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News Middle East Israel attacks Gaza aid fleet Al Jazeera's report on board the Mavi Marmara before communications were cut Israeli forces have attacked a flotilla of aid-carrying ships aiming to break the country's siege on Gaza. More than 10 people were killed and dozens injured when troops intercepted the convoy of ships dubbed the Freedom Flotilla early on Monday, the Israeli military said. The Israeli Army Radio had earlier said that up to 16 people had been killed. The flotilla was attacked in international waters, 65km off the Gaza coast. Footage from the flotilla's lead vessel, the Mavi Marmara, showed armed Israeli soldiers boarding the ship and helicopters flying overhead. Al Jazeera's Jamal Elshayyal, on board the Mavi Marmara, said Israeli troops had used live ammunition during the operation. The Israeli military said four soldiers had been wounded, two of them moderately, and claimed troops opened fire after "demonstrators onboard attacked the IDF Naval personnel with live fire and light weaponry including knives and clubs". Free Gaza Movement, the organisers of the flotilla, however, said the troops opened fire as soon as they stormed the ships. Israeli intervention Earlier, the Israeli navy had contacted the captain of the Mavi Marmara, asking him to identify himself and say where the ship was headed. IN DEPTH Focus: On board the Freedom Flotilla Focus: 'The future of Palestine' Tensions rise over Gaza aid fleet 'Fighting to break Gaza siege' Aid convoy sets off for Gaza Programmes: Born in Gaza Video: Israel's Gaza PR offensive Video: Gazan's rare family reunion abroad Video: Making the most of Gaza's woes Shortly after, two Israeli naval vessels had flanked the flotilla on either side, but at a distance. Organisers of the flotilla carrying 10,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid then diverted their ships and slowed down to avoid a confrontation during the night. They also issued all passengers life jackets and asked them to remain below deck. Al Jazeera’s Ayman Mohyeldin, reporting from Jerusalem, said the Israeli action was surprising. "All the images being shown from the activists on board those ships show clearly that they were civilians and peaceful in nature, with medical supplies on board. So it will surprise many in the international community to learn what could have possibly led to this type of confrontation," he said. Meanwhile, Israeli police have been put on a heightened state of alert across the country to prevent any civil disturbances. Protests Condemnation has been quick to pour in after the Israeli action. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, officially declared a three-day state of mourning over Monday's deaths. Live blogging Aftermath of Israel's attack on Gaza flotilla Thousands of Turkish protesters tried to storm the Israeli consulate in Istanbul soon after the news of the operation broke. The protesters shouted "Damn Israel" as police blocked them. Turkey is also reported to have summoned the Israeli ambassador to lodge a protest. "(The interception on the convoy) is unacceptable ... Israel will have to endure the consequences of this behaviour," the Turkish foreign ministry said in a statement. Ismail Haniya, the Hamas leader in Gaza, has also dubbed the Israeli action as "barbaric". Hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists, including a Nobel laureate and several European legislators, were with the flotilla, aiming to reach Gaza in defiance of an Israeli embargo. But Israel had said it would not allow the flotilla to reach the Gaza Strip and vowed to stop the six ships from reaching the coastal Palestinian territory. The flotilla had set sail from a port in Cyprus on Sunday and aimed to reach Gaza by Monday morning. Israel said the boats were embarking on "an act of provocation" against the Israeli military, rather than providing aid, and that it had issued warrants to prohibit their entrance to Gaza. It asserted that the flotilla would be breaking international law by landing in Gaza, a claim the organisers rejected.

Isreal are mongs, lets kill hamas leader and send it ballistic. well done, they have just caused even more deaths. Fuck Isreal - Palestine gave them land, they abused it so fuck them. unreal anyone care? I do, Isreal are big bullys who wont back down to many broken noses.

Similarly, on June 25, 2006, an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, was captured by Palestinian militants at an army post near Gaza. The BBC and ITV news, the Guardian and the Independent all described the action as a “kidnapping”. Guardian journalist David Fickling wrote: “Israeli troops arrested dozens of Hamas ministers and parliamentarians today as they stepped up their campaign to free a soldier kidnapped by militants in Gaza at the weekend.” (Israel detains Hamas ministers | World news | guardian.co.uk) We wrote to Fickling and asked him why Israeli militants “detain” and “arrest” while Palestinian militants “kidnap”. Fickling replied: “There is a well attested distinction between arrest – an action carried out by a state as the first step of a well-defined legal process – and kidnap, which is an action carried out by private individuals with no defined outcome, enforceable purpose, or rights of review or release.” (Email, June 29, 2006) In reality, these “arrests” occurred in occupied territory in violation of international law. The notion of a “well-defined legal process” was laughable - Israel has no legal jurisdiction whatever in the territories. As Fickling’s answer makes clear, the hidden ideological source empowering much propaganda is the presumed legitimacy of the state and its actions. We are trained, not just to respect, but to revere the state, the shining “city upon a hill”. We lower our heads before ‘the flag’ and the national anthem much as we would before religious idols. Indeed, people receive an insult to ‘the flag’ much as they would an insult to their God. This seems just ‘the way things are’ now, but in 1937 political analyst Rudolf Rocker explained how state managers had very consciously emulated organised religion in their attempts to manipulate the public mind: “Every church is constantly striving to extend the limits of its power, and to plant the feeling of dependence deeper in the hearts of men. But every temporal power is animated by the same desire, so in both cases the efforts take the same direction. Just as in religion God is everything and man nothing, so in politics the state is everything, the subject nothing.” (Rocker, Culture and Nationalism, Michael E. Coughlan, 1978, p.55) Rocker added: “The Crusader's cry, ‘God wills it!’ would hardly raise an echo in Europe today, but there are still millions of men who are ready for anything if the nation wills it! Religious feeling has assumed political forms.” (Ibid, p.252) ‘Balanced’ news reporting of state action comes laden with this highly suspect, quasi-religious baggage. Notice how respectable Fickling’s “troops” who merely “arrest” seem compared to the “militants” who “kidnap”. The “troops” are “security forces”, responsible agents of the hallowed state. A “militant” is any Tom, Dick or Harry with a gun. And of course a “terrorist” is a kind of devil. It sounds much worse when journalists report that civilians have been killed by “militants” or “terrorists” than by “security forces” or “peacekeeping forces”. The latter terms instantly tone down the psychological impact of state violence, suggesting that the motive was to maintain order - any civilian casualties must have been an unintended outcome, a tragic mistake. By contrast, the word “terrorist” suggests that civilian suffering was the intended outcome. To propose that “security forces” might be “terrorists” - that they might be intimidating through terror - is dizzying. It sounds like a contradiction in terms, a reversal of the truth. The end result is that we are trained to react to violent acts, not on the basis of their objective legality and human cost, but on the basis of the perceived legitimacy of the people committing the act. Violence committed by authority figures will tend to be viewed as legitimate and well-intentioned. Violence committed by non-state actors or “rogue states” resisting the state will tend to be seen as illegitimate and malevolent. This means that the public, in a sense, does not receive “news” - it receives the +same+ event repeated over and over again. The same “security forces” are always taking regrettable but necessary action against “terrorists” and “militants”. The public no longer sees real, changing, complex events; it sees the same frozen, benevolent image of the world. As we have seen in recent years, almost literally any horror, any act of mass murder, can take place behind this image with few public attempts to intervene or stop what is happening. It is the role of the mass media to use language to keep this frozen image fixed before the public mind. Kidnapped - Iran Provides A Casus Belli For War Needless to say, devotion to the state religion is promoted only for “respectable” members of the “international community”. Mere “rogue states” are a crude parody of the real thing. Like dressed up chimpanzees, their armed forces are in reality “militants”, their political commanders “terrorists”. It makes no difference that they wear the same uniforms ‘we’ wear, ape our quasi-religious state pomp and ceremony, or cover themselves in shiny medals. Just three years ago, on March 23, 2007, 15 British sailors were detained by Iranian forces and held captive for twelve days. The mainstream media immediately described the sailors as “hostages” who had been “kidnapped” in Iraqi waters (in fact the sailors were part of an illegal occupation force in Iraq that had strayed into Iranian waters). A Guardian report was titled: “Timing: Kidnappings came day before UN resolution.” (The Guardian, March 26, 2007) A Times leader commented: “Bordering on Barbarity: Iran’s despicable treatment of British hostages leaves it isolated.” (The Times, March 31, 2007) This was an act of “piracy”, obviously. But more than that, it was a casus belli for war. Melanie Phillips wrote in the Daily Mail: “Britain seems to be in some kind of dreamworld. There is no sense of urgency or crisis, no outpouring of anger. There seems to be virtually no grasp of what is at stake. “Some commentators have languidly observed that in another age this would have been regarded as an act of war. What on earth are they talking about? It +is+ an act of war. There can hardly be a more blatant act of aggression than the kidnapping of another country’s military personnel. “What clearly +does+ belong to another age is this country’s ability to understand the proper way to respond to an act of war. When his Marines were seized by the Iranians, the commander of HMS Cornwall, Commodore Nick Lambert, did nothing to stop them and later said it was probably all a misunderstanding. If Nelson had been such a diplomat in such circumstances, Trafalgar would surely have been lost.” (Phillips, ‘The appeasement of Iran,’ Daily Mail, March 28, 2007; Melanie Phillips’s Articles » The appeasement of Iran) None of the British sailors were harmed. None were killed while unarmed at point blank range with multiple shots to the head and body. None were grievously wounded, beaten, Tazered, tear-gassed or stun-bombed. None were refused medical attention while they lay dying at the point of a gun. Despite the complete absence of Iranian violence, journalists were appalled that the sailors had not responded with force. Tony Parsons wrote in the Mirror: “The Americans are calling us wimps for allowing British sailors and marines to be kidnapped without a fight, and even bigger wimps for being so pathetically toothless in our response... “There was a moment when military action was a possibility, and indeed the best option - and I'm not talking about sending a gunboat or sabre rattling. The 15 being held hostage were not bob-a-jobbing. They had guns, too - but they didn't use them to defend themselves. And HMS Cornwall, armed with enough firepower to blow a few Revolutionary Guards all the way back to downtown Tehran, was about as much use as a rubber duck.” (Parsons, ‘Toothless Britain takes it lion down,’ The Mirror, April 2, 2007) Writing in the Daily Mail, Michael Seamark noted the “embarrassment over how and why Iran was able to seize the servicemen... without a shot being fired...” (Seamark, ‘Freedom!: Huge relief as our sailors head home,’ Daily Mail, April 5, 2007) Stephen Glover wrote in the same paper: “When the commander of a powerful Royal Navy warship allows a detachment of his personnel to be captured by a small Iranian force, it suggests that the British rules of engagement are at fault. So, too, the fact that the sailors failed to put up any fight in their own defence.” (Glover, ‘Thank God our servicemen are free, but make no mistake, this has been a humiliation for Britain,’ Daily Mail, April 5, 2007) Melanie Phillips agreed: “The reason Commodore Lambert did nothing to stop the Marines being taken was because the current rules of engagement forbid action which might escalate a crisis. That must change. We should state publicly that our rules of engagement are now being altered to allow us to defend ourselves.” (Phillips, op. cit.) Not only did journalists lament the lack of a violent response to the non-violent Iranian action, the expectation indeed hope, Peter Wilby noted in the Guardian, was for a violent conclusion to the affair: “The storyline had been mapped out. There would be blindfolded captives, torture and show trials. Britain would respond with Churchillian rhetoric, gunboats, SAS raids and stiff upper lips and, if it didn't, Tony Blair, along with Margaret Beckett's caravan, could be given one last kicking. Instead, we had an Easter ‘gift’ from President Ahmadinejad. The newspapers' disappointment at the peaceful end to a story that had been boiling up nicely was palpable.” (Wilby, ‘A sailors' story told without a hint of scepticism,’ The Guardian, April 9, 2007) The disappointment was doubtless shared by the United States, which “offered to take military action on behalf of the 15 British sailors”, the Guardian reported: “Pentagon officials asked their British counterparts: what do you want us to do? They offered a series of military options, a list which remains top secret given the mounting risk of war between the US and Iran.” (Ewen MacAskill, Julian Borger, Michael Howard and John Hooper, 'Iran crisis: Diplomacy: Americans offered "aggressive patrols" in Iranian airspace,’ The Guardian, April 7, 2007) The Telegraph was incensed by the "hostage-taking", which it deemed an "outrage". (Leading article, ‘Iran's actions will only increase its isolation,’ The Telegraph, March 29, 2007) A Times editorial raged: “For more than four days British sailors and Marines have been imprisoned in Iran. They have been interrogated, psychologically abused, denied access to the outside world and pressured into giving ‘confessions’. The 15 were seized at gunpoint by armed Iranian Revolutionary Guards... Their kidnapping is an outrage. In earlier times it would have been an immediate casus belli [for war]. It would fully justify the use of force to obtain their release. There is, however, an even greater outrage compounding this insult to international law: the pusillanimous timidity of British officials and politicians, who have failed disgracefully to confront Iran with the ultimatum this flagrant aggression demands.” (Leading article, ‘Britain's Hostage Crisis,’ The Times, March 27, 2007) The Times’ editors sneered bitterly at Iranian propaganda claims that the sailors were being “well-treated”: “What ‘well treated’ means can well be imagined: some of the Britons who were seized in a similar incident three years ago have described the mock executions, the psychological torture and the intimidating way that their captors tried to force admissions of guilt.” (Ibid.) Truly the Iranians must be demons in human form. The crew +were+ repeatedly questioned, the Sunday Times reported two years later, "but in a friendly way,” according to the sailors. One of them, Bloomer, recalled: “‘For the first few days the door was locked all the time, then gradually it was left open more often, till one evening one of the guards asked if we wanted to sit out on the patio and watch a football match on TV,’ Bloomer says. The Iranian guards were, in fact ‘excellent hosts’. “‘We were brought three meals a day, crisps and snacks. We always had a bowl of fresh fruit. If anything, we may be a bit overweight because they were feeding us so much. They discovered one of us liked Iran tea, so it arrived by the flask.’ “There were two beds in the room. The younger guys allotted one to Bloomer and took turns at sleeping on the floor. ‘It was a bit like a camping trip, actually. It wasn't bad at all.’” (Margarette Driscoll, ‘Ordeal or adventure? I can't decide,’ Sunday Times, December 6, 2009) Part 2 will follow shortly...

Scene After IDF Attack In Gaza RAW FOOTAGE not for the faint hearted

Being tweeted by Sky New Breaks: . SkyNewsBreak Paul Gascoigne is admitted to Newcastle General Hospital following a car accident. He is in a comfortable condition Doesn't say whether he was driving or not or whether alcohol was involved. It's very sad to see someone like this love him or hate him.

This decision by the BBC is not the act of an impartial organisation, but a cowardly decision by director general Mark Thompson, motivated by fears that the Israeli government will bar BBC journalists from press conferences, as they did in 2003. The existence of an ongoing conflict did not, after all, prevent the BBC from broadcasting similar DEC appeals in the past: Gulf Crisis (1990) Former Yugoslavia (1994) Rwanda (1994) Sudan (1998) Kosovo (1999) Liberia (2003) Sudan - Darfur (2004) Darfur & Chad (2007)

So, back to work everyone, everything is okay once again. I'll sleep well tonight. As bad as Hamas may be, is there a bigger gang of pocketlessly funded, war-mongering, (let's all turn a blind eye) Brooklyn-based cunts on this earth (including Brooklyn)?

YouTube - Paul Gascoigne drunk talking bullshit he has serious psycological problems