U.S. Filmmaker Recorded Flotilla Massacre Video

Bad news for Israel's spinmasters...

One of those shot down aboard the Mavi Marmara. Photo courtesy: culturesofresistance.org

(SALEM, Ore.) - The world is slowly absorbing the real magnitude of the Israeli attack on the Freedom Flotilla to aid Gaza. A filmmaker as it turns out, was able to smuggle an hour of raw video back to the USA and two versions, a 15-minute edited video, and the full 60-minutes of raw video, are both published below.

Cultures of Resistance director Iara Lee was aboard the besieged Mavi Marmara and has since returned home safely.

I would consider her to be one of the bravest and most successful filmmaker/documentarians in the world. Nobody expected this, the amount of gunfire from Israel's military is unbelievable, horrifying.

According to Cultures of Resistance: "On the night of Sunday, May 30, showing a terrifying disregard for human life, Israeli naval forces surrounded and boarded ships sailing to bring humanitarian aid to the blockaded Gaza Strip."

On the largest ship, the Mavi Marmara, Israeli commandos opened fire on civilian passengers, killing at least 9 passengers and wounding dozens more.

Others are still missing. In fact at least 17 people have just disappeared, gone off the radar... only Israel knows.

The final death toll is yet to be determined.

Despite the Israeli government's thorough efforts to confiscate all footage taken during the attack, Iara Lee was able to retain some of her recordings.

The Gaza Blockade

Try to imagine: Palestinians in Gaza live in an atmosphere that closely resembles the concentration camps of Europe. No, there are not gas chambers; that would never fly. Instead, Israel caged people in like animals and have slowly been killing them, razing their crops, bull dozing their villages and homes, in an overall attempt to destroy their actual will to live.

It isn't working.

What Israel's seemingly cruel and unusual approach to the "Palestinian Problem" has actually managed to do, is grab the world's attention, and illustrate this lethal Israeli approach to halting a convoy for peace. It is not just or fair to remove human life this way, it all could have been avoided.

By that I do not mean the people in the Flotilla; they're doing the much needed work of God, or Allah, depending on your cultural reference for our creator; I mean only Israel.

The Flotilla was deemed the only possible response to the problem in Gaza, but no matter how nice or sincere these people were in their desire to help other human beings placed in jeopardy by Israel, the IDF 'commandos' set out to kill people aboard the ship, targeted by a assassin photo pamphlet the IDF soldier/sailors carried.

Debunking Israel's Myths

Another aspect of this is the testimony of former U.S. Marine Ken O'Keefe, a Gulf War Veteran. He relates how the Mavi Marmara crew had disarmed and captured three Israeli soldiers and how the soldiers looked at them as though they expected to be killed. They were not killed. That is the beginning and end of the ill motives of this ship's crew. Their friends were slaughtered in cold blood, unarmed, and when given the chance, did not kill in retaliation.

Many Israelis may not understand the notion of not retaliating, as it is extremely customary of Israel to wage heavy handed attacks over things like unguided rocket attacks from the elected but unrecognized political party and militant group Hamas.

In a standard western context, military or otherwise, attacking those who are unarmed is criminal and a show of extreme cowardice. There is not an exception to the rule.

Israel has so far:

• Released video clips supposedly of their soldiers being attacked on the Mavi Marmara, that actually was Israeli Defense Force training video shot aboard the vessel's sister ship.
• Released audio clips edited to include a reference to Auschwitz and other ridiculous assertions that Israel thought would actually be believed.
• Hired actors and producers and writers and technicians to create a video mocking the song "We Are The World" by Michael Jackson and an all star cast, which claims that these peace activists were members of Hamas, blah, blah etc.
• Agreed to allow certain items from the Flotilla into Gaza, but almost nothing of significance.
• Watched both Turkey and Egypt take brave positions for humanity and against the Israeli attack.

Below is raw footage from the moments leading up to and during the Israeli commandos' assault on the Mavi Marmara.

Please visit, support and appreciate: culturesofresistance.org. Iara Lee heroically revealed something that Israel tried very hard to prevent.

This is the gut wrenching reality of what Israel is, and a very candid look at the people who were aboard the Mavi Marmara. They are shot, they are dying, and they are remarkably calm and collected for the circumstances. It is impossible to not respect people willing to die to help others.

The Freedom Flotilla for Gaza was never a threat to Israel - only hope for Israel's victims. Word is circulating that Israel will take the seized cement intended for Gaza from the confiscated ships, and use it to build more illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.

It is the gunfire though, so much, and the knowledge that Israeli soldiers actually did have a 'hit list' and there is video of one, after it was removed from an Israeli soldier. It truly was a hit mission to murder people whose only goal was to assist the hungry and battered people of Gaza. There is not a possible excuse for it unless one believes that cold blooded murder is acceptable.

Israeli Attack on the Mavi Marmara, May 31st 2010 // 15 min. from Cultures of Resistance on Vimeo.

Israeli Attack on the Mavi Marmara // Raw Footage from Cultures of Resistance on Vimeo.

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Tim King is a former U.S. Marine with twenty years of experience on the west coast as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor. In addition to his role as a war correspondent, this Los Angeles native serves as Salem-News.com's Executive News Editor. Tim spent the winter of 2006/07 covering the war in Afghanistan, and he was in Iraq over the summer of 2008, reporting from the war while embedded with both the U.S. Army and the Marines.

Tim holds numerous awards for reporting, photography, writing and editing, including the Oregon AP Award for Spot News Photographer of the Year (2004), first place Electronic Media Award in Spot News, Las Vegas, (1998), Oregon AP Cooperation Award (1991); and several others including the 2005 Red Cross Good Neighborhood Award for reporting. Serving the community in very real terms, Salem-News.com is the nation's only truly independent high traffic news Website. You can send Tim an email at this address: newsroom@salem-news.com

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A deep hole on the moon that could open into a vast underground tunnel has been found for the first time. The discovery strengthens evidence for subsurface, lava-carved channels that could shield future human colonists from space radiation and other hazards.

The moon seems to possess long, winding tunnels called lava tubes that are similar to structures seen on Earth. They are created when the top of a stream of molten rock solidifies and the lava inside drains away, leaving a hollow tube of rock.

Their existence on the moon is hinted at based on observations of sinuous rilles – long, winding depressions carved into the lunar surface by the flow of lava. Some sections of the rilles have collapsed, suggesting that hollow lava tubes hide beneath at least some of the rilles.

But until now, no one has found an opening into what appears to be an intact tube. "There's sort of a chicken-and-egg problem," says Carolyn van der Bogert of the University of Münster in Germany. "If it's intact, you can't see it."

Finding a hole in a rille could suggest that an intact tube lies beneath. So a group led by Junichi Haruyama of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency searched for these "skylights" in images taken by Japan's Kaguya spacecraft, which orbited the moon for almost two years before ending its mission in June.

Deep cave

The team found the first candidate skylight in a volcanic area on the moon's near side called Marius Hills. "This is the first time that anybody's actually identified a skylight in a possible lava tube" on the moon, van der Bogert, who helped analyse the feature, told New Scientist.

The hole measures 65 metres across, and based on images taken at a variety of sun angles, the the hole is thought to extend down at least 80 metres. It sits in the middle of a rille, suggesting the hole leads into a lava tube as wide as 370 metres across.

It is not clear exactly how the hole formed. A meteorite impact, moonquakes, or pressure created by gravitational tugs from the Earth could be to blame. Alternatively, part of the lava tube's ceiling could have been pulled off as lava in the tube drained away billions of years ago.

Radiation shield

Finding such an opening could be a boon for possible human exploration of the moon (see What NASA's return to the moon may look like).

Since the tubes may be hundreds of metres wide, they could provide plenty of space for an underground lunar outpost. The tubes' ceilings could protect astronauts from space radiation, meteoroid impacts and wild temperature fluctuations (see Can high-tech cavemen live on the moon?).

"I think it's really exciting," says Penny Boston of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro. "Basalt is an extremely good material for radiation protection. It's free real estate ready to be exploited and modified for human use."

Blocked passage?

But even if astronauts were to rappel into the hole, they might not be able to travel far into the tube it appears to lead into. "I would bet a lot of money that there's a tube there, but I would not bet nearly so much that we could gain access to the tube," says Ray Hawke of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, who has also hunted for lunar lava tubes.

Rubble or solidified lava might block up the tube. "It could be closed up and inaccessible," Hawke told New Scientist.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which should be able to snap images of the area that are at least 10 times as sharp, could help reveal more about the hole. And more lava tube openings may be found.

The Kaguya team is still combing over images of other areas in search of additional skylights. And Hawke says a proposal is in the works to use LRO's main camera to snap oblique shots of the lunar surface. This could help reveal cave entrances that are not visible in a bird's-eye view.

Journal reference: Geophysical Research Letters (in press)

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