**UPDATED**
HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS, which I call war crimes, now can be documented through satellite imaging.
From PBS “News Hour” on Wednesday:
MARGARET WARNER: The fighting in Aleppo is now being monitored by a human rights organization using commercially available satellite imaging.
Amnesty International recently commissioned DigitalGlobe, which operates three private satellites out of this control room in Denver, to take images of Aleppo and the surrounding area. It’s part of a small but growing trend over the past decade.
To document suspected human rights abuses on the ground in places like Sudan, nonprofits are buying high-resolution satellite imagery. Now this same “eye in the sky” technology is being employed to document the Syria conflict.
In another development, Syrians in Lebanon have reportedly been abducted in a new escalation of regional tensions. From the New York Times:
Spillover from the Syrian conflict hit Lebanon in a frightening new way on Wednesday with the abduction of more than 30 Syrians inside Lebanese territory, which their captors called revenge for the kidnapping of a relative inside Syria. Members of a powerful Lebanese Shiite family who captured the Syrians, displayed in a video shown on Lebanese television, threatened to cause havoc in the streets and conduct an extended kidnapping spree in Lebanon until their family member, taken hostage by Syrian rebels, was set free.
suspected human rights abuses – next thing they’ll tell me Anderson Cooper is gay!
To bad there isn’t some internaional organization that should be intervening in a situation like this.
No kidding. Unfortunately, depending whose human rights we’re talking about, either the U.S., Russia (FKA the USSR), or China will object on behalf of their proxies/allies. Giving each of the big six veto power over any actions has placed a real limit on what can be done.
When I see an image like this, one of the first things that pops into my head is to look at the areas that are clearly settled and/or cultivated, versus those that are not. Those yellow dots are supposed to be artillery craters. Where there are exploded artillery shells, there will probably be unexploded artillery shells, also. The yellow dots are mostly in cultivated land. What that tells me is that there are going to be some very nervous farmers working those fields in the last few years.
The effects of war often last far longer than the wars themselves. Just ask the French.