Thursday, June 10, 2010

Doomed to Repeat It

Noam Chomsky has a statement up about the Israeli hijacking of the Mavi Marmara, with this important reminder:

It is worth bearing in mind that the crime is nothing new. For decades, Israel has been hijacking boats in international waters between Cyprus and Lebanon, killing or kidnapping passengers, sometimes bringing them to prisons in Israel including secret prison/torture chambers, sometimes holding them as hostages for many years. Israel assumes that it can carry out such crimes with impunity because the US tolerates them and Europe generally follows the US lead.

But remember, we have to look forward into the future, not backward into the past!

Incidentally, though the Israelis thought they'd confiscated all video and other potentially embarrassing evidence from the surviving passengers of the Mavi Marmara, some got through anyway. Even in the future nothing works!

And as a reminder that our brave armed forces, border police, and paramilitaries are ever-vigilant to protect America against the threat of terror, one of them shot a Mexican teenager on the other side of the border in the head. As usual, the initial government reports were lies.