RIGHT TO PROTEST GONE?
Police had Black Block infiltrated in Toronto and knew what they were going to be doing.
Democracy in big trouble as police powers expand to level of being able to declare martial law.
Bruce Gagnon is coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. He offers his own reflections on organizing and the state of America's declining empire....
The collapsing US military & economic empire is making Washington & NATO even more dangerous. US could not beat the Taliban but thinks it can take on China-Russia-Iran...a sign of psychopathology for sure. @BruceKGagnon
Our Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (D-ME) is talking better on the war $$ issue. Now all we need is to see how she votes on the upcoming war $$ supplemental and the Pentagon war appropriations bills.
The final proof will be in the pudding.
This is the kind of student leadership we need in the U.S.
This student leader is connecting the dots by saying don't tie education funding into the upcoming vote on the $33 billion war supplemental bill.
That is a message of solidarity!
This is an excellent news report. I've seen several different news stories by this particular reporter and have been impressed with each of them. He's one of the better journalists out there these days.
The South Korean government has announced that they intend to begin actual construction of the Navy base in September and expect to be finished in 2014. The South Korean Defense Minister has called the Gangjeong villagers "African natives" in an obvious racist slap at the fact that they are unwilling to be controlled.
The people in Gangjeong are a rare inspiration. They intimately feel their sacred connection to the land, the sea, the rocks, the fish, and the coral. As a village young and old alike are taking collective responsibility to protect it all. It is not a common sight in today's world to see virtually an entire village moving together with such common purpose. It indeed is a pure honor to be able to witness and find even small ways to support such a principled struggle.
My primary lesson from listening to the villagers of Gangjeong, and the other activists from Okinawa, Guam, and the Philippines is that the American people have no clue about the suffering that our military bases around the world are causing the people who have to deal with these outposts of empire. Many U.S. citizens seem to avoid opening their hearts to the enormous harm that is being done in our name with our tax dollars. The environmental degradation that results from these U.S. bases is beyond imagination.
The voices of those opposing U.S. bases must be heard. Each of us should hear their crys for support and we must do more in our own communities to bring these appeals to the public attention. The American people must learn that there is a consequence somewhere in the world when our planes, ships, tanks, and troops are deployed in a particular country. There is an impact on the environment and the human population who live there.
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
Respect My Authoritah | ||||
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The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
An Energy-Independent Future | ||||
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See the entire article here and another good one here
My take is that the U.S. knew about these reserves all along but has just now gone public with it in order to deal with the growing public opposition to the war in Afghanistan. The fact that the article also appears just days before the House of Representatives votes on another $33 billion war supplemental is no coincidence.
It is getting good reviews so far, I think the color photos/graphics/cartoons make such a difference. Sadly the black and white print version does not offer such good contrasts.
Hope you find the newsletter useful and educational. And of course we hope it inspires you to share the space issue with others.
Israeli Attack on the Mavi Marmara, May 31st 2010 // 15 min. from Cultures of Resistance on Vimeo.
This video was released today at the United Nations by activists who were on-board the Mavi Marmara. One women smuggled the video off the ship in her underwear. It is I believe the first such video made public since the Israeli attack on the ship.
We've heard from many of those on that humanitarian aid mission that the Israeli military took all their possessions - clothes, cameras, computers, video tapes, passports, etc - except for the clothes on their back. People are demanding that Israel release all of their belongings so that a real reconstruction of the events on that night could be made public.
So far Israel refuses to do so.
This video released on May 31 by IDF
The video apparently doctored by the IDF, released on June 4
Progressive journalist Max Blumenthal, reporting from Israel, has proven that Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) forged an audio communication that was intended to paint the Free Gaza Movement in a negative light. He was able to force the IDF to acknowledge they had edited the audio transmission and he was able to get the New York Times to report this story - even though it was buried in their paper.
From the New York Times:
The I.D.F. make public what they said were audio transmissions that Israel’s navy received from the Mavi Marmara before the raid. The clip suggested that a polite request from the navy to the ship was met with responses from three people who said: “Shut up — go back to Auschwitz,” “We have permission from the Gaza Port Authority to enter,” and “We’re helping Arabs going against the U.S., don’t forget 9/11, guys.”
This clip, posted on the I.D.F.’s official YouTube channel on Friday, was met with immediate skepticism by some bloggers and journalists in Israel. Max Blumenthal pointed out in a post on his blog that the I.D.F. had already released video of what seemed like the same exchange four days earlier in which the only reply from the ship was “Negative, negative. Our destination is Gaza. Our destination is Gaza.”
Mr. Blumenthal suggested that at least one of the voices making the inflammatory remarks in the clip “sounded like an impersonation of an Arab.” He also noted that Huwaida Arraf, one of the organizers of the flotilla, said that it was her voice saying “We have permission from the Gaza Port Authority to enter.” But Ms. Arraf was not on the Mavi Marmara, which suggested that the I.D.F. tape was not an unedited snippet of the exchange between the naval ship and the Mavi Marmara.
On Saturday, the I.D.F. published what it called a “Clarification/Correction” regarding the clip which said that the audio had been edited.
Next Up: The German-Jewish organization Jewish Voice for Peace in the Middle East is preparing a Jewish flotilla to the Gaza Strip. "We intend to leave around July," a member of the organization, Kate Leitrer, said to Ynet. "We have one small craft so far, in which there will be between 12 and 16 people, mostly Jews."
This is a very moving four-part series of clips about the first journey to Gaza in 2008 by the Free Gaza Movement.
It tells the story how they had to quietly organize the trip in fears that Israel would find ways to sabotage the boats or kill the organizers.
People around the world must continue to keep breaking Israel's illegal and immoral blockade of Gaza.
The people of Gaza deserve to be free.
See an important article on this subject here
Isn't it just confounding that politicians in the U.S. (from both parties) refuse to acknowledge that Israel has more than 200 nuclear weapons?
Is there any wonder that so many people around the world look upon the U.S. government as a total hypocrite when we lecture and demand that Iran or North Korea not have nuclear weapons while we facilitate countries like Israel and India building more of them?
My mother always said, "What's good for the goose is good for the gander." In this case the U.S. policy says we like our goose friends to have their "nuclear deterrent" and we don't like the ganders to have evil weapons of mass destruction.
Until the double standard goes away nothing really changes in the nuclear world. It's no wonder that despite all of Obama's cheap talk about wanting to get rid of nukes, nothing was accomplished at the U.N.'s Nuclear Non-Proliferation (NPT) conference last month in New York City.
U.S. hypocrisy is holding up any real progress in nuclear disarmament.
This Real News segment gives a good view of what it looks like inside Israel in the aftermath of their attack of the humanitarian aid shipments.
It is absolutely evident to me that Israel feels no hesitation to kill anyone they want and to smear anyone who supports the Palestinian people as terrorists. They think they can get away with any kind of brutality.
Sadly for Israel they fail to see that the majority of people around the world now view their occupation of Gaza as a crime.
Below are excerpts of what some of the freed passengers had to say. See more here
Andre Abu-Khalil, Al Jazeera cameraman
First they [the Israelis] tried to come by helicopter and tried to come down on the main deck. But the Turkish people were gathering on the rooftop and they managed to grab three of the soldiers, which led to a second helicopter to come and start shooting live bullets on the people.
People [on board] did not have any guns. All what they had were some wooden sticks which is normal.
I was on the Mavi Marmara [the lead ship of the flotilla].
I wasn't on the rooftop deck. I was on the first deck floor where the Israelis tried to climb by the ropes on the deck.
There were 20 Turkish resistance guys throwing tomatoes, anything that they managed to throw, on the Israelis.
Then one of these Turkish guys got a bullet just in the head. When the Turkish people saw that, they pulled him inside when the Israelis started firing on the deck.
[After the Israelis took over the ship] they kept us tied up, hands behind the back, for nine hours until we reached the Ashdod port and from there they took us for individual interrogation and then shipped us all to Be'er Sheva jail.
The organisers [of the flotilla] swapped the four Israelis kidnapped, or caught, by the people on the ship, and because they were beaten up, because it's kind of resistance from our side, we swapped the Israeli soldiers to [get] to treat our injured.
Mohamed Vall, Al Jazeera reporter
The Israeli assault took those of us on the ship by complete surprise.
During that hour an half in the early morning everybody on board the ship thought that no-one would survive the Israeli attack because we saw about 30 war vessels surrounding this ship and helicopters attacking with very luminous bombs, the sound of them makes you think you are dead
That was a fear of war, complete war, on a ship that was full of men, women and even children.
The first soldiers on the ship were not killed, they were not shot at, they were captured by the defenders of the ship.
Moments later another bigger helicopter landed more troops and this time they fired immediately at people and killed as many as they could so that they could reach the cabin and take control of the ship.
I saw blood spilt on the ship and everyone knew that there was no weapons. we all knew the Israelis would intercept us and try to stop us, but we didn't think that they would open fire at the first moment.
I have been shown the picture of a Yemeni man, and this is ridiculous, who was on the ship and most people know that every Yemeni in the world has a Yemeni style knife, that is a cultural thing and does not have anything to do with violence.
I understand now that in Israel they are trying to make a big deal about that, saying that the boat was full of violent people and just because of that one man.
Othman Battiri, Al Jazeera crew member
At 4:15, tens of Navy boats carrying tens of soldiers tried to board the ships. They were met by resistance. Peaceful resistance. Helicopters came and tried to download soldiers. They could not.
At that moment, they started firing live ammunition.
First, they fired sound and gas bombs and rubber bullets. Some people were injured from the rubber bullets. Then, live bullets were used. I saw several men being wounded. We tried to help some of the wounded. I saw four people who were killed.
I saw two people die before my eyes. One of them had a bullet in the chest. The other was bleeding but I did not know where he was shot.
We went down to see the other dead people. One had a bullet in his head as if he was hit by a sniper. Live bullets were every where.
They did not respect that all those on the ships were civilians. There were no weapons.
There was not firing by the activists on the soldiers. As media we stand witnesses on that.
They four dead people that I saw were all Turkish. Two were old men. The other two were younger. One of the young people was a coordinator in the media room. His name is Juwdat.
We heard that more people were killed. I only saw four. Most of the fighting took place on the upper level around the room of ship captain, where the activist tried to prevent the soldiers from trying to control the captain’s room. This is where live ammunition were used.
The attack started at 4:15 and ended around 5:30 when we heard that the ship was controlled by the Israeli's.
Around 7:00 they asked us to leave our rooms and they started tying our hands.
Hazem Farouq, Egyptian MP from the Muslim Brotherhood
Helicopters were flying above us. Four military ships and 10 Navy boats surrounded us. They rained us with sound and gas bombs as if we were in real war.
Four people died before my eyes and in my hands. We could not find any first aid material. What happened required a field hospital to treat the injured. I did not have the necessary material to treat their bleeding wounds.
When we tried to carry the injured, the Israeli soldiers refused to allow men to carry the wounded. They pointed their guns with laser light toward their heads. They asked women to carry the wounded. Some women could not.
The wounded were very hurt because they were not carried in the proper way through the stairs and narrow doors.
Farouq is a dentist who was on board Mavi Marmara, the lead ship of the flotilla. He spoke to Al Jazeera after arriving in Cairo.
Issam Zaatar, Al Jazeera cameraman
I was filming, and then he [an Israeli solider] ran after me with a stun gun.
He could not catch me. One of his colleagues hit my hand from behind with a stun gun. My camera fell down. He ran to crush the camera with his feet.
I told him, don't break my camera. If you want the tapes, I will give them to you. I told him these are media equipment. They had no limits.
They used rubber bullets. They used tear gas bombs. It was an unbelievable scene.
Haneen Zubi, Palestinian member of the Knesset
We were expecting the Israeli army to stop us, to prevent us from entering but surely we didn't expect such a war against us.
It was 14 ships which approached us, nearly at 4.30 in the morning. Fourteen ships that I could count and one helicopter. Maybe more than 10 soldiers, I couldn't say exactly [how many] were getting out of the helicopter.
On the second floor of the ship there were just passengers who are journalists, a nurse and organisers of the flotilla who didn't have anything in their hands.
After 20 minutes, maybe 15 minutes, there were three dead bodies.
It ended at six, when a voice from the microphone said the ship was controlled by the Israelis, 'please enter the rooms'.
Norman Paech, former member of the German parliament
This was not an act of self-defence [by the Israeli army], but rather it was completely disproportionate - although we were counting on our ship being blocked and maybe checked.
This was a very serious offence, this was a war crime.
I personally saw two and a half wooden sticks which were used [by activists].
We had not prepared in any way to fight. We didn't even consider it.
No violence, no resistance - because we knew very well that we would have absolutely no chance against soldiers like this.
Mihalis Grigoropoulos, Greece
I was steering the ship, we saw them [Israeli soldiers] capture another ship in front of us, which was the Turkish passenger vessel with more than 500 people on board and heard shots fired.
We did not resist at all, we couldn't even if we had wanted to. What could we have done against the commandos who climbed aboard?
The only thing some people tried was to delay them from getting to the bridge, forming a human shield. They were fired upon with plastic bullets and were stunned with electric devices.
There was great mistreatment after our arrest. We were essentially hostages, like animals on the ground.
They wouldn't let us use the bathroom, wouldn't give us food or water and they took video of us despite international conventions banning this.
Nilufer Cetin, Turkey
We stayed in our cabin and played games amid the sound of gunfire.
My son has been nervous since yesterday afternoon ... I did not need to protect my son.
They knew there was a baby on board. I put a gas mask and life jacket on my son.
We did not experience any other problems on board, only a water shortage.
We took walks on the deck, played games with my son. The curtains were drawn, so I did not see the raid as it was happening. I only heard the voices.
There are lightly and heavily wounded people.
There are thousands, millions of babies in Gaza. My son and I wanted to play with those babies. We planned to deliver them aid. We wanted to say: 'Look, it's a safe place, I came here with my baby-son.'
I saw my husband from a distance, he looked okay. The ship personnel was not wounded, because they [the soldiers] needed them to take the ship to port.
I will go again if another ship goes.
Cetin returned to Istanbul airport with her one-year-old son.
Youssef Benderbal, France
The instructions were clear. Do not provoke, remain calm and go to meet them [the commandos] saying 'we are pacifists and not terrorists'.
Masked commandos took possession of the ship. They were aiming for the captain's cabin.
Benderbal was not on board Mavi Marmara, the lead ship of the flotilla, but on one of the other five ships. He gave this account to Europe 1 radio after arriving at a Paris airport.
Dimitris Gielalis, Greece
Suddenly from everywhere we saw inflatables coming at us, and within seconds fully equipped commandos came up on the boat.
They came up and used plastic bullets, we had beatings, we had electric shocks, any method we can think of, they used.
Gielalis was on board the ship Sfendoni.
Mutlu Tiryaki, Turkey
When we went up to the deck, they emerged from helicopters and military boats and attacked us.
They approached our vessel with military ships after issuing a warning. We told them we were unarmed. Our sole weapon was water.