June 24, 2009

To: The Israeli Ministry of Defense, Fax: 972-3-697-6717
To: The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Fax: 972-2-5303367
From: The Free Gaza Movement

This letter serves as a formal notification to you, as the Occupying Power and belligerent force in the Gaza Strip, that on Thursday, June 25, 2009 we are navigating the motor vessel Spirit of Humanity, and the motor vessel Free Gaza from the Port of Larnaca to the port of Gaza City. Our vessels will be flying the Greek flags, and, as such, fall under the jurisdiction Greece.

We will be sailing from Cypriot waters into international waters, then directly into the territorial waters of the Gaza Strip without entering or nearing Israeli territorial waters.

We will be carrying medical supplies in sealed boxes, as well as crayons, coloring books and toys for children, cleared by customs at the Larnaca International Airport and the Port of Larnaca. We will also be carrying 300 bags of cement delivered directly from the supplier to the Port of Larnaca. There will be passengers and crew on board from 14 different countries. Our boats and cargo will have received security clearance from the Port Authorities in Cyprus before we depart.

As it will be confirmed that neither we, the cargo, any of the boats’ contents, nor the boats themselves constitute any threat to the security of Israel or its armed forces, we do not expect any interference with our voyage by Israel’s authorities.

On Tuesday, December 30, an Israeli Navy vessel violently, and without warning, attacked our motor vessel Dignity, disabling the vessel and endangering the lives of the 16 civilians on board. This notice serves a clear notification to you of our approach. Any attack on the motor vessels, Spirit of Humanity and/or Free Gaza will be premeditated and any harm inflicted on the people on board will be considered the result of a deliberate attack on unarmed civilians.

A copy of this notification has been sent to the embassies of the civilians who will be on board.

For More Information, Please Contact: Greta Berlin, +357 96 471 263 or
Ramzi Kysia, +357 99 081 767
www.FreeGaza.org
###

GIPFELSOLI
23 June 2009

find here a try to put information from various sources together building a schedule of protest. please note that some dates might change (like always) and help to correct/complete.

to understand the situation in italy, it is important to look how berlusconis election april 2008 affected all left movements (and which new ones emerged). also, take some time going deeper into the issue of the earthquake and how the government, resp. berlusconi are handling (and militarizing) it. remember that berlusconi explained the shift of the summit from la maddalena to l’aquila with the absence of a “black bloc”, which the media gives the locals much fear of. remember also that that people in l’aquila (30.000 living in precarious, militarized camps) are very, very furious against the government.

a very important source is/will be http://abruzzo.indymedia.org (yet only italian).

*Diffused actions in italian cities 2 – 10 July*

Continue reading →

This video looks staged. The man in the blue and white-striped shirt seems to have a white cloth around his head at the start that’s gone by the end that might be explained by light reflecting on gray hair or someone out-of-frame removing it since his hands are visible throughout. But it appears that someone, possibly him, pours the “blood” on her face approx. 10 seconds into the video.

Go to http://vixy.net/, copy and paste the video’s URL [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ovCazy0ipw ] into the box, and click start to download the AVI file.

Updated 22 June 2009:
This would explain the huge bloodstain.

There is a ton of blood on the ground before she ever falls down. (probably from video take #1)

Neda, young girl brutally killed in Iran, becoming symbol of rebellion
BY Helen Kennedy, Daily News, 22 June 2009

An ABC reporter in Dubai said she was told the girl was rapidly buried to forestall a funeral rally.

Mousavi & co. shrugged off the greatest rally of their media revolution? They might have bothered to verify name and picture before declaring her a martyr.

From the comment section of Helen Kennedy’s article:

URGENT CORRECTION NEEDED: The photo you posted of the Neda who was killed in Iran is not correct. Your posted photo is of Neda Soltani on Facebook. I communicated with her on 6/21/09 in a process of elimination to find info on the dead woman. This Neda Soltani whom you have pictured is alive and well. She went to the trouble to identify the correct name of the murdered woman, Neda Soltan, and she posted her translation of the Farsi on her website. Of course, her posting was under her own photo because it was her Facebook wall. Hamed Rad picked this up and apparently erroneously thought the photo of the LIVE Neda Soltani was the photo of the Neda who was killed. Hamed has now posted this photo erroneously in various news postings. PLEASE REMOVE THE PHOTO ASAP! It is of a beautiful woman in headscarf. The live Neda Soltani has also removed her photo from her Facebook home page, but if you look at her other photos you will see it is still on her Facebook. There is more than on

Posted by beam on Jun 22, 2009 5:02 AM

The photo in question:

by Maximilian Forte, Open Anthropology, 20 June 2009

Source verification of digital information has risen to prominence with the Iranian election protests that have been ongoing since Saturday, 13 June, 2009. This does not just apply to alleged information distributed through social media, of course, as it also applies to mainstream media who, like the BBC, have been found to use doctored photos of protests showing a massive rally for Mir Hosein Mousavi that was actually a rally in support of the winning candidate, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In an attempt to convince rapid readers who do not make time to fact check, or cannot check facts, it has become a habit for some who use Twitter to precede their tweet with the word, “CONFIRMED,” without any indication of how the information was confirmed, when, and by whom. “Citizen journalism” and civil society politics are both going to get damaged unless we take away some lessons from this conflict.

[Read the article]

“Citizen journalism” is dead. It has devolved into idolatry of highly paid propagandists of the ruling class and “cyberwarfare“:

6. Denial of Service attacks. If you don’t know what you are doing, stay out of this game. Only target those sites the legitimate Iranian bloggers are designating. Be aware that these attacks can have detrimental effects to the network the protesters are relying on. Keep monitoring their traffic to note when you should turn the taps on or off.

7. Do spread the (legitimate) word, it works! When the bloggers asked for twitter maintenance to be postponed using the #nomaintenance tag, it had the desired effect. As long as we spread good information, provide moral support to the protesters, and take our lead from the legitimate bloggers, we can make a constructive contribution.

I expect more retractions like this one due to “Twitter Fraud“:

NOTE FROM STEVE CLEMONS:

PLEASE NOTE THAT I HAVE RECEIVED INFORMATION DIRECTLY FROM THE BRITISH EMBASSY THAT THEY HAVE NOT TAKEN IN INJURED PROTESTERS. THERE IS SOME LEVEL OF MISINFORMATION FLOODING THROUGH TWITTER WITH REGARD TO THE EMBASSIES. I DO NOT HAVE INFORMATION ON ANY EMBASSIES EXCEPT THE UK — AND KNOW WHAT I PREVIOUSLY WROTE BELOW IS WRONG.

THERE MAY BE ACCIDENTAL REPORTING OUT THERE — OR MISLEADING “TWITTER FRAUD”.

But as a commenter to Forte’s article notes the lessons of #amazonfail have quickly been forgotten; once moral outrage has been unleashed, negativity retains an illegitimate validity long after catalysts are revealed as engineered falsehoods. The U.S. government and its affiliates are not only old hands at manufacturing disinformation but have demonstrated a formidable expertise in appropriating the communication tools of “citizen journalists” and using them to their advantage.