Day: May 13, 2010

Report: Israel training to block Freedom Fleet

Leave a comment

12 May, 2010 — URUK Net

Bethlehem – Ma’an – Israel’s naval forces are allegedly in training to prepare to seize eight boats scheduled to dock in the Gaza Strip on 24 May from Europe, Arabic-language media reported on Wednesday.

“About half of the Israeli naval forces will participate in an operation that was approved by the cabinet. [Israeli] Defense Minister Ehud Barak will supervise the operation,” an Israeli official told the Arabic-language satellite TV station Al-Hurra.

israel-navy.jpg

The Freedom Fleet is scheduled to set sail from the UK, Greece and Turkey. The European Free Gaza campaign said Israeli authorities informed them that the flotillas would be prevented from docking in Gaza.

The boats will be loaded with prefabricated homes, cement, and medicine and will be accompanied by 600 individuals in a bid to break the siege on Gaza.

On Sunday, Jamal Al-Khudari, head of Gaza’s Popular Committee Against the Siege, said Israeli threats to open fire at the boats reveal Israel’s weakness.

“Such threats reflect the occupation’s failure and embody state terrorism against peaceful individuals who come to support a people under siege and aggression,” a statement issued by Al-Khudari said.

Under international law, the activists attempting to dock in Gaza have the right to participate in breaking the siege, Al-Khudari added, saying the threats will not deter participants from arriving in Gaza.

The popular committee organizer said the group was coming well-equipped, and would be ready should the Israeli navy surround them for a long period of time.

The Freedom Flotilla announced plans in late April, saying a group of ships would depart from several corners of the Mediterranean and gather in international waters with the intent to deliver some 5,000 tons of building and medical supplies to the population under siege.

According to flotilla organizers, 600 activists will sail three cargo ships and five passenger boats for Gaza in what a statement called the “biggest internationally coordinated effort to directly challenge Israeli’s ongoing occupation, aggression, and violence against the Palestinian people.”

Interview: Hervé Junior Bijou – Haiti's needs are still desperate

Leave a comment

11 May, 2010 — Socialist Worker

Hervé Junior Bijou returned to Haiti on April 21 for the first time since the earthquake struck in January. He is from the town of Jérémie, where he graduated from law school in 2006. While studying, he co-founded an organization to provide legal assistance to detainees who could not afford an attorney—Haiti has no public defense system. His new organization, called Maha-Lilo, or Many Hands, Light Load, is working to get aid to his hometown.

Hervé has spent the last two years in the U.S. and currently lives in Seattle. The day before he returned to Haiti, he spoke to Jesse Hagopian, a teacher in Seattle and SocialistWorker.org contributor who was in Haiti with his wife and 1-year-old son when the earthquake hit.
—

Continue reading →

Report-back from Cochabamba: World Peoples Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth

Leave a comment

7 May, 2010 — LeftStreamed

Part 1: with delegates to the Cochabamba climate conference:

  • performance by Red Slam collective
  • Kimia Ghomeshi, Campaign Director, Canadian Youth Climate Coalition (transcript)
  • Ben Powless, Mohawk from Six Nations in Ontario, member of the Indigenous Environmental Network


Part 2:

  • Danny Beaton: 2010 recipient of the National Aboriginal Achievement Award (NAAA) for Environment and Natural Resources
  • Robert Lovelace, a leader of Ardoch Algonquin First Nation

Resources:

Training makes killing civilians acceptable Pt2

1 Comment

13 May, 2010 — The Real News Network

Josh Stieber: They put us through psychological tests to see if we were willing to shoot civilians Pt2


http://widgets.vodpod.com/w/video_embed/Groupvideo.5638973

more about “Training makes killing civilians acce…“, posted with vodpod

Bio
Josh Stieber enlisted in the army after graduating high school. He was deployed to Baghdad from Feb 07- Apr 08 with the military company shown on the ground in the Collater Murder video. Upon his return from Iraq, Josh was granted conscientious objector status.

Israel: The not-so-new Fascism – Palestinians, the not-so-new Unter-Menschen By William Bowles

2 Comments

13 May, 2010

The parallels are obvious to see, unless of course you don’t want to see the ‘victims’ turn into the victimizers. Such is the case with Israel, which quite properly should be described as a white racist, settler colonial state. But this is a description that is ‘beyond the Pale’ for the ‘civilized’ nations to accept.

For decades the Zionist entity has played the victim card, even appropriating the term ‘Holocaust’ as its own, this in spite of the fact that millions of Roma, Slavs, Russians, Homosexuals, the ‘mentally feeble’ and other ‘undesirables’ (‘Unter-Menschen’ or under-people) were exterminated in Nazi concentration camps. In fact collectively, a far greater number than that of the European Jews, amongst which I might add are my own relatives.

Apologists for Israel talk of ‘never again’ which roughly translated means never again for white people as once more the ‘race card’ becomes the rationalization for Genocide. The ‘civilized’ nations once again avert their eyes from the unfolding tragedy that is Palestine, now sixty-two years in the making.

Continue reading →

New weapons experimented in Gaza: population risks genetic mutations

Leave a comment

13 May, 2010 — www.uruknet.info – New Weapons Committee Press Release 11 May, 2010

Toxic and carcinogenic metals, able to produce genetic mutations, have been found in the tissues of people wounded in Gaza during Israeli military operations of 2006 and 2009. The research has been carried out on wounds provoked by weapons that did not leave fragments in the bodies of the victims, a peculiarity that was pointed out repeatedly by doctors in Gaza. This shows that experimental weapons, whose effects are still to be assessed, were used.

The researchers compared the quantity of 32 elements present in the tissues through ICP/MS (a type of highly sensitive mass spectrometry). The job, carried out by laboratories of Sapienza University of Rome (Italy), Chalmer University (Sweden) and Beirut University (Lebanon), was coordinated by the New Weapons Research Group (Nwrg), an independent committee of scientists and experts based in Italy, who is studying the use of unconventional weapons and their mid-term effects on the population of after-war areas. The relevant presence of toxic and carcinogenic metals found in the wound tissues points to direct risks for survivors, but also to the possibility of environmental contamination.

Continue reading →

Black Agenda Report 12 May, 2010: The Supreme Court? Is This Why We Vote For Democrats?

Leave a comment

The Supreme Court? Is This Why We Vote For Democrats?

by BAR executive editor Bruce Dixon
We vote for Democrats, the argument goes, because sending a Republican to the White House means sending racist conservative neanderthals to the Supreme Court.  A clinching argument right?  What would John McCain do?  But is that the right question to ask?

Continue reading →

Police arrest photographer for displaying Cameron “wanker” poster

2 Comments

12 May 2010 — The Evening Standard

cameron-wanker.jpgA freelance photographer was arrested and handcuffed by police after displaying a poster in his home window describing David Cameron as a “wanker”.

David Hoffman said five police burst into his terrace home in Bow after a neighbour complained about the Class War poster in his ground-floor window. He said the officers told him he had broken the Public Order Act and threatened to return and arrest him if he displayed it again.

He told me: “I asked what was going on and they said the poster caused alarm, disorder and distress. One of them went over and pulled the poster down off the window.

“They held me for about 10 minutes in handcuffs. I produced my press card for ID and at that point they slowed down slightly. I don’t think it’s an offence. It’s a word you see in newspapers frequently. ‘Wanker’ is not just masturbator – the Oxford English Dictionary says it also means a contemptible person. It seems fair political comment to me.”

Mr Hoffman, who has covered politics for more than 25 years, said he rotated the Cameron poster with a similar version featuring Lib-Dem leader Nick Clegg. He also has Gordon Brown and Nick Griffin versions but says there is no need to use the latter as it is “self-explanatory”. He was arrested on polling day last Thursday.

He said: “I think it’s a perfectly reasonable bit of free speech I’m entitled to make. They [the police] were very stroppy, very heavy. It’s political policing.”

Creative-i Comment: So you don’t think we live in a police state? Today, it’s no longer the Metropolitan Police but the Political Police! This is how low the ‘mother of democracies’ has sunk. Inquiring minds want to know where can we get the poster?

Police arrest photographer for displaying Cameron “wanker” poster

Leave a comment

12 May 2010 — The Evening Standard

cameron-wanker.jpgA freelance photographer was arrested and handcuffed by police after displaying a poster in his home window describing David Cameron as a “wanker”.

David Hoffman said five police burst into his terrace home in Bow after a neighbour complained about the Class War poster in his ground-floor window. He said the officers told him he had broken the Public Order Act and threatened to return and arrest him if he displayed it again.

He told me: “I asked what was going on and they said the poster caused alarm, disorder and distress. One of them went over and pulled the poster down off the window.

“They held me for about 10 minutes in handcuffs. I produced my press card for ID and at that point they slowed down slightly. I don’t think it’s an offence. It’s a word you see in newspapers frequently. ‘Wanker’ is not just masturbator – the Oxford English Dictionary says it also means a contemptible person. It seems fair political comment to me.”

Mr Hoffman, who has covered politics for more than 25 years, said he rotated the Cameron poster with a similar version featuring Lib-Dem leader Nick Clegg. He also has Gordon Brown and Nick Griffin versions but says there is no need to use the latter as it is “self-explanatory”. He was arrested on polling day last Thursday.

He said: “I think it’s a perfectly reasonable bit of free speech I’m entitled to make. They [the police] were very stroppy, very heavy. It’s political policing.”

Creative-i Comment: So you don’t think we live in a police state? Today, it’s no longer the Metropolitan Police but the Political Police! This is how low the ‘mother of democracies’ has sunk. Inquiring minds want to know where can we get the poster?