Gathering here a couple of at least curious news I read recently at Science Daily. They have nothing to do with each other except one thing: they both deal with life at extreme temperatures.
Being human is cool... literally so.
Benjamin Passey and colleagues report that temperatures were hellishly high most of the time in one of the most likely cradles of human evolution: the basin of Lake Turkana, including the last three million years.
This may support the thermal hypothesis of human evolution, that would explain why we don't have any fur and sweat so much (intended for cooling) and also maybe why we walk on only two legs, reducing the direct impact of both the Sun and the overheated soil.
The article does not mention it but I recall reading some time ago that even brain size increase has been attributed tentatively to such heat challenge, as larger brains would prevent fainting under the heat allowing our ancestors to exploit the territory at noon, when predators are enjoying their siestas. That would also explain why we keep "natural hats" of hair on our heads, of all bodily places (and I'd dare hunch it might also explain thinly curled hair, still overwhelmingly dominant among tropical peoples, as a means to secure free circulation of air near it).
Where water is a rock... methane fills the rivers. Life in Titan?
This in fact was already known. What is new is that astronomer Chris McKay suspects that the chemistry of Titan could well be indicative of the existence of some form of life on it.
Saturn's satellite Titan, as you probably know, has many similitudes with Earth's environment, just that with a much lower temperature range that does not allow water to melt ever. At such freezing temperatures, methane, an organic compound, takes the role of water switching between liquid and gaseous states in the hazy orange atmosphere of this planetoid, the largest moon of the Solar System.
But what is new and interesting is that scientists expected that natural chemistry in Titan would produce lots of acetylene but Cassini has failed to find any of it so far. The most likely chemistry for life without water at such gelid temperatures would be a metabolism of acetylene by hidrolization (reaction with hydrogen instead oxygen, as usually happens on Earth) and, according to McKay, the available data seems to indicate that this is actually happening on Titan.
Still, Mark Allen, says that all non-biological explanations are not still ruled out. Acetylene might be just degraded by solar radiation for example.
But the aboundance of organic compounds on Titan is so overwhelming that it is difficult to think that life has not evolved upon them at the slightest chance. This last is my opinion.
Not substantially different from what happened this past week at the Mediterranean but much less likely to reach the front pages, or even any page at all, of the international media.
I already reported a month ago on how a paramilitary gang, UBISORT, at the service of the Oaxacan oligarchy, lead by Governor Ulises Ruiz, attacked a civilian caravan in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, when they tried to breach their siege of the indigenous autonomous municipalities, murdering two, Betty Cariño and Jiry Jaakola.
Now the civil society of the southern Mexican state is willing again to risk their lives to challenge the impunity of the death squads and to bring emotional and material support to the isolated indigenous community of San Juan Copala, where several journalists and activists have already been murdered in the struggle between the democratic self-rule of the people and the landlords.
The risk is huge, like the Zionists, the paramilitary gangs at the service of the Mexican and multinational oligarchy are ready to kill. The members of the Misión Copala know this but still they march.
The Triqui people have no water, electricity, food nor medicines because of the siege by the death squads.
Spanish alternative information site La Haine is covering this new caravan on daily basis starting today (in Spanish language only).
A brief review of the latest events re. the Zionist attack against the Freedom Flotilla and new initiatives.
17 activists still missing. Israel threw people to the sea
Window into Palestine reports that 17 peace activists who were aboard the Mavi Marmara are still unaccounted for and feared dead.
According to this source, Israeli troops threw four injured people to the sea and shot at blank point the man who raised the white flag indicating surrender and several people who were already hadcuffed.
This tells me that the lack of any sort of reaction by other countries may have co-adjuvated to some of the deads. Because most aboard the ship weared life jackets, so if a rescue mission would have been sent, they had a chance of finding those thrown by Israel to the sea still alive.
More videos, photos and first-person accounts
More raw footage has emerged, along with photos and declarations, clarifying the events at the Mavi Marmara. You can watch the video of some of the hottest moments of the Zionist aggression and pictures of the two Israeli soldiers neutralized in apparent self-defense actions by the people on the ship, and then taken care of by the very same people, at Ali Abuminah's blog.
Then you can read to Ken O'Keefe's first person account of the events aboard the Mavi Marmara and then in Israeli military prisons, where he was tortured, at Window into Palestine. An important read to understand about nonviolence and self-defence, including quotes from Ghandi.
O'Keefe. Injuries courtesy of Israeli torturers
Al Jazeera's Jamal Eishayyal, a UK citizen, also has a first person account of the events aboard the Mavi Marmara and how the British government totally ignored him.
Unions take action
It is also important to mention how worker unions are taking direct action against Israel. Justice reported yesterday that a Swedish dock workers' union has declared a week of strict boycott against Israel at all Swedish ports. Today WiP reports that British largest union Unite has voted to join the BDSM campaign in the hope to replicate the workers' resistence that was so crucial in dismantling South African apartheid.
Jewish ship to be sent to Gaza with aid
Jewish activists have decided to join the actions against the blockade of Gaza by fleeting their own aid ship to break the blockade, reports Justice.
Israel legitimacy to exist questioned
There is also an interesting article by Christopher King at Window into Palestine denying the legitimacy of Israel to exist on light of international law and historical SdN/UN resolutions. The key issue being the rights of the natives of Palestine, logically.
This past week I have been really oblivious to anything that was not directly related to the Zionist criminal assault of the Freedom Flotilla. I really did not feel that almost anything else mattered. Sometimes the tragedy of History just takes all the emotional and mental space and there is not really much room for anything else, I guess you can understand that.
However some more or less interesting stuff has been published in the meantime, in particular two papers on West Eurasian autosomal genetics which have been addressed at Dienekes' Anthropology Blog. So it's time to make a brief mention of them:
See: Dienekes' relevant post for abstract, some details and his very questionable opinions, as well as for some discussion among readers.
Particularly questionable is his opinion that Basques should still be genetically identical to all other Iberians, based on one paper's Fst data but ignoring a whole array of other papers. These are (at least) Bauchet 2007 (discussed here), Achili 2007 (discussed here), Tian 2009 and Athaniasiadis 2010 (discussed here).
While Iberians are not sampled and plotted, based on the data of Tian 2009, they should show up very close to French and Italians (except the unique Sardinians), slightly above the (0,0) coordinates, in the graph above. Of course, it dependends on which Iberians but I'm talking about the main cluster, not Cantabrians nor Catalans.
Jewish genetics: yet another instance of truth avoidance
Note: capitalized labels refer to Jewish subgroups. I strongly suspect, based on Fst distances (see second update below), that Palestinian and Bedouin labels are mistaken and should be the other way around.
It really frustrated me once again that Turks (nor Greeks nor Syrians) had been compared with. [note: see update below, this is not true after all and is quite revealing] The most logical hypothesis, based both on historical and the available genetic data, suggests that modern Jews (or most of them) are not so much descendants of historical Jews from Palestine as from a hybrid population that coalesced mainly in Asia Minor in Hellenistic and Roman times.
The above graph does not contradict this hypothesis at all, at least for the main Jewish population of Europe, Turkey and Syria. Irano-Iraqi Jews instead probably had different origins, the same that Yemeni, North African and Ethiopian Jews do as well (not studied here).
The affinity to Adigey (a NW Caucasian people) strongly suggests this, as well as the fact that they seem less Levantine than such an outsider population as are the Druzes (with Anatolian and Egyptian origins, not Levantine). Anyone familiar with European genetics would expect Greeks and Turks to pop up almost exactly where most Jews do.
Comparing with Bauchet-2007
But if you doubt my words, I suggest that you look at Bauchet 2007, which is the only paper so fare that has compared Jews (Ashkenazi) with Greeks and Armenians, resulting in almost total identity in all comparisons (k-means, PC analysis), as well as with South Italians. None of these groups are present in this analysis but they should show up pretty much where the main Jewish cluster is.
PC analysis of West Eurasians (fig. 4-A)
K-means clustering (fig. 4-B)
This paper remains to date one of the main and more clear references to understand European genetics at autosomal level and in particular to understand Basque and Jewish affinities or lack of them.
Together with other materials, some of them listed above, the case is clear:
Basques are a distinct subgroup of Europeans, though probably akin to some North/NE Iberians and some South/SW French
Iberians are also a distinct subgroup to the exclusion of Basques, even if they overlap at times (but not more than they overlap with Eastern Mediterraneans)
Jews seem impossible to take apart from other Eastern Mediterraneans (Greeks, Armenians, South Italians, Adigey) but they seem somewhat distinct from Palestinians, meaning they probably coalesced in Anatolia. The fact that Zionist researchers systematically avoid comparing with Turks, Greeks, etc. probably means that they know this is true but want to hide it.
If you still doubt of the distinctiveness of Basques in relation to Iberians, I would recommend to look at this other PC graph from Achilli 2007, even if it is about mtDNA, where the case is very clear even with a very small Basque sample in an ocean of other European and many different Iberian samples. Iberians do look quite diverse anyhow but none of them really clusters with Basques:
Update: Jewish genetic affinity with Turks and Cypriots revealed in the supplementary material.
Someone has sent me a copy of Atzmon's paper and I must correct my previous statement that no Turks were sampled. In fact there is a small sample of Turks and Cypriots which cluster very closely with the main Jewish group (Euro-Turco-Syrian Jews):
I can't tell at the moment if the subgroup that clusters most closely are Turks or Cypriots or a bit of each but that is all what is in the ESE control group. There are also a couple of NW Europeans who also cluster very tightly and are most likely descendant of recently assimilated Jews (maybe in the time of the Holocaust, when some families found that such was their only hope of survival).
Update: Fst distances
Table 1 is pretty interesting, even if it lacks the Turkish/Cypriot sample, in particular the Fst distances. In it, it seems quite obvious that Iranian and, to a lesser extent, Iraqi Jews are different populations from the main Jewish cluster of this study, that I will call hereafter Western Jews (incl. Turkish, Greek, Syrian, Italian and Ashkenazi subgroups). The most representative subgroup of this "Western Jewry" of Hellenistic-Roman origins are probably Turkish Jews (labeled TUR in the study), followed closely by Greek Jews (GRK) and then Syrian, Ashkenazi and Italian Jews.
In order to simplify, I averaged Fst distances within this group, resulting in the following pairwise comparisons with other populations (bold type):
Figures in regular brackets (...) are Fst pairwise distances with Turkish Jews (TUR) only, while figures in square brackets [...] are distances with Palestinians.
For reference, the average Fst distance between Western Jewish populations with each other is 0.005 (0.004 of Turkish Jews with the other Western Jews on average).
Maybe, in all this stressful week of informations about the Zionist shameless murders and the Freedom Flotilla heroism, you remember that the ambassador of Israel in Spain, Raphael Schutz, totally lost his temper, perspective of reality or just somehow let his dark Nazi-Zionist soul get out of protocol at an interview with newspaper El Períodico... and shamelessly compared the victims of Israeli murders aboard the Mavi Marmara with those of traffic accidents (mentioned here on Friday), exclaiming "who cares?"
Today, the mother of one of the persons aboard the ship, journalist David Segarra (mentioned here), who yesterday returned to his hometown of Valencia among demonstrations of support, has published an open letter to Schutz that I am translating here integrally:
To the ambassador of Israel in Spain
Mister Schutz:
I am the mother of David Segarra Soler. Now it is 5 am of June 2nd. It is dawning at Valencia and I just learned of the liberation of all those kidnapped in Israeli territory, among them my son.
I must confess that right now I don't feel any hatred to you nor towards the state you represent, not because of an altruist nor noble nor religious reason, but because of pure egoism: hate destroys. A good example of this is being offered by your state to the World. Born from the feeling of collective guilt by a cowardly Europe that was not able to defend its Jewish citizens from another monstrous and self-destroying hate, Nazi hate, it would seem as if history has not taught you anything. You are repeating the same patterns of hatred, of death, of dehumanization of the rival, of occupation of lands, of construction of walls and barbed wire fences, of racial arrogance... just that now the victims do not carry a star sewn to their clothes and the ghetto is not in Warsaw. It is in Gaza and the West Bank.
I will not tell you about the personal hell I have gone through these days. It would be ridiculous when compared with the daily and continuous pain of the Palestinian mothers. I am a lucky woman: my son David comes back from the massacre of the Mavi Marmara alive and well. You may have destroyed his only "lethal weapon": the video-camera. But what you forget in your blind hatred is that human beings have eyes, ears, mouth and memory to tell the World all the horror they have witnessed. And against that, Mr. Schutz, all your powerful propaganda can do nothing.
I bid you farewell without further ado and in the more exciting moment of my life I want to transmit to you, as representative of Israel in my country, my deepest pity. As much pity as immense is the admiration for my son, whom you, with all your terror machinery, have not been able to bring into submission. The same that you will never be able to force the Palestinian People into submission either.
In a joint meeting at the Pentagon (Arlington, Virginia) the President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, the Vice-President, Joe Biden, the Supreme Court, all Congress, the directors of the main secret services (CIA, NSA, FBI) and Wall Street Stock Market, voted unanimously in favor of abrogating the remnants of the Constitution of the United States and becoming a semi-autonomous colony of Israel, whose right to rule in America and the World was explained "because they are the Chosen People of God".
Those who wanted to oppose the move (a handful of, mostly Afroamerican, representatives of BOTH communist AND islamist ideology, and certainly antisemitic) were shot on the spot. Later a Warner Bros cartoon showed how they attempted to murder the President as they got transformed, "by the hand of God", a CNN talking head explained, into lookalikes of Willy Coyote.
Rumor is that Obama, in perfect Latin, said "Et tu Brutus..." but we have not been able to confirm this part.
Another version said that he instead said: "what a brutal massacre..." but this is also unconfirmed.
While the new national, or rather colonial, anthem is still being designed (they have difficulties with the rhymes, an anonymous source said), the new flag of the country is already known:
This explains the rhyme problem said a speaker of the Music Industry on condition of anonymity.
In a parallel development the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, also known as the Israel Lobby, decided to recycle itself into a mercantile charter that will now bear the name of Israeli West Indies Company, taking effective control of the new colony.
From now on Barack Obama shall be addressed as Governor General of New Zion and must go in yearly pilgrimage to Jerusalem to prostrate before the rulers of the Empire. His power will be nil but he will still have to put up with all the blame, for a good salary, of course.
Nothing has really changed, said a spokesman from the White House, just that now things are more clear. The Presid... erm, the Governor General... wants honesty and sincerity to be the main pillars of his policy.
In a separate development, the Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, declared that his country is considering very seriously leaving the Commonwealth and joining the Israeli Empire as well. After all we are even more Zionists than the Americans, he said.
Other countries that are rumored to be willing to join the Israeli Empire are Egypt, which would become a protectorate, Morocco, the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain and maybe others.
Asked if Italy would follow suit, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said with his trademark botox smile: we value highly the frienship of Israel, Iran and Colombia but, you know, Italy has its own mafia, what means that we are a sovereign country.
Also in Rome, Pope Benedict declared with hands raised to the sky and the same gesture of infinite patience that he always displays to the press: God writes straight with crooked lines, blessed be Him and His infinite wisdom.
In Beijing, President Hu Jintao raised an eyebrow in a most rare emotional expression while declaring: not really unexpected. We hope that the US bonds we have are convertible into shares of the new West India Company.
In Tel Aviv, Benjamin Netanyahu said: finally! Then he proceeded to declare Gaza nuclear tests zone and war on Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Eritrea, Sudan, Turkey, Venezuela and Malta. The Israely Sepoy Army of the West Indies, formerly known as the US Armed Forces is combing the country in search of healthy recruits aged 12 or older for all these new imperial wars.
The usual satirical disclaimer: any resemblance of the characters and countries of this story with any real people or country alive or dead is a mere coincidence (how could it be otherwise?)
Anticopyright: text and illustrations in this story are my creation and can be copied at will. Attribution is good manners but lack of it may protect my life from the Mossad and such, so do as you wish.
The 'Rachel Corrie' has been intercepted by Israeli troops.
Apparently this happened already in Gaza territorial waters because there are reports that people could see the ship from shore.
It seems the boarding happened from the sea and that there are no victims this time but there are few details available yet.
The attack happened more than one hour ago, before 10:00 GMT per the messages at Free Gaza's tweeter page. I did not report earlier because I was awaiting for confirmation, which just came in form of Free Gaza's news release.
Autopsies have revealed that five of the nine returned bodies were shot in the back or in the back of their heads. Some were repeatedly shot.
That is the case of the young Turco-American Furkan Dogan, who was shot five times at close range in the face, back of the head, back and leg (twice). Similarly, 61 y.o. Ibrahim Bilgen was shot four times (temple, chest, hip and back).
In the same article there's also a declaration of Turkish PM, T. Erdogan, defending Hamas legitimacy:
[They] are resistance fighters fighting for their land. They are Palestinians.
They won an election and now they are in Israel's prisons. I told this to the Americans, that I do not accept Hamas as a terrorist group.
The details of some of the killings are now coming to light. Window into Palestine reports that Cevdet Kiliçlar was shot on the head as response to him taking photos of Israeli murders aboard the Mavi Maramara. He was shot on the head and died almost instantly.
Free Gaza has posted today at their site an article saying that the ship is just 150 miles from Gaza. However:
The passengers on board the ship have stated, “communication is difficult and sometimes impossible and there are many rumors out there started by Israeli authorities, but there is no way we are going to Ashdod. We are, for sure, on our way to Gaza.”
The Malayo-Irish crew includes a Nobel Prize laureate, a Malaysian MP, a former UN Assistant Secretary General, a former Political Secretary to the PM of Malaysia, among other people, including Malaysian journalists.
Huwaida Arraf arrested at Bilin
Huwaida Arraf, chairwoman of Free Gaza, was arrested again by the Israeli authorities while taking part at a weekly nonviolent protest against the wall of shame, reports Free Gaza. Bilin is a Palestinian village strangled by the construction of the Apartheid Wall.
Habeas Corpus petition
Free Gaza attorneys have also issued an habeas corpus petition to the High Court of Israel demanding information about the health and whereabouts of the 54 passengers who were admitted to Israeli hospitals after the raid.
They also sent a letter to Israeli health officers asking them to set up a hotline for the families of the injured and deceased.
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement, which calls to boycott Israel for its apartheid and genocidal policies, in response to the criminal attack against the Freedom Flotilla makes a call to:
Mobilize for an emergency Global BDS Day of Action on Saturday 5 June 2010 -- the 43rd anniversary of the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem
Pressure governments to start implementing trade sanctions and arms embargos
We call specifically on transport and dock workers and unions around the globe to: Refuse to load/offload Israeli ships and airplanes, following the historic example set by the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU) in Durban in February 2009 and endorsed by the Maritime Union of Australia (Western Australia).
According to Gara newspaper all radio contact with the peace ship Rachel Corrie, that is sailing towards Gaza loaded with much needed aid and even more needed love and hope, has been lost. The news article has a time stamp of 8:35 CET, two hours ago and is sourced to EFE agency, citing Audrey Bomse, attorney of Free Gaza.
We don't know where the ship is because we have lost radio contact with it. We suppose that Israel has intefered the system, she said.
Who cares?
In a related news item, Israeli ambassador in Spain, Raphael Schultz has compared the killings of peace activists with traffic accidents, saying:
Yes, nine people have died in that action but 155 died in a terrorist attack in India last week. Who cares? Have you heard anything about that? 23 Spaniards died at the reads last weekend.
I am still having these most strange intermittent disconnections from the Internet. Oddly enough they only seem to happen when I using my browser (either one) but not when I'm playing online, which goes swiftly as long as I do not open a browser. I have made a virus scan and have not detected anything but the case is that I cannot use the Internet at the moment with the ease I should and hence my reporting activity is being handicapped.
Still, with patience I can do something like reporting that the testimonies of the people aboard the flotilla are being gathered at a new blog: Gaza Flotilla Survivors. It's a must read. You'll find out how the Zionist commandos started shooting at the Mavi Marmara before physically boarding it, how people was shot at close range and how a baby was threatened to force the captain to surrender the ship. And that is just part of it.
Scary, sure. But it is not like we are going to be allowed ourselves to be scared by a bunch of mafioso nazis, right?
The names, and in most cases the photos, of the nine people murdered by Israel have finally been known but only upon their arrival to Turkey. They are all Turkish nationals but one, a 19 years old boy, is also US citizen.
However there are more deadly victims, as the Zionist commandos threw many corpses overboard (organizers keep the figure of 16-20 killed). That is what Manuel Tapial, who was aboard the Mavi Marmara, said in Spanish to SER radio. He also said that there were executions after the Zionist commandos had total control of the ship and that they were shot from the zodiacs that surrounded the ship (from Un té por Palestina, podcast included).
The same story is confirmed by Bulent Yildirim, president of IHH (source):
They gave us nine bodies. Relatives are going to identify them. But the list of martyrs is larger.
There are missing people. Our doctors handed them 38 injured but they now say that there are only 21 injured.
What follows is an incomplete list: those whose bodies Israel has returned:
Furkan Dogan, 19. Born in the USA with dual Turkish-US citizenship. Student at Kayseri High School, planning to study medicine. Two siblings.
Necdet Yildirim, 32. From Malatya. IHH aid worker. Married with a three-year-old daughter.
Cevdet Kiliçlar, 38. From Kayseri. IHH aid worker, former journalist. Married with two children. You can see some of his photos at Flickr.
Ali Haydar Bengi, 39. From Diyarbakir. Graduate in Arabic Literature by Al-Azhar University, Cairo. Married with 4 children.
Cengiz Akyüz, 41. From Iskenderun. Married with three children.
Fahri Yaldiz, 43. From Adiyaman. Firefighter. Married with four children.
Cengiz Songür, 47. From Izmir. Married with seven children.
Çetin Topçuoglu, 54. From Adana. Former taekwondo champion, coach of Turkey's national taekwondo team. Married with one son. (Link to his Facebook page)
Ibrahim Bilgen, 61. From Siirt. Electrical engineer. Member of the Chamber of Electrical Engineers of Turkey. Married with 6 children.
Hamas has refused the selective delivery of some of the flotilla aid cargo by Israel. It demands that all cargo, including the much needed construction materials, are included.
You can find a very brief synthesis of what does the Gaza siege means for the daily lives of the people surviving at the Zionist-made ghetto at Intifada-Palestine.
Never mind Israel spits on him, insults him, disrespects him... US Vicepresident Joe Biden has rushed to defend Israel right to do what it wants in regards to Gaza.
The boot-licking attitude of US politicians towards the Zionist Project is unbelievable. I'd be deeply ashamed would I have US nationality. In fact I am deeply ashamed anyhow as human being because what affects other people affects me too and because, whatever you may believe, I have sympathy for and feel solidarious with the US people (meaning working class, of course)
The exact words were:
Israel has the absolute right to protect its security interests.
Absolute?! What the heck! What is going on here? Why Israel, a terrorist rogue racist genocidal state has absolute rights and instead the right of all others, beginning by Palestinians is relative or non-existent?
This has no name and shows how the Zionist Mafia totally controls the power resorts in the USA.
Shame... absolute shame.
But for now on, if anyone had still any doubt, we know that whatever Israel has, whenever it murders pacifists and civilians, it is doing so because the USA shamelessly and absolutely backs it.
According to Ynet News and also to Haaretz, both Israeli media outlets (handle with care), all survivors of the Freedom Flotilla, excepting seven severely injured who are being treated in hospitals at Israel but including the four Palestinians who had earlier been brought to trial, have finally been released.
Israeli courts accepted the argument of the defense that they could not be charged for being in ships attacked by Israel in international waters.
The bodies of the nine people (apparently the latest figure) murdered by Israel at sea have been flown to Turkey. Their identities are still not known, at least to me.
Turkish members of the flotilla got a well deserved heroes welcome at their arrival at Ankara, reports Desert Peace.
Declarations of Israeli ambassador in Washington evidence that the murderous attack against the Mavi Marmara was premeditated, reports Window into Palestine. The use of the term "nonviolent" in his declarations is absurd and offensive, by the way: Israel does not know what is nonviolence. He seems to mean "less violent" or "non-murderous" means, nothing else.
WiP also reports on Israeli MP aboard flotilla, Haneen Zoubi, denouncing that the goal of the criminal attack was to scare off further convoys. This seems obvious but what they have really achieved is the opposite: increased support for the Free Gaza project and most probably more and more resolute such convoys. As I said above, Israel with its violent neonazi ideology has no idea of what nonviolence means and, as I said in a comment here at Leherensuge on Monday, they have not, they cannot instill fear with such tactics, just rage, maybe pity.
They have achieved exactly the opposite of what they meant to. This cartoon describes it well:
What Israel has achieved with its gangster style is, at least to some extent, unite the civil societies at both sides of the Mediterranean above our cultural differences and, more often than not, above the stands of our weak and corrupt governments.
Again there is a single Humankind united by the blood spilled on the turquoise waters of the Mare Nostrum, by our love and admiration for the heroes of the Freedom Flotilla and by our determination to see the people imprisoned in the Gaza Ghetto and all those oppressed by the Palestine Apartheid (aka Israel) free and dignified.
The same blog has another article on how the only qualification needed to be in the US government seems to be unconditional love for Israel. It is based on a Haaretz article on the meaningless riff-raffs between Likudniks and Labor-Zionists on who is more Zionist than the other. In my opinion they all suck equally and US subservience to the Zionist International is really pitiful.
And this that comes now is something that really shames me, insults my humankind and boils my blood. But still I must show it:
The individual above is a Zionist counter-demonstrator at San Francisco, California (source), and what he is advocating for is for the Palestinian Holocaust. These monsters, these most vile criminals, these Jewish Nazis are not satisfied by ethnically cleansing the Palestinian people from their lands and dumping them by millions into a tiny strip of land. They are not satisfied with then bombing them with napalm and depleted uranium, nor with cutting them off from all but the very essentials and still calling them "terrorists" when they dare to defend themselves maybe throwing a powerless rock against a tank.
No these bastard sons of Hitler won't rest until they can be fully compared with the murderer of their ancestors, until they can reproduce to the tiniest detail the ovens of Auschwitz and Matthaussen.
That is Israel, that is Zionism.
And I'm not exaggerating: that is exactly the plan that at least many Zionists, the most vocal and determined ones, have: to exterminate or deport all Palestinians and make everything from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River (at least) Jewish-only land. Never mind they just arrived yesterday.
No words can really express what I feel in front of that, just determination to keep my stand and make what I can to make the much needed changes happen, to make Justice real again.
That is the opinion of Michel Chossudovski, who notes that the US Chief of Staff (Prime Minister), Rahm Emanuel, visited Israel and talked with Netanyahu just before Israel decided to intercept the Freedom Flotilla by military means in international waters, resulting in the massacre of Monday.
Emanuel, the second most powerful man in the USA (and by extension the World), is an Israeli citizen whose father was a member of terrorist and genocidal fascist organization Irgun, notorious for its attacks against civilian targets. His personal style is no better than his father's, as he is notorious for his irate and hyper-aggressive style at politics, that have gained him the nickname of Rahmbo.
First of all I have to say that I woke up from my nap, many hours ago, listening accidentally to a patio conversation among various neighbors outraged at the crimes of Israel. A Rumanian neighbor (easy to pick apart by her strong accent) in particular was very outraged at the horror of Gaza as gigantic prison and compared Apartheid South Africa favorably to the situation of Palestine. It really reflects how nearly every single person is outraged at Israel.
News:
Al Jazeera reports that Israel is deporting either by plane or through the border of Jordan all the kidnapped activists on board of the ships. The figure is finally of circa 700 and not 500 as reported earlier by some sources.
At least four Palestinian/Israelis, Free Gaza Movement board director, Lubna Masarwa, Sheik Raed Salah, leader of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, Mohammed Zeidan, Director of International Advocacy Programme for the Arab Association for Human Rights and Hamed abu Dabis are facing multiple serious criminal offences for their participation in a peaceful voyage to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza.
No information is yet known on the injured, some of them severely so, or on the corpses of the murdered ones. Their names seem still not known either.
Al Jazeera also says that Egypt is opening the Gaza border to humanitarian aid, though it is not clear for how long on under which restrictions.
The article also includes the declarations of journalist Mohamed Vall, who was aboard the Mavi Marmara:
The Israeli assault took those of us on the ship by complete surprise. We saw about 30 war vessels surrounding this ship, and helicopters attacking with very luminous bombs. More troops came and immediately opened fire, and killed people on the ship without any distinction.
In this other article there are photos of some of the aid carried by the flotilla after Israeli search: toys, books, clothes, wheelchairs.
The Qatari news site also has an opinion article by Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan, very critical of Israel, as well as some images from the still ongoing popular protests across the World, even inside Israel.
Also La Haine covers to some extent with photos, videos and links the protests happening in Europe, such as this one at Milan:
Justice has, among other interesting stuff, a Haaretz report on the cross-accusations in the Kneset between Israeli MP Hanin Zoabi, who was aboard of the flotilla, and fascist (Likud, NU, etc.) elements in the racist legislative body.
Kawther Salam includes an article explaining how Zionist soldiers shot each other (they are said to be "the elite" but the images I have seen show them extremely nervous and unprofessional).
International Solidarity Movement offers the declarations of Greek passengers of the Freedom Flotilla, denouncing the Zionist ultra-violence, declaring that they refused to sign the inculpatory declarations provided by the Zionist military after their kidnapping, demanding the Greek government to break relations with Israel and declaring their intent to repeat their feat until the siege of Gaza is lifted:
Until the biggest concentration camp created by Israelis in the 21st century stops to exist.
Sabbah Report has an article by US academic Alan Sabrosky, really saying that the ball is in the US court and that the situation created by Israel by this aggression is so serious that nobody, absolutely nobody, would opposse or doubt if the USA took the much belated initiatives to either break the Gaza siege by force, establish sanctions against Israel or suspend Israel from UN membership.
It is only US attitude of subservience to Zionism what blocks the World from taking the much needed action against the rogue state.
The McLoughling Post has a report on Israeli pacifist movement B'Tselem's information director, Lizi Sagi, denouncing Israel as a Nazi state.
At Palestine Video I found this most interesting interview with rapper Immortal Technique at a New York demonstration saying very clarifying things:
It really made me think, added to watching yesterday at TV Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11, including a very brief caption of Cynthia McKinney and other Afroamerican congresswomen some years ago opposing the anti-terrorist laws passed by the Bush administration, that the USA could really have much better people in positions of power, including the presidency and Congress.
Just that for that it would need to be a real democracy and not a media-crazy.
Palestine Video includes this most revealing interview by Russia Today (a media outlet I have already praised before for their impartiality) to Danny Schechter on how the mainstream media, specially in the USA, allows itself to be manipulated by Israel and the Zionist Lobby:
Also the UN Human Rights Council has voted by overwhelming majority to condemn Israeli actions and to dispatch an international probe on Israel's behavior.
Palestine Think Tank has translated to English the full discourse of Turkish PM Tayyip Erdogan, a couple of days ago in Chile, on the murderous Israeli attack in international waters to aid ships, several of which were Turkish jurisdiction. Some excerpts follow: Today I do not only want to speak to my dear people but to all of humanity.
... Despots, gangsters even pirates have specific sensitiveness, follow some specific morals. Those who do not follow any morality or ethics, those who do not act with any sensitivity, to call them such names would even be a compliment to them. Israel has, by attacking a ship with volunteers from 32 countries, in fact defied the world. World peace has been deeply wounded. This brazen, irresponsible, reckless government that recognises no law and tramples on any kind of humanitarian virtue, this attack of the Israeli government by all means – but by all means, must be punished.
...
Those ships were all ships of mercy. And their cargo was the heart of humanity.
So far it has been an outstanding moral victory for the side of Justice, Peace and Freedom in the conflict between the Global Civil Society and the Zionazi Enemy-Of-All: Israel's ugly truth has been unveiled (again) at a high cost and it's clear that the Zionist colonial project is morally bankrupt in the face of the World.
But this has not finished yet. The six ships that were intercepted the other night are just part of the planned Freedom Flotilla. One ship, the Rachel Corrie, of Irish flag, was delayed and is right now somewhere between Malta and Gaza, other two ships had "technical problems" (were probably sabotaged by the Zionists) and had to stay in port in Turkey.
The final decision is not yet taken but it's very possible that the Rachel Corrie with or without the other ships will head to Gaza in the following days.
Among the people aboard this ship is Peace Nobel laureate Máiread Corrigan-Maguire, wrongly reported earlier among those attacked by Israel, who is one of the promoters of Free Gaza.
The departure of the Rachel Corrie has been announced in various blogs and news sites but so far I had not really emphasized it because it lacked clear confirmation. According to Window into Palestine the final decision has not yet been taken but the ship has clearly departed from Malta already.
In any case, Greta Berlin, a speaker for the Free Gaza project declared:
We are an initiative to break Israel’s blockade of 1.5 million people in Gaza. Our mission has not changed and this is not going to be the last flotilla.
Here follows a nice video-report on what is the Rachel Corrie vessel and what aid is carrying to Gaza:
In other developments, it seems that Israel is set to deport as quick as possible all kidnapped activists. Though there are also news that some of the Palestinian ones are being subject to trial.
Also Basque newspaper Gara has this beautiful image of Gazans throwing carnations to the Mediterranean in homage to the victims of Israel's madness:
Browsing around for more news on the flotilla and such I stumbled upon this music video, posted at Maysaloon with the comment I think this song kind of captures the atmosphere around the world right now. I agree to some extent and for me Keny Arkana is a new discovery (I'm not much into music so you'll forgive me if this is old news to you) and therefore I'm embedding her video 'La Rage' (French lyrics with English subtitles) here specially to make a positive energy break in the stress caused by the Zionist muderous nightmare.
By the way, for those who can't read Spanish the ending message (by Subcomandante Marcos) says:
Struggle is like a circle: you can start at any point but it never ends
Again the Zionist massacre of maybe as many as 29 civilians (Galloway's figure, Israel says 10) aboard the Free Gaza flotilla is what I'm going to deal with. I have discussed it and tried to cover the most important developments
First of all it is intolerable that we still don't know for sure the casualty figures and their names.
Some of the prisoners are already returning to their homes but most remain under Israeli detention. Israel has declared, revoking previous statements that they would be judged there (on what charges: interception of Zionist bullets with their bodies?), that they will be offered the choice to identify themselves and be returned home or to remain in Israel as political prisoners.
I imagine that some of the approximately 130 Palestinians in the ships will chose the second option. Because in the videos before departure they were so extremely eager to return to their homeland in spite of all the oppression!
The declarations of some of the returning pacifists can be read at Reuters' AlertNet:
We did not resist at all, we couldn't even if we had wanted to. What could we have done against the commandos who climbed aboard? The only thing some people tried was to delay them from getting to the bridge, forming a human shield. They were fired upon with plastic bullets and were stunned with electric devices.
There was great mistreatment after our arrest. We were essentially hostages, like animals on the ground.
They wouldn't let us use the bathroom, wouldn't give us food or water and they took video of us despite international conventions banning this.
(Mihalis Grigoropoulos)
The captain of the vessel Mavi Marmara told us 'They are firing randomly, they are breaking the windows and entering inside. So you should get out of here as soon as possible.' That was our last conversation with him.
(Bayram Kalyon)
There are others but the only direct witness mentioned of what happened at the Mavi Marmara seems to be German MP Norman Paech (Die Linke):
"That was not an act of self defence. That was a war crime ... To talk about self defence is a mockery." He personally saw "two and a half" wooden blocks which activists used. He did not see any knives. He did not rule out that activists used metal rods, but he did not see them.
British PM David Cameron calls for a lift of the blockade of Gaza.
King Abdullah from Jordan has offered to take those prisoners who are citizens of countries that have no relations with Israel.
A rather unusual development are the mass protests in Tel Aviv (see video from Israel Social TV - in Hebrew). It's difficult to evaluate the numbers because there are not panoramic images but I'd say that thousands [confirmed: Israeli Ma'an agency says that 2000, as reported by Gaza Solidarity].
The President of Finland declared:
We have condemned it very strongly. The first thing of course is the situation in Gaza. Isolation is not a constructive way for negotiations. So the people in Gaza should be treated in a human way. They have suffered quite too much. The second part is that, these ships of solidarity have been one effort by the NGO side, and the answer of [the] military is totally impossible to understand.
I think that the leaders of Israel have now seen not only different countries; the EU, and the UN Security Council have strongly condemned the violence, and have been very decisive to say that it has to be stopped, both the blockade and the other violence.
Turkish Prime Minister, Tayyip Erdogan, demanded that Israel shares information about the condition of the activists from the flotilla.
Erdogan's discourse at least once emphasized the historical ties of friendship and cooperation with Israel. However he also addressed the Israeli nation in this manner:
We have always contributed to the attempts of Israeli people to maintain peace and stability. Now it is their turn. Your government's aggressive attitudes, like robbers, like pirates, this is damaging your country's respect in the international arena.
Part of his discourse was also critical with the USA, implicitly blaming them for Israeli's arrogance and reckless attitude.
More details of Erdogan's discourse can be read here.
Hamas denounced the UN Security Council declaration as weak and unbalanced. They also made a call for Palestinian unity.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak declared that it is opening the Rafah crossing for medical and humanitarian cases however he did not state for how long (in previous occasions it has only lasted a few days). Later information from Al Fatah (the so-called Palestinian Authority but that title would correspond to Hamas if anyone, as they won the last elections) said that there are no restrictions on who can cross through Rafah.
Al Jazeera cameraman Isaam Zaatar, on board of one of the ships, denounced violence from the Zionist troops:
I was filming, he [an Israeli solider] ran after me with an electric stick [stun gun]. He could not catch me. One of his colleagues hit my hand from behind with a stick [stun gun]. My camera fell down. He ran to crush the camera with his feet. I told him, don’t break my camera. If you want the tapes, I will give them to you. I told him these are media equipment. They had no limits. They used rubber bullets. They used tear bombs. It was an unbelievable scene.
He also informed that many of the arrested are being forced by the Zionist military to sing false documents declaring that they had broken the law.
The European Union and Russia issued a strong joint statement condemning the use of violence and calling for the blockade of Gaza to be lifted. In my opinion, this rare joint declaration shows how the lack of a strong stand from Washington on Israeli crimes is altering the geopolitics of West Eurasia and weakening NATO.
Global civil movement Avaaz (Voice in Arabic) has an online petition that states:
We call for an immediate, independent investigation into the flotilla assault, full accountability for those responsible, and the lifting of the Gaza blockade.
In few hours it has achieved almost 70,000 signatures. You can add yours here.
Another such petition by US-based Freedom Forward can be found here.
Arab League Secretary General, Amr Moussa, declared that action will be decided tomorrow and that the action will be taken against Israel "on legal, political and economic levels".
The Israeli Military seems to insist that the death toll is of 10. We'll see.
Israel is gradually turning from an asset to the United States to a burden.
Dagan also said that the U.S. government has recently examined the possibility of coercing a settlement on Israel and the Palestinians, but retreated from the idea after realizing it would not lead to a peace agreement.
The same site also mentions that Israeli-Arab leaders have called a general strike in protest for the murderous attack on the flotilla. They also called on world governments to put Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu on trial and called for a number of demonstrations.
Past coverage of the massacre and related events in this blog here and here.
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