The Freckled Jihadi: The Raytheon 9

[Anonymous]

The Post That Got Me Banned From Daily Kos

by Al Qaeda Seltzer
Sat Jun 21, 2008 at 11:17:38 PM PDT

I try to keep up on things, but to stay informed you have to really try hard. Real info isnt delivered thru the national media, it is all largely a project in perception and opinion management that we get fed on a daily basis, which is why we are here, from all walks of life, banging away furiously at our collective keyboards and rooting around for truth.
Well, here is a story that got by me when it was going on...
The Raytheon 9
Yea...turns out that in Ireland it is legal for the citizens to inhibit activity that has been proven to lead to war crimes. In this case, Raytheon missile manufacture.

[youtube:2mu6acfs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dV_oWWqEjTk[/youtube]2mu6acfs]

This from Raytheon9.org

On 11 June 2008, by a unanimous verdict of the jury, the Raytheon 9 were found not guilty of three counts of criminal damage at the Raytheon offices, Derry Northern Ireland on 9 August 2006.

    Immediately afterwards, the defendants addressed supporters and press outside Belfast's Laganside Court. Colm Bryce began:

    The Raytheon 9 have been aquitted today in Belfast for their action in decommissioning the Raytheon offices in Derry in August 2006. The prosecution could produce not a shred of evidence to counter our case that we had acted to prevent the commission of war crimes during the Lebanon war by the Israeli armed forces using weapons supplied by Raytheon.

    We remain proud of the action we took and only wish that we could have done more to disrupt the 'kill chain' that Raytheon controls.

    This victory is welcome, for ourselves and our families, but we wish to dedicate it to the Shaloub and Hasheem families of Qana in Lebanon, who lost 28 of their closest relatives on the 30 July 2006 due to a Raytheon 'bunker buster' bomb.

    Their unimaginable loss was foremost in our minds when we took the action we did on 9 August, and the injustice that they and the many thousands of victims of war crimes in Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan have suffered, will spur us on to continue to campaign against war and the arms trade that profits from it.

    We said from the beginning that we came to this court not as the accused but as the accusers of Raytheon. This court case proved that Raytheon in Derry is an integral part of the global Raytheon company and its military production. This is no longer a secret or in doubt. Raytheon have treated the truth, peaceful protest, local democracy and this court with complete contempt. The most senior executive who appeared said that the charge that Raytheon had 'aided and abetted' the commission of crimes against humanity was "not an issue" for him. Raytheon should have that contempt repaid in full and be driven out of Derry and every other place they have settled. They are war criminals, plain and simple. They have no place in our society and shame on all those in positions of power or influence who would hand them public funds, turn a blind eye to their crimes, cover their tracks or make excuses for them.

    These crimes continue daily and hourly in the Middle East. It is up to those of us who oppose those wars of domination and occupation to build a movement that matches the enormity of what is being done by Western governments. We hope that this victory gives courage and heart to all those involved in that movement and the many more who need to be for us to achieve our aim of stopping these wars. Until then, the very least we can do, to show solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the Middle East is to dissociate ourselves from the corrupt governments of the US and Britain. That means opposing the visit to Belfast of the world's biggest war criminal, George W Bush on 16 June.

    We feel totally vindicated by this decision and wish to extend our heartfelt thanks to all of those who gave us support, especially to our families and friends, to the members of the Derry Anti War Coalition and the Irish Anti-War Movement , to our excellent legal teams. Of course, we particularly want to thank the jury who listened intently through three weeks of evidence before ensuring that justice was done today.

    Eamonn McCann then addressed supporters and press saying:

    The outcome of this case has profound implications.

    The jury has accepted that we were reasonable in our belief that: the Israel Defence Forces were guilty of war crimes in Lebanon in the summer of 2006; that the Raytheon company, including its facility in Derry, was aiding and abetting the commission of these crimes; and that the action we took was intended to have, and did have, the effect of hampering or delaying the commission of war crimes.

    We have been vindicated.

    We reject entirely and with contempt the statement by Raytheon this evening suggesting that the result of the trial gives them concern about the safety of their employees. This is an abject attempt to divert attention from the significance of the outcome. Not a shed of evidence was produced that we presented the slightest danger to Raytheon workers. The charge of affray was thrown out by the court without waiting to hear defence evidence.

    Our target has always been Raytheon as a corporate entity and its shareholders and directors who profit from misery and death.

    There is now no hiding place for those who have said that they support the presence of Raytheon in Derry on the basis that the company is not involved in Derry in arms-related production. We have established that not only is the Derry plant involved in arms-related production, it is also, through its integration into Raytheon as a whole, involved in war crimes.

    We call on all elected representatives in Derry, and on the citizens of Derry, to say now in unequivocal terms that the war criminal Raytheon is not welcome in our city.

    We call on the office of the Attorney General and the Crown Prosecution Service, in light of this verdict, to institute an investigation into the activities of Raytheon at its various plants across the UK, with a view to determining whether Raytheon is, as we say it is, a criminal enterprise.

    We believe that one day the world will look back on the arms trade as we look back today on the slave trade, and wonder how it came about that such evil could abound in respectable society. If we have advanced by a mere moment the day when the arms trade is put beyond the law, what we have done will have been worthwhile.

    We took the action we did in the immediate aftermath of the slaughter of innocents in Qana on July 30th 2006. The people of Qana are our neighbours. Their children are the children of our neighbours. We trashed Raytheon to help protect our neighbours. The court has found that that was not a crime. This what the Raytheon case has been about.

    We have not denied or apologised for what we did at the Raytheon plant in the summer of 2006. All of us believe that it was the best thing we ever did in our lives.

There must be something in the water in Ireland, these are the same good folks who refused to be absorbed into the E.U. hive mind, for which i applaud them. These good folk's proactive anti-war activities show strength of spine the like of which far too rarely see the light of day in the pushback against the global terror war for profit.

[sullivan]

We don't all have freckles! That's a false stereotype, to be sure, to be sure, to be sure!

[kolnidre]

Great information and excellent verdict, but do tell us more about your banning from the Daily Ziokoz.

I recently got unceremoniously banned from a discussion board with zero notice. They didn't even send an explanation of a "violation" to the email I registered with. My IP was tagged and I simply can't get back on from home. I presume I am guilty of not being liked for posting factual information critical of both IsraHell and the US regarding the USS Liberty attack. I also made a joke on a thread about what someone should give someone as a Bar Mitzvah gift. I said "how about the missing vowels from the Torah," which I do declare was on point and damn witty, but since I was critical of IsraHell in other threads it was surely seen as hate speech.

Not to hijack the thread. I just needed to vent a little.

Cheers to Ireland for rejecting that abysmal Lisbon Treaty. Stay vigilant against the next onslaught surely on the way.

[Anonymous]

Its not my post, its from WUFYS, I put it in quotes to emphasize that.  Click on the link and you can read more of the comments there.  Peace.

[TeslaandLyne]

Raytheon making 'bunker buster' bombs; thats a good cover.
Electronics must be having a slowdown.
Unless the electronics in an integral part of the detonation.
Messing with the fuses would have been a big surprise.
The company would have hunted them down.