Do The Right Thing! (That would be YOU, not US....)

U.S. Ducks As Cluster Bomb Ban Takes Effect

• By Spencer Ackerman  
• July 29, 2010  |  
• 12:26 pm  |  
• Categories: Weapons and Ammo

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/07/u-s-ducks-as-cluster-bomb-ban-takes-effect/#ixzz0vAx0CGRv
Excerpt:
More than 30 countries have ratified the Convention on Cluster Munitions — the threshold for it entering into force — and over 100 have signed it since 2008. Holdouts include Russia, Israel and the United States. All three of those countries have used cluster bombs in the past decade: Russia during its conflict with Georgia in 2008 (Georgia also used cluster munitions against Russia); Israel during its conflict with Hezbollah in 2006 (Hezbollah also used cluster munitions against Israel); and the U.S. during the initial phases of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. (Neither the Taliban nor Saddam used cluster bombs against U.S. troops.)

There are a variety of cluster bombs, but they generically work like this: the munitions spray out smaller bombs across a given target, so you can cover a wide area and take out enemy vehicles, weapons, and, of course, fighters with a single, relatively small burst. Some versions, like the Wind Corrected Munition Dispenser, equip the bomblets with tech to control their trajectory, making them more like smart bomblets.

The case against their use is well known: cluster sub-munitions are, in effect, the world’s deadliest duds. The bomblets have a failure rate of up to ten percent by some estimates — and can act as unexploded ordnance, going off in civilian areas after a battle has concluded, similar to landmines. The Cluster Munition Coalition, a group opposed to the weapons, estimates that 60 percent of cluster-bomb casualties are injured “while undertaking their normal activities.”

Entire Article Here.

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/07/u-s-ducks-as-cluster-bomb-ban-takes-effect/#ixzz0vAxhNiHW

Ms. Sherrod

The date of the NAACP speech was March 17th of this year.  Aside from the obvious question of why she was giving a speech on St. Paddy's day instead of drinking Guiness like a real American, it also raises the issue of how a butchering of such a recent speech could have passed for so long -- it isn't as if half the audience is now dead or senile.

Anyway, as much as I villify the administration for being rash and the media for being gullible, the real asshole-with-criminal-intent is Breitbart who will probably do prison time about the same year as Dick Cheney.

Monkey Smuggler Caught at Airport

Points for creativity? A Mexican man has been arrested after authorities
 at Mexico City's international airport discovered 18 titi monkeys stuffed
 into socks and tied around his waist. Roberto Sol Cabrera was returning 
from Lima, Peru, and had been trying to smuggle in the tiny primates by
 wearing them slung on a belt under his clothing—“to protect them from
 X-rays." Two of the monkeys were dead when they were confiscated. 
Many species of titi monkeys are on the Convention on International 
Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora's endangered
 list, and can be sold for around $1,550 in Mexico.

I originally decided to post this because I thought 
it was funny.  But then I thought -- this isn't really funny 
at all.  Have this horrible feeling I'm getting soft...

Headers I Never Expected To See...

APA warns shrinks not to participate in torture

Different Pres, same old shit...$40 Billion to spy on -- YOU!

 "Perfect Citizen is Big Brother."
From a Raytheon  employee in an anonymous email.  Raytheon is developing a "monitoring" system for the NSA, to be used inside the United States:

Some officials familiar with Perfect Citizen see it "as an intrusion by the NSA into domestic affairs, while others say it is an important program to combat an emerging security threat that only the NSA is equipped to provide," the Journal states.

The program is reportedly being funded under the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, a program launched by the Bush administration in January, 2008, and continued under the Obama administration. The initiative is budgeted to cost $40 billion over several years.
Here...

The title for Worst Goldberg is in serious doubt From TBogg

By: Jay B. Tuesday June 29, 2010 4:28 pm
(excerpt)  

Still, I have standards. And because I’m a serious journalmalist guy, I asked some respected Middle East scholars about Jeffrey Goldberg, specifically his observation that:

I have noticed, by people with limited experience in the Middle East (Their lack of experience causes them to reach the naive conclusion that an invasion of Iraq will cause America to be loathed in the Middle East, rather than respected)

One unnamed academic replied: “This is a serious quote?”
Another who requested not to be named said, “Why does this Goldberg [fellow] think Arabs respect people who bomb their country, regardless of the reason — and here the reason was clearly specious? Does he think that Israel has won the respect of the Arab people in general? It’s an observation of a sociopath.”

Read the entire post here.

TUESDAY, JUL 6, 2010 16:07 ET

Rules of America's rule of law