Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning:
The Instinctive Drowning Response – so named by Francesco A. Pia, Ph.D., is what people do to avoid actual or perceived suffocation in the water. And it does not look like most people expect. There is very little splashing, no waving, and no yelling or calls for help of any kind.
While I was partying at Sunrise Celebration in Somerset recently my good friend Ken O’Keefe was sailing off to Gaza on the Mavi Marmara, as part of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.
The flotilla was carrying humanitarian aid, medical supplies, and construction materials, intent on breaking the Gaza Strip blockade being perpetrated by the apartheid state of Israel against the people of Palestine.
In the middle of the night on 30 May, while in international waters, they were forcibly boarded by armed Israeli commandos. The passengers defended their ship against the invaders and nine of them were murdered, most shot at close range in the back of the head.
Ken helped overpower two commandos and managed to disarm one of his pistol and empty it’s ammunition. The commandos eventually overpowered the flotilla, then promptly kidnapped everyone, towing the ships to a detention camp. After stealing everyone’s possessions and generally treating them like dogs the kidnappers relented to international pressure, releasing and deporting most of those they had kidnapped. Ken wanted to appeal his deportation to Ireland and instead go to Gaza, but, having already been seriously beaten twice by Israeli soldiers while captive, his solicitor advised him that for his own safety he should leave Israel.
For his troubles Ken was laughably listed on the IDF’s official propaganda weblog — IDF Spokesperson — as “known to be involved in terrorist activity,” and continuing with:
Ken O’Keefe (Born 1969), an American and British citizen, is a radical anti-Israel activist and operative of the Hamas Terror organization. He attempted to enter the Gaza Strip in order to form and train a commando unit for the Palestinian terror organization.
To form and train a commando unit? I’ve had some heated arguments with Ken over the years but ‘terrorist commando’? Someone in the IDF propaganda unit’s been telling porkies. (Note to IDF: when you’re falsely accusing someone of being a terrorist try not to get their nationality wrong. Kind of makes you look like you don’t know what you’re talking about.)
So let’s get this straight. They kidnap Ken (whose life story happens to be an open book). Then they deport him. And then they tell us he’s a known terrorist? Wouldn’t it perhaps be a little more prudent to hold onto a terrorist?
Someone in the IDF propaganda unit doesn’t know how to tell porkies.
External links
Props to Iceland for going ahead with plans to pass the world’s strongest freedom of speech laws.
Time to look for a new web host in Iceland.
Apparently this isn’t an indictment of the private sector but of the public sector. Go figure.
Henry Siegman, writing for Haaretz:
When I managed to get over the shock of that exchange, it struck me that the invocation of the Hitler era was actually a frighteningly apt and searing analogy, although not the one my friend intended. A million and a half civilians have been forced to live in an open-air prison in inhuman conditions for over three years now, but unlike the Hitler years, they are not Jews but Palestinians. Their jailers, incredibly, are survivors of the Holocaust, or their descendants. Of course, the inmates of Gaza are not destined for gas chambers, as the Jews were, but they have been reduced to a debased and hopeless existence.
Fully 80% of Gaza’s population lives on the edge of malnutrition, depending on international charities for their daily nourishment. According to the UN and World Health authorities, Gaza’s children suffer from dramatically increased morbidity that will affect and shorten the lives of many of them. This obscenity is a consequence of a deliberate and carefully calculated Israeli policy aimed at de-developing Gaza by destroying not only its economy but its physical and social infrastructure while sealing it hermitically from the outside world.
Particularly appalling is that this policy has been the source of amusement for some Israeli leaders, who according to Israeli press reports have jokingly described it as “putting Palestinians on a diet.” That, too, is reminiscent of the Hitler years, when Jewish suffering amused the Nazis.
Christian Groups: Biblical Armageddon Must Be Taught Alongside Global Warming
It’s official, the UK has blown its historical chance to bring its electoral system into the 21st century and make a better democracy.
Both the Conservatives and Labour have ensured the UK won’t get a referendum on whether people want proportional representation or not. The Liberal Democrats didn’t have the numbers. There will be a referendum on the Alternative Vote system but, while an improvement, it is not proportional representation.
Labour is now lying to their supporters that they didn’t have the numbers for a coalition. In fact they did, the smaller parties were offering their support to an alliance. Labour supporters who are gutted that the Conservatives are now in power should realise that it is entirely Labour’s fault that they are:
A [LibDem] spokesman said key members of the Labour team “gave every impression of wanting the process to fail” and the party had made “no attempt at all” to agree a common approach on issues like schools funding and tax reform.
“Certain key Labour cabinet ministers were determined to undermine any agreement by holding out on policy issues and suggesting that Labour would not deliver on proportional representation and might not marshal the votes to secure even the most modest form of electoral reform,” he said.
This isn’t a party interested in policy. They’re interested in unbridled power. Instead of compromising a little on policy with the Liberal Democrats they’d rather compromise completely and have a Conservative government.
The Conservatives won around 10 million votes while the Liberal Democrats and Labour together won around 15 million votes, around 5 million more than the Conservatives. And yet the Conservatives get 306 seats while Liberal Democrats and Labour together get only 315 seats. Just 9 more seats than the Conservatives. Why do we pretend this is representative democracy?