Day 125 of 2011:

"We Don't Need The Photo"
by Jerry Waxman

As President Obama said, there will always be skeptics. Even if the photograph of a dead Osama bin Laden was produced, there would be those who would say it was faked. Al Qaeda is aware that their leader was killed. His family is aware of it. We do not need to "wave trophies" as our barbaric enemies do when they behead an innocent man on video.

The success of the raid on the bin Laden compound does raise some questions: Primarily, Americans would like to know when their troops will leave Afghanistan. The mission they went there for nearly 10 years ago has been accomplished, more or less. And realizing it is no simple matter, Americans would like to see their armed forces go back to Americal "

Another issue is Libya. The Americans have funded groups that oppose Ghaddafi. Many believe that some of the rebels in Libya are actually linked to Al Qaeda. If that is the case, the U.S. and NATO are taking an enourmous risk in supporting the rebels. We can only hope that this story is not yet true.

World History Timeline

. . .Headlines 05 May 2011 . . .

Libya Was First To Issue Arrest Warrant For Bin Laden: U.S. Could Be Aiding Al Qaeda Against Gaddafi . . .

Hamas And Fatah Sign Reconciliation Agreement. . .

Obama Goes To Ground Zero: Perhaps Bin Laden's Demise Brings Some Closure . . .

WWI Veteran (Last of the Last) Claude Choules Passes Away At 110. . .

. . .Snapshot 05 May 2011 . . .

• Libya Current Events
  Libya Was First To Issue Arrest Warrant For Bin Laden: U.S. Could Be Aiding Al Qaeda Against Gaddafi (Washington Post) TRIPOLI, Libya — In an attempt to portray itself as an ally in the battle against al-Qaeda, Libya reminded the United States on Wednesday that Moammar Gaddafi’s government, not anyone in Washington, was the first to issue an arrest warrant against Osama bin Laden, back in 1998.
  
  The warrant, approved by Interpol, came after two German anti-terrorism agents were gunned down in the Libyan city of Sirte in 1994, an attack the government in Tripoli blamed on the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a militant organization linked to al-Qaeda.
  
  Five months after the warrant was issued, al-Qaeda carried out coordinated bombings on the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing more than 200 people.
  
  “At the time, they didn’t listen to us, because no one listened to Libya then,” said one senior Libyan government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
  
  Gaddafi’s open endorsement of terrorist attacks against Western nations, as well as Libya’s involvement in the bombing of a Berlin nightclub in 1986 and the downing of a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, turned the country into a pariah state and led President Ronald Reagan to nickname its leader “the mad dog of the Middle East.”
  
  According to former British intelligence agent David Shayler, eight years after Lockerbie, Britain’s MI6 sponsored the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group in a 1996 attempt to kill Gaddafi.
  
  It was as a result of this connection, two former French intelligence agents alleged, that the British secret service subsequently thwarted Libya’s attempt to turn the spotlight on Libyan Islamists and bin Laden
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• India Current Events
  Air India Strike Brings To Question India Government's Role In Businesses (Washington Post) NEW DELHI — Pilots with India’s state-owned airline entered the eighth day of an indefinite nationwide strike Wednesday, demanding higher wages and a probe into what they call the company’s near-destruction by corrupt or incompetent officials.
  
  With more than 90 percent of Air India’s domestic flights canceled and tens of thousands of passengers affected, the pilots’ action has reignited a polarizing debate here over the privatization of such ailing state-owned enterprises.
  
  In recent days, Indian news media and social commentators have urged the government not just to sell Air India but to get out of the business of running businesses entirely. The federal government owns at least 217 companies, including hotels, and steel, tire, textile and machine-tool plants, with a total investment of $129 billion, according to a Finance Ministry report.
  
  “There’s no longer a case for continuing with an airline that haemorrhages taxpayer’s money,” the Times of India declared in an editorial Monday. On Sunday, columnist Tavleen Singh wrote in the Indian Express: “We have indulged the Indian state for far too long in its failed business ventures.”
  
  Calls for the dismantling of the government’s Soviet-style holdover businesses remain controversial, even after two decades of free-market economic reforms. Officials and analysts often refer to the state-owned companies as “family silver,” possessions not to be sold off casually.
  
  The Air India crisis has also renewed memories of controversial privatization projects in which government assets were sold to private companies at bargain prices.
  
  In Mumbai, a government-owned hotel called the Airport Centaur was sold for $18 million after it reported a loss in 1999. A 2004 government audit said that the price should have been $49 million. A state-owned telephone company was also sold to a private firm in 2002, but elements of that deal have still not been implemented because of bureaucratic delays.
  
  “There is widespread corruption and inefficiency in the way the bureaucrats and politicians run these companies, driving them to loss,” said Amit Bhaduri, professor emeritus of economics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. “This inefficiency becomes a justification for privatization. Then, very often ... they have been sold at extremely low prices to the private sector.”
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• North Korea Current Events
  North Korea Prisons Become More Crowded; Treatment Of Political Prisoners More Abusive (NY Times) SEOUL, South Korea — New satellite images and firsthand accounts from former political prisoners and former jailers in North Korea have confirmed the enormous scale and bleak conditions of the penal system in the secretive North, according to a report released Wednesday by the human rights group Amnesty International.
  
  Former inmates at the political labor camp at Yodok, North Korea, said they were frequently tortured and had been forced to watch the executions of fellow prisoners, the report said, noting that the North’s network of political prisons is estimated to hold 200,000 inmates.
  
  “North Korea can no longer deny the undeniable,” said Sam Zarifi, the Asia Pacific director of Amnesty International. “For decades, the authorities have refused to admit to the existence of mass political prison camps. These are places out of sight of the rest of the world.” The report says that almost all of the human rights protections that international law has tried to set up for the past 60 years “are ignored.”
  
  After comparing recent satellite photos of prison camps with images from 10 years ago, Mr. Zarifi said, Amnesty International became concerned that the “prison camps appear to be growing.”
  
  North Korea’s work farms and prison factories are the world’s most notorious, according to human rights experts. Political prisoners sentenced to hard labor initially included landlords, purged party officials and the religiously active, according to Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, the authors of “Witness to Transformation,” an authoritative study of North Korean refugees.
  . . . . .  See rest of main story| |

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• Middle East Current Events
  Hamas And Fatah Sign Reconciliation Agreement (NY Times) Rival Palestinian movements signed a historic reconciliation accord here on Wednesday vowing common cause against Israeli occupation, a product of shifting regional power relations and disillusionment with American peace efforts.
  
  Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Fatah movement and — at least until now — an American ally, joined forces with Khaled Meshal, the leader of Hamas, the Islamist group that rejects Israel’s existence and accepts arms and training from Iran.
  
  At the signing ceremony inside Egypt’s intelligence headquarters, men from Mr. Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, which runs the West Bank, and from Hamas, which rules Gaza — who had for four years viewed one another as solemn enemies — embraced and even joked. But they also expressed steely mutual resolve.
  
  “We will have one authority and one decision,” Mr. Meshal said from the podium. “We need to achieve the common goal: a Palestinian state with full sovereignty on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as the capital, no settlers, and we will not give up the right of return.”
  
  The forces that produced this unexpected reconciliation are many — the changes in Egypt, the troubles of the government in Syria, the failure of peace talks with Israel and Mr. Abbas’s plans to retire with a lasting legacy. But the efforts of Mr. Abbas to join hands with Hamas also underscore his determination to pursue Palestinian statehood unilaterally and his willingness to risk a major rupture with the United States and Israel.
  
  [ Related: Palestinian Youth Sceptical Of Agreement
  Thousands of Palestinians, led by youth activists, have poured onto the streets of the West Bank and Gaza in recent months to demand national reconciliation.
  
  But when the leaders of the rival Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, signed a historic, if preliminary, agreement in Cairo on Wednesday to end a four-year schism and unify the two Palestinian territories, wariness and skepticism precluded any mass outpouring of joy.
  
  At the Brazil coffee shop in Ramallah near its central Manara Square, men carried on playing cards and chatting, largely oblivious to the speeches of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president and Fatah chief, and Khaled Meshal, the leader of Hamas, based in Damascus, Syria, as they were being broadcast for the first time. The sound was muted on the flat screen television fixed to the coffee shop wall. ]
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• Turkey Current Events
  Unrest In Middle East Poses Threat To Turkey's Influence (NY Times) Turkey faces a growing challenge from the tumult sweeping the Arab world to its booming economic stake in the region, newfound political influence and longstanding policy of permitting no problems to fester along its borders.
  
  In a few short years, Turkey has emerged as the Middle East’s most dynamic power. But weeks of Turkish diplomacy in Libya collapsed Monday, and Turkey’s prime minister bluntly called for Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi to step down. A similar situation may await in Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad has personally promised Turkish leaders to undertake reform while persisting with his crackdown.
  
  In neighboring Iraq, Turkey fears the inability of the government there to keep the country stable as the United States completes its military withdrawal. And Lebanon, where Turkey enjoys access to both Hezbollah and its foes, is now entering a fourth month without a government.
  
  Before the so-called Arab Spring unleashed by revolution in Egypt and Tunisia, Turkey was a catalyst in an emerging realignment of the Middle East, charting a foreign policy often independent of the United States in a region bereft of any country that matched its political stature. Now the unrest on its borders is undermining years of diplomatic and economic investment, forcing Turkey to take a more assertive role as its vision of economic integration runs up against the threat of growing instability.
  . . . . .  See rest of main story| |

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• U.S. Current Events
  Obama Goes To Ground Zero: Perhaps Bin Laden's Demise Brings Some Closure (NY Times) President Obama travels to ground zero in Lower Manhattan Thursday afternoon, six days after ordering a daring nighttime raid in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden, the author of the terrorist attack that turned this patch of land into hallowed ground.
  
  Mr. Obama, in his first visit as president to ground zero, plans to lay a wreath at a memorial to the nearly 3,000 victims of the 9/11 attacks. He will also meet privately with family members of the victims, firefighters and other rescue workers who died in the September 2001 attacks.
  
  “He wants to meet with them and share with them this important and significant moment, a bittersweet moment,” the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, said on Wednesday.
  
  It is a quiet coda to a week that began with a stunning announcement by Mr. Obama, just before midnight on Sunday, that a team of Navy Seals had stormed Bin Laden’s hiding place – a heavily-fortified compound in an affluent town not far from the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.
  
  Mr. Obama invited former president George W. Bush to join him at ground zero, but Mr. Bush declined. A spokesman for the former president said he appreciated the invitation but wanted to stick to his policy of staying out of the public spotlight since he left office.
  
  For Mr. Bush, ground zero was the site of one of the iconic moments of his presidency. Days after the World Trade Center towers collapsed, he traveled to the smoldering wreckage to thank the rescue workers, delivering his speech through a firefighter’s bullhorn.
  
  [ Related: "Why Dogs Must Be Honored: Mystery of the Canine SEAL"
  The identities of all 80 members of the American commando team who thundered into Abbottabad, Pakistan, and killed Osama bin Laden are the subject of intense speculation, but perhaps none more so than the only member with four legs.
  
  Little is known about what may be the nation’s most courageous dog. Even its breed is the subject of great interest, although it was most likely a German shepherd or a Belgian Malinois, military sources say. But its use in the raid reflects the military’s growing dependence on dogs in wars in which improvised explosive devices have caused two-thirds of all casualties. Dogs have proved far better than people or machines at quickly finding bombs.
  
  Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of United States forces in Afghanistan, said last year that the military needed more dogs. “The capability they bring to the fight cannot be replicated by man or machine,” he said.
  
  Maj. William Roberts, commander of the Defense Department’s Military Working Dog Center at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, said the dog on the raid could have checked the compound for explosives and even sniffed door handles to see if they were booby-trapped. ]
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• International Current Events
  WWI Veteran (Last of the Last) Claude Choules Passes Away At 110 (Reuters) - British-born Claude Choules, 110, believed to be the last World War One combat veteran, died in his sleep in an Australian nursing home overnight, his family said on Thursday. "He always said that the old men make the decisions that send the young men into war," said his son Adrian Choules.
  
  "He used to say, if it was the other way around, and the old... were off fighting, then there would never be any wars," Adrian Choules told local media.
  
  Choules was born in 1901 and signed up with the British Navy for the Great War at just 15 years of age.
  
  After the war, he moved to Perth and joined the Australian Navy, working as a demolition officer at the Fremantle Harbour during World War II, making him the last veteran who served in both World Wars.
  
  The only other surviving World War I veteran is believed to be Britain's Florence Green, also 110, who served with the Royal Air Force in a non-combat role.
  
  In 2009, Choules published a book about his life, The "Last of the Last".
  . . . . .  See rest of main story| |

Don't Worry - Have A Vacation 

Day 124 of 2011:

"A World Still In Confusion"
by Jerry Waxman

The death of Osama bin Laden still tops the news. However now, we are looking at details. Critics - professional critics - have found fault in the conduct of the operation to capture and/or kill the leader of Al Qaeda. The unilateral effort of U.S. special commandos and the hasty disposal of the body have led to criticism and suspicion, which should be expected. It is also possible to expect evidence proving that the military did everything right.

In this case the nit-picking is not called for. The operation was a swift success, and there is reason to say that the world is better off without this man. Authorities on the subject believe that Al Qaeda is greatly weakened, and with it, fellow terrorist groups may be less comforable finding outside supports

World History Timeline

. . .Headlines 04 May 2011 . . .

Questions Surrounding Raid On Bin Laden's Compound Bring New Tension To U.S. - Pakistan Relations . . .

Nations Call For Sanctions Against Syrian Government For "Barbaric" Acts Against Protestors. . .

Conservative Party Makes Gains In Canada's Federal Elections . . .

Caribbean Cruise Line Tries To Help Haiti By Maintaining A School. . .

. . .Snapshot 04 May 2011 . . .

• U.S. - Pakistan Current Events
  Questions Surrounding Raid On Bin Laden's Compound Bring New Tension To U.S. - Pakistan Relations (NY Times) Tensions between the American and Pakistani governments intensified sharply on Tuesday as senior Obama administration officials demanded answers to how Osama bin Laden managed to hide in Pakistan, and the Pakistani government issued a defiant statement calling the raid that killed the Al Qaeda leader “an unauthorized unilateral action.”
  
  John O. Brennan, the top White House counterterrorism adviser, said there were many questions about how the sprawling compound “was able to be there for so many years with Bin Laden resident there and it didn’t come to the attention of the local authorities.”
  
  “We need to understand what sort of support network that Bin Laden might have had in place,” Mr. Brennan said during an interview with ABC on Tuesday.
  
  The suspicions have intensified efforts by some members of Congress to scale back American aid to Pakistan, or cut it entirely, as lawmakers described Pakistan as a duplicitous ally undeserving of the billions of dollars it receives each year from Washington.
  
  Still, Obama administration officials and some members of Congress seemed determined to avoid the kind of break in relations that would jeopardize the counterterrorism network the C.I.A. has carefully constructed over the last few years in Pakistan, and as the administration tries to end the war in Afghanistan, a conflict where Pakistan is a necessary, if difficult, partner.
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• U.S. Current Events
  Excessive Celebrations By Youth Who Grew Post 9/11 (NY Times) Young Americans, like many others, had a variety of reactions to the death of Osama bin Laden — sadness and anger at the lives he had destroyed, questions about how much safer his death made the United States. But their response, in some notable instances, was punctuated by jubilant, if not jingoistic, celebrations.
  
  In Washington, college students spilled in front of the White House chanting “U.S.A! U.S.A.!” and puffing cigars. In State College, Pa., 5,000 students waved flags, blew vuvuzelas, and sang the national anthem and the chorus to Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” Cheering students jumped into Mirror Lake at Ohio State — as they do with big football games — and swelled the Common in Boston.
  
  Some, like Ms. Bright, thought the celebrations excessive. But they were not surprising, she and others said, in the context of how much their young lives had been shaped by Sept. 11. For them, it set off a new emphasis on patriotism, with constant reminders from teachers and parents that it is important to be proud of being an American — a striking contrast to the ambivalence of the Vietnam years that marked their parents’ generation.
  
  The attacks were the first time they had considered that people in the rest of the world might harbor ill will toward Americans. The experience established the world in polarities of black and white, with Bin Laden being the new emblem of evil.
  
  “I probably wouldn’t be as appreciative of living in America if I hadn’t seen 9/11 happen and grown up in this time,” said Ms. Bright, now a graduate student at American University.
  
  “We carry the weight of it more because our entire adult lives have been during a time of war,” she said. “The strong reaction is because it’s the first goal that has been met that we can take ownership of.”
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• Syria Current Events
  Nations Call For Sanctions Against Syrian Government For "Barbaric" Acts Against Protestors (VOA News) The Syrian government, which initially proposed reforms, has mounted a security sweep that it acknowledges included nearly 500 arrests on Sunday in Daraa alone. State Department Acting Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner told reporters that U.S. officials are "very disturbed" about credible reports of military operations in Daraa that include tanks,
  
  "We’ve seen reports the Syrian government is conducting a widespread campaign of arbitrary arrests that target young men in Daraa," said Toner. "It’s also our understanding that electricity, communications and other public services have been cut off for several days, and that the humanitarian situation there is quite grave. These are, quite frankly, barbaric measures, and they amount to the collective punishment of innocent civilians."
  
  Asked whether the Syrian president might become a target of U.S. sanctions, spokesman Toner said options for further U.S. action "remain on the table."
  
  Amnesty International said Tuesday that it has received first-hand reports of torture and other ill-treatment of Syrian detainees as a wave of arrests of anti-government protesters intensified last weekend.
  
  Amnesty's international advocacy director, T. Kumar, says the tactics suggest that the Assad government has embarked on a "full blown crackdown" to crush the protest movement.
  
  "What we have found recently is that on top of mass killings, using heavy weapons on civilian protesters, we also learned that those who have been arrested for peacefully demonstrating have been beaten up, tortured," said Kumar. "They also experienced harsh detention conditions.
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• Canada Current Events
  Conservative Party Makes Gains In Canada's Federal Elections (NY Times) It was a different Prime Minister Stephen Harper who appeared on Tuesday for his first news conference after his Conservative Party’s resounding victory in Canada’s federal election.
  
  Not only were his campaign’s tight controls over questions from reporters gone, but Mr. Harper even returned to the lectern twice after aides had declared the session over.
  
  And instead of offering only terse, tightly scripted answers, Mr. Harper joked and even mildly mocked himself at points.
  
  He had good reason to be upbeat and relaxed. After the two previous elections had left him short of a voting majority, Mr. Harper was returned to office on Monday with his Conservatives holding 167 of the 308 seats in the House of Commons. The party, which had relied on its power base in Western Canada, also boasts significant representation in Ontario, the most populous province, for the first time in years.
  
  And with the exception of the New Democratic Party, which made a significant breakthrough in Quebec, Mr. Harper left the opposition reeling.
  
  The Liberals, once Canada’s most powerful party, were reduced to 34 seats, a historic low. The election was the first in which the Liberals had not finished first or second. Their leader, Michael Ignatieff, lost his own seat in Toronto and announced his resignation as head of the party on Tuesday morning.
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• Thailand Current Events
  Human Rights Groups Claim Thai Government Responsible For Deaths Of Some Protestors (NY Times) A year after the bloody suppression of antigovernment protests in Bangkok, no government official has yet been charged with a crime related to the deaths of about 90 people, including medical workers and others who were apparently the deliberate targets of sniper fire, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Tuesday.
  
  At a news conference here, the New York-based group’s Asia director, Brad Adams, displayed video clips that he said showed at least one sniper in military uniform, as well as figures on an elevated train track, whose presence he said contradicted the government assertions that no soldiers had been deployed there.
  
  The use of snipers has been one of the contentious elements of debate over the events that convulsed Bangkok with violence. The government has insisted that it did not deploy snipers.
  
  But the report said Human Rights Watch had gathered evidence that “several unarmed protesters, medical volunteers and bystanders were killed with single shots to the head, suggesting the use of snipers and high-powered scopes.”
  
  There was no immediate government response to the Human Rights Watch report. The government has announced its own investigations into the violence, but has not yet issued a final report.
  
  In April and May last year, hundreds of thousands of “red shirt” protesters occupied parts of Bangkok, demanding that the government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva step down. The protests were crushed in a military offensive on May 19.
  
  “In plain view, government forces shot protesters and armed militants shot soldiers, but no one has been held responsible,” Mr. Adams said.
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• South Korea Current Events
  Seoul Police Raided Google's Offices On Suspicion Of Misuse Of User Data (NY Times) The Seoul police raided Google’s office here Tuesday on suspicion that its mobile advertising unit, AdMob, had illegally collected users’ location data without users’ consent, the police said. The raid represents the latest setback to the U.S. Internet search company’s South Korean operations.
  
  The investigation also highlights growing concerns about possible misuse of private information as the popularity of mobile devices like smartphones and tablet computers increases.
  
  Information on users’ locations is viewed as crucial for the growing mobile advertising sector, as it helps personalize online ads according to individual preferences or geographical positions. Last month, Apple defended its use of iPhone location data but denied that it was tracking the movements of customers.
  
  Google and Apple have been criticized by U.S. lawmakers over their protection and use of consumer data from cellphone applications, including where users are located.
  
  Google executives have talked about the ability to tailor advertising to users on the basis of location. Google bought AdMob, a leading global mobile advertising firm, last year for $750 million.
  
  “Every technology has a flip side,” said Kim Kwang-jo, a computer science professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. “Location-based services benefit customers by helping them find nearby restaurants, gas stations and other places with their smartphones. But it could potentially violate consumer privacy. There are loopholes in location-based services, and companies should get consent from customers to collect location data.”
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• Haiti Current Events
  Caribbean Cruise Line Tries To Help Haiti By Maintaining A School (NY Times) On a jungle-covered hill, about 25 Creole-speaking kindergartners chanted numbers inside a gleaming classroom, the ceiling laced with clotheslines of paper butterflies. Past noon, they spilled into the courtyard to dash across the gravel in a blur of blue and cream uniforms, each one embroidered with an anchor and the school’s unusual name: “École Nouvelle Royal Caribbean,” or the New Royal Caribbean School.
  
  For years, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., the cruise line corporation based in Miami, has run a private resort on a sandy promontory nearby — a playground of lounge chairs, bars and even an alpine coaster that shoots guests though the forest.
  
  The company has leased the 260 beachfront acres, about 90 miles north of the nation’s capital, from the government since 1986. Several times a week, up to 7,000 people descend for the day when mega ships make berth here on a newly completed $34 million pier, offering a dizzying contrast to the poverty beyond the gates.
  
  But in the wake of the January 2010 earthquake that devastated the capital, the cruise line evoked harsh criticism when it resumed docking pleasure ships at the resort for frolicking vacationers — just six days after the quake killed as many as 300,000 people, according to Haitian officials, and rendered more than a million homeless.
  
  Then the company opened the cheery citrus-colored school complex just outside the resort’s heavily guarded chain-link fences in October, a move Royal Caribbean representatives said it was considering before the disaster and the scathing press it received afterward.
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Don't Worry - Have A Vacation