The European Union is spending millions of pounds developing “Orwellian” technologies designed to scour the internet and CCTV images for “abnormal behaviour”.

A five-year research programme, called Project Indect, aims to develop computer programmes which act as “agents” to monitor and process information from web sites, discussion forums, file servers, peer-to-peer networks and even individual computers.

Its main objectives include the “automatic detection of threats and abnormal behaviour or violence”.
Project Indect, which received nearly £10 million in funding from the European Union, involves the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and computer scientists at York University, in addition to colleagues in nine other European countries.

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of human rights group Liberty, described the introduction of such mass surveillance techniques as a “sinister step” for any country, adding that it was “positively chilling” on a European scale.

The Indect research, which began this year, comes as the EU is pressing ahead with an expansion of its role in fighting crime, terrorism and managing migration, increasing its budget in these areas by 13.5% to nearly £900 million.

The European Commission is calling for a “common culture” of law enforcement to be developed across the EU and for a third of police officers – more than 50,000 in the UK alone – to be given training in European affairs within the next five years.

Continue reading: THE TIMES

Russia’s deployment of extra troops in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia has brought the prospect of war “very close”, a minister of ex-Soviet Georgia said on Tuesday.

Separately, in comments certain to fan rising tension between Moscow and Tbilisi, the “foreign minister” of the breakaway Black Sea region was quoted as saying it was ready to hand over military control to Russia.

“We literally have to avert war,” Temur Iakobashvili, a Georgian State Minister, told reporters in Brussels.

Asked how close to such a war the situation was, he replied: “Very close, because we know Russians very well.”

“We know what the signals are when you see propaganda waged against Georgia. We see Russian troops entering our territories on the basis of false information,” he said.

(Continue reading: Reuters)

French President Nicolas Sarkozy strode into office a year ago after talking big about economic growth, but by early 2008 he complained that “the till’s already empty”—as he sported flashy accessories and stepped out with an even flashier new partner, Carla Bruni.  Now, “Sarko” is doing crisis management and offering apologies for his past mistakes.

(Continue reading: Truthdig)

In France and Germany, students are being forced to undergo a dangerous indoctrination. Taught that economic principles such as capitalism, free markets, and entrepreneurship are savage, unhealthy, and immoral, these children are raised on a diet of prejudice and bias. Rooting it out may determine whether Europe’s economies prosper or continue to be left behind. 

Millions of children are being raised on prejudice and disinformation. Educated in schools that teach a skewed ideology, they are exposed to a dogma that runs counter to core beliefs shared by many other Western countries. They study from textbooks filled with a doctrine of dissent, which they learn to recite as they prepare to attend many of the better universities in the world. Extracting these children from the jaws of bias could mean the difference between world prosperity and menacing global rifts. And doing so will not be easy. But not because these children are found in the madrasas of Pakistan or the state-controlled schools of Saudi Arabia. They are not. Rather, they live in two of the world’s great democracies—France and Germany. 

(Continue reading: Foreign Policy)

As demand for downloading television programmes soars, broadcasters and ISPs are arguing over who should foot the bill for keeping the internet up to speed.

Ashley Highfield is stepping down as director of future media at the BBC to head the Kangaroo Project, the joint venture between the three main broadcasters to make their content available on demand over the internet.

When it goes live later this year, the scheme, which was first put together at the end of last year, will give viewers a single place to access programmes from Channel 4, ITV and BBC Worldwide. And although it will initially function over the internet, in the longer term it could be available on other platforms such as Freeview, BT Vision or Virgin Media.

“Kangaroo will be an important shop window for UK broadcaster content”, Michael Grade, the executive chairman of ITV, said.

Despite the warm words, the scheme is born of necessity rather than desire. All three channels already have their own web services, but they have recognised that the user-friendliness of a single portal stands a better chance of success against both internet aggregators such as Google and traditional rivals such as Sky.

Adam Daum, a media analyst at Gartner, said: “Ideally, the broadcasters want everyone to come to their own site because then they have complete control over both the user experience and, in the case of the commercial operators, over the advertising. Kangaroo is a trade-off between their interests and those of their customers.”

One of the big issues in the short term will be copyright. The implications of on-demand viewing, rather than linear broadcast, are significant – as last year’s writers’ strike in Hollywood illustrated. The channels will face sticky negotiations with third-party producers over the rights to sell content worldwide, and on-demand, rather than as a one-off, or even with repeats, within the UK.

“It will be very messy for broadcasters who don’t produce the majority of their content because they will have to renegotiate worldwide rights not just for the internet, but potentially also for IPTV, cable, even mobile devices,” Mr Daum said.

The boom in on-demand services is not only raising issues within the TV industry. It is also causing major headaches over the capacity of the internet, and the multi-billion-pound infrastructure upgrades needed to handle the exponentially larger bandwidth requirements.

But the broadcasters are not far behind. The BBC’s iPlayer, launched at Christmas, now attracts a weekly audience of 1.1 million and showed 42 million programmes in the first three months of the year, including hits such as The Apprentice. Channel 4’s 4oD service is also growing fast, with a 110 per cent rise in active users this year and a 100 million rise in viewing figures since it launched popular programmes such as Shameless. ITV.com peaked last November with around 2.2 million viewers for programmes like Bionic Woman.

There is already a row brewing between online content providers and internet service providers (ISPs) faced with costs as high as £830m over the next three years to handle the extra traffic from video services. Industry representatives say discussions are constructive. But Mr Highfield caused a storm this month by threatening to name and shame ISPs that restrict iPlayer traffic. And Simon Gunter, the head of strategy at Tiscali, is leading a call from the ISP industry for the BBC to stump up some of the costs so they do not have to be passed on to consumers.

But the ISP question – which is caused by the cost of “backhaul” to the core network – is symptomatic of a longer-term issue about the massive amounts of investment that will be required to upgrade the UK communications infrastructure.

Antony Walker, the chief executive of the Broadband Stakeholder Group, said: “Today’s services are within the capability of the existing network but as we look forward … there will be an impact on the access infrastructure.”

BT is already spending £10bn on its 21st Century Network programme, which will replace 17 ageing fixed-line networks with one internet protocol-based system by 2011. And improved broadband technology installed in local exchanges has helped push bandwidths up to current top speeds of around 20 Mbit/s, although average rates were still a measly 4.6 Mbit/s last year.

But while international rivals from France to South Korea push ahead with investments offering speeds of up to 100 Mbit/s, progress in the UK is slow. There are some minor trials under way. Some 10,000 homes in Ebbsfleet in Kent will have the option of 100 Mbit/s connections from August as part of a BT pilot. And Virgin Media, which owns the cable network spanning around half the country, is to extend its 50 Mbit/s service to 9 million homes by the end of the year. The bottleneck is the so-called “last mile” of copper telephone line that runs from individual premises to local exchanges. And it will cost an estimated £15bn over 10 years, plus untold roadworks, to upgrade it to the fibre-optic cable needed for super-high speeds.

BT, which owns the copper network, says the commercial case simply does not exist in the current regulatory climate.

Ofcom launched its consultation in December and is expected to report later this year. And a government review, led by Francesco Caio, the former group chief executive of Cable & Wireless, has begun. But there are no easy answers, not least because BT’s preferred option – to increase the amount of money it is allowed to charge other operators for access to its exchanges – is widely opposed by its rivals.

With online viewing figures shooting up, the race is on to find a workable strategy. And developments in the mobile sector are likely to add to the pressure.

Mobile phone network operators are starting to put more weight behind mobile internet services. But the impact of widespread mobile internet on the already strained communications network will be astronomical, says John Roese, the global chief technical officer at Nortel.

“There is some evidence of slowing down caused by video-on-demand, but what is more of a worry is the advent of the new 3G and 4G wireless networks because the current architecture for backhaul is configured like the old voice network,” Mr Roese said. “The existing infrastructure for mobile was just not designed with Google or iPlayer in mind.”

(The Independent)

Document outlines powers but sets no time limit on troop presence

by Seumas Milne

A confidential draft agreement covering the future of US forces in Iraq, passed to the Guardian, shows that provision is being made for an open-ended military presence in the country.

The draft strategic framework agreement between the US and Iraqi governments, dated March 7 and marked “secret” and “sensitive”, is intended to replace the existing UN mandate and authorises the US to “conduct military operations in Iraq and to detain individuals when necessary for imperative reasons of security” without time limit.

The authorisation is described as “temporary” and the agreement says the US “does not desire permanent bases or a permanent military presence in Iraq”. But the absence of a time limit or restrictions on the US and other coalition forces – including the British – in the country means it is likely to be strongly opposed in Iraq and the US.

Iraqi critics point out that the agreement contains no limits on numbers of US forces, the weapons they are able to deploy, their legal status or powers over Iraqi citizens, going far beyond long-term US security agreements with other countries. The agreement is intended to govern the status of the US military and other members of the multinational force.

Following recent clashes between Iraqi troops and Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi army in Basra, and threats by the Iraqi government to ban his supporters from regional elections in the autumn, anti-occupation Sadrists and Sunni parties are expected to mount strong opposition in parliament to the agreement, which the US wants to see finalised by the end of July. The UN mandate expires at the end of the year.

One well-placed Iraqi Sunni political source said yesterday: “The feeling in Baghdad is that this agreement is going to be rejected in its current form, particularly after the events of the last couple of weeks. The government is more or less happy with it as it is, but parliament is a different matter.”

It is also likely to prove controversial in Washington, where it has been criticised by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who has accused the administration of seeking to tie the hands of the next president by committing to Iraq’s protection by US forces.

The defence secretary, Robert Gates, argued in February that the planned agreement would be similar to dozens of “status of forces” pacts the US has around the world and would not commit it to defend Iraq. But Democratic Congress members, including Senator Edward Kennedy, a senior member of the armed services committee, have said it goes well beyond other such agreements and amounts to a treaty, which has to be ratified by the Senate under the constitution.

Administration officials have conceded that if the agreement were to include security guarantees to Iraq, it would have to go before Congress. But the leaked draft only states that it is “in the mutual interest of the United States and Iraq that Iraq maintain its sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence and that external threats to Iraq be deterred. Accordingly, the US and Iraq are to consult immediately whenever the territorial integrity or political independence of Iraq is threatened.”

Significantly – given the tension between the US and Iran, and the latter’s close relations with the Iraqi administration’s Shia parties – the draft agreement specifies that the “US does not seek to use Iraq territory as a platform for offensive operations against other states”.

General David Petraeus, US commander in Iraq, is to face questioning from all three presidential candidates on Capitol Hill today when he reports to the Senate on his surge strategy, which increased US forces in Iraq by about 30,000 last year.

Both Clinton and Democratic rival Barack Obama are committed to beginning troop withdrawals from Iraq. Republican senator John McCain has pledged to maintain troop levels until the country is secure.

via/ The Guardian

Saudi Arabia most likely would develop nuclear weapons if Iran acquires them, according to a report to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

High-level American diplomats in Riyadh with excellent access to Saudi decision-makers said an Iranian nuclear weapon frightens the Saudis “to their core” and would compel the Saudis to seek nuclear weapons, the report said. The American diplomats were not identified.

Turkey also would come under pressure to follow suit if Iran builds nuclear weapons in the next decade, said the report prepared by a committee staff member after interviewing hundreds of individuals in Washington and the Middle East last July through December.

While Turkey and Iran do not see themselves as adversaries, Turkey believes a power balance between them is the primary reason for a peaceful relationship, the report said.

Egypt most likely would choose not to respond by pursuing its own nuclear weapons program, said the report prepared in late February and obtained Wednesday. The impact on relations with Israel and the United States were cited as the primary reasons.

A U.S. intelligence estimate late last year said Iran worked on nuclear weapons programs until 2003 before abandoning them. However, the intelligence analysts also reported Iran was continuing to enrich uranium, a key weapons component, and possessed the capacity to produce nuclear weapons if it decided to do so.

Sen. Richard G. Lugar, R-Ind., the senior Republican on the committee, directed staff member Bradley Bowman to conduct the study.

Among its conclusions, the report said demands for nuclear energy and for matching Iran’s nuclear progress virtually guarantees that three or four Middle Eastern countries will generate nuclear power by 2025.

And this, in turn, will reduce the obstacles to acquiring nuclear weapons, the report said.

The spread of nuclear weapons in the Middle East could reduce regional security and endanger U.S. interests, the report said.

In the next two or three years, the United States must take steps to restore Arab and Turkish confidence in U.S. security guarantees, the report concluded.

Otherwise, it said, “the future Middle East landscape may include a number of nuclear-armed or nuclear weapons-capable states vying for influence in a notoriously unstable region.”

//associated press//

By James G. Neuger

NATO rebuffed bids by Ukraine and Georgia to be put on a path toward membership, dealing a blow to President George W. Bush’s goal of extending the western military alliance into the former Soviet heartland.

Allied leaders refused to offer pre-membership plans to the two ex-Soviet republics, driven by concern in western Europe about antagonizing Russia. In a separate setback, Greece snarled alliance expansion into southeastern Europe by blocking entry for the Republic of Macedonia. Two other Balkan countries — Croatia and Albania — will be invited to join, alliance leaders agreed late yesterday in Bucharest.

Discord over North Atlantic Treaty Organization expansion casts a cloud over Bush’s legacy, giving Russian President Vladimir Putin an opening to exploit a divided alliance and to strengthen Russia’s hold on its sphere of influence.

“Bush expended a great deal of political capital teeing this one up,” said Charles Kupchan, a professor at Georgetown University in Washington who was on the National Security Council in the Clinton administration. “Despite the heavy lifting, Washington’s proposal was shot down.”

Bush went into the summit calling for pre-membership plans for Ukraine and Georgia to “send a signal throughout the region that these two nations are, and will remain, sovereign and independent states.”

Germany and France led the opposition to declaring the two eligible for membership, arguing that Ukraine’s society is split and that secession movements within Georgia would import instability into NATO.

Georgia, Ukraine

“I would be happy to be proven wrong, but for the moment I do not expect membership action plans for Georgia or Ukraine here,” NATO spokesman James Appathurai told reporters late yesterday after the first session of the summit.

Russia, weakened by the breakup of the Soviet Union after the Cold War, was powerless to stop the first two rounds of NATO expansion, which brought former Soviet satellites into the alliance between 1999 and 2004.

Putin has threatened to aim missiles at Ukraine if it joins NATO and hosts bases. Russian lawmakers are using Georgia’s bid for membership to give further encouragement to ethnic-Russian separatist movements in two Georgian regions.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili had lobbied hard for the pre-membership status, seeing it as a seal of approval for Georgia’s fledgling democracy and a line of defense against Russia.

Russia “will cry victory,” Saakashvili said yesterday in Bucharest. “What’s at stake here is whether peace will be preserved or we will go back to the conflicts and regional tensions.”

New NATO members that spent a half-century under the Soviet yoke were the loudest advocates of expansion further east. “NATO has to stay the course,” Prime Minister Calin Tariceanu of Romania, which joined in 2004, told a German Marshall Fund conference in Bucharest yesterday.

Action Plans

The NATO action plans guide would-be members in overhauling their armed forces and bolstering their democracies. The plans would not, however, automatically lead to membership.

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer sought to soften the blow on Ukraine and Georgia by saying the alliance is committed to bringing them in, even if the timing is uncertain.

“This can never be a question of `whether’,” De Hoop Scheffer said at a joint briefing with Bush yesterday.

Debate now focuses over what language to use to reaffirm NATO’s “open door” policy for Ukraine and Georgia, a senior American official told reporters late yesterday.

In southeastern Europe, tensions dating back to the era of Alexander the Great wrecked a consensus to admit three countries in order to write a final chapter to the wars that ripped apart Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Greece objected that Macedonia’s name implied a territorial claim on the northern Greek province of the same name. Last- ditch United Nations-brokered talks failed to resolve the dispute.

Macedonia fails to meet the “crucial conditions of good neighborly relations,” Greek Foreign Ministry spokesman George Koumoutsakos told reporters in Bucharest.

Macedonia, the only republic to break free of Yugoslavia without firing a shot, said it negotiated in good faith and accused Greece of putting regional stability at stake and tarnishing the credibility of NATO.

`Extra Mile’

“We have gone our extra mile and now it’s up to Greece to think twice about its position,” Macedonian Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki said in a telephone interview. He said no new negotiations are scheduled during the summit, which runs until mid-afternoon tomorrow.

The name dispute has vexed Macedonia since independence, outlasting a tentative settlement from 1993, when the new Balkan state was admitted to the UN as “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.”

More than 100 countries, including the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Russia and China, recognize Greece’s neighbor as the Republic of Macedonia. Greece leads a minority, along with France, Germany and some others, that recognizes it only under the UN name.

Veto

A veto of Macedonia would also frustrate U.S. policy. Bush yesterday urged allies to “extend the circle of freedom” by taking in all three countries in the Balkans.

Greece also ruled out making an offer to Macedonia conditional on a settlement of the name dispute during the year or more that allied governments will need to ratify the membership treaties.

Milososki said Macedonia gave a “positive” response to the latest UN proposal — “Republic of Macedonia (Skopje).” Skopje is the country’s capital. Greece objected to that name, Milososki said.

Allied leaders are intent on bringing Macedonia in “as soon as possible” once the name dispute is settled, NATO spokesman Appathurai said.

//bloomberg//

Geert Wilders has kept his word. He has circulated his film Fitna before April 1 and has, as he puts it, been ‘properly’ restrained. The film, which nevertheless appeared unexpectedly on the Internet on Thursday, is indeed not as shocking as expected during the hyped-up prelude to the premiere.

So the film seems like an anticlimax. It goes no further than making suggestive comments: the suggestion that the Koran is the source of all the violence in the world; the suggestion that Islam is a threat to everyone’s freedom, like Hitler and Stalin. But in Fitna, the Koran is not destroyed and the bomb in the prophet’s turban, drawn by the Danish cartoonist, doesn’t quite explode.

Has Wilders been successful in giving an example of his political and artistic skills with Fitna? Certainly not when it comes to his artistic capacity. Wilders doesn’t have enough creative talent and is sloppy in his approach.

This might still prove a problem and he will probably have to explain himself before the courts. For example he used material from the Danish cartoonist without asking permission and wrongly said a photograph of a rapper was the murderer of film-maker Theo van Gogh. And he has dragged others along with him – proof of a stunning lack of responsibility. The Dutch public prosecution department is also looking into whether Fitna incites hatred in the legal sense.

Freedom of expression, one of the fundamental concepts of every democratic state, can cope with this amateurish attack. This confidence is confirmed by the muted reactions to the film to date. Earlier prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende had almost precipitated a sort of emergency by using the word ‘crisis’. But when the hour of reckoning arrived, the prime minister limited himself to a declaration in which he said the government ‘regretted’ the film.

Representatives from Islamic organisations used a similar tone. Some reacted completely laconically. The question now is whether Fitna will be seen in the same way in less articulate circles in the Netherlands and abroad. After all, action and reaction belong together. Governments and individual agitators could use the film as an excuse to get even for other things. But the calm way the film has been received up to now gives hope.

Both left and right-wing politicians have dismissed the film as old hat. They saw ‘nothing new’ in the footage. But such comments show a misunderstanding of Wilders’ political goal. He doesn’t want to bring new insights or promote dialogue. Fitna is just a weapon in his propaganda war. His politics stand or fall with the concept of the ’self-fulfilling prophecy’. In this sense Wilders hasn’t done himself or the citizens of the Netherlands a service. And that too must be said in public.

//spiegel online//

Ever since Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy, then chancellor and finance minister, swapped notes at a conference in Birmingham on how they were going to get to the top, the two plotters have had a sneaking mutual regard for each other. Their ambition fulfilled, neither have found the job of their dreams plain sailing. If Mr Brown has stopped the leaky vessel of his government from taking in water, Mr Sarkozy’s presidency is still sinking in the polls. If either man were at the helm of a cross-channel ferry instead of a government, you would take the tunnel every time.

But of the two, it is the French president who has most to gain from his first state visit to Britain which ends today. Lampooned at home for his predilection for all that glitters (Rolex watches, gold pens and his supermodel wife) Mr Sarkozy has to sober up. His presidency urgently needs to acquire dignity, statesmanship, a sense of distance from the cut and thrust of politics, not an inextricable entanglement in them. To have appeared tanned, wealthy and happy before pale-faced countrymen struggling to pay the bills and about to undergo painful economic reforms, is a misjudgment unusual in a man who only last year was credited with being France’s most able politician.

In his speech yesterday to both houses of parliament, Mr Sarkozy called for a new era of Franco-British brotherhood. This is a part of the battle that is shaping up at home. His hardest reforms – changing work practices, pension and healthcare reform – are still to come and for this he is using Britain as a model. This may seem bizarre to Britons who have traveled to French hospitals for their operations. But as a foreign policy idea, it is not bad for Britain or for Europe. It would be a mistake to think that the Franco-German alliance, which has been at the heart of the European project, is the loser in all this. The flamboyant French president may not get on with the cerebral German chancellor Angela Merkel. But European politics is not a zero-sum game. Franco-German relations do not necessarily deteriorate if Franco-British co-operation improves.

Mr Sarkozy pledged to send more troops to Afghanistan if Nato backed the French proposals, for which he requires British help. America has called on Nato allies for more help in fighting a resurgent Taliban. An increased French presence would be a precursor to rejoining the military structures of Nato, in a way which allayed US concerns about duplicating command structures. The prize would be a military capability the European Union needs. Strip Mr Sarkozy’s words of their gushing rhetoric, and the message that both Britain and France need each other is undeniably true.

//guardian//

A senior former ally of President Pervez Musharraf claimed America and Britain’s “failure” in Afghanistan sparked a wave of violence in Pakistan.

“The West has failed in Afghanistan and so has shifted the blame to Pakistan,” Lt-Gen Orakzai, told The Daily Telegraph in his first interview since resigning earlier this year as governor of the restive North West Frontier province.

Gen Orakzai said US demands for Pakistan “to do more, more and more” had led to the military bombing its own citizens in the border tribal areas, and prompting a “war of resistance”.

He added the threat posed by al-Qa’eda in the tribal areas had been “greatly exaggerated” by the West, and the military strikes had caused many innocent deaths and a lot of collateral damage.

“There was a lot of resentment… people wanted revenge for the loss of their loved ones. It snowballed.”

Gen Orakzai, a Pushtun from the tribal areas, was reportedly asked to resign as governor after brokering a controversial peace agreement in North Waziristan.

US officials said the deal had led to a threefold increase in cross-border infiltration of militants from Pakistan to Afghanistan and allegedly leant on Mr Musharraf to remove him.

“Nobody has said don’t fight terrorism. But if the US keeps asking us to do more, Pakistan will be in a critical position,” said Gen Orakzai. “So leave us alone for some time and let us give a political solution a chance.”

His remarks came amid increasing US concerns Pakistan’s counter-terrorism co-operation may wane as the new coalition government looks set to clip the power of Washington’s ally, Mr Musharraf, or possibly oust him.

Asif Ali Zardari, the co-chairman of the senior coalition partner, the Pakistan’s People’s Party, and Nawaz Sharif, the former prime minister, have both stated the new government would “redefine” Pakistan’s stance on the US-led “war on terror”.

Mr Musharraf’s support for the US-led campaign has been deeply unpopular and the new government of prime minister Yusf Raza Gilani has pledged to reach a national consensus on how to deal with tribal militants.

A sullen-faced Mr Musharraf swore in Mr Gilani, an aide of the late Benazir Bhutto whom he once jailed for five years on trumped-up political charges. Supporters chanted “Long Live Bhutto” as the new prime minister repeated the oath.

//telegraph//

Antiwar protesters rolled through cities across the nation on Wednesday in a series of largely peaceful, and sometimes subdued, marches on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

While there were more than 140 arrests in San Francisco and more than 30 in Washington, attendance was lighter and the acrimony more muted than at protests in the early years of the war.

In San Francisco, where an estimated 150,000 people took to the streets in 2003, about 500 protesters roamed early Wednesday, many in costume and chanting amid the clamor of a makeshift marching band. In the evening, a larger crowd marched peacefully outside City Hall.

While the banners and bullhorn rhetoric were strident, the mood among some was pessimistic.

“The war is not going to end,” said Bob McGee, 67, from Livermore, about 50 miles east of the city. “It doesn’t matter who wins the election. The only thing that’s going to stop it is the destruction of the economy.”

Across the bay in Berkeley, the antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan spoke to about 100 people in front of a Marine recruiting station, the site of a recent fight between those on both sides of the war. But there, too, protesters seemed less full-throated than in the past.

Adam Beach, 40, said he and his wife had opposed the war from the beginning, but conceded that he felt discouraged. And, he added, “those feelings are shared by a lot of people.”

In Washington, 32 people were arrested outside the I.R.S. after they crossed police barricades and tried to block an entrance. Small numbers of arrests were also reported in Syracuse, Hartford and Chicopee, Mass.

Many of the day’s protests were so calm that some people brought their children.

“I feel like there’s more and more dissent, even in Congress, but I’m not so sure that I trust them to represent the people’s will,” said Stephanie Alston, 33, who brought her 9-month-old daughter, Calliope, to the San Francisco march. “And it’s already five years too late.”

//new york times//

By PAUL SCHEMM

Osama bin Laden accused Pope Benedict XVI of helping in a “new Crusade” against Islam and warned of a “severe” reaction to European publications of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that insulted many Muslims.

Bin Laden’s new audiotape message raised concerns al-Qaida was plotting new attacks in Europe. Some experts said bin Laden, believed to be in hiding in the rugged Afghan-Pakistan border area, may be unable to organize an attack himself and instead is trying to fan anger and inspire his supporters to violence.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said bin Laden’s accusation that the pope has played a role in a worldwide campaign against Islam is “baseless.” Lombardi said the pope on several occasions has criticized the cartoons, first published in several European newspapers in 2006 and republished by Danish papers in February.

The pope angered many in the Muslim world in 2006, when he cited a medieval text that characterized some of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad as “evil and inhuman,” particularly “his command to spread by the sword the faith.”

The pope later said he was “deeply sorry” and stressed the remarks did not reflect his own opinions. He has since led a public campaign for dialogue with Muslims.

Bin Laden’s audiotape was posted late Wednesday on a militant Web site that has carried al-Qaida statements in the past and bore the logo of the extremist group’s media wing Al-Sahab.

“The response will be what you see and not what you hear and let our mothers bereave us if we do not make victorious our messenger of God,” said a voice believed to be bin Laden’s, without specifying what action would be taken.

He said the cartoons “came in the framework of a new Crusade in which the Pope of the Vatican has played a large, lengthy role,” according to a transcript released by the SITE Institute, a U.S. group that monitors terror messages.

“You went overboard in your unbelief and freed yourselves of the etiquettes of dispute and fighting and went to the extent of publishing these insulting drawings,” he said. “This is the greater and more serious tragedy, and reckoning for it will be more severe.”

The five-minute message, bin Laden’s first this year, came as the Muslim world marks the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday on Thursday. It made no mention of the fifth anniversary Wednesday of the U.S.-led invasion in Iraq.

A U.S. counterterrorism official in Washington said “CIA analysis assesses with a high degree of confidence it is Osama bin Laden’s voice on the tape” and that there was “no reason to doubt bin Laden is alive.”

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the intelligence matters involved.

On Feb. 13, Danish newspapers republished one of the cartoons, which shows Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban, to illustrate their commitment to freedom of speech after police said they had uncovered the beginnings of a plot to kill the artist. Critics argue that publishers use freedom of speech as a cover to spread Islamophobia as, for example, antisemitism is entirely illega including in the use of free speech/press.

Muslims widely saw the cartoons as an insult, depicting the prophet as violent. Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet, even favorable, for fear it could lead to idolatry.

The original 12 cartoons, first published in a Danish newspaper and then in several papers across Europe, triggered major protests in Muslim countries in 2006.

There have been renewed protests in the last month, though not as large or widespread. A few dozen university students waved banners and chanted slogans against Denmark on Thursday in Islamabad. The students said they had not seen the bin Laden message.

Ben Venzke, the head of IntelCenter, a U.S. group that monitors militant messages, called Wednesday’s message a “clear threat against EU member countries and an indicator of a possible upcoming significant attack.”

Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani general and security analyst, said bin Laden was likely too isolated to organize an attack. But the al-Qaida leader may be hoping to use anger over the cartoons to inspire violence, he said.

“Even if he has not got the capacity (to launch an attack), he will try to infuse hatred,” Masood said.

Denmark’s intelligence agency said Thursday that bin Laden’s warnings “don’t immediately give reason to change” its assessment of the threat level against the country.

Last week, the intelligence agency had warned that reprinting the cartoon had brought “negative attention” to Denmark and may have increased the risk to Danes at home and abroad.

//ap//

All of a sudden, DC establishment figures care about “international law” when it suits their interests in Kosovo.

News Flash: The Bush administration acknowledges there is a such thing as international law.

But, predictably, it is not being invoked to address the US prison camps at Guantanamo, the wide use of torture, the invasion and occupation of sovereign countries, the extraordinary rendition program. No, it is being thrown out forcefully as a condemnation of the Serbian government in the wake of Thursday’s attack by protesters on the US embassy in Belgrade following the Bush administration’s swift recognition of the declaration of independence by the southern Serbian province of Kosovo. Some 1,000 protesters broke away from a largely non-violent mass demonstration in downtown Belgrade and targeted the embassy. Some protesters actually made it into the compound, setting a fire and tearing down the American flag.

“I’m outraged by the mob attack against the U.S. embassy in Belgrade,” fumed Zalmay Khalilzad,the US Ambassador to the United Nations. “The embassy is sovereign US territory. The government of Serbia has a responsibility under international law to protect diplomatic facilities, particularly embassies.” His comments were echoed by a virtual who’s who of the Bill Clinton administration. People like Jamie Rubin, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s deputy, one of the main architects of US policy toward Serbia. “It is sovereign territory of the United States under international law,” Rubin declared. “For Serbia to allow these protesters to break windows, break into the American Embassy, is a pretty dramatic sign.” Hillary Clinton, whose husband orchestrated and ran the 78-day NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999, said, “I would be moving very aggressively to hold the Serbian government responsible with their security forces to protect our embassy. Under international law they should be doing that.”

There are two major issues here. One is the situation in Kosovo itself (which we’ll get to in a moment), but the other is the attack on the US embassy. Yes, the Serbian government had an obligation to prevent the embassy from being torched and ransacked. If there was complicity by the Serbian police or authorities in allowing it to be attacked, that is a serious issue. But the US has little moral authority not just in invoking international law (which it only does when it benefits Washington’s agenda) but in invoking international law when speaking about attacks on embassies in Belgrade.

Perhaps the greatest crime against any embassy in the history of Yugoslavia was committed not by evil Serb protesters, but by the United States military.

On May 7, 1999, at the height of the 78 day US-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, the US bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese citizens, two of them journalists, and wounding 20 others. The Clinton administration later said that the bombing was the result of faulty maps provided by the CIA (Sound familiar?). Beijing rejected that explanation and alleged it was deliberate. Eventually, under strong pressure from China, the US apologized and paid $28 million in compensation to the victims’ families. If the US was serious about international law and the protection of embassies, those responsible for that bombing would have been tried at the Hague along with other alleged war criminals. But “war criminal” is a designation for the losers of US-fueled wars, not bombers sent by Washington to drop humanitarian munitions on “sovereign territory.”

Beyond the obvious hypocrisy of the US condemnations of Serbia and the sudden admission that international law exists, the Kosovo story is an important one in the context of the current election campaign in the United States. Perhaps more than any other international conflict, Yugoslavia was the defining foreign policy of President Bill Clinton’s time in power. Under his rule, the nation of Yugoslavia was destroyed, dismantled and chopped into ethnically pure para-states. President Bush’s immediate recognition of Kosovo as an independent nation was the icing on the cake of destruction of Yugoslavia and one which was enthusiastically embraced by Hillary Clinton. “I’ve supported the independence of Kosovo because I think it is imperative that in the heart of Europe we continue to promote independence and democracy,” Clinton said at the recent Democratic debate in Austin, Texas.

A few days before the attack on the US embassy in Belgrade, Clinton released a Molotov cocktail statement praising the declaration of independence. In it, she referred to Kosovo by the Albanian “Kosova” and said independence “will allow the people of Kosova to finally live in their own democratic state. It will allow Kosova and Serbia to finally put a difficult chapter in their history behind them and to move forward.” She added, “I want to underscore the need to avoid any violence or provocations in the days and weeks ahead.” As seasoned observers of Serbian politics know, there were few things the US could have done to add fuel to the rage in Serbia over the declaration of independence — “provocations” if you will — than to have a political leader named Clinton issue a statement praising independence and using the Albanian name for Kosovo.

On the campaign trail, the Clinton camp has held up Kosovo as a successful model for how to conduct US foreign policy and Clinton criticized Bush for taking “so long for us to reach this historic juncture.”

Perhaps a little of that history is in order. If Kosovo is her idea of solid US foreign policy, it speaks volumes to what kind of president she would be. The reality is that there are striking similarities between the Clinton approach to Kosovo and the Bush approach to Iraq.

On March 24, 1999, President Bill Clinton began an 11-week bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. Like Bush with Iraq, Clinton had no UN mandate (he used NATO) and his so-called “diplomacy” to avert the possibility of bombing leading up to the attacks was insincere and a set-up from the jump. Just like Bush with Iraq.

A month before the bombing began, the Clinton administration issued an ultimatum to President Slobodan Milosevic, which he had to either accept unconditionally or face bombing. Known as the Rambouillet accord, it was a document that no sovereign country would have accepted. It contained a provision that would have guaranteed US and NATO forces “free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access throughout” all of Yugoslavia, not just Kosovo. It also sought to immunize those occupation forces “from any form of arrest, investigation, or detention by the authorities in [Yugoslavia],” as well as grant the occupiers “the use of airports, roads, rails and ports without payment.” Additionally, Milosevic was told he would have to “grant all telecommunications services, including broadcast services, needed for the Operation, as determined by NATO.” Similar to Bush’s Iraq plan years later, Rambouillet mandated that the economy of Kosovo “shall function in accordance with free market principles.”

What Milosevic was actually asked to sign is never discussed. That it would have effectively meant the end of the sovereignty of the nation was a non-story. The dominant narrative for the past nine years, repeated this week by William Cohen, Clinton’s defense secretary at the time of the bombing, is this: “We tried to achieve a peaceful resolution of what was taking place in Kosovo. And Slobodan Milosevic refused.” Refused peace? More like he unwisely refused one of Don Corleone’s famous offers. Washington knew he would reject it, but had to give the appearance of diplomacy for international “legitimacy.”

So the humanitarian bombs rained down on Serbia. Among the missions: the bombing of the studios of Radio Television Serbia where an airstrike killed 16 media workers; the cluster bombing of a Nis marketplace, shredding human beings into meat; the deliberate targeting of a civilian passenger train; the use of depleted uranium munitions; and the targeting of petrochemical plants, causing toxic chemical waste to pour into the Danube River. Also, the bombing of Albanian refugees, ostensibly the people being protected by the U.S.

Similar to Bush’s allegations about Iraqi WMDs in the lead up to the US invasion, in 1999 Clinton administration officials also delivered stunning allegations about the level of brutality present in Kosovo as part of the propaganda campaign. “We’ve now seen about 100,000 military-aged men missing ….They may have been murdered,” Cohen said five weeks into the bombing. He said that up to 4,600 Kosovo men had been executed, adding, “I suspect it’s far higher than that.” Those numbers were flat out false. Eventually the estimates were scaled back dramatically, as Justin Raimondo pointed out recently in his column on Antiwar.com, from 100,000 to 50,000 to 10,000 and “at that point the War Party stopped talking numbers altogether and just celebrated the glorious victory of ‘humanitarian intervention.’” As it turned out “there was no ‘genocide’ — the International Tribunal itself reported that just over 2,000 bodies were recovered from postwar Kosovo, including Serbs, Roma, and Kosovars, all victims of the vicious civil war in which we intervened on the side of the latter. The whole fantastic story of another ‘holocaust’ in the middle of Europe was a fraud,” according to Raimondo.

Following the NATO invasion of Kosovo in June of 1999, the US and its allies stood by as the Albanian mafia and gangs of criminals and paramilitaries spread out across the province and systematically cleansed Kosovo of hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Romas and other ethnic minorities. They burned down houses, businesses and churches and implemented a shocking campaign to forcibly expel non-Albanians from the province. Meanwhile, the US worked closely with the Kosovo Liberation Army and backed the rise of war criminals to the highest levels of power in Kosovo. Today, Kosovo has become a hub for human trafficking, organized crime and narcosmuggling. In short, it is a mafia state. Is this the “democracy” Hillary Clinton speaks of “promoting” in “the heart” of Europe?

It didn’t take long for the US to begin construction of a massive US military base, Camp Bondsteel, which conveniently is located in an area of tremendous geopolitical interest to Washington. (Among its most bizarre facilities, Bondsteel now offers classes at the Laura Bush education center, as well as massages from Thai women and all the multinational junk food you could (n)ever wish for). In November 2005, Alvaro Gil-Robles, the human rights envoy of the Council of Europe, described Bondsteel as a “smaller version of Guantanamo.” Oh, and Bondsteel was constructed by former Halliburton subsidiary KBR.

Herein lies an interesting point. The Serbian government is largely oriented toward Europe, not the US. The country’s prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, is a conservative isolationist who is not enthusiastic about a US military base on Serbian soil any more than Cuba is about Gitmo. He charged that, in recognizing Kosovo, Washington was “ready to unscrupulously and violently jeopardize international order for the sake of its own military interests.” To the would-be independent Kosovo government, however, Bondsteel is no problem.

Russia and a few other nations are fighting the recognition of Kosovo as an independent nation, but that is unlikely to succeed. Still, this action will undoubtedly reverberate for years to come. “We have in Serbia a situation in which the U.S. has forced an action –the proclamation of independence by the Kosovo Albanians — that is in clear violation of the most fundamental principles of international law after World War II,” argues Robert Hayden, Director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. “Borders cannot be changed by force and without consent — that principle was actually the main stated reason for the 1991 U.S. attack on Iraq.”

And this brings us full circle. International law matters only when it is convenient for the US. So too are the cries for “humanitarian interventions.” And despite the extremism of the Bush administration, this is hardly a uniquely Republican phenomenon. In a just world, there would be a humanitarian intervention against the US occupation of Iraq — with its indiscriminate killings of civilians, torture chambers and widespread human rights violations. There certainly would have been such an intervention during the bipartisan slaughter, through bombs and sanctions, of Iraq’s people over the past 18 years. But that’s what you get when the cops and judges and prosecutors are the criminals. US policy has always operated on a worthy victim, unworthy victim system that is almost never primarily about saving the victims. Humanitarianism is the publicly offered justification for the action, seldom, if ever, the primary motivation. With Iraq, Bush wheeled out the humanitarian justification for the occupation–Saddam’s brutality — only after the WMD lies were thoroughly debunked. In Yugoslavia, Clinton used it right out of the gates. In both cases, it rang insincere.

If you are a victim who happens to share a common geography with US interests, international law is on your side as long as it is convenient. If not, well, tough. The UN is just a debate club anyway. Just ask the tens of thousands of Kurds who were slaughtered by Turkey with weapons sold to them by the Clinton administration during the 1990s. Or the Palestinians who live under the brutality of Israel’s occupation. In some cases, the “victims” allegedly being protected by the US actually get bombed themselves, as was the case with President Clinton’s “humanitarian” bombings of the north and south of Iraq once every three days in the late 1990s.

In the bigger picture, the Bush administration’s quick recognition of an independent Kosovo has given us a powerful reminder of a fact that is too often overlooked these days: empire is bipartisan, as are the tactics and rhetoric and bombs used to defend and expand it.

Jeremy Scahill, an independent journalist who reports frequently for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!, has spent extensive time reporting from Iraq and Yugoslavia. He is currently a Puffin Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute. Scahill is the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. 

//znet//