Society's Child

Turkish Freedom Flotilla II being organized for Gaza will have military protection

Ariel Ben Solomon, Herb Keinon
Jerusalem Post
Mon, 28 Jul 2014 19:48 UTC

Media report says activists - the same behind 2010's 'Mavi Marmara' - scheduled to take off with Turkish military protection.

Amid Israel's Operation Protective Edge to stop Hamas attacks from Gaza, a "Freedom Flotilla" is being organized in Turkey to bring humanitarian aid to the Hamas-controlled Palestinian coastal enclave with the protection of the Turkish military, according to an unconfirmed media report.

The flotilla, called "Freedom Flotilla II," is being organized by the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), the same organization that was behind the Mavi Marmara flotilla that sought to break Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip in May 2010.

Israel Navy commandos boarded the ship, were attacked, and killed nine of the attackers.

IHH chairman Bulent Yildrim was quoted by The Middle East Monitor as telling Gulf Online last week that the activists would set sail as soon as they receive the necessary permit from the authorities in Ankara and that the Turkish military would provide protection to the ship.

Diplomatic officials said Jerusalem was following the reports carefully, but stressed that it was not clear whether the flotilla would ultimately set sail.

Comment: Israel has slaughtered over 1,000 Palestinians in the past weeks and destroyed entire communities. And then they turn around and say that aid will only hurt the Palestinian people. It should be blatantly obvious that Israel's intentions are singularly focused on the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

Readers may recall the propaganda surrounding the international effort for the 2010 Gaza flotilla. It was Israel who attacked and killed nine civilians and wounded dozens more. See the following Sott.net article by Joe Quinn in 2010 for more information:

A People That Shall Dwell Alone - Israel's Attack On The Gaza Flotilla

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Things have to get worse before Congress will take action on climate change

Tom Boggioni
Rawstory.com
Wed, 23 Jul 2014 11:12 UTC

In an exclusive interview with Salon, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson talked about his role as a scientist, how the media presents scientific breakthroughs, and about how climate change will have to get worse before citizens force their elected representatives to do anything about it.

Tyson explained that he doesn't see himself as an advocate, but as an educator whose job it is to present "emergent scientific consensus," in the hope that the public and policy makers will use it to make informed decisions.

"I'm just trying to get people as fully informed as they can be so that they can make the most informed decisions they can based on their own principles or philosophies or mission statement," Tyson explained. "What concerns me is that I see people making decisions, particularly decisions that might affect policy or governance, that are partly informed, or misinformed, or under-informed."

Tyson notes that during the Cold War, physicists actively advocated for specific policies because those policies were directly related to their work in developing nuclear weapons. When it comes to climate change, he would like to see more climate scientists take the lead instead of an astrophysicist like himself just because he's famous.

Comment:
ABC: Man may need to live in space to survive cometary impacts, global disasters
We live in a cosmic shooting gallery

See also:
Celestial Intentions: Comets and the Horns of Moses

Man left 98-year old wheelchair-bound mother in sweltering hot car while he gambled

Tom Boggioni
Rawstory.com
Wed, 23 Jul 2014 09:38 UTC

Dwight McGinnis Jr, 67, of Raleigh, North Carolina, faces a charge of vulnerable adult neglect after he left his 98-mother-old in a hot car while he played at a casino on Monday night.

Police in Maryland arrested a visiting North Carolina man after discovering he had left his 98-year-old mother in his truck in the sweltering heat while he was in a casino gambling.

Dwight McGinnis Jr, 67, of Raleigh, faces a charge of vulnerable adult neglect.

According to police, a passerby called 911 to report seeing an elderly woman sitting alone in a truck in the parking plot of the Maryland Live! Casino, according to WBAL.

Responding, the officers found the woman, who is wheelchair-bound and can't take care of herself, sitting in the truck with a single window cracked open in the 80-degree heat. Investigators said there was an empty soda can in the truck but nothing else for her to eat or drink.

According to the parking lot records, the woman had been sitting in the truck for over five hours.

Vancouver's Oppenheimer Park: A reminder of aboriginal title to urban centres

Duncan McCue
CBC
Tue, 22 Jul 2014 19:26 UTC

Protesters hand City of Vancouver eviction notice over park occupied by homeless

A 65-year-old homeless pensioner known as JT told CBC News he had a rude awakening Saturday morning when he was handed an eviction notice from the city, telling him he had to leave within 24 hours. Since then, the city itself has been handed an eviction notice by First Nation members. (CBC)

When Vancouver police served an eviction notice to a small group of homeless people camping in a downtown park recently, the protesters responded with some paperwork of their own.

They served an eviction notice on the City of Vancouver, stating Oppenheimer Park is on unceded aboriginal land - and that no one could make them leave.

Ukrainian soldiers flee to Russia: Refuse to fight against their own citizens

RT.com
Sun, 27 Jul 2014 08:34 UTC

More than 40 Ukrainian soldiers have abandoned their military posts and crossed into Russian territory, stating that they refuse to fight against their own people, a Russian Federal Security Service spokesperson said.

At least 41 Ukrainian soldiers have made it to Russian territory after asking self-defense forces for help, the spokesperson from the Federal Security Service's Rostov region border patrol unit, Vasily Malaev, told Itar-Tass.

"At around 20:30 Moscow time, 41 Ukrainian soldiers left their military bases and arrived at the Ukrainian border crossing checkpoint Izvarino. They appealed to the militia there for help to with cross into the Russian territory, in connection with the fact that they do not want to fight against their own people," Malaev said.

All of the soldiers were able to cross into Russia at the Donetsk checkpoint, the spokesperson added.

Meanwhile, a Russian hospital near the Ukrainian border has been treating wounded Ukrainian soldiers. Some of them have expressed their unwillingness to fight for the Ukrainian army, blaming mobilization laws for forcing them to do so.

CIA signature: Ancient tomb sacred to all Muslims destroyed by ISIS in Iraq

RT
Fri, 25 Jul 2014 10:44 UTC

© REUTERS
People walk through the rubble of the Prophet Younis Mosque after it was destroyed in a bomb attack by militants of the Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the city of Mosul, July 24, 2014.

The shrine of Jonas - revered by Christians and Muslims alike - has been turned "to dust" near Iraq's Mosul. Footage of the event was posted online, and witnesses said it took ISIS militants just an hour to stuff the mosque with explosives.

"ISIS militants have destroyed the Prophet Younis (Jonah) shrine east of Mosul city after they seized control of the mosque completely," an anonymous security source told the Iraq-based al-Sumaria News.

The extremist group ISIS changed its name from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS/ISIL) to just the Islamic State (IS), after formally declaring a new caliphate in Syria and Iraq at the end of June.

Muslims know the tomb as the shrine of Younis, whereas Christians refer to it as the tomb of Jonas.

Jonas is renowned for having been swallowed by a fish or a whale in the Bible's Old Testament, with a similar story being present in the Koran. The site upon which the mosque had been built dated back to the eighth century BC.

"[The] Islamic State completely destroyed the shrine of Nabi Yunus after telling local families to stay away and closing the roads to a distance of 500 meters from the shrine," an anonymous official from the Sunni Endowment, which manages Sunni religious affairs in Iraq, told AFP.

'He had a gun to my head': Freed British journalist chronicles Ukrainian captivity

RT
Sat, 26 Jul 2014 10:30 UTC

RT has managed to re-establish contact with Graham Phillips, a news contributor who was captured at Donetsk airport on Tuesday night while covering the Ukrainian conflict. Philips shared firsthand details of his three days in captivity with RT.

"I am in Poland. I am not exactly sure where I am. I just got to the border by the SBU (Ukrainian Security Service) quite recently, so I am getting my bearings," Phillips told RT, which contacted the journalist via Skype after his release.

Phillips said he was deported from Ukraine and banned for three years on the grounds that he works for RT. "The reason they gave [me] that was simply that I work for RT, that was all it said in the form. They wouldn't let me take it or copy it. Just said that 'you work for RT, it's the enemy.' I wasn't given the chance to defend myself. I was just taken to the border."

The journalist said it all started three days ago when he was on his way to film fire exchanges between government forces and militants just a few hundred meters away from the airport in Donetsk. He was with Vadim Aksyonov, a stringer for ANNA News agency.

"RT told me not to go in strong terms, but I went anyway with the local journalist Vadim. And we were taken by Ukrainian soldiers and Vadim was pretty badly beaten right in front of me by Ukrainian soldiers. He was on the ground, his head in the ground, just a young guy punching him and kicking him," Phillips said.

In Tel Aviv, around seven thousand protest against the Gaza operation

Zafrir Rinat
Haaretz
Sun, 27 Jul 2014 03:42 UTC

Some 7,000 protesters were estimated to attended in the biggest protest against the operation thus far, alongside a small protest in support of the IDF.

Thousands assembled at Tel Aviv's Rabin Square on Saturday evening for what became the largest protest against the Israeli military operation in Gaza thus far. According to official estimates some 7,000 protesters attended.

Meanwhile, a smaller group rallied in support of the operation in Gaza. The police served as a barrier between the groups to prevent clashes.

Jon Snow: Gaza is not just about them, it's about us, too

Jon Snow
Channel 4 News
Fri, 25 Jul 2014 17:07 UTC

This is humankind's most grievous cancer, for its cells infect conflicts in every corner of the world. We fail as humankind if we do not devise a coming-together.

She lay in my arms. Just weeks old, a tiny baby. Her Palestinian father had just handed her to me at the infernal steel border building at the exit of Gaza into Israel. She did not cry. She just looked at me with her beady, dark eyes.

Her father was trying both to open her pram, and steady his wounded wife in her wheel chair. Their luggage was scattered at the final entry gate as if just thrown through it.

We shared no common language, it had just seemed inevitable that as the only other able-bodied human in this absurd transit room, I should care for the baby.

I know not their story, nor how, alone seemingly, they were the only Palestinians, in that brief half-hour of Israeli aerial ceasefire, to have been allowed across.

But holding this girl baby connected me again to the wardfuls of small children so brutally smashed by this odious war. Connected me too to the ever-present reality that the average age in Gaza is 17 and that a quarter of a million are children are, like the babe in my arms, small children.

Results of US-EU anti-Russian sanctions coming in: First hit, Dutch food firm

NL Times
Fri, 25 Jul 2014 16:07 UTC

Dutch potato processing company Farm Frites from Oudenhoorn in Zuid-Holland is unable to receive a loan from the bank to built a factory in Russia that will produce fries. The conglomerate has postponed the construction of that factory. The EU has imposed a boycott due to the plane crash tragedy in Ukraine, the Algemeen Dagblad reports.

Comment: No, this is the result of sanctions that were decided at an EU summit meeting in Brussels the day before MH17 was blown out of the sky by agents unknown. They had nothing to do with the false-flag terror attack and everything to do with responding desperately to deals made at the BRICS summit in Brazil, which took place from 14 - 16 July.

This news comes after the conglomerate has made all the preparations. "The signatures for the factory close to St. Petersburg were finished up to the details. We have stopped the project", says Simon Quist from Farm Frites.

Quist calls this a "substantial disappointment." The project has stalled until there is more clarity on the exact cause of the plane crash, Quist tells the AD. Before there is more news about possible measures to be taken against Russia, it is unclear when or if Farm Frites will even receive a bank loan.

The company was hoping to be able to deliver fries to Russian McDonald's branches from 2016. Farm Frites has more than 40 branches around the world, and says that it respects the bank's decision. The advisor to the Russian partner in the deal also says there is understanding on the Russian side.

What(?), ..thought Charlie didn't surf [Link]

Jibrish

SBC says "Hang em... All the jab pushers." to which I add 'after fair trials.' You know all of the TV/film/fiction tropes about 'pushers' giving...

Rowan Cocoan

Good. Shut the bitch up. She was his girlfriend for Christ's sake! MeToo is a Team FUKUSraHell psyop. (I don't know why they threw Weinstein under...

Rowan Cocoan

Winternights3 There's probs a good connection! Just think about it.

sbc

Moving the goalposts. and people are too shit stupid to notice or care

sbc

Society's Child

Turkish Freedom Flotilla II being organized for Gaza will have military protection

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Things have to get worse before Congress will take action on climate change

Man left 98-year old wheelchair-bound mother in sweltering hot car while he gambled

Vancouver's Oppenheimer Park: A reminder of aboriginal title to urban centres

Ukrainian soldiers flee to Russia: Refuse to fight against their own citizens

CIA signature: Ancient tomb sacred to all Muslims destroyed by ISIS in Iraq

'He had a gun to my head': Freed British journalist chronicles Ukrainian captivity

In Tel Aviv, around seven thousand protest against the Gaza operation

Jon Snow: Gaza is not just about them, it's about us, too

Results of US-EU anti-Russian sanctions coming in: First hit, Dutch food firm

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