The Occupy Oakland protest took another violent turn in the dusk hours today when protesters went head-to-head with riot police after a series of defiant actions.  According to the Associated Press, some of the protesters  “broke into a vacant building, shattered windows, sprayed graffiti and set fires” as well as “threw concrete chunks, metal pipes, lit roman candles and Molotov cocktails.” Police indicated that an estimated 3,000  protesters had gathered earlier in the day at the port, the 5th busiest in the nation, “effectively shut[ting it] down.”

Many of the Occupy Oakland movement protesting at the city’s port declared their solidarity with the Longshoremen’s union in Washington state.  In September, longshoremen Port of Longview in Washington stormed a grain shipping terminal, cut the brake lines on rail cars and held security personnel hostage, resulting in violent clashes between union workers and police.  The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on August 31st had issued a complaint against the union, condemning its “violent and aggressive” actions.

From the Monthly Review, John Hamilton interviews Oakland, CA International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10 member and co-chair of the Million Worker March Movement, Clarence Thomas (not the SCOTUS Clarence Thomas), who explains why the Occupy movement is supporting the ILWU and closing of the port:

The partial transcript from Monthly Review is below:

“One of the reasons why they are doing it is because they are trying to defend ILWU workers in Longview, Washington, who are facing a behemoth of agribusiness, EGT.  The driving force behind EGT is a leading agribusiness concern called Bunge. . . .  Longshoremen have a debt of gratitude to the people who have organized this action today. . . .  30% of the funding of our pensions comes from that grain operation in the Pacific Northwest.  This is an attempt to rupture the jurisdiction of longshore workers that we’ve had for over 77 years in this country.  Wall Street is on the move, on the waterfront, looking for new profits, and the community are standing with the ILWU.

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For long time Obama watchers this comes as no surprise. Bill Kristol is reporting  that the United States plans to abandon Israel at the UN Security Councel next week.  According to the Weekly Standard Editor, the Obama administration has been informing  foreign governments that it will support a resolution to set up an independent UN Commission to investigate Israeli actions in the guerrilla flotilla incident.

Apparently the President does not care

a) this is an extraordinary singling out of Israel, since all kinds of much worse incidents happen around the world without spurring UN investigations.

b) that the investigation will be one-sided, focusing entirely on Israeli behavior and not on Turkey or on Hamas.

c) that this sets a terrible precedent for outside investigations of incidents involving U.S. troops or intelligence operatives as we conduct our own war on terror.

The most recent  ’independent” investigation of Israel conducted by the UN, the Goldstone Report, threw any standards of investigation out the window. The report violated international standards for inquries, including UN rules on fact- finding. The Commission systematically favored witnesses and evidence put forward by anti-Israel advocates, and dismissed evidence and testimony that would undermine its case. The commission relied extensively on mediating agencies, especially UN and NGOs, which have a documented hostility to Israel; and reproduces earlier reports and claims from these agencies. And that’s just for a start. It is clear that Barack Obama is looking for the UN to create another anti-Israel Kangaroo court.

While UN Ambassador Susan Rice is reported to have played an important role in pushing for U.S. support of a UN investigation, the decision is, one official stressed, of course the president’s. The government of Israel has been consulting with the U.S. government on its own Israeli investigative panel, to be led by a retired supreme court justice, that would include respected international participants, including one from the U.S. But the Obama administration is reportedly saying that such a “kosher panel” is not good enough to satisfy the international community, or the Obama White House.

Remember, earlier this week Obama spoke about his desire for an international of inquiry. Also,  Ambassador Rice’s recommendation was foreshadowed when she remained mute during the UN’s Human Rights Council condemnation of Israel over the indecent.

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The media in the backdrop of Barack Obama’s now infamous “whose ass to kick” comment has argued that this President’s critics are angry at him for not showing more emotion.  That conservative bastion CNN features an article entitled ‘Why Obama doesn’t dare become the ‘angry black man’ that reads:

Who would have ever expected some white Americans to demand that an African-American man show more rage?

If you’ve followed the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, you’ve heard the complaints that Obama isn’t showing enough emotion.

But scholars say Obama’s critics ignore a lesson from American history: Many white Americans don’t like angry black men.

[…]

“Folks are waiting for a Samuel Jackson ‘Snakes on the Plane’ moment from this president as in: ‘We gotta’ get this $#@!!* oil back in the $#!!* rig!’ But that’s just not who Obama is,” says Saladin Ambar, a political science professor at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

A few observations here.  First, notice how it is only leftists like Bill Maher, Spike Lee and the elites in academia and the media coming out and making this a race issue.  Second, how unintelligible is this argument?  People are upset because the President is not getting upset, but they are wrong to be upset because they don’t like President’s that play into stereotypes?  What exactly does this have to do with an oil spill that is crippling the nation?  And who is perpetuating such a stereotype?  Third, which Americans are demanding that Barack Obama show rage?  People of all stripes and colors are looking for a President to stand up and show calm but confident and steadfast leadership, irrespective of the President’s race.  If Barack Obama happened to be purple it wouldn’t make a damn difference.

The race issue is simply devised as a smokescreen by which the left seeks to distract us.  Since the President has done a poor job leading the nation in the wake of the ongoing BP spill, the media pulls the race card to shift the focus away from Obama and towards his critics who after all are all clansmen.  Yet notice again that throughout this Presidency, the only people talking about race are the leftists themselves.

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The Obama administration’s response to the Israeli blockade of Gaza has been, to put it charitably, uncertain. Are the Israelis right to try to prevent ships of any kind bound for Gaza from bringing offensive weapons into the Hamas terror state? Gaza is not some remote location. Gaza abuts Israel. Four thousand rockets have been fired by Hamas from Gaza into Israel proper, into civilian areas, into Jewish homes, shops, and houses of worship. Hamas has declared war on Israel. Hamas is dedicated to eradicating “the Zionist entity.” They won’t even name the Jewish state.

After initially proclaiming, chest out, that there would not be “daylight” between the U.S. and Israel’s right of self-defense, the Obama administration began backtracking. Like Annie, unnamed officials began to sing: “The sun will come out tomorrow.” They could hardly admit, after all, that the administration’s Mideast policy is shambolic. (That’s a nice internationalist touch for you. “Shambolic” is Brit slang for chaotic, disorderly.)

What we need is clarity. The Israelis had no choice but to intercept the Turkish-sponsored “flotilla.” What ensued when Israeli commandos repelled onto the deck of a Turkish ferry boat was indeed shambolic. The “peace” activists who crowded the deck set upon the Israeli soldiers with their palm fronds. Or was it olive branches? Try lead pipes.

And the Israeli commandos, those aggressive brutes, fired back. The French would understand very well this aggressive behavior. They have a phrase: “This animal is very mechant (wicked). When you attack it, it defends itself.”

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In the post-American world, a convoy of war ships trussed up as a “flotilla” is affectionately called “humanitarian aid.” And now the world is demanding a full-on “investigation” of Israel’s defensive action.

I asked former UN Ambassador John Bolton for his take on it. He said, “How Obama reacts in the UN Security Council and more generally will say a lot about his views on Israel.”

You gotta love how post-American Obama was so quick to call policeman James Crowley “stupid,” motivated by racism in the Gates affair, but when Jewish soldiers were getting beaten to a pulp on the killing flotilla, the Obama administration morally equivocated and “condemned those acts which resulted in the loss of life.”

What the hell does that even mean? And Obama and other world leaders are ignoring the fact that, as was reported by the Israel Project, “all nine protesters killed Monday (May 31) aboard a Gaza-bound Turkish ship carrying weapons-wielding activists are believed to be Turkish nationals and were backed by the IHH, an Islamist Turkish group connected to global jihadi networks.”

Has the post-American President Obama bothered to watch the murderous beatings?

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There is very little difference between what intelligence analysts do and what ordinary folks try to accomplish when they pick up a newspaper, listen to the evening news, or read the posts on this and other sites. In every case, wittingly or not, they attempt to separate the revealing details from the background noise.

That is what we should do with regard to the violent incident that took place when the Israelis boarded the six ships constituting the so-called Gaza Flotilla. Most of what we have learned in the aftermath is true and appalling but, in the long run, inconsequential.

The Israeli soldiers who landed on the Mavi Marmara (in Turkish, the Blue Sea of Marmara) in preparation for conducting the ship to an Israeli port – from which the goods being carried could be sent on to Gaza – were, in fact, ambushed, as Allison Kaplan Sommer indicates in her lucid analysis of the evidence that has become available, and all of the usual suspects quickly lined up to condemn Israel for crimes she did not commit.

This is a tiresome, all-too-predictable business reminiscent of the campaign launched in the wake of the clearing action undertaken some years ago at the Jennin refugee camp and of the campaign launched after the Israelis intervened in in 2008 to put an end to Hamas’ firing of missiles into Israel from their stronghold in Gaza. It is part and parcel of a long struggle on the part of the PLO in days gone by and of Hamas now to stage incidents and rally world public opinion against the Israelis for doing what they have to do to defend themselves.

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Regarding the recent Gaza flotilla incident…predictably, Progressive Democrats are blaming Israel. In a most intriguing case of egomaniacal projection, they are calling it “Israel’s Kent State!”

The unflappable pro-Gaza writer, MJ Rosenberg, even goes so far as to blame the current lack of knee-jerk condemnation from America toward Israel on the ‘Zionist controlled Congress.’

Meanwhile in Washington, the word is that Obama will ease the pressure on settlements and the strangulation of Gaza to keep pro-Israel donors to the Democratic party writing checks for the November election.

I certainly don’t know what will happen. However, given that nothing has changed since Bibi’s last visit, any demonstration of love from the administration will be proof that US policy is dictated by campaign contributions.

The usual suspects are already rushing to offer the usual double talk to defend what Israel did. Here is typical claptrap from the Israel-is-always-100%-right American Jewish Committee. AIPAC and its media acolytes are also out there to tell us that the Israelis are the victims, and if you don’t think so, you are an anti-Semite. Or a self-hating Jew.

But the massacre happened in international waters and the attack was launched by military commandos against civilians trying to relieve other civilians suffering under an illegal blockade.

There is only one spot in this country where the lobby will be able to sell the story that the humanitarian flotilla was the aggressor and that Israel is the victim here. That is the United States Congress.

Despite Rosenberg’s preemptive straw-man charges that he is an anti-Semite or a self-hating Jew, we will take him at his word that he is neither of those things. But in the case of the writing above, we might accuse him of having a small problem with bigotry.

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What a shock. A majority of the arrested “peace activists” who brutally attacked the Israeli soldiers with pipes, metal rods. chairs and knives are linked to terror groups including Al-Qaeda. Several are members of the Muslim Brotherhood. The activists include Turks, Yemenites and Indonesians. And, many of the arrested “peace” fanatics have no identification papers.

The terror-linked “peace activists” even brought their own “Hezbollah slingshots” with them on their “peace” mission. (IDF)

YNET News reported:

The ongoing interrogation of passengers who were aboard the Marmara – the Gaza aid flotilla’s flagship – revealed that the majority of those who attacked the Israeli Naval Commandos boarding the ship have direct and indirect Global Jihad ties.

Israel’s investigation has revealed some 100 people infiltrated the peace and humanitarian aid activists making their way to Gaza, with the explicit design to attack Israeli soldiers using cold arms.

Some among that group are believed to have ties with World Jihad groups, mainly al-Qaeda.

The majority of suspects are Turks, but some are Yemenites and Indonesian. One Yemenite Islamist was photographed with a dagger in his belt prior to the raid.

The suspects are not cooperating with investigators. Most of them have no identification papers, and Israeli authorities are still trying to ascertain their identity.

So, will the Western media omit this from their reports, too?

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The so-called peaceful leftists and Pro-Gaza activists who attacked the Israeli soldiers today with pipes, metal rods and chairs belong to a terrorist-linked organization. The International Humanitarian Fund (IHH), which plays a central role in organizing the Gaza Flotilla, is a Turkish humanitarian relief fund with a radical Islamic anti-Western orientation. The president of IHH (Bulent Yildirim) recruited “Jihad warriors” and transferred firearms, and explosives to Al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorists organizations.

For some strange reason the state-run media forgot to mention this in their reports today?

Here is one video that shows the Gaza Flotilla activists chanting “Kill the Jews”.
Via Palestinian Media Watch:

From the video: Gaza flotilla participants chanted Islamic battle cry invoking killing of Jews. The name Khaibar mentioned in battle cry was the last Jewish village defeated by Muhammad’s army in 628. The battle marked the end of Jewish presence in Arabia. There are Muslims who see that as a precursor for future wars against Jews. At gatherings and rallies of extremists, this chant is often heard as a threat to Jews to expect to be defeated and killed again by Muslims.

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