Jean Shaoul

Israeli commandos attacked the Mavi Marmara ship on
May 31, 2010, killing eight Turks and one Turkish-
American. (Hürriyet Daily News)

Relations between Turkey and Israel have deteriorated sharply, despite the diplomatic efforts of the Obama administration.

The immediate source of the tensions is the publication of a United Nations report into Israel’s attack on the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara, part of a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in May 2010. However, this is only the focus for hostilities generated by a wider conflict over regional hegemony in the Middle East.

The vessel was in international waters when Israeli commandos raided it, murdering eight Turkish citizens and a Turkish American. Several other civilians were seriously injured.

Ever since the Mavi Marmara killings, the Turkish government has demanded that Israel issue an official apology and pay compensation—both of which Israel has refused to do.

The UN report was—as expected—a whitewash. It endorsed the Israeli rampage on the Mavi Marmara and providing UN approval for further actions by Israel against Gaza. As a sop to Turkey, the report complained that the Israel Defence Force had used “excessive force”, calling on Israel to make “an appropriate statement of regret” and “offer payment for the benefit of the deceased and injured victims and their families”.

When Israel again refused to back down, Ankara was furious. It had offered various olive branches before the UN published its report, including stopping Turkish NGOs from participating in further aid flotillas to Gaza. Now, however, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has launched a diplomatic offensive against Israel, threatening to send Turkish destroyers to escort future aid convoys trying to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

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Khalid Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem

The latest dignity-inspiring reflexes against Israel by the Turkish government and Egyptian protestors is undoubtedly a heartening, good news for hundreds of millions of people around the world who over many decades watched rather helplessly a manifestly criminal Israel torment, humiliate and murder innocent Arabs and Muslims in the tens of thousands.

Indeed, since its misbegotten birth in 1948, Israel has never wasted an opportunity to brutalize and savage ordinary Arabs and Muslims. Israeli forces, who constantly had a qualitative edge over Arab armies combined, thanks to unlimited Western, especially American support, bombed with utter apathy schools, hospitals, homes, apartment buildings and mosques.

In April, 1970, this writer vividly remembers how at least 30 Egyptian school children were mercilessly massacred when American-supplied Israeli warplanes bombarded their Bahr el Baqar primary school in the eastern province of al-Sharqiyya. Israel never apologized for the carnage.

Jordanian, Syrian, Lebanese and especially Palestinian civilians were murdered rather callously by Israel for purposes having to do with creating deterrence or as a disproportionate response to legitimate acts of resistance against a manifestly racist, colonialist occupying power.

In 2006, the Israeli air force dropped 2-3 million cluster bomblets over Lebanon, enough to kill or maim 2-3 million Lebanese civilians. This would be tantamount to the perpetration of at least half a holocaust!!

In 2008-09, Israeli launched an all-out Nazi-like Blitzkrieg against the virtually defenseless Gaza Strip, murdering and maiming thousands of innocent civilians whose only crime was their being non-members of the Chosen people or Master race.

Interestingly, the whoring leaders of the so-called "free-world" watched the genocidal massacres progress day after day after day, without batting an eyelash, as if the people being murdered and incinerated were insects, not human beings. The despicable mantra the leaders of America, Britain and Canada, to mention a few states, kept invoking was that "Israel had the right to defend itself."

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Nahida Izzat, Exiled Palestinian

Recently, a very dear friend of mine was outraged to learn about the criminal 9/11 cover-up and asked:

think anyone will ever be held to account for this obscenity?

The term 'White Supremacism' defines the likes of KKK, of racists, neo-nazis etc, and projects a notion of wickedness and evil.

Wherever suitable, the term is used freely and without hesitation, generally by the Left, including the anti-Zionist Jewish Left. No one thinks twice before accurately using the term to portray anyone who claims that so called "White" people are superior to "people of colour".

In some instances, the term is used in association with those who express concerns that the cultural identity of their society might be threatened by immigration. In other instances, the term "White supremacist" is used against historians and researchers who raise uncomfortable questions about official historical narratives enforced by the establishment.

The Ku Klux Klan has been described as a Christian, as well as a white, supremacist group. So are many white supremacist groups in the United States today. George W. Bush’s support for fundamentalist Christianity has been linked to his having a “Christian supremacist vision” in his policies in the Middle East.

The racist delusion of “White supremacy”, is a reality involving generally unsavory individuals, a small fringe groups of white people overall. The term does NOT imply that all of or most whites are supremacists.

The use of the term "White supremacists" [referring to] precisely such people, is perfectly legitimate and legal, anyone can utter it when suitable without having to fear censorship, slander or smear. It seems pretty elementary that whomever uses the term to define people holding such "white supremacist" opinions, does by no means imply to be anti-whites or white-hater. Under no circumstances [should] Non-white people be forbidden to criticize or discuss the problem of White supremacism.

I never came across of a non-racist white person who would claim that the issue of "white-supremacy" is a “white-only” issue, implying that only white people have the right to discuss, to examine or to expose “White-Supremacists". In fact the contrary is true, all non-racists are always encouraged to publicly discuss, oppose, and demonstrate against “White Supremacy”, even within the main stream media.

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Paul Craig Roberts

The notion that a country in which truth is dead is a “light unto the world” is an absurdity.

In the US on September 11, 2011, the tenth anniversary of 9/11, politicians and their presstitute media presented Americans with “A Day of Remembrance,” a propaganda exercise that hardened the 9/11 lies into dogma. Meanwhile, in Toronto, Canada, at Ryerson University the four-day International Hearings on the Events of September 11, 2001, came to a close at 5pm.

During the four days of hearings, distinguished scientists and scholars and professional architects and engineers presented the results of years of their independent research into all aspects of 9/11 to a distinguished panel consisting of the honorary president of the Italian Supreme Court who was an investigative judge who presided over terrorism cases and three distinguished scholars of high renown and judgment. The distinguished panel’s task is to produce a report with their judgment of the evidence presented by the expert witnesses.

The Toronto Hearings were streamed live over the Internet. I was able to watch many of the presentations over the four days. I was impressed that the extremely high level of intelligence and scientific competence of the witnesses was matched by a high level of integrity, a quality rare in US politics and totally absent in the American media.

As I stressed in my recent interview about 9/11 with Jim Corbett and Global Research, I am a reporter, not an independent researcher into 9/11. I pay attention when the fact-based community finds problems with the official propaganda. Perhaps this reflects my age. My generation was raised to believe in evidence and the scientific method. George Orwell and other writers warned us of the consequence of succumbing to government propaganda as a result of disinterest in the truth or government manipulation of one’s patriotism.

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Evarist Kagaruki

Nato bombs Tripoli as UN’s Amos calls for ‘pause’.

For the first time, we have seen the organistion embracing an invidious policy of regime change in a member state.

Superficially, the establishment of the no-fly zone over the Libyan territory in March by the UN Security Council Resolution 1973 looked well-intentioned: to “protect civilians against attacks” by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s forces that had been unleashed to quell the uprising in Benghazi - the stronghold of the rebel National Transition Council (NTC) - against the Tripoli regime. But, in actual fact, the no-fly zone was meant to provide air cover for ground rebel troops which, on their own, could not dislodge Gaddafi’s forces.

The insurgents were assisted with arms, cash, and logistics by the Nato alliance to enable them to keep up the fight to the end, something which was totally against the spirit and letter of the said resolution. But the same weapons have killed and maimed hundreds of innocent civilians the resolution sought to “protect” in the first place. The Western media propaganda, not surprisingly, deliberately skipped this grim fact of the conflict in Libya.

There is now no doubt that Gaddafi, who is hated by some and loved by others (for different reasons), has been ousted – not, of course, by the NTC but by the Western powers with the tacit approval of the UN. The world body had, to the consternation of many, allowed Nato to go beyond its mandate and take sides in a civil war! Libya is now firmly in the hands of Western imperialists whose main interest there is essentially the control of the country’s flow of oil to the industrial capitals. As the fighting ends, there are already signs of an emerging scramble among the allies and foreign firms for access to the oil wealth.

As we anxiously watch the unfolding scenario on the political horizon in Libya, there is a ten-million dollar question yet to ponder: Is the UN still an organization that serves the purpose for which it was established? Or, put another way: Is the world body still useful and relevant to the people of the Third World?

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