One bit of news that mostly slipped under the radar earlier this week was the release of a report by leading Pakistani officials, said to be two years in the making, concerning how it could have been possible for Osama Bin Laden to have lived in Pakistan for so long – for around nine years, in fact – during a period when he was the world’s undisputed Public Enemy #1, with EVERY BIT of the humongous US intelligence establishment searching actively for him along with any number of allied intelligence agencies. Not to include the “allied” Pakistani intelligence agency, however, the ISI, the one that really would have mattered.

No, instead this report cites “culpable negligence and incompetence at almost all levels of government” for the failure of the ISI to realize that, for most of this period, Osama was holed up in a walled compound in Abbottabad, only 110 km north of the capital Islamabad and in fact the city where no less than the Pakistani Officers’ Academy (that is, the Pakistani equivalent of West Point) is situated!

It was a four-man commission that wrote this report, according to the New York Times account, namely a judge on the Pakistani Supreme Court joined by a retired police officer, army general and diplomat. In their report these eminent gentlemen “allowed for the possibility that some security officials had covertly helped Bin Laden,” stating at one point that “[c]onnivance, collaboration and cooperation at some levels cannot be entirely discounted.” The Washington Post account cites their conclusion that “[t]he failure was primarily an intelligence-security failure that was rooted in political irresponsibility.” Indeed, both news pieces state that this report from the so-called Abbottobad Commission was never meant to be made public, that the only reason we are hearing about it now is that al-Jazeera managed to get hold of a copy and publish it on their website.

That is all well and good. But all of us can understand how “secret” reports can ultimately and intentionally find their way to public exposure nonetheless. I’d like to suggest that that is what happened here: this is nothing but a whitewash, yet another distraction which has successfully kept the cruel truth from sinking in among the American public that a leading “ally,” to whom the US Treasury has paid some $18 billion in military and economic aid since the September 11 attacks, deliberately and systematically hid the main perpretator behind those attacks, and continuously lied in response to any and all enquiries. Here, I’ll let Jon Stewart explain, who as you’ll see had somewhat of a personal stake in the matter:

[Sorry, I removed this video – and took WAY too long in doing so, apologies – because it had the tendencey to “auto-play” when readers visited this page. The link is here, if you’re interested; the gist is that Jon Stewart remarks on how he had been lied to re: Osama Bin Laden when interviewing former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf on a past show.]

Fine, then, this Abbottabad report is little more than a 336-page steaming pile of misinformation. That doesn’t mean that it can’t have useful bits here and there. Human interest angles, for example – like it seems that Osama Bin Laden himself was stopped in Pakistan for a traffic violation, for speeding, “but the police officer failed to recognize him and let him go.” That last bit is from the NYT piece, but that’s about all there is there about that. And there is nothing about any traffic violation incident in the Washington Post account. (more…)

Party pooper! It now emerges that George W. Bush is not especially happy over Osama Bin Laden’s death. I’ll let Andy Borowitz put it best:

Bush “not overjoyed” by Osama news: “I don’t rejoice at the death of another person, especially one I couldn’t find.”

May 13, 2011 4:41 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@BorowitzReport

Andy Borowitz

Careful, Mr. President! You shouldn’t be saying things like that – you’ll sound like the French!

Un crime parfait http://lemde.fr/l5TC2a

May 13, 2011 2:03 pm via twitterfeedReplyRetweetFavorite

@lemondefr

Le Monde

You read that right: Christian Salmon of the French government’s research institute CNRS, writing in Le Monde, goes so far as to call the operation that dispatched Bin Ladin “a perfect crime,” according to the definition of philosopher Jean Baudrillard:

[A] crime whose authors are anonymous, whose narrative is impossible, whose body is unfindable, and for which all pieces of evidence have disappeared in the Pakistani night, even while it was filmed by cameras mounted on commando’s helmets and followed directly by the American executive. Invisible target. Invisible execution. Invisible cadaver. A veritable black hole in the mediasphere.

He’s sort of suspicious of what the Americans claim to have happened, you could say. It’s like something out of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Purloined Letter (but the French were always particularly fond of Poe). Even then, the Americans failed to smash that Osama Bin Laden myth of the lone cave-dwelling fighter, “who appears and disappears as he likes, taunting the greatest world power, an Arabian Clint Eastwood, a Muslim Robin Hood who claims to avenge the Palestinian people’s suffering.” Fundamentalists are ready to rename the Arabian Sea as the “Martyr’s Sea,” for heaven’s sake!

Similarly Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer of King’s College, London, also writing in Le Monde, is not very impressed by the Abottabad operation:

Tuer l’ennemi public numéro 1, est-ce “rendre justice”? http://lemde.fr/lZQWgY

May 13, 2011 2:03 pm via twitterfeedReplyRetweetFavorite

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Le Monde

President Obama, in his televised announcement, declared that “justice has been done.” Vilmer: “That’s surprising: if it was enough to kill him to do justice for the victims [of Al-Qaeda], why did they claim to want to arrest him?” Actually, Vilmer does not for a moment believe that the SEAL Team 6 commandos had any other orders than to kill. Bin Laden wasn’t armed; there was no return fire during that raid. No, it was far easy to kill him than to deal with all the issues having a live Osama Bin Laden on their hands would entail, including arguments over the death penalty and the possibility of retaliatory hostages being taken.

To use an Israeli term, then, this was a “targeted assasination.” But that’s OK – there’s no problem with such a concept for any country that does still practice capital punishment. France, however, does not do that, and has not done so for thirty years. Ultimately, Vilmer is disappointed not so much with Obama – as in, that’s the Americans, what can you expect? – as he is with his own leaders (Sarkozy, Foreign Minister Juppé) who were quick to echo the American president’s assertion that justice had been served. If one claims to remain true to French ideals, he wants to say, it’s not possible to be glad at Bin Laden’s death, one must rather regret that what really was constituted as an assasination squad through its actions made any true justice impossible.

¡¡You’re the next contestant on Who Wants to be a Martyr?!!

Portrait du “docteur” Zawahiri, le successeur potentiel de Ben Laden http://lemde.fr/jWKbaC

May 5, 2011 8:56 am via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@lemondefr

Le Monde

Anyway, Doctor, for as long as you are still around and in-line to head the Al-Qaeda organization – and keep in mind that two of your operatives have already been killed recently in Yemen by unmanned drones (link in Danish) – let’s take a look at this examination of your background, thoughtfully provided by Le Monde.

Firstly, for this visual age of ours it’s important to have a “grip & grin”-type photo together with the predecessor, as a token that he at least regarded the subject as a decent jihadi sort of fellow. Check! (True: there’s no “grip” in the picture provided here, and for that matter also very little “grin”; I think those things are probably un-Islamic.) In good newspaper-style, though, author Cécile Hennion cuts right to the essentials of why Zawahiri is the best bet to succeed Osama Bin Laden in her very first paragraph:

“Doctor” Zawahiri, with an Egyptian degree in surgery, is considered the ideologist of Al-Qaeda and the “brain” behind the September 11, 2001 attacks. He has for a long time been Osama Bin Laden’s principal lieutenant and personal doctor.

Curious, then, that he wasn’t present at that Abottabad compound during that deadly raid last Monday morning (local Punjabi time). Nonetheless, he suffers no shortage of terrorist bona fides. For instance, after Osama Bin Laden came back to his native Saudi Arabia a hero from fighting the Russians in Afghanistan, but then had to flee the country due to his anti-regime agitation, it was initially only the House of Saud that he swore to lead a jihad against. Zawahiri, who first met him in Afghanistan, convinced him to widen his target to all “apostate regimes of the Muslim world.” The Doctor was also behind the fatwa of the late 1990s which declared that it was the responsibility of all good Muslims to kill Americans and their allies. (more…)

More Bin Laden, Bin Laden, Bin Laden . . . It may have been among the most incidental of occurrences in the media uproar following the announcement of his death late last Sunday/early last Monday. But that doesn’t mean that people didn’t notice, or don’t want to seize on it to make a point – even as far away as Germany:

That’s from Berlin’s Die Tageszeitung or taz. (That additional -gezwitscher part actually means “tweeting” in German – now you know!) Even if you’re not up with the language, you can still see that what’s at issue is the rather-too-many mistaken references to “Obama” rather than “Osama” cropping up in that same media uproar, perpetrated by Fox News.

Missed them? No problem. The following YouTube clip from the David Pakman Show – in English, of course – reviews them for you. There were more instances than you might have thought!

Depending on your own media diet, all this Fox flim-flammery might already feel familiar, in an alliterative sort of way. For most in Germany, though, it is unknown and so somewhat shocking. As the taz-reporter Meika Laaff explains:

Whoever watches Fox stations in the USA has an interesting view of the world. There demagogues [Einheizer – literally “fire-lighters”] like Glenn Beck explain the evil connection between Fukushima, the European financial crisis and the Arab Spring.

It doesn’t help that the taz is a leftist paper, based in Berlin, itself well-known as a leftist city, even in Nazi-times. And remember, this is the European Left we’re talking about here, meaning that the typical Fox News audience might as well be living on another planet – and that taz reporters will always be on the look-out for any opportunity to send derision it’s way. Here, Ms. Laaff repeats several times her assertion that the Obama/Osama mix-up is actually deliberate on Fox’s part and intended to undermine respect for the President by way of a subconscious association that sheer repetition can plant in the heads of the unwary.

But give Laaff and her editors some credit as well. It turns out that some German media were guilty of the same Obama/Osama switch, including no less than Chancellor Merkel’s own press secretary*, who Laaff claims issued a tweet that translates to “#Chancellor: Obama responsible for deaths of thousands of innocents, mocked the principles of Islam and all religions.” (Of course that tweet is no longer on-line in that same form, it has been corrected.) The Bild Zeitung and Der Spiegel committed similar errors. (Surprising for the latter, not so much for the former, which is a National Enquirer-style tabloid, but with more-attractive women.)

At the end of her piece Laaff even challenges readers to get in contact by e-mail if it turns out that her taz has made the same mistake. So again, give her credit – not least because all this evidence of Germans having trouble with that Obama/Osama thing rather dilutes her claim that Fox News does it all the time deliberately.

*Equivalent in the US administration to White House press secretary Jay Carney(val Barker).

BTW did you like the no-less-than-three embeds in this post? A new record! I’m actually going to see if I can keep adding them until, at some point, my posts are 100% embed and I don’t have to write anything at all myself!

“U-S-A! U-S-A!” Europeans woke up to the news, while cheering Americans put off bedtime for a while to go congregate and rejoice. The killing of Osama Bin Laden dominates world news today, while analyses of the consequences and of Bin Laden’s extraordinary life are likely to occupy much print and many pixels in the days to come.

Naturally, such pieces are already forthcoming. One of the best I’ve seen so far comes from an expected source, Prof. Juan Cole’s blog Informed Comment, although it does veer at the end to the realm of personal reminiscences. (The September 11, 2001 attacks were after all the inspiration for setting up that blog, as they were for so many other things e.g. US Army/Marines enlistments.)

Plus, as always Prof. Cole’s treatment is in English, which is not really within the remit of the blog you’re reading now. Let’s turn to Der Spiegel instead:

Osama Bin Laden: Der Terrorfürst… http://tinyurl.com/635z5g5

May 2, 2011 5:19 am via SPIEGEL ONLINEReplyRetweetFavorite

@SPIEGEL_Politik

SPIEGEL Politik

That link leads to an article entitled The Prince of Terror, by Yassin Musharbash. (Despite the name, a born-and-bred German journalist.) The photo-series you’ll find starting at the article’s head – basically a series of Osama TV-stills – is nothing to write home about, but what Musharbash writes about his historical background is quite interesting. For the world’s premier terrorist could very well have become its leading playboy instead; he was born into quite a wealthy Saudi family, which had made its money in the construction business. But no, he chose religion over worldly things, and became known over his lifetime for his qualities of patience, modest living, and friendliness – “friendliness” to a select few, at least, since he never was so enthusiastic about Westerners and his strict religious convictions kept him from shaking any female’s hand from an early age, as well from any music, photography, or television (except for the news).

Nonetheless, from a position as an outsider he soon became one of the leading heroes within the Afghan resistance to Soviet occupation. Of course, it was from the (mostly Arab) fighting elements he assembled there for that original purpose that he would go on to build his “Al-Qaeda” network. (The name in Arabic literally means “network,” as well as a number of other things.) But Musharbash helpfully reminds us of another, later instance when the West’s and Bin Laden’s military interests coincided, namely in Bosnia during the Yugoslav wars of the early 1990s: A nascent Al-Qaeda then supplied fighters to defend that break-away republic from Serb depredations long before Europe or the US had made up their mind what to do themselves.

The Dutch paper De Volkskrant is also quick off the blocks with its own Profile: This is how Bin Laden became the most-wanted terrorist on Earth. No photo-series this time – but really, by now haven’t we all had to gaze on his face more times than we have really wanted? – just a Bin Laden background, with a couple new and interesting facts. Supposedly he originally started working in Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion there just to try to recruit for and supply the resistance, not take up arms himself, but he changed his mind one day when he happened to be attacked by some Russian helicopters. Also, although after his success there he returned to his native Saudi Arabia as a famous hero, he soon fell afoul of the authorities there by shooting his mouth off against them too often, to the point that they confiscated both his passport and much of his property. (Of course, that didn’t stop him from moving to Sudan, by way of Yemen, and thence back to Afghanistan.)

There’s just one strange thing here: the (unnamed) Volkskrant reporter writes about how, even after the US invasion of Afghanistan, Bin Laden still managed to run Al-Qaeda – in a loose way – “with his satellite and computer.” I can easily imagine Bin Laden weilding a laptop (although the power-supply could have been problematic), but not a “satellite” as the world’s authorities keep careful tabs on what’s allowed up into space. Perhaps the author meant “satellite-telephone.”

No joke, this – at least the report comes from the respected Dutch newspaper Trouw, not known for putting out spoof articles. The lede:

Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden has called upon the world to boycott American goods and the dollar, because the US and other Western lands, according to him, are guilty of global warming. That is on a tape-recording that the television station Al-Jazeera played on Friday [today].

Yes, according to Osama the US economy must be brought to a halt if global warming is to be stopped. You’ll admit he is starting to get a bit more innovative now with his propaganda angles, what with this new “green” direction – although you should also keep in mind that the authenticity of this latest alleged cave-missive has not yet been verified.

UPDATE: Renowned Middle East blogger Prof. Juan Cole accepts that that latest Bin Laden message is for real, and in an extended blogpost highlights the Saudi fugitive’s hypocrisy, detailing how “[g]lobal terrorism is a high-carbon activity and very bad for the environment, not to mention humans and other living things.” (Some of you of proper age will hear in his word-choice a distinctive 1960s-echo that surely could not have gone unintended.)

That’s at least according to “Devil’s Advocate” (Advocaat van de Duivel), a television program on the Dutch state network Nederland 2, on which every week “lawyer Gerard Spong defends a prominent personality about whom public opinion has an outspoken position,” according to its description on Nederland 2. We’re informed of this vital and earth-shaking development, not from a Dutch newspaper, but from journalists across the border writing for the German daily Die Welt (TV court declares Osaba bin Laden innocent; I tried but could not find any report on this in the on-line Dutch press).

Yes, this program is a sort of “people’s court” in which Spong – in his day-job a prominent Amsterdam defense attorney who charges up to €450 an hour – defends the notorious before a “citizen’s jury” and a larger studio audience, who are each then polled to see what effect his arguments have had on them. (Check it out: you can watch the entire latest program from this webpage, just click on the bekijk uitzending link, but of course it’s in Dutch with no sub-titles.) And in this particular episode that “citizen’s jury” ruled as “unproven” both the propositions that Bin Laden was the planner/director of the September 11 attacks and even that he was the founder/leader of al-Qaeda. Instead, both the jury and the studio audience ruled that those attacks on New York and Washington were most likely “a fiction propounded by Western politicians.” Still, Spong did try to push things a bit too far – maybe that’s just the professional instinct of any good defense lawyer – by also advancing the proposition that Bin Laden was a mere “freedom-fighter at war against the West”; the jury concluded instead that he is indeed “a terrorist who misuses Islam for personal ambitions to power.”

That Die Welt article holds tightly to the prescribed journalistic objectivity, simply passing on to readers the fact that this TV program occurred and the details as to what the “citizen’s jury” decided, without any additional editorial comment. In that same vox populi, vox dei spirit, it also displays in a prominent spot at its head a simple Yes/No on-line poll question: “Is al-Qaeda still a danger for the West?”

It looks like I was a bit premature when I wrote in this space a few days ago about al-Qaeda’s “endorsement” of John McCain. (But the quotation-marks around “endorsement” were back in the original post, too.) From his weblog on the site of the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant, Bas Benneker informs us that, actually, Al Qaida has also not yet decided. (more…)

Wow – another EuroSavant post that simply writes itself! This time that delectable characteristic arises from the particular format employed (as you will soon see), and the article in question comes from Information, the Danish intellectual weekly newspaper, with the pungent title 20 reasons for the chaos we find ourselves in (and yes, it’s someone else’s fault).

Let’s go through these twenty reasons, then, shall we? – and see where we agree with the article’s author (with a very German name, I must say), Anna von Sperling. We might even keep a sort of running score; that nice, tapered, obviously feminine, nude (i.e. no rings) finger there pointing accusingly to the right at the article’s head starts us out with “one” . . . (more…)

Information is Denmark’s leading mainstream commentary newspaper, and now its writers have responded to the recent report of President Bush approving American military actions within Pakistan without any need for permission from or warning to the Pakistani authorities with a pair of analyses: USA moves the terror-war to Pakistan, by Graham Usher, and USA’s war against terror lies in ruins, by Martin Burcharth. (more…)

Hold on: that’s Tariq bin Laden, Osama’s older brother. The French newsmagazine Le Figaro reports that that Bin Laden intends to invest 50 billion dollars in a “tourist village” on the Algerian coast designed to attract European retirees to go there to spend some time on the Mediterranean Sea, in the Mediterranean sun. You’ll surely recall how the Bin Laden family was, and continues to be, one of the richest families in Saudi Arabia, having made their fortune mainly in construction. Yes, it will be a luxury project, with private clubs and of course medical installations of high standard. The settlement, called “Nour” (“light” in Arabic) will cover an extensive 1,500 square kilometers.

It’s September 11 again, three years from the day that has gone down in history. That’s a ready-made theme for commemorative newspaper articles, should editors desire to take advantage of it. Perhaps it’s a certain nostalgia for the “We are all Americans now” message from Le Monde back then immediately after the attacks – a sentiment which quickly disappeared at the hands of Bush administration indifference like dew on a sunny summer’s morning – that has me heading for the French press to see whether there’s anything to be said about the anniversary there. Surprisingly, Le Monde itself takes a pass (at least with what it publishes in its on-line edition). But Libération takes up the theme with a couple of articles, starting with the paean to hindsight written by Pascal Riche (that paper’s Washington correspondent): The Missed Signals of 11 September. (more…)

“You smell that? Do you smell that? Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”

So run the famous lines of Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore (played by Robert Duvall) in the 1979 movie “Apocalypse Now,” recently voted “the best speech in cinema history” in a movie fan poll, according to a report by BBC News. But now napalm has a competitor in the “War: what scents does it make?” department. Adam Hannestad, Cairo correspondent of the leading Danish daily Politiken reports on a new best-seller at Pakistani perfume-counters, “Usama Bin Laden Cologne Spray.” (more…)

Here we go! (Lost the thread? See the beginning of my previous post, i.e. of “Mon Sep 08, 2003,” as the peculiar pMachine software formatting puts it.) Plenty, plenty of commentary on Bush’s Sunday speech in the French press – let me try to cover as much as I can, in the time I’ve allotted myself (and it’s a generous slice, you can be sure, dear reader!) to write this.

Why not start with Le Figaro? My reflexive instinct is rather to start with Le Monde (“France’s New York Times,” and all that), but Tuesday’s print edition of Le Figaro irresistibly draws me with its big front-page, above-the-fold headline above the standard picture of Bush addressing the nation in the Oval Office: Qui veut aider Bush? – “Who Wants to Help Bush?” (more…)

Today we progress towards fulfilling yesterday’s mention of current French points-of-view towards the Coalition troubles in Iraq. The on-line dailies are treating the subject hit-or-miss (see a review of a contribution from Libération at bottom). But what’s that over there on Le Monde diplomatique? That’s the sister-publication to Le Monde – of course – but it comes out monthly, and so with longer, “deeper” articles which are mostly opinion-pieces that take a broader look at current affairs. And on the front page of the latest (Sept. 2003) issue we have L’onde du chaos (“The Wave of Chaos”), an examination of Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Bush Administration by writer Alain Gresh.

Le Monde diplomatique can be relied upon to lay out a “French” point-of-view carefully fashioned to be about as opposite to what the American administration would want you to believe as possible, short of setting up your own direct feed to Osama bin-Laden’s propaganda department. But stepping out of the confines of Fox News and the various other US media outlets which often are but thinly-disguised cheerleaders for administration policy, to be confronted with a foreigner’s viewpoint, is what this site is supposed to be all about, right? (Or is it instead about foreigners discovering the various innovations that make America great, such as Hooters Air? Or America discovering the innovations that make Europe great, like medically-prescribed marijuana? Just let me know.) (more…)