GazaFriends: Song for the Freedom Flotilla by Doc Jazz
25 October, 2010
Wonderful song by Doc Jazz about the Freedom Flotilla. Please watch, then pass on to your own contacts. The song is clear and eloquent and should be seen around the world.
Updates from October, 2010 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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VTJP Palestine/Israel Newslinks 25 October, 2010: Ancient Mosque Vandalized by Rightist Israelis in Nazareth Area
25 October, 2010 — VTJP
News
International Middle East Media Center
Israel Hands 231 Orders Targeting Arab Homes In Jerusalem
IMEMC – 25 Oct 2010 – Tuesday October 26, 2010 – 00:34, Local sources in Jerusalem reported Monday that the Israeli Authorities handed on Monday 231 demolition orders targeting Arab and Palestinian homes in several neighborhoods in occupied East Jerusalem.Hamas Minister: “We Will Liberate Akka And Haifa”
IMEMC – 25 Oct 2010 – Monday October 25, 2010 – 23:28, Israeli sources reported that Hamas Interior Minister at the dissolved government in Gaza, Fathi Hammad, stated that Hamas will liberate Akka and Haifa, and that armies from different parts of the world will join this effort. -
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The mathematics of strangulation of Gaza By Jesse Bacon
26 October, 2010 — The Only Democracy?
When the specifics of Israel’s siege of Gaza came to light, it appeared almost random in its insanity and cruelty. The famous example is the prohibiting of pasta while allowing rice, all the while claiming this was somehow ensuring Israel’s security. Well wonder no longer. Through the heroic efforts of Gisha, whose work we feature regularly here on The Only Democracy?, the actual policy has been released. It turns out there is a detailed series of charts and formulae that look like someone attempted to translate the lectures of Glenn Beck into public policy. In the driest of terms, it represents a calculus of human misery, equations of despair that add up to the starvation of Gazans and a protracted conflict.
Here is Gisha’s summary of the revealed policy, with my annotations.
“Policy of Deliberate Reduction”
The documents reveal that the state approved “a policy of deliberate reduction” for basic goods in the Gaza Strip (section h.4, page 5*). Thus, for example, Israel restricted the supply of fuel needed for the power plant, disrupting the supply of electricity and water. The state set a “lower warning line” (section g.2, page 5) to give advance warning of expected shortages in a particular item, but at the same time approved ignoring that warning, if the good in question was subject to a policy of “deliberate reduction“. Moreover, the state set an “upper red line” above which even basic humanitarian items could be blocked, even if they were in demand (section g.1, page 5). The state claimed in a cover letter to Gisha that in practice, it had not authorized reduction of “basic goods” below the “lower warning line”, but it did not define what these “basic goods” were (page 2). -
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Lawyers establish Flotilla Justice Group to coordinate legal action on behalf of flotilla victims
25 October, 2010 — Gaza Friends Doha, Qatar
International legal experts and lawyers representing victims of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla today announced the establishment of the “Flotilla Justice Group.” The announcement came at the conclusion of a two-day meeting held on 23 and 24 October, aimed at coordinating legal actions to hold Israel accountable for its 31 May 2010 attack on the Freedom Flotilla. The meeting, hosted by the Doha-based Al Fakhoora campaign, brought together 70 representatives from 20 countries, to follow up on work that began at the first lawyers’ meeting held in Istanbul on 15 July.
The international advocacy groups, legal and media experts, and lawyers in attendance met in a number of workshops to devise a comprehensive strategy for national, regional and international legal action, inter-organizational coordination, and media mobilization. “The Flotilla Justice Group” will serve as a coordination mechanism for facilitating communication and the exchange of information between lawyers working on behalf of flotilla victims around the world.
Bettahar Boudjellal, a Qatar-based international human rights expert, said, “Israel’s attack on the Freedom Flotilla breached international, human rights and humanitarian law. Our efforts to unify the legal actions through a designated coordination apparatus will allow us to collectively bring the State of Israel to justice. More importantly, it will serve as a foundation for responding to Israel’s future violations.”
The conference workshops were led by prominent personalities within the growing movement to end Israel’s strangulation of Gaza as well as its persistent human rights violations throughout the occupied Palestinian territory. Participants in the meeting included representatives from the following countries: Bahrain, Belgium, Bosnia Herzegovina, Canada, Egypt, France, Greece, Indonesia, Italy, Jordan, Kuwait, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Palestine, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Yemen.
“The creation of the Flotilla Justice Group is a vital step forward on the road to holding Israel accountable for its attack on our flotilla, and their ongoing abuse of the Palestinian people” said the Freedom Flotilla organizers.
Organizations and firms participating in the conference included: the Turkish ?nsan Hak ve Hürriyetleri ?nsani Yard?m Vakf? (IHH), the Free Gaza Movement, European Campaign to End Siege on Gaza (ECESG), Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU), the Elmadag Law Firm from Turkey, Mazlumdar — the Turkish Human Rights Association, the UK-based Hickman and Rose law firm, Ship to Gaza – Greece, Ship to Gaza – Sweden, Indonesian Muslims’ Lawyer Team, the Muslim Lawyers Association of South Africa, and others.
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Fakhoora is an international campaign which aims to secure the freedom to learn for Palestinian students in Gaza and the West Bank. The campaign is named after a United Nations girls’ prep school in Gaza’s Jabaliya refugee camp that was the scene of an attack by Israeli tank shells on January 6, 2009.
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Tarpley & Escobar: China to blame or to admire?
22 October, 2010 — RT.com
China’s rate of development on a global scale is moving faster and more consistently the other nations. Should the world take note of the Chinese economic system? Many Americans and US politicians are blaming China for the recession and for taking American jobs, while others say we should look to chain and immolate their system. Pepe Escobar, a correspondent for the Asia Times said China is not to blame; instead the US itself is to blame. Nations like Great Britain choose to cut spending and jobs to rise from a deficit, the US simply prints more money. “What we are seeing is that the free trade countries, the British and the US are basically basket cases. The Chinese have had the good sense to follow traditional forms of mercantilism, dirigisme and protectionism,” said Webster Tarpley, a journalist.
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Engdahl on France: Cutting pensions instead of military spendings?
22 October, 2010 — RT.com
French police have broken the blockade of a refinery crucial for the capital’s fuel supplies. A workers union that captured the depot said at least three people were injured in the clashes. A special operation ended the blockade that had lasted for more than a week, causing significant fuel shortages. Meanwhile, the Senate is expected to approve president Nicolas Sarkozy’s proposal to raise the retirement age to 62 – the reason behind the protests. Frederick William Engdahl, an American writer and journalist based in Germany, questions the reform saying it could be aimed at protecting tiny elite in France.
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Wikileaks: garbage in, garbage out
23 October, 2010 — Left I on the News
It goes without saying that there’s lots of good information in the latest Wikileaks document dump. First-hand reports by the soldiers involved of killing of civilians at checkpoints, for example. But there’s also more than a fair dose of ‘garbage in, garbage out,’ because the source for all the material is the U.S. military, and the U.S. military is nothing if not self-serving.
One example is the reported increase in civilian deaths caused by the invasion of Iraq. The basic report, that the U.S. was lying through its teeth when it claimed not to do body counts, demonstrates for the umpteenth time how much trust one can place in the pronouncements of the U.S. military (i.e., none). But as noted in the Guardian, the lying continues even in these reports, because these reports record a grand total of zero civilian casualties in the two assaults on Fallujah, a laughable claim. And, as we know from years of observation, the U.S. military routinely records every possible death it can as ‘enemy’ rather than civilian, in a classic case of ‘guilty until proven innocent,’ even when those deaths include reporters.
A second example, now widely reported and no doubt instant conventional wisdom, is that the three American hikers were arrested in Iraqi territory. But if you look closely, the ‘evidence’ for that is essentially non-existent. Secret aerial footage? Nothing of the sort. Just a report from some Iraqi colonel. But was he there? No, the only people who claim to have witnessed the capture claimed that, from some unspecified distance (but not too close because they were ‘following’ the hikers, and clearly not close enough that the three knew they were being followed), managed to ‘know’ that the three were ‘several yards’ on the wrong side of an unmarked border. Please.
Then we have the also widely reported claims that Iran has been extensively involved with the war in Iraq. Even the Washington Post was obliged to note, though, that ‘The Guardian noted that sources for some of the reports on Iran were described as ‘untested or of low reliability.” That’s quite an understatement, though. Because if you read the extensive analysis in the Guardian of the alleged Iranian involvement, you’ll find that virtually every example is based on hearsay and conjecture. Here’s a typical paragraph:
A week later, on 7 November 2005, an intelligence report says the IRGC smuggled 12 boxes of ammunition and two boxes of rockets to unknown individuals in Amara, a city close to the border in south-east Iraq where Britain had the lead responsibility within the multinational coalition. The rockets are possibly surface-to-air missiles, the report says. But the source does not know the intended recipients of the munitions, the log admits, and does not make clear whether he saw the shipments or only heard about them.
Caveat emptor!
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URUK Net Newsletter, 24 October, 2010: ’Child cancer skyrocketing in Basra’
24 October, 2010 – URUK Net
The shaming of America
Robert Fisk:
October 24, 2010 – As usual, the Arabs knew. They knew all about the mass torture, the promiscuous shooting of civilians, the outrageous use of air power against family homes, the vicious American and British mercenaries, the cemeteries of the innocent dead. All of Iraq knew. Because they were the victims. Only we could pretend we did not know. Only we in the West could counter every claim, every allegation against the Americans or British with some worthy general – the ghastly US military spokesman Mark Kimmitt and the awful chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Peter Pace, come to mind – to ring-fence us with lies. Find a man who’d been tortured and you’d be told it was terrorist propaganda; discover a house full of children killed by an American air strike and that, too, would be terrorist propaganda, or “collateral damage”, or a simple phrase: “We have nothing on that.”…Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=71107
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The secret war between Wikileaks and the Pentagon, (and some media outlets) By Danny Schechter
25 October, 2010 — Mediachannel.org
It happened on a Friday, the anniversary of the first US casualties of the Vietnam War way back in 1957. It was also the anniversary, in 1964, of French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre’s announcement that he was turning down the Nobel Prize. He later sat as a judge on Bertrand Russell’s Vietnam War Crimes Tribunal, which indicted that conflict’s carnage and lies.
It was the day this year that the often shadowy Wikileaks, chief nemesis of the Pentagon, maybe their worst nightmare—considered perhaps even more dangerous than the Taliban– surfaced again with the largest public drop of secret military documents in history. Wikileaks is a public web site run by the Sunshine Press, a non-profit group.
For understandable reasons, the Pentagon is at war with its information war against the war—literally.
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The Revolt Shaking France
25 October, 2010 — The B u l l e t – Socialist Project • E-Bulletin No. 423
Strikes and protests have spread to every corner of France as President Nicolas Sarkozy pushes for a final vote in parliament on his proposal to ‘reform’ the country’s national pension system.
Every day last week has seen strikes, blockades and demonstrations. Police attempted to break up blockades at oil refineries and supply facilities after weeks of oil workers and their supporters stopping fuel deliveries, but the actions frequently resumed after police left. Almost all of the country’s ports are still struck – according to reports, 52 oil tankers are at anchor off the coast of Marseilles, still waiting to unload.
The biggest actions have come when the unions have called nationwide strikes, but rolling walkouts and protests continue every day. This week, police have lashed back at youth demonstrators, fighting running battles in cities around the country – with the media parroting Sarkozy’s denunciations of “lawbreakers.”
Sarkozy’s proposal would raise the minimum age for retirement from 60 to 62 and the age when retirees can get full benefits from 65 to 67. The measure was passed by the country’s Assembly and is being considered in the Senate – a vote was scheduled for October 20, but was delayed, though the Sarkozy government insists one will take place soon. Even if the measure passes, however, more protests are already planned, including at least two nationwide strikes and days of action at the end of October and early November.
This revolt is the latest in a wave of struggles that have rocked France over more than a decade, dating back to a wave of public-sector strikes in 1995 that stopped a conservative government from imposing changes to the pension system.
Charles-André Udry is editor of the magazine La Brèche and the web site À L’encontre, a veteran of the socialist movement in Europe and a member of the Movement for Socialism in Switzerland. He talked earlier this week to , editor of the International Socialist Review, about the issues at stake and the prospects for the struggle that is shaking France.
Millions of people took to the streets across France during days of action to protest Sarkozy’s pension plan (Serge Grosclaude). -
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26 October, 2010 Following the leak by w…
26 October, 2010
Following the leak by whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks of almost 400,000 secret US army field reports from the Iraq war between 2004 and 2009. Join Julian Assange at the Frontline Club this evening in conversation with one of the most famous whistle blowers in history, Daniel Ellsberg who was responsible for the leak of the Pentagon Papers in 1971.
The discussion will be chaired by Elizabeth Palmer, CBS News correspondent.
LIMITED SPACE AVAILABLE. To book tickets please see here.
We will also be broadcasting the event live from 7pm on Livestation
Note: I couldn’t get through to the Frontline site to find out what the date is!
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VTJP Palestine/Israel Newslinks 24 October, 2010: Settlers Flood Palestinian Village With Sewage
24 October, 2010 — VTJP
News
International Middle East Media Center
Israeli Soldiers Continue Their Facebook Displays
IMEMC – 24 Oct 2010 – Monday October 25, 2010 – 00:51, The Israeli Walla News website published on Sunday several pictures published by Israeli soldiers on Facebook showing “memories” while humiliating Palestinians during the war on Gaza.Army Installs Two Roadblocks Near Salfit
IMEMC – 24 Oct 2010 – Sunday October 24, 2010 – 15:57, On Sunday afternoon,Israeli soldiers installed two military roadblocks at the crossroads of the town of Hares and at the entrance of the town of Deir Estia, near the West Bank city of Salfit. -
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New at Climate & Capitalism 15-25 October, 2010
25 October, 2010 — Climate & Capitalism
25/10/10 – Against mainstream economics: The Kick It Over Manifesto
25/10/10 – If wealth was height, how tall would rich people be?
25/10/10 – Barry Commoner: Capitalism versus the environment
22/10/10 – Bill Maher: Global warming is not a debate
21/10/10 – Suppressed report confirms international violations by Canadian mining companies
21/10/10 – The Ant, The Grasshopper, and a Big Steaming Pile of Manure
19/10/10 – British Green leader to union conference: ‘We need to forge an alliance’
19/10/10 – Global inequality by the numbers
19/10/10 – ANNOUNCEMENT: Subscribing to C&C
18/10/10 – Richest nations aim to wreck climate talks
18/10/10 – UN Convention meets to decide how to enhance corporate profits by marketing biodiversity
18/10/10 – The new climate-change denialism: Who promotes it, how to answer it
18/10/10 – Electric Evasion: The Great Green Car Con
18/10/10 – A Tale of Two Oil Spills
15/10/10- Scientists: Climate change caused Pakistan floods
15/10/10- Is climate change good for Canada?
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British Green leader to union conference: ‘We need to forge an alliance’
18 October, 2010 — Climate and Capitalism
‘Our current economic system only works by cheating future generations out of their birthright and by exploiting the vulnerable here and abroad’
Speech by Caroline Lucas, Member of Parliament and leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, to Alliances for Green Growth, a conference organized by the Trades Union Congress, October 11.
Thank you for that introduction and for the chance to speak at today’s conference. As one who has been a supporter of workers’ rights and of the union movement throughout my career, it is incredibly satisfying that the union movement should be taking such a positive role in another issue close to my heart, that of transforming our economy into one that is both just and sustainable.
It is also right that we should be looking to forge alliances, and join our forces where we can. For these are not easy times. As a Member of Parliament, right now, for example, I am campaigning alongside trades unionists over the threat to jobs posed by the coalition’s savage and frankly often counter-productive cuts.
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Welcome to the BBC’s ‘objectivity’
24 October, 2010 — StoptheWarCoalition
The BBC’s political editor, Nick Robinson, filming his report on the government’s spending review — which decimated welfare services — takes direct action against a placard making the obvious point: why is the government spending billions on the unjustified and unwinnable war in Afghanistan while cutting services for the poorest and most vulnerable people in Britain?
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Algorithms and red wine By Joe Bageant
24 October, 2010 — Joe Bageant
Is the “digital hive” a soft totalitarian state?
Ferrara, Italy — Sitting in a bottliberia, one of those wine bars that brings out food to match your particular choice of wine, mystified by the table setting. What was that tiny baby spoon for? Cappuccino surely, at some point, but why no big spoon to go with the knife and fork? The things a redneck American does not know grow exponentially in Bella Italia, starting with the restaurants — not to mention several civilizations beneath one’s feet. Being in a house that has been continuously occupied for over 1000 years — resisting the temptation to piss in the hotel room bidet, that sort of thing.One thing the Italians can never be accused of is being a culture given to vinyl sided sameness, fast food franchises. Another thing is lack of a good educational system, given that Italy’s is among the very best in the world. So here I am sitting with some college kids trying to hang onto my end of a discussion of evolutionary consciousness, and whether Italy can withstand the cultural leveling of globalism.
“And Mr Bageent, what do you think of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s concept of the hive mind and the noosphere? Can monolithism and totalitarianism possibly be resisted in the cybernetic age?”
Huh?
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The Bible: A Manuel for Genocide (must watch)!!!
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URUK Net Newsletter, 23 October, 2010: Torture, killing, children shot – and how the US tried to keep it all quiet
23 October, 2010 – URUK Net
SMART ISRAELI MISSILES IN GAZA –
by Flora Nicoletta
October 23, 2010 – …We went to Esh-Shifa hospital. It was in the afternoon. In the first room we entered there was Emad Eid Mattar Marzuq. Emad had lost his two legs at the end of July, a few days before my visit. His wife was pregnant at home. His brothers were with him. They offered me tea, coffee, soft drink, fruits, candies, as it is the Palestinian custom.It was a hot day. Emad was 37-year old and handsome. A white sheet covered part of his body. When Emad moved I saw for a second that he was completely naked and his two short stumps were enormous due to big bandages. The bandages were so big that no underpants could be worn by Emad. One night Emad was walking in the neighborhood of Shejayia in Gaza City. While he was speaking on his cell phone a missile was fired at him. His brothers explained me that inside such kind of missile there are some sort of turning knives which cut everything. The young man from Caritas took me to other rooms. That day I saw no less than twenty amputees, a living catalogue of horror. All of them were young…In the streets of Gaza one can see many amputees. There are scores of girls, women and men like Emad Marzuq and many are even in worse physical conditions and poorer than Emad… and not all of them can go in the street. My friend Abu Ramzi underlines that the smart Israeli missiles are American…Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=71094
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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange walks out on CNN interview By Stephen C. Webster
23 October, 2010 — Raw Story
If you want an interview, it’s unwise to ask WikiLeaks founder and former hacker Julian Assange about charges of sexual impropriety, as CNN correspondent Atika Shubert found out recently.
This video is from CNN, broadcast Friday, Oct. 22, 2010.
When Shubert first inquired about the allegations of internal turmoil at WikiLeaks — claims leveled by former employee Daniel Domscheit-Berg — Assange took a dry tone and emphasized that his purpose for appearing in front of the cameras was the publication of classified Iraq war documents.
Then she asked about the molestation charges being investigated by Swedish police. Her written report to CNN, which initially summarized that he refused to talk about it, is something of a polite understatement.
“This interview is about something else,” he said. “I will have to walk if you are… If you are going to contaminate this extremely serious interview with questions about my personal life.”
The reporter persisted, so Assange calmly got up, removed his mic, apologized and left.
Appearing at a London press conference on Saturday, Assange insisted that the site’s latest disclosure is “about the truth.”
“The attack on the truth by war begins long before war starts and continues long after a war ends,” he said. “We hope to correct some of that attack on the truth that occurred before the war, during the war and which has continued on since the war officially concluded.”
He claims the cache of documents reveals over 104,000 civilian deaths during the Iraq war, and an initial report by the Associated Press confirms the files detail at least 15,000 additional unreported civilian casualties.
Additionally, German paper Der Spiegel pointed to several accounts of what it calls “dubious attacks” by US Apache helicopters, suggesting they may have amounted to war crimes.
Assange has called the charges of rape and molestation, filed by two women in Sweden, a “smear campaign” based on a consensual relationship.
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The Chances of a War with China are Rising By Mike Whitney
22 October, 2010 — Global Research – Information Clearing House – 2010-10-21
The United States conducts monetary policy the same way it conducts foreign policy; unilaterally. When Fed chairman Ben Bernanke signaled last week that he was planning to restart his bond purchasing program (Quantitative Easing) he didn’t consult with allies at the IMF, the G-20 or the WTO. He simply issued his edict, and that was that. The fact that the Fed’s policy will flood emerging markets with cheap capital, pushing up the value of their currencies and igniting inflation, is of no concern to Bernanke. He operates on the same theory as former Treasury Secretary John Connally who breezily quipped to a group of euro finance ministers, “The dollar is our currency, but your problem.”
