Category: Video

Obama, State Secrets Privilege, and Sovereign Immunity

Change you cannot believe in. Obama’s Justice Department is not only defending Bush’s abuse of executive privilege, it is actually extending it. Here is a hard hitting look at it by the inimitable Keith Olbermann. I have always liked Olbermann, but I was wary of his earlier Obamamania. But as is evident in these reports, the reprieve is over and the gloves have come off. (Also check out Glenn Greenwald’s excellent post on Olbermann’s uncompromising journalism).

Second clip: Continue reading “Obama, State Secrets Privilege, and Sovereign Immunity”

Amy Goodman and Glenn Greenwald on Bill Moyers Journal

Bill Moyers talks with alternative media heavyweights Glenn Greenwald and Amy Goodman about what can and can’t be addressed in big corporate media. Amy Goodman and Glenn Greenwald are the first recipients of the Park Center for Independent Media Izzy Award (named for I.F. Stone).

Gaza war crimes investigation: Israeli drones

Clancy Chassay asks why Israeli drones with optics capable of seeing the colour of a target’s clothes killed so many Palestinian civilians during the recent Gaza invasion. Part Three of Three. Watch Part One and Part Two.

Mounir al-Jarah slowly takes down the bricks he used to wall up the entrance to his sister’s courtyard. Inside, flesh still clings to the walls; blood-soaked furniture and family items lie broken and mangled.

Mounir’s eyes search around the old house as he recounts the events of 16 January, when a rocket fired from an unmanned aerial vehicle killed his sister, her husband and four of her children.

Continue reading “Gaza war crimes investigation: Israeli drones”

Gaza war crimes investigation: Attacks on medics

Clancy Chassay asks why 16 medical workers were killed and more than half of Gaza’s hospitals were hit during Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Part Two of Three. Watch Part One and Part Three.

Medical staff and ambulance drivers who attempted to assist casualties of the Israeli invasion of Gaza have told the Guardian that they were attacked by Israeli forces while trying to carry out their job.

The offensive left 16 medics dead. Nearly all of them were killed by Israeli fire while trying to save lives, and many more were wounded. According to the World Health Organisation, more than half of Gaza’s 27 hospitals were damaged by Israeli bombs. Two clinics were completely destroyed and 44 others received damage.

Continue reading “Gaza war crimes investigation: Attacks on medics”

Gaza war crimes investigation: human shields

Clancy Chassay investigates claims from three brothers that the Israeli military used them as human shields during the invasion of Gaza. Part One of Three. Watch Part Two and Part Three.

Israel has been accused of using Palestinian human shields during its invasion of Gaza, a breach of the Geneva conventions that prohibit intentionally putting civilian lives at risk.The Guardian has interviewed three Gazan brothers who described how they were taken from their home at gunpoint, made to kneel in front of tanks to deter Hamas fighters from firing and sent by Israeli soldiers into Palestinian houses to clear them.

“They would make us go first, so if any fighters shot at them the bullets would hit us, not them,” said 14-year-old Al’a al-Attar.

Continue reading “Gaza war crimes investigation: human shields”

Galloway faces the ‘Jewish Defence League’

George Galloway on Channel 4 News (UK) facing the national director of the ‘Jewish Defence League’ (JDL) of Canada, Meir Weinstein, on Galloway’s banning from Canada.

Looking at the JDL Canada website we find the group was established “in the late 1960s to confront and fight anti-Semitism.”  One might wonder why they are interested in blocking Galloway from entering Canada; the story was originally that he was banned for his views on Canada’s military presence in Afghanistan.  Perhaps it is their first principle, ‘Ahavat Yisroel’, Love of Israel, and Galloway’s recent aid convoy to Gaza that is the real problem.  I was surprised to see Weinstein on Channel Four, as he considers helping the starving people of Gaza a crime, you’d expect to see him on the BBC.

Also worth noting is that the JDL was described as a violent extremist Jewish organization in an FBI 2000/2001 Terrorism report.

Holocaust in Palestine

H/t to Mohammed Omer for posting this on Facebook.

The following YouTube from France is a powerful depiction contrasting life in Palestine and for Jews during the European Holocaust. When will ordinary Americans and American politicians understand these similarities? Who knows. But we will do whatever it takes to change American views toward Palestine and the Mideast… one step at a time.  

Rong Radio

Brilliant stuff, from Benjamin Zephaniah. (thanks Tariq)

Rong Radio — by Benjamin Zephaniah

My ears are battered and burned and
i have just learned that i have been
listening to the wrong radio station Continue reading “Rong Radio”

Shoe hurled at Israeli ambassador

Before long shoes will be banned as a security threat by ever-paranoid Israeli Ambassadors giving lectures … and dodging war crimes arrests.

A woman has thrown a shoe at the Israeli ambassador to Sweden as he was giving a lecture on Israel’s forthcoming elections.

The shoe hit Benny Dagan in the chest during a seminar held at the University of Stockholm on Wednesday, a local police official said.

Ylva Kornheffer, a board member of the Stockholm Association of Foreign Affairs, the student association which organised the seminar, said she was “sitting in the front row and suddenly a shoe was flying over my head”.

Continue reading “Shoe hurled at Israeli ambassador”

Militainment

The first Gulf War was recently descibed by Robert Fisk as a turning point, where Western society seemed indifferent to war and civilian casualties, he discerned that part of the problem was due to journalism saying “our television lads and lasses played it [the war] for all it was worth – it was the first war that had ‘theme’ music to go with the pictures”.

Militainment is a documentary on this phenomena where journalism blends with entertainment and the military establishment.