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Posted on Monday, 6 September, 2010 By yours truly | TOOLS: Talk or Share
“If I can’t dance – I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” Thus spoke Emma Goldman (1869-1940) and it’s been variously repeated and attributed since.
PAL JAM is a combination concert, party and workshop to raise funds for Palestine direct action. If you’re in London and you’ve got an empty Saturday the 11th of September laying around, there’s 12 hours of great things to fill it between 4pm and 4am. I know I can’t think of a better way to spend a September 11.
“Direct actions in support of Palestine, such as blockades of Ahava or Carmel Agrexco don’t pay for themselves, van hire, D-locks etc all cost cash money. Therefore a network of people who carry out such actions are putting on a fundraiser to pay for future actions. Come on down, with a banging line up and a great social centre to have a party in (the Ratstar comes with 2 rooms of music, a cinema room and even a roof terrace, oh yes), there has never been a funner way to support a great cause.”
Find out more!
Posted on Wednesday, 18 August, 2010 By yours truly | TOOLS: Talk or Share
Those tuning in to Monday night’s Panorama on BBC may have finished the episode under the impression that a Turkish ship had attacked a group of Israeli pleasure boaters somewhere off the coast of Tel Aviv. In fact, it was meant to be an exposé on the Israeli military’s deadly attack on a civilian vessel flying under a Turkish flag in international waters carrying an international crew and passengers and aid shipments bound to Gaza in an attempt to break a siege there that defies international law. See how easy that was? The show’s lead reporter, Jane Corbin wasn’t able to actually explore that in any depth the entire half-hour slot she had.
Corbin is a member of the Panorama documentary team and a self-styled “renowned expert on the al-Qaeda network and Islamist threat” that faces us all. I know this because it’s how she advertises herself. She even wrote a book on it.
Corbin ostensibly set out in Monday’s docu-drama to answer the question of what happened on the ship Mavi Marmara that led to the deaths of nine of its passengers by the guns of the Israeli commandos that stormed it. Spoiler alert: After a half an hour, the viewer is none the wiser. 80% of the program was devoted to commandos who killed 9 civilians while, at the most, 20% was devoted to all other comments. Her lengthy, fawning interviews with Israeli Navy flacks and TV-approved commandos failed to provide a definitive answer. The scant time dedicated to eye witnesses who had been aboard the Mavi Marmara on the night of May 31 also apparently failed to suit her narrative of choice. As a result, what we the TV audience received was pure propaganda. 
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Posted on Saturday, 31 July, 2010 By yours truly | TOOLS: Talk or Share
“When the United States is on the side of injustice, it harms our country, it harms our integrity, it harms our principle, it harms our standing in the world. People want to believe that we, as the world’s leading superpower, live up to our highest virtues. And when we fail to do that, it threatens, and endangers, and undermines us.”
— Rep. Brian Baird, speaking at the 9th Annual National Organizers’ Conference for the US Campaign to End the Occupation
Hey Brian,
I hear you’re stepping down from Congress soon. Sorry to hear about it, really. It seems like you’ve finally arrived to a place where I could vote for you again, and now the whole process has to start over and I have to listen to a new representative get it wrong for years upon years. Perhaps you’ve decided that your awakening has come with the unfortunate side effect of being unable to win another election while also saying what you believe. That may be true, but so what?
I think that’s the best time to run for re-election. As much as possible, we need it on the public record how many people actually vote and campaign against rationality. Elections are when these people out and say things which can be recorded. We need that. When need to know which fellow Democrats, Republicans and other parties will or won’t do so, because more importantly than serving democracy for yet another election cycle, we can measure public reaction and see exactly where your part of the United States stands.
So, put it to the test and run again. You’ve got nothing to lose.
Posted on Friday, 11 June, 2010 By yours truly | TOOLS: Talk or Share
Delegitimize.com is a new media library project by Nigel Parry that plans to publish a series of both topic-specific and current event-focused archive websites, with the help of the pro-Palestinian community and beyond.
The Gaza Flotilla archive is a freely-available research resource on the events that took place in international waters off the coast of Gaza on 31 May 2010.
Posted on Wednesday, 9 June, 2010 By yours truly | TOOLS: Talk or Share
Tony Blair takes a photo of himself in front of the human rights travesty he helped create in Iraq.
Dear Tony Blair,
Shut the hell up. Here’s what you had to say on the Israeli massacre of nine humanitarian aid activists from Turkey and the illegal boarding and abduction of others in international waters and the theft of their cargo legally bound for Gaza under international law: “I am 100% on Israel’s side.” … “There are no questions at all. There have been rockets fired from Gaza, there are people in Gaza who want to kill innocent Israelis.” (entirely unrelated) … “When it comes to security, I am 100% on Israel’s side.”
Thus, Tony Blair, you are in 0% support of international law, human rights, a peace process, the United Nations or common sense. People need to stop blathering on about Helen Thomas and look at a real hate monger: You.
Quite the envoy of “The Quartet” you are in the name of coming up with some sort of solution to a conflit: A war criminal with a great smile. I don’t get why so many in Labour actually seem to miss you. I’m waiting for someone to actually explain to me what you brought to the table that could be identifiable as “helpful.” You pretty much delivered UK foreign policy to the White House, dragged your country into the most ridiculously insane war in modern history that Iraq is still in ruins from, and you did so knowingly based on false information.
And is now here you are proselytizing for Israel’s right to ethnic cleansing and apartheid and to pop a bullet in the head of anyone it wants to in international waters. You display nothing but disdain for the poeple in the entire region of the Middle East it seems, and you’ve managed to propel this into a profitable business opportunity for yourself. Way to go, you.
Posted on Thursday, 3 June, 2010 By yours truly | TOOLS: Talk or Share
IMEU has a great synopsis with regardss to the various laws that Israel’s attacks on the Free Gaza flotilla are in violation of, as well as the legal status of the Gaza blockade and occupation…
Some of the participants of the humanitarian flotilla. (Maan Images)
Israel exercises “effective control” over Gaza and as such remains an occupying power. Under international law Israel’s blockade of Gaza is illegal. Its attack on the humanitarian aid flotilla – meant to enforce an illegal blockade – is illegal as well.
1. Why is Israel’s siege of Gaza illegal under international law?
2. Why does the international community continue to consider Israel an occupying power in Gaza?
3. If Israeli claims to have ended its occupation of Gaza were true would the blockade still be illegal?
4. Did Israel have the legal right to prevent the passage of the humanitarian aid flotilla?
5. Did Israel have the right to board the flotilla ships in international waters?
6. Can maritime blockades be imposed in international waters?
7. Did Israel’s actions constitute self-defense?
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The thoughts of worldly men are for ever regulated by a moral law of gravitation which, like the physical one, holds them down to earth. There are no signs in the sun, or in the moon, or in the stars, for their reading. They are like some wise men, who learning to know each planet by its Latin name, have quite forgotten such small heavenly constellations as Charity…and who, looking upward to the spangled sky, see nothing there but the reflection of their own great wisdom and book-learning.
