Israel/Gaza: This Old Jewish Brit, Sir Gerald Kaufman standing up to be counted

A long, long time ago before he was ever honoured with a knighthood, we very briefly met and spoke to Gerald Kaufman. (But that's not really relevant to the rest of this tremendously, refreshingly, revealing report. Probably just a bit of vanity, posing and/or name dropping on our part, eh? Well, none of us are perfect are we? Except maybe mad members of certain self proclaimed, 'master races', eh?)

No matter.

This video of Sir Gerald Kaufman delivering an emotional, open, brave, honest and true speech in our old Brit houses of parliament, is a "must NOT miss" sight for sore eyes.

You'd better believe us.



Well said Sir Gerald. We salute you.

[Huge hat-tip to our old fellow blogger friend "Gert" for finding this extra special, recent, unmissable video, btw.]

* (Cross posted across at 'appletree')

From New York USA : Israel's "Final Solution" to "The Palestiniam Problem"

It may well be that even after seeing this you still can't believe it.

Huge hat-tip to a good American friend, Doug Watt.

Doug also gave us this.

The UpTake
is opening up a call for Opinion/Editorial videos. To kick this off, we bring you all the first video by Dennis Trainor, who will be providing a regular voice to our media palette. We do not have a name for the show yet, and look forward to hearing ideas for the show's name from our audience. We also hope that more people feel inspired to send us "video op/eds" and will be providing guidance in the near future on how to submit your own opinions to our site.




For more about Dennis, here is what Steve Grove, the head of news and politics at YouTube had to say about him:

"I first met Dennis when he started his channel on YouTube under the moniker "Davis Fleetwood". Playing the role of an angry hermit in the basement of his home, Dennis' character was a unique bird to the Internet community - combining the satire of a Lenny Bruce with the performance style of an Andy Kaufman, all the while offering an acerbic social commentary that resonated with a large audience on the site. "Davis Fleetwood" soon became one of the most prominent voices in YouTube politics, posting daily videos that were thoughtful, provocative, and darkly humorous.

When YouTube teamed up with CNN to host a part of presidential debates, we tapped "Davis" to come to the debate and produce commentary from the scene on YouTube's behalf - and a question he'd submitted online was posed to Dennis Kucinich in the live televised debate. It must have been a sign - within weeks, Dennis had been hired by the Kucinich campaign to do reporting and commentary for the campaign. To my knowledge this was the first time a video blogger had been plucked from YouTube and hired by a presidential campaign. Demonstrating he could shift from theatre to politics, Dennis produced some great online and on-air video content for the Kucinich campaign, breathing a fresh perspective into the campaign.

In the new an undefined field of online video, Dennis has proven he knows both how to create compelling work, and how to distribute and promote it.

*(Cross posted across at 'appletree')