Kathleen Wells of Race Talk interviews Noam Chomsky on Israel.
The arms trade, and you, dear UK taxpayer, are paying to set up the deals:
British taxpayers are paying a secretive lobbying firm $10,000 (£6,354) a month to push American politicians to award contracts to British defence companies.
It’s the 65th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in history today.
Let’s hope the U.S. and Israel do not try to trump it as some have been suggesting they might.
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
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.
Collateral Murder, another U.S. massacre, this time caught on tape. When you watch the video bare in mind the U.S. military claimed the victims died in a battle that took place between U.S. forces and insurgents:
“There is no question that coalition forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force”
—Lieutenant-Colonel Scott Bleichwehl,
spokesman for U.S. forces in Baghdad. (New York Times)
The reality is a bunch of coward rednecks flying around in helicopters committing murder from high above.
When the Nuremberg Tribunal described a war of aggression as the supreme war crime, because it “contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole,” this is the kind of thing they were talking about. These trigger happy rednecks flying around in helicopters just shouldn’t be in Iraq in the first place.
And this redneck nation wonders why people want to fly planes into their buildings.
Back in 2003 and 2004 over 70% of American’s polled were telling pollsters not only that they believed Saddam Hussein had WMDs but that he was personally involved in the attack on the World Trade Centre.
Now they’re at it again, with over 70% telling pollsters that they think Iran has nuclear weapons.
Should this country really be allowed to deal in international politics?
