Monday, June 28, 2010

One Man's Story of the Israeli Assault on the Flotilla

Kevin Neish, Canadian activist aboard the Mavi Marmara, witnessed the Israeli commando assault.

Eyewitness to the Israeli Assault on the Mavi Marmara
By Dave Lindorff / June 15, 2010

Kevin Neish of Victoria, British Columbia, didn’t know he was a celebrity until he was about to board a flight from Istanbul to Ottawa. “This Arab woman wearing a beautiful outfit suddenly ran up to me crying, ‘It’s you! From Arab TV! You’re famous!’” he recalls with a laugh. “I didn’t know what she was talking about, but she told me, ‘I saw you flipping through the Israeli commando’s book! It’s being aired over and over!’”

A soft-spoken teacher and former civilian engineer with the Canadian Department of Defense, Neish realized then that a video taken by an Arab TV cameraman in the midst of the Israeli assault on the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza of him flipping through a booklet had been transmitted before the Israelis blocked all electronic signals from the flotilla. The booklet had pictures and profiles of all the passengers, and he'd found it in the backpack of an Israeli Defense Force commando.

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Sunday, June 27, 2010

The Toronto Model (or the St. Paul Model, or ...)

Police use pepper spray to break up a group of protesters during a rally at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul Monday. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

When police stick to phony script
By Catherine Porter / June 26 2010

They call it the Miami Model.

But it could be called the Genoa model, the Pittsburgh model and, after this weekend, the Toronto model.

It refers to police tactics used in Miami seven years ago, during the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit, and, more importantly, the protests erupting on the streets outside.

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Saturday, June 19, 2010

BP and Iraq: Same Story, Different Details



Twin Oil Disasters: BP and Iraq
Bloody Friday in Iraq Leaves 27 Dead, over 80 Wounded

By Juan Cole / June 19, 2010

The wave of violence in Iraq on Friday, wherein guerrillas killed at least 27 and wounded dozens, underlined how fragile the country still is. In many ways, American Iraq resembles BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil gusher. In the cases both of Iraq and of Deepwater Horizon, oil men were trying to get a big reserves of petroleum that had earlier been out of their reach. Iraq’s 115 billion barrels of oil had been put off limits by sanctions pushed for in Congress by, among others, the Israel lobbies. The Deepwater Horzizon lay deep under the Gulf of Mexico, under a mile of water and 2 further miles of the earth’s crust– the deepest oil well in history.

In both Iraq and Deepwater Horizon, corners were cut and the people behind them tried to succeed on the cheap. Instead of nearly half a million troops in post-war Iraq, then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld sent a little over 100,000, and they could not keep order. Instead of a whole range of safety measures on the Deepwater Horizon rig, BP made do with no relief well and skimped on a number of other key pieces of equipment.

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Thursday, June 17, 2010

Nima Shirazi: The Subjugation Will Be Televised


World Cup Domination & Entertaining the Empire: One Aim Changes Everything
By Nima Shirazi / June 17, 2010

"Our situation is like a football match. The superpower countries are the players, and we are just the ball to be kicked around." - A young Pakistani civilian, North Waziristan

The Great Game is indeed alive and kicking. This summer's World Cup tournament is providing yet another way for the United States to project its power across the globe, though not as a result of the American national team's action on the pitch.

Rather, this year, the subjugation will be televised.

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Saturday, June 12, 2010

Treatment of the Palestinians Is America's Shame

And what is truly critical to understand is that the vast majority of the members of Congress (both houses) are consistent in their concurrence with Senator Schumer's perspective. In short, they are all sympathetic toward, if not directly condoning, crimes against humanity. Shame, shame.

Richard Jehn / Fluxed Up World


Schumer’s Sippenhaftung and the Children of Gaza
By Juan Cole / June 12, 2010

“Gaza” is an abstraction to most Israelis, including Sen. Charles Schumer of New York. A majority of the 1.5 million Gazans is not even from Gaza, but rather is from what is now Israel.

Americans do not know, and perhaps do not care, that 68% of Gazans are refugees living in 8 refugee camps, who were ethnically cleansed and violently expelled from their homes in 1947-48, in what is now Israel. And no, they were not combatants, just civilians caught up in a civil war of sorts. They lost massive amounts of property and their homes, which would now be worth billions, but have never received a dime from the Israelis in reparations or compensation. Then in winter of 2008-2009, the Israeli military destroyed one in every eight Palestinian homes, rendering even more people homeless.

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