“The Side of Love” video for my poem

This might be the last one for a while. I need to regroup and recover my weary troops of invisible little helpers.

Here’s the link to THE SIDE OF LOVE, a poem dedicated to the late Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish. Music from El-Funoun.

Images from the photo galleries of the International Solidarity Movement. Footage of Israeli forces bombing Gaza borrowed from kaiserx30.

The Chill in the Bones of the Puppet Masters

Nice title.  I could sell it to a hack novelist.

George Galloway writes in The Morning Star:

-o-

All the lies deployed to justify the wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan took this great lie as their premise – that the West must bomb and blast the people of those countries into “democracy” because they are incapable of changing their societies themselves.

The fall of Ben Ali and the rise of the Egyptian masses has put paid to that essentially racist stereotype. The women in Egypt – young and old, with hijabs or not, university educated and from the slums – are showing that they do not need Laura Bush or Cheri Blair giving a faux-feminist gloss to F16s to liberate them. The sisters are doing it for themselves alongside men drawn from across the base of Egyptian society.

And the US State Department, British Foreign Office and French Quai d’Orsay don’t like it one bit. It’s not only their close personal connections with the torturing regimes of Ben Ali and Mubarak which now stand fully exposed. We know a little about Tony Blair, who still found Mubarak a force for good as the death toll from his clinging onto power climbed above 300.

More is at stake than these politicians’ personal connections with Mubarak. The cornerstone of decades of US and Western policy of holding down the mass of the people in the region in the interests of oil, corporate control of trade and investment and Israel is shattering. Every Arab despot ruling the region almost without exception from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf knows it. Which is why the wind of change that is intoxicating their people is bringing a chill to each of those regimes.

-o-

First Day of 2011 Nearly Over

So what was the highlight of this day?  Hours spent at the only pharmacy that was open today after 5pm to get a prescription sorted out for my daughter who was stung by an insect in the garden.  She has a history of allergic reactions, and not knowing what stung her added an interesting level of guesswork for the young doctor who saw her at the emergency ward.  Apparently the young doctor has had a full day of treating patients with various types of insect stings.  It must have been a busy time for critters of all sorts today after the unexpected downpour – thunder and summer rain on New Year’s Day!

Now just reading up on a few bits of news before midnight strikes and then this one hit me:  ISRAELI FORCES KILL FEMALE PROTESTER IN BIL’IN

Watch Palestinians protest against the APARTHEID WALL here.

How does one’s minuscule life compare to such tragedy?

Help Silwan Resident Adnan Gheith Stay in Jerusalem | Popular Struggle Coordination Committee

Help Silwan Resident Adnan Gheith Stay in Jerusalem | Popular Struggle Coordination Committee.

How to Kill with a Paintball Gun: an International High Seas Musical for the Benefit of the Israeli Offensive Force (a not so new arm)

How to Kill with a Paintball Gun: an International High Seas Musical
for the Benefit of the Israeli Offensive Force (a not so new arm)

“The activists were armed with knives, scissors, pepper spray and guns.”
He said he was armed only with a paintball rifle. “It was a civilian
paintball gun that any 12-year-old can play with,” he said. “I saw my
friends on the deck spitting blood.”
A soldier identified only as a sergeant interviewed
after the massacre in international waters, 31 May 2010

Make bloody certain you only carry a paintball gun
As you descend from the heavens, or a helicopter,
Landing on the deck with images of Peter Pan
In your head twirling, because you can never

Know when the passengers of a ship you are boarding
Without permission might not be willing
To give just all the world’s hugs and kisses
To give just what your world misses

A paintball gun is all you need
A paintball gun is all you need

Sing with me, all of you still rappelling down from the heavens

A paintball gun is all you need
A paintball gun is all you need

Come on now, don’t be shy, to the top of your voices

A paintball gun is all you need
A paintball gun is all you need

Be bloody ready with your paintball gun brothers
Tell the passengers to open their mouths wide
Be bloody ready with your paintball gun brothers
Aim well, not too low and not too high

A paintball gun is all you need
A paintball gun is all you need

Point your toes brothers
Let’s shock and awe

So no one ever forgets
Such magnificent pirouettes

Now flood those bloody mouths with paint
Go ahead, can’t you hear them begging

A paintball gun is all you need
A paintball gun is all you need

BANG!

-o-

Elders Condemn Israel’s Actions

The Elders group of past and present world leaders, including former South African president Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, on Monday condemned as “completely inexcusable” the deadly Israeli attack on a flotilla carrying aid for Gaza.

…”This tragic incident should draw the world’s attention to the terrible suffering of Gaza’s 1.5 million people, half of whom are children under the age of 18,” the group said.

How to Kill with a Paintball Gun: an International Musical

for the Benefit of the Israeli Offensive Force (a not so new arm)

“The activists were armed with knives, scissors, pepper spray and guns.”

He said he was armed only with a paintball rifle. “It was a civilian

paintball gun that any 12-year-old can play with,” he said. “I saw my

friends on the deck spitting blood.”

A soldier identified only as a sergeant interviewed

after the massacre in international waters, 31 May 2010

Make bloody certain you only carry a paintball gun

As you descend from the heavens, or a helicopter,

Landing on the deck with images of Peter Pan

In your head twirling, because you can never

Know when the passengers of a ship you are boarding

Without permission might not be willing

To give just all the world’s hugs and kisses

To give just what your world misses

A paintball gun is all you need

A paintball gun is all you need

Sing with me, all of you still rappeling down from the heavens

A paintball gun is all you need

A paintball gun is all you need

Come on now, don’t be shy, to the top of your voices

A paintball gun is all you need

A paintball gun is all you need

Be bloody ready with your paintball gun brothers

Tell the passengers to open their mouths wide

Be bloody ready with your paintball gun brothers

Aim well, not too low and not too high

A paintball gun is all you need

A paintball gun is all you need

Point your toes brothers

Let’s shock and awe

So no one ever forgets

Such magnificent pirouettes

Now flood those bloody mouths with paint

Go ahead, can’t you hear them begging

A paintball gun is all you need

A paintball gun is all you need

BANG!

-o-

Look at Me, Look at Me! I am Fabulously Kind and Generous!

The tragedy in Haiti will slowly be eased out of the news to make room for other newsmakers, say like Israel.  Magicians abound, it seems, even in such dark circumstances.  Or so says this article from The Telegraph:

-o-

Israel builds a field hospital in Haiti. Anti-Zionists not fooled!

by Stephanie Guttman

Clever people the Jews… oops, I mean the Israelis. Look at the lengths to which they have gone to distract the world from their daily ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The latest trick is an Israeli field hospital, rushed into Haiti last Friday and erected in a soccer field.

The US, with all its resources, hasn’t yet managed to set up a field hospital in Haiti (undoubtedly the State Department is still drafting the crucial legal papers needed) but the Israelis, operating with their usual disregard to the niceties of law, slapped one up and have already delivered a baby there. The father, obviously paid off by the Mossad, rapturously declared that the baby would be named “Israel”.

According to Israeli government sources the hospital includes 10 tons of medical equipment, 40 doctors, 24 nurses, medics, paramedics, x-ray equipment and personnel, a pharmacy, an emergency room, two surgery rooms, an incubation ward, a children’s ward and a maternity ward.

Information from Israeli government sources should, of course, be taken with a grain of salt, but footage of this tent-city/hospital has now been seen on SKY, Fox and CNN, ABC and CBS and the video seems to confirm (Mossad video fabricators are tricky) at least that the facility is large, clean, and full of modern equipment. CBS’s piece called the hospital the “Rolls Royce of medicine in Haiti”.

Thankfully, the BBC has kept its head and is not colluding with the Israeli government’s attempt to make the world forget its sins.  However, that has not stopped Jewish…er…Zionist propagandists, who are already triumphantly calling the field hospital “Israel’s Disproportionate response”, a reference to the charge last year that Israel reacted to Hamas rocket fire with “disproportionate” military force.  The word “disproportionate” in this case refers to the fact that this country of 7.5 million has sent 220 people, compared to say, China, which as of last week had sent 60.

Read the rest of the article.

Dance on the Bloodfloor

I know, silly title. Only makes sense to those who know the not-so-successful album by the late (or in hiding?) Michael Jackson.

Following is a quote from Haaretz.com

Today it is more shameful to be an Israeli because the world, as opposed to Israelis, saw the scenes. It saw thousands of dead and injured taken in the trunks of cars to something between a clinic and a primitive hospital in an imprisoned and weakened region one hour from flourishing Tel Aviv, a region where the helpless had nowhere to run from Israel’s arsenal. The world saw schools, hospitals, flour mills and small factories mercilessly bombed and blown up. It saw clouds of white-sulphur bombs billowing over population centers, and it saw burned children.

-o-

Nice having other dance partners like Egypt and the US in prolonging the siege on Gaza. Viva Palestina 3, the convoy originally started by British MP George Galloway, has been refused entry into Egypt and its members have gone on hunger strike. Turkey has stepped up in support of the international move to break the siege.

“The One Thing Worse” – Amira Hass

A few days old, but I just read it now.  Here’s part of an article by Amira Hass that appeared in Haaretz.com:

The Goldstone Commission’s findings are in line with what anyone who didn’t shut his or her eyes and ears to witness testimony already knows.

B’Tselem, Breaking the Silence, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Haaretz and the international media – to Israelis, these have all fallen into the trash bin of the mendacious Palestinians. In the best case, they have become trapped in their own pure-hearted naivete, and in the worst, into collaborating with efforts to besmirch Israel and bolster prejudices against it. Like the Serbs of yore, we Israelis continue thinking it’s the world that is wrong, and only we who are right.

Israel struck a civilian population that remains under its control, it didn’t fulfill its obligation to distinguish between civilians and militants and used military force disproportionate with the tangible threat to its own civilians. Air Force drones and helicopters fired deadly missiles at civilians, many of them children; the Tank Corps and Navy shelled civilian neighborhoods with weapons not designed for precision strikes; soldiers received orders to fire on rescue crews; others fired on civilians carrying white flags; and others killed people in or near their homes. Troops used Gazans as human shields, soldiers detained civilians in abusive conditions, the army used white phosphorus shells in dense civilian areas and, on the eve of withdrawing, destroyed wide residential, industrial and agricultural areas.

There is only thing worse than denial – the admission that the IDF indeed acted as has been described, but that these actions are both normal and appropriate.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1115232.html

The Gaza Report – now what?

UN Fact Finding Mission finds strong evidence
of war crimes and crimes against humanity
committed during the Gaza conflict;
calls for end to impunity

Running a Prison is Not Cheap

US military experts have presented a detailed plan to Egyptian security officials and donated high-tech equipment to uncover tunnels.

Read the rest of the article.

I thought the US Government had no money to spend on its own population’s basic medical needs?