Ya, got that cheers. Iâm on the lucozade now mickee, nothing stronger!!!
On those murderous bastards, I can see alright mickee, too well unfortunately. I know its not a one way street, but it doesnât excuse the Israeli tactics.
Israeli firm in second Irish army contract
John Downes, News Investigations Correspondent
September 5, 2010
A controversial Israeli defence company which was awarded a multimillion-euro contract by the Irish government before last Mayâs attack on the Gaza aid flotilla received another lucrative contract from Ireland in the past three years.
A spokesman for the Department of Defence confirmed that the company, Elbit Systems, supplied an artillery fire control system to the defence forces for âŹ3.2m between 2007 and 2009.
The contract to supply the system was in addition to a âŹ2.37m contract to provide surveillance and target acquisition equipment to four light tactical armoured vehicles.
Defence minister Tony Killeen recently confirmed that this more recent contract will not be subject to any sanctions in light of the Israeli attack on the aid flotilla.
Elbit was dropped from Norwayâs pension fund last year over ethical concerns, after it emerged that it was involved in work on the separation wall between Israel and the West Bank. The company supplies surveillance equipment to monitor the barrier.
Norwayâs then finance minister Kristin Halvorsen said it did not wish âto fund companies that so directly contribute to violations of international humanitarian lawâ.
However, a spokesman for the Department of Defence said Killeen does not intend to review his decision to award the contract.
Last week the government persuaded the EU Commission to withdraw a plan to allow Israel access to private information on European citizens in protest at the misuse of Irish passports by suspected Israeli agents.
http://www.tribune.ie/news/article/2010/sep/05/israeli-firm-in-second-irish-army-contract/
good business acumen shown there shown by the irish defense forces.
Elbit have an excellent track record for artillery systems design and some of the stuff they have coming down the line in the future is spectacular to say the least comapred to the more inaccurate and less cost effective from a maintenance perspective Russian designed equipment
, hopefully testing of their new products will begin soon out here on the east coast.
ive done a bit of work with them in the past and they are a superb company.
The sheep on the Curragh stand no chance now
its the glen of imaal in wicklow Runt as far as i know where the IDF ( irish defense force) fire of their artillary in prepration for whatever invasion is on the horizon.
Very wise move.
This will have us nice prepped for an invasion on Switzerland.
Presumably our plan revolves around occupying the post office in Bern until they shell us into surrender. Itâs worked before.
I see these filthy scumbags shot and killed an elderly man lying asleep in his bed, supposedly thinking he was a âHamas leaderâ. Sure. He was an entirely innocent civilian.
The Israelis have found after their internal investigation that they acted legally and in self defence in their assault on the humanitarian flotilla in international waters.
David - I urge Tony Blair to uphold the Widgery Report and not reopen an inquiry into Bloody Sunday - Trimble, former chair of the international friends of Israel, has concluded that it was an extremely fair and rigorous report.
The Palestinian negotiation documents leaked by Al Jazeera have seriously rattled cages today. Incredible stuff. The PLO at various stages have offered Israel concessions way beyond what anyone though would be acceptable to the Palestinians and the Israelis still rejected it. This has included more or less giving up Jerusalem and the West Bank settlements. The PLO is dead now. Thatâs certain. So is the myth that the Israelis want a peace settlement. Itâs all out in the open now.
This seemingly endless and ugly game of the peace process is now finally over
The peace process is a sham. Palestinians must reject their officials and rebuild their movement
Itâs over. Given the shocking nature, extent and detail of these ghastly revelations from behind the closed doors of the Middle East peace process, the seemingly endless and ugly game is now, finally, over. Not one of the villains on the Palestinian side can survive it. With any luck the sheer horror of this account of how the US and Britain covertly facilitated and even implemented Israeli military expansion â while creating an oligarchy to manage it â might overcome the entrenched interests and venality that have kept the peace process going. A small group of men who have polluted the Palestinian public sphere with their private activities are now exposed.
For us Palestinians, these detailed accounts of the secretly negotiated surrender of every one of our core rights under international law (of return for millions of Palestinian refugees, on annexing Arab Jerusalem, on settlements) are not a surprise. It is something that we all knew â in spite of official protests to the contrary â because we feel their destructive effects every day. The same is true of the outrageous role of the US and Britain in creating a security bantustan, and the ruin of our civic and political space. We already knew, because we feel its fatal effects.
For the overwhelming majority of Palestinians, official Palestinian policy over these past decades has been the antithesis of a legitimate, or representative, or even coherent strategy to obtain our long-denied freedom. But this sober appreciation of our current state of affairs, accompanied by the mass protests and civil society campaigns by Palestinian citizens, has been insufficient, until now, to rid us of it.
The release into the public domain of these documents is such a landmark because it destroys the final traces of credibility of the peace process. Everything to do with it relied upon a single axiom: that each new initiative or set of negotiations with the Israelis, every policy or programme (even the creation of undemocratic institutions under military occupation), could be presented as carried out in good faith under harsh conditions: necessary for peace, and in the service of our national cause. Officials from all sides played a double game vis-Ă -vis the Palestinians. It is now on record that they have betrayed, lied and cheated us of basic rights, while simultaneously claiming they deserved the trust of the Palestinian people.
This claim of representative capacity â and worse, the assertion they were representing the interests of Palestinians in their struggle for freedom â had become increasingly thin over the last decade and a half. The claim they were acting in good faith is absolutely shattered by the publication of these documents today, and the information to be revealed over this coming week. Whatever oneâs political leanings, no one, not the Americans, the British, the UN, and especially not these Palestinian officials, can claim that the whole racket is anything other than a brutal process of subjugating an entire people.
Why has this gone on for so long and at such high cost? And why havenât the Palestinians been able to create the democratic representation so urgently needed to advance their cause? Israel, along with those who share its worldview, would assert that the problem lies with the Palestinians themselves, being part of an Arab political culture that can only breed either authoritarian governments or terrorists. Yet what these documents reveal is the extent of undemocratic, authoritarian, colonial and, frankly, terrifying coercion the US, Britain and other western governments have been imposing upon Palestinians through this unaccountable leadership.
The unconstrained power of America, the global superpower that has (now on record and in sickening detail) taken one partyâs side in this conflict, can be seen on every page. Everyone is implicated, from the president to the secretary of state, from the military generals who have created the security forces to implement these policies to the embassy staff involved in the daily execution of them. It also shows this policy is an absolute failure, bringing ruination upon the Palestinians and increasing belligerency from the completely unfettered, aggressive and erratic Israel, currently practising a form of apartheid towards the Palestinians it rules through force.
This uneven balance of power can only be successfully addressed in the same way every national liberation movement has addressed it in the past: through the unassailable strength of a popular mandate. Ho Chi Minh sitting down with the French, or Nelson Mandela negotiating with the apartheid regime embodied this popular legitimacy, and indeed drew their principles and negotiating positions from it. The Palestinian leadershipâs weak and incompetent posturing is the opposite of dignified and honourable national representation, and proves useless to boot.
On the positive side, had such deals eventually come to light, Palestinians would have rejected them comprehensively. But the worst betrayal has been what this hypocrisy has bequeathed to the young generation of Palestinians. These officials have led a new generation to believe that participating in public governance is base and self-seeking, that joining any political party is the least useful method to advance principals and create change.
Through their harmful example, they have alienated young Palestinians from their own history of resistance to colonial and military rule, so they now believe that tens of thousands of brilliant, imaginative and extraordinarily brave Palestinians never existed or, worse, fought and died for nothing. It cuts them off from any useful mobilising methods and techniques that they might draw upon today â the democratic and collective mechanisms that are needed more than ever. They have given young people the idea that there is no virtue in collective organisation, the mechanism by which popular democratic change is made and preserved.
The increasingly popular view that the Palestinian revolution was a failure from its inception, always corrupt, driven from above and never from below, is false â but it has gained credibility through the actions of the current regime. Its behaviour has nearly erased the record of the contribution made by tens of thousands of ordinary Palestinian citizens who, through the sheer force of their devotion to public life, fought for principles and created real and democratic self-representation under the worst of conditions. It is our most valuable freedom, and one well worth fighting for: the release of these devastating documents paves the way for its restoration.
Needs an Executive Summary Ted. I only made it to the third paragraph before becoming dangerously drowsy.
+1
good post mate.
The Palistinian stance and rhetoric has become so boring and repetitive now most people just switch off when they come on and allow them to wallow in thier self pity.
these revelations are actually fucking hilarious, what a shambles the PLO are.
they have been properly stabbed in the back now by one of their own for 30 pieces of silver and Al Jazeera have sold them out.
there will be civil war in the west bank now because of this, but i suppose Israel will get blamed for that tooâŚ
the international community should just leave Hamas and Fatâah at it now and fight till they wipe each other out, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon wont have them and i dare say Israel couldnt care less either
Jerusalem (CNN) â An organizer of the Gaza flotilla said Thursday that one of its ships has been sabotaged while anchored in Turkeyâs territorial waters.
The propeller of the Irish ship Saoirse was damaged by what one organizer says is plastic explosives, the second ship to be damaged this week ahead of a flotilla that intends to challenge Israelâs maritime blockage of the Gaza strip.
The flotilla, which is expected to leave soon but has faced a series of bureaucratic and technical delays, is a commemoration of the one-year anniversary of a similar flotilla that resulted in a clash in international waters with Israeli navy commandos that killed nine people, including an American.
âWe believe that plastic explosives were used to blow and weaken the propel shaft, and this would have sunk the ship in open sea,â said Fintan Lane, one of the Irish boat coordinators.
âWe believe that plastic explosives were used to blow and weaken the propel shaft, and this would have sunk the ship in open sea.â
Lane said the damage was similar to what happened to another flotilla boat docked in Piraeus, outside of Athens.
He called on the Greek and Turkish authorities to investigate what he called an act of terror.
CNN cannot independently verify the claim.
While Lane on Thursday did not outright blame Israel for the alleged sabotage, there have been a number of accusations by organizers about the governmentâs effort to block its flotilla.
A spokesman for Israelâs Foreign Minister said he was ânot going to get inside accusations. They are vague. There is nothing behind them.â
âWe have not concealed our case, our arguments, our diplomatic efforts. Itâs all out in the open.â
The Israeli military Tuesday claimed flotilla participants had threatened to kill Israeli military personnel should their boats be boarded. They allege sacks of sulphuric acid were being stockpiled on boats to be used in attacks on Israeli commandos.
Flotilla organizer Medea Benjamin dismissed the allegations as ludicrous, saying: âThey see this nonviolent, rag-tag group of ships as such a threat theyâre using their entire propaganda apparatus, and their diplomatic and economic clout to try to stop 300 peace activists. Itâs pathetic.â
In May 2010, the Mavi Marmara â owned by the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation, or IHH â and five other ships were on their way to Gaza with humanitarian aid and about 700 activists from various countries when the Israeli soldiers boarded it.
An independent Israeli commission, led by retired judge Yaakov Turkel, later found that the Israeli commandos âacted professionally and in a measured manner in the face of unanticipated violenceâ when they seized the Gaza-bound aid ship.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters Friday that she didnât think the flotilla plan for this year âis useful or productive or helpful to the people of Gaza.â
âWe have certainly encouraged that American citizens not participate in the flotilla,â she said, âand we are urging that all precautions be taken to avoid any kind of confrontation.â
Clintonâs comments followed an even harsher statement by State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, in which she criticized what she called âirresponsible and provocative actions that risk the safety of their passengers.â
The Spanish Agency for Cooperation built solar panels in the West Bank to provide electricity for 40 families, a school, and a medical centre. The Israelis decided to demolish it after two weeks - http://translate.gooâŚ149_459011.html
Interesting series of miraculously foiled/botched attacks on Israeli embassies over the last few days, just when the States and Israel are looking for a pretext to attack Iran.
Oh I really hate Zionism.
Good win for Palestine on Wednesday.
I wish the Israeliâs would do something positive and bomb the shit out of Bashar Al Assad.