Was that a small typo in my title? No. Anders Fogh Rasmussen is Denmark's prime minister.
This morning, on the Danish Ritzau News Bureau, this wire came to my attention:
Translated: "According to local police, 39 year old Lebanese farm worker, Hisham el-Ghossein, lost his life while working outside his village of Quantara when he stepped on an unexploded cluster bomb. The bomb was used by the Israelis during the short-lived Hizbollah war of 2006. Cluster bombs spread mini-bombs from a container, and unexploded ordinance can for years explode with the slightest touch. [Risk management calls this prospect the ordinance's "dud-rate."] According to the UN, Israel cast over a million cluster bombs into Lebanon in that one-month period." And many UN sources suggest that the actual count of dropped cluster bombs by Israel in that one-month period is over 4 million, with perhaps up to 40% of them having not exploded.
There are many types of cluster bombs, including even those that carry propaganda printouts and are spread over an urban region. Even to this day, some 300 Vietnamese will die each year due to the unexploded cluster bombs from the Vietnam War.
Former Defense Secretary William Cohen stated that by 2005, the dud-rate for these munitions would be down to 1%.
However, according to the best objective experts, the dud-rate for the cluster bombs the US Air Force has dumped on Iraq and Afghanistan comes with a dud rate that's 13% at best . The US has simply dipped into its manufacturers' older stockpiles.
In Europe earlier last month (May, 2008), there was a general consensus to ban the use of cluster bombs. The US and China bitterly oppose such a measure, as does Pakistan, India... and Denmark.
Yes, you heard right. The Danish government of Fogh Rasmussen was one of the few nations not to approve such a measure and insist that it must be able to use these bombs in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. The nearly 30,000 cluster bombs in the Danish arsenal are part of Bush's legacy in Danish politics, which has turned on its head in the last 7 years.
Meanwhile, what about Lebanese farm worker Hisham el-Ghossein's family? Do we dare to personalize war in this way? See ourselves as its active participants, in those who suffer, by whom we empower in politics and the special interests that sit behind the products you buy and the means by which you make those purchases? Cluster bombs create terror in so many different ways rather than fight it. Hisham probably had many who cared for and loved him, and whom many depended upon. That a modern, democratic nation could use such an instrument of terror upon an entire region's innocent population just to settle a score is a fact that so easily can be exploited by al Quaida and Hezbollha, as they seek recruits.
Many American and European openly traded public funds invest in the manufacture of cluster bombs. For example, Danica Pension Fund, one of Europe's largest retirement funds and a branch of the largest bank in Denmark, Danske Bank, has come under fire from the Red Cross for its investment in cluster bomb manufacturing by Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and L-3 Communications. This is precisely the military industrial complex scenario that Republican president Eisenhower warned us of in his farewell speech of January, 1961, echoed again by Democratic President Kennedy, just prior to his assasination. Those last two links will take you to short Youtube videos of those speeches.
How each of us pay insurance premiums, purchase our credit cards, and generally do every-day banking business has a lot to do with Hisham el-Ghossein's untimely death in Lebanon, and the countless others now in Iraq and Afghanistan. And of course, who you vote for in November. My vote goes to Obama.
Both Hillary and McCain voted against the ban and supported Bush's virtually unilateral world stance that cluster bombs must not be outlawed, and voted with the same old status quo, 70-30.
Here is yet another example of how US politics so deeply affect the lives of everyone on this planet.
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Comments: 70
We are active participants in these wars. We all like to play victims when, say the brother of this kid in this picture, turns around and become a Jihadhist. Excuse, he has no reason to want to harm people who did this to his brother whoever that might be (Israel in this case).
Our officials vote on these things, we put our money with companies manufacturing these weapons, and turn around and act like the good people against those "who hate our way of life"
What a farce.
No word of rebuke for those groups I see either. It sure is easy looking at the world in your way I guess. Far fewer bad guys.
The point here is that carpet bombing like this winds up doing one thing, which the Romans were famous for. Salting an entire civilian region, with something rather more terrorizing than salt.
But we the people and "we" as in government (we are who we vote to lead) need to work smarter defeating al Quaida (and the jealousy that breed terrorist groups) so no more attacks occure on US soil.
And working smarter may or may not be wrapped up in a cluster bomb.
BTW, I didn't see any reference to land mines, (which are probably much worst,) as they are left behind on purpose and not the result of what our best technology can produce.
I do not believe in "polarization" as in taking extreme sides on issues, but if I must, I am more than proud to take the more humanitarian side than the folks like Charles here are so proud to take ... which really comes from a pathetic fear of those they WANT their "protectors" (military) to "kill for them". What a mental pathology.
Wars somewhere, anywhere, work to the advantage of the investors in that military industrial complex in that, as mentioned, the "older weapons stocks" must be used up before their "shelf life date" expires requiring expensive disposal otherwise. Wars are GOOD for BUSINESS ... cost PLUS manufacturing is very profitable for those who invest in it all ... especially when the rest of us pay for it all with our tax dollars ...
But then here I go, sounding just like a liberal weak peacenik whiner ... just the kind of people that the Charles's of the world so hate as the real enemy as far as they are concerned, which is anyone that is NOT behind the neocon imperialism to make the world "safe" for "REAL" Americans (Big Business).
"Many American and European openly traded public funds invest in the manufacture of cluster bombs."
People are commenting on the bad effects of war, posing as innocent bystanders. Wake up folks. We are involved and that was one of the main point raised here.
Well written, important article.
America is a dual edged sword.
Our people are magnanimous, friendly and helpful.
Our political system however has done as much harm as good throughout history.
The main problem is that we are not a democracy, rather ours is a system bought and sold daily by the highest bidding special interests.
G.E., General Dynamics,etal are always among the highest bidders.
As for Bush, well volumes have been written on his criminality and treasonous ways.
An eye for an eye...and the whole world will be blind. Not just pretty words. A very real truism. At some point, we have to decide to stop killing each other's innocent civilians over the actions of military forces. A weapon like this doesn't just nuetralize hostile targets. It stays behind and kills innocent people. Maybe you consider that just unfortunate collateral damage, but perhaps you wouldn't think so if the cluster bombs were falling in your back yard.
But with so many people like you who misguide the electorate on reality, it breaks my heart to write articles such as this.
In the latest Israeli use, it was a deliberate intention to "salt" the earth because they wanted a zone of emptiness between them and their "enemies", they did NOT want any people to come back and live there because there might be combatants among them. They wanted that to be a "no mans (or no child's even) land" ...
But someone said something earlier that I had not thought of or heard of, the possibility to manufacture into those types of weapons a component that naturally decays or self dissolves in the triggering mechanism, so that after a reasonable time from use, it renders the weapon less lethal to inadvertent contact ? It seems like such a small thing to take care of ... IF ... anyone REALLY cared.
As for the guilt of all of us as to where we invest and/or put our money relative to helping those that promote war ... that can often be very hard to figure out who is involved in what ... as far as making any decisions as to a change of our own ways ...
But basically, what is needed is for every person to take self responsibility for everything they think, say, and do ... then possibly there will come a culminative "tipping point" that leads to more humane compassion for one another and less "need" for weapons and wars ... it those the most selfish that hold the most fear that causes the most hatreds that most support wars because they think their leaders will protect them.
OR ... we can just keep on making ever more deadly weapons until we all kill each other ... what goes around comes around in one form or another ... like begets like.
So Charles. I guess if the poor children don't see the bomb in time...well...thinning the herd, right? One less kid to worry about growing up to be a drain on society or threaten your perfect little world of American Righteousness.
It's not like this things are painted neon yellow to make them easy to spot. They blend in to the surroundings.
Yes, war is hell and civilians have been killed in every war. But in WWII we didn't have satellites in space that can pinpoint enemy strongholds. We didn't have the intelligence networks we have now. We didn't have the ability to communicate data in seconds. Continued use of cluster bombs is a primitive desire to hold on to a baseless method of war.
Is a bomb OK if it kills outright and on the spot? Should we ban all bombs, all guns? Is the cluster too far removed from the damage that another type of bomb does that burns a human beyond recognition for life, maims for life, or robs of arms, legs, various body parts? Should we ban airplanes because two crashed into the twin towers? How do we draw a line about what's fair in war? Nothing about war is fair. Many innocent people... women, children are killed or injured from various kinds of weapons.
Should cluster bombs go the way of the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which is sometimes referred to as the worst terror attack in history?
And, at the same time remembered as the bomb that brought the long second world war to a sudden end, thereby saving many thousands of lives.
Is war humanity's natural inclination, or can appeals to reason and moral persuasion cause nations and their leaders to act differently? The answer to this would seem more important than what weapons are fair to kill with.
I don't have answers, just questions. Seems if we could make human life sacred to all, we will have destroyed the social order that believes it is not.
President Carter, in his book, discusses Israel's first use of U.S.-supplied cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians during his presidency. The bombs had been sold to Israel with the stipulation that they only be used as defensive weapons, and Israel violated that agreement. I don't recall why Carter decided not to report this to Congress but he said if he had, there was a risk Israel could be denied future weapons.
Again in the 2006 war Israel trotted out the cluster bombs and used them extensively in the civilian areas of South Lebanon. What incensed me was that after the hostilities ceased, the U.S. military sent our troops in to pick up the bomblets.
These are insidious weapons that should be banned and, in my view, countries that refuse to do so are wrong. For some reason, either intentionally or not, many bomblets fail to explode when released from their canister and they remain a long-term risk to the general population where they have been used. Almost all the casualties from cluster bombs have been civilians.
It is a symbol of the barbaric nature of the current human animal, unfortunately, and it is one of the first things I would hope to see changed over the course of time.
Again, great article and thanks for getting the word out.
AMEN...Salud.
I could care less about your thoughts, or how hard you are with them. They only have the power of a cave's shadows. Get out in the sunlight a bit.
Thanks.
>>...you're from Denmark, it took American might to help save Europe in World War II, but it seems like except for the old folks over there who do remember, yuns forget and put on the narcissism to where you think the United States is bad.
They should be creating more people to disarm and remove these rather than making more weapons. Yes- I know that is a dream.. Sad- I do not know what the answer is for the world.
"But someone said something earlier that I had not thought of or heard of, the possibility to manufacture into those types of weapons a component that naturally decays or self dissolves in the triggering mechanism, so that after a reasonable time from use, it renders the weapon less lethal to inadvertent contact ? It seems like such a small thing to take care of ... IF ... anyone REALLY cared."
But then another school of thought that I also entertain, is that of taking off all rules and regulations so that everyone can (those that survive ?) learn quicker and FINALLY the horrors of it all to the degree that none would ever consider such again ... of course that is not the preferred solution, but it sure is a possible one ... sort of like committing suicide I suppose ... at the rate so many are going, the latter may well happen anyway.
Eurabia!? Or as the racist Folkepartiet says it, "Islamesering af Europa/Danmark"
Charles, you just shot yourself in the head, then your foot.
Who's president Rasmussen? I think you might mean the prime minister of Denmark.
It's not so much him but Pia Kjærsgaard, the chairperson for the Danish People's Party (Folkepartiet), to whom Fogh Rasmussen has caved in in order to hold a thin 1 or 2 vote margin of his coalition-party's mandates (what gets members of parliament (Folketinghet) elected) so he could stay statsminister (prime minister).
Oh well, why do I even bother replying to this Nazi-like racist drivel?
Well.. because I can chose to either delete an inflammatory statement such as yours, Charles (do you even care about how peoples of Arabic descent feel over such words?), or leave it here for the world to see the type of thinking that leads to death and mayhem, the prime attributes of any religion's devil archetype.
Why not go find a little island somewhere, get LOST with a group of Nazis, and see what sort of society will survive?
I'm not writing these words to you, Charles, as I no longer care what you think. These words are here to bring some sanity back into this article... and let peoples of any ethnic background who may be hurt by your words realize that cancerous thinking such as yours is becoming self-evident.
A few months ago an international survey was done to take the heartbeat of the world's fear of Islam. Denmark was at the absolute very top. Nearly 80% of those Danes surveyed felt paranoid over anything Muslim. But what was really telling was where America fell in this poll. The US was among the "western world's" most integrated societies, with more than 2/3 of Americans completely OK with Muslim ethnicism in their midst. So the US - despite 9-11 - has begun to wise up to the manipulated fear-mongering of talking heads like Rush Limbaugh and what's been spinning out of the White House, and begun to see the enemy for what it is.
The issue of the Mohammad drawings, which incited things to the surface here in Denmark, is very misunderstood by most who have not lived in Denmark long. To many peoples of Arabian descent, these drawings elicit the same racist hurt that an African-American would feel when she sees hangman's nooses hanging from a tree outside her school. The Danish People's Party purposely and with manipulated precision generate issues where none exist, only to keep this social divisiveness alive... thus keeping this racist party politically alive through fear - though it's not quite so black-and-white. I'll explain below. Last year, Fogh Rasmussen nearly lost an emergency election when his coalition party leadership fell. In the two week election period, lots of divisive statements were exchanged, including resuscitating the Mohamed drawing problem in the Jyllands-Posten (daily newspaper) from 2005. In many places of Arabia where good Danes go to do humanitarian work, like in the Palestinian regions, reactions to Denmark also were equally manipulated by the extremest factions of fundamentalist Muslims. Divisive issues are equally manipulated by these factions. Their imams have talking heads just as stupidly dangerous as the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and Jimmy Swaggart, who gain attention and a following by demonizing Muslims simply to advance a messianic and rather fascist ideology.
The Scandinavian "problem" with Muslims is complicated by the fact that in our vexing atmosphere of racism, it has grown increasingly difficult for even highly educated people with an Arabian-sounding name to get a good job. Denmark has these relatively deplorable concentration camps, where refugee families often are incarcerated for years as they await the processing of their refugee status, and likely deportation. This further deepens the problem on all sides. Talking heads verbally lash out their reasons for being angry at each other. Meanwhile, the average Muslim - who thinks and lives for the sake of peace, prosperity and their children's futures just like you and I (I have worked as a PTSD therapist among them), grow increasingly the victims of ethnic profiling in all sorts of formal police and informal on-the-street situations. One of my best friends is a Jew whose parents had to flee Denmark to Sweden in 1943 when the occupying Nazis began rounding up Danish Jews. Her face is classic Jewish, if there is such a thing, but she's actually experienced in the past six years a lot of snide racist remarks she'd never been exposed to before on Copenhagen buses and in the streets because her face and hair also could look very Arabic.
The problem in Scandinavia is also economic. A disproportionate number of Muslims are on the welfare rolls of Norway, Denmark and especially Sweden. Sweden actually has a problem few truly are aware of. Swedish culture (and traditionally also Danish in previous years) has a type of "surface political correctness" in its approach to ethnic issues. Just on the other side of the huge tunnel-bridge that spans the sound between Copenhagen and Sweden, the city of Malmo is literally fiscally and socially overwhelmed by the settlement of Muslims. But the local Swedes tend to not verbalize their angst for fear that it would be PC incorrect and viewed as inciting unrest. This actually entrenches the problem. An American Jew now living in Sweden, Jonathan Friedman, teaches socio-anthropology. He recently stated: "No debate about immigration policies is possible [in Sweden]. The subject is simply avoided. Sweden has such a close connection between the various powerful groups, politicians, journalists, etc. The political class is closed, isolated."
This is what makes many others in Scandinavia fearful. How does one express a concern without either coming off as a racist or as one who appeases terrorism for the sake of being PC?
An open debate is important in our society. Thus far, only extremists have had their voices recognized, at least in Danish politics. Here is where America has had, and can have, great influence. America, if we'd just get rid of its Bush/Cheney-like political equation, has a lot to teach our world on how to integrate, or even culturally amalgamate, various ethnic immigrants. The US has had a whole history of politicians and extremists who have stirred the national fires of racism over a couple of centuries for the sake of their political advancements, as in "fear the Italians," fear the Irish..." fear the Vietnamese...", and let's not forget, "fear the Japanese...(WW II)" etc. as these ethnic minorities began to settle in certain cities and localities, changing the local scenery of where they settled with stuff like Irish bars, Italian restaurants and Vietnamese shops. Boston, New York, San Francisco etc. grew culturally rich from this influx. US politicians do have a problem right now with the some 15 million Mexicans that are in America.
The problem with Muslims in Scandinavia has grown exponentially worse since the US invasion of Iraq. Several million Iraqis, Palestinians and Afghans, among others, flounder homeless in the world now, seeking a home and hearth to raise what's left of their destroyed families. Denmark keeps sending many of the refugee-seekers back into their war-ravaged neighborhoods, including to Africa. The racism that these families have suffered in Denmark of course becomes the topic of discussion wherever they've been sent to, and only fuels the fire of divisiveness on all sides and from all corners of the globe. Extremist Muslims then use their stories to further their political agenda, including the war tool they have gotten used to use: threatening terrorism in much the same way Bush or Hillary might threaten millions of peaceful Iranians with obliteration if their political leadership doesn't toe a line.
Those refugee-seekers who manage to get residency in Denmark will naturally settle where others from their homelands also have settled, so there's this talk of ethnic ghettos in Copenhagen, where crime among disenfranchised youth is significantly higher than other places. These "2nd generation immigrant" youth band together, since they feel themselves ostracized by Danish society, and can create the havoc we see in east LA among the local criminal bands.
In Sweden a few years back, an evangelist named Runar Søgaard preached an inflammatory, anti-Mohamed line. Muslim extremists reacted by threatening a holy war in Sweden, and the preacher was given police protection... but on the flip-side, Swedes also reacted by, for example, pulling an AIDS-awareness painting from a museum since the erotic image also included some verses from the Koran. So I can understand to an extent why some politicians in Denmark, like Pia Kjærsgaard, do not want to be passive onlookers and appeasers as something seemingly threatening comes their way. What truly is needed is an open debate so that all sides can sanely express their fears, and in that light we would all see the shadow play for what it is.
But in the polarized world climate of the world since the Bush legacy in Iraq, such an open debate looks rather impossible. Bush even disallowed his advisers' debate of his own policies once he'd made up his mind. Bush has got to be right in everything he does, and all else in the world is wrong. That also very much sounds like bin Ladin. But with this coming election in America, the US may yet again be in a position to teach the world how all human beings in this world are made of the same stuff, including at the emotional level, including even a belief in a higher power.
It deals with how our day to day actions either cause or reduce the suffering in the world.
A little warm smile - as if to your own mother or daughter - to a woman wearing a scarf or something "foreign" has perhaps a more far reaching effect than a nation going to war. An old Mother Goose story, which has its equivalent in the non-linear mathematics of a sensitive dependence on initial conditions.
(and I also recognise that you know all of this, thus my message is also for the others that may think Charles has a good idea ... hopefully they are few)
The worlds natural diversity could be a wonderful thing, as God intended, were we able to recognise and share our God given spiritual commonality with more appreciation and cooperation between those differences. That cooperation would result in a peaceful and creative synergy where everyone would win and there would be no losers. Spirit would bridge the voids of differentiation, replacing duality (+/-) with trinity (+=-) ...
(+=-)>(+/-)
(+/-)<(+=-)
We, in the "west" ought also to remember that a lot of the architecture, art-styles, medical science and mathematics we take for granted comes from Persia and Arabia.