Cap'n Refsmmat

Damn. That's terrible. Check around local pawnshops and stuff; I find it hard to believe a rabid guitar enthusiast raided your house just to get a rare guitar. They probably thought "hey, a nice guitar, I can sell that for a few hundred." Since it's rare, it'll definitely stand out when they try to sell it. Keep an eye open.

It doesn't really tie up the system -- it could take a few hundred more people online at a time before we hit any troubles handling everyone. Just composing a post doesn't tie anything up. That's weird. Are you using the WYSIWYG editor? (as in, not typing BBCode but pressing the bold button and getting bold text in the editor) It might get messed up by the spellchecker. Hitting backspace in the wrong place is something I run into fairly often. Firefox seems to save the data when I go forward again, so I don't lose anything -- unless I'm using Quick Reply, when the box is empty when I get back. Very annoying.

According to the articles presenting that claim, Netanyahu gave no evidence. Now, as for (a) and (b). (a) isn't a valid excuse, because there's no way for Israel to have known that until after they boarded. (And there aren't international standards for searching boats.) It's not like they could say "No, we reject your inspections, because we're going to find knives aboard." Also, knives are a perfectly normal thing to find aboard boats, considering that there are kitchens. A lot of people I know carry around pocket knives as well. Also, the point of the inspections is to check the cargo for items not to be sent to Gaza. The knives were personal effects of the passengers. They would have been irrelevant if the IDF did not board, because there'd be no opportunity to use them on anyone. Knives are only important if you want a fight. What articles are these? Here's another account I just found: http://pulsemedia.org/2010/06/06/ken-okeefe-we-the-defenders-of-the-mavi-marmara/ The videos and pictures and audio communication that came out are incomplete. They don't tell us what happened, they show us a sliver of the events. There aren't any pictures or video of how the Israelis treated their prisoners, so eyewitness accounts of Israeli brutality are all you're going to get. The videos don't tell us anything about before the helicopters arrived, about what the people on the boat were thinking, about what was going on below decks, about what happened after the ship was seized. Also, seeing that the IDF has already been found to have released a doctored audio recording, I would not be surprised if what we have been shown is the nice, IDF-friendly side. Now, in other news, regarding legality: the National Lawyer's Guild's International Committee has put out a press release stating unequivocally that the blockade is illegal. http://www.nlginternational.org/news/article.php?nid=313 (see http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3665517,00.html ) [emphasis all mine] Go and read it. If you accept the premise of disproportionality, which is easy (considering Gaza's current state), then the rest follows quite nicely. Also, these people are lawyers.

I have pointed out twice already that Turkey searched the ships before their departure, according to their Prime Minister.

Oh no. No, if there were no deaths, the actions of the flotilla would have been largely unremarkable and nobody would really care. The boats would be towed to Israel, everyone would say "that wasn't so bad," and the blockade would continue. Instead, some people died, and outrage erupted. It doesn't matter if those people were fighting and were a threat; they died. On a mission to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza. Sure, they were asking for it, but they died, and the media had something to latch onto. Now, everyone's interested. Everyone goes, looks, and learns what's happening: Israel is blockading Gaza, many Gazans are in poverty, humanitarian efforts go badly, etc. Now the UN is condemning the blockade and Iran is seizing the PR opportunity to pick on Israel. (Although Iran would take any chance they could get. If Netanyahu sneezed on TV they'd send a ship full of Kleenexes to Gaza, just because.) Nations are demanding investigations and searching through international law. That wouldn't happen if this ended peacefully. No, the protesters succeeded brilliantly. Their actions brought attention to the blockade of Gaza, just as they wanted. They may have brought negative attention upon themselves, but they don't care. In the end, people are demanding action about Gaza now, and so they've won. It's a pity people had to die to achieve that.

Which is funny, actually, since I understand lots of them were given knuckle sandwiches when they first landed on the deck. Must not have liked the taste. ...I apologize, that was in bad taste

You just have to follow the rules when slaughtering her, that's all. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhabiha

I think that's a steak knife. Maybe they want to treat him to dinner. (not a great weapon in any case, but stabby nevertheless)

No. Just the ones that declared them to be impartial. http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israel-awaiting-green-light-from-u-s-for-internal-gaza-flotilla-probe-1.294786 Nope. By the IDF. Although there'll be a separate investigation to make the US happy as well. Also, the account Double K linked to made it very clear that the journalists were on the upper decks, taking pictures of the action. And I was right -- they said they smuggled three microSD cards out. Hope they release the pictures soon. Henning Mankell was on one of the other boats, and that was where his stuff was stolen. He also stated that others on the boat were beaten up or Tased if they were too slow or asked for something, like water or a restroom. Also, a nice picture:

They can enforce the blockade without stealing the property of those on the ships. Of course, Mankell also believes the boarding was illegal, but stealing his socks was the last straw.

Well, he says they stole everything else, too:

One account I read (I've read so many that I have no idea where it was) commented that an officer on one of the IDF boats approaching the Marmara fired three shots from his handgun into the air, as a warning or something. Easy enough to hear that and say "they're shooting at us!"

I'd imagine it's easy to overpower a digital satellite transmission; digital transmissions tend to drop out pretty fast once the transmission quality gets too low. (Digital shortwave radio, for example, has high-quality audio, but a shorter range because the digital audio becomes impossible to decode once there's too much noise.) I doubt the manufacturers really anticipate jamming, anyway. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged True. Some have argued that the Israelis fired first, and so the flotilla defended themselves against the IDF justifiably, but I can't imagine anyone thinking they can defend themselves successfully against trained men with guns by using metal bars and pointed sticks. All you're going to do is get shot a few more times. But again, it'd be nice to know what really happened.

...the IDF jammed their satellite feeds, so I doubt there's much of interest online.

The activists had live satellite video feeds set up, not the IDF.

Hmm. I just checked and discovered that the time limit before being logged out is 15 minutes; if it takes you more than 15 minutes to compose a response, or you don't visit the site for 15 minutes, you're logged out. Since a lot of our users take time to compose responses and find sources, I've doubled that to 30 minutes. Hope that helps.

That's not the only issue people have with the attack, though. One account I read stated that the Israeli forces had not been trained in the crowd-control weapons they used -- paintball guns and Tasers. Others have suggested that riot police should have been sent in instead of a commando unit. The majority of the objections in this thread, however, center around the blockade itself, and whether it is legal and effective against Hamas. Without the blockade, there'd be no need for this assault. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged What I read stated that the IDF jammed their satellite phones and such.

Regarding the confiscation and return of videos and equipment: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ioi_0jtO9RjMwPNRoXNCndRPRq3gD9G3T8FG0 (in a hurry, of course, so they didn't have time to take their stuff with them) http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=51737 http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2010/jun/04/press-freedom-israel

Not quite everything? The pictures could be from just one camera. There were 600 people on the boat; there was more than one camera. And I'm fairly certain that nothing short of a full body cavity search could find a SD card if you reeaally wanted to hide it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2010/jun/05/flotilla-raid-henning-mankell-diary?CMP=twt_gu Henning Mankell disagrees. Angrily. Socks! Perhaps the pictures that were published were ones that got through without the IDF noticing -- it's not that hard to hide an SD card, considering how small they are.

The accounts from journalists that I've read have said that the recordings were confiscated by the IDF, as well as their cameras, computers, etc. Henning Mankell (Swedish novelist) also says they stole his socks.

But why is the IDF saying this instead of the protesters? It'd be a brilliant excuse for the violence -- "that wasn't us!" Instead, they've said that Israel fired first as their excuse. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Awesome, thanks for digging that up. We'll see in the coming weeks how well this goes -- if Hamas lets things in, how the aid organizations handle it, and if any further flotilla incidents (I believe Iran wants in on the action now) change things.

Indeed. Three weeks of registration, fifty posts. I believe that's explained at the notice on top of the Religion forum.

So you pick the number for God so that your hypothesis works? Isn't that backwards?

...get a few more husbands to handle all your wives? er, wait...