No Cluster Conscience
Filed Under Environment, Just Plain War, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
The horror of these things — cluster bombs.
Sunday, Aug. 1, marks beginning of an international ban on those terrible weapons — Cluster munitions explode in mid-air to release dozens — sometimes hundreds — of smaller “bomblets” across large areas. Because the final location of these scattered smaller bombs is difficult to control, they can cause large numbers of civilian casualties — and a treaty in which the US still has not recognized.
(Illustration found here).
In the the not-so-distant past, cluster bombs have been used in Cambodia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Lebanon.
The Convention on Cluster Munitions started in February 1997, in which 46 nations issued the “Oslo Declaration,” and a final draft of the treaty was adopted in May 2008 at a meeting in Dublin, Ireland.
One hundred seven nations, including seven of 14 countries that have used cluster bombs and 17 of the 34 countries that have produced them signed the original document — which prohibits the use, production and transfer of cluster munitions and obliges those that have ratified to destroy stockpiles.
Some nasty, dumb-ass countries have steered clear of the treaty: China, Russia, India, Israel, Pakistan, Brazil and, of course, the good-ole US of A.
Two years ago, at the offset of the ban process, the US Pentagon declared: “While the United States shares the humanitarian concerns of those in Dublin, cluster munitions have demonstrated military utility, and their elimination from US stockpiles would put the lives of our soldiers and those of our coalition partners at risk.”
Bullshit — U.S. field artillery used them on the ground in Iraq, and a shitload is still hanging about.
From a USATODAY investigative piece in December 2003:
The Pentagon presented a misleading picture during the war of the extent to which cluster weapons were being used and of the civilian casualties they were causing.
Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters on April 25, six days before President Bush declared major combat operations over, that the United States had used 1,500 cluster weapons and caused one civilian casualty.
It turns out he was referring only to cluster weapons dropped from the air, not those fired by U.S. ground forces.
In fact, the United States used 10,782 cluster weapons, according to the declassified executive summary of a report compiled by U.S. Central Command, which oversaw military operations in Iraq.
Centcom sent the figures to the Joint Chiefs in response to queries from USA TODAY and others, but details of the report remain secret.
No wonder the Pentagon hates-to-loathing entities like WikiLeaks.
The US has a shameful history with those weapons: In Vietnam, between 1964 and 1973, more than 2 million tons of explosive ordnance, including an estimated 260 million cluster munitions were deployed, and with reportedly about a 30 percent failure rate, leaves about two-thirds of the country still mega-dangerous.
Although President Obama signed an export moratorium on the weapons last year, and the US military claims it won’t use cluster munitions with a failure rate of more than one percent (yip-pee) by the end of 2018 — eight frickin’ years from now.
How long does it take to figure this shit out?
Even the nit-wit, corrupt president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, signed the ban in December 2008, and supposedly the US hasn’t used cluster bombs since 2003, but this is, of course, the weapon that just won’t stop killing.
In southern Lebanon, where a quick-brutal conflict took place in 2006, the area is still triggered by all the unspent munitions that’s literally been spread across the countryside.
Cluster bombs still contaminate roughly 80 percent of the farm land and the forests. The bombs lurk underground, in between rocks, in waste pipes, on trees or in dry stone walls. They are everywhere, spread all over the place.
The Israeli army used munitions that were 35 years old, says Mohamed Scheikh from the center for minesweeping with the Lebanese army.
“Therefore the number of duds is very high. In some areas it’s 100 percent — none of the discharged bombs exploded right away,” he explains. “43.6 square kilometers (16.8 square miles) in Southern Lebanon were affected. So far, we’ve managed to clean up half of it already.”
Cluster bombs are malicious weapons.
They do not have a due date: “They are always ready to explode. And the longer they remain underground, the more sensitive and dangerous they get. Due to heavy rain and torrents they change their position,” he says.
Obama should do more — his whole gig is change — and sign the ban on these terrible, senseless and civilian-killing weapons.
And sure as shit not wait until 20-freakin’-18 to do something.
Out Drankin’
Filed Under Cloud gazing, Musings | Leave a Comment
As the economy tanks, people seem to be drinking their financial problems away, as research indicates more US peoples are hitting the bottle, with more white guys getting bombed than any other ethnic group.
Free, white and drunk:
Whites are more likely than blacks and Hispanics to get drunk. Twenty percent of white men drank to intoxication at least once a month, compared with just 13 percent of black men.
In Gallup poll released Friday, 67 percent of US adults claim to down at least one alcoholic beverage on occasion, the highest level in 15 years — and 72 percent of the those aged 18-to-54 appreciated alcohol.
(Illustration found here).
Income also apparently has played a factor in bellying up to the bar.
Gallup’s poll reported 81 percent of people making $75,000 a year enjoyed booze, but only 46 percent of those making less than $20,000 said they drank — no credit.
In order to survive in an employment environment where there’s five people after one job opening, booze, weed and just-plain bad behavior becomes the “new normal” for daily life.
The bubble-bursting of the American Dream alters perception, finances shift and life get’s a bit dicey:
“I’m seeing an increase in bad lifestyle choices,” confirms Jonathan Alpert, a New York psychotherapist and relationship columnist.
“People are staying up until the wee hours of the morning, there’s an increase in smoking, drinking and sexual behaviors like surfing porn and using hookers.”
…
People are also shoplifting more.
According to the Global Retail Theft Barometer study, stealing has risen 6% during the past year. Retailers attribute the increase in five-fingered discounting to the soured economy because of the items being pocketed–fresh meat, for instance, is a particular favorite.
As someone involved in retail liquor sales, it’s the economy, dumb-ass, and drink up!
Banging the War Bong
Filed Under history, Just Plain War | 1 Comment
Even as thousands of documents reveal a beyond-quagmire US entanglement in Afghanistan, the core entity of any kind of peace or accord in the war — Afghan police and soldiers — is a nothing more than a deadly, brutal joke.
A joke, however, without a punchline.
Check this video from Aljazeera English as a couple of Afghan police hit a big, smoking bong before joining troops of the US 82nd Airborne for a patrol; first one guy tokes up, and then the other, choking and off to war, Soviet rifles straped across their shoulders — without the backstory and hardware, the scene could be of a couple of dudes getting ready to party.
Says Sgt. Ryan Gloyer on loaded local cops:
“In the past we’ve had some issues with some ANSF (Afghan National Security Forces), getting high on patrol.
I wouldn’t say I feel threatened, they just act silly.
Like anybody who smokes weed, they act ridiculous, hard to get them to focus, they won’t stay quiet, just got the giggles.
It’s pretty difficult.”
The video was filmed by members of the 82nd Airborne, and according to Aljazeera’s The Asia Blog: “I hope a million people see it,” said one, who understood the twisted hilarity of it all.
A wide audience did get a view: Jon Stewart on the Daily Show played a small portion of the video — the most meaningful portion– at the end of a routine Wednesday night. See it here.
A ‘twisted hilarity’ coated in extreme-black humor.
The documents from WikiLeaks made public last weekend reveals this little problem with the Afghan police and army is, in the parlayed words of Joe Biden, ‘one fuckin’ big deal.’
From a New York Times analysis of the documents:
The reports paint a disheartening picture of the Afghan police and soldiers at the center of the American exit strategy.
The Pentagon is spending billions to train the Afghan forces to secure the country.
But the police have proved to be an especially risky investment and are often described as distrusted, even loathed, by Afghan civilians.
The reports recount episodes of police brutality, corruption petty and large, extortion and kidnapping.
Some police officers defect to the Taliban.
Others are accused of collaborating with insurgents, arms smugglers and highway bandits.
Afghan police officers defect with trucks or weapons, items captured during successful ambushes or raids.
Drugs, too.
And it ain’t just tokin’ a bong, but some scary shit.
From CNN:
Illegal drugs appear in several other instances to have fueled much of the internal Afghan disputes.
In March 2009, a gunfight broke out after “a significant proportion” of Afghan Border Police at a patrol base were “high on opium and having a party.”
The shooting left at least one person dead. The stoned police officers apparently had an argument with an Afghan interpreter at his temporary quarters.
Shots were fired, leaving one policeman dead. British forces were “alerted and arrived on the scene to deal with the incident and treat the casualty.”
It was unclear who fired the fatal shot.
There is only one real option.
Exit stage right now.
The WikiLeaks documents were first furnished in the US to the New York Times, in the UK to The Guardian, and in Germany, Der Spiegel.
The Germans took it to heart.
From Spiegel Online:
The German government, NATO and the West shouldn’t wait that long.
Together they should realize — and admit — that the war in Afghanistan is not going to end in success.
We have failed. The war has been lost.
The country that we leave behind will not be pacified. It is possible that we could have been successful had we understood earlier how the country works.
But now, we are no longer a part of the solution — increasingly, we have become part of the problem. It is best just to leave now, before additional blood is spilled.
The secret war logs given by WikiLeaks to SPIEGEL confirm as much.
Sorry to say, however, that stoned dog won’t hunt.
Friends
Filed Under Cloud gazing, Musings | Leave a Comment
Lack of friendship is supposedly worse on your well being than a Quadruple Bypass Burger from the Heart Attack Grill.
From Reuters on a report released Tuesday by a research team at Brigham Young University:
Having good social relationships — friends, marriage or children — may be every bit as important to a healthy lifespan as quitting smoking, losing weight or taking certain medications…
…
“A lack of social relationships was equivalent to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day,” psychologist Julianne Holt-Lunstad, who led the study, said in a telephone interview.
Her team conducted a meta-analysis of studies that examine social relationships and their effects on health. They looked at 148 studies that covered more than 308,000 people for their analysis, published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine at http://www.plosmedicine.org.
…
Having low levels of social interaction was equivalent to being an alcoholic, was more harmful than not exercising and was twice as harmful as obesity.
Social relationships had a bigger impact on premature death than getting an adult vaccine to prevent pneumonia, than taking drugs for high blood pressure and far more important than exposure to air pollution, they found.
Yet, the techno-irony:
Her team found some troubling evidence that Americans are becoming more isolated, and thus losing the support and care that love and friendship provide.
“For instance, trends reveal reduced intergenerational living, greater social mobility, delayed marriage, dual-career families, increased single-residence households, and increased age-related disabilities,” they wrote.
“More specifically, over the last two decades there has been a three-fold increase in the number of Americans who report having no confidant,” they added.
“Such findings suggest that despite increases in technology and globalization that would presumably foster social connections, people are becoming increasingly more socially isolated.”
Modern life seems in itself, a “feedback loop,” which creates or makes an environment or a situation far-even worse, as there’s more communication but far less friendship.
So, if you always dine alone on a menu of burgers and fries, you’re one screwed puppy.
Warrior Cultures With A Shitload of Corruption
Filed Under Just Plain War, Madness | Leave a Comment
The US is getting the shaft in war making.
Two invasions and two bloody, nasty quagmires.
Rare is the Maureen Dowd column that is more than pancake face powder, or a shoe-horned turn at national politics, and rare still is a piece with insight into the US’ two beleaguered faraway wars.
In her column this morning, Dowd touches upon the deathly maze of Afghanistan and how the US is up against some terrible and experienced fighters.
The money graph:
We invaded two countries, and allied with a third — all renowned as masters at double-dealing.
And, now lured into their mazes, we still don’t have the foggiest idea, shrouded in the fog of wars, how these cultures work.
Before we went into Iraq and Afghanistan, both places were famous for warrior cultures. And, indeed, their insurgents are world class.
Along with the IEDs, the savage car bombs and a wicked, back-stabbing insurgency, is a shitload of cruel corruption, a corruption so deep, the the majority of Afghans would take the Taliban over the supposedly
legitimate government in Kabul.
Indeed, the culture of corruption is a way of life, according to some of those 92,000 documents leaked Sunday by the whistleblower website, WikiLeaks.
Why is the US there?
There have been 1,207 US military deaths in Afghanistan and to fuel the conflict there requires gasoline at $85 a gallon — enough said.
The US needs to do a quick shit out of dodge, eagle pull before the situation gets worse.