Middle East landscape rapidly changing

[seafoid]

Youve pretty much captured his argumentation technique.

Problem is he believes everything he thinks you've said so ...the mans impossible to converse with.

An asshole

I will allow you one chance to retract that statement

So you equate me calling you an asshole , to you calling me provo scum......you are a COWARD!

I equate scum to asshole and the provo part should be obvious from your extremist attitude to the guards and PSNI.

Now, what were you doing in Riyadh during the gulf war 1 ? or are you too much of a COWARD to answer ?

You work for an oil company don't you ?

Why can't you use regular language? Why does everyone who doesn't agree with you have to be gay/scum/asshole ? Have you run out of points to make?

[trileacman]

Youve pretty much captured his argumentation technique.

Problem is he believes everything he thinks you've said so ...the mans impossible to converse with.

An asshole

I will allow you one chance to retract that statement

So you equate me calling you an asshole , to you calling me provo scum......you are a COWARD!

I equate scum to asshole and the provo part should be obvious from your extremist attitude to the guards and PSNI.

Now, what were you doing in Riyadh during the gulf war 1 ? or are you too much of a COWARD to answer ?

You work for an oil company don't you ?

Why can't you use regular language? Why does everyone who doesn't agree with you have to be gay/scum/asshole ? Have you run out of points to make?

It was Count who lowered the tone of the debate first.

[seafoid]

Youve pretty much captured his argumentation technique.

Problem is he believes everything he thinks you've said so ...the mans impossible to converse with.

An asshole

I will allow you one chance to retract that statement

So you equate me calling you an asshole , to you calling me provo scum......you are a COWARD!

I equate scum to asshole and the provo part should be obvious from your extremist attitude to the guards and PSNI.

Now, what were you doing in Riyadh during the gulf war 1 ? or are you too much of a COWARD to answer ?

You work for an oil company don't you ?

Why can't you use regular language? Why does everyone who doesn't agree with you have to be gay/scum/asshole ? Have you run out of points to make?

It was Count who lowered the tone of the debate first.

Sheehy has been operating like that since long before this latest handbag sequence . He doesn't have any arguments so he ratchets up the ad hom stuff.

[give her dixie]

Israeli forces manhandle E.U. diplomats, seize West Bank aid

By Noah Browning
KHIRBET AL-MAKHUL, West Bank | Fri Sep 20, 2013 3:23pm BST

(Reuters) - Israeli soldiers manhandled European diplomats on Friday and seized a truck full of tents and emergency aid they had been trying to deliver to Palestinians whose homes were demolished this week.

A Reuters reporter saw soldiers throw sound grenades at a group of diplomats, aid workers and locals in the occupied West Bank, and yank a French diplomat out of the truck before driving away with its contents.

"They dragged me out of the truck and forced me to the ground with no regard for my diplomatic immunity," French diplomat Marion Castaing said.

"This is how international law is being respected here," she said, covered with dust.

The Israeli army and police declined to comment.

Locals said Khirbet Al-Makhul was home to about 120 people. The army demolished their ramshackle houses, stables and a kindergarten on Monday after Israel's high court ruled that they did not have proper building permits.

Despite losing their property, the inhabitants have refused to leave the land, where, they say, their families have lived for generations along with their flocks of sheep.

Israeli soldiers stopped the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delivering emergency aid on Tuesday and on Wednesday IRCS staff managed to put up some tents but the army forced them to take the shelters down.

Diplomats from France, Britain, Spain, Ireland, Australia and the European Union's political office, turned up on Friday with more supplies. As soon as they arrived, about a dozen Israeli army jeeps converged on them, and soldiers told them not to unload their truck.

"It's shocking and outrageous. We will report these actions to our governments," said one EU diplomat, who declined to be named because he did not have authorisation to talk to the media.

"(Our presence here) is a clear matter of international humanitarian law. By the Geneva Convention, an occupying power needs to see to the needs of people under occupation. These people aren't being protected," he said.

In scuffles between soldiers and locals, several villagers were detained and an elderly Palestinian man fainted and was taken for medical treatment to a nearby ambulance.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement that Makhul was the third Bedouin community to be demolished by the Israelis in the West Bank and adjacent Jerusalem municipality since August.

Palestinians have accused the Israeli authorities of progressively taking their historical grazing lands, either earmarking it for military use or handing it over to the Israelis whose settlements dot the West Bank.

Israelis and Palestinians resumed direct peace talks last month after a three-year hiatus. Palestinian officials have expressed serious doubts about the prospects of a breakthrough.

"What the Israelis are doing is not helpful to the negotiations. Under any circumstances, talks or not, they're obligated to respect international law," the unnamed EU diplomat said.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/09/20/uk-palestinians-israel-eu-hamlet-idUKBRE98J0GJ20130920

[seafoid]

Israeli forces manhandle E.U. diplomats, seize West Bank aid

By Noah Browning
KHIRBET AL-MAKHUL, West Bank | Fri Sep 20, 2013 3:23pm BST

(Reuters) - Israeli soldiers manhandled European diplomats on Friday and seized a truck full of tents and emergency aid they had been trying to deliver to Palestinians whose homes were demolished this week.

A Reuters reporter saw soldiers throw sound grenades at a group of diplomats, aid workers and locals in the occupied West Bank, and yank a French diplomat out of the truck before driving away with its contents.

"They dragged me out of the truck and forced me to the ground with no regard for my diplomatic immunity," French diplomat Marion Castaing said.

"This is how international law is being respected here," she said, covered with dust.

The Israeli army and police declined to comment.

Locals said Khirbet Al-Makhul was home to about 120 people. The army demolished their ramshackle houses, stables and a kindergarten on Monday after Israel's high court ruled that they did not have proper building permits.

Despite losing their property, the inhabitants have refused to leave the land, where, they say, their families have lived for generations along with their flocks of sheep.

Israeli soldiers stopped the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delivering emergency aid on Tuesday and on Wednesday IRCS staff managed to put up some tents but the army forced them to take the shelters down.

Diplomats from France, Britain, Spain, Ireland, Australia and the European Union's political office, turned up on Friday with more supplies. As soon as they arrived, about a dozen Israeli army jeeps converged on them, and soldiers told them not to unload their truck.

"It's shocking and outrageous. We will report these actions to our governments," said one EU diplomat, who declined to be named because he did not have authorisation to talk to the media.

"(Our presence here) is a clear matter of international humanitarian law. By the Geneva Convention, an occupying power needs to see to the needs of people under occupation. These people aren't being protected," he said.

In scuffles between soldiers and locals, several villagers were detained and an elderly Palestinian man fainted and was taken for medical treatment to a nearby ambulance.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement that Makhul was the third Bedouin community to be demolished by the Israelis in the West Bank and adjacent Jerusalem municipality since August.

Palestinians have accused the Israeli authorities of progressively taking their historical grazing lands, either earmarking it for military use or handing it over to the Israelis whose settlements dot the West Bank.

Israelis and Palestinians resumed direct peace talks last month after a three-year hiatus. Palestinian officials have expressed serious doubts about the prospects of a breakthrough.

"What the Israelis are doing is not helpful to the negotiations. Under any circumstances, talks or not, they're obligated to respect international law," the unnamed EU diplomat said.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/09/20/uk-palestinians-israel-eu-hamlet-idUKBRE98J0GJ20130920

Presumably dispossessing Bedouin nomads is Jewish self defence. It looks more like colonialism. 

[give her dixie]

This is the French Diplomat, Marion Castaing, who was part of the EU delegation that was detained today and had their aid confiscated. She can count herself lucky she wasn't on the Mavi Marmara, as she would have been killed..........

[muppet]

Israels attack on Gaza was disproportionate, brutal and a number of war crimes were committed such as using illegal weapons and targeting civilians. Its a great shame on the international community that this went unpunished.

Good man.

At least you say it as it is.

It should also be mentioned that the idiots in Hamas must bear some responsibility for bringing this horror upon their own people.

Civilians and children die and surely any sane person (Sheehy is excluded obviously) cannot support that.

We have been "saying it as it is" about Israel since day one. You,on the other hand, waste no opportunity to spread lies and misinformation about Israels right to self-defence.

Go away silly boy.

You can't even read let alone follow a discussion.

You keep having a go at me and you keep coming off second best. Just be more truthful and you will save yourself these embarassing episodes.

So let me get this right.

You have been saying this all along:

"Israels attack on Gaza was disproportionate, brutal and a number of war crimes were committed such as using illegal weapons and targeting civilians. Its a great shame on the international community that this went unpunished."

[Orior]

Egypt Sentences 529 Morsi Supporters to Death

CAIRO March 23, 2014 (AP)
By MAGGIE MICHAEL Associated Press

A court in Egypt on Monday sentenced to death 529 supporters of ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi on charges of murdering a policeman and attacking police, convicting them after only two sessions in one of the largest mass trials in the country in decades.

The verdicts are subject to appeal and would likely be overturned, rights lawyers said. But they said the swiftness and harshness of the rulings on such a large scale underlined the extent to which Egypt's courts have been politicized and due process has been ignored amid a sweeping crackdown on Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood supporters since the military removed the president last summer.

The first of the trial's two sessions in a court in the city of Minya, south of Cairo, saw furious arguments as the judge angrily rejected requests by defense lawyers for more time to let them review the trial documents for the hundreds of defendants. In Monday's session when the verdicts and sentences were read, security forces barred defense lawyers from attending, one of the lawyers, Yasser Zidan, told The Associated Press.

"This is way over the top and unacceptable," said attorney Mohammed Zarie, who heads a rights center in Cairo. "It turns the judiciary in Egypt from a tool for achieving justice to an instrument for taking revenge."

"This verdict could be a precedent both in the history of Egyptian courts and perhaps, tribunals elsewhere in the world," he added.

All but around 150 of the defendants in the case were tried in absentia by the court in the city of Minya, south of Cairo. The judges acquitted 16 defendants.

Egypt has seen a string of mass trials of Morsi supporters in recent weeks, usually over charges of violence in connection to Islamist protests against Morsi's removal and the crackdown.

The 545 defendants in the case were charged with murder, attempted murder and stealing government weapons in connection with an attack on a police station in August in the town of Matay in Minya province. One police officer was killed in the attack. The violence was part of rioting around the country sparked when security forces stormed two pro-Morsi sit-ins in Cairo, killing hundreds of people on Aug. 14.

During the first session on Saturday, defense lawyer Khaled el-Koumi said that he and other lawyers asked the presiding judge, Said Youssef, to postpone the case to give them time to review the hundreds of documents in the case, but the request was declined.

When another lawyer made a request, the judge interrupted and refused to recognize it. When the lawyers protested, Youssef shouted that they would not dictate what he should do and ordered court security to step in between him and the lawyers.

A security official in the courtroom said the defendants and the lawyers disrupted the proceedings by chanting against the judge: "God is our only refuge!" He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

"We didn't have the chance to say a word, to look at more than 3,000 pages of investigation and to see what evidence they are talking about," el-Koumi, who was representing 10 of the defendants, told The Associated Press.

A senior Brotherhood figure, Ibrahim Moneir, denounced the verdicts, warning that abuses of justice will fuel a backlash against the military-backed government that replaced Morsi.

"Now the coup is hanging itself by these void measures," he said, speaking to the Qatari-based Al-Jazeera Mubashir Misr TV station.

He said he believed the verdicts were timed to send a message to an Arab League summit that begins Tuesday in Kuwait, where Egypt is pressing other Arab governments to ban the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group.

On Tuesday, another mass trial against Morsi's supporters opens in a Minya court with 683 suspects facing similar charges. The defendants in that case include Brotherhood leader Mohammed Badie, who also faces multiple other trials, and senior members of the group from Minya province.

Egypt's military toppled Morsi in July after four days of massive demonstrations by his opponents demanding he step down for abusing power during his year in office. Since then, Morsi's Brotherhood and other Islamist supporters have staged near-daily demonstrations that usually descend into violent street confrontations with security forces.

The military-backed government has arrested some 16,000 people in the ensuing crackdown, including most of the Brotherhood leadership.

At the same time, militant bombings, suicide attacks and other assaults — mostly by an al-Qaida-inspired group — have increased, targeting police and military forces in retaliation for the crackdown. The authorities have blamed the Brotherhood for the violence, branding it a terrorist organization and confiscating its assets. The group has denied any links to the attacks and has denounced the violence.

Imad El-Anis, an expert in Middle Eastern politics at Nottingham Trent University, said Monday's verdicts were "far from meeting minimum international standards for judicial processes of this kind."

But he said Egyptian authorities are unlikely to heed any international criticism of the verdicts "and are likely to push on with further rapid mass trials."

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/egypt-court-orders-leading-activist-freed-bail-23025836

Okay USA, UK where are you on this one?

[thejuice]

I think a better question might be to ask those who fought to oust Mubarak and afterwards Morsi if this is what they wanted. Those who say they are protecting the spirit of the revolution. Is this their revolution realised or has Egypt gone back to square one?

[seafoid]

I think a better question might be to ask those who fought to oust Mubarak and afterwards Morsi if this is what they wanted. Those who say they are protecting the spirit of the revolution. Is this their revolution realised or has Egypt gone back to square one?

It's gone back to Square 1. As long as Israel exists Egypt is going to be ruled by a dictator.

The Army (sponsored by the US and Israel) wants to exterminate the Muslim brotherhood (who have around 40% popular support) but they are just adding fuel to the conflagration of the future.   
Imagine executing 50 FF leaders.
Sure they fucked up but they don't deserve to be executed.   

[AZOffaly]

Lads, (seafoid and ghd primarily), what is your solution to the issue? Is it the removal of Israel from Gaza/West Bank and the recognition of Palestine as a state, or is it the removal of Israel altogether, and let the Israelis live in an Arab controlled country(ies) or move back to Europe?

Do ye agree that Israel as a state has as much right to exist as Palestine, or do you believe it has no right to be there?

[thejuice]

Move Israel to Arizona.

I'm sure the climates not that different and apart from a few rednecks I doubt they'd get any hassles.

Just pay some head honcho rabbi to reinterpret the Torah and I'm sure they'll come round to it. And then everything will be dandy.

[johnneycool]

I think a better question might be to ask those who fought to oust Mubarak and afterwards Morsi if this is what they wanted. Those who say they are protecting the spirit of the revolution. Is this their revolution realised or has Egypt gone back to square one?

It's gone back to Square 1. As long as Israel exists Egypt is going to be ruled by a dictator.

The Army (sponsored by the US and Israel) wants to exterminate the Muslim brotherhood (who have around 40% popular support) but they are just adding fuel to the conflagration of the future.   
Imagine executing 50 FF leaders.
Sure they fucked up but they don't deserve to be executed.

The Egyptian army rule Egypt and did in Mubaraks time and still do. Mubarak played along with them, but the Muslim Brotherhood were destined to failure as long a the Egyptian Armys financial backer says so.

[seafoid]

I think a better question might be to ask those who fought to oust Mubarak and afterwards Morsi if this is what they wanted. Those who say they are protecting the spirit of the revolution. Is this their revolution realised or has Egypt gone back to square one?

It's gone back to Square 1. As long as Israel exists Egypt is going to be ruled by a dictator.

The Army (sponsored by the US and Israel) wants to exterminate the Muslim brotherhood (who have around 40% popular support) but they are just adding fuel to the conflagration of the future.   
Imagine executing 50 FF leaders.
Sure they fucked up but they don't deserve to be executed.

The Egyptian army rule Egypt and did in Mubaraks time and still do. Mubarak played along with them, but the Muslim Brotherhood were destined to failure as long a the Egyptian Armys financial backer says so.

Mubarak was an army man, as was Sadat, as was Nasser.
The Army controls around 40% of the economy.
And is propped up by the US to keep Israel's southern border quiet, a result of the Camp David Agreement.
The money keeps Egypt quiet. It's not sustainable long term. The country has massive structural problems,
number one being population growth.

[thejuice]

Move Israel to Arizona.

I'm sure the climates not that different and apart from a few rednecks I doubt they'd get any hassles.

Just pay some head honcho rabbi to reinterpret the Torah and I'm sure they'll come round to it. And then everything will be dandy.

Of course I say the above in jest but I think it also goes to expose the tragedy of it all. The poorly judged decision made to solve one problem as it were, who in an act of faith have opened a life misery onto themselves and others and has become so wrapped up in the levers of geopolitics to become irreversible.