So it looks like V S Achyutanandan has woken up to what the whole country knew: that Kerala is a safe dump for unbridled breeding of Islamic extremism and that their methods and goal doesn't exactly smack of universal brotherhood, of the real kind, not the Islamic kind.

Radical Islamic outfit Popular Front of India (PFI) is aiming to convert Kerala into a Muslim majority state in the next 20 years, Kerala Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan said here Saturday.

For achieving that goal, the outfit is pumping money to attract youth and give them weapons. They also try to convert youth from other communities and persuade them to marry Muslim girls, Achuthanandan told reporters here.

Quite a revelation.

The ever-awake cynic in me questions the context, circumstances, and timing of this thoroughly unsecular (Note: to be distinguished from Pseudosecular and other variants thereof) revelation. It isn't like on the morning of July 25 he had this startling wake up call. Going by the record of his party, there are at least three factors at play:

• The Christian stealth lobby that is both pissed off and shaken at the brazen cutting off of the lecturer's hand.
• The Left, which has seen massive erosion of its vote bank in West Bengal, is desperate to preserve its other traditional stronghold.
• The prospect that the Islamic threat is, you know, actually real in Kerala and that time is fast running out.

Giving due credence to the last factor, the first two prospects seem more likely to have elicited this bold statement from a sitting, secular Chief Minister of a revolutionary party. His boldness doesn't end there. Read this.

The chief minister said the outfit [Popular Front of India] tried to create a clean image by organising freedom parades on independence day.
Various district administrations have already banned the parade organised by the PFI every Aug 15, he said.

This in a state with a hoary record of appeasing even known terror-enablers like Madani. The PFI has spread its tentacles to a peace-loving city like Bangalore by organizing justice and social harmony rallies from time to time. Among others, here's a partial list of luminaries who have lent their fair names to its cause. One such recent cause was a protest against the anti-Cow slaughter bill that was passed by the Karnataka Assembly.

CK Jaffer Sharief, journalist Gauri Lankesh, DS spokesman and MLC YSV Dattha (Deve Gowda's sidekick), Prof Rahmath Tarikere, Girish Karnad, and U R Ananthamurthy (surprise!).

Now that some of their own naughty boys have chopped off the lecturer's hand and invited the wrath of the Kerala Chief Minister, will these luminaries stand up and disown their errant boys? These worthies who, at the mention of BJP, instantly jump up in indignant self-righteousness like monkeys whose bottoms have been singed, have remained mum for over 3 weeks.

Back to Achyutanandan who seems to have also discovered Love Jihad here:

The chief minister was responding to a question whether the ongoing crackdown would not prove counterproductive. Achuthanandan's statement also points an accusing finger at the PFI for encouraging love jihad', something the organisation has been vehemently denying.

Perhaps Achyutanandan only needs to get a count of Love Jihad cases in Kerala. And while he's at it, it'll be good to ask him the reason for the studied closure of all his five senses when similar Soldiers of Allah went on a rampage converting, threatening, and killing innocent Hindus in Kerala. Or the reason RSS workers in Kerala need to walk around inconspicously, almost in fear because their identity will well mean amputation and/or death and the police would just close the case. Didn't it occur to him that these cases were also part of Islamizing Kerala in the next N years? Or isn't the life of Hindus worth anything given there are 800 million of them? This is one of the reasons for my said cynicism. A Marad massacre attracts little attention in the political and media circles. A perfunctory case is filed and blissfully forgotten ever after while the chopping of a lecturer's hand elicits tremendous pressure from the (gasp!) Chief Minister in less than 3 weeks. The reason is anybody's guess.

As I said in my earlier post,

Communist governments in India are powerless to counter the brutal forces that teaming up with Islamists inevitably unleashes. What was once a mere electoral/rhetorical gimmick is today an evil that is both indispensable and a force that they cannot fight againstlike riding the tiger and all that.

Riding the tiger begins rather innocently. Here's an example of how it works. Look no further than Martha Nussabaum who provides a loathsome sample of how to intellectually masturbate to the vilest affront to human dignity. Her 83472983743298 lines of tedious prose and self-defined premises are meant to show why banning the Burqa is a bad idea because the ban is utterly unacceptable in a society committed to equal liberty. She's an academic superstar and I'm sure she's aware of the consequences of this kind of argument but she does it anyway. In a line, the consequence: it plays directly into the hands of the Mullahs who are more than delighted to have a white educated woman on their side. See! Your own Phd women say what we're saying: that the place of a woman is in the kitchen and bedroom and behind the Burqa. Apply the Nussbaum Principle in every other case: Satanic Verses, Danish cartoons, Halaal meat, allowing the Muslim Personal Law to exist as a parallel law, and you have the perfect recipe for creating an atmosphere where people's hands are chopped off in broad daylight. Successive governments in Kerala did this and now they're only facing its logical consequences.

However, the political climate being what it is, the Kerala Home Minister's statement only shows he's not in a hurry to learn:

Meanwhile, Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said here that the police were trying to find out whether the PFI was a reincarnation of the banned SIMI.

The organisation was trying to attract Muslim youths towards the path of terrorism. However, a majority are not following them. The state government's policy was not to harass or victimise the Muslim community in the name of the ongoing investigations as the Opposition had alleged,

One wonders why, if the majority of Muslims wasn't following the PFI/SIMI, the Home Minister felt compelled to give this justification: The state government's policy was not to harass or victimise the Muslim community. Will the appeasement ever have an end other than gory?

Tags: Achyutanandan, Commentary, India, Indian Politics, Indian Secularism, Islam, Islamic Terror, Islam-Watch, Jihad, Kerala, Kerala Politics, Kerala-Islamic Terror Lab, Love Jihad, Media Watch, P T Joseph, P T Joseph Hand Chopped Off, Pseudosecularism, Pseudosecularism Hall of Shame, Secularism, Terrorism, War on Communism

The event is in some ways comparable to the leak of the Pentagon Papers, a set of documents that provided a behind-the-scenes look at the American war in Vietnam. Those papers reached the public in 1971. At more than to 90,000 reports, WikiLeaks' Afghan War Diary is even more substantial. By some measures it is the biggest intelligence leak to date.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assage told the UK newspaper The Guardian that the size of the leak is only one dimension of its significance:

This situation is different in that it's not just more material and being pushed to a bigger audience and much sooner but rather that people can give back. So people around the world who are reading this are able to comment on it and put it in context and understand the full situation. That is not something that has previously occurred. And that is something that can only be brought about as a result of the Internet.

Two months ago, we put WikiLeaks first in a list of innovative websites that could reshape the news. The site accepts submissions of confidential political or corporate documents, reviews them to make sure they're accurate, then publishes them on the web for anyone to see. WikiLeaks has previously leaked e-mails from Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin and a video of U.S. soldiers killing civilians.

Assage was careful to point out that the Afghan War Diary is comprised of old reports, not future military plans, so its usefulness to NATO's enemies in the battlefield should be limited. The people able to make the most informed decisions about whether or not the release of information can endanger American interests or lives are those working inside the Pentagon, but those are the very people WikiLeaks is trying to keep accountable. The controversy of values is clear.

WikiLeaks is able to solicit submissions from all over the world while avoiding jurisdiction by operating in several countries at once or none at all, depending on your interpretation of the situation. This wasn't possible before the web. Now it is, and the implications for society are significant.

How the Leak Happened

The Afghan War Diary was simultaneously given to reporters from The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel several weeks in advance so those reporters could study the documents and provide context with their public release. It was also given to those three publications so that no one national government could censor it.

WikiLeaks removed data that could implicate its sources, but the U.S. military already has an alleged WikiLeaks source in custody: 22-year old intelligence analyst Bradley Manning, who The Guardian says is suspected as the source of the video that depicted U.S. soldiers killing civilians. So far we've seen no evidence for or against any connection between the Afghan War Diary and Manning.

Politico reports that The White House released a critical statement in response to the leak, saying the U.S. strongly condemns the disclosure. The statement criticized WikiLeaks for not approaching the White House for comment or verification, and claimed that the bleak logs record events that took place before the Obama administration's change in strategy.

What the Leak Includes

The three publications given early access to the reports have made a few similar observations about what they say. Foremost is the general narrative that the situation in Afghanistan is bleaker than any of the governments involved would have you believe, particularly when it comes to collaboration between the United States and Pakistan.

Several reports either directly or indirectly implicate the ISI, a Pakistani intelligence agency, in aiding Taliban fighters. There are some suggestions in the reports that current or former members of the ISI have actually met with Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders to collaboratively organize attacks on American troops.

However, the New York Times notes that some of the reports on that subject come from Afghanistan intelligence, which has a negative relationship with Pakistan and a potential interest in damaging its reputation. Other reports detail NATO-ordered civilian killings, specifics as to why NATO progress has been slow at best, and other bleak pictures of the activities in the war.

Apart from the WikiLeaks website, you can find report specifics in an interactive map The Guardian produced to highlight 300 critical reports found in the leak.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, rubenhi

More About: afghan war, afghan war diary, afghanistan, julian assage, media, News, Pakistan, politics, war, wikileaks

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Continue reading PSX4Droid brings spiky-haired protagonists to your Googlephone (video)

PSX4Droid brings spiky-haired protagonists to your Googlephone (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 25 Jul 2010 15:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Reports this week revealed that U.S. defense contractor, Raytheon, makers of the Patriot missile defense system, is developing software for soldiers that runs on Google's Android operating system. The software, called the Raytheon Android Tactical System or RATS, has already been tested by some members of the U.S. Special Forces. It involves a social-networking type of display where soldiers interact as "buddies" and track each others' movements on the battlefield.

Sponsor

There's an App for That! Social Networking for Soldiers, Military-Grade Satellite Images

If RATS takes off, soldiers would carry smartphones with them into battle, says this Reuters report released on Wednesday. However, the phones would run identity recognition software so that enemy forces would not be able to unlock the device if they ever got their hands on one of them.

In addition to the soldier "buddy tracking" system described above, the Android OS could also support applications that delivered satellite images to the phone's large color touchscreen. Military satellites can focus in on minute features you can't see when using consumer-level technology like Google Earth. Instead, the software installed on RATS could potentially zero in on facial features or could be used to read license plates, for example.

The phones running these military-level Android apps wouldn't be standard Nexus Ones or Droids, of course, but specially designed handsets, each costing around $500 - the same price as unlocked consumer smartphones. So far, Raytheon has tested the software on handsets made by Motorola and HTC.

Raytheon would also design and install GPS tracking, encryption and communication software onto the phones, the latter to provide coverage where signals don't exist.

Google was a Big Help, Says Raytheon

Raytheon credits Google for its help in the software's development. Says Mark Bigham, Vice President for Defense and Civil Mission Solutions at Raytheon, "We're trying to take advantage of smartphone technology to tailor for what soldiers may need in the field. Google has helped us push the limits of the phone."

Bigham also notes that Google would benefit financially if and when RATS became available to the defense market - a market which isn't just limited to the U.S. Besides the U.S. Army, Bigham says that the Indian military is another potential customer for this Android-based technology.

Now that we're preparing to say goodbye to Don't Ask, Don't Tell (or at least we hopefully are), it's a good time to look back on this controversial policy. And what better way to do that than by reading ahilarious nine-year-old comic book created by the military to explain the rules of neither asking or telling to our soldiers? Give up? I'm not surprised because there is literally no better way.

The comic book idea makes sense in theory. DADT is an incredibly complicated policy in practice so, instead of sitting all of the nation's soldiers down for a lecture, the military gives them a comic. A comic abouta bunch of our nation's soldiers sitting down for a lecture. Ugh. This may be the most boring comic book ever written.

>>>Read some of the highlights' at Mediaite.

Mark Gottlieb's July 2010 update to the Magic Rules has been released, it includes a number of erratas for cards as well as rules adjustments, including the just printed Elixir of Immortality among others. Perhaps the biggest change is the creation of a new rule talking about something called Emblems.'

Emblems are, well for now why don't you go read Mark Gottlieb's update. We'll just give you the brief excerpt here:

If you're wondering what an emblem is, you are correct: Until now, there's no such thing as emblems. Furthermore, there are no cards that create emblems or at least, there won't be any such cards until the Oracle update goes live this Friday. At that point, there will be oneand only onecard that can create an emblem: Elspeth, Knight-Errant .

What Elspeth really wants to do is create a pseudo-enchantment with a static ability that works for the rest of the game. So an immutable enchantment. One that can't be destroyed, or stolen. Something like a Vanguard card that you get in the middle of the game rather than at the beginning. An object with an effect that hovers over the rest of the game. We can do this. We can invent emblems.

New Elspeth, Knight-Errant wording
[+1]: Put a 1/1 white Soldier creature token onto the battlefield.
[+1]: Target creature gets +3/+3 and gains flying until end of turn.
[-8]: You get an emblem with Artifacts, creatures, enchantments, and lands you control are indestructible.

Full Article on Wizards.com

By Allan Lengel

JERUSALEM Call it a case of very different worlds colliding.

The top newspaper Haaretz here in Israel reports that Mexican authorities thwarted a plan by the Lebanese group Hezbollah to set up a network in Latin America and use Mexican Nationals with ties to Lebanon to go after Israel and western targets. Haaretz attributed the story to the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Sevassah.

The report said Mexican police had under surveillance a Hezbollah group leader Jameel Nasr, who had traveled through Latin America and lived in Tijuana, Mexico. He was arrested by authorities.

Haaretz reported that U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick in June wrote the Department Homeland Security to warn that Hezbollah was working with the Mexican drug cartels.

To read more click here.

OTHER STORIES OF INTEREST

• Manson Follower Denied Parole for 19th Time (AP)
• Blago Spoke of Fundraising and Road Project (AP)
• Prosecutors to Appeal Ruling on Russian Spy Case Bail (AP)
• Alleged Army Whistleblower Felt Angry and Alone (AP)
• Ex-Detroit School Official Faces Obscenities Charge (AP)
• Son of Shot Officer Joins NYPD (AP)
• Chicago Police, Mayor Face Torture Claims (Courthouse News Service)
• Former Gore Aide Among Targets of Russian Spies (Newsweek)
• 22-Year-Old Soldier Charged With Leaking Classified Info (Wall Street Journal)

Cloth sensors could make the Internet of Things fashionable.

MIT scientists announced this week that they have created a new kind of fiber capable of detecting and emitting sound. "Throughout their history a key premise has remained essentially unchanged," the research team wrote in Nature Materials, "fibres are static devices, incapable of controllably changing their properties over a wide range of frequencies."

Professor Yoel Fink and team says they've upended that history and have developed a process for making fiber that can act like a microphone or a speaker. As with any new type of sensor, the platform possibilities are intriguing - the degree of personal intimacy (pants with patience, shirts that sass you back) makes this particularly potent.

Sponsor

We wrote this Spring about 10 Smart Clothes You'll Be Wearing Soon, but Fink's creation may be the smartest of the smart clothes bunch.

All this instrumentation of personal items and objects is going to require some serious deliberation over privacy policies and standards. If my clothes are listening to me, I want to be very sure I know to whom they are repeating what they hear. That conversation has barely begun.

Fink's research was supported by MIT's Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Defense Department's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). So you can be sure that consumer privacy rights are somewhere on everyone's agenda. Scientists, of course, are only in charge of creating clothes that can hear - not deciding when they should listen.

Photo: Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT/Greg Hren

According to a recent press release, "Many English speakers cannot understand basic grammar":

Research into grammar by academics at Northumbria University suggests that a significant proportion of native English speakers are unable to understand some basic sentences.

The findings which undermine the assumption that all speakers have a core ability to use grammatical cues could have significant implications for education, communication and linguistic theory.

There hasn't been a lot of press uptake so far just three articles as to this moment indexed by Google News, with the UPI the most prominent, although the press release is a couple of days old. But half a dozen people have sent me email about it, so it's creating some buzz nevertheless.

Although the work hasn't been formally published yet, I'm happy to say that preprints are available on the web site of the prime mover, Ewa Dabrowska. The key findings are discussed in Ewa Dabrowska, "Individual differences in native language attainment: A review article", and James Street and Ewa Dabrowska, "More individual differences in language attainment: How much do adult native speakers of English know about passives and quantifiers?".

The key experimental setting involves showing subjects pictures like this and this:

and

paired with sentences like these:

Actives:
The boy photographed the girl.
The soldier grabbed the sailor.
The man carried the woman.
The girl fed the boy.
The sailor hit the soldier.
The soldier pushed the sailor.

Passives:
The girl was hugged by the boy.
The woman was chased by the man.
The woman was pulled by the man.
The soldier was frightened by the sailor.
The sailor was kicked by the soldier.
The man was kissed by the woman.

Q-is:
Every umbrella is in a stand.
Every feather is in a vase.
Every toothbrush is in a mug.
Every ball is in a box.
Every pencil is in a jar.
Every cake is in a tin.

Q-has:
Every shoe has a hamster in it.
Every bowl has a turtle in it.
Every cone has an ice cream in it.
Every pot has a windmill in it.
Every basket has a dog in it.
Every dish has an orange in it.

On each trial, the subject's task is to say whether the sentence is true of the picture. The pairings of picture-types and sentence-types were semi-randomized, so that two of the same sentence type were never adjacent. Each subject got six instances of each sentence type.

The subjects were of two types: "High Academic Attainment" (basically graduate students) and "Low Academic Attainment" (who "had at most 11 years of formal education and were employed as shelf-stackers, packers, assemblers, or clerical workers"). Unsurprisingly, the HAA subjects never made a mistake. You may or may not be surprised to learn that the LAA subject often got things wrong, and that their error rate varied systematically with the type of sentence:

Here's a bit more detail on the distribution of mistakes across LAA subjects in the passive, Q-is and Q-has cases:

(Note that the bars are plotted just to the left of the corresponding number at the high end of the scale, and just to the right of the corresponding number at the low end of the scale, somewhat confusingly)

In a second experiment, Street and Dabrowska looked at the effects of systematic instruction in this particular task on subjects' performance.

Overall, I found the experiments fairly convincing. I do worry a bit about what some colleagues and I used to call "the paper airplane effect": At one point we thought we had discovered that a certain fraction of the population is surprisingly deaf to certain fairly easy speech-perception distinctions; the effect, noted in a population of high-school-student subjects, was replicable; but observing one group of subjects more closely, we observed that a similar fraction spent the experiment surreptitiously launching paper airplanes and spitballs at one another. In my opinion, Street & Dabrowska's learning experiment (not discussed here yet) lowers but doesn't eliminate the possibility that the effect is due as much to a difference in diligence and attentiveness as to a difference in linguistic knowledge.

But almost half a century after the work of Peter Wason (see here and here), I don't think anyone should find it shocking that significant numbers of people find it difficult to "understand" some fairly elementary sentences. I don't mean to say that there's nothing new here, just that Dabrowska seems to me to overstate the "consensus" about the distribution of linguistic (and in particular semantic) abilities of certain sorts.

Anyhow, I've got to check out of my hotel and head for the airport, so that's all I have time to say now. I'll take this up again after I get back to Philadelphia.

The video, which became a viral sensation this week even after if was taken down by the original uploader and then uploaded again received mixed reactions from bloggers and press. Some found the image of the six soldiers decked out in IDF uniforms and military gear hilarious, others, disrespectful. The IDF, however, was less nebulous about its feelings.

ynet reports that Colonel Amir Abulafia, commander of the Benjamin Brigade, called forth the two squad commanders yesterday for their participation in the video. According to the colonel, the fact that they were wearing IDF uniforms at the time tied their actions to the IDF, which made the dancing unacceptable.

However, since they didn't actually do anything wrong, the soldiers' penalty is merely to create an educational video in order to prevent similar incidents in the future, according to a statement from the IDF. (The rest of the soldiers are currently on vacation, and are scheduled to be released from the military in a week so they got off the hook.)

We have to wonder, at this juncture, what this video will look like. I imagine it being like Footloose, with fewer tractors.

In case you missed the video the first time, we've embedded it below.

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I was going to skip this story, but the cute girl in the first photo held my interest. :P

Published: 05 July 2010
Chiang Mai, Thailand

This journalist was all over the place. She stood out from the crowd for obvious reasons. One evening, as the sun was setting, she was walking down a mostly desolate street not far from Dusit Thani hotel, and she was alone with that little camera. Soldiers were here and there, and I thought, That's a brave woman. She walked by and I never said hello. On another day, she walked by and I was talking with some journalist whose name I never got, and said that if she took off that helmet and body armor you might think she is just another pretty face, but she's not just another pretty face, is she? The journalist said that he had once seen her at another time, and she was curled up on the ground, sleeping by a trash can, and he said she is a brave one indeed.

On another day there had been much fighting and some journalists were out in the middle of it but I did not go to the middle. I watched from the edges as a writer instead of a photographer, but this one apparently had dived in because he was sweating and more covered in soot than this photo seems to reveal.

Despite the danger, witnesses were out there, seemingly by the hundreds.

Often the journalists waited, as do soldiers.

(Note: Photos in this dispatch are not in chronological or geographic order, but are ordered thematically. This is not a comprehensive accounting of the Bangkok fighting. There are probably thousands of accounts online.)

This was a strange battle area. Surrounded by modern buildings, nice hotels and the trappings of a modern city, you could dive into a 7-Eleven for a cold drink. I tried to buy tampons in case of bullet wounds but tampons are hard to come by in Thailand, so, having left my gear in Afghanistan, I bought pads instead.

Any helmet was better than none. Protestors often used slingshots with iron ingots, lugnuts, marbles and rocks.

Cameras everywhere.

The world was watching.

Nowhere to hide.

Must have been hundreds of journalists from many countries.

This is Nattha Komolvadhin from Thai PBS. There was some fighting going on here this day. I got to talk with her at length during an interview much later. Very sharp journalist complete with a PhD.

There was fighting just here on the street.

Journalists wore green armbands. This man was also wearing a red cross. Maybe he was playing it double safe, but the best insurance against getting shot is to not be here, or to wear body armor.

Base of Dusit Thani hotel.

Was hot but not as bad as Afghanistan or Iraq.

Often it was hard to tell if they were journalists, tourists or maybe soldiers undercover. Saw some guys who looked far too fit and military to be journalists, and they wore the same types of shoes.

Rama IV road just near Lumpini Park.

Skirmishes happened in many places over a period of weeks. I was there only about ten days. My guess was that freelancers and those from small companies were mostly without body armor.

After bullets started flying, numerous journalists at different times sought cover behind this green box.

Most amazing is how quickly information was flowing. Every decent phone is a camera. Facebook. Twitter. Real-time vignettes flew around the world far faster than bullets.

With war reporting, the danger levels usually go like this: Most dangerous is video work. Second is still photography. Third is writing. Safest might be painting: I say this because a famous British fine artist once painted soldiers straight off my photos -- without my knowledge or authorization -- indicating she had been in battles she had never seen. She was making gobs of money in a London art gallery while getting significant international press, all while pretending to have been there. (Amazing that a famous painter would rip-off an internationally known photographer apparently while expecting to not get caught.)

With still photography you can, at times at least, reach around and get a quick shot. But there are those pesky rules of combat: if you can see them, they can see you. If you can hit them, they can hit you.

With video, the gear often is bigger and it takes longer to get good shots. Worse still, the shooter must focus more on the camera.

Soldiers only have to focus on the environment. Interestingly, as a writer, if you talk too much with soldiers or government officials, you'll likely be called a pawn or a stooge, but if you hang out with arsonists you might be called an intrepid researcher.

This journalist came around during some fighting. He looked distressed and I asked if he was okay and he talked about someone who was hit.

This man also came from the direction of someone who was hit and I thought he might have seen it but I didn't ask.

Just waiting.

Some of the body armor didn't look so serious. This body armor might create more work for the surgeon: after the journalist gets wheeled in, she might look at the X-Ray, pull the mask over her face, and realize she was going to have to dig out the bullet and pieces of the body armor.

Some of the helmets were made for a different job.

Tourist maybe? I didn't know but there was fighting just here. Journalists are not screened from Thailand and require no special visas or permissions, and tourists definitely were coming and going from the fighting area. Sounds like the U.S. government is today censoring the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico more than the Thais were doing here. (The Thai government was censoring some websites, illegal radio stations and so forth, but I saw zero battlefield censorship.)

There were rumors of death threats from some protestors to journalists, but most protestors were not threatening. There was serious fighting over the weeks with about 90 people killed and around 1,900 wounded.

Thai TV 3 was targeted and the building burned.

At least 27 buildings and locations were on fire as of 9 p.m. local time, including the Thai TV 3 building, the Metropolitan Electricity Authority, Siam Theatre, several banks and part of the Stock Exchange of Thailand, officials said.

Noppatjak Attanon (blue shirt) spent some time in America and played football in high school. Noppatjak was among many courageous Thai journalists who got close enough to get burned. Ultimately it's probably far more dangerous for Thai journalists than for foreign correspondents, though foreign correspondents were taking casualties. Noppatjak is famous in Thailand and he works at The Nation which was also specifically threatened by militants. I went to their offices to be interviewed and soldiers were guarding it against attack. I spent some time with Noppatjak on the street. He is instantly recognized. Journalism can at times be more dangerous than soldiering.

Nothing is more powerful than still photography, though in the journalism world, photographers are often deemed the lowest rung. Shooters are often seen as fungible and hirable like taxis. Yet the truly top-notched shooters, that top percent, are not fungible, and can be a force unto themselves. Still photography isin my opinion as a writerby far the most powerful and versatile method to convey powerful messages quickly and broadly. Nothing else comes close. Not video, not writing, not portraiture or radio or telephone interviews. Still photography is the Big Gun of war reporting.

And yet the snobs are often the writers, who might view themselves as intellectually superior, but who when teamed up with a top-grade photographer can literally, without exaggeration, affect battlefields as would the most powerful generals. Nevertheless, photographers generally are seen as sidekicks, supporting actors, and downrange you might hear a journalist quip, Oh yes, the Shooters are first to the bar and last out. (While the writers plug away at their stories and wrestle with editors.)

Battlefield television is usually not the most powerful, but can be the most dangerous. The crews often are larger, the gear is bigger, and during shooting (and SHOOTING!) they often try to linger on a scene to get the full effect. Videographers must focus on the gear. Experienced military Combat Camera folks will tell you that your chances of getting killed on the battlefield multiply when you start shooting video. It's true. Also, that big camera gear often can look like a weapon, like a rocket launcher, and this can be especially so during the dramas of heavy fighting which include smoke, fire, darkness, extremely loud noises, sweat in the eyes, screaming, fear and lots of adrenaline and some guy who pokes around a corner from within the enemy positions and he has something on his shoulder and BAM BAM BAM BAM. Dead. Then comes the report, Government security forces are believed responsible for killing of a cameraman

Sometimes nobody is really responsible. Sometimes the surfer gets bashed on the rocks, the rocket explodes, or the climber is swept away in an avalanche. It just is.

Never know where correspondents have been. Last week they might have been reviewing restaurants when action came to their neighborhood, or they might have seen a dozen conflicts and sailed the seven seas. As the years unfold, some of the most interesting people I meet are the experienced international correspondents, while others give the feeling they are running from child support.

Unidentified journalist taking local transport into the Red Shirt camp.

Some people blamed many journalists for catching a sort of Stockholm Syndrome inside the Red Shirt camp, and some of them did in fact seem to drink the Kool-Aid. Drink the Kool-Aid is American slang meaning they blindly believe what are told. The term is derived from an American cult leader named Jim Jones who persuaded about 900 people to commit suicide by drinking poisoned Kool-Aid, and if you pay close attention you'll often hear it around U.S. politics, or in military circles. Even while grenades were being fired and dozens of buildings were ablaze in Bangkok, some journalists continued to spout that the protestors were peaceful and unarmed. They were drinking the Kool-Aid.

The Reds were getting much favorable press, and so nearly all of them seemed to be extra polite and friendly with journalists which creates its own cycle. Meanwhile, the police and Army were being polite, respectful and professional, yet not offering lunch and soft drinks. (Of course.) If the military offered gratuities, likely we would view it with cynicism, but when protestors did the same, it was a sign of friendliness. I sensed that part of the friendliness was just normal Thai culture, but there also was extra-friendliness toward people with cameras. Some of the journalists truly seemed to fall for it. Hook, line and sinker. Others seemed to go with the flowkeeping in mind that editors in Berlin, London and New York have strong say in their stories and if Iraq taught me anything about journalists and journalism it was that distant editors set the tone for most publications. After the acceptable white lines of a narrative are painted, few people stray from the path.

Humans see what we expect to see, and there is no doubt that many people expected to see an Asian government using a sickening amount of force to quell dissent. We expected to see that. But that's not what actually happened. Not at all.

[More to follow.]

Please click here to read Even as the World Watched: Part I

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A new regulation by China's People Liberation Army (PLA) bans China's approximately 2.5 million soldiers (the vast majority of which are male) from online dating (including advertising for wives), social networking or blogging.

The regulation took effect on June 15, but according to one anonymous soldier quoted by the China Daily, We had the similar rules the first day I became a soldier. The ban just makes it official.

The official ban was put in place apparently out of fear that soldiers would leak military secrets, including troop positions, as well as possibly leading to cyber attacks. A PLA colonel was quoted by the China Daily as saying, Soldiers should not take part in any Internet interaction, even if they try to cover up their military identities, because they cannot ensure they will not be revealing any information relating to their job, including something they may consider irrelevant.

So what's a lonely soldier in the 21st century in China to do? Well, go to bi-monthly dating socials, apparently, where they can meet reliable civilians. On the other side of the coin, PLA soldiers are also some of the most sought after husbands in China for a number of reasons, including financial stability, high social status, and well, because they're tall (there is a height requirement), so all those well off, respected and tall soldiers just got a little harder for China's women to get to know. Don't feel too bad for the women, however there are approximately 30 million more men in China than women.

On a more serious note though, the solider quoted in the China Daily also had this to say about not having full access to the Internet: We are not familiar with current affairs or popular social topics, which makes it hard for many demobilized soldiers to blend into society, which must certainly be true as a solider in the world's largest army, in a country with the world's largest online population.

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Original title and link for this post: Chinese soldiers aren't allowed to date online, use social media

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WASHINGTON, DCThe National Anti- Quartering Association, America's foremost Third Amendment rights group, held its annual gala in Washington Monday to honor 191 consecutive years of advocating the protection of private homes and property against the unlawful boarding of military personnel.

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"This is a proud day for quarters-owners everywhere," said the organization's president, Charles Davison, in his keynote address. "Year after year, we have sent a loud and clear message to the federal government and to anyone else who would attack our unassailable rights: Hands off our cottages, livery stables, and haylofts."

The NAQA was created in 1816 in response to repeated violations of the Third Amendment during the War of 1812. The organization quickly grew in influence and cites its vigilance as the primary reason why the amendment has only been litigated once in a federal court since the Bill of Rights was ratified. The organization is also arguably the country's most powerful political lobby; every politician elected since 1866 has fully supported Third Amendment rights.

"The framers of the Constitution provided the American people with the right to have their homes free of troops unless Congress mandates otherwise during a time of war," Davison said. "Thanks to our tireless efforts, six generations of civilians have never known the cruelty and duress of quartering unruly foot soldiers."

Davison recalled the "dark days" of 1982, when the federal case of Engblom v. Carey threatened to strip Americans of their fundamental Third Amendment freedoms. The ruling by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals acknowledged that the State of New York had indeed violated the Third Amendment rights of the plaintiffs. The case, according to Davison, was "a chilling reminder of how even an established 200-year-old right hangs by a slender thread."

"I don't think people fully understand how close we came to completely losing such a basic right," Davison said. "If the Second Circuit had ruled otherwise, we'd be living in a world in which soldiers would be quartering amok upon our very hearthstones."

Davison expressed pride in the NAQA's grassroots involvement at the local level, citing the association's direct-mailing campaigns and its fully staffed regional centers where citizens can report Third Amendment rights abuses. The NAQA also holds quartering-safety seminars for citizens interested in learning how to effectively defend their households against U.S. troops seeking shelter.

Davison reiterated the organization's promise to oppose pro-quartering legislation should any ever be proposed.

"Keep the fat hands of soldiers out of America's larders!" Davison said to rousing applause. He was quoting the NAQA's familiar slogan, which can be found on T-shirts, bumper stickers, and other merchandise sold on the group's website.

Davison ended his address by warning of the dangers of the NAQA resting on its laurels.

"Pro-quartering advocates are waiting for just the right moment to stick a bunch of troops in our homes," Davison said. "Well, I say to them that we will never allow this to happen. You can count on the true patriots of the NAQA to ensure that no chickens and livestock will be appropriated, and private stores of salt, brandy, candles, and vinegar will stay firmly where they belong: in civilian hands."

The NAQA is known for its quick and aggressive mobilization when it believes Third Amendment rights are at risk, and has rushed to the defense of homeowners it believes are being illegally coerced into housing American soldiers. Last month, 200 NAQA members marched on a private residence in Fairfax, VA after receiving a tip that the owners were being victimized by three Navy seamen demanding prolonged quartering. They ended their demonstration, however, when it was discovered that the sailors were brothers on shore leave visiting their parents.

Davison, 49, has headed the NAQA since January, replacing longtime president Lawrence Frost. Frost, 58, left the organization to chair the Citizens Committee for the Right to Drink, a 21st Amendment rights group committed to the continued legal status of alcohol for Americans of drinking age.

Hey guys! It's almost 1 AM and I've still got some work to finish up before I get some sleep but I just wanted to share a really touching moment with you guys. We are on a tight schedule for this trip and it leaves very little margin for error or getting side tracked but that is exactly what we did today.

While traveling through Kansas City, MO we received a phone call from a soldier's mother who was asking us to stop off an visit her son. He had been wounded recently and suffered from burns over 66% of his body. The Colonel jumped at the chance to help this family and we changed directions and headed to Menorah Medical Center in Overland Park, KS.

Getting to meet this soldier was a fantastic experience. He was in great spirits and was very grateful that we we're able to spend some time with him and his family. He was even so kind to help the High Five Tour with our mission and take one of our 20,000 high fives. I promised him that we would get his picture up on the tour site as quickly as possible and it made it's rounds today on MilitaryMonday on Twitter. I also wanted to share it with you guys.

I'll see you guys on the road.

When explaining the concept of augmented reality to someone who has never heard of it, I find myself going through a series of common real-life and pop-culture examples to help them understand. Aside from explaining that the "1st and Ten Line" in football games and the computer vision of the Terminator are indeed forms of augmented reality, I often use examples from the military - the fighter pilot heads-up-display, for example - as well. In fact, the military has played a significant role in the early development of AR, and one company is attempting to make sure it is a large factor in the future of the technology as well.

Sponsor

A Chicago-based company called Tanagram Partners is currently developing military-grade augmented reality technology that - if developed to the full potential of its prototypes - would completely change the face of military combat as we know it. Tanagram CEO Joseph Juhnke presented the technology last week at the Augmented Reality Event in Santa Clara, California, and wowed the audience with his presentation.

Illustrations from Juhnke's presentation tell the company's story of how its technology could give American troops the upper-hand in hostile situations. First of all, the company is developing a system of lightweight sensors and displays that collect and provide data from and to each individual soldier in the field. This includes a computer, a 360-degree camera, UV and infrared sensors, stereoscopic cameras and OLED translucent display goggles.

With this technology - all housed within the helmet - soldiers will be able to communicate with a massive "home base" server that collects and renders 3D information onto the wearer's goggles in real time. With the company's "painting" technology, various objects and people will be outlined in a specific color to warn soldiers of things like friendly forces, potential danger spots, impending air-raid locations, rendez-vous points and much more.

In the above image, a spotter on a roof paints an area near his squad-mates in a red color, marking the area as a danger spot. The ability to virtually communicate the location of hostile forces to fellow soldiers is an invaluable technology to troops fighting in unfamiliar urban environments. The local fighters have a home field advantage because they are fighting in their back yards, in a way. Tanagram hopes to level the playing field - and then some - in an effort to help troops better understand their surroundings.

All of this technology can also be monitored from a central base location by military leaders. They can gather around a virtual map of the battlefield with live location data for their troops. Best of all, the system has a memory for the information put into it - which means soldiers new to an area that has been fought in before will have the benefit of knowing where previous danger spots were.

As futuristic and far-fetched as this seems, Tanagram is actually in the process of building this technology right now. The company is funded by a grant from DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), and plans on having a working proof-of-concept that runs on an iPhone by the first quarter of next year. Tanagram also hopes to have the server and client system operational as early as Q2 2011 as well as an open-source head-mounted display (HMD) client by the end of next year.

When explaining the concept of augmented reality (AR) to someone who has never heard of it, I find myself going through a series of common real-life and pop-culture examples to help them understand. Aside from explaining that the 1st and Ten Line in football games and the computer vision of the Terminator are indeed forms of augmented reality, I often use examples from the military - the fighter pilot heads-up-display, for example - to supplement them. In fact, the military has played a significant role in the early development of AR, and one company is attempting to make sure it is a large factor in the future of the technology as well.

Sponsor

A Chicago-based company called Tanagram Partners is currently developing military grade augmented reality technology that - if developed to the full potential of its prototypes - would completely change the face of military combat as we know it. Tanagram CEO Joseph Juhnke presented the technology last week at the Augmented Reality Event in Santa Clara, California, and wowed the audience with his presentation.

Illustrations from Juhnke's presentation tell the company's story of how their technology could give American troops the upper-hand in hostile situations. First of all, the company is developing a system of lightweight sensors and displays that collect and provide data from and to each individual soldier in the field. This includes a computer, a 360-degree camera, UV and infrared sensors, stereoscopic cameras and OLED translucent display goggles.

With this technology - all housed within the helmet - soldiers will be able to communicate with a massive "home base" server that collects and renders 3D information onto the wearer's goggles in real-time. With the company's "painting" technology, various objects and people will be outlined in a specific color to warn soldiers of things like friendly forces, potential danger spots, impending air-raid locations, rendez-vous points and much more.

In the above image, a spotter on a roof paints an area near his squad-mates in a red color, marking the area as a danger spot. The ability to virtually communicate the location of hostile forces to fellow soldiers is an invaluable technology to troops fighting in unfamiliar urban environments. The local fighters have "home field advantage," because they are fighting in their back-yards in a way. Tanagram hopes to level the playing field - and then some - in an effort to help troops better understand their surroundings.

All of this technology can also be monitored from a central base location by military leaders. They can gather around a virtual map of the battlefield with live location data for their troops. Best of all, the system has a memory for the information put into it - which means soldiers new to an area that has been fought in before will have the benefit of knowing where previous danger spots were.

As futuristic and far-fetched as this seems, Tanagram is actually in the process of building this technology right now. The company is funded by a grant from DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), and plans on having a working proof-of-concept that runs on an iPhone by the first quarter of next year. Tanagram also hopes to have the server/client system operational as early as Q2 2011 as well as an open source head-mounted display (HMD) client by the end of next year.

From The Scotsman:

THE international community united in condemning Israel yesterday following an attack on an aid flotilla bound for the blockaded Gaza Strip that left at least ten people dead.

Spontaneous protests erupted across Europe and the Middle East, as US president Barack Obama expressed deep regret over the massacre.

Israeli forces stormed the convoy of six ships carrying aid yesterday in a pre-dawn raid that saw commandos abseiling on to a boat and shooting dead pro-Palestinian aid volunteers.

Four Scots were believed to be among at least 27 Britons on board the flotilla. Their fate was unknown last night, although the Foreign Office said no Britons were among the dead. Israel said its forces were forced to respond to unexpected resistance as they boarded the vessels, but one Scottish witness said the Israelis had faced no resistance.

Mr Obama demanded emergency talks with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu last night, as planned peace talks were cancelled. Foreign Secretary William Hague led the worldwide chorus of condemnation, saying: I deplore the loss of life during the interception of the Gaza flotilla. Our embassy is in urgent contact with the Israeli government.

And a contender for quote of the day:

Mr Netanyahu expressed regret for the loss of life. but said the soldiers had no choice.

Our soldiers had to defend themselves, defend their lives, or they would have been killed, he said. Israel said it opened fire after its commandos were attacked with knives, clubs and live fire from two pistols wrested from soldiers after they descended from a helicopter to board one of the vessels.

Wait, the soldiers attacking a boat in international waters are the victims here?

JERUSALEM (AP) - Israeli naval commandos stormed a flotilla of ships carrying aid and hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists to the blockaded Gaza Strip on Monday, killing at least 10 passengers in a predawn raid that set off worldwide condemnation and a diplomatic crisis.

Israel said its commandos were attacked by knives, clubs and live fire from two pistols wrested from soldiers after they rappelled from a helicopter to board one of the vessels.

Dozens of activists and at least 10 Israeli soldiers were wounded in the bloody confrontation in international waters.

Click here to watch video from aboard the ship.

Reaction was swift and harsh, with a massive protest breaking out in Turkey, Israel's longtime Muslim ally, which unofficially supported the mission. Ankara announced it would recall its ambassador and call off military exercises with the Jewish state.

The bloody showdown came at a sensitive time in Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was to meet Tuesday with President Barack Obama to discuss the next round in U.S.-led indirect negotiations, but Netanyahu called off the visit on Monday morning. From Toronto, Netanyahu spoke by telephone with top Israeli officials and expressed his "full backing" for the military, according to a statement from the army.

The White House said in a written statement that the United States "deeply regrets" the loss of life and injuries and was working to understand the circumstances surrounding this "tragedy."

The activists were headed to Gaza on a mission meant to draw attention to the blockade, which Israel and Egypt imposed after the militant Hamas group seized the territory of 1.5 million Palestinians in 2007.

There were conflicting accounts of what happened early Monday, with activists claiming the Israelis fired first and Israel insisting its forces fired in self defense. Communications to the ships were cut off shortly after the raid began.

An Israeli commando who spoke to reporters on a naval vessel off the coast, and who was identified only by the first letter of his name, "A," said he and his comrades were surprised by a group of Arabic-speaking men when they rapelled onto the deck.

He said some of the soldiers, taken off guard, were stripped of their helmets and equipment and thrown from the top deck to the lower deck, and that some had even jumped overboard to save themselves. At one point one of the passengers seized one of the soldiers' weapons and opened fire.

A high-ranking naval official displayed a box confiscated from the boat containing switchblades, slingshots, metal balls and metal bats. "We prepared (the soldiers) to deal with peace activists, not to fight," he said. Most of the 10 dead were Turkish, he added.

A Turkish website showed video of pandemonium on board one of the ships, with activists in orange life jackets running around as some tried to help an activist apparently unconscious on the deck. The site also showed video of an Israeli helicopter flying overhead and Israeli warships nearby.

Turkey's NTV showed activists beating one Israeli soldier with sticks as he rappelled from a helicopter onto one of the boats.

Activists said Israeli naval commandos stormed the ships after ordering them to stop in international waters, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) from Gaza's coast.

An Al-Jazeera reporter on one of the Turkish ships said the Israelis fired at the vessel before boarding it. The pan-Arab satellite channel reported by telephone from the Turkish ship leading the flotilla that Israeli navy forces fired at the ship and boarded it, wounding the captain.

"These savages are killing people here, please help," a Turkish television reporter said.

The broadcast ended with a voice shouting in Hebrew, "Everybody shut up!"

In a news conference in Tel Aviv, Israel's military chief of staff and navy commander said the troops were able to take over the five other boats without incident and all of the violence was centered on the boat carrying most of the flotilla's passengers, the Turkish-owned Mavi Marmara.

Troops were attacked, said Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, and an unspecified number of troops were helicoptered to hospital suffering from gunshots, knife wounds and blows.

"To me it is clear without a doubt, judging by what I saw and what I heard in the first reports from the soldiers, that in light of the danger to human life this violence required the use of weapons, and in my opinion the soldiers acted as they should have in this situation," Ashkenazi said.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak expressed regret for the loss of life, but called IHH, a Turkish group organizing the sea convoy, a violent organization "operating under cover of humanitarian activity."

The ships were being towed to the Israeli port of Ashdod, and wounded were evacuated by helicopter to Israeli hospitals, officials said. Two ships had reached port by midday.

Many of the passengers were from European countries.

The European Union deplored what it called excessive use of force and demanded an investigation by Israel. The EU said the blockade of Gaza, now in its fourth year, is "politically unacceptable," and called for an immediate, sustained opening of crossings into the Hamas-controlled territory, according to a statement by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

Turkey called on the U.N. Security Council to convene in an emergency session about Israel.

Thousands marched in protest in Istanbul, some setting Israeli flags on fire after trying to storm the Israeli consulate. Israel quickly advised to its citizens to avoid travel to Turkey. In neighboring Jordan, hundreds demonstrated in the capital Amman to protest the Israeli action and demand that their government breaks diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.

Israeli security forces were on alert across the country for possible protests.

There were no details on the identities of the casualties, or on the conditions of some of the more prominent people on board, including 1976 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire of Northern Ireland, European legislators and Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein, 85.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the Israeli "aggression," declared three days of mourning across the West Bank and called on the U.N. Security Council and Arab League to hold emergency sessions on the incident.

Ismail Haniyeh, leader of the rival Hamas government in Gaza, condemned the "brutal" Israeli attack and called on U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to intervene.

In Uganda, Ban condemned the deaths of the activists and called for a "thorough" investigation. "Israel must provide an explanation," he said.

The activists were headed to Gaza on a mission meant to draw attention to a 3-year-old Israeli blockade of the coastal territory. Israel and Egypt imposed the blockade after Hamas, which it considers a terrorist group, violently seized the territory. Critics say the blockade has unfairly hurt Gaza's 1.5 million people.

Before the ships set sail from waters off the east Mediterranean island of Cyprus on Sunday, Israel had urged the flotilla not to try to breach the blockade and offered to transfer some of the cargo to Gaza from an Israeli port, following a security inspection.

The violent takeover threatened to deal yet another blow to Israel's international image, already tarnished by war crimes accusations in Gaza and its blockade of the impoverished Palestinian territory.

Organizers included people affiliated with the International Solidarity Movement, a pro-Palestinian group that often sends international activists into battle zones, and the IHH.

The Turkish group is an Islamic humanitarian group that is based in Istanbul but operates in several other countries. Israel recently arrested the IHH's West Bank operative, but said his arrest was not related to the planned aid mission.

Hasan Naiboglu, the Turkish maritime affairs undersecretary, told the Anatolia news agency that Israel had jammed communications with the ships. He accused Israel of violating international law by carrying out the raid in international waters.

Turkey had unofficially supported the aid mission and has been vocally critical of Israeli military operations against Palestinians in Gaza.

The flotilla of three cargo ships and three passenger ships carrying 10,000 tons of aid and 700 activists was carrying items that Israel bars from reaching Gaza, like cement and other building materials.

This is the ninth time that the Free Gaza movement has tried to ship in humanitarian aid to Gaza since August 2008.

Israel has allowed ships through five times, but has blocked them from entering Gaza waters since a three-week military offensive against Gaza's Hamas rulers in January 2009.

The latest flotilla was the largest to date.

---

Goldenberg reported from aboard the Israeli warship INS Kidon. AP writer Selcan Hacaoglu contributed to this report from Ankara.

JERUSALEM Israeli naval commandos stormed a flotilla of ships carrying aid and hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists to the blockaded Gaza Strip on Monday, killing at least 10 passengers in a predawn raid that set off worldwide condemnation and a diplomatic crisis.

Israel said the forces encountered unexpected resistance as they boarded the vessels. Dozens of passengers and at least five Israeli soldiers were wounded in the confrontation in international waters.

Israel's tough response triggered widespread condemnation across Europe; many of the passengers were from European countries. The raid also strained already tense relations with Israel's longtime Muslim ally Turkey, the unofficial sponsor of the mission, and drew more attention to the plight of Gaza's 1.5 million people.

Turkey announced it was withdrawing its ambassador to Israel, canceling three joint military drills and calling on the U.N. Security Council to convene in an emergency session about Israel. The Israeli ambassadors in Sweden, Spain, Denmark and Greece were summoned for meetings, and the French foreign minister called for an investigation.

The violent takeover also threatened to deal yet another blow to Israel's international image, already tarnished by war crimes accusations in Gaza and its blockade of the impoverished Palestinian territory.

It occurred a day before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was to meet with President Barack Obama at the White House to discuss the Middle East peace process.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy condemned "the disproportionate use of force" against the flotilla.

"All light must be shed on the circumstances of this tragedy, which underlines the urgency of resuming peace talks," he said in a statement.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak expressed regret for the deaths but blamed the violence on organizers of the flotilla, calling the effort a "political provocation" by anti-Israel forces.

Israeli security forces were on alert across the country, and the government advised Israelis to avoid travel to Turkey.

There were conflicting accounts of what happened early Monday.

An Al-Jazeera reporter on one of the Turkish ships said the Israelis fired at the vessel before boarding it. The Israelis, who had declared they would not let the ships reach Gaza, said they only opened fire after being attacked by activists with sticks, knives and live fire from weapons seized from the Israeli commandos.

"On board the ship we found weapons prepared in advance and used against our forces," declared Israel's deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon.

"The organizers' intent was violent, their method was violent and the results were unfortunately violent. Israel regrets any loss of life and did everything to avoid this outcome."

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the Israeli "aggression," declared three days of mourning across the West Bank and called on the U.N. Security Council and Arab League to hold emergency sessions on the incident.

Ismail Haniyeh, leader of the rival Hamas government in Gaza, condemned the "brutal" Israeli attack and called on U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to intervene.

Israel's military chief, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, said soldiers were forced by violent activists to respond with live fire.

The activists were headed to Gaza on a mission meant to draw attention to a 3-year-old Israeli blockade of the coastal territory. Israel imposed the blockade after Hamas, which it considers a terrorist group, violently seized the territory. Critics say the blockade has unfairly hurt Gaza's 1.5 million people.

"It's disgusting that they have come on board and attacked civilians. We are civilians," said Greta Berlin, a spokeswoman for the Free Gaza movement, which organized the flotilla. She spoke from the Mediterranean island of Cyprus and said she had lost contact with the flotilla.

Before the ships set sail from waters off the east Mediterranean island of Cyprus on Sunday, Israel had urged the flotilla not to try to breach the blockade and offered to transfer the cargo to Gaza from an Israeli port, following a security inspection.

Israeli naval commandos stormed the ships in a pre-dawn raid while they were in international waters after ordering them to stop about 80 miles (130 kilometers) from Gaza's coast, according to activists.

A Turkish website showed video of pandemonium on board one of the ships, with activists in orange life jackets running around as some tried to help an activist apparently unconscious on the deck. The site also showed video of an Israeli helicopter flying overhead and Israeli warships nearby.

Turkey's NTV showed activists beating one Israeli soldier with sticks as he rappelled from a helicopter onto one of the boats.

The Al-Jazeera satellite channel reported by telephone from the Turkish ship leading the flotilla that Israeli navy forces fired at the ship and boarded it, wounding the captain.

"These savages are killing people here, please help," a Turkish television reporter said.

The broadcast ended with a voice shouting in Hebrew, "Everybody shut up!"

The Israeli military said troops only opened fire after encountering unexpected resistance from the activists. Activists attacked troops with knives and iron rods, and opened fire with two pistols seized from the forces.

A total of five soldiers were wounded, two seriously, including at least one hit by live fire, the army said. Two of the dead activists had fired at soldiers with pistols, the army said.

"They planned this attack," said Israeli military spokeswoman Lt. Col. Avital Leibovitch. "Our soldiers were injured from these knives and sharp metal objects ... as well as from live fire."

The ships were being towed to the Israeli port of Ashdod, and wounded were evacuated by helicopter to Israeli hospitals, officials said. One of the ships had reached port by midday.

There were no details on the identities of the casualties, or on the conditions of some of the more prominent people on board, including 1976 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire of Northern Ireland, European legislators and Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein, 85.

Satellite phones on board the ships were turned off, and communication with a small group of reporters embedded with the Israeli military was blocked.

The Free Gaza Movement is an international group of pro-Palestinian activists that claims the blockade, imposed three years ago after the militant Islamic Hamas group overran Gaza, is unjust and a violation of international law.

Organizers included people affiliated with the International Solidarity Movement, a pro-Palestinian group that often sends international activists into battle zones, and the IHH, a Turkish aid group that Israel accuses of having terrorist links.

Hasan Naiboglu, the Turkish maritime affairs undersecretary, told the Anatolia news agency that Israel had jammed communications with the ships. He accused Israel of violating international law by carrying out the raid in international waters.

Israel's Ynet news website said Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak called Turkish officials, including the defense and foreign ministers, to discuss the raid.

The United Nations expressed "shock" and condemned the killings. "We are in contact with the Israeli authorities to express our deep concern and to seek a full explanation," said a statement from the highest-ranking U.N. official in the region, Robert Serry.

The flotilla of three cargo ships and three passenger ships carrying 10,000 tons of aid and 700 activists was carrying items that Israel bars from reaching Gaza, like cement and other building materials.

This is the ninth time that the Free Gaza movement has tried to ship in humanitarian aid to Gaza since August 2008.

Israel has allowed ships through five times, but has blocked them from entering Gaza waters since a three-week military offensive against Gaza's Hamas rulers in January 2009.

The latest flotilla was the largest to date.

___ Goldenberg reported from aboard the Israeli warship INS Kidon. AP writer Selcan Hacaoglu contributed to this report from Ankara.

Painter Matthew Mitchell's project is deceptively simple: He's painting 100 portraits of people who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The process has taken on a much more powerful reality than he realized it would.

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CNN.com and Stamen Design have launched "Home and Away" [cnn.com], an impressive interactive data visualization that allows users to learn about and pay tribute to more than 6,000 fallen troops from more than 20 countries. Evolving from 2 separate lists of casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq, Home and Away tells the story of where and how the lives of these troops began and ended. The website also allows for personal memories to be continually added by family and friends.

While tackling the many issues involved when dealing with an extremely sensitive dataset, this project attempts to exploit the power of data visualization to engage a wide audience and tell compelling and moving stories, here as an exceptional way to honor the sacrifice every single one of the deceased soldiers made.

Users can search for casualties across several different criteria, including last name, age hometown, location of death and date of death. More detail about the life of each casualty is featured on a personal memorial page, as well as memories from family and friends shared through iReport, CNN's user-generated news community.

More information is also available at Presslift.

Thnkx Erica!

I have no idea at all if Jason Aaron even knows I exist, let alone the particulars of what comics I like, but at this point, I can come to no other conclusion:

That dude has got to be writing comics only for me at this point. But he's not the only one, and that's the subject of tonight's installment of The Internet's Most Shirtless-Batman-Loving Comics Reviews! Here are my thoughts on a couple of the comics I picked up this week!

Return of Bruce Wayne #2: If you don't like this comic, then you're stupid and I probably hate you.

I'm not even kidding. If you asked me to come up with my ideal plot for a comic book, it would be very close to this, a story wherespoiler warning, and seriously, if you haven't read this, stop here and go do so, then go read David Uzumeri's annotations for this issueDarkseid uses The Omega Sanction to turn Bruce Wayne into a living time bullet, counting on him fighting his way through time by sheer shirtless Batmanly determination, while still solving other mysteries and Batmanning in different eras, only for Batman to be one step ahead of him all along. It is, in all honesty, everything I want from a Batman story and more.

It gets to the heart of Morrison's vision of Batman as a character, much in the same way that Final Crisis: Superman Beyond was his vision of Superman writ large. In that story, nothing can hold the Bleed, but Superman can, but here, he's taking it to the next level. It's not just that nobody could survive the Omega Sanction and being lost in caveman daysbut Batman canit's that Darkseid is aware of this and took advantage of it, doing to the 21st Century exactly what he did to Orion in Final Crisis, launching a last spiteful from Hell's heart, I stab at thee strike at the world that defeated him, and that Batman knows all this and is still going to defeat him.

It's the extension of everything Morrison's been doing with the character since JLA and Superman's explicit assertion that Batman's the most dangerous man on Earth, and it's one that comes up again and again in his work, from his role as the Justice League's master planner to the scene in R.I.P. where the Joker talks about how no matter how crazy he gets, Batman draws another mental box around him. It's his defining trait.

Morrison's Superman isn't defined by his powers, he's defined by his morality; the defining scene of All Star Superman isn't Superman fighting Solaris or even Lex Luthor, it's him stopping the girl from committing suicide. It's that he cares. And in the same way, Morrison's Batman is defined by one trait: He is, quite simply, the World's Greatest Detective. No one, not even a god, can out-think him.

Every now and then I'll have a conversation about Batman (surprise!) with my pal and ex-Cracked editor Jay Pinkerton, and he generally takes the tactic of calling me an attention deficit spaz who only wanting Batman to fight gorillas in space, while I tell him he's a narrow-minded child for thinking the grim-and-gritty street vigilante is more valid than other portrayals. If we were sitcom roommates, we would've long ago drawn a line down the middle of the apartment, where Brave and the Bold can only be watched on one side. And yet, we both think this is one of the best comics we've ever read, because the core of the character is valid, even in a bizarre (and to me, awesome) milieu of sun-eater dragons and time travel.

On the art side of things, Frazer Irving does an amazing job here, just as he did in the similarly puritain-themed Seven Soldiers: Klarion with Morrison. What's different here, though, is how he's able to effortlessly go from Batman fighting an Elder Thing to the sci-fi styled Vanishing Point and the literal collapse of the universe to the 17th Century version of street crime, jumping from one to the next in an absolutely beautiful story. There are great, simple tricks that he pulls off perfectlythe shadow of Mordecai's hat shading his face like Batman's mask, the jaw-dropping shock on Malleus's face at the endand the whole experience is fantastic, especially given that Irving was handed the unenviable task of following up Chris Sprouse, who was equally perfect in the first issueand who seriously needs to draw Morrison's run, for real you guys.

So I guess what I'm saying here is that I liked it.

I liked it a lot.

So much, in fact, that talking about anything else at this point just doesn't have the same zing. There was a surprising amount of great comics this weekThunderbolts, Weapon X, Fantastic Four, Secret Avengers, Thor, even a surprisingly fun Brave and the Bold that I'm sure I'll talk about when the second part comes out and the fan-service-filled final (for me) issue of Power Girland a couple of real stinkers, but you guys know where my heart lies.

If you'd like to discuss them, or any other comic you liked this week, have at it!