This video is unavailable to view in the USA.

A powerful film with exclusive footage from the day of the Israeli assault on the densely populated district of Shujayea in Gaza City. A film by Amjad Almalki and Ahmed Ashour.

I downloaded it  off Youtube using a proxy server located in Europe.

The version on of this war of aggression by Israel is heavily censored in the USA

IS THE US CORPORATE MEDIA RACIST?

Perhaps a fringe web site like Little Green Footballs can be forgiven for calling former US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney "One of the craziest moonbat politicians in the US". But when the prestigious Washington Post finally acknowledges the Israeli hijacking of the Greek-flagged "Spirit of Humanity" and the abduction of the passengers and crew, including the former US Congresswoman, and starts their article with "Somehow we didn't think we had seen the last of Cynthia McKinney.", you know this is a trend.

Now, I would like you all to look back to 2007, when armed British patrol boats strayed into Iranian territorial waters, and Iran captured 15 British service personnel. In contrast to the near total silence surrounding Israel's taking of the "Spirit of Humanity", the American and British media were filled with outrage, demands for the release of the British sailors, and warnings of dire consequences that would happen if the international standards for treatment of prisoners were not adhered to by Iran! The fate of the British sailors was the headline news for day after day after day until Iran released them back to Britain after Britain (while claiming an old map was to blame) promised the incursions would never happen again.

The freed sailors were treated as heroes and then ordered never to publicly comment on just what had actually happened.

The same media that lionized the British sailors and expressed such concern for their well being has taken a totally different approach with the Israeli capture of the "Spirit of Humanity".

There has been virtually no coverage at all other than (as pointed out above) articles that insult McKinney and treat the whole subject as not important. Readers of WRH have called into TV stations like WABC-TV in New York only to be told that Michael Jackson, a musician dead of a drug overdose, is the major international story and that the seizure of the "Spirit" by Israel just isn't important at all.

I am trying to figure out why the two stories are treated so differently.

True, there are some differences. The British Patrol boats were armed for war while "Spirit of Humanity" was on a peace mission. The British eventually admitted they had been in "disputed" Iranian waters while "Spirit of Humanity" was clearly in international waters. But that doesn't explain the strange disconnect in the way the two stories were treated.

I wondered if maybe the authors of the above hit pieces on Cynthia just didn't like women, but then I remembered that one of the British crew was a woman as well, so that cannot be the problem.

Then it finally hit me. Cynthia McKinney is black. And the British sailors, including the female, are all white!

That has to be it. And I am stunned! After all the progress I thought we had made in civil rights in the United States, to see such a double standard at work in the American corporate media! WhiteBritish sailors captured are headline news, while a captured black US Congresswoman is treated as irrelevant, if not outright scorned!

This is a major shock. It has been so long since I have seen such blatant racism on display in the corporate media, and while LGF might be forgiven, I find it alarming to see such a double standard in the Washington Post!

Of course, I might have missed something here. Maybe there is another reason that the American Corporate media thinks that Iran hijacking boats in their own territorial waters is a major news story while Israel hijacking a boat in international waters is not. And if that is true; if there really is a reason why the two stories are being treated differently, I welcome any member of the corporate media to call into my radio show and explain it to me.

Because until they do, I think we have no choice left but to conclude that the difference in coverage between the two stories is that the American Corporate Media just don't like black people!

:)


"One man recently wrote, "Give a man a pudding and Diana Rigg during the lunch hour and experience shows he will be a thing of slobbering contentment from start to finish." —New York Newsday, 3 April 1994

Fear the October Surprise

Fear the October Surprise

September 27, 2006

For those who wonder what purpose was served by one of the first official acts of George the 2nd when he issued an executive order classifying the official records from the Reagan-Bush years, we now know. George 1st (Bush Sr) participated in a behind the scenes negotiation with Iran in October of 1980 to gain the promise of the release of the 52 American Embassy hostages. Bush's October Surprise was sufficient to gain Reagan the presidency and the humiliating defeat of Jimmy Carter. And as promised, the Iranians released the hostages on inauguration day in exchange for American arms. The acorn doesn't fall far from the tree.

Private citizens running for public office and conducting arms deals with foreign countries who hold Americans hostage is pretty close to treason. If Prescott Bush could be caught Trading with the Enemy with his Nazi pals during WW II, why shouldn't George 1st carry on the tradition? It runs in the family.

Today we have a presidency coming unglued with a civil war in all but name on a horrific scale in Iraq, the Taliban back in control of most of Afghanistan and Israel goading the US into the Mother of All War Crimes by demanding we attack Iran with nuclear weapons. It's clear that George 2nd lost the first election to Al Gore and was appointed into office by the Supreme Court. And it's also become pretty obvious that Karl Rove managed to steal another election in the Presidential elections of 2004. With two separate court decisions which have determined George 2nd to have violated the law both with his treatment of prisoners in Cuba and illegal wiretapping in the US, George 2nd faces not only impeachment but possible imprisonment should all of the details of 911 be revealed.

Look for an October Surprise.

Fear the October Surprise, it's coming your way soon.

It could be a false flag operation by Israel designed to give the Gang of Fools a Casus Belli to attack Iran with nuclear weapons. Something like hitting one of our carriers in the Persian Gulf with an anti-ship missile fired from a gunboat using Iranian frequency radar. Americans have short memories and Karl Rove is well aware of the evil in the hearts of men. He wallows in evil and the best that can be said of the Bush Regime is that he has brought fear to America.

In any case, the world is in for another six weeks of the greatest danger of nuclear war since the dark days of October of 1962. George 2nd is madder than a hatter. There is a good chance this administration will do anything to prevent the Democrats for taking either the House of Representatives or the Senate. It's entirely possible that Karl Rove will incinerate America before allowing the investigations that would be part and parcel of a Democrat-controlled House of Representatives. They are the ones who vote on Impeachment and it's clear to anyone who listens to Americans speak these days, if we lived in a democracy, Bush would be toast.

If Bush is stupid enough to attack Iran, it won't take months for Americans to realize we have lost the war as was the case with Iraq, we will be able to figure it out in a couple of days. You won't be able to give dollars away and gold is going through the roof as our economy collapses and our form of government disappears. These clowns have lost three wars in a row. Am I the only person to see signs of a pattern here?

It wasn't Adolf Hitler who paid the price for WW II and his illegal war of aggression, it was the German people. We simply cannot torture and murder people on a wholesale basis without paying the butcher's bill.

They want you be to afraid BE VERY AFRAID

Regards.

Will November Bring Hope or Another Stolen Election?

One-Party Rule and the Corporate Press Threaten Freedom and Democracy

Will November Bring Hope or Another Stolen Election?

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

In one month we will know if Americans understand the danger of the Bush administration's fanatical preoccupation with terrorism combined with one-party control of the executive and legislative branches. If voters let pass the opportunity in the November election to take Congress out of Republican hands, America will experience a more rapid descent into a police state.

The Bush administration's response to 9/11, an event about which we have incomplete and unreliable information, has been to trample important civil liberties such as habeas corpus, the attorney-client privilege, privacy, due process, and prohibition against self-incrimination.

Today, "detainees" incarcerated by US government officials are held indefinitely without charges or warrants--essentially imprisoned without trial, denied access to lawyers and family, and tortured in an effort to attain self-incrimination, while US citizens are spied upon without court warrants.

These are the distinctive features of a police state. They have brought President Bush and his government into conflict with the US Constitution, the Geneva Conventions, and US statutory law. To sanctify these violations of Constitution, treaty, and law, last week the US Republican Congress passed a warrantless surveillance bill and a detainee bill that destroys privacy and removes court protections and Geneva Conventions protections from detainees.

Many Americans are unconcerned about these developments, because they believe only real terrorists are affected. In fact, the majority of "terrorist detainees" are innocent people sold to Americans as "terrorists" for bounties. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf says, "We have earned bounties totaling millions of dollars." Amnesty International's Claudio Cordone says of that organization's report released September 29, "Bounty hunters, including police officers and local people, have captured individuals of different nationalities, often apparently at random, and sold them into U.S. custody."

Moreover, the definition of "terrorist suspect" is subject only to the discretion of the arresting officials. No evidence has to be presented or even possessed to justify the detention of the person as a terrorist. As no evidence is required, anyone can be branded a terrorist suspect.

Consider, also, that laws tend to be expansively interpreted. For example, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) was intended to apply to organized crime. Today a RICO claim can arise in almost any context, including divorce cases. It is applied to individuals, legitimate businesses, and political protest groups.

President Bush, Vice President Cheney and a variety of neoconservative and Republican writers are attempting to broaden the definition of terrorist to include truthful critics of Bush's Iraq war. On September 29, for example, the Associated Press reported that Bush said that critics who claim the Iraq war has made America less safe embrace "the enemy's propaganda."

In making this charge, Bush is damning the National Intelligence Estimate prepared by US intelligence agencies which concluded that the war in Iraq was making Americans less safe by breeding more terrorism.

If Bush can accuse the CIA of "embracing terrorist propaganda," any columnist or reporter who reports truthfully can be put in the "against us" camp and interred for giving "aid and comfort to the enemy."

By passing the detainee and surveillance bills, Congress has given the executive branch the power to silence dissent. Naive Americans believe that there is a difference between the government having arbitrary and unaccountable powers to arrest enemies and using these powers against its own citizens. But governments always use the powers they gain. Otherwise, there is no point to the US Constitution, which was written to restrain the growth of government power. If government can be trusted with arbitrary and unaccountable power, the US Constitution has no purpose.

The Democrats, of course, have done nothing to protect us from Bush's illegal war or from his assaults on the Constitution and civil liberty. Democrats have been intimidated by the threat of being politically placed in the "against us" camp, and Democrats are as much in the pockets of AIPAC, the oil industry, and the military-industrial complex as Republicans.

Nevertheless, one-party rule magnifies error by marginalizing dissent and debate. The Republican Congress acquiesces to the Republican executive in order to maintain a common front that the opposition cannot penetrate. Detrimental policies and laws harmful to liberty are passed for the sake of party power, not because they are good for Americans or true to the Constitution.

The Democrats don't deserve to be in office any more than do the Republicans, but by putting Democrats in office, voters can strengthen Americans' ability to dissent from Bush's police state measures and Bush's commitment to interminable wars in the Middle East. One-party rule suppresses dissent within the government and, thus, makes dissent all the more difficult outside government.

Freedom and democracy in America are already impaired by a heavily concentrated media ownership that no longer serves the public interest. A one-party government combined with a corporate controlled press is no recipe for maintaining freedom and democracy in America.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com


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Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness. -- George Orwell