The trailer to a new documentary, Remnants of a War. The documentary looks at the efforts to rid southern Lebanon of the cluster bombs dropped by Israel during its 2006 war with Hezbollah.

A 2006 report from Ha’aretz points to the scope of the problem:

“What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs,” the head of an IDF rocket unit in Lebanon said regarding the use of cluster bombs and phosphorous shells during the war.

Quoting his battalion commander, the rocket unit head stated that the IDF fired around 1,800 cluster bombs, containing over 1.2 million cluster bomblets.

In addition, soldiers in IDF artillery units testified that the army used phosphorous shells during the war, widely forbidden by international law. According to their claims, the vast majority of said explosive ordinance was fired in the final 10 days of the war.

The rocket unit commander stated that Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) platforms were heavily used in spite of the fact that they were known to be highly inaccurate.

MLRS is a track or tire carried mobile rocket launching platform, capable of firing a very high volume of mostly unguided munitions. The basic rocket fired by the platform is unguided and imprecise, with a range of about 32 kilometers. The rockets are designed to burst into sub-munitions at a planned altitude in order to blanket enemy army and personnel on the ground with smaller explosive rounds.

The use of such weaponry is controversial mainly due to its inaccuracy and ability to wreak great havoc against indeterminate targets over large areas of territory, with a margin of error of as much as 1,200 meters from the intended target to the area hit.

The cluster rounds which don’t detonate on impact, believed by the United Nations to be around 40% of those fired by the IDF in Lebanon, remain on the ground as unexploded munitions, effectively littering the landscape with thousands of land mines which will continue to claim victims long after the war has ended.

Because of their high level of failure to detonate, it is believed that there are around 500,000 unexploded munitions on the ground in Lebanon. To date 12 Lebanese civilians have been killed by these mines since the end of the war.

According to the commander, in order to compensate for the inaccuracy of the rockets and the inability to strike individual targets precisely, units would “flood” the battlefield with munitions, accounting for the littered and explosive landscape of post-war Lebanon.

What’s particularly galling is that the Israeli Defense Forces dropped most of these bombs during the last 72 hours of the conflict — after a UN ceasefire deal had been reached, but before it came into effect. Of the over one million cluster bombs dropped, an estimated 35 percent failed to detonate. As of late 2008, 40 people had been killed and another 270 injured by unexploded cluster bombs. About a third of the victims are children.

UN figures show that 26 percent of southern Lebanon’s cultivatable land has been affected, and that 34 million square meters – or 13 square miles – are contaminated.

The Washington Post recently put together a multi-media presentation on the ongoing impact of indiscriminate carpeting of southern Lebanon with cluster bombs as well.

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Belarus is said to be Europe’s last dictatorship, a country damned as an outpost of tyranny by the US. Witness follows Elyssa Livergant, an acclaimed Canadian playwrighter, as she secretly travels from London to Minsk to collaborate with the Free Theatre of Belarus, a banned theatre group that performs underground. The Free Theater is a rare voice of dissent in President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s Belarus — it is currently the only drama troupe boldly resisting government pressure and censorship. The company, created in 2005, is now coming into the international limelight.

This film is a rare glimpse into this closed society, a powerful testament to the struggle for freedom of expression and a moving story about the power of art.

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El maestro de la musica vallenata ha muerto.

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When I was a boy, my mother’s sister married into a family from Balmville Tree, New York a small town just north of Newburgh and across the river from Beacon. In an effort that I might better learn English, I was shipped off to my aunt’s home during the summers. It was during these boyhood summers that I met Pete Seeger. Both he and my uncle were avid sailors and both were involved in cleaning up the Hudson.

The video from Voice of America omits that Pete Seeger was blacklisted and banned from television for 17 years.

Pete Seeger is an American hero. A voice for the ages.

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For more than six centuries, the Ottoman Empire controlled Arab lands, leaving its imprint on art, language and food.

Today, Turkey is wielding influence once again in the Arab world — not militarily, but through its soap operas. More than a dozen Turkish soaps have aired on Arab television, offering an escape from the hard daily realities of life.

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Academy Award winning filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen have directed a 30 second spot for The Reality Coalition attacking the oxymoron that is clean coal.

In reality, there is no such thing as “clean” coal in America today. Coal cannot be called ‘clean’ until its CO2 emissions are captured and stored safely.

Let’s be clear: there are no US homes, factories, shopping centers or churches powered by coal plants that capture and store their global warming pollution.

Today, coal power plants emit carbon dioxide (CO2), the pollutant causing the climate crisis. A third of the America’s carbon pollution now comes from about 600 coal-fired power plants. And of the more than 70 proposed new coal power plants, barely a handful have plans to capture and store their CO2 emissions. If these dirty plants are allowed to be built, this will mean an additional 200 million tons of global warming pollution will be emitted in America each year. Until coal power plants no longer release CO2 to the atmosphere, coal will remain a major contributor to the climate crisis.

More on the spot from Variety.

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Wan Smolbag (One Small Bag) is a theatre company on the Vanuatu Island. Tourists see only a tropical paradise but on the other hand it gives a totally different picture. Many of the Islanders live in slums. They face the unemployment, alcohol drug abuses, HIV infection rates, and domestic violence.

From their website:

Wan Smolbag Theatre is a non-government organisation based in Vanuatu but operating all over the South Pacific. We started as a group of 15 voluntary actors in 1989, then 5 paid actors, and we’re now approaching our 20th anniversary with a staff of around 100 full- and part-time staff and over 200 volunteers.

Coupled with structured workshops facilitated by actors, the organisation uses drama to inform, raise awareness and encourage public discussion on a range of contemporary health, lifestyle, environment and governance issues.

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It was a true joy to see and hear Pete Seeger sing Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Landyesterday on the National Mall. Having grown up for a time in the Hudson Valley, I have long been a fan of Pete Seeger and The Weavers, the 1940s folk group, in which he sang and played the banjo. Through music, I learned politics. As I say good bye and good riddance to George W. Bush tonight I am mostly listening to The Weavers and I think Sinnerman, the old Negro spiritual, most appropriate.

Some of you might prefer the Nina Simone version:

George Bush, where you gonna run to? (more…)

Entropa, the controversial artwork by Czech artist David Cerny, proves inspirational for other artists. Take a look at this cartoon by Dutch political cartoonist Ruben L Oppenheimer, for example. For more on his work: Ruben L. Oppenheimer.

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Good old Neil Young tells it as it is in this clip that he posted on YouTube earlier this.

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