Time-lapse video of the devastating Gulf region oil spill. The images are from NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites.
Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Satellite Timelapse April 20 – May 24 2010
Riz Khan interviews Abdul Salam Zaeef, the former Afghan ambassador to Pakistan under the Taliban regime, and Jere van Dyk, author and journalist and one time captive of the Taliban.
In 2002, Pakistan violated diplomatic protocol to kidnap Zaeef and hand him over to the United States. He spent the next several years first at Bagram and then at Guantanamo Bay, constantly being tortured and abused. Jere van Dyk on the other hand is a US journalist who at one point was kidnapped and imprisonsed by the Pakistani Taliban. Here both recount their respective experiences under captivity and their views on Afghanistan’s future. Zaeef insists that the Taliban’s goals are regional, and they have no interest in picking fights abroad.
See:
AlJazeeraEnglish — June 19, 2010 — Israel’s separation apartheid wall, twice the height of the former Berlin Wall and more than 750km-long, is a much hated barrier in the Palestinian West Bank.
Now, a restaurant owner in the occupied Palestinian West Bank has come up with unique way to please World Cup fans: he has been showing every match of the tournament on a section of the wall, transforming it into a giant screen.
AlJazeeraEnglish — 18 June 2010 — Turkey’s popularity in the Middle East has soared following its denunciation of Israel’s deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla last month. Turkish flags and posters of Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, have been prominent in demonstrations around the world protesting the Israeli attack. In the Gaza Strip, a growing number of newborn babies have been named after Erdogan. Meanwhile Turkey says it will not send its ambassador back to Israel unless it receives a formal apology for the attack, that left nine people, mostly Turks, dead.
Al Jazeera’s Rula Amin reports on Turkey’s rising popularity in the region.
Al Jazeera reconstructs the events surrounding the Israeli assault on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.
AlJazeeraEnglish — 14 June 2010 — In the early hours of Monday, May 31, the Israeli navy intercepted a flotilla of boats carrying thousands of tonnes of aid to Gaza. Nine passengers on the Mavi Marmara – the flotilla’s largest boat – were killed. This much we know. In the aftermath of the event, accounts from both sides have diverged wildly. Israel claims that it acted in self-defence against a group of “violent extremists” linked to al-Qaeda and Hamas, intent on breaching the military blockade of Gaza. The activists say they were frightened for their lives after being shot at from helicopters in the dark of night, their raised white flag ignored. They say Israel’s attack on their ship in international waters was unexpected and disproportionate. Examining claim and counter claim, A Vourney of Life and Death includes an exclusive interview with the captain of the Mavi Marmara, those on board the ships and previously unseen footage.
Good analysis from Link TV’s Mosaic Intelligence Report. Also see this excellent analysis of Erdogan’s rise by Patrick Cockburn.
linktv — 11 June 2010 — (Mosaic Intelligence Report: June 11, 2010) Turkey votes against UN sanctions on Iran. Erdogan is a hero in the Arab world. Did Turkey abandon its EU dreams? And why is it looking towards the East?
Daniel Ellsberg warns that Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.org, faces the possibility of assassination. Should something bad happen to Assange, or should he disappear, you know’d know who did it. Who’s the Rogue State again?
Cultures of Resistance has released Iara Lee’s hour-long video of the attack on Mavi Marmara. You see events leading up to the attack, the attack itself (beginning at about 36:00), and its aftermath. (via Juan Cole, whose coverage of the massacre and its aftermath has been stellar)
Continue reading “The assault on the Mavi Marmara (hour-long video)”
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