Lebanon: more than 750 cluster bomb sites; 1 Million unexploded cluster bomblets (Dropped by Israel, US made)

October 23, 2006 edition | A call to abolish cluster bombsLike land mines, they can plague affected areas for years, and should be banned. | By Curt Goering | LEBANON

"Watch out! Watch out!" shouted my Lebanese colleague as I approached an unexploded cluster bomb near a soccer field in the southern Lebanese village of Soultaniye. As I tried to get a close-up photograph, he warned me to proceed cautiously so my shoes wouldn't inadvertently sprinkle dirt on the bomblet or otherwise disturb it, causing it to explode.

This close call came during a recent Amnesty International mission to assess the impact on civilians of this summer's war between Hizbullah and Israel. At the United Nation's Mine Action Coordination Center, I learned of Hussein Qaduh, a student who had been critically injured in a cluster-bomb explosion the previous evening.

One of his friends showed me where Hussein had been injured. More than a dozen unexploded bomblets still lay on the playing field and the path beside it; the adjacent wall and houses bore the signature pockmarks of exploded cluster bombs. Strewn across the spot where Hussein fell were stained pages from a notebook that villagers used to try to stem his bleeding. In the nearby village of Majdel Silim, villagers were eager, even insistent, to show me where bomblets had landed - on balconies, outside front doors, in trees and gardens, and even inside homes. A mother whose son had suffered cluster-bomb injuries pointed to the tree branches above us.

Tragically, the problem of unexploded ordnance, especially cluster bombs, has emerged as perhaps the conflict's most enduring legacy, one that will hamper southern Lebanon's recovery for years. The United Nations has identified more than 750 sites where cluster bombs were fired, with estimates indicating that at least 1 million unexploded cluster bomblets litter the villages, fields, gardens, and orchards of southern Lebanon. ...

Palestine: IS IT possible to force a whole people to submit to foreign occupation by starving it?

The Great Experiment

By Uri Avnery

10/14/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- IS IT possible to force a whole people to submit to foreign occupation by starving it?

That is, certainly, an interesting question. So interesting, indeed, that the governments of Israel and the United States, in close cooperation with Europe, are now engaged in a rigorous scientific experiment in order to obtain a definitive answer.

The laboratory for the experiment is the Gaza Strip, and the guinea pigs are the million and a quarter Palestinians living there.

IN ORDER to meet the required scientific standards, it was necessary first of all to prepare the laboratory.

That was done in the following way: First, Ariel Sharon uprooted the Israeli settlements that were stuck there.

After all, you can't conduct a proper experiment with pets roaming around the laboratory. It was done with "determination and sensitivity", tears flowed like water, the soldiers kissed and embraced the evicted settlers, and again it was shown that the Israeli army is the most-most in the world.

With the laboratory cleaned, the next phase could begin: all entrances and exits were hermetically sealed, in order to eliminate disturbing influences from the world outside.

That was done without difficulty. Successive Israeli governments have prevented the building of a harbor in Gaza, and the Israeli navy sees to it that no ship approaches the shore. The splendid international airport, built during the Oslo days, was bombed and shut down. The entire Strip was closed off by a highly effective fence, and only a few crossings remained, all but one controlled by the Israeli army.

There remained a sole connection with the outside world:

the Rafah border crossing to Egypt. It could not just be sealed off, because that would have exposed the Egyptian regime as a collaborator with Israel. A sophisticated solution was found: to all appearances the Israeli army left the crossing and turned it over to an international supervision team. Its members are nice guys, full of good intentions, but in practice they are totally dependent on the Israeli army, which oversees the crossing from a nearby control room. The international supervisors live in an Israeli kibbutz and can reach the crossing only with Israeli consent.
So everything was ready for the experiment.

THE SIGNAL for its beginning was given after the Palestinians had held spotlessly democratic elections, under the supervision of former President Jimmy Carter.

George Bush was enthusiastic: his vision of bringing democracy to the Middle East was coming true.

But the Palestinians flunked the test. Instead of electing "good Arabs", devotees of the United States, they voted for very bad Arabs, devotees of Allah. Bush felt insulted. But the Israeli government was ecstatic: after the Hamas victory, the Americans and Europeans were ready to take part in the experiment. It could start:

The United States and the European Union announced the stoppage of all donations to the Palestinian Authority, since it was "controlled by terrorists". Simultaneously, the Israeli government cut off the flow of money.

To understand the significance of this: according to the "Paris Protocol" (the economic annex of the Oslo agreement) the Palestinian economy is part of the Israeli customs system. This means that Israel collects the duties for all the goods that pass through Israel to the Palestinian territories - actually, there is no other route. After deducting a fat commission, Israel is obligated to turn the money over to the Palestinian Authority.

When the Israeli government refuses to pass on this money, which belongs to the Palestinians, it is, simply put, robbery in broad daylight. But when one robs "terrorists", who is going to complain? ...

655,000 people have died in Iraq as a result of the US-led coalition invasion, according to the largest scientific analysis yet

Enormous death toll of Iraq invasion revealed | 13:32 11 October 2006 | NewScientist.com news service | Debora MacKenzie

Around 655,000 people have died in Iraq as a result of the US-led coalition invasion, according to the largest scientific analysis yet. That is 2.5% of the country's entire population.

The study was conducted by US and Iraqi scientists to determine how many Iraqis have died since the invasion in March 2003.

Various estimates have been made of Iraqi casualties, ranging from 48,000 to 126,000. But these have been based on reporting by the press, hospitals or the military, and tend to underestimate the dead, the researchers claim.

Gilbert Burnham and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, US, and Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, Iraq, surveyed 1849 households with a total of 12,801 inhabitants, in all but two of the 18 governorates across Iraq. The researchers asked about births, deaths and cause of death. They did not discriminate between civilian and combatants.

The death rate before the invasion was a fairly normal 5.5 per thousand people per year. Since March 2003, that figure has averaged 13.2, the researchers found. More worrying, the death rate has risen every year since the invasion: this year reaching 19.8 per thousand people per year, a near-fourfold increase over pre-invasion levels.

Critics commenting on the study say the number of deaths in the families interviewed – 82 reported before the invasion, 547 afterwards – was too few to extrapolate to the whole country. But the researchers insist they have made statistical compensations for their sample size to pre-empt these criticisms.

They estimate that there were at least 392,976 excess deaths – those that would not have occurred, has there been no war – in Iraq since 2003, and possibly as many as 942,636. The research confirmed the results of the same group’s 2004 study. ...

US bankrolling Pakistan's military ruler Pervez Musharraf $70-80 million a month ...payola has embarrassed Washington

'US paying Pak $70-80 million a month'Add to Clippings | Chidanand Rajghatta | [ 29 Sep, 2006 0251hrs ISTTIMES NEWS NETWORK ]

WASHINGTON: A British analyst has stirred a hornet's nest by revealing that the United States is bankrolling Pakistan's military ruler Pervez Musharraf to the extent of $70-80 million a month, adding fuel to the dictator's incendiary visit to the West this month.

The unnamed analyst has made the disclosure in a British ministry of defence think-tank paper that has subsequently been disowned by London as "not representing the views of the MoD or the government."

While much attention has been drawn to the analyst's contention that Pakistan's spy agency ISI is supporting terrorism, the portion about the payola for Musharraf, as reported by BBC, has embarrassed Washington, which is already chafing from Musharraf's own disclosure that the US paid bounty money to the Pakistan government for handing over wanted Al Qaida terrorists. ...