White Phosporus or White Christmas?

Peter Brookes
Address : http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/cartoon/

Israel rams Gaza-bound medical aid boat

A boat delivering 3.5 tonnes of Cypriot medical aid to the Gaza Strip has been rammed by Israeli naval vessels in international waters, activists say.
Address : <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7805075.stm&gt;

I use to be very sympathetic to Israel. Now I hate it.

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk The 20m (66ft) Dignity was carrying 15 civilian passengers, including several doctors, journalists, a former US congresswoman and a member of the Cypriot parliament, says Free Gaza. The organisation sent out an urgent statement on Tuesday saying the vessel had been surrounded by at least six Israeli military ships. "They are firing live ammunition around the Dignity, and one of the warships has rammed the civilian craft causing an unknown amount of damage," said the statement. "We heard heavy gunfire in the background before all contact was lost with the Dignity." The Dignity's captain, Denis Healey, told reporters in Tyre they had been attacked "without any warning, any provocation, or anything". Free Gaza said the incident was "an act of terrorism", as well as a violation of international maritime law and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Crowds turned out to greet the Dignity as it arrived in Tyre port.

Sydney chocolate factory melts

According to the headline in the SMH, a chocolate factory has melted.
Shouldn't they have built it out of something more heat resistant?

Fire melts Sydney chocolate factory - National - smh.com.au

Firemen inspect the chocolate factory in Marrickville.
Photo: Kate Geraghty

Robert Fisk comments on the Israeli attacks on gaza

Excellent article, of which the following snip is just one part of his commentary.

Robert Fisk is one of my favourite commentator son the Middle East.

Well worth reading if you are following this news topic.

Another bit I liked:
Is Hamas going to say: "Wow, this blitz is awesome – we'd better recognise the state of Israel, fall in line with the Palestinian Authority, lay down our weapons and pray we are taken prisoner and locked up indefinitely and support a new American 'peace process' in the Middle East!" ...

clipped from www.independent.co.uk General Yaakov Amidror, the former head of the Israeli army's "research and assessment division" announced that "no country in the world would allow its citizens to be made the target of rocket attacks without taking vigorous steps to defend them". Quite so. But when the IRA were firing mortars over the border into Northern Ireland, when their guerrillas were crossing from the Republic to attack police stations and Protestants, did Britain unleash the RAF on the Irish Republic? Did the RAF bomb churches and tankers and police stations and zap 300 civilians to teach the Irish a lesson? No, it did not. Because the world would have seen it as criminal behaviour. We didn't want to lower ourselves to the IRA's level.

So what have the Palestinians got to complain about?

Excellent article in The Independent humourously showing the hypocrisy of ISraeli / US positioning on the attack on the Gaza strip.

For example:

...mostly the Israelis justify themselves with a disappointing lack of imagination, such as the line that they had to destroy an ambulance because Hamas cynically put their weapons inside ambulances. They should be more creative, and say Hamas were planning to aim the flashing blue light at Israeli epileptics in an attempt to make them go into a fit, get dizzy and wander off into Syria where they would be captured...

Mark Steel: So what have the Palestinians got to complain about? from The Independent

Howard government did know about Habib rendition

I've been waiting for stories from the Howard regime to leak out. There has to be a tonne of dirt and crap that the Howard minions swept under their skirts.

clipped from www.theaustralian.news.com.au THE Australian Defence Department has admitted it has more than 85,000 pages of documents regarding the rendition of former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib to Egypt despite telling federal parliament it had no involvement in the matter. The Howard government always maintained that it did not know Mr Habib was going to be sent to Egypt or how he got there. But the latest admissions by Defence follow revelations earlier this year that the US Government told former ASIO head Dennis Richardson that it wanted to render Mr Habib to Egypt for questioning. Mr Richardson had never publicly admitted the official approach was made. It only came out after his successor, Paul O'Sullivan, was questioned in parliament. Mr O'Sullivan revealed that Mr Richardson was told of the rendition plan by a US government official weeks before the Sydney father of four was "kidnapped" and sent to Egypt, where prisoners were known to be tortured.

Amanda Vanstone helped Mafioso after mates paid thousands to the Liberal Party

Yep, according to this story in The Age, Australia's ambassador to Italy, Amanda Vanstone allowed a Mafia crime figure remain in Australia
after his supporters donated thousands of dollars to the Liberal Party.

According to the story in The Age, until Vanstone's intervention, Madafferi had spent nine years
fighting moves by Australian authorities to deport him after he
overstayed his visa. His lawyers cited mental illness and the fact that
he had an Australian wife and four young children among their arguments
for allowing him to remain.

Late last week, Ms Vanstone defended her decision, saying she had had concerns for Madafferi's mental health.

Sexualized news and the "Ins And Outs" Of Shaving Your Pubes

Rupert Murdoch's Fox is reaching the bottle of the barrel, while at the same time Rupert, according to The Economist is "investing in a vigorous expansion of its political coverage and international news".

Anyway, according to The Huffington Post, Fox News' "sexpert" Yvonne K. Fulbright in a recent column described the "ins and outs" of shaving your pubes in this article which is well worth reading (The Huffington post one that is).

The Huffington Post: Fox News - The "Ins And Outs" Of Shaving Your Pubes

Even as Bill O'Reilly bemoans that "the moral and ethical climate in America is declining," and that the "Internet and an irresponsible media have hit traditional values hard," Fox News has become a premiere purveyor of sexualized news.

See also FoxNewsPorn

Google marks ANZAC day

Good on ya Google. The google picture for http://www.google.com.au/ today.

The Pentagon, not Metallica, The Master of Puppets

The New York times today reports that a Pentagon campaign using retired officers has been used to shape terrorism coverage from inside the TV and radio networks.

I note from the screen shots Rupert Murdoch's Fox features heavily.



The Pentagon information apparatus has used these analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance.


Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.

Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.





Source: Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand - New York Times

Address : http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html?hp