Sunday 12 December, London Morning Star.
MPs will vote today on the Police Reform Bill, which contains a plethora of proposals concerning election of police commissioners, setting up a police reserve force, alcohol licensing, drugs enforcement and banning permanent protests in Parliament Square.
But this massive Bill also contains one clause which has been inserted at the request of a foreign government.
Clause 151 would give the Director of Public Prosecutions a veto over whether an arrest warrant could be issued for war crime suspects.
This would essentially allow the …

Kevin Ovenden, a representative of Viva Palestina, was on the main ship of the Freedom Flotilla when Israeli soldiers descended onto the deck – he spoke from Turkey to Siân Ruddick.
“We knew the Israelis were going to attack, or intercept us in some way. At 11pm we had the first contact. A visual warning was that two Israeli warships were approaching us, followed by a third.
“We were 90 miles north of the Israeli coast, and 22 miles away from the buffer zone that Israel …

By Ray McGovern
A chief lesson to learn from President Barack Obama’s recent unwillingness to stand up to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud Lobby is that such timidity can get people killed.
Casualty figures are still arriving in the wake of Israel’s Sunday night-Monday morning commando attack on an unarmed flotilla trying to bring relief supplies to the 1.5 million Palestinians crowded into Gaza. Already, at least nine civilian passengers are reported killed, and dozens wounded.
Seldom has an act of aggression been so …

By the Editor.
Media coverage of the Flotilla Massacre has been a disgrace.  In confiscating cameras and imprisoning the aid workers travelling on the ships, Israel has succeeded in enacting a media blackout after its killing of 10 unarmed civilians in international waters.
In unsurprising sycophancy, the Western press has shamefully reserved the majority of its page space and airtime to the Israeli government point of view.  This has consisted of propaganda and lies – some laughable, but some dangerously believable.  Comments and assertions have ranged from claims that the aid workers …