No guns? They must be terrorists
By Mark Steele
The Independent/UK: August 5, 2010
Somehow, the Chilcot Inquiry has become like Big Brother. About once a month
it pops up as a small item in the news and you think: "Oh blimey, I didn't
realise that was still going on." Before long, like Big Brother, they'll
come up with stunts to try and revive some interest. So they'll reintroduce
contestants from previous inquiries such as Martin McGuinness and Christine
Keeler, or make some witnesses complete a task of finding hidden ping-pong
balls in the room or they have to give evidence blindfold.
So it might seem these procedures are pointless, in which case it makes no
difference that the Israelis have agreed to co-operate with a United Nations
inquiry into the episode in which nine people died after the Israeli Defence
Force went aboard the Mavi Marmara as it sailed towards Gaza.
But it seemed to matter to the Israelis, because until this week they
insisted their own inquiry was sufficient, and that was already under way.
One fact emerging from this process was that the victims, according to "Sgt
S" who shot six of them, "were without a doubt terrorists". And he produced
evidence to back this up, which was: "I could see the murderous rage in
their eyes".
This matches the classic definition of a terrorist according to
international law, as someone "with murderous rage in their eyes", and shows
the key witness in any terrorist trial isn't the forensics expert or
explosives analyst but an optician. If they're trained well enough they can
shine a light at the iris and tell whether you're short-sighted,
long-sighted, Hamas or Basque separatist.
But there was more. According to the Jersusalem Post the IDF told the
inquiry that the group on the boat were "well-trained and likely
ex-military" because "each squad of the mercenaries was equipped with a
Motorola communication advice, so they could pass information to one
another". A Motorola communication advice? So these so-called
peace-activists were armed with mobile phones! It's a wonder the whole
Middle East wasn't set alight. And to think Motorola and other sinister arms
dealers such as Nokia and Orange go round trading in this deadly merchandise
quite openly.
If the IDF were asked to police a rock festival, at the moment when everyone
used their mobiles to take a photo they'd open fire on the whole crowd. Then
once 3,000 were dead, Sgt S would say: "Well done, boys, if we hadn't been
so careful that could have turned quite nasty."
One possible difficulty in proving the optically murderous gang's intent
could be that none of them had guns. But the IDF dealt with that by saying
the "mercenaries" preferred to use "bats, metal bars and knives, since
opening fire would have made it blatantly clear they were terrorists and not
peace activists". So this was another cunning trick of the terrorists, to
disguise the fact they were terrorists by not doing anything terrorist. My
neighbour's much the same; disguising her terrorism by being 74 and spending
all day peacefully doing the garden without ever shooting anyone, the evil
witch.
Even more blatantly, the inquiry was told the group did have guns on board,
but "the mercenaries threw their weapons overboard after the commandos took
control of the vessel". Because that's classic guerrilla training, to carry
guns right up until the moment when the enemy arrives, and then throw them
away. This is the strategy of all great military thinkers. That's why
Nelson, at the Battle of Trafalgar said: "Men, I see the French, and so let
every Englishmen do his duty, and chuck all our weapons in the sea. That'll
teach the bastards."
On and on this goes, with Prime Minister Netanyahu making it clear he agrees
with it, himself calling the victims "mercenaries". Because these
mercenaries were trying to get goods such as medicine to an area that's
under a blockade, which is typical mercenary behaviour, except instead of
gun-running, they were inhaler-running.
But bit by bit Israel is finding it has to answer for itself publicly, and
the old excuses are not so easily accepted. From now on they'll have to put
a bit more thought into their bollocks, which has got to be for the good.
***
http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0821/fox-shareholder-funded-mosque-imam
Fox News co-owner funded 'Ground Zero mosque' imam
Raw Story Saturday, August 21st, 2010
The second largest shareholder in News Corp. -- the parent company of Fox
News -- has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to causes linked to the
imam planning to build a Muslim community center and mosque near Ground Zero
in Manhattan, says a report from Yahoo!News.
According to the report from Yahoo!'s John Cook, Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin
Talal, who owns seven percent of News Corp., "has directly funded [Imam
Feisal Abdul] Rauf's projects to the tune of more than $300,000."
Cook reports that Prince Al-Waleed's personal charity, the Kingdom
Foundation, donated $305,000 to Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow, a project
sponsored by two of Rauf's initiatives, the American Society for Muslim
Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative, which is building the Manhattan
mosque.
That Fox News' second-largest shareholder, after Rupert Murdoch, has
financial links to the "Ground Zero mosque" will be seen as ironic by
critics of the news network, who have watched with chagrin as the network's
talking heads attempt to link the mosque to radical Islamism.
Last week, Daily Show host Jon Stewart lambasted Fox panelist Eric Bolling's
attempt to link the Cordoba Initiative to Hamas and Iran. Stewart used News
Corp.'s connections to Prince Al-Waleed, and the prince's connections to the
Carlyle Group and Osama bin Laden to make a tongue-in-cheek argument that
Fox News may be a "terrorist command center."
"Stewart didn't need to take all those steps to make the connection," Cook
writes.
Cook also reports that Prince Al-Waleed has in the past funded a number of
Islamic organizations that have been maligned by Fox News commentators:
Al-Waleed donated $500,000 to the Council on American-Islamic Relations -
which has been repeatedly denounced on Fox News's air by Geller and others
as a terror group - in 2002. Indeed, Rauf's "numerous ties to CAIR" alone
have been cited by the mosque's opponents as a justification for imputing
terrorist sympathies to him, yet few people seem to be asking whether
Murdoch's extensive multi-billion business collaboration with the man who
funds both Rauf and CAIR merits investigation or concern.
Other beneficiaries of Al-Waleed's largess include the Islamic Development
Bank, a project designed to "foster the economic development and social
progress of [Muslims] in accordance with the principles of Shari'ah." The
IDB funds the construction of mosques around the world, and has been
implicated by frequent Fox News guest Stephen Schwartz in an attempt to
spread radical Wahhabism (a fundamentalist branch of Islam) throughout the
United States.
Cook notes that it was none other than News Corp.'s New York Post that
reported on Prince Al-Waleed's donation to Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow. He
reports that Fox News had no comment for his article, and emails to the
prince's Kingdom Foundation were not returned.
Prince Al-Waleed owns an estimated $2.5-billion-worth of News Corp. Majority
shareholder Rupert Murdoch recently took a stake in the prince's Middle
East-based media conglomerate, Rotana Group. Murdoch and Prince Al-Waleed
are reportedly working on launching an Arabic news network that will compete
with existing pan-Arabic networks Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya.
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