Get News & Views Updates
Most Popular This Week
- This Is Cardboard. Also Entirely Recycled, Water and Fireproof, and Dirt Cheap.
- Obamacare Architect Leaves White House for Pharmaceutical Industry Job
- A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Between 1945-1998
- The GOP's Big Budget Mumble
- Five Facts About America's Pathological Wealth Distribution
Popular content
Today's Top News
Gaza Aid Convoy to Change Course
Organisers of Viva Palestina aid convoy, which is trying to reach the Gaza Strip, have now agreed to go via Syria en route to Egypt.
Organisers of Viva Palestina aid convoy, which is trying to reach the Gaza Strip, have now agreed to go via Syria en route to Egypt. [AFP] The agreement came after a Turkish mediator reached a deal with the Egyptian consul in Jordan's Red Sea port of Aqaba.
The convoy will now head to the Syrian port of Latakia to sail from there to the Egyptian port of El Arish, and then to Gaza.
The Viva Palestina convoy, which has been stranded in Aqaba for the past five days, is led by George Galloway, a British MP.
Turkey dispatched an official on Saturday to try convince the Egyptians to allow the convoy to go through the Red Sea port of Nuweiba, the most direct route to Gaza after Egypt insisted that the convoy can only enter through El-Arish, on its Mediterranean coast.
Viva Palestina and another convoy, The Gaza Freedom March, were planning to arrive on Sunday to commemorate the first anniversary of Israel's war on Gaza that killed 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.
Meanwhile, at least 300 French participants of the Gaza Freedom March spent the night camped out in front of their embassy in Cairo, bringing a major road in the Egyptian capital to a halt as riot police wielding plexiglass shields surrounded them.
Egypt angry
Hossam Zaki, an Egyptian foreign ministry spokesman, accused the French protesters of lying and trying to embarrass Egypt.
"They claimed they had aid to carry to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, which is a lie," the MENA news agency quoted Zaki as saying."They want media exposure and to pressure and embarrass Egypt," he said.
On Sunday, police briefly detained 38 international participants in the Sinai town of El-Arish, organisers said.
"At noon (1000 GMT) on December 27, Egyptian security forces detained a group of 30 activists in their hotel in El-Arish as they prepared to leave for Gaza, placing them under house arrest.
"Another group of eight people, including American, British, Spanish, Japanese and Greek citizens, were detained at the bus station of El-Arish in the afternoon of December 27," they said.
On Sunday, Egyptian police also stopped some 200 protesters from renting boats on the Nile to hold a procession to commemorate those who died in the Gaza war.
On December 31, participants are hoping to join Palestinians "in a non-violent march from northern Gaza to the Erez-Israeli border," the organisers said.
- Posted in
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
15 Comments so far
Show AllThe Egyptian Government certainly is acting as the little lapdog for the Israeli and US governments. One would think they would have some sympathy for their brothers and sisters in Gaza. Oh, yeah, that's right, the US gives them billions and the people of Gaza are just prisoners in a giant open air prison, so why should they care for them?! They've no money to give!
Egyptian government, another puppet and "business" pawn?
Yes. Spineless piece of ... crap.
It's interesting to see how such immoral, ... governments make themselves to be in obvious terms.
I don't know who they follow, but it's clearly and neither Jesus of Nazareth nor prophet Mohammed. Both of them would be crucified by governments like in Egypt today.
Bravo to those who fight to keep Gazans alive.
Not that there's much to be alive for there, but we can derive some inspiration from the following AlJazeera piece.
"Witness: Gaza Fixer 2. 27 Dec 09", part 1 of 2 (13:22), posted Dec 28th
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pr4YqzLlHVI
Part 2 of 2 (9:28)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CNmf2NvHts
I got the links from a post at Uruknet.info and I don't think you want to miss this short documentary. It's important and shows consequences of Israel's war on Gaza last winter like no one would ever want to experience.
If a real-life story like that can't help us to live more humbly, etcetera, then surely no story of ill fortune ever will.
And there are documentary films, for which there are at least some freely viewzble and worthwhile clips, that only tell us more about how HORRIBLE the Palestinian situation is; not for Israelis, but for Palestinians.
Who are ther Zionist Congress Critters that keep sending our tax money to this cruel dictatorship?
Just look up who has dual-citizenship with Israel, Humbaba. That's a start.
/cm
Pretty much All of them, and they fall all over each other to do it.
I don't know, but they peculiarly are still walking about society in the USA, so why is this?
If I know of psychopaths, ..., walking through my neighborhood, or anywhere I go, then my conscientious duty is to report them. Why is this not happening with our psychpath politicians?
I don't know why, but it's clearly not happening; or if there are such citizen reports, then they're kept secret, censored. And such censorship is expectable. So what's really happening?
Galloway is a lying toad who just wanted to embarrass Egypt so he could gain media attention from the brain-dead extreme left. He purposefully violated Egyptian law then acted all aghast when Egypt actually maintained their laws. All he had to do was follow their directions, but no, that wouldn't get him any attention.
Amazing how hypocrites like him talk about international law then whine when laws are applied to them.
Obama used to stand up for Palestine. Now he is owned by the Jews.
Remember, we always need to divide and conquer. I believe we shoot ourselves in the foot when we vilify a whole group when we can target a subgroup and then get support rather than opposition from the other subgroup. As a Jew I take offense when you say he is owned by "the Jews". I recommend you specify a sub-group of Jews that would then exclude people like Hedy Epstein and myself. I believe Obama is working very slowly, carefully and strategically to extricate himself from control by the global corporatocracy. The corporatocracy has a large Zionist element in its leadership that is allied with the leadership of Israel. The corporatocracy has enormous wealth and power and wouldn't tolerate an Obama that would greatly threaten the status quo. I urge people to see this video of a Laura Flanders interview of John Perkins and Russ Baker.
http://www.blip.tv/file/2837830/
If the link doesn't work search: "laura flanders" "russ baker" "john perkins"
John Perkins, as many of you know, wrote "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" about the bribes and escalating series of threats he made to new third world leaders to become servants of the corporatocracy rather than their people. He now makes it clear in his new book "Hoodwinked" that American presidents are treated no differently. Baker wrote "Family of Secrets" about the Bush family and has a new book relating to the above issues, but I know less about him.
On Obama, it would be better to say that the Corporatocracy, with strong ties to and affinities with Israel's right wing government and that holds power over Obama won't allow him to defy Israel's brutal government.
i think it is more truthful to say simply; "He is owned"
An 85-year-old Holocaust survivor was among a group of grandmothers who began a hunger strike in Cairo on Monday to protest against Egypt’s refusal to allow a Gaza solidarity march to proceed.
American activist Hedy Epstein and other grandmothers participating in the Gaza Freedom March began a hunger strike at 1000 GMT.
"I’ve never done this before, I don’t know how my body will react, but I’ll do whatever it takes," Epstein told AFP, sitting on a chair surrounded by hundreds of protesters outside the United Nations building in Cairo.
The only embarrassment here is the Egyptian collaboration with the US/Israel to maintain the siege of Gaza. Egypt exposes itself as a police state by cracking down on human rights activists.
So Egyptian officials are angry, are they? I'm sure that regular Egyptian citizens feel quite the opposite. They don't like their government any more than the Marchers and
Viva Palestina do at the moment. USA-Egypt-Israel, collaborators in a ghastly Palestinian scenario, all.