"Must see" video from Gaza

[mhgaffney]

The Killing Zone

If a picture is worth 1,000 words the following video is worth a million.

It shows the ugly reality of Gaza that you are NOT seeing on US television. Two journalists risked their lives to film this report. Understand, the rest of the world is watching this and similar films -- only America has closed its eyes.

The special Israeli tanks must be seen to be believed. They are like something out of a Terminator film.

You will need broad band to load this 49 minute video. Welcome to the world’s largest prison.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article14753.htm

One of the few voices being raised in protest in Israel today is that of Gideon Levy:

Gaza's darkness

By Gideon Levy

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/757768.html

Gaza has been reoccupied. The world must know this and Israelis must know it, too. It is in its worst condition, ever. Since the abduction of Gilad Shalit, and more so since the outbreak of the Lebanon war, the Israel Defense Forces has been rampaging through Gaza - there's no other word to describe it - killing and demolishing, bombing and shelling, indiscriminately.

Nobody thinks about setting up a commission of inquiry; the issue isn't even on the agenda. Nobody asks why it is being done and who decided to do it. But under the cover of the darkness of the Lebanon war, the IDF returned to its old practices in Gaza as if there had been no disengagement. So it must be said forthrightly, the disengagement is dead. Aside from the settlements that remain piles of rubble, nothing is left of the disengagement and its promises. How contemptible all the sublime and nonsensical talk about "the end of the occupation" and "partitioning the land" now appears. Gaza is occupied, and with greater brutality than before. The fact that it is more convenient for the occupier to control it from outside has nothing to do with the intolerable living conditions of the occupied.

In large parts of Gaza nowadays, there is no electricity. Israel bombed the only power station in Gaza, and more than half the electricity supply will be cut off for at least another year. There's hardly any water. Since there is no electricity, supplying homes with water is nearly impossible. Gaza is filthier and smellier than ever: Because of the embargo Israel and the world have imposed on the elected authority, no salaries are being paid and the street cleaners have been on strike for the past few weeks. Piles of garbage and obnoxious clouds of stink strangle the coastal strip, turning it into Calcutta.

More than ever, Gaza is also like a prison. The Erez crossing is empty, the Karni crossing has been open only a few days over the last two months, and the same is true for the Rafah crossing. Some 15,000 people waited for two months to enter Egypt, some are still waiting, including many ailing and wounded people. Another 5,000 waited on the other side to return to their homes. Some died during the wait. One must see the scenes at Rafah to understand how profound a human tragedy is taking place. A crossing that was not supposed to have an Israeli presence continues to be Israel's means to pressure 1.5 million inhabitants. This is disgraceful and shocking collective punishment. The U.S. and Europe, whose police are at the Rafah crossing, also bear responsibility for the situation.

Gaza is also poorer and hungrier than ever before. There is nearly no merchandise moving in and out, fishing is banned, the tens of thousands of PA workers receive no salaries, and the possibility of working in Israel is out of the question.

And we still haven't mentioned the death, destruction and horror. In the last two months, Israel killed 224 Palestinians, 62 of them children and 25 of them women. It bombed and assassinated, destroyed and shelled, and no one stopped it. No Qassam cell or smuggling tunnel justifies such wide-scale killing. A day doesn't go by without deaths, most of them innocent civilians.

Where are the days when there was still a debate inside Israel about the assassinations? Today, Israel drops innumerable missiles, shells and bombs on houses and kills entire families on its way to another assassination. Hospitals are collapsing with more than 900 people undergoing treatment. At Shifa Hospital, the only such facility in Gaza that might be worthy of being called a hospital, I saw heartrending scenes last week. Children who lost limbs, on respirators, paralyzed, crippled for the rest of their lives.

Families have been killed in their sleep, while riding on donkeys or working in fields. Frightened children, traumatized by what they have seen, huddle in their homes with a horror in their eyes that is difficult to describe in words. A journalist from Spain who spent time in Gaza recently, a veteran of war and disaster zones around the world, said he had never been exposed to scenes as horrific as the ones he saw and documented over the last two months.

It is difficult to determine who decided on all this. It is doubtful the ministers are aware of the reality in Gaza. They are responsible for it, starting with the bad decision on the embargo, through the bombing of Gaza's bridges and power station and the mass assassinations. Israel is responsible now once again for all that happens in Gaza.

The events in Gaza expose the great fraud of Kadima: It came to power on the coattails of the virtual success of the disengagement, which is now going up in flames, and it promised convergence, a promise that the prime minister has already rescinded. Those who think Kadima is a centrist party should now know it is nothing other than another rightist occupation party. The same is true of Labor. Defense Minister Amir Peretz is responsible for what is happening in Gaza no less than the prime minister, and Peretz's hands are as blood-soaked as Olmert's. He can never present himself as a 'man of peace' again. The ground invasions every week, each time somewhere else, the kill and destroy operations from the sea, air and land are all dubbed with names to whitewash the reality, like 'Summer Rains' or 'Locked Kindergarten.' No security excuse can explain the cycle of madness, and no civic argument can excuse the outrageous silence of us all. Gilad Shalit will not be released and the Qassams will not cease. On the contrary, there is a horror taking place in Gaza, and while it might prevent a few terror attacks in the short run, it is bound to give birth to much more murderous terror. Israel will then say with its self-righteousness: 'But we returned Gaza to them.'

[W*GS]

Yep, MG, we can always count on you for the Jew-hating perspective...

[Spider]

Originally Posted by W*GS

Yep, MG, we can always count on you for the Jew-hating perspective...

But is the video truthfull ?

[Rigs11]

Originally Posted by W*GS

Yep, MG, we can always count on you for the Jew-hating perspective...

And we can always count on you to spin like a monkey.Instead of refuting anything in his post you yurn into a giant vagina.

[W*GS]

Boy Wonder, you're not old enough to drink, so lay off the sauce.

[Rigs11]

Originally Posted by W*GS

Boy Wonder, you're not old enough to drink, so lay off the sauce.

And you're older than dirt Libby so go change that diaper and keep damming them past presidents.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by mhgaffney

Understand, the rest of the world is watching this and similar films -- only America has closed its eyes.

Exactly.

If you live in China, you can't access any information about the Tiananmen Square uprising of 1989. If a Chinese citizen tries to Google "tank man," for instance, he gets no results.

Similarly, if you live in America, you can count on the right-wing corporate media to screen out images from Iraq and Afghanistan, images of the flag-draped caskets of American troops returning from Iraq under cover of night, etc.

This is what happens when there is a total merger of corporate interests with government power.

[ClevelandBronco]

Originally Posted by L.A. BRONCOS FAN

Exactly.

If you live in China, you can't access any information about the Tiananmen Square uprising of 1989. If a Chinese citizen tries to Google "tank man," for instance, he gets no results.

Similarly, if you live in America, you can count on the right-wing corporate media to screen out images from Iraq and Afghanistan, images of the flag-draped caskets of American troops returning from Iraq under cover of night, etc.

This is what happens when there is a total merger of corporate interests with government power.

And yet there it is linked above for all who care to watch it.

"Tank Man" may be unavailable on Google China, but the film referenced above is readily available in the U.S.

Try another.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by ClevelandBronco

And yet there it is linked above for all who care to watch it.

"Tank Man" may be unavailable on Google China, but the film referenced above is readily available in the U.S.

Try another.

Try another stab at comprehension - this one fell down and can't get up.

[ClevelandBronco]

Originally Posted by L.A. BRONCOS FAN

Try another stab at comprehension - this one fell down and can't get up.

I really can't agree. You're comparing the institutional totalitarianism of China to the choices our corporate media make in what they will and won't air?

If I've fallen and can't get up, it's only because I tried to take a ride in that balloon you floated. You know. The one that's full of holes.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by ClevelandBronco

I really can't agree. You're comparing the institutional totalitarianism of China to the choices our corporate media make in what they will and won't air?

Not comparing - pointing to similarities when and where they exist.

Originally Posted by ClevelandBronco

If I've fallen and can't get up, it's only because I tried to take a ride in that balloon you floated.

Um, no.

It's now clear that your problem is distinguishing the meaning of words like "similarly" from words like "comparing."

Originally Posted by ClevelandBronco

You know. The one that's full of holes.

And then you woke up, and, hopefully, read that Defense Science Board report.

[SteveTensi13]

If it shows a bunch of terrorist getting blown to bits, what's the problem?

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by SteveTensi13

If it shows a bunch of terrorist getting blown to bits, what's the problem?

That you're an openly racist, "death to all Muslims" whack job with the moral and intellectual sophistication of a toddler?

[ClevelandBronco]

Originally Posted by L.A. BRONCOS FAN

It's now clear that your problem is distinguishing the meaning of words like "similarly" from words like "comparing."

Yeah. That must have been where I lost you.

But let's note that you used the word "similarly." I was willing to give you a way out through a less loaded comparison.

If you'd like to reject that generous way out, I'm fine with the result.

[mhgaffney]

Originally Posted by ClevelandBronco

You're comparing the institutional totalitarianism of China to the choices our corporate media make in what they will and won't air?

Your point is beside the point.

The Chinese filter the news because they are a non democratic communist state.

Our American corporate media filter the news for a different reason, because they are heavily invested in the US government's distorted view of reality.

Either way it's still censorship. Right?

MG

[W*GS]

Originally Posted by mhgaffney

Either way it's still censorship. Right?

Wrong.

"Censorship" is not defined as "not seeing the story I want to see in the medium I want to see it".

[W*GS]

Originally Posted by L.A. BRONCOS FAN

Similarly, if you live in America, you can count on the right-wing corporate media to screen out images from Iraq and Afghanistan, images of the flag-draped caskets of American troops returning from Iraq under cover of night, etc.

Just because those things don't show up on CNN or MSNBC doesn't mean censorship is at work. Like I told MG, "censorship" is not defined as "not seeing the story I want to see in the medium I want to see it".

Originally Posted by L.A. BRONCOS FAN

This is what happens when there is a total merger of corporate interests with government power.

I've already proven that what you allege is "censorship" is in fact nothing of the sort, so your statement above is false (and is preciously tangential to the point at hand anyway); however, the fact that real censorship does indeed exist in China, so what does that prove about the logical endpoint of your particular ideology?

[mhgaffney]

Originally Posted by W*GS

Just because those things don't show up on CNN or MSNBC doesn't mean censorship is at work.

Then what do you call it?

You need to go outside the US or browse the web -- to get a different perspective -- and realize that despite our bill of rights our media is not giving us a true picture of the world.

We get a limited filtered view of events. One that's very selective. Our press usually frames the news in a way that puts the US in the best possible light. It's why most Americans don't have a clue about what the US government is doing abroad. For example, the US news from Iraq is all canned -- confabulated. In a word, it's a lie.

We found out recently that the Bush admin actually hired PR people and paid more than a billion to selected journalists to write dummy stories about the war reflecting the Bush line. This was declared illegal. Bush broke the law. Every instance was a felony. What he did also showed total contempt for the American people. But where's the outrage? Bush should be prosecuted.

[Stuck In Texas]

Originally Posted by mhgaffney

Then what do you call it?

You need to go outside the US or browse the web -- to get a different perspective -- and realize that despite our bill of rights our media is not giving us a true picture of the world.

We get a limited filtered view of events. One that's very selective. Our press usually frames the news in a way that puts the US in the best possible light. It's why most Americans don't have a clue about what the US government is doing abroad. For example, the US news from Iraq is all canned -- confabulated. In a word, it's a lie.

We found out recently that the Bush admin actually hired PR people and paid more than a billion to selected journalists to write dummy stories about the war reflecting the Bush line. This was declared illegal. Bush broke the law. Every instance was a felony. What he did also showed total contempt for the American people. But where's the outrage? Bush should be prosecuted.

I may be thinking about a different incident, but weren't these stories designed to be published in Iraqi papers for the purpose of misleading the enemy? If that's the case then it's propaganda which would be legal and should be used as part of psychological warfare. If that's not the incident you're talking about I apologize in advance. I hadn't heard about this.

[W*GS]

Making your arguments in bold doesn't make them any better. Are you next going to go to ALL CAPITAL LETTERS in the vain hope that your "arguments" will be more persuasive?

Originally Posted by mhgaffney

Then what do you call it?

I don't call it "censorship". You abuse the word when you use it the way you do - "I don't see the news stories I want to see told the way I want them to be told on the TV channels I want them on" - that's no different than complaining that you don't see articles on molecular biology in "Cosmo"...

Originally Posted by mhgaffney

You need to go outside the US or browse the web -- to get a different perspective -- and realize that despite our bill of rights our media is not giving us a true picture of the world.

Where does it say in the BoR that the news media has to be accurate, or report stories the way you want them reported? That you can go outside the US, or browse the web, to get what you want, shows that your use of "censorship" is very highly wrong.

Originally Posted by mhgaffney

We get a limited filtered view of events. One that's very selective. Our press usually frames the news in a way that puts the US in the best possible light.

As opposed to your choice, which would put the US in the worst possible light. How is that better? Because you feel that the US is the worst country in the world, mayhap?

Originally Posted by mhgaffney

It's why most Americans don't have a clue about what the US government is doing abroad. For example, the US news from Iraq is all canned -- confabulated. In a word, it's a lie.

Somehow enough Americans have gotten past the "censorship" and filtering to have a very poor opinion of how the Bush administration has handled the war in Iraq. How can this be?

Originally Posted by mhgaffney

We found out recently that the Bush admin actually hired PR people and paid more than a billion to selected journalists to write dummy stories about the war reflecting the Bush line.

A "billion"? Wow - an army of 1,000 journalists would get over a million each. Your "billion" is waaaay off.

[mhgaffney]

Originally Posted by Stuck In Texas

I may be thinking about a different incident, but weren't these stories designed to be published in Iraqi papers for the purpose of misleading the enemy? If that's the case then it's propaganda which would be legal and should be used as part of psychological warfare. If that's not the incident you're talking about I apologize in advance. I hadn't heard about this.

On September 30, 2005 the Government Accounting Office (GAO) released a report stating that Bush had violated existing US laws that prohibit covert propaganda. Here's a story about it.

http://mediacitizen.blogspot.com/200...ropaganda.html

This is undoubtedly the tip of an iceberg. Google searches should turn up more. MG

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by mhgaffney

Your point is beside the point.

The Chinese filter the news because they are a non democratic communist state.

Our American corporate media filter the news for a different reason, because they are heavily invested in the US government's distorted view of reality.

Either way it's still censorship. Right?

MG

Thanks, MG - I was about to take another crack at explaining myself to Cleveland, and you beat me to it.

[Stuck In Texas]

Originally Posted by mhgaffney

On September 30, 2005 the Government Accounting Office (GAO) released a report stating that Bush had violated existing US laws that prohibit covert propaganda. Here's a story about it.

http://mediacitizen.blogspot.com/200...ropaganda.html

This is undoubtedly the tip of an iceberg. Google searches should turn up more. MG

That's interesting. Thanks for the link! I'm going to look into this a little more.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by Rigs11

And we can always count on you to spin like a monkey.Instead of refuting anything in his post you yurn into a giant vagina.

No kidding.

According to The O'W*GS Factor, anyone who criticizes Israel's policies is an anti-Semite (just like anyone who criticizes the Kennebunkport Cowboy's policies hates America and wants the terrorists to win.)

W*GS is like a third-rate Bill O'Reilly.

[W*GS]

Originally Posted by L.A. BRONCOS FAN

According to The O'W*GS Factor, anyone who criticizes Israel's policies is an anti-Semite

MG has made it amply clear he's opposed to more than just "Zionism" or Israel - but since he's on your side, you deny it.

Originally Posted by L.A. BRONCOS FAN

(just like anyone who criticizes the Kennebunkport Cowboy's policies hates America and wants the terrorists to win.)

Nice attempt at a smear, but I've never said anything like the above. Slam errand and the others who make such an (asinine) argument.

Originally Posted by L.A. BRONCOS FAN

W*GS is like a third-rate Bill O'Reilly.

You're the left-wing equivalent of Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter - there's no smear or innuendo, or outright lie, that you won't use when you think it scores you debate points...