RunCynthiaRun
July 11, 2009
Video taken on the boat “Spirit of Humanity” of Israeli Navy approach and threat before capture of Cynthia McKinney and FreeGaza.
Thank you to the producers http://www.ricenpeas.com/
for permission and making video available.Thank you to
http://wbaix.org
for reporting the news that the mainstream media wouldn’t.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
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Viva Palestina US update
“Viva Palestina” viva Palestina. Aid Convoy to Gaza!
The largest ever U.S. humanitarian aid convoy to Gaza is now gathering in Egypt to head across the border into Gaza on Monday, July 13.
Vehicles are coming from Alexandria, the medical supplies from Cairo and the advanced party of nearly 100 US citizens is heading for the staging post of Al Arish, just before the border with Gaza.
That group, of four buses, has, however, been stopped from crossing over the Suez Canal and into the Sinai region, which leads to Gaza.
The buses, carrying people, medical aid and bearing US, Egyptian and Palestinian flags in a spirit of international cooperation, have been held at a security checkpoint and given various, conflicting reasons for why they cannot proceed to their destination at Al Arish.
New York Councilman Charles Barron is leading the group and is negotiating with security officials to resolve the situation. He has contacted Washington and other elected officials in an effort to clarify the reasons for the delay and address any concerns as efficiently as possible.
Former US Congresswoman and Presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney will join the convoy on Sunday, July 23, and British Member of Parliament George Galloway will also be heading to meet up with Councilman Barron and the advance group.
Councilman Barron and the rest of the advance group of the convoy, however, are insisting on their right to travel with their supplies to Al Arish, where the rest of the convoy is to rendezvous with them before heading for the border crossing into Gaza.
This medical convoy is on the way to Gaza a month after US President Barack Obama described the situation in Gaza as a “humanitarian crisis.”
“Our convoy is on an aid mission,” says Galloway, “We come in peace; but we will not be stopped.”
Kevin Ovenden, Viva Palestina coordinator
For more information, etc, please phone Rob Hoveman on 00 44 7507 600561
Peace and Solidarity
As you are all aware, Viva Palestina, USA Aid Convoy will be at Rafah Border we hope on Monday, we have had reports that Cynthia McKinney will be with the Convoy.
Check out: [see above video]
EXCLUSIVE – VIDEO SMUGGLED out of Israel reveals what really happened when the Israeli Navy resorted to an act of piracy and illegally boarded the Free Gaza boat
http://www.ricenpeas.com/2009/July/cynthia_mckinney_intvw.html
Let us hope that they all have a smooth journey and get in to Gaza with minimum effort. A privilege which is withheld from so many Palestinian people.
Below you will see links for Photos of the Viva Palestina team whilst in Egypt.
Photos from Sue Thompson Global Peace Advocate, International Artist and Photographer, with the assistance of funding from Help International (HI) of Palestine and United Kingdom, have been able to take part in the Aid Convoy from USA, Viva Palestina. Sue’s joined with the convoy in USA , met with George Galloway, Head of the US Convoy in Cairo.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=58180793973&ref=ts
With the assistance of HI representatives, who; ”Aspire to enhance the Palestinians lives by building / creating positive living conditions; psychologically, socially and culturally to ensure a better and fairer ‘just’ life for the people of Palestine. ” she will be taking photos of the war raged community, especially of the children, to help promote awareness and the plight of children around the world via her “Source of Peace” during Exhibition Showcases .
For anyone wishing to join IMORB at Rafah Border email us or call
Nada Kassass (0020) 0… Arabic/English
Paki Wieland (0020) 0187358621 English
Iman Badawi (0020) 0197910753 Arabic/English
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Gaza convoy stopped in Egypt
by Kevin Ovenden
SocialistWorker.org
July 11, 2009
Viva Palestina coordinator Kevin Ovenden reports that a humanitarian aid convoy originating in the U.S. and bound for Gaza has been stopped by Egyptian authorities.
THE LARGEST-ever U.S. humanitarian aid convoy is now gathering in Egypt to head across the border into Gaza on Monday, July 13.
Vehicles are coming from Alexandria, the medical supplies from Cairo and the advanced party of nearly 100 U.S. citizens is heading for the staging post of Al Arish, just before the border with Gaza.
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Viva Palestina: Relief Halted on the Way
by Soozy Duncan
http://www.vivapalestina-us.org
July 11, 11:47 pm EST
Stopped at the Suez Canal by Egyptian authorities, over 100 delegates from the Viva Palestina caravan are sleeping in vehicles until they are permitted passage to the Sinai peninsula on their way to deliver medical aid to Gaza. The group is being pressed to return to Cairo by Egyptian authorities and has not been allowed to cross the Mubarak Peace Bridge in El Qantara, Egypt.
[…]
see
The journey to Gaza begins by Michael Prysner
Cynthia McKinney Lands in NYC + McKinney honored America on July the 4th
Our IDF By Gideon Levy + It’s Been a Bad Week for Israel
McKinney released, returning to U.S. + Palestine, the world’s largest open air prison
Dandelion Salad 
Pingback: Threatened And Beaten On The Way To Gaza + Free Gaza–and Palestine « Dandelion Salad
Natureboy — its the heat pal . the heat drives them all nuts.
pardon me Mary –but the Mckinnys of this world do make a difference. she ran for president on the green party ticket to challenge the corrupt 2 partys in the american empire. her work on the environment is stellar. and by comparing her – a non violent activist to Hamas is an insult .
had Micheal Jackson been on that boat , the media would have been all over that story .
Pingback: Viva Palestina Updates 2 and 3 « Dandelion Salad
It seems more like civil disobedience than a ‘stunt’.
Sometimes people feel they have to take a stand. The plowshares 8 knew they’d be arrested for destroying warheads, I definitely approve of their actions.
These are the brave people, sacrificing to bring attention to stem the tide of atrocity.
Rachel Corrie also made a ‘spectacle’ of herself, sacrificed her young life for this cause. Maybe she wrongly thought the real Zohan had some scruples, when in fact each and every israeli is a trained warmongering psychopath, all scruples bred and trained out of them.
The last place you want to intentionally end up is an israeli detention black hole– certainly no more palatable than an Iranian one.
This whole thing is one treacherous, disgusting, violent, religiously fanatical, hyper-caffeinated maniac corner of the world, and best to be categorically avoided.
But Kudos to anyone willing to make humanitarian sacrifices of themselves in an attempt to draw attention to the intolerable, anti-humane, sociopath hell-hole of the entire incurably violent middle east, a region of desert-dwelling unwashed miscreants regardless of ‘faith’ which doesn’t support human life, and which people insist on fighting over either for oil or some bizarre, arrogant religious pretensions.
I say carve out a miserable piece of desert right here in similarly uninhabitable Utah for each of these cults, each with their own island of sand in similar lifeless sweltering denuded hot hell, and let them swelter in peace, forever apart, and leave Palestine to the foxes and felines and camels and gazelles and HYRAXES (!) and the other fine wildlife who ORIGINALLY settled there to live in peace without borders.
What arrogant people, these nationalistic middle east fanatical religious culturally violent people! You were the very last to arrive. Have some respect for the real god, life on earth, and behave.
Thanks, Natureboy, very well stated. Events such as these must happen and must be given as much news attention as possible. One does not need to “like” the people involved to condone their efforts. Mary and others need to set their personal feelings for McKinney aside and look to the larger picture of what this ship, The Spirit of Humanity, was attempting to accomplish.
Natureboy, I’m all with you on the relocation of “New Israel” somewhere in the middle of the Western US since for some reason they do like deserts. The funds otherwise going to arm Israel could be used to begin the relocation.
It is a rare idea, and I realize its preposterous, the whole reason pilgrims congregate there, from all three Abrahamic ‘faiths’ is the myth of the holy land– as if one spot was the most sacred of all. If Christians believed in sacred places, they would have left the Black Hills alone.
Off topic: I realize also my personal intolerance with the horrors of the middle east are likely to offend, apologies. I used to be a humanist, but this era of endless war, the US ‘National Security State’ and all its tentacles, the cults whole populations succumb to, be it distortions of theistic religions inciting people to violence, the cult of greed-based capitalism, the cult of warmongering violence (itself its own religion among the military), the cult of nationalism of any kind– It’s all intolerable.
If jews could have learned a bit of cross-tribal compassion from Jesus, instead of tribal arrogance, if Islam could have learned a bit from the revelations about love from Rumi, if Christians could have learned from Rev. King about non-violence, then these ‘faiths’ would never have been at war endlessly.
One always imagined that prosperity would bring peace, but here we’ve had the greatest prosperity ever known, and it’s the most prosperous who endlessly make wars (to ‘protect’ their prosperity at the expense of others?)
One always imagined that if we could liberate women from oppression that we’d become a more compassionate society– instead the need for family apparently fell completely apart, and women, we find, gravitate toward their own brand of endlessly shallow, gossipy consumerism, selfishness and power, while men have ceased to evolve altogether, just becoming less relevant to the primal drive to be shallow, selfish, evil humans.
Read enough Jason Miller, and it’s clear that, as Helen Caldicott put it, Humanity is a pathogen on the planet.
I think we’ve given humanity enough chances and tried enough methods to design society, and in the end peace does not prevail, happiness and health are not the common goal, only, consumption, arrogance, abuse and greed.
The ONLY good people are those willing to make the individual choice to peaceably resist oppression, to spread the word about oppression, and admonish people to think for themselves, to question authority, and find their compassion. Without these people, like Cynthia and Lo, we are lost as a species, and the life on earth will die with us.
McKinney puts a bad face on the efforts to help Palestine. She is self-serving and a phony who engineered this bogus “kidnapping”, deliberately having herself and the others detained as a publicity stunt. I have no use for her.
And the other 20 people on board the Spirit of Humanity were also doing this for a “publicity stunt”? Mainstream media ignored this almost completely. Word needs to get out on the blockade; part of doing something like this is to broadcast the plight of the Palestinian people due to the blockade by Israel.
The world knows of their plight. It is no secret. If you look into McKinney’s background you will see just what she is up to. Of course it was a publicity stunt, and those people unnecessarily put themselves into an awkward position for the purpose of getting publicity. Their boat was cleared in Cyprus to travel to Port Said, Egypt, not to Gaza, and when the ship changed course it violated international maritime law.
The world knows, but the media will not play McKinney’s game. There are many Palestinians who also have no respect for her and see her as self-serving. This was a farce completely devoid of any dignity or purpose. I am sorry to disagree with you, but the McKinneys of the world don’t help the Palestinians at all. Just as Hamas’ refusal to renounce terrorism doesn’t help them, and the failure of the PA and Hamas to work together to benefit the Palestinians. Silly stunts such as this are not about to bring about change, it is up to the PA and Hamas to sit down together and with Israel and the Arab countries to solve this crisis.