By DOUG MELLGREN, Associated Press Writer
San Francisco Chronicle
Wednesday, December 3, 2008

(12-03) 13:27 PST OSLO, Norway (AP) --An Afghan teenager who lost both legs in a cluster bomb explosion helped persuade his country to change its stance and join nearly 100 nations in signing a treaty Wednesday banning the disputed weapons.

Afghanistan was initially reluctant to join the pact — which the United States and Russia have refused to support — but agreed to after lobbying by victims maimed by cluster munitions, including 17-year-old Soraj Ghulan Habib. The teen, who uses a wheelchair, met with his country's ambassador to Norway, Jawed Ludin, at a two-day signing conference in Oslo.

Because cluster bombs can lie undetected long after they have been discharged, they are known to continue killing even when a war is over. In Iraq, a minimum of 50 million sub-munitions have been used in U.S.-led operations between 1991 and 2006. About 3,000 casualties have been identified because of these weapons. www.thewe.cc - [articles and photos]

"I explained to the ambassador my situation, and that the people of Afghanistan wanted a ban," Habib, who said he was crippled by a cluster bomb seven years ago, told The Associated Press.

Speaking through an interpreter, Habib said the ambassador called Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who agreed to change his stance on the treaty.

"Today is a historic day," Habib declared. ( Continued )

Telegraph.co.uk
11 October 2008

What happens to the horrific images of war that don't appear in the media? Where does war photography end and art begin? Two new exhibitions raise provocative questions, as Ruby Russell discovers

Currently on display in a gallery space in a converted church in Brighton is what is surely one of the most disturbing works of art to be seen this year. Entering the building, you are confronted with a curved plastic screen, through which the installation behind appears as lurid blur of colour. The screen has been erected to ease the viewer into a scene that the gallery's director, Matthew Miller, thought long and hard through "sleepless nights" about displaying.

Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn's The Incommensurable Banner is an 18-metre fabric sheet that reveals a bloody mass of graphic images depicting the effects of modern munitions on the human body: horrifically degraded flesh, smashed skulls, tortured remains.

( >>Continued )

By Claire Smith
Scotsman
13 September 2008

HAVING defended their own country and fled through occupied France, the Polish airmen of the Second World War cemented their reputation for fearlessness and daring by becoming pilots in the RAF.

However, when the conflict ended, they were denied an official place in the victory celebrations for fear of upsetting Britain's Soviet allies.

But today, the forgotten Polish heroes will be remembered as a Spitfire, a Hurricane and a Lancaster bomber fly over Grangemouth, where hundreds of Polish pilots were trained.

It will be the first time a Spitfire has flown over the disused air base since the end of the war, and will be one of the few occasions when the contribution of Polish fighter pilots has been recognised.

The flypast will commemorate a time in Scottish history when Polish pilots trained alongside Scots, Czechs, Belgians and Austrians in a desperate effort to beat the Luftwaffe.

( Continued )

When would-be president Ingrid Betancourt was rescued last month, Colombia's Marxist guerrillas lost their most treasured hostage. But morale in the jungle was already low, with hunger, executions and forced abortions among Farc's female troops. Alice O'Keeffe meets the women who have given up the revolution

Alice O'Keeffe
The Observer
Sunday August 24 2008



Rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) parade in the main square of San Vicente del Caguan. (Photograph: Ricardo Mazalan/AP)

Lina grips her face with her hands and lets out a groan of pain. Her uncle is standing over her, his hands forming the shape of a pistol and pointing down at an imaginary body on the floor. 'They had him on the ground, like this,' he says. 'They fired two shots into his head from here.'

'They humiliated him before killing him?' wails Lina, tears running down her face. Her body is bent double at the news of her brother's death. Gunned down aged 27 in her home town of Florencia, southern Colombia, he was murdered, she believes, by her former 'boss' - her commandant in the ruthless guerrilla army, Farc.

Lina was a member of Farc - the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - for seven years. Last December, exhausted and demoralised, she deserted, handing herself in to the army. Farc does not take such betrayal lightly. A terrible revenge has been exacted upon her family.

( >>Continued )

From Wikipedia:

Edith Louisa Cavell (December 4, 1865–October 12, 1915) was a British World War I nurse and humanitarian. She is celebrated for helping hundreds of Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium. Her subsequent execution received significant sympathetic press coverage worldwide. “Patriotism is not enough…” Her strong religious belief propelled Cavell to help all those who needed help - whether a member of the German forces or the Allied forces. “I can’t stop while there are lives to be saved”.

Nurse Cavell helped hundreds of soldiers from the Allied forces to escape from occupied Belgium to the neutral Netherlands, in violation of military law. She was arrested on August 3, 1915 and charged with harbouring Allied soldiers, not for espionage. She was jailed for 10 weeks, with the last two weeks being in solitary confinement and court-martialled by the Germans for this offence.

She made no defence, admitting her actions, and was ordered to be executed by firing squad at 2am on October 12. A degree of controversy attends the execution itself. According to some accounts, on the way to the Wall she became faint, stumbled and fell. While she was unconscious on the ground, the German commanding officer took a revolver and shot Cavell dead . However, eyewitness accounts by "one Pasteur Le Seur," who attended Cavell in her final hours, assert that the firing squad functioned normally, with eight soldiers firing at Cavell while eight others executed a Belgian civilian, a Philippe Baucq.

Image source
www.edithcavell.org.uk
Legends and Traditions of the Great War