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POPSIstiklal The oil that was their independence, has become their chain.
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POPSTell candidates to sign Cluster Bomb Treaty!
Letters to the candidates at link. Here's the sad truth: The United States is the largest producer, stockpiler, and user of cluster bombs in the history of the world. When 111 nations gathered recently to draft a treaty to ban these horrific weapons, the US was conspicuously absent. We need to right this wrong. But the leading presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, have been silent on whether they will endorse the global cluster bomb ban. We need a President who will do the right thing. Click here to ask all the presidential candidates to commit to sign the global cluster bomb ban. http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/1493/t/2765/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=2218 Cluster bombs are designed to open in mid-air, dispersing hundreds of smaller "bomblets." The resulting blasts kill indiscriminately, spraying over an area roughly the size of three football fields. Approximately 30% of ordnance from each bomb will fail to explode on impact, creating virtu
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POPS111 Nations Ban Cluster Bombs; US Not Among Them The piece goes on: "The country that thinks of using cluster munitions next week should think twice, because it would look very bad," said Espen Barth Eide, Deputy Defense Minister of Norway, which began the negotiations last year and will host a treaty-signing ceremony Dec. 3. "We're certain that nations thinking of using cluster munitions won't want to face the international condemnation that will rain down upon them, because the weapons have been stigmatized now," said Steve Goose, arms control director of New York-based Human Rights Watch, who was involved in the talks. Maybe the next US admin. will be moved by this, but not Bush. Can't shame the shameless.
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POPS100+ countries adopt cluster bomb ban in Dublin This despite the absence of the United States, China, Russia, Israel, India and Pakistan -- all major cluster bomb stockpilers and producers. Supporters said they hoped the treaty would pressure them to change track or shame them into not using cluster bombs. "We all know that there are important states not present, but I am convinced that we will have succeeded in stigmatising any future use of cluster munitions," Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin said.
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POPSUS: Cluster Bomb Ban would hurt "humanitarian work" Perhaps there'd be less of it to do! Rather than helping craft the treaty, US ducks the conference and criticizes - as do Russia and China, the other manufacturers of cluster bombs. One wonders what role defense industry moguls (who make big bucks from cluster bombs) have played in American position.
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POPSCluster Bomb Olympics With White House Backdrop (No, not the Onion) Why: To generate public awareness of cluster bombs just two days prior to the negotiation of a global cluster bomb ban treaty in Dublin, Ireland on May 19. More than half the world’s nations will attend, but the U.S. government has refused to participate. Who: Organized by the US Campaign to Ban Landmines and co-sponsored by Amnesty International, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, CIVIC, Democracy in Action, Friends Committee on National Legislation (Quakers), Jewish Voice for Peace, Network of Spiritual Progressives, and Veterans for Peace. The event is open to participation by all ages. Those in attendance can sign a petition urging the Pentagon to stop using cluster bombs, which cause unacceptable harm to civilians. The U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines (USCBL) is a coalition of approximately 500 U.S.-based human rights, humanitarian, faith-based, children's, peace, disability, veterans', medical, development, academic, and environmental organizations dedicated to a
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POPSThe Gaza bombshell The hypocrisy of the USA is astounding. It recognises the "independence" of Kosovo led by the UCK (Kosovo Liberation Army), yet encourages boycotts of Hamas-led Gaza. It complains about genocide in Darfur, yet stands idly by while Israil rains cluster bombs on the children of Lebanon.
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POPSAmericanism: The good, the bad and the ugly The famous go-to-war-for “American way of life,” underlines America’s persistent claims of a monopoly on morality. What is it, this American morality? This righteousness? Is it our religious roots in the fable of the Puritan settlers, those super religious people who in their hardships were bigots, perhaps also practitioners of incest and racists soon morphing into dogmatic chauvinists who early-on labeled their dissidents and different-thinkers witches and demons. The same Americanism initiated then which today fosters the rights of the rich to become richer, the strong to trample the weak . Meanwhile, out in the empire, as long as it is distant, the Puritan legacy instills blindness to the use of cluster bombs from the stratosphere and hidden torture in places with foreign names like Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib . . . and while our neighbors in Haiti eat dirt, literally.
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POPSLaos: U.S. war remains still killing 30 years after Vietnam War
More: The State Department has requested $1.4 million to fund efforts to clear unexploded ordnance in Laos in 2008, less than half the amount Washington provided this year. A U.S. diplomat in Vientiane, the Laotian capital, said he was told to expect only $900,000 next year U.S. B-52 bombers and other warplanes flew more than half a million missions over Laos and dropped between 2 million and 3 million tons of ordnance Nong lost his 18-year-old wife, Mee, in 1986 when the couple gathered with other villagers around a fire one night to chat about the day's big news, an attack by a wild pig. As they usually did for important gatherings, the women built a fire to warm a pot of rice wine. Problem was, one of the legs in the tripod was an unexploded rocket-propelled grenade, which blew up. As Nong, 50, recalled the day, several neighbors took seats on logs and stones in his dirt yard to show missing fingers, scarred legs and arms, and talk of the curse all around them.
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POPSMost War Crimes Were Israeli in Lebanon War
A shocking aspect of the war was Israel's firing of at least a million cluster bombs, old munitions supplied by the US with a failure rate as high as 50%, in the last days of fighting. The tiny bomblets, effectively small land mines, were left littering south Lebanon after the UN-brokered ceasefire, and are reported so far to have killed 30 civilians and wounded at least another 180. Israeli commanders have admitted firing 1.2 million such bomblets, while the UN puts the figure closer to 3 million. Israel's use of cluster bombs has been described as a war crime by human rights organizations. According to the rules, the bombs should have been used only in open and unpopulated areas – although with such a high failure rate, this would have done little to prevent later civilian casualties. A leaked army report to the Israeli media, discovered that the cluster bombs had been fired into Lebanese population centers in gross violation of international law.
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POPSBBC: Israel "indiscriminate and disproportionate" in Lebanon It called some of Israel's military actions in Lebanon during the war "indiscriminate and disproportionate". It particularly highlighted the attacks on United Nations observers and the dropping of more than 3.5 million cluster bombs (90% of the total) in the 72 hours after the UN Security Council passed the resolution which effectively ended the war.
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POPSIsrael denies UN info on Custer bombs in Lebanon UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon ..."I call on the Government of Israel once again to provide this information to the United Nations." 44. While there has been a decrease in the number of casualty figures in recent months, there have been 22 additional incidents among civilians since my last report, with one person killed and 21 injured. Since the cessation of hostilities came into effect, a total of 203 civilians have been injured (180) or killed (23) as a result of cluster munitions. I regret to have to report that, despite a number of attempts by UN senior officials to obtain information regarding the firing data of cluster munitions utilized during last summer's conflict, Israel has yet to provide this critical data. I call on the Government of Israel once again to provide this information to the United Nations.
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