Global outrage at Israel's brutal attack on the Gaza aid flotilla

When Israel announced that they were holding their own inquiry into their massacre of aid activists on the Gaza Flotilla, which happened at the end of May, it wasn’t a massive surprise when their ‘impartial panel’ proved to be a total sham. As we reported at the time, Israel predictably hand-picked a panel mostly consisting of retired Israeli generals, some Canadian military hack with a dodgy human rights record, and David Trimble, Ulster Unionist politician and renowned bigot and sectarian knobhead.

But you’d maybe expect that, for all its faults, the United Nations, an international body which is kind of meant to be as impartial as they come, would manage slightly better on this front. Somehow, however,  and quite incredibly, the UN have managed to top all of Israel’s shameless whitewashing – they’ve only gone and picked Alvaro fucking Uribe as the vice-chair of their ‘independent’ panel of inquiry into the attacks. Uribe is the outgoing President of Colombia, famous for his friendly, diplomatic and impartial bouts of killing trade unionist, funding right-wing guerillas and being best pals with some of the world’s most notorious drugs barons, at least when he’s not too busy stoking up war with his neighbours and receiving billions in aid from the United States, that is!

Israel has been in the news the past couple of days for practically provoking a war with Lebanon following military excursions which skirted the Lebanese border, leaving five dead – including a civilian journalist – when things spilled over into gunfire a few days ago. As it happens, Colombia has also been in the news for much the similar (without any killing… yet), constantly accusing neighbouring Venezuela, and the left-wing government of Hugo Chavez, of harbouring left-wing guerillas who form one side in the relatively low-intensity civil war that’s been going on in the country for decades. Although there’s absolutely no evidence that this is the case – all Uribe has been able to offer is a couple of dodgy photos from a few years ago that were probably taken in Ecuador anyway (which Colombia illegally invaded in 2008 on the same justification). Chavez has quite understandably been getting a bit unnerved at these persistent threats emanating from Colombia, given that it’s no secret that the US government would quite like to bump him off and a proxy war through Colombia is probably their best bet for doing so now, after their countless failures to depose Chavez domestically and halt the ongoing revolution .

Uribe and Bush share a joke about how many commies they killed last week

Uribe’s regime in Colombia have consistently failed to investigate reports of systematic torture, human rights abuses and extra-judicial murder in the country. Invariably, these have been against the left-wing opposition – including the now infamous cases of Coca Cola bottling plant workers who faced execution by paramilitary death squads because they’d tried to fight for better wages and conditions, or even just been a member of a trade union. It’s crazy that the UN thinks a man who has well documented links to fascist paramilitaries, cocaine trafficking and mass abuses of human rights in his own country is possibly capable of impartially investigating a massacre of civilians abroad.

And for the inquiry to be announced  in the same week that the UN Secretary General was summoned by the Venezuelan government over serious concerns about a Colombian attack is just taking the piss, and whether intentional or otherwise, sends a clear endorsement to Colombia’s US-sponsored imperialist warmongering. An MEP from the United Left party in Spain, Willy Meyer, has already slammed the decision as like “like leaving a fox to guard the chickens”, adding that Uribe presides over a country with “the largest mass grave in Latin America”.

Don’t hold your breath for the inquiry’s results!

16 Responses to “They’ve done it again! Another week, another bullshit inquiry”
  1. Jack says:

    This article, written in 2002 when Uribe was originally running for office, breaks down just how closely he and his family are involved with cocaine trafficking and the infamous Medellin cartel.

    http://www.narconews.com/narcocandidate1.html

    And with this comment, all the recent comments will have been by me, so others please say something so it doesn’t look like a wall of me!

  2. Dafty Weegie says:

    The very notion of a “Palestinian Arab nation”, having ancient attachments to the Holy Land going back to time immemorial is one of the biggest hoaxes ever perpetrated upon the world! There is not, nor has there ever been, a distinct “Palestinian” culture or language. Further, there has never been a Palestinian state governed by Arab Palestinians in history, nor was there ever a serious Arab-Palestinian national movement until 1964…three years BEFORE the Arabs of “Palestine” lost the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and Gaza as a result of the 1967 Six Day’s War (which the Arabs started). Even the so-called leader of the “Palestinian” people, Yasser Arafat, is Egyptian! In short, the so-called Arab “Palestinians” are a manufactured people…a people with no history and no authority…whose sole purpose for existence is to destroy the Jewish State!

    Israel first became a nation in 1312 B.C., two thousand years before the rise of Islam! Seven hundred and twenty-six years later, in 586 B.C., these first ancient Jews in the land of Israel (Judea) were overrun and Israel’s First Jewish Temple (Solomon’s Temple) on Jerusalem’s Old City Temple Mount was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, king of ancient Babylon. Many of the Jews were killed, enslaved or expelled; however many were allowed to remain. These Jews along with their progeny and other Jews, who would resettle over the next 500 years, rebuilt the Nation of Israel and also a Second Temple in Jerusalem on the same site as Solomon’s Temple. Thus, the claim that Jews suddenly appeared fifty years ago, right after the Holocaust, and drove out the Arabs is preposterous!

    Then, in 70 A.D.(nearly 2,000 years ago), it was the Roman Empire’s turn to march through ancient Israel, known at that time as Judea, and destroy the Second Jewish Temple, slaughtering or driving out much of the Jewish population. The Romans, without success, had tried to impose their many deities on the Jews, but few Jews were willing to submit to the Roman demands regarding their worship, and were certainly unwilling to regard a Roman Emperor as a divine being.

    After a succession of uprisings against Roman rule, in which over one and a half million Jews were killed, enslaved or driven out of their homeland, the then Roman Procurator in charge of the area decided to take even another measure in retaliation. Calling his scribes, he asked the historians as to who had been the worst enemies of the Jews in past history. He was told the “Philistines.” Having this determination, he then ordered all maps altered to reflect that the Land of Israel (Judea) would be labeled “Philistia” (further bastardized into “Palaistina”) to dishonor the Jews and obliterate them, if only figuratively, from the map. Hence, the name “Palestine” was invented, and entirely appropriate that this invented name of the Romans would be used by Muhammad’s invented religion of Islam, over 1,800 years later, when initiating its campaign to steal the Jewish homeland.

    Over 3,250 years, various Peoples, Religions and Empires marched through Jerusalem, Israel’s ancient capital established by King David. The region was successively ruled by the Hebrews (Jews), Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Maccabeans, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Egyptians, the Crusaders, Mamelukes, the Turks (who indifferently governed the backward neglected territory from the 16th Century until the British drove them out during World War I) and then once again by the Jews in 1948. None bothered, nor were they in the least bit inclined, to build a Nation of their own…EXCEPT the Jews!

    It should be noted that in 636 A.D., when the Arab marauders of Muhammad came to the land, and uprooted even more of the Jews, they did not form any Arab nation there…and certainly not a “Palestinian” nation. They were simply “Arabs” who, as did others before them, moved into a geo-political area called “Palestine!” And, remember this one fact…it was not the Jews who “usurped” (a favorite word from the Arab propagandists) the land from the Arabs. It was the Arabs in 636 A.D. who overran and stole it from the Jews! A point: The Dome of the Rock Mosque was constructed atop the ruins of the second Jewish Temple, and not vice-versa!

    The Jewish People have the most legitimate “Birth Certificate” of any nation in the world! Every time there is an archaeological dig in Israel, it does nothing but support the fact that the Jewish People have had a presence there for well over 3,000 years. The national coins, the pottery, the cities, the ancient Hebrew texts…all support this claim. Yes, other peoples have passed through, but there is no mistaking the fact that Jews have always had a continuous presence in that land for over 3,000 years. This predates and certainly dwarfs any claims that other people in the regions may have.

    IN CONCLUSION: No nation, other than the ancient nation of Israel and later again in 1948, with the rebirth of the 2nd Nation of Israel, has ever ruled as a sovereign national entity on this land. A mighty Jewish empire extended over this entire area many centuries before the Arabs, and their newly invented religion of Islam appeared on the scene in the 7th Century A.D.

  3. Jack says:

    I think the version of history you’ve put forward here is pretty inaccurate, and leans a bit heavily on Biblical chronology which has been shown by archaeology to be flawed. For a more accurate history of the Jewish people, I recommend http://inventionofthejewishpeople.com/

    But leaving that to one side, what relevance does the history of the millenium before last have for the political situation in Palestine today? Palestine was inhabited by Arabs continuously for centuries. If we have to give all land back to who held it in the 6th century, who’s going to come and clear all the Vikings, Normans etc off this territory of historical Pictland?

  4. Paul says:

    Dafty Weegie the fact that Jews lived here is of course factually known and this is obviously cause for a right nor do the arabs have a distinctive claim other than the one that christaians have as well that it is the holy land and it should be protected against non-beleivers. But the arabs that have lived their have lived their much longer than most modern Jews. It was not a nation but people lived their and called it home. I find it hard to judge both sides people will claim that the israelies slaughter the palestinians of Gaza but then I am not exactly confident that the muslims are some how innocent it as been shown quite clearly Muslims don’t like Israel moderate muslims believe them to be wrong and more extremist want to destroy it.
    Jack the picts were just another invasion they came from Ireland. The biblical does concern us because this is were the Jewish claim comes from or the Talmud. The Quran is were the muslims get theirs. This is the problem with nations attached to faith Judiasm is a faith and a race it is hard to come down on any side and our 21st century sensibilities are usually abused by both sides to try to gain our support. If the west were more willing to let them get on with it the situation would be less ploliticised.

  5. Gabriel says:

    Dafty Weegie is an appropriate name indeed. What a lot of daft ideas! Your second paragraph is particularly amusing, you go off on various Talmudic/Biblical claims about the ancient history of a group of people who happened to be the ancestors of the modern Jewish nation and claim that the invasions they suffered hundreds of years ago proved that they didn’t drive out the muslims in the 20th century. Total non-sequiter.

    Also your entire argument seems to stem from basically saying my great-great-great to the power of x grandfather lived here, therefore I have an automatic right to live here. Which is bullshit. Claiming such ownership of land is like claiming the americans own the moon, absurd and pointless.

    Oh yes, and since arabs have been living in Palestine for nigh-on 400 years, I’d say that constitutes a pretty damn settled group of people. And plus, don’t the Judaic scriptures say that there were people living in the “promised land” before the Jews got there and had to be driven out because god supposedly told them to do so?

  6. Auriel says:

    The Arabs were allowed in by the Jews to work and build the country, it is the satanic death cult of Islam that teaches them to hate Israel and turned them against the Jews and created all the problems that we see today, terrorism and the terrorism in the wider world etc etc. The proof that Palestine is invented purely to destroy Israel should explain everything its simple and the real evil behind this ISLAM. In terms of scientific, engineering and medical developments the Jews have given more to the world than any other race just look at the amount of Nobel prize winners that are Jewish, even windows XP was made in Israel allowing you to read this. The Arabs have given nothing and their cult of Islam wants to convert or kill you

    (and then kill your homosexual friends & relatives, kill unchaste females friends & relatives, kill you if try to leave……)

  7. Auriel says:

    The Muslim populations in Palestine grow very fast because the woman in a Muslim marriage is a prisoner and must have many children for a Muslim man and the children are often seen as expendable being given up as suicide bombers. Would you be proud of your child if they blown themselves up? Would you believe they went to heaven? Sometimes I wonder about people in socialist movements. You want to break the blockade so that there will be more attacks on Israel, so they are left with no option and they do what any other nation would do under the circumstances.Duh!
    By the way if the IDF wanted to massacre the flotilla they could have blown the entire fleet out of the water in seconds. The Muslim Turkish flotilla have achieved what they set out to achieve (martyred themselves) and their mentally retarded followers believe they are in heaven.

  8. Sarah says:

    Shut up you mad racist bastard

  9. Andy Bowden says:

    The Israelis never ‘let in the muslims’ to Palestine, they lived there for already for centuries. What your spouting is Joan Peters fraudulent “From Time Immemorial” bollocks.

  10. Raphael says:

    This is a video about the Jewish conspiracy to take over the world, take your money and infiltrate the socialist movement.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymO0CmsdyHc

  11. Michael says:

    More information on the Jewish conspiracy and how national socialists can stop the spread of Zionist global supremacy.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygb6VrW8WZw

  12. Jack says:

    Please note that Dafty, Auriel, Raphael and Michael are the same person. LOL.

  13. James N says:

    …and quite a strange person at that.

    There is no such thing as a nation called Palestine and there are no Palestinian people? Fuckin hell, we better get this news out quick, a lot of trouble could be saved! You’ve got to admire their determination to preserve that myth then, not many people could fight a national liberation war for over 60 years, to win freedom for a nation that doesn’t really exist. Emmmm, I remain confused, how come they have a flag and a culture and stuff then? And if they’re just Arabs, how comes they’re treated as second-class citizens in the Arab countries where there is a Palestinian diaspora?

    Btw, see all this shit about Islam being a made-up religion? Are you saying this is in opposition to Judaism, which is real because it comes directly from God via the prophets? Isn’t that basically what all religions say? And isn’t there a fairly well-established uncontroversial consensus that people who claim it’s OK to persecute and kill people because they don’t follow your religion are… what’s the word?… massive fucking bastards?

  14. Paul says:

    Palestine claims to be a natiion but it most certainly has the best Press office. Several countries have minority muslims and each calim to want a nation of Islam. this nation is represseve. Islam as a form of governance is unacceptable it often discriminates against women and holds back its people. The worry of palestine and others like it is the fact that they beleive that Islam is the only reason to have that land. Also it is well known that the arabs which palestinians are. Forcefully took the land off of the byzantine Empire. The fact is the palestinians claiming the land as theirs is essentially like our immigrant communities claiming this lands as their own and splitting the land. i.e. the way that the Scottish immigrants to northern Ireland now claim this land as their own this is wrong.

  15. Puffling says:

    wtf, Paul?!

    “The fact is the palestinians claiming the land as theirs is essentially like our immigrant communities claiming this lands as their own and splitting the land. i.e. the way that the Scottish immigrants to northern Ireland now claim this land as their own this is wrong”

    I think you’ve got the situation severely backwards…

    The Israelis are the immigrants in this situation, you mad bastard.

    And Islam isn’t the issue here – the repression and suffering inflicted on innocent Palestinians is.

  16. Jack says:

    Paul, the zionist Irish republican, a supporter of the IRA but not of the Palestinian resistance to a colonial authority which in fact is currently WAAY more brutal than the British in Ireland (not that it’s a competition, all oppression is bad!), you are a seriously mixed up guy!

  17.