The Mysterines - Reeling
1 hour ago
Saturday, 5 June 2010
Greg Davis - Grateful Dead Mix (Vol. 2)
Grateful Dead Mix – Volume 2
by Greg Davis
(April / May 2010 – Burlington VT)
Stream:
From the Gaza Flotilla Crisis, a Peace Opportunity?
"In every crisis lies an opportunity," the Obama White House says. But the hidden opportunities in the Israeli attack on the Gaza-bound aid boats are not obvious. Only the problems for Obama are: staving off a break in relations between two U.S. allies; channeling demands for an international investigation into a mechanism acceptable to Israel; easing the flow of goods into Gaza. Nevertheless, there is an opportunity now to transform the latest crisis into something that can reinforce Barack Obama's aspirations for Middle East peace.
With Egyptian and U.S. cooperation, Israel has maintained a four-year-long siege on Gaza to prevent the smuggling of weapons that would convert Gaza once again into a launching pad for attacks on Israeli citizens. Before this crisis, the strategy appeared to be working. Close Israeli-Egyptian coordination had made it more difficult for Hamas to smuggle in weapons. Fearful of another Israeli military operation that would topple its regime, Hamas had begun policing the territory to prevent other militant organizations from launching attacks on Israel.
But the effort had its costs too. First, maintaining the siege eroded Israel's international legitimacy. Even though Israel has managed to stave off a humanitarian crisis by allowing the entry of food, fuel and medical requirements, to the world it was engaging in a policy of collective punishment. And Israel's oldest and most important regional alliance — with Turkey — also began to crack as Turkey's populist Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, excoriated Israel's siege in order to curry favor at home and in the Arab and Muslim world.
For Obama, there were dangers as well. With Erdogan's encouragement, the siege of Gaza — rather than the failure to resolve the larger Palestinian problem — had become the hot-button issue in the Muslim world. The perception of U.S. complicity was harming Obama's outreach efforts in the region. Moreover, Hamas would not remain deterred forever: sooner or later it would gather the wherewithal and attack Israel again.
The fleet crisis has brought all these costs to the fore, but in the process, it might just have given all sides the motivation to change their approaches.
To test this proposition, Obama should adopt a three-pronged strategy. He should encourage the negotiation, by an Arab or European mediator, of a package deal between Hamas and Israel. The key ingredients are commitments by Hamas to prevent all violent attacks on Israel and stop smuggling weapons into Gaza. In return, Israel should lift its siege, allowing goods to flow in and out of Gaza with appropriate inspections. If Hamas breaks its commitments, which Israel has the ability to monitor, then the borders can be closed again — with Hamas rather than Israel bearing the blame. And in this context, a prisoner swap should be concluded so that Gilad Shalit, the kidnapped Israeli soldier, can be freed.
At the same time, Obama should try to shift attention to the West Bank, making sure that the "proximity talks" proceed. There is a quick fix available that would do much to improve Israel's image while strengthening the Palestinian leadership there. It involves the withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces from the West Bank territories they reoccupied during the intifadeh. The Palestinian security forces have demonstrated that they can prevent terrorism and maintain order in these areas, including during this crisis. Extending that control to all the areas ceded to Palestinian rule in the Oslo agreements would enable the Palestinian Authority to claim it had "liberated" Palestinian territory, not through violence but through peace negotiations with Israel.
Finally, Obama should try to patch things up between Turkey and Israel by refocusing them on the effort to promote an Israeli-Syrian peace. With the previous Israeli government, Turkey had played a key role as mediator with Syria. This gave Erdogan, with his intense interest in promoting Turkey's regional role, a stake in maintaining a relationship of trust with Israel. Although hurt feelings on both sides are bound to complicate this effort, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs to find a way to rebuild Israel's strategically important relationship with Turkey, and Obama needs to bring Syria into his peacemaking effort.
Given the mess we're in today, success seems unlikely. But a severe crisis forces leaders to recalculate the costs of the status quo and perhaps recognize the need for a fundamental change of direction. If Obama doesn't test this opportunity, there's a good chance that the battle over the Gaza fleet will sink his own Israeli-Palestinian peace boat.
Martin S. Indyk @'Brookings'
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.
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lost cities
(For Aaja)
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