(Thanx ThomH!)
Saturday, 5 June 2010
Prove that Beck is NOT a liar...
What Everyone Needs to Know About Beck's Honesty, Political Values and Methods of Communication
Corporations need to lose their divine status
God spoke to Moses through a burning bush on Mount Horeb. He apparently speaks to Republicans through a spewing oil well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico...HERE
Jewish Refugees on Legendary Ship “Exodus” Would Be Called Terrorists by (Today's) Israeli Govt.
“They were mobbed, they were clubbed, they were beaten, stabbed, there was even a report of gunfire. And our soldiers had to defend themselves,” [Bibi Netanyahu] said.I was brought up to be a liberal Zionist of sorts, and as a young person I was profoundly moved by Leon Uris’s brilliant novel, Exodus. I read it twice during my teens. It was the story of the creation of the state of Israel, as seen through the eyes of a handful of dauntless Jewish refugees, fleeing the cruelest oppression and ultimately carving out a little safe haven for themselves, despite an array of seemingly insurmountable obstacles blocking their way. The story of that journey — from beleaguered detainees in a British refugee camp on Cyprus to young statehood — is an important part of Israeli lore. When Otto Preminger made Uris’s tale into the film starring Paul Newman in 1960, it had a measurable impact on the American public’s view of the Israel-Arab conflict.
[Defense Minister Ehud] Barak voiced regret for the deaths, but called the flotilla a political provocation and said the sponsors of the flotilla were violent supporters of a terror organization.
Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, meanwhile, said the soldiers were forced by violent activists to respond with live fire.
Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said earlier Monday that the organizers of the Gaza aid flotilla have connections to international terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Al-Qaida, and called the aid convoy a violent and provocative attempt to break the blockade on Gaza.
There was, of course, a real Exodus. Uris loosely based the early part of his novel on its journey, which required running the British blockade of then-Palestine.
1947…
In international waters off Palestine the British Royal Navy intercepted the Exodus and British troops attempted to board.According to the New York Times, “the violent way the British Navy seized that ship and deported the refugees backfired, creating global sympathy for the plight of stateless Jews.”
Several hours of fighting followed, with the ship’s passengers spraying fuel oil and throwing smoke bombs, life rafts and whatever else came to hand, down on the British sailors trying to board, The Times reported at the time. Soon the British opened fire. Two immigrants and a crewman on the Exodus were killed; scores more were wounded, many seriously. The ship was towed to Haifa, and from there its passengers were deported, first to France and eventually to Germany, where they were placed in camps near Lübeck.
The refugees had no legal authority to enter Palestine, and the British were determined to block the ship. In the battle that ensued, three Jews aboard the Exodus were killed. The ship’s passengers — more than 4,500 men, women and children — were ultimately deported to Germany.The Times noted this as well:
The attack and its aftermath, which focused attention on the plight of many European Jews after the war, made headlines worldwide and helped marshal support for an Israeli state. [...]
Captain Ahronovitch was 23 when he took the helm of the Exodus. On July 11, 1947, he picked up the refugees at Sète, in southern France. On July 18, as the ship neared the coast of Palestine, the British Navy intercepted it. Captain Ahronovitch tried to break through, but two British destroyers rammed the ship.
Large protests erupted on both sides of the Atlantic. The ensuing public embarrassment for Britain played a significant role in the diplomatic swing of sympathy toward the Jews and the eventual recognition of a Jewish state in 1948.
On Monday, activists wounded by the Israeli military during the raid on the ships were brought to Haifa for medical treatment. Sixty-three years ago, the world saw photographs and newsreel footage of dazed Jewish refugees, some wounded by the British military, disembarking the Exodus 1947, under armed guard, in Haifa.
Another parallel between the events of 1947 and those on Monday is a dispute over what might have justified the use of deadly force against civilians. Israeli officials insisted in initial statements that shooting activists in the flotilla was justified because commandos boarding one ship were met with “live fire and light weaponry including knives and clubs.” That assertion was called “a lie,” by one of the flotilla’s organizers. In his live-blog post, Mr. Sheizaf wrote that Channel 10, an Israeli television station, reported that the Israeli military had completed a search of the ship and “no weapons discovered except for the two pistols that were taken from the soldiers.” Later in the day an Israeli military Web site posted a photograph of knives and sticks that were found on the ship where civilians were shot and killed.
In August 1947, a New York Times article on the clash at sea the previous month was headlined: “Crew Man From the Exodus 1947 Denies the British Met Firearms; Grauel, on Arrival in New York, Says Naval Boarding Party Shot at Jews Whose Weapons Were Potatoes, Canned Goods.”
Joshua Holland @'AlterNet'
More on the voyage of the 'Exodus'
Maybe at this point we should also mention
Bearing in mind once again that one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist...
Liverpool fear exodus of key players after Benitez walks
At least now that Ferdinand is out Gerard will be Captain of England!
Israel’s Foreign Ministry Tweets at Me, Tries to Defend Itself - And Proves My Point
You know things are getting hairy when a government agency feels the need to go to Twitter to defend its actions.
That’s what happened this morning when I tweeted the fact that more peace activists were killed on the day of the flotilla attack, than Israelis have been killed by Gaza rockets in 10 years.
To my surprise, within minutes, @IsraelMFA, the official Twitter account run by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, directed a tweet at me that read: “more than four naval personnel were injured, some from gunfire and some from various other weapons.”
I tweeted back (in compressed format) that injured is the key word here. No Israeli soldiers died — no Israeli soldiers even sustained “serious” injuries — though they did leave at least nine peace activists lifeless.
The MFA’s tweet directed at me is no longer on their Twitter page. It was likely deleted because its blind-sided comment thoroughly proved my point. That’s how it goes in the world of propaganda — inconveniences are handily, quickly deleted.
Daniela Perdomo @'AlterNet'
Walled City of Kowloon: Living Inside the Maze
The Triad, who represented most of the criminal element, were pretty much forced out in the 70s – by a police attack some 30,000 strong, no less -- but the city remained as a kind of anarchist warren, a world-unto-itself where the residents built and maintained pretty much everything.
MORE
lost cities
(For Aaja)
Friday, 4 June 2010
The Voice of Oscar Wilde?
According to H Montgomery Hyde’s 1975 biography of Oscar Wilde: “…It was during one of these visits to the Exhibition that Wilde was recognized in the American pavilion, where one of the stands was devoted to the inventions of Thomas Edison. One of these inventions was the ‘phonograph or speaking machine,’ and Wilde was asked to say something into the horn of the recording mechanism. He responded by reciting part VI of The Ballad Of Reading Gaol, which consists of the last three stanzas of the poem, and identifying it with his name at the end.” (More.)The purported wax cylinder is lost but an acetate copy surfaced in the 1960s. Wilde’s son, Vyvyan Holland, identified his father’s voice then changed his mind later on. An analysis by the British Sound Archive threw further doubt on the recording so we’re left to make up our own minds which you can do for yourself here. It doesn’t sound to me like the voice one would expect from a man of Wilde’s physical size, but then I also never expected Aleister Crowley’s voice to be so highly-pitched. If anyone knows of more recent research or detail about the Wilde recording, please leave a comment.
John Coulthart @'{feuilleton}'
This video illustrates real-time MRI of vocal performance. It includes examples from a soprano and an emcee/beatboxer. This video was featured at the Sounds and Visions Session, of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM) Scientific Sessions, May 2006, Seattle.
For more information, visit sail.usc.edu/span
For more information, visit sail.usc.edu/span
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
