What happened when Israeli state thugs attacked freedom ship: an eyewitness account

Below is a statement by Dr Swee Ang, who was the medical doctor on the al-Awda, the freedom flotilla ship delivering medical supplies to the besieged people of Gaza; among those assaulted and tasered was Mike Treen, the national director of Unite trade union in NZ and a veteran activist in progressive causes from opposition to the Vietnam War to anti-apartheid activities and support for the Palestinian cause.

The statement, made on August 4, has appeared in a number of places; we took it from the blog of veteran British anti-imperialist and socialist activist Tony Greenstein.  We’ve added subheads to break up the text a bit more.

by Dr Swee Ang

The last leg of the journey of al-Awda (the boat of return) was scheduled to reach Gaza on 29 July 2018. We were on target to reach Gaza that evening. There are 22 on board including crew with USD15,000 of antibiotics and bandages for Gaza. At 12.31 pm we received a missed call from a number beginning with +81… Mikkel was steering the boat at that time. The phone rang again with the message that we were trespassing into Israeli waters. Mikkel replied that we were in International waters and had right of innocent passage according to maritime laws. The accusation of trespassing was repeated again and again with Mikkel repeating the message that we were sailing in international waters. This carried on for about half an hour, while Awda was 42 nautical miles from the coast of Gaza.

Prior to the beginning of this last leg, we had spent 2 days learning non-violent actions and had prepared ourselves in anticipation of Israeli invasion of our boat. Vulnerable individuals especially those with medical conditions were to sit at the rear of the top deck with their hands on the deck table. The leader of this group was Gerd, a 75 year old elite Norwegian athlete and she had the help of Lucia a Spanish nurse in her group.

The people who were to provide non-violent barrier to the Israelis coming on deck and taking over the boat formed 3 rows – two rows of threes and the third row of 2 persons blocking the wheel house door to protect the wheel house for as long as possible. There were runners between the wheel house and the rear of the deck. The leader of the boat Zohar and I were at the two ends of the toilets corridor where we looked out at the horizon and inform all of any sightings of armed boats. I laughed at Zohar and said we are the Toilet Brigade, but I think Zohar did not find it very funny. It was probably bad taste under the circumstances. I also would be able to help as a runner and will have accessibility to all parts of the deck in view of being the doctor on board.

The attack begins

Soon we saw at least three large Israeli warships on the horizon with 5 or more speed boats (zodiacs) zooming towards us. As the Zodiacs approached I saw that they carried soldiers with machine guns and there was on board the boats large machine guns mounted on a stand pointing at our boat. From my lookout point the first Israeli soldier climbed on board to the cabin level and climbed up the boat ladder to the top deck. His face was masked with a white cloth and following him were many others, all masked. They were all armed with machine guns and small cameras on their chests.

Tasered

They immediately made to the wheel house overcoming the first row by twisting the arms of the participants, lifting Sarah up and throwing her away.  Joergen the chef was large to be manhandled so he was tasered before being

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Trump – the show and the reality

by The Spark

Every day, Trump hogs the spot light.  He uses summits to attack US allies, like Canada and NATO.  He takes aim at women leaders, insulting British prime minister Theresa May and German chancellor Angela Merkel.  He walks in front of the elderly Queen of England, almost tripping her up.

Then he rubs it in.  He pretends to be best buddies with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

The news media goes crazy.  “This is not a normal president” and “We’ve never had a president like this before,” they say.

That’s music to Trump’s ears.  He is playing a game to keep his base behind him.  He doesn’t mind shocking the others to do that.  It reinforces his play to look ‘tough’.

Trump poses as the champion of the

Activist Mike Treen tasered, kidnapped, and detained in Israel

Mike Treen, a long time activist and leader of Unite union, was taking part in a flotilla loaded with medicines for the people of Gaza under a ten year blockade. Yesterday he was  was tasered, kidnapped and injured by Israeli Occupation forces who stormed the boat. He is being held in Israel in a prison.

Unite trade union national director and veteran socialist activist Mike Treen

Kia Ora Gaza, the solidarity group which arranged Mike’s participation in the flotilla, is calling on the government to condemn the Israeli government for its actions. Winston Peters has been acting PM and is a supporter of Israel. From midnight today Jacinda Ardern resumes her role as PM. Will she prove to be less mute and disgraceful than Peters? We think not.

Below are reports from Kia Ora Gaza on Mike’s situation and the fate of the flotilla to Gaza:

Mike Treen repeatedly tasered by Israeli Occupation Forces, other injured and hospitalised

UPDATE (11:48am 31st July NZ time)   

We have now received a direct report from Mike in Givon Prison.

He was tasered repeatedly by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) while in the wheelhouse of the Al Awda and subsequently tightly handcuffed. He received injuries to his face and head and was bleeding but is now recovering.

Of Mike’s fellow flotilla members one was tasered in the head, a 69-year-old female surgeon received a head injury and a senior Canadian passenger received a foot injury and had to be treated in hospital.

The IOF takeover of the boat conducted by armed and masked soldiers was clearly violent with many passengers and crew assaulted, roughly handled and hit. 

Local civil rights lawyers met with all those detained a few hours ago. All their belongings, including their passports have been seized and not returned, despite promises they would if they co-operated.

Despite KiaOra Gaza contacting the New Zealand Hon. Consul in Tel Aviv requesting assistance we are unaware of any contact, visit or action from the New Zealand Government or its representatives to assist.

(update at 4pm Monday 31st July – The Honorary Consul has now been to see Mike. Winston Peters has responded to the letters sent to him but the Government has taken no specific action apart from alerting the Cairo embassy to Mike’s situation).

The next flotilla boat, the “Freedom” continues to approach Gaza.

Previous report (6.15am 31st July NZ time)

Eyewitnesses report that Unite Union leader Mike Treen’s boat was hijacked in a violent raid and that he and the rest of the crew are being held in Givon prison, near Tel Aviv.

Continuing the debate on imperialism

A number of people who were engaged in the Imperialism study/discussion group initiated by this blog have recently been debating David Harvey and others on imperialism today (and in the past).  The debate has taken place on the site of the Review of African Political Economy.  For links to the key articles, see here.

The most recent contribution is by one of the Imperialism group participants based in New York. 

by Walter Daum

Esteban Mora begins his contribution to the roape.net discussion of the David Harvey-John Smith debate by asserting that the whole debate over who drains value from whom is misguided. While Smith says the West continues to drain the East and Harvey holds that the direction has been reversed, Mora believes that both claims rest on the ‘misconception’ arising from dependency theory that the imperialist North drains value from the imperialized South. [1]This, he says, is ‘not entirely accurate,’ and he goes on to make further claims which, as I see it, amount to arguing that imperialism as classically defined by Marxists does not exist – and for that matter never did.

Mora’s argument goes through several steps. He first points out that Northern and Southern capitalists both exploit the South, which is undeniably true. The rate of profit is higher in the South, he says, because of Southern industry’s less developed organic composition of capital, and both Northern and Southern capitalists benefit from it. But this reasoning is off-target. Mora overlooks the enormous super-exploitation of Southern labor (in fact, he never mentions any kind of exploitation), the main reason that profit rates from production in the South are higher. Moreover, the organic composition need not be much lower in the South; many Southern factories use up-to-date technology.

Second, Mora rejects the dependency-theory notion of a ‘correlative movement between rising profits and diminishing profits.’ It is not clear whether the rising profits are meant to be those produced in the North or those captured by Northern capitalists wherever produced, and likewise for the diminishing profits of the South. But since he is aiming to refute the ‘drain’ of profits, we have to assume that he is denying that Northern capitalists capture greater profits than Southern capitalists. On this, John Smith has shown in his book and in this online discussion that, Apple, for example, makes a much higher rate of profit than the contractors who produce its devices in China. And I gave evidence in my contribution to the debate that ‘the surplus-value flow from the U.S. to China does not match that extracted from China by the West.’

Mora seems to. . . .

Full: Again, Is imperialism still imperialism

Behind the big centre-left win in Mexico presidential elections

PEDRO MERA / GETTY IMAGES Photo: Pedro Mera

by Jimena Vergara

Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) crushed the other candidates in the July 1 Mexican presidential election, winning over 50% of the votes – twice as much as his nearest opponent.

The international press, with good reason, has described the election as historic because of the massive level of voter participation. In the last elections, 63% of the electorate voted, and in this one, 78% took to the polls.

The international and national press is filled with headlines about the “leftist” who won the presidency. AMLO is, in fact, a center-left politician whose election represents deep discontent with the political establishment. The masses invested their aspirations in his candidacy as a product of their deep resentment against the parties that have governed Mexico for the last century.

A historic election

AMLO, part of the political party MORENA (which stands for National Regeneration Movement in Spanish), won

Trump, tariffs, tantrums and trade – grandstanding or real trade war?

by The Spark

Since the spring (NZ autumn – Redline), the Trump administration has imposed a wave of tariffs on 1,102 imported goods, from aluminum and steel, that is, the building blocks of basic industry, to consumer items like washing machines, solar panels, and LED lighting.

Do these tariffs signal a real change in U.S. trade policy? Or are they one more instance of Trump grandstanding, playing to the chauvinism of his America First voting base?

For all the furore Trump’s rhetoric has produced, it is much ado about little. Even if the tariffs that Trump has announced take full effect – which is doubtful – they will hit only a very small portion of the roughly three trillion dollars a year in imports into the U.S. As Stephen Gallagher, managing director of Société Générale, explained, “… right now it’s more of a temper tantrum on trade, as opposed to a real war” (Wall Street Journal, June 19) although, as Gallagher points out, there is always the risk that it could develop into something much bigger.

But Trump’s tariffs have already produced a

Interview with Danish anti-imperialist

The following interview was first published in English on leftwingbooks.net, see here.

This is the English version of an interview with Torkil Lauesen that Gabriel Kuhn conducted for the German daily junge Welt. Torkil Lauesen is a Danish anti-imperialist whose book The Global Perspective: Reflections on Imperialism and Resistance has recently been published by Kersplebedeb. In 1991, Lauesen was sentenced to ten years in prison for his involvement in the so-called Blekingegade Group whose activities have been featured in the PM/Kersplebedeb release Turning Money into Rebellion: The Unlikely Story of Denmark’s Revolutionary Bank Robbers. (The book can be bought here)

In 1991, you were sentenced to ten years in prison because of your anti-imperialist activities. Now, 25 years later, you have written a book titled The Global Perspective: Reflections on Imperialism and Resistance. Has nothing changed?

Everything has changed in order to stay the same: The industrialization of the Global South and the global chains of production have intensified imperialism. Superprofits for capital have increased, while the prices for consumer goods in the Global North have decreased. U.S. hegemony has declined. We now live in a multipolar world with new powers emerging. So-called real socialism no longer exists, and national liberation movements have all but disappeared.

At the end of the 1980s, antiimperialism pretty much vanished from the left’s radar. Why?

National liberation struggles in the Global South subsided and neoliberalism ushered in a golden capitalist era. Furthermore, the talk about globalization concealed the ongoing reality of imperialism.

Was there no globalization?

Of course there have been drastic changes in capitalism in the last thirty years: innovations in transport and communications have altered the entire system of production and distribution. But very few people have