Florida Man Accused of ‘Terrorism’ Based On Book Collection
Counter Current News | July 2, 2015
Imagine being falsely accused of terrorism for nothing more than the books you have read. Well that’s exactly what has happened to a Florida man named Marcus Dwayne Robertson.
The U.S. government composed “snippets of information from various sources, out of context, to weave together a narrative of terrorist ideation,” according to a Florida judge.
That judge just ordered the release of Robertson, also known as “Abu Taubah,” an Orlando, Florida resident and Islamic scholar. Abu Taubah was accused of “supporting terrorism,” but the “evidence” against him amounted to nothing more than the books on his bookshelf.
Robertson, also known as “Abu Taubah,” was incarcerated from 2011. The charges he faced, however, were tax fraud and illegal gun possession. Not exactly “terrorism.”
But following his arrest and conviction stemming from these charges, prosecutors added what they termed “terrorism enhancement” to the sentence.
There seems to be no rationale for this other than ABu Taubah’s religious orientation… that and his book collection.
This sentencing guideline modification would have locked Robertson up for 20 years.
But the judge’s recent rejection of this bizarre, Orwellian sentencing “enhancement”, led to the Islamic scholar being released immediately.
Robertson’s sentence was argued as justifiable by prosecutors who said the contents of his Islamic book collection were sufficient “evidence” that he was connected to terrorism.
Approximately two dozen eBooks that Robertson downloaded were presented as “evidence” of his “terrorist connections.”
Prosecutors highlighted passage after controversial passage, as though this could serve as legitimate evidence that someone is a terrorist. They didn’t seem to understand that the contents of a book someone owns cannot be used as evidence against them.
A memorandum obtained by First Look was issued along with Judge Gregory A. Presnell decision. That memorandum strongly rejected the government’s argument that eBook passages could be used as “evidence” of “terrorism.”
“[T]here was no evidence produced that Robertson ever accessed these particular documents, much less that he took their extremism to heart,” Presnell argued.
He made it clear that even if the Islamic scholar admitted to having read the eBooks in question, this would not and could not be used as evidence of terrorism.
“The government has never disputed Robertson’s claim of being an Islamic scholar,” he added. “It is not at all remarkable for an Islamic scholar to study, among many, many others, the writings of Islamic extremists.”
He said that beyond this, the prosecutors did “not even come close to proving… Robertson’s relatively minor income tax fraud was intended to promote a federal crime of terrorism.”
The judge noted that he received “hundreds of emails” over the last few weeks that urged him to lock up the man for no reason other than because he was a Muslim. These emails amount to little more than racism and bigotry in most cases, and fear-mongering and ignorance in the rest.
“In America, everyone has a right to say and believe what they want, within the bounds of the law,” Presnell said before declaring that Robertson would have to be released immediately.
Robertson’s lawyer Daniel Broderson agreed that “at no point did the government ever have any actual evidence [Robertson] advocated terrorism, so they attempted to use his library of books as a backhanded way of branding him as a terrorist. He spent four years in prison, two years of it in isolation, over a prosecution that was both unfounded and that completely ran afoul of the first amendment.”
Speaking to The Intercept after he was released, Robertson said, “they’re trying to find an indirect way to sentence people with non-terrorism charges as though they’d committed terrorism offenses, without having to provide the preponderance of evidence that is normally required in such cases. You own a few books and some guy tells an informant you said something, and suddenly that is legal basis enough to sentence you to prison for decades.”
He added that he “lost all those years, in jail, in terrible conditions, away from my family. After all that, they couldn’t produce one single statement from me that supported terrorism.”
Protest commemorating one year anniversary of the killing of Mohammad Abu Khdeir met with military violence
International Solidarity Movement | July 3, 2015
Ramallah – On July 2, 2015, in honor of the first anniversary of the murder of Muhammad Abu Khdeir, Palestinian activists with international supporters blocked a settlers-only road leading to the illegal Adam settlement. Demonstrators cited this road as the road that the murderers took in their search for a Palestinian victim. Journalists, Palestinian and international activists, suffered from pepper spray burns and several were hospitalized.
“This is the first in a week of demonstrations for Muhammad Abu Khdeir. One of the murderers, Yosef Haim Ben-David, is from the Adam settlement. This is why the demonstration was held at this settlers-only entrance,” said Abdullah Abu Rahmah, the coordinator of Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements in Bil’in.
Demonstrators blocked the road to settler traffic in both directions until the Israeli Army and Border Police dispersed the non-violent demonstrators and journalists by pepper-spraying indiscriminately. Three Palestinian activists, four journalists, and two International ISM volunteers were pepper sprayed in the eyes and mouth by a masked Army officer. An ISM co-founder as well as journalists from Roya TV Channel, Reuters, and Palestine TV were severely pepper sprayed in the eyes requiring hospitalization.
The soldiers threw sound percussion grenades at demonstrators and chased people. In addition to the pepper spray, they shoved journalists and Palestinian activists to the ground.
After the soldiers and border police chased the demonstrators off the road and down a hill, they continued to throw percussion grenades even as the demonstrators stood at a distance waiting to find fellow demonstrators.
Israeli forces detain 550 Palestinians in six months
Press TV – July 3, 2015
Israeli forces have detained 550 Palestinians, including women and children, in the occupied West Bank since the beginning of 2015.
The detainees, who were arrested in the southern city of al-Khalil (Hebron), included seven women and 105 teenagers, Amjad Najjar, the head of the Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS) in al-Khalil, said on Thursday.
The Palestinian official added that 225 of the detainees received sentences through the Israeli practice of the so-called administrative detention, under which Palestinians are kept behind bars without charge or trial for months or even years.
According to Najjar, 78 Palestinian patients “who faced a real life threat as a result of detention” were among the inmates in Israeli jails, where they receive no “medical treatment.”
He noted that Israeli forces treat the Palestinian detainees in a “savage and inhuman way during detention.”
The PPS report pointed out that many of those detained during the six-month period were from the town of Beit Ummar, where over 60 residents, mostly minors, were arrested between January and March.
Earlier reports by the PPS showed that Israel detained 383 Palestinians across the West Bank in December 2014.
Over 7,000 Palestinians are reportedly incarcerated in 17 Israeli prisons and detention camps.
Freedom Flotilla: ‘Tasering my friend Charlie was an act of terrorism’
By Richard Sudan | RT | July 1, 2015
Despite the Israeli authorities’ claims that the seizure of a Freedom Flotilla boat was ‘uneventful’, footage has emerged that indicated that they tasered a Swedish aid worker.
The boats making up Freedom Flotilla 3 (FF3) have been prevented from reaching the besieged people of Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid. The flotilla’s flagship Marianne was boarded by the Israeli military and taken to the Israeli port of Ashdod earlier in the week. By now, some of the crew members have been released, while others remain detained.
Meanwhile, the boat I was meant to be on has not yet left a Greek port. It will head to Gaza at some point. I have been asked not to publish the details. But we will go.
The Israeli authorities claim that their soldiers were ‘non-violent’ as they took over the Marianne, which amounted to an illegal act of piracy, as the vessel was in international waters at the time it was intercepted. The Israeli authorities claimed that there were no injuries when they seized the boat which they had no right to do, legally or morally. The illegal act has been described as ‘uneventful’.
Unsurprisingly though, footage has emerged which shows that the opposite is true. The video shows Arab member of the Israeli Knesset (parliament) Basel Ghattas, who I had long conversations with on my trip, first addressing the Israeli Navy before the soldiers boarded the Marianne. The footage then shows Israeli Navy thugs repeatedly tasering Swedish activist and humanitarian aid worker Charlie Andreasson.
Charlie has spent much time in Gaza. He’s a really nice guy and a genuine individual, the kind of selfless character you meet when preparing for a campaign like this. I had the pleasure of talking with him many times as we prepared for Freedom Flotilla 3, and ate dinner with him just a few days ago.
I watched the video of Charlie being tasered and knew it was him before I even read the article.
It was a sickening feeling. According to Oxford dictoniaries.com a taser is ‘a weapon firing barbs attached by wires to batteries, causing temporarily paralysis’. In reality though, tasering is an extremely violent act which can even cause death. There are campaign groups which lobby against the use of tasers by police for this very reason.
But this is how Israel routinely behaves. In typical fashion the Israeli leadership has sought to distract attention from its own crimes. Netanyahu wrote a letter published in the press and delivered to the activists on the boat. He says they must have gotten lost and perhaps should have headed to Syria. He exploits one tragedy to cynically justify another.
And here he does it again, suggesting that Israel is a beacon of light, justice, surrounded by hostile neighbors in the Middle East trying valiantly to uphold those oh so cherished values we hold dear. You can almost hear the harps playing and the angels singing when you read the letter his press office wrote for him on his behalf. He invites the readers to be “Impressed by the only democracy in the Middle East”.
Well Benjamin, we invite you to go to Gaza and to see what Israel’s democracy looks like if you happen to be a Palestinian and born in Gaza. He says that the leadership in Gaza is “using children as human shields.” Perhaps this comment is written by Netanyahu’s office to deflect attention from the fact that Israel killed hundreds of Palestinians last year including many children, and has done so since 1948.
Netanyahu claims that the people on the flotilla were bringing weapons to Gaza. This is false and nothing but an attempt by Israel to save face in the wake of yet another act of piracy committed at sea. They have to say that we are terrorists, because as it is, the world forming a much clearer picture as to the true extent and nature of Israel’s war crimes.
I’ll end here with a story that Charlie told me once when we were sitting down talking, in the company of two other activists.
Charlie told of a time he was in Gaza, and saw a young man shot by an Israeli soldier, possibly a sniper, as they found themselves under attack as is routine in Gaza.
Charlie and whoever else was there couldn’t help the Palestinian man as they were still being shot at. They had to watch him die, unable to reach him as he lay just a few feet away. They then had to inform the father that his son was dead-while the body of his son still lay in the road, unable to be recovered. The boys’ father thanked them.
I’ve never even seen the image of this happening, but yet I can’t shake it from my mind. Charlie is a brave person and didn’t deserve the treatment he got by the Israeli navy.
The Israeli soldiers are brainwashed and carrying out the work of Netanyahu’s war criminal regime. The sooner people wake up to this the better.
Richard Sudan, is a London based writer, political activist, and performance poet. Follow him on Twitter.
Utah police introduce programs to ‘reeducate’ civilians
By Justin King • The Fifth Column • June 16, 2015
Salt Lake City – The Utah Fraternal Order of Police hosted an event for more than 70 law enforcement agencies. The local media dutifully touted it as a way to reduce violence and some form of community outreach, apparently they didn’t examine the message very closely. The propaganda effort is, unsurprisingly, being conducted in a state where cops kill more people than drug dealers or gang bangers. It’s being conducted in a city that had a DA elected after promises of holding police to account for their actions. There has not been a single conviction.
The premise behind the program is as Stalinesque as they come. The advertising for the program paints it as something that helps officers and the community step into each other’s shoes. However, rather than address the fact that officers consistently use excessive force, it’s designed as a mobile reeducation center to convince people to “play the yes sir, no sir game” when dealing with officers. In other words, comply or die. For officers, the training revolves around attempting to alter the community’s perception of excessive force, rather than actually stopping it. During the class in Utah, officers were advised to go to neighbors after they bust down a door to execute a search warrant to explain why it was done. Nothing says “safe community” like terrorizing one family with a no-knock raid and then going and knocking on all the doors in the neighborhood to confront those families and scare them as well. More importantly, what are the officers going to say? It’s doubtful they will act with a presumption of innocence and therefore open the department up to a lawsuit.
The speaker at the event said, “Who is going to re-educate people who have been educated in a negative way? You!” Yes, it really is designed as a reeducation program.
The name of the organization is “Why’d You Stop Me.” There’s a 17-minute commercial available on YouTube that showcases some of the advice they are giving to kids who endure the reeducation program. Even in the video designed to make the organization look as if it is something other than a propaganda effort, the one-sided message provided by the organization that incorporates “the thin blue line” into its logo is apparent.
The video starts by displaying a badge wrapped with the “thin blue line,” which has become synonymous with police cover-ups, brutality, and misconduct. It then shows a series of clips of officers being beaten or shot. Then after endorsements from a bunch of members of the thin blue line, it displays: “121 Police Officers died in 2014 while protecting the communities they serve.”
With all of the images of violence, the message is clear: 121 cops were killed by criminals last year alone. Of course, that isn’t anywhere near the truth. According to the ODMP (the cited source in the video), the actual number of line of duty deaths was 134. However, they weren’t all beat to death or gunned down by merciless criminals. 2 were killed by other cops, 19 had heart attacks, 7 died from a “9/11 related illness,” 41 were killed in car accidents of some sort, and so on. Less than half of that number were actually killed by the actions of criminals. There’s no telling how many were killed during excessive force scenarios they provoked or by conducting no-knock raids against people that would have otherwise been nonviolent. It makes no mention of the number of unarmed civilians killed by cops during the same year. It makes no mention of the number of people killed by cops at all. That number is 1104. Seems like it would be worth mentioning that cops are killing civilians at a ratio of 20:1.
At 8:21 in the video the speaker states: “If you guys act respectfully, you get through that contact alive.” Seems to me that simply being unarmed should be enough to get through the contact alive. Just like World War II propaganda films, it shows successful conversions of people that didn’t respect police officers, who now say they do. They must be very proud to be able to trick a child from an underfunded inner-city school by feeding them lies and half-truths, but what is going to happen when that child sees a cop beat someone to death because they weren’t acting respectfully?
The primary speaker is obviously some form of social worker, anthropologist, or psychologist, right? Nope. He’s a cop. He works for Long Beach Police Department. He’s a member of the thin blue line. Why should we have expected anything else?
Why does Utah need some form of propaganda effort to reeducate the population? It probably has something to do with the fact that becoming a homicide victim at the hands of police is the most likely way of becoming a homicide victim in the state except for domestic violence, but we don’t have the numbers to determine how many domestic violence victims were killed by partners who are law enforcement. A cursory search found at least 4.
One Utah incident that has made headlines recently because the cop taunted the family of the unarmed man he killed is the case of Joey Tucker. Tucker was in some form of medical or emotional distress when an officer shot him three times. Even though the video clearly shows the officer’s statements to be false, and the new DA, Sim Gill, campaigned on holding police accountable and once wrote a paper lamenting the law enforcement community’s practice of not properly investigating crimes, no charges have been filed. Two videos of Tucker’s execution and screenshots of the Facebook conversation in which the cop says the son’s life was only worth $100,000 are available here.
Welcome to a society that will allow the population to be reeducated to accept brutality and violence, rather than ending it. We are headed to a hellish future where the security services of the United States are permitted to behave as judge, jury, and executioner while the public is expected to cheer at their own executions.
SWAT Raids Wrong Home, Breaks Windows, then Issues Family Citation for Broken Windows
This case gives a new and an even more despicable meaning to the term, “Broken Windows Policing”
By Matt Agorist | The Free Thought Project | June 30, 2015
St. Louis, MO — Leon Walker and his family were settling down for dinner last week when they were violently interrupted as flashbang grenades came flying into their house and began exploding.
The front door was kicked down, and armed assailants rushed in with AR-15 rifles drawn and pointed Walker and his family. These armed and incredibly incompetent and dangerous assailants were members of the St. Louis Police Department’s SWAT team.
The SWAT team was looking for an evil man who allegedly committed the ‘crime’ of selling a substance to willing customers. This man’s name was Darron Ford, and he lived two doors down from the Walker family.
The fact that the man they were looking for lived two doors down was of no consequence to these thugs in uniform as they went along with the raid, in full. For two hours, police, who knew they were at the wrong address, tore the home of Leon Walker apart in search of a non-existent reason to justify their idiocy.
Never let a botched SWAT raid go to waste.
Had Walker tried to defend his home against the armed invaders, he would have been killed, and the world would have never known about it. The blurb on the nightly news would have been that police kill an armed man who fired on them.
“Obviously they think they’re being invaded,” family attorney Bevis Schock said. “The hope is that they won’t fight back but that they’ll cower in fear – the flight response rather than the fight response.”
Schock says that police should have stopped their madness once they realized they were at the wrong home. However, they were on an apparent mission to destroy and intimidate.
After the life-threatening home invasion and subsequent destruction of their home, the St. Louis Police Department sent out a building inspector. In turn, the inspector issued the Walker family a citation for a window the SWAT team broke during the raid!
“In this case the insult was to have the building inspector cite them for the window that had been broken by the police an hour earlier as part of the entry, and that’s outrageous,” Schock said.
The Walker family could have been killed by these barbarians as they followed their controller’s orders to seek out illicit substances. Instead of an apology for threatening all their lives and ransacking their home, the Walkers were extorted!
The Walker family has since filed a lawsuit against the city of St. Louis. The taxpayers will now foot the bill for the belligerent idiocy of the St. Louis SWAT team.
The Walker’s situation is hardly an isolated one either. Also this month, and in the same town, another family was wrongfully raided by St. Louis SWAT. Angela Zorich and family were subject to a massive military-style raid during which their house was destroyed, their beloved dog killed, and their mother kidnapped. The reason for this war-like assault on a family — Zorich was on hard times and was temporarily unable to pay her gas bill.
Sadly, many Americans are still unable to see the horrors of the massive and brutally negligent police state that has exploded in this country. The apologists sit back and tell people that if they don’t do anything wrong, they don’t have anything to worry about.
Egypt president to change law to permit speedy executions
Reprieve | June 30, 2015
Egypt’s President, General Abdel-Fattah al Sisi, has said he wants to change the law to allow for quicker executions in the country.
In remarks at the funeral of Egypt’s Attorney-General Hisham Barakat, who died after a car bomb attack on Monday, Sisi is reported to have said: “The arm of justice is chained by the law. We’re not going to wait for this. We’re going to amend the law to allow us to implement justice as soon as possible”. He added: “If there is a death sentence, a death sentence shall be enforced.”
The decision to expedite executions for those sentenced to death raises fears for scores of people arrested in the military’s 2013 breakup of protests. Many face possible death sentences in mass trials that fail to meet international standards; including juveniles such as Irish teenager Ibrahim Halawa, who is being tried as an adult alongside 493 other people. Ibrahim, a student from Dublin, was 17 and visiting family in Cairo when he was arrested in August 2013. Now 19, he has reported torture and mistreatment throughout his two years of pre-trial detention.
Commenting, Maya Foa, the head of Reprieve’s death penalty team, said: “In Egypt we’ve already seen scores of innocent people – including juveniles such as Ibrahim Halawa – arrested for the mere ‘crime’ of being at or near a protest. Thousands still face torture, ‘mass trials’, and the threat of hanging. It is sickening that President Sisi now wants to dismantle what little checks remain to prevent wrongful executions. This wave of repression has done nothing to restore law and order in Egypt – Sisi must urgently change course, before any more lives are lost.”
Spin Becomes “Fact” in NY Times Gaza Flotilla Story
Barbara Erickson | TimesWarp |June 30, 2015
Now, with the seizure of a Swedish boat in international waters, The New York Times can no longer ignore Flotilla III, the latest attempt to break Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza. So we find a story today that ends the paper’s silence on this weeks-long saga that began in Gothenburg last month.
Times readers learned nothing of the Marianne and her three companion vessels as the international organizers of the flotilla announced their plans and gathered crews throughout the spring. Even when one of the boats was sabotaged last week or when a Palestinian member of the Knesset announced that he was joining the group, none of these events appeared in the Times.
Those who checked out The Washington Post, Newsweek, CBS News or Israeli media would have known that Flotilla III was on its way to Gaza, with the Swedish vessel approaching the strip and the others far behind. The Times, however, avoided any mention of the effort until today, when the Israeli navy announced that it had seized the Marianne and was taking her to the port of Ashdod. (The other vessels by then had turned back toward Europe.)
Now the Times has published an article by Diaa Hadid on the seizure, and her piece gives precedence to Israeli spin, allowing official excuses for the brutal siege of Gaza to stand as fact. Thus, she writes that Israel maintains a naval blockade of the strip “because militants have tried to smuggle in weapons and attack Israel by sea.”
Hadid repeats this formula in the subsequent paragraph where she states that Israel allows only “small amounts” of construction materials into Gaza “because Hamas has used building materials to construct tunnels to attack Israel.”
United Nations investigations have provided very different takes on these two issues: A 2010 fact-finding mission, for instance, declared that Israel has imposed the blockade (by land and sea) out of “a desire to punish the people of the Gaza Strip for having elected Hamas. The combination of this motive and the effect of the restrictions on the Gaza Strip leave no doubt that Israel’s actions amount to collective punishment as defined by international law.”
Where Hadid’s piece implies that tunnels have been used for random “terror” attacks on Israel, a recent UN report on the 2014 conflict found that the tunnels had been used only for legitimate means, to engage with Israeli troops during the fighting this past summer. Neither the Times nor any other media outlet has named a single Israeli civilian who was harmed because of these tunnels. (See TimesWarp 6-22-15.)
Unfortunately, Hadid fails to mention either of these findings and repeats Israeli spin as accepted fact. She fails to make even a minimal attempt at attribution, and so we have no “according to” or “Israel claims” here—just the bald, assertive “because.”
Her story ends with a poignant quote that begs for explanation. As fishermen gathered in Gaza to protest the seizure of the Marianne, one of them spoke to a Times representative. “We hope that other activists come to Gaza to help us break the naval siege,” he said, “so that we can sail again without fear.”
The article leaves us with an unanswered question: Why are the fishermen living in fear? Times readers, however, never learn the answer: Israeli naval boats routinely open fire on fishermen as they sail within the 6-mile limit imposed by the blockade. At least one died this year, several have been injured, and several have lost their boats and equipment because of the Israeli attacks.
The Times ignores this ongoing breach of the August 2014 truce, which stated that the fishing limit would expand to 12 miles. (This in itself is still far short of the 20-mile boundary set by the Oslo accords.) The paper also ignores Israel’s military incursions into Gaza, which are further breaches of the ceasefire.
Times editors are counting on a short shelf life for the Flotilla III story. Too much attention to such messy topics as international law, the definition of piracy, assaults on unarmed fishermen and Israeli breaches of the 2014 ceasefire might expose some inconvenient facts about Israel’s pitiless siege of Gaza, and this is not to their taste.
Hindu extremists beat Muslim man in northern India
In this picture, a Muslim man is being thrashed by Hindu extremists from the Bajrang Dal organization in Muzaffarnagar, northern India, June 19, 2015
Press TV – June 29, 2015
Footage has been released online purportedly showing members of an extremist Hindu organization thrash a Muslim man in India’s northern and most populous state of Uttar Pradesh.
Videos posted on social media networks show radicals from the Bajrang Dal organization, whose ideology is based on fundamentalist Hindutva, verbally abusing the victim as a fanatic mercilessly beats the man, identified as Riyaz, with a belt in the city of Muzaffarnagar, situated approximately 130 kilometers (80 miles) north of the capital, New Delhi, and in front of a large number of onlookers.
The ill-fated Muslim man is being tormented on the accusations that he was attempting to slaughter a cow in Shamli district of the city. Riyaz, however, has dismissed the claims and said he was just present at the site, where the cow was allegedly being slaughtered.
The video further shows Indian police forces arresting the victim, while taking no actions against Bajrang Dal extremists.
Meanwhile, local civil groups have blamed Samajwadi Party and Bharatiya Janata Party – the two major Indian political parties – of rekindling sectarian strife in Muzaffarnagar.
In September 2013, clashes between Muslims and Hindus in the Shamli and Muzaffarnagar districts of Uttar Pradesh state killed more than 50 and left 50,000 displaced. Many among the Muslim community fled their homes seeking shelter at relief camps.
A total of 294 people were arrested over the violence, despite nearly 6,000 being named as suspects.
Displaced Indian Muslims said their makeshift homes were being demolished by the state government in order to avoid negative media attention, following a report that revealed 34 children had died in the relief camps.
If Israel was a democracy, Freedom Flotilla would be allowed to Gaza
Richard Sudan | RT | June 29, 2015
Three of the four boats in the Gaza-bound Freedom Flotilla have turned back as the flagship Marianne was intercepted by the Israeli military and rerouted to Ashdod port. If Israel was a democracy it would grant this boat safe passage to Gaza.
These activists are peaceful people sailing in international waters, and are attempting to bring aid, and to donate a fishing boat to the people of Gaza, who are at the mercy of one of the most ruthless and sophisticated armed forces in the world. An attempt to stop them while they are in international waters, itself constitutes a breach of international law. Israel commits war crimes which are acknowledged by the United Nations and many human rights organizations. Let’s consider who the real terrorists in this scenario are. It isn’t the people struggling to have a decent quality of life in the most densely populated piece of land in the world. The idea that Palestinians could present a threat to such a powerful state as Israel is simply ludicrous. Israel holds the political, military, and economic power and controls the information narrative.
We should never forget when thinking about the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, that when Israeli forces stormed the Mavi Marmara in 2010, in an act of piracy, they killed nine people with one person later dying from injuries. The authorities have acted as if no crime was ever committed and as if Israel has nothing to answer for. That is state-sponsored violence with complete impunity.
Our boat is the last to set sail. However, we were told Sunday that our boat for now remains in Athens, and is not moving. At the moment, that’s all I can say.
For this reason, at the time of writing, we are preparing to deviate from the original plan and are making alternate plans to reach our ultimate destination. I would like to be specific at this point but cannot say much more than I already have. What I can say however, is that everyone here is motivated by a drive to highlight what is happening in Gaza through peaceful means.
We are being labeled as trouble makers and as agitators who are trying to make trouble for Israel, which of course is always presented as being guilty of nothing.
Past and present parliamentarians from different nations, aid workers, scholars, and journalists do not paint a picture of terrorists. Actually they have a track record of working against terrorists, many of them working in areas of conflict in the past with people who have had their lives torn apart by war.
They say, as they do when anyone tries to reach Gaza that the act in itself is an act of terrorism because the government in Gaza is run by Hamas. Hamas – who were elected and who represent the people.
Whatever one might think of Hamas is irrelevant, unless of course you happen to live in Palestine. Hamas did not bomb hundreds of innocent people last summer including hundreds of children.
The act of trying to prevent some fishing boats being delivered to people who are trapped and who have no freedom of movement is a monstrous one. These activists are unarmed and are 100 percent not a threat to Israel; they are pretty selfless human beings who simply care. If Israel was a democracy it would grant these activists safe passage. Israel however fulfills none of its obligations to the people of Palestine, and so it’s no surprise that it refuses to acknowledge the humanitarian crisis it has created.
What is wrong with equal rights for everyone under a system which treats everyone the same? If it was good enough for South Africa then surely it’s good enough for the rest of the world.
The FF3 coalition is a peaceful campaign absolutely maintaining a policy of nonviolence. It seems pretty clear though at this stage as if Israel is determined to allow no aid through to Gaza, and will continue to act as judge, jury, and executioner towards anyone that dare question or disagree with the colonial settler state.
I hope the brave souls who are on the vessels already at sea make it and that no harm comes to any of them. They do not deserve to have their names dragged through the dirt by a largely ignorant liberal press, and it’s an utter disgrace that many are happy to highlight a humanitarian crisis elsewhere in the world, while Palestine gets pushed to the side-lines. If FF3 serves to highlight any of this then the campaign will have been worth it.
Richard Sudan, is a London based writer, political activist, and performance poet. Follow him on Twitter.
The General Dynamics, Saudi Arabia contract and Canada’s moral regress
By Mitchell Thompson | Disinformation | June 28, 2015
With the case of the Canadian-brokered General Dynamics light armored vehicle sale to the Saudi Arabian government, Canada’s manufacturing sector has become complicit in human rights abuses abroad.
The question of benefit could be framed like this: is General Dynamics employing more people than its equipment is killing?
The Globe and Mail reported that Ed Fast, Canada’s Minister of International trade said, the deal will help the manufacturing area in London to “become the epicentre of a cross-Canada supply chain directly benefiting more than 500 local Canadian firms… Our government will continue to support our exporters and manufacturers to create jobs, as part of our government’s most ambitious pro-trade, pro-export plan in Canadian history.”
That export plan, justified by job-creation involves the sale of light armoured vehicles, manufactured in Canada that the Globe and Mail describes as having “effective firepower to defeat soft and armored targets… options for mounted guns include a 25-mm cannon and 7.62-mm machine guns and smoke grenade launchers.”
The Ottawa Citizen reports that:
“Canada’s defence industry has beaten out German and French competitors to win a massive contract worth at least $10 billion US to supply armoured military vehicles to Saudi Arabia.
The win was announced by International Trade Minister Ed Fast to cheering workers Friday at a factory in London, Ont., and will go a long way in bolstering the Harper government’s case for transforming Canada into a global arms dealer.
But it also raises many ethical questions that will continue to surface as Canada’s arms industry turns more and more to the volatile Middle East and South America for business.
Canada has previously sold light armoured vehicles (LAVs) like those used by Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan to Saudi Arabia, with more than 1,000 delivered to the Middle Eastern kingdom in the early 1990s, and 700 more in 2009.
But the government is touting this latest deal as the largest export contract in Canadian history, with the potential to create and sustain 3,000 jobs in southern Ontario and other parts of the country.
Exactly how many LAVs are being sold to Saudi Arabia was not being revealed, but documents filed in the U.S. by General Dynamics Land Systems – Canada, whose London-based subsidiary will be building the vehicles, put the contract at between $10 billion and $13 billion.
Defence and export industry representatives praised the Conservative government Friday for its role in securing the deal.”
The job creation argument that Canada is using stands even more oddly next to the moral cost of the deal, given Saudi Arabia’s human rights record.
Alex Nieve, Secretary General of Amnesty International told the Globe that “[The Saudi government is] known to use armoured vehicles and other weapons in dispersing peaceful protest.”
Jonathan Manthorpe writes for IPolitics that “The Saudi regime is buying these vehicles not to defend the nation from foreign threats, but to protect the regime from Saudis — from internal dissent and demands for reform.”
Hillary Homes of Amnesty told the Globe that “[Saudi Arabia] is among the worst human-rights violators in the world.”
Canada’s support of the Saudi abuse is bad enough, what’s worse is its insistence that working Canadians become participants. The government says it wants this sort of arms manufacturing as the epicentre of a cross-Canada supply chain with connections to over 500 firms. Is that really something Canada wants as an epicentre of any part of its economy?
Let’s consider what that means. If the epicentre of a sector of the manufacturing industry is dependent on the manufacturing of equipment for a third world dictatorship, continued economic progress for that sector would require that government to use that equipment. Canadians would have an interest in the Saudi Arabian government using its old equipment, so it can buy new equipment, made in Canada.
If Amnesty and others are correct, that the equipment that we manufacture will likely be used against civilians and a sector of our economy depends on that manufacturing- that means that a sector of our economy would be dependent on those abuses.
There are good people working in manufacturing. Having their work emanate from third world dictatorships perverts the entire sector. Working people should not be forced to participate in such an exchange, to remain economically viable.
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From the Archives
How Bill Gates Premeditated COVID Vaccine Injury Censorship
By Dr. Joseph Mercola | March 30, 2021
In 2000, everything about Bill Gates’ public persona changed. He morphed from a hardnosed and ruthless technology monopolizer into a soft, fuzzy and incredibly generous philanthropist when he and his wife launched the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.1
It was a public relations coup. May 18, 1998, the U.S. Justice Department, in collaboration with 20 state attorneys, filed an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft.2 At that time, the company was 23 years old and was ruling the personal computer market. The Seattle Times described the fallout from the antitrust lawsuit:3
“The company barely escaped being split up after it was ruled an unlawful monopolist in 2000 for using its stranglehold on the PC market with its Windows operating system to cripple competitors, such as Netscape’s Navigator Web browser.”
How would the world be different today if the company had been split? Yale law professor George Priest described the antitrust lawsuit as “one of the most important antitrust cases of its generation.”4 In 2002, a court settlement placed restrictions on Microsoft to curb some of its practices for five years.
It was later extended twice and then expired May 12, 2011. The lawsuit had a dramatic effect on “the emergence of an entirely new field called IP (intellectual property) antitrust,” Iowa law professor Herbert Hovenkamp told the Seattle Times.5
Later, large sums donated from the foundation made the news multiple times, including $9.5 million to GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines), a second $7.5 million to GAVI and $6.8 million to the World Health Organization in 2017.6
By June 2020, in the middle of a global pandemic, the Gates Foundation’s donations totaled 45% of WHO’s funding from nongovernmental sources.7 Once mainstream media’s attention was no longer on Gates’ antitrust activities and focused on the philanthropist actions of the foundation, Gates publicly turned his attention to vaccinating the world, long before COVID-19.8
Event 201: A Preplanned Pandemic
In a deep dive into the Gates Foundation’s charitable donations, The Nation found there were $250 million in grants to companies where the foundation held corporate stocks, including Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Sanofi and Medtronic. The money was directed at supporting projects “like developing new drugs and health monitoring systems and creating mobile banking services.”9 … continue
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Aletho News 