We’re either opposed to cluster bombs or we’re not

Fiddler says:

11:48am | 25/08/12

as a former RAA officer I can say then WP is an invaluable tool for marking targets, deploying smokescreens and incendiary against equipment. We don’t use it against personnel or in built up areas.

Of course there is the likelihood that it will come into contact with enemy troops if used but lets face it, war is a dirty business.

John says:

12:14pm | 25/08/12

If you were to describe democracy in computer terms, it would be a virus, Trojan’s inside a computer (country) with all the ports and backdoors open to infect it and to be taken over by the parasite (hacker). All credit taken stolen and protection mechanic’s make the virus more complex and self replicating. All security systems, get undermined and weaken (culture) in order for the virus to maintain total control.

Another way to describe a democracy is leave you all your windows and doors opened, go on holiday and come back to see your home (country) infested by illegals, sqautors, all you stuff stolen, your house destroyed, you credit cards all maxed out by illegal squatters. Also have few gangs, crimnals operating from your house,(country) their criminal activities. Democracy! the castle gates are opened, there is now law, all the scum of the earth will pour in to loot and defile it.

The difference between a dictatorship and a democracy is that democracy allows the best cunning dictator group to rule.

marley says:

01:37pm | 25/08/12

@John - well, I have to give you an A for Absolute Lack of Logic in that argument. 

You claim that a democracy leaves things wide open to be stolen by outsiders. I assume that means you would prefer the protections of a more authoritarian system of government.

But at the same time, you say that a democracy is really just a dictatorship with better quality dictators.

So, according to your own logic, if we’re the same as a dictatorship but with more competent tyrants, we should be better able than they are to fend off those thieving foreigners.  So what’s your concern?

John says:

03:17pm | 25/08/12

marley

You fail to see what’s going on around you, western nations are no longer nations, their national media are now owned by internationalists groups, governments now serve internationalist interests we no longer control our own economy, not even allowed to create our own money. Nationalism is anti-marketed, while internationalism is marketed.

You might look back at totalitarian regimes, but these regimes might not have had all the answers, but at-least they protected and pushed for the interests of their nation. These groups in time were taken down and replaced with democratic movements, which lead to internationalists groups to come in to buyout the media, politics’s, politicans and finance. There never was any real democracy, it was just propaganda to topple the other leaders and to replace them with more organized internationalists totalitarianism, who care nothing for the nation that control.

The same thing happened with communism, they preached it, toppled the czar, who funded Trotsky? International Banking Cartel. Then Stalin came along and opposed Trotsky and international banking cartel pulled the pull on Stalin. When soviet union collapsed, they tried again, then Putin came along and soiled their vulture feast.

This is totalitarianism, international totalitarianism. They are creating powerful dictatorial international body that feed’s off the wealth of all nations that occupy and control. They are dividing and weakening all nations and people’s.

The WEST is under total occupation, it’s biggest authoritarian dictatorial regime on this planet. Look at the capitalistic structure on company’s and cooperation’s, who runs the show? The CEO! He doesn’t place company decisions on thousands of employee’s, his decisions on based on his individual interest.

You think the western governments follow the interests of mass’s who have no power or wealth, or do they follow the interests of those who own the media, banks and politics? You have a society where the mass’s are put into perpetual debt. They keep on feeding and making the upper class’s more and more powerful. Even the middle class has been targeted by the elite. It’s going go back to Trotsky days, one class, and one party. The one class will be poor divided weak herd of people. This is where the west is heading to because it embraced Democracy. Democracy just makes it easier to subvert and hijacked a nation by internationalists groups.

You underestimate the elite, their intellectual, their wealth, their power. You have no idea how powerful and influential they are.

marley says:

07:37pm | 25/08/12

@John - umm, I pointed out a total failure of logic in your argument, and you haven’t addressed it.  If you aren’t capable of making a rational defence of your own statements, why on earth should I give credibility to anything you say?

pa_kelvin says:

12:19pm | 25/08/12

A right cluster f#&k…....... Some-one had to say it.

DOB says:

01:26pm | 25/08/12

Thats nonsense. You may be unaware of this but every type of modern war - even the dirtiest going - is highly regulated. For example it is impossible to buy any high powered cartridge ammunition that is not full copper jacketed. It is easier to manufacture unjacketed ammunition but that is illegal for any type of relevant weapon. Manufacturers do not manufacture such ammunition simply becuase it is illegal and if they did they wouldnt be able to sell anything else.

The Geneva conventions are encyclopedic on this stuff - and the use of legal weapons is also heavily controlled under the conventions. This is why miltary lawyers are deployed to warzones.

Cluster ammunitions are one of the last exceptions and everyone - except the americans - recognizes that they have to go.

You are simply ignorant of the salient facts.

Muggles says:

11:49am | 25/08/12

“Bombs kill people and it is about time that we practiced peace in what is left of this world.”

Fine. But do you have any practical suggestions?

Right now, Iran is installing centrifuges at a rapid rate, in bunkered chambers, spread across remote desert areas, surrounded by SAM defences. Their nuclear program has been hidden and repeatedly blocked from UN inspectors, despite Iran claiming the program is for a civilian power system.

Please tell us how your “practising of peace” will ensure that:

1) Iran—a military-run theocracy with a history of threatening exterminating its neighbours—will not get access to nuclear weapons, and

2) Iran will not use those nuclear weapons to attack Israel, in its attempts to become the regional super-power?

(Keep in mind that any attack on Israel would result in the nuclear destruction of Tehran. Tens of millions would die almost immediately, and hundreds of millions would die or be permanently affected in the aftermath. But then, rationality isn’t a theocratic strongpoint.)

Unless you have some REAL-WORLD answers to these questions, your anti-American rant means little more than all the other anti-American rants that we see every day.

Banging on about the nasty yanks is easy and fashionable. It takes zero effort. But don’t pretend it will solve anything.

John says:

10:13am | 25/08/12

Humans rights violations are great justification for war and genocide. UN council votes also moralizes death, genocide and destruction.  Look at what happened with Libya, when US, UK, France and the 7 other third world country’s who most likely go paided to vote. Their vote caused 20,000+ plus deaths, spilled blood all over the hands of the French, US and UK.

The western media even had like 7 day blackout on the war in order to control descent, then after the 7 days they propagandized the war. The West military seems be a form of mercenary’s force serving the interests of cold blooded financial elite who see humanity on a whole including their duped western mercenary’s soldiers as nothing more then excrement.

John says:

11:44am | 25/08/12

When the west’s condemns Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Germany, Syria, Iran the population’s don’t even wash their hands of the coming slaughter. The western politicians are worse as they are quick to dig their hands into the bloody corpse and the western media celebrates such immoral deeds.

John says:

11:59am | 25/08/12

What do you expect, it’s all lies, the 9/11 story is also utterly baloney. It nothing more then false flag operation in order to target the America mass conciseness to support the invasion and occupation of the middleast. Who benefited from such an act? The financial elite who rule America. It’s no surprise that so called terror leader osama bin laden is dead and lying at bottom of the Atlantic ocean (I don’t believe it) and the west still has troops in Afghanistan, and more justification for the occupation on the so called Taliban and how we need to maintain a presence to maintain a bullshit democracy.

They are there to maintain long term presence, you could add Iran as one of the reasons, oil reasons and maybe culture reasons to maybe try subdue the population and bring them into western empire where they can be easily managed and controlled with excessive debt coming from international banker printing press’s, also using the corrupt sellouts as their agents in the middleast.

Yak says:

11:31am | 25/08/12

Excellent post Craig.

Succinct and sarcastic, just the way I like it.

the cynic says:

02:03pm | 25/08/12

Anjuli They do no more or no less than the same amount of carnage that some raghead does when he or she walks into a crowded place somewhere that is not in a a war zone and blows themselves and heaps of innocents to bits. I don’t care a rats that cluster bombs are used. The end result is all that matters. If they work use them if not make them more lethal. In the end he who has the biggest box of tricks wins.

jaz says:

01:20pm | 25/08/12

As citizens of our country we cannot have an impact on how other nations let alone terrorist organisations conduct themselves in war, but we can stand up and say how we will conduct ourselves. We can chose to be better than the likes of Hezbolla, in which case we need to be vigilant against the darkest elements of war and speak out when we are crossing the line of acceptable conduct, or we can throw our hands up and say war is war and bad things happen. Which is what Japan has said to justify the atrocities committed by the Japanese army in world war 2. I think we are better than Hezbola or the Japanese army in WW2.
The Idea that if the enemy are using unethical tactics and killing civilians indiscriminately then we have to shut up when we do the same is childish. Also the article didn’t mention Israel or the conflict there it is about Australias hypocrisy on the issue .