Monthly Archives: March 2007

Ban cluster bombs!!!

From Jewish Voice for Peace. I urge you to sign their petition. Thanks, John
Dear John:
Stop cluster bombs now.
Tell the US Senate to join the global movement against cluster bombs.
Sign the petition.
Last summer, during the waning days of the war, Israel dropped hundreds of thousands of US-made cluster bombs in the southern part of Lebanon. From the end of the war, through January 2007, 22 Lebanese civilians were killed and another 164 wounded by cluster bombs that were left unexploded. Seven of the dead and 63 of the wounded were children, who often find unexploded cluster bombs laying about and try to pick them up.
Sign now to bring an end to the use of cluster bombs.
A global movement is well under way to ban these weapons, which cause a disproportionate amount of harm to civilians. But the United States is not part of it.
A Senate bill currently on the table would finally begin restricting the sale, transfer and use of cluster weapons. Similar proposed legislation was defeated last year. The current version is toned down in the hope that it might be passed.
Click here to find out more about cluster bombs and the Senate bill.
Jewish Voice for Peace has partnered with Just Foreign Policy to gather support for the Senate bill and put the United States on track to catch up with the global movement to ban cluster bombs. We’ll deliver this petition to every US Senator and every Democratic presidential candidate.
Tell them that US Jews and allies support a total ban on cluster munitions.
Sign this petition today.
Thank you.

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March on Selma

As promised both Hillary Clinton, accompanied by Bill, and Barack Obama turned up at adjacent venues in Selma, Alabama. Both claimed to be heirs of the historic Civil Rights march which took place in the sixties. The Washington Post coverage (3/3/2007) includes video clips:
“The two presidential candidates spoke at separate Sunday morning services and later joined in the ritual march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, led by Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who as a young civil rights leader was beaten on the bridge with other protesters on the morning of March 7, 1965, as they began a voting-rights march to Montgomery.”

As for those deciding who to go and hear:
“Democratic Reps. Anthony Weiner (N.Y.) and Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) went to hear Clinton speak. The bulk of the other members of Congress in Selma on Sunday, including Lewis, went to hear Obama.”

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Canadian diamonds: “There are no clean diamonds”.

After talking about what’s happening to Africa’s wealth I read in the Washington Post (5/3/2007) about a booming diamond industry in northern Canada, once the scene of a gold rush. The article claims it could be the answer to “blood diamonds” resulting from conflict zones. However on reading the article you might see that there are more than superficial similarities. You see land there is owned by Inuit – the earlier settlers on land which they saw taken out of their hands before. Now there is a surge in interest in education. The report goes on to say there are not too many Indians on the boards of the mining companies which form an industry larger than South Africa’s

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Portrait of a war hero

The Washington Post (4/3/2007)http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/03/AR2007030301263.html?referrer=email reports on a hero decorated for galantry in Iraq. Problem is his decoration means nothing to him.
“When the narrator finished reading the story of Workman’s “extraordinary heroism” in Iraq, Brig. Gen. Richard T. Tryon pinned the Navy Cross to Workman’s chest and the crowd in the grandstand stood and cheered. It was a moment of well-deserved triumph, but it didn’t make Workman feel any better.
‘When they put that medal on me, from that point on, I sunk deeper into depression,’ he recalls. ‘Everybody says it must be awesome to win the Navy Cross. Well, as a matter of fact, it’s not. I lost three guys that day, so for the longest time, I didn’t even want to wear it. I’d look down at it and see three dead Marines.’ “
Source Washington Post 4/3/2007.
The cost of war is nor easy to count: the number of corpses, well if they are American. No one knows exactly how many Iraqis are dead. It doesn’t begin to look at what happens to those who survive. Are they the lucky ones?

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Collision ahead

The two front runners of the Presidential campaign for the Democrats, Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, will both be in Selma, Alabama, site of a famous civil rights march in the sixties. Former President Bill Clinton will also be there says the Washington Post (2/3/2007). It’s the black vote they’re after. Bill Clinton is to receive a civil rights award which will be collected by Hillary.
Clearly Clinton does not intend to give way to Obama and it will be interesting to see the rel;ative support each candidate attracts.

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