay compensation for all the damages inflicted".
NATO war crimes in Iraq
The Geneva Conventions are clear "Civilians shall not be the object of attack." According to the UN Security Council resolution, military forces were tasked with expelling Iraqi forces that invaded Kuwait. That task involved 88,000 tons of bombs that killed civilians & killed more civilians through the destruction of power grids, food, water treatment, sewage systems. US soldiers used napalm to incinerate entrenched Iraqi soldiers. US soldiers dropped fuel-air explosives, cluster bombs that use razor-sharp fragments to shred people. Depleted uranium were used to penetrate tanks causing long term health hazards, the economic embargoes have killed as many as 1million Iraqis.
Why did the US & its allies deliberately destroy Iraq's water supply & not repair it? Why did these western nations repeatedly bomb infrastructures for flood control, municipal & industrial water storage, communication towers, irrigation & hydroelectric power? (8 multi purpose dams, 7 major pumping stations, 31 municipal water & sewage facilities were destroyed). These have nothing to do with Saddam or his supporters – these are services needed for the people of Iraq.
They were bombed to create – waterborne diseases which have killed thousands of Iraqi civilians & the bombs & weapons used have caused radiation poisoning as a result of depleted uranium shells.
Article 54 of the Geneva Convention states "it is prohibited to attack, destroy or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population" – including foodstuff, livestock & drinking water supplies & irrigation works".
Why were these acts not treated as war crimes under the Geneva Convention & does this not constitute genocide by US & allies?
NATO war crimes in Afghanistan
If NATO has committed war crimes in Iraq & Yugoslavia, should we be surprised to read of NATO war crimes in Afghanistan? Indiscriminate bombings killing unarmed civilians have only been answered with an "apology" by NATO. The presence of US & NATO troops in Afghanistan was similar to that which took place in Yugoslavia – without any proof a country has been taken over. Indiscriminate bombings mean rebuilding projects being handed over to profit-driven private corporations. The irony is that the Afghan government are compromising the welfare of its own citizens for its own financial benefits. This has caused a rise in Pashtun nationalism & indirect support for the Taliban. Thus it has been easy to pass blame for NATO killings on the Taliban while civilian deaths keep piling, infrastructure continues to be bombed & anarchy prevails throughout Afghanistan.
NATO in Libya
NATO's Libya operation followed the UNSC Resolution which NATO has violated seen through its presence on ground, bombing of civilian structures. Greatest violation is by NATO taking sides which is illegal, illegal too is the murder or attempt to murder government officials with no formal declaration of war. NATO is also using cluster bombs & depleted uranium which is also illegal. NATOs violations in Libya are many & what we would like to know is why is the ICC silent?
In the case of Libya, the ICC has no jurisdiction for Libya never ratified the Rome Treaty nor has the US. However, under international laws a Head of State has immunity. So if ICC does not question the US & its crimes against humanity why should ICC question Libya when the UN Security Council cannot refer to the ICC according to its Statute? ICC has been considering action against Georgia since 2008, against Guinea since 2009 & against Colombia since 2006 but the ICC took just 3 days to find Libya guilty.
The NATO countries participating in air strikes in Libya include France, UK, US, Canada, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands & Italy. What excuse does NATO have for bombing a Downs Syndrome School, the University of Tripoli, the man-made waterway irrigation system which supplies most Libyans with drinking water, bombing a hospital killing over 50 many of whom were children, bombing villages killing civilian population – is this not genocide & can the ICC continue to watch doing nothing?
The sinister campaign to take over Libya was by first projecting to Gaddafi that the US "deeply valued the relationship between the United States & Libya" (2009) This was because British Petroleum, Exxon Mobil, Halliburton, Chevron, Conoco, Marathon Oil & industrial giants like Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Dow Chemical & Fluor signed investments & sales deals with Libya. The US State Dept awarded a $1.5m grant to train Libyan civilian & government security forces in 2009. Many of these "trainees" are now leading the NATO-backed "rebel forces".
Thus, the pretence of being a "friend" to Gaddafi by the US since 2009 was to get Gaddafi to agree to allow foreign presence in Libya.
For months now NATO has been pounding Libya. Over 30,000 air & missile assaults on mostly civilian infrastructure was expected so too was the "rebel uprising" for they had been already trained to rise against Gaddafi. NATO also bombed Libyan airports, ships, energy depots, ports & highways, warehouses, hospitals, waterplants & civilian homes. NATO was able to garner diplomatic support inclusive of the Arab League, NATO took services of hired mercenaries in Qatar. Libyan assets were frozen amounting billions of dollars. Economic sanctions were imposed by NATO cutting off Libya's income from oil sales.
International media also controlled by western imperialists were relaying images that portrayed rebels waving rifles & shouting against Gaddafi. These rebels entered towns that had been devastated by NATO air attacks! What these rebels did was to rob homes, banks & destroy public institutions on the instructions of NATO. Going against Gaddafi does not equate to ruining infrastructure & destroying property that is used by one's own people!
NATO wanted Libya to be destroyed. Like NATO destroyed Yugoslavia & Iraq. NATO wanted to ensure Libya had to be "reconstructed" because all these contracts would eventually go to profit-making western companies!
Incidentally, Libya is a country that had boasted the highest per capita income & standard of living in Africa.
What took place in Libya is a message from the imperialists for other nations in North Africa, Asia & Latin America. US-NATO are already engaged in colonial wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen & Somalia. What about the fall of Mubarak of Egypt & Ben Ali in Tunisia while uprisings in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Morocco, Algeria were all associated with movements demanding end to EU-US & Israeli domination of the region & would have caught their intelligence by surprise.
NATO provided the money to silence the "people's march to democracy" & the situation in Egypt is far worse than during Mubaraks reign! In Bahrain the West called for "reform" while continuing to arm the Bahraini royal family as seen in the NATO backed Saudi invasion of Bahrain to support the royal dictatorship. In Yemen, the West continued to support the Ali Saleh regime. Nevertheless, NATO is apparently providing support to Islamic fundamentalists in a move to overthrow Bashar Al-Assad.
What did Libya do to anger the West? Did the West not like its pursuance of pro-African agenda which had funded an independent regional bank & communications system designed to bypass IMF & World Bank control?
What has ensued is that like in Iraq & Afghanistan there is likely to be a dominating US-NATO present that is looking towards a military offensive in Iran & Syria. Sub-Saharan Africa may like to remember Gaddafi's generous aid, grants & loans that helped these nations from IMF, World Bank. Who will remember Gaddafi's development programs, construction projects that offered many jobs to sub-Saharan African immigrant workers. Despite all these maneuvers, China is still bracing ahead over its western counterparts.
July 22, 2011 is the date when NATO hit the Libyan water supply pipeline. Days later NATO hit the pipeline factory producing pipes to repair it. Both incidents could not have been accidents. NATO went on to target civilian water supply network that supplied water to 70% of Libyan population. Nevertheless, the truth will emerge just like Libya is now revealing how it funded French President Sarkozy's election campaign & the numerous secret meetings Tony Blair held with Gaddafi & there must surely be more in the Pandora's box which is why the West is in a haste to bump of Gaddafi as they did to Osama & Saddam – all previous friends of the West.
It is certainly time that UN member states stood up against aggression by Western neo-imperialism. Member states must demand a probe into all the atrocities by NATO & demand that these nations steering NATO be charged with war crimes. Russia & China need to champion this cause.
With only 28 nations making up the NATO alliance, the UN has 53 African member nations & 48 Middle-East & Asian nations & 12 nations in South America. It is opportune for these non-NATO members to make a voice within the UN & demand that NATO be investigated for all of its war crimes & be charged for every war crime committed. Source
A Dossier on Civilian Victims of United States' Aerial Bombing of Afghanistan
Massacre of Gaza and Lebanon
Now they want to go to war with Iran based on fabricated evidence.
It is time for the world to say no to more War.
Don't believe the spoon fed garbage being fed to you by the US media. It is all a lie, just like all the other lies they have told you.
The US government and NATO Leaders will lie. They have been lieing to you all a long.
So how gullible are you?
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Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, asking the UN Palestinian 'freedom'
Cost of war to Libyans about $200 Billion
Over 800 Bodies Dumped in Libyan Cemetary by Rebels
The International Hearings into the Events of September 11 2001
on October 14, 2011 at 1:22 am Comments Off on UN Member States Must Demand Action Against NATO War Crimes
Tags: Afghanistan, Belgium, canada, children, city dwellers, civilian deaths, cluster bombs, denmark, Depleted Uranium, diplomats, du, electricity grids, farmers, farms, france, Geneva Convention, hospitals, ICC, Iraq, Italy, Libya, markets, nato, Netherlands, Pakistan, patients in hospitals, people traveling in public transport, poisoning water supplies, power plants, radiation, Reporters, schools, shops, stores, the elderly, UK, UN Charter, universities, US, war crimes, water supply networks, Yemen, Yugoslavia
America: Arms dealer to the stars! Who's the number one weapons broker in the world, again? Take a guess
By Mark Morford
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.
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.
Gaza (1): A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words
US Raided Afghan Hospital
on September 10, 2009 at 3:21 am Comments Off on America: Arms dealer to the stars! Who's the number one weapons broker in the world, again? Take a guess
Tags: arms dealer, capitalism, cluster bombs, du, fighter jets, fighters, Gatling guns, grenades, guns, major weaponry, radiation, sniper rifles, tanks and rocket launchers, U.S.made weapons, united states, usa, War, WMD
Information Wanted by the International Criminal Court/ UN: Falk Likens Gaza to Warsaw Ghetto
Photo courtesy of the IDF Spokesperson
In June 2007, the suspect imposed a siege on 1.5 million residents of Gaza. The siege, which is ongoing in 2009, is collective punishment according to International Law. The year and a half long siege caused severe food and fuel shortages, intermittent drinking water and electricity supply, disruption to sewage treatment plants and shortages of medicine and essential medical equipment, affecting the lives of 1.5 million people – a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and Rome Statute.
On 27 December 2008, the suspect ordered the aerial bombardment of Gazan population centers. The attacks involved hundreds of fighter jet sorties, dropping hundreds of tons of bombs on Gazan neighborhoods. At least 1,300 people – men, women and children were killed and 5,300 were injured. Schools, hospitals and UN facilities were targeted, medical crews shot at and prevented from evacuating the wounded.
On 10 December 2008, a formal complaint was submitted by Lebanese lawyers to the International Criminal Court in the Hague, Netherlands, against Ehud Barak and four other Israelis: Ehud Olmert, Matan Vilnai, Avi Dichter and Gabi Ashkenazi on the suspicion that they had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity by ordering and maintaining a siege on Gaza.
Description of the suspect: a white man, about 65 years old, lower than average height, graying hair, brown eyes, with glasses.
Photo courtesy of the New Histadrut
On 12 July 2006, the suspect ordered the aerial bombardment of villages and cities in Lebanon, targeting essential infrastructure, such as water, food, fuel and electricity supplies. The bombing also damaged hospitals, clinics and schools – all places expressly prohibited from attack under international law. As a result of the bombing, ground assault and artillery fire, more than 1,200 people were killed including hundreds of children and elderly people.
On 8th November 2006, the suspect ordered the shelling of Beit Hanoun, a neighborhood in Gaza, in response to rockets fired toward Israel. For 15 minutes, residential neighborhoods were shelled, resulting in the deaths of 19 people, including 9 children. At least 40 people were injured. Firing shells deliberately and indiscriminately into civilian areas constitutes a war crime.
In August 2006, an official complaint was filed to the High Court in Morocco on the suspicion Peretz had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. The suspect holds Moroccan citizenship. The complaint was filed by 3 Moroccan Jews, all renowned for their human rights work.
Description of the suspect: an olive-skinned man, about 60 years old, black hair, brown eyes, with a moustache.
Binyamin Ben Eliezer
At the end of the '67 war, the suspect was the head of the Sayeret Shaked IDF Unit. According to testimonies by Israeli and Egyptian soldiers, the suspect ordered the killing of 250 Egyptian or Palestinian fighters (exact nationality unclear) shortly after the war ended. Evidence indicates that the killings were carried out using helicopters flying low above the Sinai desert, hunting the retreating soldiers, some of whom were unarmed.
Further eye-witness testimonies state that the suspect personally executed prisoners of war who did not obey instructions. The killing of soldiers after hostilities have ended, and the execution of prisoners of war are all expressly prohibited under international law and are classed as war crimes.
Between March 2001 and November 2002 the suspect, acting as Minister of Defense, led a policy of extra judicial killings, collective punishment and the shelling of residential areas in the West Bank and Gaza. All of these actions are prohibited under international law and constitute war crimes and crime against humanity, and since July 2002 are prosecutable in the International Criminal Court, The Hague, Netherlands.
In March 2007 the suspect, whilst still a government minister, canceled a trip to Egypt due to fear of arrest for his activities in the '67 war.
Description of the suspect: an olive-skinned man, about 70, black hair, larger than average build.
Photo courtesy of the Government Information Office
Avi Dichter
From July 1, 2002, on the day the International Criminal Court was established, until May 2005, the suspect was head of the Shabak, the Israeli intelligence service (GSS). As head of the Shabak, the suspect ordered the tortures of detained Palestinians – an activity explicitly prohibited under the Geneva Conventions, the Rome Statute and the International Convention against Torture. Torture is a crime against humanity.
In July 2002, the suspect was part of a group, which ordered the assassination of Salah Shehadeh, the commander of the Hamas military wing. The assassination was carried out by dropping a one-ton bomb on Shehadeh's house, causing the deaths of 15 people, including 9 children, and injuring dozens more. Extra-judicial executions are war crimes under international law. The bombing of residential neighborhoods is collective punishment.
On 10 December 2008, a complaint was submitted to the International Criminal Court, The Hague, Netherlands, against the suspect and 4 other people – on the suspicion he had committed war crimes for ordering the siege of Gaza. The suspect was acting as Minister for Public Security at the time. Prior to this, in July 2008, a complaint was filed in the High Court of Spain on the suspicion he had committed a war crime for ordering the execution of Salah Shehadeh. The Spanish court has issued a warrant for the suspect's arrest.
Description of the suspect: a white man about 55 years old, taller than average height, white hair. The suspect speaks Hebrew, English and Arabic.
Photo courtesy of the Danish Embassy
Carmi Gilon
From 1995-1996, the suspect was head of the Israeli Internal Security services, also known as the Shabak (GSS). In this capacity, he ordered the torture of Palestinian detainees – an activity prohibited under international law and classed as a crime against humanity.
Torture usually included: tying a person in painful positions continuously for hours, sometimes days; tying a noxious smelling hood over the person's head, "shaking" the person; depriving the person of sleep and food; exposing him or her to freezing or high temperatures, chaining him or her to a small chair in a way designed to induce pain, playing loud music for hours, and isolating the person from the outside world, sometimes for months.
According to interviews the suspect gave to various media after the end of his service, the suspect was personally involved in about 100 cases of torture of Palestinian prisoners, some of whom were released without any trial. In those interviews, the suspect said he supported torture and even called on the Israeli government and Supreme Court to continue the policy of torture. This is forbidden.
Several human rights organizations in Israel and abroad, including Amnesty International, hold testimonies given by hundreds of Palestinians who were severely torture (out of thousand who were tortured but have not given testimonies). The tortures were carried out during the time that the suspect was head of the Shabak.
In August 2001, a complaint about the suspect's involvement in torture was made in Denmark by a group of lawyers for human rights and a group of Palestinians who had received asylum there. The complaint was rejected because the suspect had diplomatic immunity at the time since he was acting as the ambassador for Israel in Denmark.
Description of the suspect: a white man, about 60 years old, wearing glasses.
Photo courtesy of the office of the chief of staff
Dan Halutz
On 12 July 2006, the suspect, as Chief of Staff, ordered air strikes on villages and cities in Lebanon, causing destruction and killing for 34 days. This is prohibited under international law.
Following the air strikes, which destroyed infrastructure and necessities for human life, nearly 900,000 people were forced to leave their homes or remain without shelter for weeks. Despite this, the suspect continued to order his pilots to bombard Lebanon repeatedly, wiping out entire neighborhoods.
4 years earlier, in July 2002, the suspect ordered a one-ton bomb to be dropped on a house in Rafah, Gaza, causing the deaths of 15 people including 9 children, and injuring dozens more.
In July 2008, after collecting evidence, testimony and documents, a complaint was submitted to the High Court of Spain on suspicion that Halutz had committed a war crime by ordering a one-ton bomb to be dropped on a house in Gaza. The court has issued a warrant for his arrest.
Description of the suspect: an olive-skinned man about 60 years old, of average height, graying hair, wearing glasses.
Doron Almog
On 10 January 2002, as head of the Southern Command, the suspect ordered the demolition of 59 houses in Rafah, occupied Gaza, an act that is considered to be collective punishment under international law and therefore prohibited.
On 22 July 2002, the suspect was part of a group which ordered a one-ton bomb to be dropped on a house in Gaza to eliminate the Palestinian Salah Shehadeh. The explosion killed 15 people, including 9 children. Dozens of people were injured.
The demolition of homes, the expulsion of residents, the bombing of residential areas, the killing of innocent civilians as a policy of occupation are considered violations of International law and classed as war crimes.
In 2005, a British court issued a warrant to arrest the suspect, however he evaded capture. In July 2008, the High Court of Spain issued a second warrant to arrest the suspect for his part in bombing the house in Gaza. Spain has extradition treaties with other EU countries.
Description of the suspect: a white man, about 65 years old, above average height, short graying hair, blue eyes. Also goes by his previous name Doron Avrutzki. Was seen recently in a company which invests money in the Israeli weapons industry – Athlone Global Security.
Photo courtesy of the Prime Minister's Office
On 12 July 2006, the suspect ordered the bombing of cities and villages in Lebanon. The 34-day bombing of residential areas broke international law. The aerial bombing and land assault ordered by the suspect, killed approximately 1,200 people and injured about 4,400. During the attack, the suspect ordered several thousand cluster bombs to be dropped near residential areas in Lebanon, something forbidden under international conventions. In total, about a million small bombs were dropped, which led to the post war deaths of 30 people and the injury of 215, including 90 children.
In the summer of 2007, the suspect ordered the blockade of 1.5 million people in Gaza, preventing them from receiving adequate food, water and electricity supplies and medication – all explicitly prohibited under international law. In December 2008, the suspect ordered an air, land and sea attack on the residents of Gaza, causing the rapid destruction of residential areas and the deaths of 1,300 people – hundreds of them children.
On 10 December 2008, Lebanese lawyers submitted a formal complaint to the International Criminal Court, The Hague, Netherlands, against the suspect and others, on suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his part in the siege of Gaza. In March 2009, the suspect will lose his diplomatic immunity.
Description of the suspect: a white man, about 60 years old, above average height, balding, with blue eyes and a taste for cigars.
Photo courtesy of the IAF Spokesperson
Eliezer Shkedy
The facts: On 12th July 2006, the suspect was head of the Israeli Air Force and therefore responsible for thousands of fighter jet sorties, which bombed residential areas in Lebanon. The bombings, using hundreds of tons of explosives, damaged more than 100,000 homes. The Air Force, under his command, deliberately targeted water sources and electrical power stations, and wrecked schools, hospitals and clinics. The air strikes killed hundreds of people and caused hundreds of thousands to flee their homes, becoming refugees without shelter.
The deliberate bombing of residential neighborhoods, as well as the deliberate destruction of houses, water and electricity plants, and essential civilian infrastructure is strictly prohibited under international law. Whoever violates these laws is considered to be a war criminal and guilty of crimes against humanity.
Collective punishment and extra judicial executions are all forbidden under the Fourth Geneva Convention and violations can be heard before the International Criminal Court, The Hague, Netherlands.
Description of the suspect: a white man, about 50 years old, above average height, ginger hair, wearing glasses.
Gabi Ashkenazi
On 27th December 2008, the suspect, as Chief of Staff, ordered the Israeli army to attack densely populated areas in the Gaza Strip. For three weeks, 1,500 tons of bombs were dropped from the air on residential neighborhoods in Gaza and tens of thousands of artillery shells were fired from tanks. For 3 weeks, the army damaged and destroyed houses, schools, hospitals, infrastructure, water and electrical plants, killed more than 1,300 people, hundreds of them children, and injured about 5,300 people. Thousands of houses were bombed or shelled and 50,000 residents were made homeless, without shelter.
Prior to this, the suspect was part of a group, which implemented a siege on 1.5 million people in the Gaza Strip, denying them a regular supply of food, water, medicine, fuel and electricity for 18 months.
According to international law, it is absolutely prohibited to bomb residential areas in a way that interrupts the lives of civilians; to carry out executions without trial, to collectively punish; to destroy or damage hospitals, schools and homes. The prohibitions against collective punishment were enshrined in the Geneva Conventions after the behavior of the Nazis in Europe during World War II when they destroyed entire villages to punish residents for sheltering the resistance. 194 countries agree with the prohibitions of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
In December 2008, a complaint was filed in the Hague against the suspect, on suspicion that he had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity for ordering the siege of Gaza.
Description of the suspect: male, about 55 years old, black hair, olive skin above average height. The suspect is armed and could be dangerous.
Giora Eiland
In July 2008, a claim was filed against the suspect in the High Court in Spain on suspicion that he was involved in war crimes and crimes against humanity for ordering a one ton bomb to be dropped on a house in Gaza, which caused the deaths of 15 people including 9 children (July 2002). Bombing residential areas is collective punishment and constitutes a war crime. Extra judicial executions are prohibited under international law and since July 2002 are prosecutable in the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands.
Description of the suspect: a white man, 55 years of age, of average height, white hair.
Matan Vilnai
In July 2007, the suspect along with his accomplices ordered a siege on 1.5 million people in Gaza. The siege caused severe deprivation by preventing the regular supply of food, water, gas, electricity, and medication to the residents living there. The siege lasted for 18 months, is still ongoing, and included a naval, air and land blockade.
In February 2008, the suspect said on Israeli army radio "the more the Qassam rocket fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, (the Palestinians) will bring upon themselves a holocaust."
Indeed on 27th December 2008, the suspect as Deputy Defense Minister, was part of a cabinet decision which ordered air, naval and ground attacks on densely populated areas in Gaza – attacks that lasted for about 3 weeks. As a result of the attacks, entire buildings collapsed on residents and infants were found starving next to their dead parents. Wounded people were buried under rubble for many days because IDF soldiers prevented medics from reaching them. (According to reports by the Red Cross.)
Some 1,300 people were killed, hundreds of them children. 5,300 were wounded. The air force bombs and tank shells hit hospitals, clinics, schools, infrastructure, UN buildings, electricity and water sources – leaving hundreds of thousands without the necessities for life.
In December 2008, a lawsuit was filed against the suspect in the International Criminal Court, The Hague on suspicion that the siege of Gaza breached international law and was thus a war crime and crime against humanity.
Description of the suspect: a white man, about 65 years old, shaven head, above average height.
Photo courtesy of the Israeli Embassy
Moshe Bogie Yaalon
On 18th April 1996, IDF troops fired 38 artillery shells measuring 155 mm at the UN compound in the village of Qana, Lebanon where 800 refugees were sheltering. They had fled their homes due to Operation Grapes of Wrath. The IDF attack was in response to Hezbollah fighters launching rockets at IDF forces from a place a few hundred meters from the compound. The IDF shelling killed 106 people and left dozens of survivors injured. During this time, the suspect was head of Israeli army intelligence, and together with others, was responsible for the shelling. Firing at a compound where civilians are sheltering from fighting is considered a war crime under international law.
On 22 July 2002, as head of the Israeli army, the suspect ordered a one-ton bomb to be dropped on a house in Rafah, Gaza, in order to assassinate Salah Shehadeh. The bomb caused the deaths of 15 people including 9 children, and injured dozens more. Bombing neighborhoods where civilians live is forbidden under international law and is considered to be a war crime.
In November 2005, relatives of those killed in Kafr Qana filed a civil law suit against the suspect in a Washington DC court. The suspect was handed a subpoena whilst he was visiting Washington, but he refused to take it and left quickly after.
In December 2006, while the suspect was making a private visit to New Zealand, a lawsuit was submitted to a New Zealand court, regarding the suspect's part in the assassination of Shehadeh. An Aukland district judge ordered his arrest. Pressure was however placed on the Attorney General by the Ministry of Justice to cancel the warrant.
In July 2008, the suspect's name was included in a list submitted to a Spanish court for investigations into war crimes. The court has issued a warrant for his arrest. Spain has an extradition agreement with all the countries in the European Union.
Description of the suspect: a white man, about 60, large build, above average height, brown hair, wearing glasses.
Photo courtesy of the Israeli Government Spokesperson
Shaul Mofaz
Between, October 2000 and June 2002 the suspect ordered a serious of actions against the Palestinian people, which included assassinations, torture, house demolitions and the deportation of civilians. In early 2001, the suspect, as Chief of Staff ordered the Israeli army to kill 70 armed Palestinians per day.
On 29th March 2002 and for 6 weeks after, the suspect was in charge of a military operation called "Operation Defensive Shield" in which, according to the Red Crescent, the army killed 216 Palestinians and wounded 416. The operation involved the widespread destruction of homes, the denial of medical treatment for the wounded, especially in two Palestinian cities, Jenin and Nablus. These actions are classifiable as war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The suspect continued these activities even after being appointed Israeli Defense Minister up to 2006. In 2002, a British lawyer presented a file to the UK Director of Public Prosecutions asking for the suspect to be investigated for war crimes such as targeted assassinations and the demolition of Palestinian homes. The suspect left the UK quickly upon hearing a file had been presented.
Description of the suspect: an olive-skinned man, about 60 years old, of below average height, clean-shaven. The suspect is armed and may be dangerous.
Photo courtesy of the Israeli Foreign Office
Tzipi Livni
On the 12th of July 2006, the suspect along with her accomplices ordered the aerial bombardment and artillery assault on residential areas in Lebanon. For 34 days she authorized troops to make 12,000 aerial sorties, to fire 100,000 artillery shells, damaging 350 schools and destroying 15,000 houses in Lebanon. 130,000 homes were partially damaged. The attacks destroyed water sources, hospitals, power stations and other infrastructure essential to life. 900,000 people were forced to leave their homes and remain without shelter for many days. Some 1,200 people were killed, and 4,400 were wounded: approximately 30% of the dead, about 360, were children under the age of 13.
On 27th December 2008, the suspect and her accomplices ordered an aerial, ground and naval attack on densely populated areas in the Gaza Strip. The attacks again damaged houses, hospitals, schools and infrastructure, and killed more than 1,300 people, including hundreds of children. 20,000 houses were partially destroyed and 50,000 people were made homeless as a result of the suspects orders.
Attacking innocent people, shooting indiscriminately into residential areas, causing injuries, destroying essential infrastructure such as water, electrical plants and hospitals are all prohibited under International law and are war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Description of the suspect: a white woman, 50 years old, above average height, blonde hair.
Anyone who has information about the suspects when he is outside of the Israeli borders, report immediately to:
The Prosecutor
POBox 19519
2500 Hague
Fax +31 70 515 8 555
otp.informationdesk@icc-cpi.int
* All information will be treated in confidence
Falk Likens Gaza to Warsaw Ghetto
There is more than enough evidence that Israel committed war crimes in its three week-long offensive into Gaza, says a UN investigator.
UN special rapporteur Richard Falk called for an independent inquiry into Israel's violation of international humanitarian law.
Falk said Israel's actions against the besieged Gazans are reminiscent of "the worst kind of international memories of the Warsaw Ghetto" which included the starvation and murder of Polish Jews by Nazi Germany in World War Two.
"There could have been temporary provision at least made for children, disabled, sick civilians to leave, even if where they left to was southern Israel," said the Jewish American academic on Thursday.
Falk, who was denied entry to Israel in December, said Gazans may have been mentally scarred for life because Israel made no effort to allow civilians to escape.
Israeli officials moved closer to being prosecuted for war crimes after Norwegian medics in Gaza found traces of depleted uranium on Gaza victims, suggesting that Israel used the illegal weapons in its war on the impoverished territory, which houses some 1.5 million Palestinians.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), there is a "high risk of developing cancer from exposure to radiation emitted by … depleted uranium weapons. This risk is assumed to be proportional to the dose received."
The Geneva Convention has classified depleted uranium ammunitions as 'illegal weapons of mass destruction' due to their high radioactivity and toxicity.
Israel faces potential war crimes charges over its excessive use of other controversial weapons on the densely-populated coastal strip.
Human rights group Amnesty International has also touched on the issue, saying that Tel Aviv used white phosphorus munitions "indiscriminately and illegally" in overcrowded areas of Gaza.
"The repeated use [of White Phosphorus] in this manner, despite evidence of its indiscriminate effects and its toll on civilians, is a war crime," said Donatella Rovera of the Amnesty International.
White phosphorus is a high-incendiary substance that bursts into all-consuming flames that cannot be extinguished with water, burning flesh to the bone and often leading to death.
Israel launched its Operation Cast Lead on December 27 to allegedly defend its territories from Hamas rockets, which were fired in retaliation for Israel's violation of a ceasefire that had then been in place.
Falk, dismissed Israel's argument that the assault was for self-defense, saying that "the UN charter, and international law, does not give Israel the legal foundation for claiming self-defense."
I have information on White Phosphorus, DU and Cluster Bombs in the Archives. There is also evidence of their use in the Photos if you know what to look for. They did use illegal weapons on the people of Gaza and they did starve them using the blockade, among other horrendous crimes.
War Crimes have no Statute of Limitation.
Israel warns soldiers of prosecution abroad for Gaza 'war crimes'/Israels Latin America "Trail of Terror"
on January 26, 2009 at 2:51 am Comments Off on Information Wanted by the International Criminal Court/ UN: Falk Likens Gaza to Warsaw Ghetto
Tags: cancer, cluster bombs, Depleted Uranium, Gaza, Geneva Convention, ICC, illegal weapons, information, International Criminal Court, Israel, Israel's violations, Lebanon, radiation, Richard Falk, UN inspector, United Nations, war crimes, Warsaw Ghetto, white phosphorus, witness impact statements, witnesses
Unusually Large U.S. Weapons Shipment to Israel: Are the US and Israel Planning a Broader Middle East War?
A very large delivery of US weaponry to Israel consisting of "3,000 tons" of "ammunition" is scheduled to sail to Israel. The size and nature of the shipments are described as "unusual":
"Shipping 3,000-odd tons of ammunition in one go is a lot," one broker said, on condition of anonymity.
"This (kind of request) is pretty rare and we haven't seen much of it quoted in the market over the years," he added.
"Shipping brokers in London who have specialized in moving arms for the British and U.S. military in the past said such ship charters to Israel were rare. (Reuters, Jan 10, 2009)
The Pentagon has entrusted a Greek merchant shipping company to deliver the weapons to Israel:
"The U.S. is seeking to hire a merchant ship to deliver hundreds of tons of arms to Israel from Greece later this month, tender documents seen by Reuters show.
The U.S. Navy's Military Sealift Command (MSC) said the ship was to carry 325 standard 20-foot containers of what is listed as "ammunition" on two separate journeys from the Greek port of Astakos to the Israeli port of Ashdod in mid-to-late January.
A "hazardous material" designation on the manifest mentions explosive substances and detonators, but no other details were given.(Ibid)
It is worth noting that a similar unusually large shipment of US ordinance to Israel was scheduled in early December:
"Tender documents indicate that the German ship hired by the US in early December also carried a massive cargo of weapons that weighed over 2.6 million kg [2600 tons] and filled up to 989 standard 20-foot containers to Ashdod from North Carolina." (Press TV, 10 Jan 2009)
Are These Large Shipments of Ordinance Connected to the Invasion of Gaza?
The request by the Pentagon to transport ordinance in a commercial vessel, according to Reuters, was made on December 31, 4 days after the commencement of the aerial bombings of Gaza by F16 Fighter jets.
Analysts have hastily concluded, without evidence, that the 2 shipments of "ammunition" were intended to supply Israel's armed forces in support of its military invasion of Gaza.
"A senior military analyst in London who declined to be named said that, because of the timing, the shipments could be "irregular" and linked to the Gaza offensive." (Reuters, January 10, 2009)
These reports are mistaken. Delivery of ordinance always precedes the onslaught of a military operation. The ordinance required under "Operation Cast Lead" was decided upon in June 2008. Further to Tel Aviv's request under the US military aid program to Israel, the U.S. Congress approved in September 2008 the transfer of 1,000 bunker-buster high precision GPS-guided Small Diameter Guided Bomb Units 39 (GBU-39).
The GBU 39 smart bombs produced by Boeing were delivered to Israel in November. They were used in the initial air raids on Gaza:
"…The Israel Air Force has used the new lightweight GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb acquired from the USA, in the recent attacks in Gaza. The [Jerusalem] Post mentioned the new weapons ordered last September having arrived last month [November], and already put to action with the IAF fighters. These weapons could have been deployed by the Boeing/IAF F-15Is, since sofar SDB is cleared for use only with this type of aircraft.
It is highly unlikely that the bulk of the weaponry included in these two large shipments, scheduled to arrive in Israel in late January, is intended to be used in Israel's military operation in Gaza. The GBU-39 is lightweight (130 kg). The entire shipment of GBU 39s (1000 units) would be of the order of a modest 130 tons. In other words, the specifications of the GBU 39 do not match the description of the "unusually large" and "heavy" shipment of ordinance.
GBU-39
Escalation Scenario
The shipment ordered on December 31 is of the order of 3000 tons, an unusually large and heavy cargo of "ammunition" pointing to the transfer of heavy weaponry to Israel.
According to US military statements, the ordinance is for stockpiling, to be used "at short notice" in the eventuality of a conflict:
"This previously scheduled shipment is routine and not in support of the current situation in Gaza. …The U.S. military pre-positions stockpiles in some countries in case it needs supplies at short notice." (Reuters, 10 Jan 2009, emphasis added)
Whatever the nature of these large weapons shipments, they are intended for use in a future military operation in the Middle East.
Since the launching of the Theater Iran Near Term Operation Operation (TIRANNT) in May 2003, an escalation scenario involving military action directed against Iran and Syria has been envisaged. TIRANNT was followed by a series of military plans pertaining to Iran. Numerous official statements and US military documents have pointed to an expanded Middle East war.
What these shipments suggest is that the "escalation scenario" not only prevails, but has reached a more active stage in the process of US-Israeli military planning.
Whether these weapons will be used or not is not known. The central question, in this regard, is whether the Gaza invasion is part of a broader military adventure directed against Lebanon, Syria and Iran, in which heavier weaponry including US made bunker buster bombs will be used.
History of US Weapons Shipments to Israel
The stockpiling of US made bunker buster bombs by Israel has been ongoing since 2005:
"The United States will sell Israel nearly 5,000 smart bombs in one of the largest weapons deals between the allies in years.
Among the bombs the [Israeli] air force will get are 500 one-ton bunker busters that can penetrate two-meter-thick cement walls; 2,500 regular one-ton bombs; 1,000 half-ton bombs; and 500 quarter-ton bombs. The bombs Israel is acquiring include airborne versions, guidance units, training bombs and detonators. They are guided by an existing Israeli satellite used by the military.
The sale will augment existing Israeli supplies of smart bombs. The Pentagon told Congress that the bombs are meant to maintain Israel's qualitative advantage [against Iran], and advance U.S. strategic and tactical interests." (Jewish Virtual Library: September 21-22, 2004, Haaretz / Jerusalem Post.)
The actual shipments of US made bunker buster bombs started in 2005. The US approved in April 2005, the delivery of:
some 5,000 "smart air launched weapons" including some 500 BLU 109 'bunker-buster bombs. The (uranium coated) munitions are said to be more than 'adequate to address the full range of Iranian targets, with the possible exception of the buried facility at Natanz, which may require the [more powerful] BLU-113 bunker buster [a variant of the GBU 28]'" (See Michel Chossudovsky, Planned US-Israeli Nuclear Attack on Iran, Global Research, May 1, 2005)
The BLU-109 is smaller than the GBU 28. "It is a 2,000lbs warhead that can be used in combination with a GPS guidance kit […], and can penetrate up to 15 feet of fortified concrete." (See F16.net)
In 2006 at the height of the Lebanon War in August 2006, a major shipment of the 2.2 ton GBU 28 bombs, according to the New York Times, was dispatched to Israel.
The GBU 28 is produced by Raytheon. It was used against Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War, has the the capability of penetrating some 20 feet of reinforced concrete. (Haaretz, 9 Nov 2008) In contrast to the GBU 39 smart bombs (130 kg) used against Gaza, each GBU-28 weighs a hefty 2.2 tons.
"The Guided Bomb Unit-28 (GBU-28) is a special weapon developed for penetrating hardened Iraqi command centers located deep underground. The GBU-28 is a 5,000-pound laser-guided conventional munition that uses a 4,400-pound penetrating warhead." Federation of American Scientists,
(For a visual depiction see "Bob Sherman, How the GBU-28 works", USA Today on-line.).
Video of GBU 28 on UTube
The recent unusually large shipments of weaponry to Israel are part of the 2004 agreement between Washington and Tel Aviv, financed by US military aid to Israel.
As mentioned above, there is a history of delivery of bunker buster bombs (including the GBU 28), going back to 2005. While the nature and composition of these recent weapons shipments to Israel are not known, one suspects that they include the heavier version of the bunker buster bombs including the GBU-28.
In this regard, it is worth noting that last Summer, Israel requested the Pentagon to deliver GBU-28 bunker buster bombs. The stated purpose was to use them in the eventuality of a military operation directed against Iran.
In September 2008, according to US and Israeli press reports quoting Pentagon officials, Tel Aviv's request was turned down. According to the reports, Washington categorically refused to deliver the shipment of GBU 28 bunker buster bombs, to be used to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. "Instead" Washington accepted to deliver the lightweight GBU-39 for use against Gaza.
The U.S. had "rejected an Israeli request for military equipment and support that would improve Israel's ability to attack Iran's nuclear facilities."
The Americans viewed [Israel's] request, which was transmitted (and rejected) at the highest level, as a sign that Israel is in the advanced stages of preparations to attack Iran. They therefore warned Israel against attacking, saying such a strike would undermine American interests. They also demanded that Israel give them prior notice if it nevertheless decided to strike Iran. In early September, Haaretz reported that the request had included GBU-28 "bunker-buster" bombs.
In mid-September, the U.S. agreed instead to sell Israel 1000 GBU-39 "bunker buster" bombs which Israeli military experts said "could provide a powerful new weapon" in Gaza, AP reported.
So: when Israel requested weapons that the U.S. expected would be used for bombing Iran, the U.S. said no, and added explicitly that it did not want to see an Israeli attack on Iran. And there was no Israeli attack on Iran. (Defense Update.com, December 2008)
The official statements and press reports are bogus. Israel and the US have always acted in close coordination. Washington does not "demand that Israel give them prior notice" of a military operation:
The report in Haaretz suggests that the Bush Administration was adamant and did not want the Israelis to attack Iran. In fact, the reports suggested that the US would shoot down Israeli planes, if they tried to attack Iran:
"Air-space authorization: An attack on Iran would apparently require passage through Iraqi air space. For this to occur, an air corridor would be needed that Israeli fighter jets could cross without being targeted by American planes or anti-aircraft missiles. The Americans also turned down this request. According to one account, to avoid the issue, the Americans told the Israelis to ask Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for permission, along the lines of "If you want, coordinate with him." (Haaretz Nov 9, 2008)
This Israeli report is misleading. Israel is America's ally. Military operations are closely coordinated. Israel does not act without Washington's approval and the US does not shoot down the planes of its closest ally.
The Nature and Composition of the Recent US Weapons Shipments to Israel
These unusually large shipments of ordinance would normally require Congressional approval. To our knowledge, there is no public record of approval of the unusually large shipments of heavy "ammunition" to Israel.
The nature and composition of the shipments are not known. Was Israel's request for the delivery of the 2.2 ton GBU 28 accepted by Washington, bypassing the US Congress? Are GBU 28 bombs, each of which weighs 2.2 tons part of the 3000 ton shipments to Israel. Are tactical bunker buster mini-nuclear bombs included in Israel's arsenal? These are questions to be raised in the US Congress.
The two shipments of "ammunition" are slated to arrive in Israel, respectively no later than the 25th and 31st of January.
Secretary Robert Gates who remains at the helm of the Department of Defense ensures continuity in the military agenda.
Preparing for a Confrontation with Iran: Beefing Up Israel's Missile Defense System
In early January, the Pentagon dispatched some 100 military personnel to Israel from US European Command (EUCOM) to assist Israel in setting up a new sophisticated X-band early warning radar system. This project is part of the military aid package to Israel approved by the Pentagon in September 2008:
"The Israeli government requested the system to help defend against a potential missile attack from Iran. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates signed off on the deployment order in mid-September. ….
Once fully operational, the system will be capable of tracking and identifying small objects at long distance and at very high altitude, including space, according to U.S. Missile Defense Agency officials. It also will integrate Israel's missile defenses with the U.S. global missile detection network.
"This will enable the Israelis to track medium- and long-range ballistic missiles multiple times better than their current radar allows them to," Morrell said. "It will … more than double the range of Israel's missile defense radars and increase its available engagement time."
This, he said, will greatly enhance Israel's defensive capabilities. "There is a growing ballistic missile threat in the region, particularly from Iran," Morrell said. "And no one in the region should feel more nervous about that threat than the Israelis. And they clearly do, and they have asked for our assistance." (Defense Talk.com, January 6, 2009, emphasis added.)
The new X-band radar system 'permits an intercept soon after launch over enemy instead of friendly territory" (Sen. Joseph Azzolina, Protecting Israel from Iran's missiles, Bayshore News, December 26, 2008).
The X-band radar would "integrate Israel's missile defenses with the U.S. global missile detection network, which includes satellites, Aegis ships on the Mediterranean, Persian Gulf and Red Sea, and land-based Patriot radars and interceptors." (Ibid)
What this means is that Washington calls the shots. The US rather than Israel would control the Air Defense system: "This is and will remain a U.S. radar system,' Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said. 'So this is not something we are giving or selling to the Israelis and it is something that will likely require U.S. personnel on-site to operate.'" (Quoted in Israel National News, January 9, 2009, emphasis added).
In other words, the US military controls Israel's Air Defense system, which is integrated into the US global missile defense system. Under these circumstances, Israel cannot launch a war against Iran without the consent of the US High Command.
The large shipments of US ordinance, slated to arrive in Israel after the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States and Commander in Chief are part of the broader program of US-Israeli military cooperation in relation to Iran.
The reinforcement of Israel's missile defenses combined with the large shipments of US weapons are part of an escalation scenario, which could lead the World under an Obama Administration into a broader Middle East war.
New Cold War?
There has been a military build on both sides. Iran has responded to the Israeli-US initiative, by beefing up it own missile defense system with the support of Russia. According to reports (December 21), Moscow and Tehran have been holding talks on the supply by Russia of "medium-range air defense systems – specifically, S-300 surface-to-air missile systems" (Asian Times, January 9, 2009)
I did post a story on this earlier:
US delivering more "Weapons of Mass Destruction" to Israel
So "why" does Israel need so many Weapons of Mass Destruction?
"Who" is paying for them? Their bank records should be examined to see who and how money is being "funneled" into the country to pay for weapons. Said money should be also stopped. Funding a "war criminal" is the same as funding a terrorist state, and is a crime. Check the "Patriot Act" I do believe it is all probably in there. Anyone could be funneling money into Israel for war toys. No different then Saddam in Iraq or any other terrorists/rogue state.
Banks could also be funding Israel as well, not to hard to launder money so it can be funneled into a terrorist/rogue state and if the US can go after Lloyds in England one could, go after money headed to Israel.
Banks like the one George Bushes grand-daddy worked for, gave money to Hitler and so did many other banks in the US. This of course was considered a crime then and is still a crime today.
Banks could fund terrorism and launder money just as well, if not better then anyone else. Maybe the banks are stealing "tax dollars" for bailouts to fund wars, for all we know.
Seems they don't want to tell anyone, where the money from the bailouts, is going or to who.
Could they be doing what Georges grand-daddy did?
Could they be helping terrorists/rogue states. Sure they could. They did it before they may be doing it now. Where there is one, there is always more and do we trust banks these days? Especially the ones who so desperately needed bailout money. And now refuse to tell us where the money went and seems the Bank of America, is again asking for more Bailout money? Banks make money from war. Go figure.
Seems no one is really checking and those who have tryed got no answers. Maybe they are being naughty.
When there is no transparency, they could be doing anything. Banks and War have always gone hand in hand however.
Just a thought to ponder. Of course ? I was pondering that thought even before the Financial Crisis hit.
Israel has been accused of "War Crimes".
Like any criminal that murders, you would not give them weapons until the trial is over and only if they were found not guilty .
In light of these circumstances "NO weapons of this magnitude.", should be allowed into Israel. Nor should they be given money to purchase or produce weapons.
Any more then you would give it to Saddam.
Who was of course accused of war crimes. Triad and convicted.
What is good for one leader, is good for all leaders. Equality you know. We all must obey the laws of the world and country. Justice is there to serve all.
There is really no difference, a war crime, is a war crime, no matter who does it.
If Sadddam did to those in" GAZA" that Israel just did, who would be the first to jump on the "sanction him" , HE is a terrorist, war criminal, charge him, bandwagon? Saddam was also an Ally of the US, received "weapons of mass destruction" from the US and! and! and!
He only did what Israel leaders are doing. I see no difference in their crimes against humanity, war crimes etc. The US also wanted Saddam to attack Iran. Talk about Dejavue.
Did Israel using illegal weapons in its offensive on Gaza?
The earth shaking under your feet, clouds of choking smoke, explosions like a fireworks display, bombs bursting into all-consuming flames that cannot be extinguished with water, mushroom clouds of pinkish-red smoke, suffocating gas, harsh burns on the skin, extraordinary maimed live and dead bodies.
All of this is being caused by the bombs Israel is dropping on the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, according to reports and testimonies from there. Since the first day of the Israeli aerial attack, people have been giving exact descriptions of the side effects of the bombing, and claiming that Israel is using weapons and ammunition that they have not seen during the past eight years.
Furthermore, the kinds of grave injuries doctors at hospitals in the Strip have reported are providing yet another explanation for the overwhelming dread inhabitants are experiencing in any case.
It is precisely for this reason that Marc Garlasco, a senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch (HRW), has come to Israel. His mission: to examine whether the weapons that both sides are using are themselves legal and whether the use of them is legal.
The American-born Garlasco has not been permitted to enter Gaza – as is also the case with people from other human rights organizations and foreign journalists. Therefore, he says, since he is unable to examine actual remnants of the explosives and see the wreckage with his own eyes, he can only guess or make assumptions in some cases. But even from afar, he has no doubt: Israel is using white phosphorus bombs. That was immediately clear to him while he stood last week on a hill facing the Gaza Strip and observed the Israel Defense Forces' bombings for several hours.
Last Saturday HRW hastened to publish a call to Israel to "stop unlawful use of white phosphorus in Gaza." The use of white phosphorus is permitted on the battlefield, explains Garlasco, but the side effects on humans and the environment are severe and highly dangerous. The statement notes that the "potential for harm to civilians is magnified by Gaza's high population density, among the highest in the world."
The fireworks-like explosions, the thick smoke, suffocating gas, and flames that are not extinguished by water, but rather are heightened by it – all of these are characteristic of the white phosphorus bombs the IDF is using. Garlasco believes the decision to make such extensive use of these bombs, manufactured by America's General Dynamics Corporation, stems from conclusions drawn from the Second Lebanon War, in which the IDF lost many tanks.
"The phosphorus bombs create a thick smokescreen and if Hamas has an anti-tank rocket, the smoke prevents the rocket from tracking the tank," he explains. There are two ways to use the bombs: The first is to impact them on the ground, in which case the resulting thick smokescreen covers a limited area; the second way is an airburst of a bomb, which contains 116 wafers doused in phosphorus. The moment the bomb blows up and the phosphorus comes in contact with oxygen – it ignites. This is what creates the "fireworks" and billows of jellyfish-shaped smoke. The fallout covers a wide area and the danger of fires and harm to civilians is enormous. The phosphorus burns glass, and immediately ignites paper, trees, wood – anything that is dry. The burning wafers causes terrible injury to anyone who comes in contact with them. The irony is that tear gas is included in the Chemical Weapons Convention and is subject to all kinds of restrictions, whereas phosphorus is not.
And in the meantime, in the hospitals in Gaza there are people lying in beds – among them many children – whose severe injuries and burns have appalled the medical teams.
Missing the target
Another new weapon that has forced itself upon Gazans is the GPS-guided mortar – a system equipped with satellite navigation, developed in Israel in late 2006-early 2007, in the wake of the Second Lebanon War. According to local military sources, it was this kind of mortar that missed its target by 30 meters and erroneously hit a United Nations Relief and Works Agency school last week; according to the UN report, 30 people were killed immediately and others died later of their injuries. "It really boggles my mind," Garlasco comments. "According to the literature, it has 3 meters' error – not 30." It is a mortar that is launched in an arc toward an unseen target, he explains, with the intention of being precise and to some extent minimize civilian casualties.
Garlasco says this is the first time the weapon has been used in any military conflict: "The Palestinians say, 'Oh, they use it on us, "experiment" with it for the Americans.' Experimenting has a different meaning for Americans. We think animal experimenting, but it is indeed a field test."
The new mortar was developed jointly by the Israeli weapons industry and a private American company called . Israel, notes Garlasco, has learned a lot from the wars the U.S. is waging in Afghanistan and Iraq, but above all learned from its own war in Lebanon in 2006. The mortar that was not supposed to have landed on the school was developed with the knowledge that troops "are fighting an enemy that is in a densely populated area, and here is the first time they use it."
Another important lesson Israel learned from the Lebanon war is that it cannot rely entirely on the U.S. to provide weapons. During that war, when the IDF ran out of cluster bombs, Israel asked for an emergency shipment of 1,200 such munitions (each containing 644 bomblets). The United States refused, and at that point, Garlasco notes, Israel realized it could not rely solely on American help in this realm.
Therefore, Israel has, for example, developed a new type of rifle, the (Tavor) TAR-21 ("an incredible weapon," says Garlasco; he can't help being complimentary) to take the place of the U.S.-made M-16. It has also invented the Delilah guided missile, but Garlasco does not know whether it has been used in Gaza. But not to worry, he adds: Despite the cluster bombs and independent Israeli development, Israel and the United States "still have a great relationship. By and large, the weaponry that Israel is using is American."
Not all of the weapons are new and innovative. Most, in fact, are American products developed during the Cold War. The artillery and incendiary weapons in Israel's possession were designed to destroy Russian tanks "and not Palestinian homes," he notes. The weapons being produced now are developed in the knowledge that the target is militants who operate from within a civilian population. Yet, much of the killing and destruction in Gaza are the result of old-fashioned, cheaper and less-sophisticated weapons.
Only last September did the United States grant Israel's request to supply it with 1,000 bombs of a new type, the GBU-39. They arrived at the beginning of December, and inhabitants of Rafah have witnessed their use – without knowing what they were – since the first day of the aerial attacks on the tunnels there. (The Jerusalem Post was the first to identify these as GBU-39s.) Gazans were surprised when they did not hear an explosion immediately after the Israeli aircraft fired; instead, the earth shook beneath their feet.
The manufacturer of the GBU-39 is the Boeing Corporation. The small diameter and light weight of these guided bombs ensure that any fighter plane can carry a large number of them and thus increase the number of attacks in every sortie. Garlasco says that the weapon is very accurate and penetrates deep into the earth. It is also designed to minimize collateral damage, since it does not explode over a large area like other bombs do. But other types of bombs are also being used and are destroying houses along the border with Egypt.
Gazans have noticed that there are bombs that produce mushroom clouds in various shades of red. Here, Garlasco admits, "I can only speculate. It looks like Israel is maybe using a new weapon that it was not using before: DIME – the dense inert metal explosive, consisting of 25 percent TNT and 75 percent tungsten, a heavy metal. You mix the two, in a fine grain, like pepper, and when the bomb hits the ground it aerosolizes. In less than a second, the mist dissipates and explodes."
He says the advantage of DIME is that "it strikes a very small area, 10 to 20 meters, and the fire it ignites burns out very quickly; if it hits us now, we will die, but no one around us will be hurt. The problem is that when you are killed – you are ripped to shreds and there is nothing left." Indeed, the injuries DIME causes are in general more severe than those caused by a "regular" bomb.
A paramedic at the Al-Awda Hospital in the Jabalya refugee camp has told the Palestinian Center for Human Rights that about 90 percent of the wounded he has rescued during the past few weeks were brought in with at least one limb missing. Is it the DIME that is causing the severe injuries being reported by the medical staff? Garlasco says there are "only rumors. No one has ever seen it used before, maybe it is being used now, but with Israel not letting in journalists and human rights organizations, these rumors are growing, and people say that Israeli is using terrible new weapons."
Perhaps, he says, the redness is a result of the metal in the explosives, but it will only be possible to ascertain this if experts are allowed into the Gaza Strip, or they talk to the IDF. Garlasco notes that herein lies the big difference between the Israeli army and the American army: As a worker for a human rights organization, he receives daily e-mails from the U.S. Air Force with a detailed report of the bombs it has dropped in Afghanistan and Iraq. "The Israelis would never do that," he explains. "They would never talk about what weapons they use and will never allow any discussion in society of whether the weapons should be used."
Another new weapon that he believes is now in use is the Spike: "It is very new, [from] 2005-2006, a special missile that is made to make very high-speed turns, so if you have a target that is moving and running away from you, you can chase him with the weapon. It was developed by the U.S. Navy jointly with Rafael [the Israel Armament Development Authority]. Rafael is the manufacturer."
Drones, incidentally, are a totally Israeli product, he notes; Israel is the world leader in this field, and America is learning a lot from it. The warships bombing Gaza are also Israeli made. But the cannons on the ships are Italian, produced by the Oto Melera company.
From his frustrating observation point outside Gaza, and on the basis of Israel's "very bad record of using cluster bombs in Lebanon and selling them to Georgia," Garlasco says he is worried that Israel is also now using the APAM (Anti Personnel/Anti Materiel) – a new type of round, or unit of ammunition, for tanks that was developed after Lebanon, each of which contains six cluster bombs. The tank guns aim above a target that is hiding behind some kind of cover and the ammunition explodes above people's heads – like those of Iz al-Din al-Qassam cells, for example, when they are firing rockets.
Garlasco and Human Rights Watch also examine the other side, and he says, "We believe that the Grad and Qassam are illegal weapons because they are not accurate enough to be used in this situation." He adds that Hamas makes frequent use of land mines and explosive charges that are liable to injure civilians.
However, because he and his fellow experts can't go into Gaza, "We don't know what the extent of any [Palestinian] civilian casualties is because of Hamas – whether they are shooting soldiers and their bullets end up killing civilians, or whether their anti-tank missiles miss an Israeli tank and hit a house. We don't know."
In 2005, Garlasco met with a political representative of Hamas and told him that use of Grads is a contravention of the Geneva Convention. The reply he got from the Hamas man was: "'All Israelis are military.' And I explained to them that their reading of international law is wrong." It is amazing, he adds, that the Palestinians can manufacture the Qassams under the conditions in Gaza. The Grad, however, "is a real military weapon, three meters long. It has a significant warhead. The problem is that it is designed to be fired in mass, to be fired 21 rockets at a time, so that you are covering an area and you are having a shock effect. You don't only have an explosion, but also a shock and it covers a big area. Shooting one at a time is almost useless from a military perspective."
As for the Israeli claim about weapons and ammunition being hidden in public buildings such as mosques, Garlasco reiterates that only independent sources will be able to examine this claim and clarify its veracity. If the mosques blown up in the heart of densely populated residential neighborhoods indeed served as hiding places for weapons and ammunition, he would expect to see many secondary explosions, which would have caused significant collateral damage and deep craters. It is difficult to analyze the Israeli claims on the basis of photographs, he notes.
Garlasco is not prepared to accept without question the Israeli claim that Hamas hides behind civilians and makes use of civilians. "Israelis are very quick to say they are doing it, but very short on proof. By keeping the independent people out, they leave doubt in people's minds." Furthermore, he believes, Israel has a record of not telling the truth: "They said in Lebanon they did not use cluster bombs. We found 4 million. They evade answering that they use phosphorus, and we stand there every day watching. They claim to have bombed a truck full of Grad missiles, and according to witnesses who spoke with Haaretz, it turned out to be a truck with oxygen tanks. Not everything that is long is a missile. How can anyone trust the Israeli military?'"
The IDF Spokesman responds: "The IDF is fighting the terror elements while meticulously observing the rules of engagement under international law. For understandable operational reasons, the IDF will not relate to a detailing of the materiel that is in its possession and the parameters in which it used. It should be emphasized, however, that the IDF uses only methods and materiel that are permitted under international law."
Did Israel test new weapons in Gaza?
Did they use people in Gaza as "Guinea Pigs"? Experimenting on people like this would be illegal and yet another war crime.
If in fact they tested new weapons on the innocent civilians in Gaza, they will also be bragging, to potential buyers about how effective they are and of course want to sell them.
They may even be planing on selling some of the ones being shipped in by the US. Or they are planning on bombing the crap out of the entire Middle East.
Getting the weapons while Bush was still in power may have also been the only way they would get any to stockpile as well. Obama may not be so Generous.
Obviously there is something going on the Public is unaware of.
I wouldn't give a mass murder weapons of this sort. No one should.
This shipment should be stopped and confiscated. If by no one else, the UN it self.
If a Police officer is accused of "pre mediated murder" would you ?
Let him have a weapon?
Let him have a passport so he could flee the country?
Would you even let him out on Bail?
Would any accuse murderer for that matter?
The leaders of Israel are not to be treated any differently then any person or country or leader ore civilian accused of murderer.
Would Saddam have been given Weapons while he was waiting trial for War Crimes?
Lets just stop and think here for a moment, are those leaders in Israel any better then Saddam?
Seems to me they may be worse if they are not stopped now.
A very large delivery of US weaponry to Israel consisting of "3,000 tons" is not, what one would give to an accused "war criminal". Anymore then you would give a machine gun to an accused murder.
Israel shells another UN school in Gaza: Israel just had to get one last UN building in before it says, it is going into a Ceasefire. A ceasefire at their discretion, of course. The blockade on Gaza still stands and they will, still be short of food, medical supplies etc. The starvation continues as the leaders in Israel pat themselves on the back. They are thinking they did such a wonderful job.
They are mad of course in their thinking and relishing in their murderous rampage, as justifiable.
The UN has called for a war crimes investigation over the shelling of its school. Photo: AFP
Two Palestinian boys have been killed after Israeli tank shells hit a UN-run school in Gaza – hours before Israel's security cabinet is expected to vote on a proposal for a unilateral ceasefire.
The boys, aged five and seven, died and 25 other Gazans were wounded as they sought to shelter in the school run by the UN relief and works agency (Unrwa) in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza.
The school is the third UN shelter to be hit by Israeli fire in its 22-day war on the territory.
The attack came as heavy artillery and aerial bombardment of what Israel described as "Hamas targets" continued on Saturday.
Christopher Gunness, an Unrwa spokesman, said several rounds hit the UN school at about 6:45am. The third floor of the school took a direct hit after a short pause, killing the pair and injuring another 14 people.
Witnesses said four more people were killed when other shells struck nearby as people tried to escape.
Investigation demanded
About 1,600 civilians had sought refuge from the fighting inside the building, Gunness said.
"The Israeli army knew exactly our GPS co-ordinates and they would have known that hundreds of people had taken shelter there," he said.
"When you have a direct hit into the third floor of a UN school, there has to be an investigation to see if a war crime has been committed."
Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, said: "I condemn in the strongest terms this outrageous attack, which is the third time it's happened.
"Top Israeli leaders have apologised and assured me two days ago that UN premises would be fully respected.
"I strongly demand a thorough investigation and punishment for those responsible," he told reporters in Beirut.
John Ging, the director of Unrwa, told Al Jazeera: "People today are alleging war crimes here in Gaza. Let's have it properly accounted for. Let's have the legal process which will establish exactly what has happened here.
'A failure for humanity'
"It is another failure for our humanity and it is exposing the impotence of our [the international community's] inability to protect civilians in conflict."
In Jabaliya refugee camp, Dr Ezzedine Abu al-Aish, a Palestinian doctor from al-Shifa hospital, lost his three daughters and one niece during an Israeli air attack as he was being interviewed on an Israeli television channel.
At least 10 people were also killed late on Friday after a tank shell slammed into their home during a funeral wake in Gaza City.
More than 1,200 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's offensive, including more than 400 children, according to UN and Palestinian medical sources.
At least 13 Israelis have also died in the same period, three of them civilians.
About five rockets were reported to have been fired from Gaza into southern Israel on Saturday.
Under no circumstances, should Israel be given any weapons.
Nor should they be given anything, to make weapons of their own.
Prevention is paramount.
Israel must also open their doors, to weapons inspectors.
Gaza must be allowed to let in "Inspectors" to "investigate" what type of weapons Israel used.
Israel is accused of war crimes and in any criminal investigation, investigators must be allowed to gather "evidence".
Israels refusal to allow the media or anyone else into Gaza is a sign of guilt.
The more times they refuse, the "guiltier", they obviously are.
They are trying to hide their crimes.
They are covering up "evidence" with Bulldozers even.
They have lied.
They have mislead their own Citizens.
They have attempted to mislead the world.
Apologizing for destroying UN building or hospitals doesn't cut it.
Apologizing for killing innocent civilians doesn't cut it either.
Rates right up there with the wife beater: saying he is sorry to the woman, he just pounded the crap out of. "Oh honey I am so sorry". Cry, whimper and big pretend, tears of sorrow. "I will never do it again".
Well anyone with any knowledge of spousal abuse knows, how it goes.
After 10 or 20 beating, still comes the "I am sorry BS".
"Israel is so sorry". "B.S." are we actually, all suppose to fall for that crap?
So what Israel is saying in essence is:
If I kill my next door neighbour, my saying "I am sorry" would be sufficient enough to allow me to "walk free" with weapons in hand. Wouldn't it?
Of course:
In the eyes of the Police, the Courts or the rest of the public at large, "Not flippin likely".
Israel is not to be trusted at this point in time.
It is in the best interest of everyone on the planet, that these weapons are kept out of the hands of Israel. Preventing them from building more in their own country is also essential.
Prevention, as I said before paramount.
If the UN body or other International bodies fail to see this or do nothing then I can only assume they are corrupt.
They can and should be stopped.
Who wants another world war?
I don't, do you?
The Israeli Government: is not Sorry.
They are in fact very proud, about what they have done.
If Saddam can be prosecuted, so can any leader, any where in the world. No exceptions. Commit a war crime go to trial. What goes for one leader goes for all leaders. Elected or not. Makes no difference.
A criminal is a criminal.
Mass murder is a crime.
You have become a very dangerous, untrustworthy, leadership. Not only to the rest of the world, but also you endanger your own people.
You are more Dangerous then Saddam. He after all really didn't have any weapons of mass destruction now did he?
We know for a fact the Israeli Government has "Weapons of Mass Destruction"
We know for a fact the Israeli Government, would use them on innocent civilians.
The State of Israel: Since its Creation
Well to those in the Israeli Government:
"I am so sorry, but I don't trust you and I don't believe you".
"You like anyone, who has betrayed my trust, now have to prove to me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, you can be trusted. Sorry isn't good enough".
What you say and what you do are two very different animals.
Ban Ki-moon should not trust you either. No one should. You are treating the UN, the same as an abusive woman beater, treats his wife.
You have given me the "Yah Yah syndrome" just like George W. Bush did.
yah yah???????????????????????????????????????????
I had tons of clues before, you were a rogue state . Now I have "3000 more tons" of clues headed your way.
"Bunker Busters" are Nuclear bombs. Just a different type, so to speak, but a Nuclear bomb all the same.
700 Israelis arrested for protesting against war
79 % of the time: Israel caused conflicts not Hamas
Gaza (6) A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words
Israel killing their own by Using Deadly Weapons of Mass Destuction against Gaza
Any casualties in Gaza Resemble those from the Iraq War.
I wonder. US Dropped Nuke on Iraq
Or Images of War Afgahanistan and Iraq
on January 19, 2009 at 12:37 am Comments Off on Unusually Large U.S. Weapons Shipment to Israel: Are the US and Israel Planning a Broader Middle East War?
Tags: 1000 bunker busters, 3000 tons, Alliant, ammunition, Barack Obama, BLU 109, british, cargo of weapons, choking smoke, cluster bombs, Cold War, consuming flames, Delilah guided missile, destroying houses, DIME, Drones, Escalation Scenario, Explosions, Gaza Strip, GBU-39, German ship, GPS-guided mortar, Greek merchant shipping company, harsh burns on the skin, hazardous material, illegal weapons, Invasion of Gaza, Israel, Israel's Missile Defense System, Israeli report is misleading, London, Media Disinformation, mushroom clouds, Operation Cast Lead, overwhelming dread, Pentagon, Rafah, rare request, ship charters, stockpiles, suffocating gas, TAR-21, Theater Iran Near Term Operation Operation, U.S. Navy's Military Sealift Command, US military, US weaponry, US-Israeli military planning, US-Israeli Nuclear Attack on Iran, weapons of mass destruction, white phosphorus bombs
Israel killing their own by Using Deadly Weapons of Mass Destuction again Gaza
Israel "Using banned arms against Gazans"
Israel has been using phosphorus bombs, cluster ammunitions and banned arms against the civilian population of the Gaza Strip, a report says.
After examining video footage of the military operation in Gaza, Turkish military analysts confirmed that such weapons have been used by the Israeli military in Gaza, the Today Zaman reported Thursday.
Cluster bombs contain hundreds of bomblets, which can bring about a catastrophe when used in civilian areas. The bomblets often remain unexploded during the military operation and cause casualties thereafter.
The United States, Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Israel have so far refused to sign an agreement to ban the use of cluster ammunitions.
Journalists and medics also reported the use of white phosphorus shells by Israel in the Gaza offensive. The chemical can cause serious burns or death if it comes to contact with human skin.
Israel launched Operation Cast Lead on December 27 and escalated its offensive into a massive ground incursion late Saturday night.
The offensive has so far claimed 772 lives in Gaza and left more than 3,100 others wounded.
SB/MD
The pale blue 155mm rounds are clearly marked with the designation M825A1, an American-made white phosphorus munition.
By Michael Evans, Defence Editor and Sheera Frenkel in Jerusalem
Photographic evidence has emerged that proves that Israel has been using controversial white phosphorus shells during its offensive in Gaza, despite official denials by the Israel Defence Forces.
There is also evidence that the rounds have injured Palestinian civilians, causing severe burns. The use of white phosphorus against civilians is prohibited under international law.
The Times has identified stockpiles of white phosphorus (WP) shells from high-resolution images taken of Israel Defence Forces (IDF) artillery units on the Israeli-Gaza border this week. The pale blue 155mm rounds are clearly marked with the designation M825A1, an American-made WP munition. The shell is an improved version with a more limited dispersion of the phosphorus, which ignites on contact with oxygen, and is being used by the Israeli gunners to create a smoke screen on the ground.
The rounds, which explode into a shower of burning white streaks, were first identified by The Times at the weekend when they were fired over Gaza at the start of Israel's ground offensive. Artillery experts said that the Israeli troops would be in trouble if they were banned from using WP because it is the simplest way of creating smoke to protect them from enemy fire.
There were indications last night that Palestinian civilians have been injured by the bombs, which burn intensely. Hassan Khalass, a doctor at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, told The Times that he had been dealing with patients who he suspected had been burnt by white phosphorus. Muhammad Azayzeh, 28, an emergency medical technician in the city, said: "The burns are very unusual. They don't look like burns we have normally seen. They are third-level burns that we can't seem to control. "Victims with embedded WP particles in their flesh have to have the affected areas flushed with water. Particles that cannot be removed with tweezers are covered with a saline-soaked dressing.
Nafez Abu Shaban, the head of the burns unit at al-Shifa hospital, said: "I am not familiar with phosphorus but many of the patients wounded in the past weeks have strange burns. They are very deep and not like burns we used to see."
When The Times reported on Monday that the Israeli troops appeared to be firing WP shells to create a thick smoke camouflage for units advancing into Gaza, an IDF spokesman denied the use of phosphorus and said that Israel was using only the weapons that were allowed under international law.
Rows of the pale blue M825A1 WP shells were photographed on January 4 on the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border. Another picture showed the same munitions stacked up behind an Israeli self-propelled howitzer.
Confronted with the latest evidence, an IDF spokeswoman insisted that the M825A1 shell was not a WP type. "This is what we call a quiet shell – it is empty, it has no explosives and no white phosphorus. There is nothing inside it," she said.
"We shoot it to mark the target before we launch a real shell. We launch two or three of the quiet shells which are empty so that the real shells will be accurate. It's not for killing people," she said.
Asked what shell was being used to create the smokescreen effect seen so clearly on television images, she said: "We're using what other armies use and we're not using any weapons that are banned under international law."
Neil Gibson, technical adviser to Jane's Missiles and Rockets, insisted that the M825A1 was a WP round. "The M825A1 is an improved model. The WP does not fill the shell but is impregnated into 116 felt wedges which, once dispersed [by a high-explosive charge], start to burn within four to five seconds. They then burn for five to ten minutes. The smoke screen produced is extremely effective," he said.
The shell is not defined as an incendiary weapon by the Third Protocol to the Convention on Conventional Weapons because its principal use is to produce smoke to protect troops. However, Marc Galasco, of Human Rights Watch, said: "Recognising the significant incidental incendiary effect that white phosphorus creates, there is great concern that Israel is failing to take all feasible steps to avoid civilian loss of life and property by using WP in densely populated urban areas. This concern is amplified given the technique evidenced in media photographs of air-bursting WP projectiles at relatively low levels, seemingly to maximise its incendiary effect."
He added, however, that Human Rights Watch had no evidence that Israel was using incendiaries as weapons.
British and American artillery units have stocks of white phosphorus munitions but they are banned as anti-personnel weapons. "These munitions are not unlawful as their purpose is to provide obscuration and not cause injury by burning," a Ministry of Defence source said.
Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian war surgery specialist working in Gaza, told The Times that he had seen injuries believed to have resulted from Israel's use of a new "dense inert metal explosive" that caused "extreme explosions". He said: "Those inside the perimeter of this weapon's power zone will be torn completely apart. We have seen numerous amputations that we suspect have been caused by this."
Bunker Busters in Action
An explosion is seen as missiles fired from an Israeli aircraft fly towards a target in the northern Gaza Strip, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2009. . Photo: AP/Gil Nechushtan
Bunker Busters are radioactive and that will cause horrendous health problems in the future, not just in Gaza but also in Israel itself.
The wind blows and the radiation goes.
Israel can expect many things such as cancer, birth defects among other numerous health problems thanks to their own Government. Israel is killing it own people not just those in Gaza.
I can also be sure there will also be health effects in Israel from the White phosphorus as well. The wind blows it goes. "Israel Breath Deep the Gathering Gloom."
There is something for Israeli's to think about come election time. Their present Government is killing them too.
They also have used them before as well.
Bunker buster bombs containing depleted uranium warheads used by Israel against civilian targets in Lebanon
Israel used White Phosphorus against Hamas targets in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead in January 2009.
White Phosphorus (WP), known as Willy Pete, is used for signaling, screening, and incendiary purposes. White Phosphorus can be used to destroy the enemy's equipment or to limit his vision.
It is used against vehicles, petroleum, oils and lubricants (POL) and ammunition storage areas, and enemy observers. WP can be used as an aid in target location and navigation. It is usually dispersed by explosive munitions.
It can be fired with fuze time to obtain an airburst. White phosphorus was used most often during World War II in military formulations for smoke screens, marker shells, incendiaries, hand grenades, smoke markers, colored flares, and tracer bullets.
The Battle of Fallujah was conducted from 8 to 20 November 2004 with the last fire mission on 17 November. The battle was fought by an Army, Marine and Iraqi force of about 15,000 under the I Marine Expeditionary Force (IMEF). US forces found WP to be useful in the Battle of Fallujah. "WP proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE. We fired "shake and bake" missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out. … We used improved WP for screening missions when HC smoke would have been more effective and saved our WP for lethal missions."
White phosphorus is not banned by any treaty to which the United States is a signatory. Smokes and obscurants comprise a category of materials that are not used militarily as direct chemical agents. The United States retains its ability to employ incendiaries to hold high-priority military targets at risk in a manner consistent with the principle of proportionality that governs the use of all weapons under existing law.
The use of white phosphorus or fuel air explosives are not prohibited or restricted by Protocol II of the Certain Conventional Weapons Convention (CCWC), the Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons which may be Deemed to be Excessively Injurious or to have Indiscriminate Effects.
White Phosphorus (WP) – Incendiary
WP is a colorless to yellow translucent wax-like substance with a pungent, garlic-like smell. The form used by the military is highly energetic (active) and ignites once it is exposed to oxygen. White phosphorus is a pyrophoric material, that is, it is spontaneously flammable).
When exposed to air, it spontaneously ignites and is oxidized rapidly to phosphorus pentoxide. Such heat is produced by this reaction that the element bursts into a yellow flame and produces a dense white smoke. Phosphorus also becomes luminous in the dark, and this property is conveyed to "tracer bullets." This chemical reaction continues until either all the material is consumed or the element is deprived of oxygen. Up to 15 percent of the WP remains within the charred wedge and can reignite if the felt is crushed and the unburned WP is exposed to the atmosphere.
White phosphorus results in painful chemical burn injuries. The resultant burn typically appears as a necrotic area with a yellowish color and characteristic garliclike odor. White phosphorus is highly lipid soluble and as such, is believed to have rapid dermal penetration once particles are embedded under the skin. Because of its enhanced lipid solubility, many have believed that these injuries result in delayed wound healing. This has not been well studied; therefore, all that can be stated is that white phosphorus burns represent a small subsegment of chemical burns, all of which typically result in delayed wound healing.
Incandescent particles of WP may produce extensive burns. Phosphorus burns on the skin are deep and painful; a firm eschar is produced and is surrounded by vesiculation.
The burns usually are multiple, deep, and variable in size. The solid in the eye produces severe injury. The particles continue to burn unless deprived of atmospheric oxygen. Contact with these particles can cause local burns.
These weapons are particularly nasty because white phosphorus continues to burn until it disappears. If service members are hit by pieces of white phosphorus, it could burn right down to the bone. Burns usually are limited to areas of exposed skin (upper extremities, face). Burns frequently are second and third degree because of the rapid ignition and highly lipophilic properties of white phosphorus.
If burning particles of WP strike and stick to the clothing, take off the contaminated clothing quickly before the WP burns through to the skin. Remove quickly all clothing affected by phosphorus to prevent phosphorus burning through to skin. If this is impossible, plunge skin or clothing affected by phosphorus in cold water or moisten strongly to extinguish or prevent fire. Then immediately remove affected clothing and rinse affected skin areas with cold sodium bicarbonate solution or with cold water. Moisten skin and remove visible phosphorus (preferably under water) with squared object (knife-back etc.) or tweezers. Do not touch phosphorus with fingers! Throw removed phosphorus or clothing affected by phosphorus into water or allow to bum in suitable location. Cover phosphorus burns with moist dressing and keep moist to prevent renewed inflammation. It is neccessary to dress white phosphorus-injured patients with saline-soaked dressings to prevent reignition of the phosphorus by contact with the air.
Some nations recommend washing the skin with a 0.5-2.0% copper sulphate solution or a copper sulphate impregnated pad. Wounds may be rinsed with a 0.1%-0.2% copper sulphate solution, if available. Dark coloured deposits may be removed with forceps. Prevent prolonged contact of any copper sulphate preparations with the tissues by prompt, copious flushing with water or saline, as there is a definite danger of copper poisoning. It may be necessary to repeat the first aid measures to completely remove all phosphorus.
White Phosphorus (WP) – Smoke
White Phosphorus (WP) creates a smoke screen as it burns. Phosphorus smokes are generated by a variety of munitions. Some of these munitions such as the M825 (155-mm round) may, on explosion, distribute particles of incompletely oxidized white phosphorus.
Smokes obscure vision and are used to hide troops, equipment, and areas from detection. Smoke screens are essential for movement in city fighting. In the December 1994 battle for Grozny in Chechnya, every fourth or fifth Russian artillery or mortar round fired was a smoke or white phosphorus round.
White Phosphorus and Red Phosphorus burn to produce a hygroscopic smoke containing phosphoric acids. Red phosphorus (RP) is not nearly as reactive as white phosphorus. It reacts slowly with atmospheric moisture and the smoke does not produce thermal injury, hence the smoke is less toxic. The extinction for these smokes is primarily due to scattering in the visible and absorption in the infrared (IR). These smokes are composed of spherical liquid particles that grow with relative humidity to an equilibrium size by absorbing ambient moisture that depends on the ambient relative humidity. The mass extinction varies significantly with relative humidity.
The White Phosphorus flame produces a hot, dense white smoke composed of particles of phosphorus pentoxide, which are converted by moist air into phosphoric acid. This acid, depending on concentration and duration of exposure, may produce a variety of topically irritative injuries.
Most smokes are not hazardous in concentrations which are useful for obscuring purposes. However, any smoke can be hazardous to health if the concentration is sufficient or if the exposure is long enough. Medical personnel should be prepared to treat potential reactions to military smokes once such smokes have been introduced to the battlefield. Exposure to heavy smoke concentrations for extended periods (particularly if near the source of emission) may cause illness or even death.
Casualties from WP smoke have not occurred in combat operations. At room temperature, white phosphorus is somewhat volatile and may produce a toxic inhalational injury. In moist air, the phosphorus pentoxide produces phosphoric acid. This acid, depending on concentration and duration of exposure, may produce a variety of topically irritative injuries. Irritation of the eyes and irritation of the mucous membranes are the most commonly seen injuries. These complaints remit spontaneously with the soldier's removal from the exposure site. With intense exposures, a very explosive cough may occur, which renders gas mask adjustment difficult. There are no reported deaths resulting from exposure to phosphorus smokes. Generally, treatment of WP smoke irritation is unnecessary. Spontaneous recovery is rapid.
White phosphorus fume can cause severe eye irritation with blepharospasm, photophobia, and lacrimation. Irritation of the eyes and irritation of the mucous membranes are the most commonly seen injuries. These complaints remit spontaneously with the soldier's removal from the exposure site. The WP smoke irritates the eyes and nose in moderate concentrations. With intense exposures, a very explosive cough may occur, which renders gas mask adjustment difficult. There are no reported deaths resulting from exposure to phosphorus smokes.
White Phosphorus – Non-Military Applications
The amazing thing is that White Phosphorus is used in almost every product imaginable – from soft drinks to toothpaste. White phosphorus is used by industry to produce phosphoric acid and other chemicals for use in fertilizers, food additives, and cleaning compounds. Small amounts of white phosphorus were used in the past in pesticides and fireworks.
In recent years, concentrated phosphoric acids, which may contain as much as 70% to 75% P2O5 content, have become of great importance to agriculture and farm production. World-wide demand for fertilizers has caused record phosphate production. Phosphates are used in the production of special glasses, such as those used for sodium lamps.
Bone-ash, calcium phosphate, is used to create fine chinaware and to produce mono-calcium phosphate, used in baking powder. Phosphorus is also important in the production of steels, phosphor bronze, and many other products. Trisodium phosphate is important as a cleaning agent, as a water softener, and for preventing boiler scale and corrosion of pipes and boiler tubes.
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and numerous state/local law enforcement authorities throughout the United States, have noted an alarming trend involving illicit methamphetamine production. Methamphetamine (AKA speed, crank or meth) is a major drug problem in the United States. All businesses engaged in the sale of red phosphorus, white phosphorus and hypophosphorous acid products should be aware of the use of these products by clandestine methamphetamine laboratory operators.
White Phosphorus – Background
Phosphorus is an element, the name derived from the Greek "phosphoros" or light bearing, the ancient name for the planet Venus when appearing before sunrise. Brand discovered phosphorus in 1669 by preparing it from urine. Phosphorus exists in four or more allotropic forms: white (or yellow), red, and black (or violet). Ordinary phosphorus is a waxy white solid; when pure it is colorless and transparent. White phosphorus has two modifications: alpha and beta with a transition temperature at -3.8oC. It is insoluble in water, but soluble in carbon disulfide.
Never found free in nature, Phosphorus is widely distributed in combination with minerals. Phosphate rock, which contains the mineral apatite, an impure tri-calcium phosphate, is an important source of the element. Large deposits are found in Russia, in Morocco, and in Florida, Tennessee, Utah, Idaho, and elsewhere.
White phosphorus may be made by several methods. By one process, tri-calcium phosphate, the essential ingredient of phosphate rock, is heated in the presence of carbon and silica in an electric furnace or fuelfired furnace. Elementary phosphorus is liberated as vapor and may be collected under phosphoric acid, an important compound in making super-phosphate fertilizers.
White Phosphorus (WP) – Other Health Effects
Systemic toxicity may occur if therapy is not administered. Therapy consists of topical use of a bicarbonate solution to neutralize phosphoric acids and mechanical removal and debridement of particles. A Wood's lamp in a darkened room may help to identify remaining luminescent particles. The early signs of systemic intoxication by phosphorus are abdominal pain, jaundice, and a garlic odor of the breath; prolonged intake may cause anemia, as well as cachexia and necrosis of bone, involving typically the maxilla and mandible (phossy jaw). Prolonged absorption of phosphorus causes necrosis of bones. It is a hepatotoxin.
The presenting complaints of overexposed workers may be toothache and excessive salivation. There may be a dull red appearance of the oral mucosa. One or more teeth may loosen, with subsequent pain and swelling of the jaw; healing may be delayed following dental procedures such as extractions; with necrosis of bone, a sequestrum may develop with sinus tract formation. In a series of 10 cases, the shortest period of exposure to phosphorus fume (concentrations not measured) that led to bone necrosis was 10 months (two cases), and the longest period of exposure was 18 years.
Signs and symptoms include irritation of the eyes and the respiratory tract; abdominal pain, nausea, and jaundice; anemia, cachexia, pain, and loosening of teeth, excessive salivation, and pain and swelling of the jaw; skin and eye burns. Phossy jaw must be differentiated from other forms of osteomyelitis. With phossy jaw, a sequestrum forms in the bone and is released from weeks to months later; the sequestra are light in weight, yellow to brown, osteoporotic, and decalcified, whereas sequestra from acute staphylococcal osteomyelitis are sharp, white spicules of bone, dense and well calcified. In acute staphylococcal osteomyelitis, the radiographic picture changes rapidly and closely follows the clinical course, but with phossy jaw the diagnosis sometimes is clinically obvious before radiological changes are discernible. It is good dental practice to take routine X-ray films of jaws, but experience indicates that necrosis can occur in the absence of any pathology that is visible on the roentgenogram.
They are also using weapons that will contaminate the areas in and around Gaza for years to come. This will not only affect Gaza but Israel, Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Jordon. It will pollute the Mediterranean sea as well. The wind blows and it goes.
The surrounding areas of Iraq have been contaminated by pollutants from the war and has extended for thousands of miles. This war on Gaza will and is doing the same thing. This just adds to the pollution in these countries compliments of wars.
Contaminated with depleted uranium since1991
This is a very small tip, of a very large Iceburg.
This is a relatively old map. That means the pollution has now had time to spread farther because of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Gaza and is in fact more concentrated in these areas. Add to this the other Chemicals and Toxins from war and the area is extremely polluted.
Pollutants from war or any other pollutant for that matter can travel a very great distance. It can travel around the world. Each time there is a war and weapons such as the ones in Gaza, are used, they affect the entire planet.
The Toxins whether it be DU of other Toxic Chemicals will in time kill millions of people. Stop killing, future innocent victims. I don't know about the rest of the world, but pollution from wars is really pissing me off. The planet cannot sustain war pollution. War is destroying the planet in and extreme way. Radiation alone has killed millions around the world. DU is radioactive and one small invisible, particle can kill you.
Stop polluting the Air.
Stop polluting the water.
Stop polluting the earth.
Stop murdering future generations.
To all Israeli's:
Next time you look at your children, ask yourself how long will it be before they get cancer or other related health problems, cause by the use of WMD used by your own Government, against those in Gaza.
Then, ask your self how long will it be before you become ill?
You will die sooner, now you have used this right next door to you country. The closer you are to ground zero the sooner you die.
History taught me that one. One teeny, tiny, invisible, particle is all it takes. There is no place to run. No place to hide. War pollution can affect you regardless of where you live. We are all trapped on this planet together. No escape for any of us. Warmongers are fools. Warmongers are Profiteers. Warmongers make everyone sick.
Oh and be sure to thank the US for giving you those lovely deadly, weapons, to protect you from the evils of the world…..You should be so grateful for their help, in killing you and your children. This is however how the US Government saves people.
White Phosphorus Health Affects
on January 9, 2009 at 4:04 am Comments Off on Israel killing their own by Using Deadly Weapons of Mass Destuction again Gaza
Tags: American, American-made WP munition, Artillery experts, bomblets, british, Bunker Busters, burn intensely, burns unit, cluster bombs, Deadly Weapons of Mass Destuction, Depleated Uranium, du, fuel air explosives, Gaza, Israel, Israel Defence Forces, M825A1, Operation Cast Lead, painful chemical burn, Palestinian civilians, particles, Radioactive, Red Phosphorus, severe burns, severe eye irritation, shower of burning white streaks, Smoke, white phosphorus, Willy Pete
Traumatic brain injuries the signature wound of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq
Troops with brain injuries face other possible problems
Traumatic brain injuries have become the signature wound of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and troops who sustain them face a daunting array of potential medical consequences later on, says a report on the issue commissioned by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
The report from the Institute of Medicine – a body that advises the U.S. government on science, medicine and health – said military personnel who sustain severe or even moderate brain injuries may go on to develop Alzheimer's-like dementia or symptoms similar to Parkinson's, a neurodegenerative disease.
They face a higher risk of developing seizure disorders and psychoses, problems with social interactions and difficulty holding down a job. Troops who sustain even mild brain injuries are more likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). And all are at a higher risk of experiencing aggressive behaviour, depression and memory problems.
The report urged the U.S. government to ramp up research in the area, saying there isn't enough evidence in the medical literature – especially as relates to mild brain injuries – to determine what today's troops face and how best to help them recover from or cope with the health problems they may develop.
"The more severe the injury, the more likely there are to be bad long-term outcomes," Dr. George Rutherford, chair of the panel that produced the report, acknowledged in an interview from Washington.
But Rutherford said that brain injuries don't have to be severe or involve penetration of the skull to set up a soldier for significant health consequences.
"If you have a traumatic brain injury – especially if it's moderate or severe – you have some chance of developing a disease down the line that you would not have developed otherwise," said Rutherford, an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco.
"For mild brain injuries, which is a much bigger group of injuries and it has a much broader scope, what we can say is for those kinds of injuries that there's a probable association between having one of those – especially with loss of consciousness – and having depression, having aggressive behaviour … or having persistent post-concussive symptoms."
"Like memory loss, like headaches, like dizziness."
The panel read 1,900 studies on brain injuries looking for evidence of what troops who suffer brain injuries might face. But most of the studies relate to injuries suffered in car crashes and sports. The report says the injury picture could look different for troops who may also develop post-traumatic stress disorder from experiences in combat and that more research is needed.
The report noted that as of January 2008, more than 5,500 U.S. military personnel had suffered traumatic brain injury in Iraq and Afghanistan as a result of the widespread use against them of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.
A similar Canadian figure for troops deployed to Afghanistan is not available, Maj. Andre Berdais, a senior public affairs officer with the Canadian Forces Health Services Group, said via email.
Berdais said that kind of data is not tracked by the Department of National Defence, as it isn't "essential in supporting our primary responsibility of patient care."
But New Democrat MP Dawn Black, who has pressed the issue as a member of the House of Commons' defence committee, said these injuries are a growing problem among Canadian troops.
"The rates are going up," Black said from Ottawa. "Intuitively we know. But we also know from anecdotal evidence from people in the field."
Black said the problem was put on her radar by soldiers and their families. "I've met with some of them and seen it. I've met with some of the families and seen it."
The force of an explosion can induce what is essentially a concussion in the brain, sending it ricocheting around within the confines of the skull.
The damage caused by even a mild brain injury can take six months to heal, said Dr. Donald Stuss, a brain expert and vice-president of research at the Rotman Research Institute of Toronto's Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care.
Injury can be done to different parts of the brain, triggering a variety of problems. But Stuss stressed that after-effects – or whether there are any long-term problems – will vary from person to person.
"So you may end up having somebody with a head injury who recovers perfectly and then afterwards has tinnitus (ringing in the ears) and dizziness from inner ear problems…. You may have some who end up with long-term memory problems," he said.
Stuss said the key is to identify people with the problem and start treating them quickly.
The Forces' Berdais said troops who have been exposed to explosions and may have suffered blast-induced injuries are screened for traumatic brain injury. Those found to be suffering from it are removed from active duty while they are symptomatic to prevent the risk of a repeat injury that could compound the insult on the brain.
And he said the Canadian Forces' new physical rehabilitation program is in the process of developing policies and procedures for troops who continue to show symptoms of traumatic brain injury despite having received care.
Psychologist Gerrit Groeneweg, executive director of Calgary's Brain Injury Rehabilitation Centre, said people suffering lingering problems from traumatic brain injuries can benefit from being taught coping techniques – strategies for improving memory and training to help overcome problems with attention.
But finding out how to best treat traumatic brain injuries among troops remains a challenge, said Dr. Greg Passey, a psychiatrist with Vancouver Coastal Health Services who spent 22 years in the Canadian Forces and who now specializes in treating PTSD.
"We don't have a really clear understanding of what the potential long-term effects are," Passey said.
"Because some of our soldiers have been exposed – they're getting blown up more than one time. And although they don't have significant outward physical injuries, you can certainly develop things like post-traumatic stress disorder or other types of psychological or psychiatric disorders."
Those who go to war can suffer so many different problems.
There is Depleted Uranium, which caused many problems. Then you have Landmines, Cluster Bombs and other types of bombs and there are many. Many types of weapons could be deafening or deadly.
Troops can be exposed to so many things. If or when they come home they need the best treatment and deserve it.
They should not be ignored as the ones from the First Gulf war. It took 17 years for the US to say well yes they are sick. There is such a thing as Gulf War Syndrome. Well 17 years is too long for any soldier to wait.
The US however will not stop using Depleted Uranium, Landmines, Cluster Bombs. They say they have a purpose. The only purpose of these weapons are to kill and they kill long after the wars are over.
Other countries are in the process of eliminating these weapons however. Those who refuse to stop using them are the ones, who need to be pressured into stopping their use.
Of course troops going to war in any country with the US will be exposed to these types of weapons. What a shame.
If I am not mistaken the first two British soldiers to die in Kosovo were killed by a cluster bomb. If they had not been used those two soldiers may still be alive today.
In the Old Days they had something called Shell Shock
"By 1914 British doctors working in military hospitals noticed patients suffering from "shell shock". Early symptoms included tiredness, irritability, giddiness, lack of concentration and headaches. Eventually the men suffered mental breakdowns making it impossible for them to remain in the front-line. Some came to the conclusion that the soldiers condition was caused by the enemy's heavy artillery. These doctors argued that a bursting shell creates a vacuum, and when the air rushes into this vacuum it disturbs the cerebro-spinal fluid and this can upset the working of the brain.
Some doctors argued that the only cure for shell-shock was a complete rest away from the fighting. If you were an officer you were likely to be sent back home to recuperate. However, the army was less sympathetic to ordinary soldiers with shell-shock. Some senior officers took the view that these men were cowards who were trying to get out of fighting."
Well many today are still called Cowards because, they become mentally ill. When will that ever change?
Many are still being sent back to war, that should not be sent back. War caused problems mental and physical. It always has and it always will. This problem is not new, but very old indeed.
They are still exposed to many dangers. They are not cowards they are sick. War makes people sick.
They need all the understanding and help they can possibly get.
They should never be ignored. Their needs are very real.
Governments cannot hide the truth forever. Someone is always watching.
Canadian Forces not tracking incidence of brain injuries, hearing loss
Elusive threats boost PTSD risk in Afghanistan
Gov't Study Concludes "Gulf War Syndrome" is Legitimate Condition, Affects 1 in 4 Vets
on December 7, 2008 at 10:54 am Comments Off on Traumatic brain injuries the signature wound of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq
Tags: Afghanistan, aggressive behaviour, Alzheimer's-like dementi, brain injuries, Calgary's Brain Injury Rehabilitation Centre, Canadian Forces, Canadian Forces Health Services Group, cluster bombs, Department of National Defence, Depleted Uranium, depression, dizziness, Dr. George Rutherford, Dr. Greg Passey, First Gulf war, Gerrit Groeneweg, head injury, headaches, Iraq, Iraqi government, landmines, memory loss, mental illness, MP Dawn Black, neurodegenerative disease, Parkinson's, psychoses, seizure disorders, Shell Shock, traumatic brain injury, troops, US military, Vancouver Coastal Health Services
Banking on Bloodshed: UK high street banks' complicity in the arms trade
Banks, Corporations and Conflict
The arms trade provides the destructive hardware used in conflicts across the world. It undermines development, contributing to the poverty and suffering of millions.
A new report by War on Want, Banking on Bloodshed: UK high street banks' complicity in the arms trade has exposed, for the first time, the extent to which the five main British high street banks are funding this violent trade.
High street banks are using our money to fund companies that sell arms used against civilians in wars across the world, including the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are financing an industry that sells arms to countries committing human rights abuses such as Israel, Colombia and Saudi Arabia.
Money from our savings and current accounts is being used to fund companies that produce pernicious weapons like depleted uranium and cluster bombs.
As a result of the financial crisis there are now unprecedented calls for regulation of the banking sector.
War on Want is calling on the government to ensure that all banks are made to publish the full details of their loans, holdings and other banking services to the arms trade. The government must also introduce regulation which prevents high street banks from supporting the arms trade.
Download report:
Download a PDF version of Banking on Bloodshed.
on December 5, 2008 at 11:51 am Comments Off on Banking on Bloodshed: UK high street banks' complicity in the arms trade
Tags: arms trade, banking services, banks, cluster bombs, conflict, Corporations, Depleted Uranium, holdings, loans, Poverty, profiteering, sells arms, suffering, War, weapons
'Peace won't cost the earth' but it might save the environment
By John Tomlinson
Essentially human beings cannot afford war. Nor can we continue to breed like rabbits. The imprint of humans on this planet is getting close to a tipping point which, once reached, will result in massive disruption, destruction, significant loss of life and, inevitably, in vast civil unrest.
Currently, environmental jargon wavers between "climate change" and "global warming": neither expression is inherently frightening. It is possible to imagine a George W. Bush, Mark Latham, Pauline Hansen or Sarah Palin saying something like "Well, in principle, I think global warming in winter would be a good idea but I don't think we could afford to do it for everybody in the world".
Whether people choose to speak about global warming or climate change they are using a metaphor to highlight or deny the impending environmental catastrophe that awaits us if we continue to mine, pollute, pillage and exploit the natural environment.
I don't pretend to know what the tipping point of the coming environmental crisis is. It may happen when there are ten billion people struggling to survive on this planet. It could be when we have released so much carbon dioxide into the oceans that plant and animal plankton, which ultimately sustain all forms of life in the sea, can no longer survive because of increased acidity. It could be in five years, 25 years, 100 years or more: or when we've heated the earth by another degree, two degrees or five degrees. It could be from something else that we are doing which scientists have yet to identify as the cause of major environmental damage. What I do know is that most of us won't know we've reached it until well after we've passed the point of no return.
Human beings may, however, be able to change their patterns of behaviour enough to avert this impending disaster. Some of the things which need to change are, in the first instance to:
• eliminate hunger and malnutrition from all parts of the world;
• share income more equitably between countries and between people;
• condemn racism in all its forms;
• stop population growth and then work to decrease the world's population;
• attempt to resolve disputes between countries and promote peace;
• aim for a fair settlement of intra-country disputations;
• promote antiviolence strategies in cities, towns and villages everywhere;
• work to enhance just solutions between groups and individuals;
• actively pursue sustainable environmental practices; and
• place justice and honour at the centre of all our dealings.
By eliminating hunger and malnutrition and promoting greater income equality we make it easier to curb population expansion, civil disputation and war.
Racism festers where there is great inequality particularly between indigenous people and colonisers. Both economic and social justice, are more easily obtained in more egalitarian societies. When sections of a society have to be aggressive merely to survive, violence between minority and dominant populations is likely to develop.
Egalitarian and sharing societies extinguish such potential flare-ups. If all are obtaining some benefit from the sharing of resources it is easier to implement sustainable environmental practices because the benefits of over-exploitation are no longer going to a handful of greedy people. The majority know that, in the long term, they are protecting the interests of all by ensuring sustainable use of natural resources.
Each of us has the capacity to start working towards building a more equal, inclusive and sharing society. We can start today, by word and deed, to help build a more egalitarian society. We can work with our friends, our work mates, our unions, sporting clubs, professional associations, social agencies, church groups and our neighbours to build a better world. As we engage in this civic project we benefit personally from being surrounded by a safer and stronger community which acts justly and promotes individual autonomy.
But in the short term military forces will be seen by many of our friends and neighbours as necessary for their protection. So we will need to explain why we can no longer afford to maintain military forces at anything beyond a sufficient force to repel an aggressor from our shores.
During the Cold War, Russia and the US amassed sufficient nuclear weapons to eliminate life as we know it many times over. The Americans used Agent Orange to defoliate large environmentally important parts of Indo China. Considerable numbers of Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian children continue to be born with extreme deformities, as a legacy of these chemical weapons. Similar herbicides are being supplied by the US to defoliate poppy crops in Afghanistan and coca crops in Columbia. Land mines and cluster bombs are blowing up poor people in many parts of the world for decades after conflicts have finished. Depleted uranium is causing the deaths of babies and children in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It is not only the combatants and civilians of invaded countries who become the casualties of war. Many members of the invading forces return home disfigured, drug addicted, poisoned by chemicals, mentally scarred and physically disabled. In some ways the soldiers who get killed are the lucky ones in the inglorious situation where countries send their troops off around the world to wage war.
The homes, hospitals, sewerage treatment works, schools, factories and commercial buildings that get destroyed during wars all have to be replaced after the strife subsides, requiring further impositions on the environment. The families whose child, mother, father, or other relative is killed are not as easily rebuilt. As Warner (1996) says (in T H White's The Once and Future King in an "Afterword"):
War was a ruinous dementia. It silenced law, it killed poets, it exalted the proud, filled the greedy with good things, and oppressed the humble and meek; no good could come of it, it was hopelessly out of date. Nobody wanted it. (Unfortunately, no one had passionately wanted the League of Nations either.)
While countries are spending vast sums on defence equipment there are more socially or environmentally useful expenditures which are foregone. This money could have been used to improve civic amenities in the home country or provided as foreign aid to help build a more peaceful world. The time wasted training troops to maim and kill could be better spent by employing them engage in some socially or environmentally useful tasks at home or abroad.
Apart from the overt environmental destructive nature of war, there is the environmental cost of just keeping the defence forces mobile. In 2007 Sohbet Karbuz noted in the Energy Bulletin that:
As of September 30, 2005 the US Air Force had 5,986 aircraft in service. At the beginning of 2006 the US Navy had 285 combat and support ships, and around 4,000 operational aircraft (planes and helicopters). At the end of 2005, the US Army had a combat vehicle fleet of approximately 28,000 armored vehicles (tracked vehicles such as Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles). Besides those the Army and the Marine corps have tactical wheeled vehicles such as 140,000 High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles. The US Army has also over 4,000 combat helicopters and several hundred fixed wing aircraft. Add all those also 187,493 fleet vehicles (passenger cars, busses, light trucks etc) the US Department of Defense (DOD) uses. The issue is that except for 80 nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers, almost all military fleet (including the ones that will be joining in the next decade) run on oil.
He went on to point out that (excluding fuel obtained overseas at no cost, used by contractors, or used in rented or leased vehicles) the Pentagon still managed to use 320,000 barrels of oil per day in 2006.
If we want to keep the world environmentally healthy then we certainly can no longer afford such profligate military consumption of carbon products. We just need to convince our fellow citizens that it is better to have a world at peace rather than one in pieces, because as Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote "the real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war."
War is killing the Planet
It pollutes everything.
Air, Water, Earth and leaves a trail of Death for future generations.
You cannot save the world using war.
War is the worst form of pollution on Earth.
Landmine Treaty Ignored, 5,400 killed or injured in 2007
EU member states urged to sign, ratify, implement cluster bomb ban treaty
on November 24, 2008 at 3:49 am Comments Off on 'Peace won't cost the earth' but it might save the environment
Tags: Abrams tanks, aircraft carriers, armored vehicles, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, Cambodian, cluster bombs, combat helicopters, destroyed, destructive nature, disfigured, drug addicted, enviroment, extreme deformities, factories, health, homes, hospitals, land mines, Laotian, mentally scarred, Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles, nuclear weapons, Peace, physically disabled, poisoned, Pollution, schools, sewerage treatment works, submarines, Vietnamese, War
OSLO: Some 100 countries will ban the use of cluster bombs with the signing of a treaty Wednesday in Oslo but major producers such as China, Russia and the United States are shunning the pact.
The treaty, agreed upon in Dublin in May, outlaws the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions which primarily kill civilians.
"It's only one of the very few times in history that an entire category of weapons has been banned," said Thomas Nash of the Cluster Munitions Coalition (CMC) umbrella group that comprises some 300 non-governmental organisations.
It's unlikely now that you're going to see large scale use of cluster bombs," he said.
Dropped from planes or fired from artillery, cluster bombs explode in mid-air to randomly scatter hundreds of bomblets, which can be three inches (eight centimetres) in size.
Many cluster bomblets can fail to explode, often leaving poverty-stricken areas trying to recover from war littered with countless de-facto landmines.
According to Handicap International, about 100,000 people have been maimed or killed by cluster bombs around the world since 1965, 98 per cent of them civilians.
More than a quarter of the victims are children who mistake the bomblets for toys or tin cans.
"This is not about disarmament, this is not about arms control. This is a humanitarian issue," said Annette Abelsen, a senior advisor at the foreign ministry in Norway which played a key role in hammering out the international agreement.
In Laos, the most affected country in the world, the US Air Force dropped 260 million cluster bombs between 1964 and 1973, or the equivalent of a fully-loaded B52 bomber's cargo dropped every eight minutes for nine years.
Dispersed in fields and pastures, the weapons make it perilous to cultivate the land and can claim numerous lives for decades after the end of a conflict.
On Wednesday, France and Britain will be represented by their foreign ministers, Bernard Kouchner and David Miliband. Japan, Canada, Germany and Australia will also sign the treaty.
But, as was the case with the Ottawa Convention that outlaws landmines, key countries such as the United States, Russia, China and Israel have objected to the ban and will not sign it because they are the biggest producers and users.
The election of Barack Obama as president may however bring about a change in the US position, activists hope.
"Obama has voted for, previously, a national regulation in the US for cluster ammunitions," said Grethe Oestern, a policy advisor at the Norwegian People's Aid organisation and a co-chair of the CMC.
"So that's not just a theoretical possibility at all that we could see the US onboard this treaty sometime in the future," she added.
In 2006, Obama voted in the US Senate to ban the use of cluster munitions in heavily populated areas, but in the end the motion was rejected.
The Oslo Convention is nonetheless expected to stigmatise the use of the weapon even by non-signatory countries, according to activists.
While the United States, Russia and China "seem to have an allergy to international law in general," there are signs that "the stigma against this weapon is already working," Nash said.
NATO's decision not to use cluster bombs, including in Afghanistan, and the lightning-quick denial from Moscow when it was accused of using the munitions against Georgia in the August war shows that these countries also find the weapon "morally unacceptable," Nash said.
"Even big countries like Russia don't want to be associated in the media with having used cluster bombs."
BRUSSELS,
The European Parliament on Thursday urged European Union (EU) member states to sign and ratify the Convention of Cluster Munitions (CCM) as soon as possible and to take steps toward implementation even before it is signed and ratified.
The resolution was adopted with 471 votes in favor, 6 against and 21 abstentions in Strasbourg, France.
The European Parliament requests EU member states not to use, invest in, stockpile, produce, transfer or export cluster munitions even though the CCM has not entered into force.
EU member states which have used cluster munitions are called on to provide assistance to affected populations and to provide technical and financial assistance for the clearance and destruction of cluster munitions remnants.
The European Parliament urged the European Commission to increase financial assistance through all available instruments to communities and individuals affected by unexploded cluster munitions.
Cluster bombs scatter over a wide area when dropped from the air or used in artillery shells. Many do not explode and it is often children who pick them up, with devastating consequences.
The charity Handicap International estimates that 98 percent of the victims of cluster bombs are civilians, of whom 27 percent are children.
EU member states are also requested to refrain from taking action, which might circumvent or jeopardize the CCM and its provisions. In particular, the parliament called on all EU members not to adopt, endorse or subsequently ratify a possible Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) Protocol allowing for the use of cluster munitions which would not be compatible with the CCM.
Timeline and Use
Laos still paying the price of Vietnam war
Cluster bomb survivor Ta with examples of the weapons that maimed him. Photo by Stanislas Fradelizi.
Xieng Khouang, Laos –
Imagine growing up in a country where the equivalent of a B52 planeload of cluster bombs was dropped every eight minutes for nine years. Then imagine seeing your children and grandchildren being killed and maimed by the same bombs, three decades after the war is over.
Welcome to Laos, a country with the unwanted claim to fame of being the most bombed nation per capita in the world. Between 1964 and 1973, the U.S. military dropped more than 2 million tons of explosive ordnance, including an estimated 260 million cluster munitions – also known as bombie in Laos.
To put this into perspective, this is more bombs than fell on Europe during World War Two.
The U.S. bombing was largely aimed at destroying enemy supply lines during the Vietnam war which passed through Laos. The war ended 35 years ago, yet the civilian casualties continue.
According to aid agency Handicap International, as many as 12,000 civilians have been killed or maimed since, and there are hundreds of new casualties every year.
Take Ta, a father of seven who lives in a remote village in Khammoune Province in southern Laos. One morning four years ago, he saw something that looked like a bombie. He knew it was dangerous, but he had also heard that the explosive inside could be used for catching fish, so he decided to touch it with a stick. That one small tap cost him both arms and an eye. Ta had to travel nine hours to get medical help. He sold his livestock to pay hospital bills, and when he ran out of things to sell, he went home.
Ta says he had to 'eat like a dog' for four years, before non-governmental organisation COPE provided him with prosthetic arms. Now he is able to help in small domestic chores.
When $50 is too much:
Then there is 31-year-old Yee Lee. He was digging around in his garden in August when suddenly his hoe came down hard on a bombie. He lost both legs and two fingers.
I met Lee at Xieng Khouang provincial hospital where he was having a moulding done for prosthetic legs. He was unsure and worried about what the future held. "I have five very young children, and my wife is six months pregnant," he said. For now, his elderly parents and younger brother help his family. "I hope, with the prosthetic leg, to get back to work either in the field or around the house."
Unfortunately, most survivors are unable to continue physical work, even if, like Lee, they receive free treatment and prosthetic limbs from agencies such as COPE and World Education . A prosthetic leg that can last up to two years costs as little as $50, yet in a country consistently ranked one of the region's poorest and where almost 30 percent of the population live on less than $1 a day, this is more than most families can afford. Worse, loss of a breadwinner means loss of income and increased poverty.
Cluster bombs are dropped by planes or fired by mortars. They open mid-air releasing multiple explosive sub-munitions that scatter over a large area. These bomblets are usually the size of tennis balls.
Aid agencies say the indiscriminate nature of these weapons and the fact many bomblets fail to go off mean they have a devastating humanitarian impact.
On December 3 this year, over 100 nations will sign an international treaty to ban the use of cluster bombs.
Legacy of Vietnam War:
In Laos, it's thought that around 30 percent of bombies failed to explode on impact, leaving about 80 million live munitions lying on or under the soil which has posed a serious threat to people's lives and livelihood.
So far, fewer than 400,000 bombies have been cleared, a meagre 0.47 per cent. The United Nations estimates almost half of all cluster munition victims are from Laos.
Even with community awareness programmes run by national authority UXO Laos, with support from numerous aid agencies, the injuries and deaths continue. Sometimes people touch the bombies out of ignorance, other times it's out of curiosity (children) or for economic reasons (adults).
With scrap metal going at $1 to $3 a kilogramme, some people collect war remnants to sell, and this includes unexploded ordnance.
In a private foundry on the outskirts of Phonsavanh, the capital of Xieng Khouang, the humanitarian organisation Mines Advisory Group (MAG) sorted through five years' worth of scrap metal, and discovered over 24,000 live items, including 500 cluster munitions.
Xieng Khouang, in northern Laos, is one of the most affected areas – more than 500,000 tons of bombs were dropped here.
The mountainous and beautiful terrain is marred by craters of all sizes – locals liken it to the surface of the moon – and littered with metal shrapnel.
Children are at constant risk. In a small village school 20 minutes from the provincial capital, 248 bombies were found in a 4,200 sq metre area.
The province is also famous for the Plain of Jars – a vast plateau of ancient stone jars whose origins remain a mystery. But the amount of war debris scattered between the giant jars has seriously hampered archaeologists' efforts to find out more about them.
David Hayter, country director of MAG, says the sad truth is that Laos will never be 100 percent rid of cluster bombs. "The priority is in clearing the land where people are living and working," he said. "We are teaching them to learn to live safely within the environment. It's a mixture of education and clearance."
More than 100 nations have reached an agreement on a treaty which would ban current designs of cluster bombs. Diplomats meeting in Dublin agreed to back an international ban on the use of the controversial weapons following 10 days of talks. But some of the world's main producers and stockpilers – including the US, Russia and China – oppose the move. Prime Minister Gordon Brown called it a "big step forward to make the world a safer place".
He announced earlier that Britain would be taking cluster bombs out of service. The final draft of the treaty went before delegates from a total of 109 countries on Wednesday afternoon.
How a Cluster Bomb Works (Source: Handicap International)
Cluster bombs are complex weapons. The following sequence explains its functioning and why bomblets cover a large area.
Step 1: The cluster bomb CBU-87 is dropped from a plane. It weighs about 430 kg and carries about 200 bomblets. This bomb can be dropped from a wide range of aircrafts from many different countries. The bomb can fly about 9 miles by itself before the bomblets are released.
Step 2: A short time before the bomblets are released the cluster bombs begin to spin. The canister opens at an altitude between 100m and 1000m. The height, velocity and rotation speed determine what area will be covered by the bomblets.
Step 3: Each bomblet is the size of a soft drink can. They deploy a little parachute that stabilizes them and makes sure that they descend with their nose down. Each of the bomblets holds hundreds of metal pieces, which can pierce armour.
Step 4: Depending on the altitude from which the bomblets were released and on the wind conditions, the bomblets can cover an area of up to 200m by 400 m. When the bomblets explode, they cause injury and damage across a wide area. The blast of one bomblet can cause deadly shrapnel injuries of in a radius of up to 25 metres.
This map shows the area of Trafalgar Square, London. It illustrates the radius of the bomblets. One cluster bomb could spread bomblets covering the red area. The green area shows the radius in which the bomblets could cause fatal injuries.
'Bomblets'
Cluster bombs have been used in countries including Cambodia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Lebanon.They are made up of a big container which opens in mid-air, dropping hundreds of smaller individual sub-munitions, or "bomblets", across a wide area.
All politicians around the world should be "Urged" to sign and ratify this Treaty.
Don't hesitate to give your "Government" a call or e-mail them.
Some times a bit of encouragement is needed.
on November 24, 2008 at 2:51 am Comments (1)
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