The great British bomb scandal

THEY have been described as "beautifully, magnificently lethal". A single British Apache attack helicopter can launch 684 cluster bombs, known as M73 sub-munitions, in one furious volley of rocket fire. The bomblets rain down creating a "kill zone" which renders the entire area impassable for any soldier, tank or truck - or any passing civilian or family car, for that matter.

Each Apache chopper is fitted with four rocket pods, containing 19 rockets, and each rocket holds nine M73 cluster bomblets. In the face of global opinion, the UK wants to see the M73 granted exemption from prohibition at next month's Dublin summit at which 100 nations will try to force through a total ban on cluster bombs.

Another cluster bomb the British government wants to see saved is the M85 - used to devastating effect by UK forces in and around the southern Iraqi city of Basra in 2003, and by Israeli forces in southern Lebanon. The UN's unexploded ordnance clean-up operation after the Israel-Hezbollah war in the summer of 2006 identified more than 960 strike sites, and cleared 137,000 unexploded cluster bombs, including 1500 M85s. By late 2007, 220 injuries and 40 deaths had been recorded because of cluster bombs that failed to self-destruct, as they are meant to do, in Lebanon.

In order to keep the weapons in the British arsenal, the UK government is attempting to redefine the cluster bomb. The Ministry of Defence says a cluster bomb has to have 10 bomblets per rocket. The M73 has nine bomblets per rocket and falls outside the definition. Opponents say this new definition is extremely convenient. The M85 is defended because, in the MoD's words, it has an effective "self-deactivation device". However, as the experience of Lebanese civilians has shown, this often doesn't work.

The UK is also seeking an exemption for ballistic sensor fuzed munitions (BSFM). While certainly "smarter" than most "dumb" cluster bombs, BSFM pose serious risks. BSFM are comprised of two bomblets contained in an artillery shell. The bomblets are released from the shell and, in theory, are supposed to use heat sensors to locate the engines of tanks or personnel carriers. However, it could just as easily lock on to an ambulance or civilian car.

Many members of the public might think a British army general who earned the nickname "Rambo" in Northern Ireland may be gung-ho about keeping UK forces well-supplied with such lethal kit, but David Ramsbotham, now Lord Ramsbotham, is among the most scathing critics of cluster munitions. He points to an underlying failure in the government's argument that cluster bombs are of strategic importance.

If that's the case, he asks, why have UK forces never used the much-lauded M73? Many suspect it is because military commanders know that deploying the weaponry in Iraq or Afghanistan would be tantamount to tearing up the doctrine of winning hearts and minds, and branding British troops with the stain of civilian fatalities on a massive scale.

For Ramsbotham, there is no need for cluster munitions in the post-Cold War era. The weapons - first created by the Nazi regime - were seen as essential during the Cold War for holding back the Red Army if it tried to advance into western Europe.

Lord Ramsbotham is not alone. As many as 30 military top brass - as yet unnamed - from the rank of retired field marshal down to colonel are due to sign an open letter to the British government ahead of the Dublin negotiations, imploring ministers to vote for an outright ban on all cluster bombs.

Cluster bombs also seriously hamper post-conflict reconstruction. It's not an easy task for civilians to rebuild an area when there is unexploded ordnance scattered about. Ramsbotham says he can't understand why the UK government is pushing for exemptions. "What we need is more precision weapons, not indiscriminate ones," he added. Ramsbotham also sees Britain's last use of M85 cluster munitions - in Iraq in 2003 - as "inappropriate".

"These weapons are inefficient. They cover large areas with lethal bomblets that may not self-destruct and can remain a problem for years. What's worse is that they are attractive to children," Ramsbotham said. He believes that those in the military and the government who are pushing for the retention of cluster bombs are doing so simply because they don't like the idea of "losing something from the locker".

Ramsbotham also sits on the all-party group of cluster munitions. It is unanimous in its condemnation of the weapons and has expressed its concerns to the defence secretary, foreign secretary and the department of international development.

Simon Conway is, like Rams-botham, an ex-soldier. He retired a captain after tours of duty in Ulster and Germany with the Queens Own Highlanders. After leaving the military, he worked with the Halo Trust de-mining areas of Cambodia and Kosovo, and is now director of Landmine Action and a vociferous campaigner against cluster bombs. Like many campaigners, he was delighted when, in November 2007, Gordon Brown made a commitment to ban the munitions. His joy was short-lived.

He pours scorn on claims cluster munitions have a good record on self-destructing. Referring to the BL755 cluster munition, which the UK used in Kosovo and Iraq but has now withdrawn from service, Conway said claims that only 6% of bomblets failed to self-destruct were wildly inaccurate - in combat conditions, the figure was closer to 25%. During tests, weapons are thoroughly serviced and in prime condition before being fired over hard ground which all but guarantees detonation. In combat, they often land on soft ground, in tree tops or on roofs, where they remain undetonated.

"Our purpose is to stigmatise these weapons," he said. Conway claims Des Browne, the defence secretary, even admitted to him in private conversation the M73 was "not appropriate for counter-insurgency operations".

"If the government pushes for these exemptions, cluster bombs will just go on being used and the casualties will continue to go up as the weapons proliferate," he said. In fact, the weapons have already proliferated. Hezbollah, according to Conway, has obtained cluster weapons, and in 2000 a Halo Trust survey found cluster bombs had been dropped by Ethiopia on an Eritrean refugee camp; Eritrea also dropped Chilean cluster bombs on an Ethiopian school.

Although Britain is not alone in seeking exemptions - France, Germany, Japan and the Netherlands are also trying to keep some munitions inside the law - the vast majority of the developing world wants a ban. Laos is perhaps one of the keenest backers of a ban. It did, after all, experience the effects of 300 million cluster bombs falling within its borders 30 years ago. They still go on killing today.

Thomas Nash, co-ordinator of the Cluster Munitions Coalition, an umbrella organisation representing 250 humanitarian organisations in 70 countries, points out the BL755 cluster munition, now withdrawn by the UK, was exported from Britain to India and Pakistan, two countries in an almost perpetual state of cold war. The munitions also found their way into the hands of Serb forces during the Balkan wars.

The M85, he points out, has ribbons attached to it and can be mistaken by children for toys. Some 100,000 of these munitions were dropped around Basra by UK forces in 2003. A large number remained unexploded and led to deaths and injuries among civilians. Nash said Norway was one of the most courageous countries involved in the campaign to ban cluster bombs. Forty per cent of Norway's artillery is modified to use M85 cluster bombs, yet the country wants to see M85s banned. In effect, the decision means Norway is junking almost half its artillery capabilities.

"They are making the right decision," said Nash. "What we are seeing in Britain, however, is the UK seeking to promote its own narrow self-interest ahead of a shared interest in human security."

Judith Robertson, director of Oxfam Scotland, said Britain's push to exempt some cluster munitions would continue the "devastation of the lives of civilians". She warned that, where Britain leads, others would follow, and moves by the UK to keep cluster bombs in the military stockpile would lead to the weapons continuing to be produced and used. "We want an absolute ban," she Robertston said. "We must hold the government to account by reminding it of Gordon Brown's statements in the past."

Two men with first-hand experience of the horror weapons can bring to ordinary families are Mick North and David Grimason. Mick North's five-year-old daughter, Sophie, was killed at Dunblane in 1996; Grimason's two-year-old son, Alistair, was shot dead in a Turkish cafe in 2003. Both are calling on the government to honour its previous pledge to ban cluster weapons and not to go back on its word.

Grimason said: "In 2006, I met Des Browne to hand over the Control Arms petition calling for an international arms trade treaty. Mr Browne gave his support and since then the UK has championed the need for such a treaty. It thus seems very inconsistent to argue for loopholes to this specific treaty on cluster bombs, and I call on him to change his mind."

Mick North added: "As a father who lost his child to misuse of arms, I know the pain and grief caused. It is incumbent on the UK to do all it can to ensure more children don't die as a result of cluster bombs, and more parents aren't left grieving the loss of their innocent children. Loopholes or exceptions simply aren't acceptable. I really can't understand why the government should want to hinder progress of the process in Dublin."

An MoD spokesman said: "A ban on the use of all types of sub-munitions would adversely impact on the UK's operational effectiveness, impose serious capability gaps on our armed forces and take away one element of force protection; we cannot therefore exclude their use either in current or future operations The issue of definitions is seen as key to the successful conclusion of this process and that is why it is so important to ensure international consensus on this issue.

"The UK, along with many other nations, has tabled its own proposals concerning the types of cluster munition that might be prohibited. The UK's purpose is to negotiate a convention which balances the need to tackle humanitarian issues with the need to protect our men and women who are engaged in crisis management operations The UK supports a treaty that bans those cluster munitions that cause a post-conflict problem. Not all types of cluster munitions do this; as even some NGOs recognise."

http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.2192968.0.the_great_british_bomb_scandal.php

Allure of Cachaça Spreads to U.S. From Brazil

ABOUT 90 miles outside Rio de Janeiro, after the bikinis of Ipanema give way to shantytowns, industrial suburbs and finally green hills, a dozen empty 9,000-liter oak casks lie in a new cellar outside a 18th-century Portuguese colonial farmhouse surrounded by 1,500 acres of forest, pasture and sugar cane.

Antônio Rocha hopes those casks, when added to the 17 full ones in another cellar, will help satisfy the growing taste in the United States for wood-aged cachaça, a smoother, sippable version of the spirit his family has been making for four generations on the farm.

If people in the United States have ever tried cachaça — fermented and distilled sugar cane juice — it’s probably when it has provided the punch for a caipirinha cocktail made with lime and sugar, mixed with a more heavy-handed mass-produced brand.

But at Mr. Rocha’s farm, they chop sugar cane from their own fields, put it through a water-powered mill, ferment the juice with naturally occurring yeast and distill it using power generated by burning the leftover sugar cane pulp.

To age his 5-year-old cachaça, he uses cherry wood casks. His 12- and 25-year versions are aged in French oak. The casks in the warehouse are part of an expansion of the business.

For years, the family sold their cachaça to other bottlers around the state of Rio de Janeiro and didn’t even use its own label, Rochinha, until 1990.

“Until 1990, cachaça didn’t have any value,” Mr. Rocha said. “The ones that sold were the ones that advertised; the quality ones didn’t advertise. It was only by word of mouth.”

Four years ago he began selling his 5- and 12-year-old cachaças in the United States, in liquor stores including Astor Place Wine & Spirits in lower Manhattan and by the shot at Churrascaria Plataforma in Midtown.

Aged cachaças, which usually have spent at least a year in wood casks, are only a tiny fraction of the overall cachaça market in the United States, maybe a thousand 9-liter cases a year, according to Olie Berlic, who imports Rochinha through Excalibur Enterprise in Greenwich, Conn. But demand is growing.

Imports of all cachaças (pronounced ka-SHA-sas) in the United States are way up in the last decade: 647,000 liters in 2007, compared with 213,000 liters in 2002 and fewer than 100,000 as late as 1998, according to the Brazilian government.

The two brands that dominate the market — Pitú and 51 — are mass produced and marked up at least five times over their retail prices in Brazil, where they cost little more than a bottle of water and get little respect.

Those sorts of industrial brands are made in large column stills, whereas small-batch brands use copper pot stills known as alambics.

Leblon, which came on the market in 2005 and is No. 3, is a purer, fruitier, more slickly marketed spirit, and has garnered good reviews. It and other labels vying for consumers in the United States, like Água Luca and Beleza Pura, can be consumed straight, but they are being marketed for making caipirinhas (pronounced kye-peer-EEN-yahs).

Meanwhile, tagging along for the ride are a few aged cachaças from small distillers like Rochinha, imbued with the flavors, and sometimes the colors, of the wood they are stored in.

Mr. Berlic, a former sommelier at Gotham Bar & Grill in Greenwich Village who created Beleza Pura, also imports most of them. In addition to Rochinha, there’s GRM from the state of Minas Gerais, and Armazem Vieira from the southern state of Santa Catarina.

“You are seeing the infancy of a category,” said Mr. Berlic, who traveled Brazil, tasting 800 cachaças, to choose his imports. “What cachaça can show the world is a variety of flavors that is unavailable in any other spirit.”

He said at least 20 kinds of wood are being used for aging, including oak, which can add a toasty vanilla note, and native Brazilian trees like jequitibá rosa, which can imbue the drink with spicy notes like cinnamon.

And nearly all cachaças maintain a whiff of their sugar cane roots.

How far people in the United States have to go to enjoy the variety of cachaça becomes clear with a visit to the Academia da Cachaça, a restaurant in Rio de Janeiro, where aged cachaças in the hundreds line the shelves and regulars carry a “cachaça notary” card that grants them special tasting privileges. There are 100 choices on the annotated menu, specifying the city and state of origin, the years of aging and the kind of wood they were aged in.

But Brazilians may not have that much of a head start on cachaça appreciation. Though cachaça has been around since the 1500s, it’s had an up-and-down ride, and only in the last decade or so have high-end brands became popular.

“Brazil is no longer the only country in the world embarrassed about its distilled liquor,” the Brazilian edition of Playboy said last April, when it ranked the top 20 cachaças.

(Two brands imported by Mr. Berlic’s Excalibur Enterprise made the list: GRM at No. 19, and Armazem Vieira, from the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina, at No. 8.)

Still, cachaça straight up seems to be a hard-to-acquire taste even for some Brazilians. At São Paulo’s exclusive Skye bar, atop the $500-a-night Hotel Unique, with a view of the skyline so vast that it looks like Manhattan in a hall of mirrors, they use GRM to make the most expensive caipirinha in the house, costing 30 reais, or about $17. Purists might cringe, but for those who shy away from tasting liquor straight up, aged cachaça is an interesting variation.

In the United States, bars, restaurants and stores that want to offer a range of cachaças for sipping have been stymied because they can’t get what they want.

Jean Frison, general manager of Churrascaria Plataforma, said he snaps up every kind he can find in New York; he has found 30. (Mr. Berlic said 40 are available nationwide, with 30 more on their way.)

At Plataforma, cachaça can cost as little as $5 for a shot of Pitú, to as much as $15 for GRM. Bottles range from about $12 for the industrial brands to $100 for the aged imports. At Astor Wine and Spirits, Beleza Pura is $24.99 a bottle and GRM 2-year is $69.99.

When Titus Ribas opened the Cachaça Jazz Club last year in Greenwich Village, he envisioned a epicurean cachaça shelf to show off the best of the artisanal cachaças from Minas Gerais state, which is a cachaça hotbed. Caught up in booking bands, though, he gave up and serves Pitú and Leblon.

Mr. Rocha and others, though, will keep trying to win people over to the taste of fine cachaça.

His family has been in the cachaça business since 1902, and he grew up steeped in it. “I didn’t like television or video games or toys,” he said. “For us, playing was taking apart a tractor.”

He started drinking cachaça when he was about 13; even when he was studying mechanical engineering in Rio de Janeiro, he would come back weekends to work. He hopes to have an expanded business to pass on to a fifth generation, his son, Rodrigo, who was born on Jan. 18.

“We can’t force him,” Mr. Rocha said. “But I want to make him so proud of the brand, that he continues producing what we’ve done here for 106 years.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/09/dining/09cachaca.html?hp

Forbes.com ferrets out the priciest abodes

Is a room with a view not enough for you? The annual list of the world's most sought-after homes is in. According to Forbes.com, this year's crop of hot spots includes Australia's Gold Coast and the French Riviera, which offer extraordinary views of the sea, and urban pads in New York, Beverly Hills and Rio de Janeiro.

The properties "might be sold within a week or stay on the market much longer," says Thierry Journiac of Terra Cognita. "This is because their owners do not really need money and so do not want to discuss the price much."

"You're definitely talking about the highest end of the market here," Joshua Saslove of Joshua & Co., an affiliate of Christie's Great Estates based in Colorado, told Forbes.com. "The net worth of the buyers and the sellers is such that they can do whatever they want."

These are world's most expensive properties, and the prices are as unique as the homes. Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan's Aspen ski lodge lists for US$135-million, while 6,000 miles away, a 64-room Istanbul waterfront mansion is asking for US$100-million.

A little further down from that heady price is South Africa's most expensive home, which comes in a comparatively modest US$18-million. But you'd better act quickly; South Africa has been dubbed one of the quickest growing real estate markets by the international real estate company Knight Frank, so that affordability may soon vanish.

If you have a medieval bent -- or a soft spot for that pale and toothy character, Dracula -- check out a US$140-million Romanian castle that was built in 1212 and once housed Bram Stoker's inspiration, Vlad the Impaler.

Regardless of whether the asking price is eight digits or nine, these potential buyers are generally cut from the same cloth: They are wealthy jet-setters hunting for that complementary second, third or fourth home. While historically, Americans, Arabs and Europeans have long bought getaways across the globe, increasingly, the rising wealth in Asia is injecting that continent's elite into the buying pool.

Still, discovering every top-tier property is impossible. Many owners sell their homes only to preselected buyers, and hide their asking and sales prices. This helps owners conceal the value of a home for tax purposes, and keeps fellow aristocrats from regarding them as tacky for announcing a US$100-million property to the world.

http://www.nationalpost.com/life/homes/story.html?id=423280