Flotilla Update: Israel Attacks Convoy, Deaths Reported

[compared2what?]

Judeo-Christian west.

How can you use that word in the same breath as an explanation of the centuries of oppression suffered by Jews at the hands of Christians?

Um....While asking myself a variation on that very question, without ever coming up with a better alternative? Because that's how I always use it?

The variation being, more or less: Self, do you have to use that lying word? There is no such thing as a "Judeo-Christian" culture in the west. And, as it happens, the western cultures of which you're speaking at the moment are all Christian cultures that now mostly tolerate Jews and various other religious or ethnic minorities whom they once persecuted. One upshot of which has been the semi-Christianization of a whole bunch of religions that made changes to their beliefs and practices because that was the price of assimilation rather than because that was the direction that the evolution of their creed happened to take.

The best I've ever been able to come up with is "Cultures that are predominantly of white and Western European descent." Which is somewhat more accurate, though still not precisely accurate. And a great deal more cumbersome.

Basically, I use that word because I don't know of an adequate replacement for it. Suggestions are welcome. I mean, as long as we're splitting hairs, it wouldn't even be fully accurate for me to describe myself as a white person of Western European descent, either literally or meaningfully. I'm primarily of mixed Eastern European descent, and there's enough hardcore Russian empire in there from a mere two generations back for the general concepts of selfhood that I was raised with to be neither fully Western nor any kind of hyphenated-Christian that the West recognizes.

Because you just cannot overstate how much staying power the influence of Roman Catholicism during the Middle Ages and Renaissance has on the present-day societies of countries that were under its dominion then. They pretty much invented the west.

worse than Israel but not provoking as much outrage, as South Africa is.

I think you'll find it's 2010, we recently celebrated the 16th anniversary of our one-state solution. And there was plenty of very helpful outrage at SA a few decades ago. Also that the SA military never actually used artillery against black neighbourhoods, so "worse" is very debatable.

Percival, I'm glad you're posting, I missed a few days of this thread so might only get into it tomorrow, but the reason Israel attracts more criticism than, say, Sri Lanka is that it's the last colonial state, where whites are dispossessing natives at gunpoint. I agree that criticism of Israel is not always wholly fair, but do you really want to be saying that Israel's violence should be tolerated up to the point where it's as bad as the worst thing happening anywhere else in the world?

No, I don't. And it's not really a fair reading of what I wrote to suggest that I said it, given how emphatically and repeatedly I've stated that an absolute is an absolute, worse than which it's not possible to get. Although you're right, I shouldn't have been making analogies or comparisons as loose and useless as that one was, it's not really defensible on any level. I'm just tired.

[Gouda]

Protesters say Israel had an assassination list

(...)

Mr Elshayyal, a reporter for the Arab channel al-Jazeera, was standing to one side of the ship and had a view of the front and back of the vessel when the fighting started. By his account, soldiers fired down on the protesters from the helicopters before an Israeli soldier had even set foot on the ship. A man next to him was shot through the top of his head, dying instantly.

"What I saw were shots being fired from the helicopter above and moments later from below – from the ships," Mr Elshayyal said. "As far as I am concerned, it's a lie to say they only started shooting on deck."

At least two other eyewitnesses saw soldiers firing from above the ships before they landed on the Marmara's deck. It is possible that this is what prompted the fierce resistance to the soldiers when they dropped down. Several passengers recount how organisers urged their peers to stop hitting the soldiers, aware of how it would harm their claim to be peaceful protesters.

Others on the ship claim they raised a white flag, but say that it was ignored. They also used a loudspeaker to reiterate their message of surrender and requested that the injured be taken off the ship to get medical assistance. Again, they were ignored.

At some point early on, the activists dragged three, possibly four, injured soldiers to a lower deck, either to keep as hostages or for their own safety. It was then, several passengers say, that the situation quickly deteriorated. Israel has insisted that the protesters took two of the soldiers' pistols and used them, but others claim the pistols were taken away to prove that Israel planned to use live rounds.

Below, the protesters rummaged through captured soldiers' belongings and claimed to unearth a document that they allege is a list of people Israel intended to assassinate. The booklet, written in Hebrew and in English, contained some photographs of passengers on the Marmara, including the leader of IHH, the Turkish charity that provided two of the ships, an 88-year-old priest and Ra'ad Salah, head of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, Mr Elshayyal said.

A military spokesman, Lt Col Avital Leibowitz, insisted soldiers acted in self-defence and that she "was not aware" of any list. But one thing is fast becoming clear – many of the dead were shot multiple times at point-blank range. One was a journalist taking photographs. "A man was shot ... between the eyebrows, which indicates that it was not an attack that took place from self-defence," Hassan Ghani, a passenger, said in an account posted on YouTube. "The soldier had time to set up the shot." Mattias Gardell, a Swedish activist, told the TT news bureau: "The Israelis committed premeditated murder ... Two people were killed by shots in the forehead, one was shot in the back of the head and one in the chest."

(...)

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 92517.html

[Nordic]

17 Breezes, you're fucking worthless.

The arguments are fraught enough already, please leave aside the personal attacks.

Fuck that. Go ahead and ban all of us Jeff. BAN ALL OF US. Go, do it.

[Nordic]

17breezes is a scumbag, a fascist, a troll, a racist, and a warmongering murderous FUCK.

Go ahead, ban me.

BAN ME

[Nordic]

Might as well have KKK members and stormfronters here.

Intolerable.

Go ahead, Jeff, ban ALL OF US.

Do it.

[17breezes]

Iran offers to provide military escort to cargo ships trying to break Israel's Gaza blockade, rep of Supreme Leader tells Mehr news agency
about 2 hours ago via breakingnews.com

http://twitter.com/BreakingNews/status/15553330702

What could go wrong?

[Jeff]

Nordic, I'm prescribing a week's rest.

[norton ash]

Sure, the Giants facemasked the Eagles' quarterback, kicked him in the throat and liver 'til he was dead, and pissed on the corpse. That's DEFENSE.

You Eagles fans are just a bunch of haters. Go Giants! Anyone who says there should be a criminal investigation is just a pussy loser Giants-hater.

Welcome to sports radio.

[anothershamus]

[Gouda]

PCR said @ 1:20: "The US is a puppet state of Israel."

He then goes on to wholly contradict himself later in the clip (The US is controlled by Wall Street, the Military-Security complex, etc - which is correct).

I thought PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS had signed off, said good bye. I was hoping he'd stick to his word.

[anothershamus]

He has apparently still has got a lot to say, how bad could the father of Reaganomics be so bad?

Interview with Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary US Treasury, Associate Editor Wall Street Journal, Professor of Political Economy Center for Strategic and International Studies Georgetown University Washington DC.



Question: Dr. Roberts, the United States is regarded as the most successful state in the world today. What is responsible for American success?



Dr. Roberts: Propaganda. If truth be known, the US is a failed state. More about that later. The US owes its image of success to: (1) the vast lands and mineral resources that the US “liberated” with violence from the native inhabitants, (2) Europe’s, especially Great Britain’s, self-destruction in World War I and World War II, and (3) the economic destruction of Russia and most of Asia by communism or socialism.



After World War II, the US took the reserve currency role from Great Britain. This made the US dollar the world money and permitted the US to pay its import bills in its own currency. World War II’s destruction of the other industrialized countries left the US as the only country capable of supplying products to world markets. This historical happenstance created among Americans the impression that they were a favored people. Today the militarist neoconservatives speak of the United States as “the indispensable nation.” In other words, Americans are above all others, except, of course, Israelis.



To American eyes a vague “terrorist threat,” a creation of their own government, is sufficient justification for naked aggression against Muslim peoples and for an agenda of world hegemony.



This hubristic attitude explains why among most Americans there is no remorse over the one million Iraqis killed and the four million Iraqis displaced by a US invasion and occupation that were based entirely on lies and deception. It explains why there is no remorse among most Americans for the countless numbers of Afghans who have been cavalierly murdered by the US military, or for the Pakistani civilians murdered by US drones and “soldiers” sitting in front of video screens. It explains why there is no outrage among Americans when the Israelis bomb Lebanese civilians and Gaza civilians. No one in the world will believe that Israel’s latest act of barbarity, the murderous attack on the international aid flotilla to Gaza, was not cleared with Israel’s American enabler.



Question: You said that the US was a failed state. How can that be? What do you mean?



Roberts: The war on terror, invented by the George W. Bush/Dick Cheney regime, destroyed the US Constitution and the civil liberties that the Constitution embodies. The Bill of Rights has been eviscerated. The Obama regime has institutionalized the Bush/Cheney assault on American liberty. Today, no American has any rights if he or she is accused of “terrorist” activity. The Obama regime has expanded the vague definition of “terrorist activity” to include “domestic extremist,” another undefined and vague category subject to the government’s discretion. In short, a “terrorist” or a “domestic extremist” is anyone who dissents from a policy or a practice that the US government regards as necessary for its agenda of world hegemony.



Unlike some countries, the US is not an ethic group. It is a collection of diverse peoples united under the Constitution. When the Constitution was destroyed, the US ceased to exist. What exists today are power centers that are unaccountable. Elections mean nothing, as both parties are dependent on the same powerful interest groups for campaign funds. The most powerful interest groups are the military/security complex, which includes the Pentagon, the CIA, and the corporations that service them, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, the oil industry that is destroying the Gulf of Mexico, Wall Street (investment banks and hedge funds), the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies, and the agri-companies that produce food of questionable content.



These corporate powers comprise an oligarchy that cannot be dislodged by voting. Ever since “globalism” was enacted into law, the Democrats have been dependent on the same corporate sources of income as the Republicans, because globalism destroyed the labor unions. Consequently, there is no difference between the Republicans and Democrats, or no meaningful difference.



The “war on terror” completed the constitutional/legal failure of the US. The US has also failed economically. Under Wall Street pressure for short-term profits, US corporations have moved offshore their production for US consumer markets. The result has been to move US GDP and millions of well-paid US jobs to countries, such as China and India, where labor and professional expertise are cheap. This practice has been going on since about 1990.



After 20 years of offshoring US production, which destroyed American jobs and federal, state and local tax base, the US unemployment rate, as measured by US government methodology in 1980, is over 20 percent. The ladders of upward mobility have been dismantled. Millions of young Americans with university degrees are employed as waitresses and bartenders. Foreign enrollment comprises a larger and larger percentage of US universities as the American population finds that a university degree has been negated by the offshoring of the jobs that the graduates expected.



When US offshored production re-enters the US as imports, the trade balance deteriorates. Foreigners use their surplus dollars to purchase existing US assets.


Consequently, dividends, interest, capital gains, tolls from toll roads, rents, and profits, now flow abroad to foreign owners, thus increasing the pressure on the US dollar. The US has been able to survive the mounting claims of foreigners against US GDP because the US dollar is the reserve currency. However, the large US budget and trade deficits will put pressures on the dollar that will become too extreme for the dollar to be able to sustain this role. When the dollar fails, the US population will be impoverished.



The US is heavily indebted, both the government and the citizens. Over the last decade there has been no growth in family income. The US economy was kept going through the expansion of consumer debt. Now consumers are so heavily indebted that they cannot borrow more. This means that the main driving force of the US economy, consumer demand, cannot increase. As consumer demand comprises 70% of the economy, when consumer demand cannot increase, there can be no economic recovery.



The US is a failed state also because there is no accountability to the people by corporations or by government at any level, whether state, local, or federal. British Petroleum is destroying the Gulf of Mexico. The US government has done nothing. The Obama regime’s response to the crisis is more irresponsible than the Bush regime’s response to Hurricane Katrina. Wetlands and fisheries are being destroyed by unregulated capitalist greed and by a government that treats the environment with contempt. The tourist economy of Florida is being destroyed. The external costs of drilling in deep waters exceeds the net worth of the oil industry. As a result of the failure of the American state, the oil industry is destroying one of the world’s most valuable ecological systems.



Question: What can be done?



Roberts: The American people are lost in la-la land. They have no idea that their civil liberties have been forfeited. They are only gradually learning that their economic future is compromised. They have little idea of the world’s growing hatred of Americans for their destruction of other peoples. In short, Americans are full of themselves. They have no idea of the disasters that their ignorance and inhumanity have brought upon themselves and upon the world.



Much of the world, looking at a country that appears both stupid and inhumane, wonders at Americans’ fine opinion of themselves. Is America the virtuous “indispensable nation” of neoconservative propaganda, or is America a plague upon the world? 2

Paul Craig Roberts is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Paul Craig Roberts

[nathan28]

Maybe PCR and Paul Volker can get a special public service show in 2014 on the Food Network, "30-Minute Dumpster Diving Recipes for Proles."

[American Dream]

Absolutely Humoungus London Demo for Palestine & Gaza Boats

[17breezes]

Egypt to strip men married to Israelis of citizenship

CAIRO (AFP) – A Cairo court on Saturday upheld a ruling to strip Egyptian men married to Israeli women of their citizenship in a case that has highlighted national sentiment towards Israel.

Judge Mohammed al-Husseini, sitting on the Supreme Administrative Court, said the interior ministry must ask the cabinet to take the necessary steps to strip Egyptian men married to Israeli women, and their children, of their citizenship.

The court said that each case should be considered separately, in a ruling that cannot be appealed.

The ruling reflects Egyptian sentiment towards Israel, more than 30 years after Egypt signed an unpopular peace deal with the Jewish state.

Before reading the verdict, Husseini said the case would not apply to Egyptian men married to Arab Israeli women.

"The case for (Egyptian) men married to Israeli Arab women is different to those married to Israeli women of Jewish origin because (Israeli Arabs) have lived under Israeli occupation," Husseini told the court.

[b]"The court's decision is taking into account Egypt's national security," the judge said.

Lawyer Nabil al-Wahsh said he originally brought the case to court in order to prevent the creation of a generation "disloyal to Egypt and the Arab world."

Children of such marriages "should not be allowed to perform their military service," he said.

The number of Egyptian men married to Israeli women is thought to be around 30,000, according to Wahsh. Only 10 percent of them are married to Arab Israelis.

"This ruling is for the benefit of Egypt, a nation of leadership, history and civilisation," Wahsh said. "It is for the protection of Egypt and Egypt's youth and its national security."

"The decision comes as Israel continues its assault on those who love peace. The latest example is the aggression against the aid boat which was heading towards the blockaded Gaza Strip," he added.

On Monday, Israeli naval commandos raided a humanitarian flotilla carrying aid to the blockaded Gaza Strip, in a bungled operation that left nine pro-Palestinian activists dead and scores injured.

A lower court ruled last year that the interior minister must look into the cases of Egyptian men married to Israeli women, and their children, in order to "take the necessary steps to strip them of their nationality."

The interior and foreign ministries had appealed the case, saying it was for parliament to decide on such matters.

Thousands of Egyptians, particularly a large number who lived in Iraq and returned after the 1990 Gulf War over Kuwait, moved to Israel in search of work and married Israeli women.

In 1979, Egypt became the first Arab country to sign a peace deal with Israel.[/b]

Sounds like racism to me. Do you think the world will be outraged? And this is an Arab state at PEACE with Israel.

[JackRiddler]

Re: "Egypt to strip men married to Israelis of citizenship"

This is an outrage. It is racism. And this is an Arab state closely allied with Israel, which until the flotilla massacre had participated in the Israeli-led starvation blockade of Gaza. Since the Camp David Accords, Egypt has received a couple of billion dollars a year in US aid as the de facto payoff for its alliance with Israel.

I guess you're against US aid to Egypt. I guess you oppose the Egyptian dictatorship with which Israel is allied.

Where do you keep getting the idea that pointing out someone else's atrocity is going to serve as an excuse for Israel's atrocities? What I find especially strange in this case is that the atrocity is being committed by an Israeli ally.

This is an outrage, and it is racism, and it is not justifiable by any measure, but it is also a reaction. Would it be happening if Israel were not grabbing more land, demolishing houses, engaging in massacres and starving the Palestinians? Would it be happening if Israel had not repeatedly attacked Egypt under preventive war doctrine in the past (notably 1956, 1967 and the subsequent "War of Attrition,") killing many thousands?

"Why do they hate us?" Some say they "hate our freedoms." Others say they hate Jews.

I say "we" should stop destroying their countries over and over and they'll stop "hating us."

Israel has separate court systems for Arab and Jew. People have very different rights in the Israeli state depending on whether they are Jewish, strictly religious Jews, Israeli Arabs or Palestinians in the territories. How is this not racism? How does one racism justify another?

Israel had a ceasefire with Hamas. Hamas fired no missiles across the Green Line for the term of the cease-fire. Israel violated the cease-fire with a crossborder attack that killed six men. When Hamas fired missiles in response, Israel bombed a captive population, including schools, hospitals, UN offices and a graduation ceremony at the police academy. White phosphorus was used. More than a thousand defenseless people were killed. The UN assigned a South African judge, who happened to be Jewish and a supporter of Zionism, to investigate the matter. He found that Israel committed war crimes under international law. He said the same of Hamas, but laid the primary blame and the far worse crimes at Israel's door.

You don't get to justify this by pointing to other atrocities. The US should not be supporting these kinds of actions with billions in military aid.

That last point is the most important point. If you want to argue that Israel is just another garden-variety killer country on a relatively small rampage, and that (name that country ) is worse, then the special privileges need to end.