The Poppy Palaces of Afghanistan

'Poppy palaces' are latest symbol of Afghan corruption


By Karin Brulliard
Saturday, June 5, 2010; 2:55 PM
Washington Post

KABUL -- For rent on Street 6 in the neighborhood of Sherpur: a four-story, 11-bedroom dwelling of pink granite and lime marble, complete with massage showers, a rooftop fountain and, in the basement, an Asian-themed nightclub. Price: $12,000 a month.

It's a relative bargain in this district favored by former warlords and bureaucrats -- Kabul's version of Beverly Hills. There may be a war on, but carnival-colored mansions are mushrooming alongside cratered streets and sewage streams here. Vast outdoor chandeliers, heated indoor pools and acres of mirrored, skyscraper glass windows abound.

The grandiose houses -- derided here as narco-tecture -- have become the most obvious symbols of Afghanistan's corruption, which ranks among the world's worst and is fueled both by an enormous influx of American dollars and by the opium trade. They have paralleled a building boom sweeping this and other Afghan cities, fed by the donor money that has helped distort an economy of haves and have-nots.

But unlike the roads and schools being built, the so-called "poppy palaces" are so garishly incongruous that some observers view them as more cultural erosion in an oft-invaded nation. Traditional Afghan residences are low-slung mud brick with internal courtyards and little external embellishment. Poppy houses, critics grumble, are imported Pakistani designs, with Arab, or simply alien, influences.

"I mix designs from the U.S. and U.K. -- I create my own!" said Haji Akram Mughal, a Pakistani architect who works out of a second-story Sherpur office, where on a recent day he displayed blueprints for two mansions he designed for Afghan Air Force generals, one of which resembled a plantation from the American South.

In most of Afghanistan, where the United Nations says more than one-third of the population lives in "absolute poverty," mud walls and no running water remain the norm. That also prevailed in Sherpur until seven years ago, when local authorities bulldozed rudimentary houses there and gave the land to senior government workers. In their place now stand houses that mimic Roman ruins, the White House and a cruise ship.

Then there are the rooftop birds: Atop two domiciles sit giant statues of eagles, their wings spread.

"When I saw that eagle on my roof, I liked it more than a real one," said Fazil Mohammed, a construction executive who owns the larger of the eagles and its 16-bedroom perch, which he said is leased to a nephew of President Hamid Karzai. Never, Mohammed said, would he have "such a fancy thing" in the typical Afghan neighborhood where he now resides.

"The eagles? I can't place them at all," said Thalia Kennedy, an architectural historian at the Kabul-based Turquoise Mountain Foundation, which preserves historic urban areas. Poppy houses, she said, "seem to represent a massive leap from tradition."

But not entirely: Afghanistan has always been a crossroads, Kennedy said, and some of the poppy houses hint at past eras. The Mughals, whose 16th- and 17th-century South Asian empire included parts of Afghanistan, favored glass decoration, a bit like the sparkly mosaics of some Sherpur verandas, she said. An "obsession" with adorning every inch of a building's interior is common across the Muslim world, she said, something Afghanistan's nouveau riche have taken outside.

Zamani Nawid, a property dealer in Sherpur, said most homeowners acquire blueprints from Pakistan and hire local engineers to do the building, which is often fairly shoddy. Then they rent them to foreigners and go live in Dubai, he said. They are "very powerful people," Nawid said -- the sorts with posses of bodyguards -- and so he asks no questions about their sources of funding.

Among Nawid's listings is a 47-bedroom monstrosity that rents for $47,000 a month. He said he has also sold a property with a poolside feature that sounds like an urban legend: A mechanical contraption that looks like a black crow, and which wraps its wings around swimmers then blows air to dry them off.

"It's bigger than a man," Nawid, 21, said approvingly. "In Afghanistan, there is a lot of competition. So everyone wants a house that is better than the other person."

Among this set, the popular features these days would make a fundamentalist Taliban commander keel over. And for that reason, they are often concealed in the basement, said Mughal, the architect.

"Barbecue -- it's a must. Swimming pool -- it's a must. And -- I feel shame -- drinking," he said about his clients' typical demands. "Yes, a bar. Everybody likes this."

A few blocks away, 80-year-old Mohammed Gul sold brooms and cucumbers outside the earth house he built with his hands three decades ago. It now stands in the shadow of Sherpur palaces, which he said he views with awe and fear.

They are lovely, he said, even if they are "owned by drug dealers." But the city has warned that his patch of land might soon be handed to developers. Then, said Mohammed, "the next day they will come to us with their bulldozers."

No Young Idealist Should Be Shot and Killed for Protesting.

Allison Krause was 19 when shot dead by US troops at Kent State.

A young American citizen on a civilian ship in international waters was shot and killed during an Israeli assault on the ship. The events that led up to the assault and what happened during are not yet known. Was it necessary for such an assault to have taken place and is there justification for it and the consequential deaths?

It is not the first time that a government overreacting to events made such a mistake. This time is was the Jewish State of Israel that was the government and one of the victims an American citizen of Turkish ancestry. It reminded me of an event years ago when four students were killed by US federal troops.

Three of the students shot to death by US troops at Kent State were of the Jewish tradition.

It was then, and is now, an infamous iconic event. What is not controversial was that four innocent idealistic young people were shot and killed in a protest event.

Today from the autopsy report conducted in Turkey, we learn of the fate of another young American protester:

A 19-year-old, named as Fulkan Dogan, who also has US citizenship, was shot five times from less that 45cm, in the face, in the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back. This time it was an Israeli soldier who did the killing.

To be consistent and intellectually honest is not always easy. At the time of Kent State, I supported the US effort in Viet Nam. I was viscerally opposed to the protestors and sympathetic to the US soldiers that killed them, but their leaders were wrong and the deaths were wrong.

Kent State disgusted many in the US who had previously supported the US war effort. Israel needs friends and allies. This foolish attack in the Mediterranean has cost Israel dearly. Questions need to be answered and the appearance of a cover-up should be avoided to prevent further damage.
______________



Remembering Kent State as an American Tragedy With a Jewish Face

THE JEWISH DAILY FORWARD
By Jonah Lowenfeld
Published April 28, 2010, issue of May 07, 2010.

KENT, OHIO — At 11 p.m. on May 3, a group of marchers will begin a candlelight vigil at Kent State University in Ohio to recall what is for many a distant echo from another era.

‘The Day the War Came Home’: Clockwise from top left, Allison Krause, William Schroeder, Sandra Scheuer and Jeffrey Miller were killed when Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on a group of unarmed students and bystanders during campus anti-war protests on May 4, 1970. The shootings came after some students hurled rocks at the soldiers.

The killing of four unarmed students by members of the Ohio National Guard during a national wave of campus protests against the Vietnam War will have its 40th anniversary this year. And as they have every year since 1971, those honoring the students’ memory will circle the area where the demonstrations took place and end up in the parking lot where they were killed.

There, the gathering will hear students from the campus Hillel recite the Kaddish.

The Jewish prayer for the dead has been recited regularly at this annual event since the early 1980s — a reflection of the fact that three of the “four dead in Ohio” famously memorialized in song by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were Jewish.

Neither at the time of the shootings nor since has anyone looked closely at this odd fact — one that seems odder still for a campus where Jews have never made up more than 5% of those enrolled. Karen Weinberger, a sorority sister of Sandra Scheuer, one of the slain, recalled that back then “it wasn’t anything that was really of great significance. The significance was the fact that you had four students that died and nine that were injured.”

But if the shootings themselves were not a Jewish tragedy, the first commemorations of them were overwhelmingly so. “What happened that day was not a Jewish event,” said Tom Sudow, an alumnus who transferred to Kent State in the fall of 1973. “The response to May 4 in a lot of ways, though, became a Jewish event.”

Today, the killings are memorialized by no fewer than four separate markers at and around the site. They convey official recognition of what happened there by everyone from the campus administration to the federal government, to the Ohio Historical Society. But in 1971, as the first anniversary of the killings approached, there were no plans to do anything to note the date’s passing. The war in Vietnam was still raging, Richard Nixon was still president, and Kent State seemed unwilling to confront its recent bloody history. “It wasn’t, ‘Cover up,’” Sudow recalled. “It was, ‘If we ignore it, maybe it will go away.’”


‘Four Dead in Ohio’: Mary Ann Vecchio screams as she kneels over the body of student Jeffrey Miller during an anti-war demonstration on May 4, 1970.

It was the campus Jewish community that stepped up then. “Hillel was very involved and had a prominent role in commemorating the lives of the four students lost,” said Jennifer Chestnut, the current executive director of Hillel at Kent State.

The Kent State Hillel back then was housed in a rented apartment and had a staff of one: Rabbi Gerald Turk. A charismatic Orthodox rabbi known for his Bukharan yarmulke and his out-of-the-box programming, Turk led the effort to place a simple plaque bearing the names of the four victims on the ground of the parking lot where they died. Dedicated May 4, 1971, it was the first physical marker of the deaths on campus.

In 1974, the plaque was stolen and later returned, riddled with bullet holes. A granite replacement was rededicated by a group of faculty members on May 4, 1975. It remained the only physical memorial on campus until 1990, when the university administration dedicated its own memorial.

The Jewish community on campus still commemorates the events of May 4, often in the context of universitywide events. The candlelight walk and vigil — one of the most distinctive elements of the annual May 4 commemoration — exemplify this.

Initiated in 1971 by then assistant professor of sociology Jerry Lewis, the yearly walk begins in the area of the campus where the protests took place, and ends at midnight in the parking lot where Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer, and William Schroeder were killed. The midnight vigil continues, in 30-minute shifts, until 12:24 p.m. on May 4 — the exact time of the shootings.

Lewis, now a professor emeritus, has tried, by his own account, to keep the walk and vigil simple. But he did allow for one significant addition: “In the early 1980s, Rabbi Turk came to me and said, ‘Do you mind if I say Kaddish?’ I said, ‘Of course I don’t mind,’ because I knew that three of the students were of the Jewish tradition.”

In the meantime, as tempers have cooled, many of the questions about what happened then have been resolved, but not all.

When Nixon announced the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia on April 30, 1970, students on campuses across the country protested. At Kent State, students broke windows of some of the businesses in the city of Kent. And at 5 p.m. the next day, amid rumors of plans to destroy the ROTC building on the campus, the mayor of Kent summoned the National Guard. The ROTC building did go up in flames Saturday evening, May 2, and the guardsmen then cleared students from the area, using tear gas and bayonets.

The next day, Ohio Governor James Rhodes visited the campus — by then wholly occupied by the Guard. Rhodes, who was in a tough race for the Republican nomination to the U.S. Senate, gave a speech designed to cement his position as a law-and-order candidate. He called the students who rioted “worse than the Brown Shirts and the communist element,” and promised to use “whatever force necessary to drive them out of Kent.” On Monday, May 4, at a noontime protest, demonstrators defied dispersal orders from the guardsmen, with some of the students hurling rocks at them from a distance. After an extended standoff, 28 guardsmen fired 67 rounds in 13 seconds at a group of unarmed student demonstrators and nearby bystanders. Four were killed; nine were wounded.

Protesters Krause and Miller were both Jewish. Scheuer and Schroeder, were bystanders, Scheuer being the third Jew.

In September 1970, a federal panel established to investigate the Kent State deaths — as well as the killing of two black students at Jackson State University in Mississippi and campus unrest nationwide —condemned the “indiscriminate firing of rifles into a crowd of students” at Kent State as “unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable.”

In the years since, numerous articles, books, government inquiries, TV specials and films have attempted to answer some of the difficult questions about “the day the Vietnam War came home.” Were students armed, as was initially reported? (No.) Were guardsmen ordered to fire? (It appears that they were — though no individual was ever clearly identified or held accountable for giving the order.) Were so-called outside agitators responsible for inciting the students to protest? (Possibly, but every one of the dead and wounded was a full-time Kent State student.)

Alan Canfora, a Kent State alumnus who was among the wounded protesters, recalled, “There were about 500 protesters there, and another 1,500 bystanders.” That three of the slain were Jews, he said, was “just an extremely unlikely mathematical probability.” No one believes they were — or could have been — especially targeted.

Few beyond the Kent State campus know about the Jewish connection to the events of May 4. But in 1970, at least some American Jews were aware of their connection to Krause, Miller and Scheuer. “I heard from so many people,” said Elaine Holstein, Miller’s mother, “and I know there were people in the Jewish community. Most people were very supportive.”

Canfora, as director of the Kent May 4 Center, for years has been collecting materials related to the shooting. When the Krause and Scheuer families invited him to retrieve materials from their houses for his archive in the 1990s, he found “numerous letters from synagogues across the country” among the papers. Each family had also received “hundreds of certificates,” Canfora said, “where members of the Jewish community across our country had purchased a tree in Israel and planted it in memory of our martyrs.”

In recent years, the university has become more comfortable with the legacy of May 4. At the urging of students, faculty and alumni, Kent State has established a number of memorials to the slain and wounded students. Earlier this year, part of the campus was added to the National Register of Historic Places. And later this year, the university will open the May 4 Visitors Center, which tells about the history of the university’s darkest day.

But to all this, Doris Krause, whose daughter, Allison, was 19 when she was killed, responded as any mother would. “I wish it weren’t so,” she said.

Obama Reads the Polls and Decides He Is Furious.

'Furious' Obama heading to Gulf for spill update
By NANCY BENAC (AP) – 19 minutes ago

WASHINGTON — Determined to project both command and compassion, President Barack Obama is returning to the Louisiana coast for a fresh look at work to stanch the oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico and the spiraling effects of the nation's worst environmental disaster. The president underscored the mounting political implications by abruptly canceling plans for a trip to Indonesia and Australia later this month.

Addressing a crisis that threatens to undermine his presidency, Obama spoke for many Thursday in declaring himself furious at a situation that "is imperiling an entire way of life and an entire region for potentially years." Friday's trip will be his second to the Gulf in eight days, answering critics in both parties who suggest he has seemed detached from the crisis.

Polls show the public growing more negative toward the president's handling of the spill.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs announced late Thursday that Obama was scrapping his foreign trip — which already had been postponed — "to deal with important issues, one of which is the oil spill."

Obama had a sensitive political decision to make: Risk putting off two allies in a strategic part of the world once again, or endure all the inevitable backlash of being on the other side of the world during a crisis at home.
The domestic agenda proved dominant.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia and the president of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, both said through spokesmen they were disappointed but understood it was necessary for Obama to stay home and deal with the crisis.

While in Louisiana, Obama planned to meet with Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who is overseeing the response effort, and with state and local officials, then visit with residents of the small barrier island community of Grand Isle, where oil is washing up on beaches and lives have been upended by the spill.

"I am so Furious"

The president's trip comes as engineers with British oil company BP worked to settle a funnel-like cap over the deep-sea leak to try to collect some of the crude now fouling four states. The cap started pumping oil and gas to a tanker on the surface overnight, but it wasn't clear how much, and crude continued to spew.

In an interview Thursday with CNN's Larry King, Obama expressed dissatisfaction with the pace of BP's reaction, saying, "What I haven't seen as much as I'd like is the kind of rapid response."

His administration on Thursday handed the company a $69 million bill for recovery costs to date — a figure sure to grow in the weeks and months ahead.

The president visited the Gulf region twice in May, and Friday's visit surely will not be his last, as the president tries to show he's staying on top of the situation, without getting in the way.

"You never want to take resources away from the response and recovery efforts, so we're certainly mindful of that," Gibbs said. "At the same time ... I think he'll go as often as he thinks that is productive in aiding those response efforts."

Somewhere between 22 million and 47 million gallons of crude oil have been disgorged into the Gulf since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20, according to government estimates. Eleven workers were killed in the blast.

Obama told King he was furious that "someone didn't think through the consequences of their actions," and he tried to deflect criticism that he hasn't shown enough emotion about the epic dimensions of the problem.

"I would love to just spend a lot of my time venting and yelling at people," the president said, "but that's not the job I was hired to do. My job is to solve this problem."

Traveling in Singapore Friday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he could not foresee a more active role for the military. "The truth of the matter is, we don't have any expertise in this area," he said at a news conference. Gates said the military has already offered help in the form of manpower, and stands ready to do more if asked.
"We'll do whatever we can to help," Gates said, "but this is not our area of specialty."

The president may well get questions about the administration's mixed signals on future drilling in the Gulf. The government's Minerals Management Service stopped issuing permits for new oil and gas drilling in the Gulf, but an administration official denied that a formal freeze had been decreed on drilling in shallow water.

Obama said he was "supportive of offshore drilling if it can be done safely and it doesn't result in these kinds of horrible environmental disasters."

Obama says, "I'll give you something to holler about."

These are the days of worthless Batchelor of Arts degrees.
The fruit of outcome-based education and affirmative action.

President Obama on controlling the debt: "Somehow people say, why are you doing that, I'm not sure that's good politics. I'm doing it because I said I was going to do it and I think it's the right thing to do. People should learn that lesson about me because next year when I start presenting some very difficult choices to the country, I hope some of these folks who are hollering about deficits and debt step-up because I'm calling their bluff. We'll see how much of that, how much of the political arguments that they're making right now are real and how much of it was just politics."

NJ Governor Christie Takes on Teacher Thuggery

Christie speaks in Washington DC, calling Newark schools 'absolutely disgraceful'

Christie says he and Obama agree on school reform; the teachers union is the only one out of step

Contents HT: New Jersey Star Ledger

Joran va ser Sloot Murders again. This Time in Peru

HERE IS SHIT BIRD JORAN VAN DER SLOOT's INTERVIEW WITH GRETA SUSTREN:





Joran van der Sloot manhunt continues in Chile, autopsy of Stephany Flores in progress in Peru
BY SEAN ALFANO
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Thursday, June 3rd 2010, 8:43 AM



Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/06/03/2010-06-03_joran_van_der_sloot_manhunt_continues_in_chile_autopsy_of_stephany_flores_in_pro.html#ixzz0pnQxbvdQ

Chilean police continue their manhunt for Joran van der Sloot, the Dutch playboy and prime suspect in the 2005 Natalee Holloway murder who now stands accused of killing a 21-year-old woman in her hotel room in Peru.

Officials in Chile said van der Sloot, 22, entered their country a couple days after he is suspected of killing Stephany Flores in a Lima hotel, where he was staying.

Flores' body was found clothed, face down on the hotel room floor Wednesday, abrasions on her face and body, and signs of trauma, Peruvian Police Gen. Cesar Guardia said. An autopsy is in progress.

Van der Sloot was in Lima for a poker tournament, police said, and appears with Flores in a video at a casino. A hotel employee spotted the pair around 5 a.m.

"We have an interview with a worker at the hotel who says she saw this foreigner with the victim enter his room," said Guardia.

The police say van der Sloot fled the hotel, alone, four hours later.

Chilean authorities believe he is still in their country and are searching hotels in the tiny towns of its northern provinces.

The May 30 murder comes exactly five years after Natalee Holloway, an 18-year-old Alabama woman disappeared in Aruba, the Caribbean island where van der Sloot's now deceased father was a prominent judge.

Twice, Aruban police arrested van der Sloot only to release him over a lack of evidence.

In 2008, van der Sloot was caught on camera, confessing to a Dutch crime reporter that he dumped Holloway's drunk, unconscious body into the ocean.

The judge in the case, however, declined to re-arrest van der Sloot.

Holloway's mother, Beth Twitty, is aware of the latest murder rap against van der Sloot, but had no comment, a family spokeswoman told The Associated Press.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/06/03/2010-06-03_joran_van_der_sloot_manhunt_continues_in_chile_autopsy_of_stephany_flores_in_pro.html#ixzz0pnQb7TyK

Four Turks Amongst the Killed. Israel Orders Diplomat's Families out of Turkey.

Israel Orders Families of Diplomats Out of Turkey
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: June 2, 2010

Filed at 1:14 a.m. ET

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israeli media say the Foreign Ministry has ordered the families of its diplomats in Turkey to leave that country because of the uproar over Israel's deadly naval raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla.

State-run Israel radio and other stations and newspapers say the diplomatic mission itself will remain in Turkey.

A ministry spokesman would neither confirm nor deny Tuesday's reports.

At least four Turkish activists were among the nine killed by Israeli naval commandos in the raid Sunday on an international flotilla bringing aid to Gaza.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel of a ''bloody massacre'' and thousands of Turks have protested across the country.

HAVE NO FEAR. OBAMA IS IN CHARGE:

The Genius of Bizzaro Netanyahu and Israel's Catastrophic Bungled Operation

To make this post, I did a search on Youtube and simply typed in the word "Israel" and constrained the search for videos posted "today". The entire page of posts were all hostile towards Israel. Israel once again has lost the propaganda war with the Palestinians.

Netanyahu has cancelled his talks with Obama.

Israel is in danger of losing her only Islamic ally,Turkey. The US and British government are making statements of regret over the events.

Another job well done by the political genius, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Israel is isolating itself, losing sympathy, allies, and doing grave danger to its own image. The claims that masked armed troops, at night, repelling aboard civilian ships in International waters were victims of attack are ludicrous. That is on a par with a burglar suing a homeowner because he was assaulted while breaking into a window.

Defenders of Israel are lashing out at those who critcize Israel. Clearly, there are many just do not like Israel, but Israel better wake up and realize it is estranging both friends and enemies. This latest action is about as bad as it gets for international public relations.

Netanyahu must have been watching some old "Mission Impossible" films.

This latest act by Netanyahu is a self-inflicted disaster for Israel. Israel would be wise to get rid of Netantahu, fast.

If Israel stays on its present course, it will be the architect of its own undoing, to the dismay of its friends and the glee of its enemies.

__________


Israel reconstruction: how the Gaza aid flotilla attack unfolded


Telegraph

Kevin Ovenden, aboard the lead ship, the Turkish Mavi Marmara, sensed a tense game of cat-and-mouse in the Mediterranean sea was about to come to a dramatic climax.

Having set off on Sunday hoping to avoid the Israeli military, he wrote on his blog: "We are 90 miles away from land – 22 miles further than the Israeli-decided 68-mile exclusion zone – but are being approached by an Israeli vessel.

"The Israeli media is reporting that Israel will deploy a very large naval force … this is an illegal aggressive move.
"All aboard are prepared. This is a very serious situation and we are calling on everyone to play their part in helping ensure their safety, and that the aid reaches Gaza without difficulty."

The flotilla, which had been warned that it would not be allowed to reach Gaza, attempted to slow and change course, hoping to prevent a confrontation until daylight, when the Israeli military action could be better filmed and broadcast by the activists aboard.

But at just after 4.30am, nuder cover of darkness, the Israelis called for decisive action. Orders were sent for commandos to intercept and takeover the ships – and so began a catastrophic, bungled operation which would claim the lives of up to 19 people, and draw international condemnation.

Just after Mr Ovenden had blogged about the silhouette of rubber launches and speedboats approaching on the murky waters, barely visible in the darkness, a helicopter began hovering overheard.

The aid armada was still in international waters, but commandos had swarmed around it and targeted the biggest ship, the Marmara.

Incensed by the aggressive attempt to capture their vessel, 30 or more activists gathered on the top deck and readied themselves for the assault. Hundreds more, who had been sleeping in the lower two decks, were roused by the commotion.
While groups of 10 commandos at a time jumped aboard from their rubber launches, elite troops from the Israeli commando unit Flotilla 13 rappelled down from the helicopter on to the Marmara. Their plan was to land on the top deck, rush to the vessel's bridge and order the captain to stop. They had been ordered to take control of the flotilla peacefully, just as they had with previous flotillas.

But the instant they landed, pandemonium broke loose.

Some activists claim that the troops, carrying rifles and handguns, and wearing body armour, began firing indiscriminately.
However, video footage released by the Israeli Defence Force suggested they were attacked first with a metal pole, sticks, clubs, and marble slingshots.

The troops responded with by throwing stun grenades, but the loud burst explosions that went off with each one whipped up a frenzied atmosphere as the activists believed they were being fired upon.

Television pictures showed activists with sticks bludgeoning an Israeli soldier as he tried to land on the boat from the helicopter, with activists tugging at the rope.

One commando was then grabbed by several of the protestors, who wrestled his handgun off him and allegedly threw him over the edge of the top deck, 30 feet below.

It was the point where the chaotic melee descended to bloodshed.

The Flotilla 13 troops now radioed to their commander for permission to begin shooting.
The commander replied: "You can go ahead and fire".

According to one witness, the Israeli journalist Ron Ben Yishai: "The soldiers pulled out their handguns and started shooting at the rioters' legs."

Shaking television footage showed one man lying unconscious on the deck, while another man was helped away.

A woman wearing hijab, the Muslim headscarf, was seen carrying a stretcher covered in blood.

Screams were interspersed with sounds of more gunfire.

One unnamed reporter, from Press TV, said in a broadcast: "We are being hit by tear gas, stun grenades. We have navy boats on either side and a helicopters overhead. We are being attacked from all sides. This is in intenational waters, not Israeli waters, not in the 68-mile exclusion zone."

Jamal Elshayyal, a British al-Jazeera reporter on board the Marmara, sent a final report just after the troops had landed.
"Two people have been confirmed killed by the Israeli Army, and the organisers on board the Mavi Marmara have now asked all the passengers to go inside. They have raised the white flag.

"Tens of people, civilians, have been injured. There are still sounds of live fire, despite the white flag being raised."
The broadcast stopped with a voice shouting in Hebrew "Everyone shut up" as the reporters were bundled down into the lower decks.

As the disaster unfolded, the airwaves went ominously quiet – the Israelis had scrambled all mobile phones and satellites – and the claim and counter-claim began.

Israeli authorities gave no details of the injuries suffered by activists. It confirmed that 10 were dead, although government sources suggested the figure could be as high as 19.

The Israeli military defended itself, saying the troops were deliberately ambushed by activists in a planned attack. At least ten personnel were injured, one seriously, it said.

Two of the dead activists had fired at soldiers with pistols, the army also claimed.

An IDF spokesman said: "We didn't look for confrontation but it was a massive attack," she said. "What happened was a last resort."

The stories of those onboard have yet to be told.

With the main ship effectively seized, and the supporting five boats also captured, the flotilla was guided to the port of Ashdod, while the injured and bodies of the dead were airlifted to hospitals in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Ashkelon.

But supporters across the world condemned the attack on a "peaceful mission".

The Free Gaza Movement, one of the organisers of the flotilla, said the IDF had started the violence, firing as soon as they boarded the ship.

There were no firearms carried by the activists, it was claimed.

Their cargo had included simply 10,000 tonnes of aid and an eclectic mix of around 650 activists, including European parliamentarians, women, children, the media. They even had the support of "celebrity" protestors such as Mairead Corrigan Maguire, the Irish Nobel peace laureate, and best selling author of the Wallander detective novels, Henning Mankell.