Indy Media Watch

Cruising around Indy Media Japan I came across this article linked from San Francisco. It was an "in-depth interview with "human shield" Ken O'Keefe during his recent Japan tour.

What exactly constitutes a tour? I know when the Rolling Stones come to town, that's a tour, but one feral unemployed person and a mate with a notepad? Not exactly. But anyway, let's have a look at what [echo and reverb on] The Human Shield said.

BC: How did you yourself get drawn into the human shield movement?

KO: One of the inspirations for it was during the siege of the Occupied Territories in spring of 2002, when the Israelis went into Jenin, amongst other places, and were committing these horrendous crimes. One of the things that I happened to see was the activists that got themselves into the Church of the Nativity and Yassir Arafat’s compound — when it was looking like, while there were Palestinians in the church, they were just gonna kill ’em. Then Yassir Arafat’s compound was seriously looking like it might get hit or run over. And these activists went in there. Whether they did or didn’t stop the Israelis from doing what they might’ve intended to do, it was a balls-out, “Fuck this, let’s do something about it” [action], and I really respected that, big-time. I thought, “That’s not talking about it, that’s just doing it.” That’s what I’ve been doing in my life and I really think that that’s what we need to do. So that was kind of an inspiration for human shields.

I notice he refers to the "horrendous crimes" committed in Jenin that we now know were never actually committed and the only thing massacred was the truth. Uh huh. Liar, tattooed and swears a lot. I wonder why he loves Indy Media and the (evil corporate scum) media don't want to know. Of course I don't recall he or his inspired colleagues ever being a human shield on Israeli buses or doing anything frankly to stop terrorism against Israel.

Speaking of which, let's talk about the Church of the Nativity. As far as I can see, your "human shields" were standing in the way of the arrest of terrorists who threatened to destroy the Church. The terrorists were also using human-shields. Namely, priests and nuns.

One of the Church’s monks taken hostage, Narkiss Korasian, told reporters:

"They [The Palestinians] stole everything, they opened the doors one by one and stole everything... they stole our prayer books and four crosses... they didn't leave anything. Thank you [Israel] for your help, we will never forget it."

Curiously, I don't see him thanking the human-shields.

Still... The other side of the story is not really Indy Media's job is it?