“ In the 1990s, there was increasing awareness and activism on the controversial issue of landmines. Horrific stories and pictures from all around the world often showed that civilians were the main landmine casualties in large numbers - and continued to be so years after the warring factions have left the battlefield (with the mines still there). Even today, clearing decades old minefields has not always been possible. It is often risky, dangerous and time-consuming. ”

Landmines

“ The overwhelming burden of displacement is borne by developing countries - said Guterres - eighty percent of refugees are in the developing world. Generosity and wealth are not proportional to each other. ”

UNHCR annual report

“ According to Pakistani authorities and the UN, at least 3 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) have now been registered as a result from recent fighting and on-going military operations against the Taliban in Pakistan's Swat, Buner, and Lower Dir districts. Refugee families are often made up of only women and children, the older men staying behind to care for their homes and crops. UN humanitarian chief John Holmes issued a desperate appeal for hundreds of millions of dollars to help those who have fled the war, warning that the U.N. can only sustain its current aid efforts for one month. Photographers in the area have captured many powerful images of those affected, some of the most striking focused on children. ”

Children in Pakistan

Children always pay the price and will never forget what they see and hear around them. The ones that survive will become adults scarred by those memories.

“ Despite the suffering and poverty fuelled by irresponsible arms transfers, there is still no comprehensive, binding international treaty on the trade in conventional arms. Since 2003, the Control Arms Campaign has been calling for a strong and effective Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), a legally binding international instrument, which will draw together and consolidate states' current obligations under international law. ”

Arms Trade Treaty

Today is

WORLD REFUGEE DAY

I still believe that the problems should be solved at the source, eliminating the causes not patching up the effects, but it's also important to remember and see what's going on because indifference is also one of the main causes.

“ Global military expenditure and arms trade form the largest spending in the world at over one trillion dollars in annual expenditure and has been rising in recent years.”

World Military Spending

World hunger and health problems could benefit immensely from even just half of such a huge amount of money. Instead, it is used to increase those same problems, in many instances actually being the direct cause.

“ More than 1 billion people on our planet are forced to drink foul, infected water, which has killed at least 22 million people in the last decade. They could all have safe, clean water within 10 years, for just a tiny fraction of the cost of global military spending. Why isn't it happening? Most governments, especially rich white ones, would apparently rather buy weapons to kill other human beings than build water facilities to save the lives of black, brown and yellow poor people. According to the Stockholm international peace research institute, in 2006 total global military expenditure topped $1.2tn; with the US accounting for $528.7bn of this spending and the UK for $59.2bn.”

Water not war

Yesterday's post was about oil, today's is about arms trade. Merry Christmas!

Image taken from: Movers and shakers

More on arms trade: Arms Trade - a major cause of suffering

“ Americans need to educate themselves, from elementary school onward, about what their country has done abroad. And they need to play a more active role in ensuring that what the United States does abroad is not merely in keeping with a foreign policy elite's sense of realpolitik but also with the American public's own sense of American values. Because at their core, those values are sound. That is why, even in places where you'll find virulent anti-Americanism, you'll also find enormous affection for things American.”

Why Do They Hate Us?

“ I saw her nearly every time I went to dinner in the chow hall at my base in Iraq. She wore an unrecognizable tan uniform, so I couldn't really tell whether she was a soldier or a civilian contractor. The thing that stood out about her, though, wasn't her strange uniform but the fact that nearly half her face was severely scarred. Or, rather, it had more or less melted, along with all the hair on that side of her head. She was always alone, and I never saw her talk to anyone. Members of my platoon had seen her before but had never really acknowledged her. Then, on one especially crowded day in the chow hall, she sat down next to us.”

Shock Troops

“ The US military is building a three-mile concrete wall in the centre of Baghdad along the most murderous faultline between Sunni and Shia Muslims.”

Latest US solution to Iraq's civil war

I cannot believe the stupidity of it: more walls? These people will never learn, apparently, they just keep digging a deeper hole. That building walls to keep people out, or in, does not bring any positive results should be clear to anybody at this point in history. How can they think that this could be a solution? This is the best the “experts” can come up with? Please, let monkeys run the show, we'd get much better results.

“ Cluster munitions spread bomblets or submunitions over wide areas threatening civilians as well as soldiers during attacks. They also leave unexploded bombs that threaten civilians for decades after a conflict. This page provides information and resources for individuals and organisations to take action to stop cluster munitions, a weapon with indiscriminate effects that is proliferating rapidly around the world.”

Cluster munitions coalition

“ From this place, and from this day forth begins a new era in the history of the world, and you can all say that you were present at its birth.”

Savage Wars of Peace

Via Kottke.org:

The Top Ten Stories You Missed in 2006

“ Hippos falling victim to a poaching spree in a national park could die out in the area by Christmas unless the culling stops, Zoological Society of London conservationists are warning. A Congolese militia group is already thought to have killed half the hippo population in Virunga National Park since setting up a base there two weeks ago. Lake Edward, in the centre of the park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was once central to Africa's greatest concentration of these magnificent beasts.”

Hippos slaughtered by rebel group in national park

War is always bad for everything: humans, animals and environment. We all know it but it still goes on in so many places on Earth. It's easier to destroy then to create.

Three projects for the 2006 season of artists' billboards produced by Clockshop. The participating artists are Trevor Paglen & John Emerson, Ignasi Aballi, and Nadiah Bamadhaj. A map of rendition flights, lists made of newspaper cuttings and photos of disappearing people.

Clockshop: the war must go on

Watching Lebanon

It's a disturbing article, food for thought. I know that that's the way many people think but I really don't see how it could ever bring anything positive along. It seems to me as if everybody actively involved is avoiding to see the causes of all this, only concentrating on the effects, as I never tire to say.

The Bush Administration and Godwin's Law

An historical frame of reference is of great importance to keep perspective on current events. Nowadays very often words are used in the media to catch inattentive people attention and subtly steer public opinion. I say inattentive because it seems to me people don't really pay attention to what words mean, to the fact that one day something is said to be white and the next black. Facts are continuously turned around to fit momentary needs of political nature, regardless of accuracy. What makes me wonder is the incapacity (or maybe unwillingness) of people's memory to retain these manipulations and see the incongruence between them. I heard a journalist saying that we have developed a “TV memory”, short unrelated flashes, and I think that in many cases it's, regrettably, the truth.

How it should be:

A Javascript elaboration of a thought (“Fear breeds hate, respect brings peace” - one of the random quotes that appear on the right upper corner of this site) to illustrate a concept: until fear is greater then respect the end result will always be war.

The most important is the last line (fear--;) without it the loop is infinite and crashes the computer..

The double minus sign is a decrement operator and subtracts 1 from whatever is assigned to. With each iteration of the loop fear decreases and the loop ends. Right now, fear is ++, it increases with each iteration. The loop is infinite.

Let's break that loop..

“ One-third of the world's population is living in water-scarce areas, say scientists behind a 5-year analysis of global water resources. The finding is a worrying update to an older study by the same team, who had previously predicted that such a situation would not arrive until 2025.”

Water crisis happening now

Next wars will be for water not oil. Will we be able to avoid that or will we just go ahead as we always seem to have done? Another self-inflicted situation, fueling my doubts on the intelligence of humans.

Armaments, Disarmament and International Security:
SIPRI Yearbook 2006

The Chapter 8 is about military expenditure and makes me think about a previous post.

20th of March 2006, third anniversary of the war in Iraq:
the start of the US-led campaign

As in any war, killing and torturing: Secret Unit's "Black Room"

Struggling Back From War's Once-Deadly Wounds

On AlertNet:

There Is No War On Terror

• Britain's role in war on terror revealed
• Rice defends US terror policies
• The defining of torture

Talking about it doesn't help. I don't believe that anybody in the Bush administration is able to understand that when the end justifies the means everybody loses. They keep thinking that somehow they are different from the rest of the people in the world and, not being able to learn, persevere on a road that brings to nothing. I don't see much difference between "them" and their "enemies". I don't like either.

The “old” one:

• Vietnam War Intelligence
• Gulf of Tonkin - 11/30/2005

The new one:

• Rights Group Lists 26 “Ghost Detainees”

In the year 2005 (which is the 21st century not the 12th), the “might is right” way of thinking is still well. How is it that there are always different ethical standards (and how can they be different if they are standard)? Why someone thinks they can do anything they want and others won't react to it? Why is so difficult to understand that is only by example that is possible to change things?

• US acknowledges Europe concern
• US probes secret CIA jail claim

source: World at war

source: Small arms

Still thinking about the article on hunger in Africa which I posted about yesterday:

• NASA: Virtually no chance of Sept shuttle launch
• NASA probe blasts off for Mars

Even if there is a scientific return from all that money spending, I still think health care and education on Earth should be of a higher priority then checking out Mars and flying around space. Why don't we fix our planet before we go destroying others? And, last but not least, the contractor is basically the largest "defense contractor" (arms manufacturer) of the world:

• Lockheed Martin
• Lockheed Martin - wiki
• Lockheed Martin - Missiles and Fire Control

An excerpt from the Wiki on Lockheed Martin:

" Lockheed Martin won the contract to build the Joint Strike Fighter in 2001 with its X-35 design. This is the most important fighter aircraft procurement project since the F-16, with an initial order of 3,000 worth $200bn before export orders "

That's it, 200 billion dollars, they only need to find another 100 and they'll be able to halve the number of starving children in Africa by 2015. Well, since we (human beings) are obviously NOT an intelligent form of life maybe on Mars we'll meet one..and probably proceed to blast it into thousands of pieces.

An interesting article: It is not only Iraq that is occupied

Then this:

• Africa hunger

From the above article:

" In order to reach the target of halving hunger by 2015, at least $303bn (£167bn) must be invested - a prospect the report describes as daunting "

So I went looking around and these are some of the facts I found:

• Rising economic cost

" Yet the costs for Pentagon operations are likely to pile up in years ahead. By 2010, war expenses might total $600 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Much depends on when - and how many - US military personnel can be withdrawn from the Iraqi theater of operations "

• War in Iraq: Preliminary Defence and Reconstruction Costs

" The best analysis of the US military costs of a war in Iraq is the one provided by Professor William Nordhaus. His estimates, based on work from the Congressional Budget Office and others, suggests that the cost of a short and successful war would be around US$50 billion. Professor Nordhaus estimates that if the war became a matter of protracted urban warfare, then the US military costs would climb to about US$140 billion. It is important to note that these costs are for the conflict itself and do not include any consideration of the, likely larger, costs of peacekeeping after the conflict "

Now, how come that it's apparently possible to find all that money to spend on a war but it becomes a daunting prospect if the money is to be spent on starving children?

Maybe to remember could help to change. The thinking behind the bombing it's still alive and kicking, let's hope that it's possible to learn from mistakes..

• Hiroshima remembers atomic bomb

From Journey through Britain's Muslim divide:

“ It's not a war against terrorism, it's a war against Islam. That's how some people see it.”

And I think that's exactly the problem. I'm strongly opposed to the war in Afghanistan, Iraq and all the other "wars" as anybody can see reading the posts in my opinions category. But, sadly, the manipulation of facts goes both ways; the reasons for all the problems are economical but they are being turned into religious. If the Muslims of the world feel oppressed there are at the same time a lot of non-Muslims that feel the same. Look at the demonstrations against the war: millions of people. So, instead of creating a gap between Muslims and non-Muslims, why not unite to be able to make the reasons of everybody be heard? Why widen the distance when the goal is the same: the right to live with dignity?

One last very important consideration about religion: let it be a personal choice, a private feeling that does not need to be pushed on others and that is naturally shared with who freely chooses to be part of it. It's necessary to believe that men can make the right choice when left free to do so. Imposing any kind of faith is a contradiction as much as imposing any kind of democratic values. Humanity (all of us) has already gone through all of this in history, why do we have to go back there again? Why not learn and prove that we are an intelligent form of life? I'm going to quote myself:

“ Fear breeds hate, respect brings peace”

“ The issue is simple. The unregulated supply of weapons makes it easy for criminals to murder, for soldiers to kill indiscriminately, and for police to arbitrarily take lives. Today's weapons are quicker and more powerful than ever before. And in the wrong hands, faster and more powerful weapons mean more abuse and more wasted lives. It's not just unlawful killings during wartime that is on the increase. Military and security equipment is being misued by soldiers, paramilitaries, and police to kill, wound, and commit terrible atrocities against civilians during peacetime too. ”

Go to control arms.org

What's been done until now is not enough apparently.

I keep repeating the same thing:

“Genius has a limit, stupidity is limitless.”