Via Avedon, the Medium Lobster speaks.
Month: June 2010
The Way It Is
Nicole Atkins:
Question of the Day
If you had one wish that would enable you to eat or drink as much as you wanted of something without any adverse effects on your health, what would it be?
Unemployed Losers
Rachel Corrie Boarded
After conflicting stories all night, international media and the Israeli government report now that the Israelis have boarded the Rachel Corrie.
Around 1 a.m. EST, Gaza observers on the beach were still reporting watching the ship headed for port.
In the meantime, the United States yesterday called the Gaza blockade “unsustainable”:
(Reuters) – The White House said on Friday Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip was unsustainable and urged a Gaza aid vessel sent by pro-Palestinian activists to divert to an Israeli port to reduce the risk of violence.
“We are working urgently with Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and other international partners to develop new procedures for delivering more goods and assistance to Gaza,” said Mike Hammer, spokesman for the White House National Security Council.
“The current arrangements are unsustainable and must be changed. For now, we call on all parties to join us in encouraging responsible decisions by all sides to avoid any unnecessary confrontations,” Hammer said in a statement.
Top Kill, Bottom Spill
An illustration of the Gulf oil spill:
The Lonesome Death of Rachel Corrie
Billy Bragg:
Political Science
Randy Newman (h/t K.):
Spend Now, Cut Later
Ezra Klein stating the obvious:
Last week, pressure from deficit hawks forced the House of Representatives to cut the size of their jobs bill in half. As David Leonhardt wrote, “the case against the jobs bill starts with the idea that the economy is recovering.” But as today’s employment numbers show, our fitful recovery is going much too slowly given our near-10 percent unemployment rate.
Yes, deficits can become a problem. But the problem facing America is long-term, not short-term, deficits. Which is why every wonk answers this question the same way: Expand short-term deficits to boost employment and commit to credible deficit reduction in the long-term. The right move for deficit hawks would be to release a proposal that pairs a generous jobs bill with serious long-term reforms (for instance, a bill providing $300 billion in immediate stimulus and also lowering the cap on the mortgage interest deduction, bringing back the full estate tax and cutting defense spending). This moment, viewed correctly, actually offers a substantial opportunity for long-term deficit reduction because the need for short-term deficit spending gives hawks a bargaining chip that will bring liberals to the table. But no one seems interested in offering that deal.
The Other Side of the Story
On Thursday, Today’s Zaman, an English-language newspaper in Turkey,reported that the president of the Turkish aid group that helped to organize the flotilla said that a photographer working for the group “was shot in the forehead by a soldier one meter away from him.” Bulent Yildirimhe, the president of the aid organization Insani Yardim Vakfi (known in English as the I.H.H.), told the newspaper on Thursday after he returned from Israel: “Our Cevdet [Kiliclar], he is a press member. He has become a martyr. All he was doing was taking pictures. They smashed his skull into pieces.” The newspaper added:
Kevin Ovenden of Britain, an activist on the ship that arrived in İstanbul on Thursday, also said a man who had pointed a camera at the soldiers was shot directly through the forehead with live ammunition, with the exit wound blowing away back of his skull.
In another report, the newspaper said that Israeli officials had confiscated images taken by one of its photographers in the flotilla:
A photojournalist from Today’s Zaman Kursat Bayhan who was on board an international aid convoy for Gaza said he tried to hide a flash disk which included the photos from the moments of Israeli attack on the convoy under his tongue to prevent Israeli authorities from seizing it but his effort failed during a medical examination.
The report added, “Bayhan said the journalists in the ship including him tried to protect the video footage and photos they took,” after the ships were seized by Israeli commandos, but “all the materials of the press members, including their passports and identity cards, were taken away.”
The way these accounts diverge from that of Israel’s military would seem to make an independent investigation into the events crucial. That is particularly true since, as The Lede noted on Wednesday, Israel is apparently in possession of much more video evidence than it has yet released.
In a post making the case that Israel should not conduct that inquiry, Noam Sheizaf, an Israeli journalist and blogger, pointed out that journalists in the flotilla seem to have left Israeli custody without any of the video they shot during the raid that might bolster their accounts.
Israel has confiscated some of the most important material for the investigation, namely the films, audio and photos taken by the passengers [and] journalists on board and the Mavi Marmara’s security cameras. Since yesterday, Israel has been editing these films and using them for its own PR campaign. In other words, Israel has already confiscated most of the evidence, held it from the world and tampered with it. No court in the world would [trust] it to be the one examining it.