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…)

“State aid”? Aaah . . . I do wish it was something remotely sexy (sorry, nothing like “marriage aids”) – but alas. It’s namely when an EU member state government provides assistance – usually €€€ – to a domestic company. And it’s a no-no under EU rules, since we’re all supposed to be in a great big unified Euro-area where all companies can compete on equal terms, and a helping hand from your government distorts those terms.

Well, State aid usually is a no-no, but sometimes it’s allowed. And the Belgian French-language business newspaper L’Echo has grabbed a bit of a scoop with its discovery that the EU Commission’s DG Competition is now shooting for “total exposure.”

Here’s journalist Frédéric Rohart’s first paragraph:

Does the whole world need to know which company receives which State aid (loan, subsidy, tax advantage . . . ) and for what amount? The European Commission thinks so, and intends to require that by 2014.

How does “the whole world” get to know? From a website, silly! Or rather, “websites”: the idea is that each member state would be required to set up its own State aid website, presumably under “guidance” from the Commission. We already know from L’Echo that, at a minimum, the information to be posted would have to include name of company, its VAT ID number, and the amount of the aid. (more…)

It’s Revolution 3.0 in Egypt now – things are hot, and extremely uncertain! Dead and wounded are falling everywhere, much of the Sinai is in open revolt against the new (temporary?) military regime, and in general no one has much of a certain idea about what is to happen next.

At least there has been some slight technical progress, reported by the Italian Huffington Post.

“Twitter returns to Tahrir Piazza” – sorry, “Square.” But it’s a truism that social media has long been a key driving force behind the Arab Spring generally, certainly behind the revolution in Egypt whose first notable accomplishment was the toppling of the long-entrenched Mubarak regime back in February of 2011.

The problem for outside observers, of course, has been language. These folks prefer to address each other in Arabic, including via social networks. Those who are non-conversant have been limited to whatever the main social network protagonists have been willing to post in English, which too often has been merely by way of after-thought.

The point of this piece is that that has now changed. Oh, they’ll still write mostly in Arabic, but most tweets (at least) will now have an English translation provided by Microsoft’s Bing Translator. According to the HuffPoIT reporter Francesco Bisozzi, this initiative has been provided by Twitter itself, in effect using accounts affiliated with the Egyptian Revolution as a trial for this technology. OK, it’s Bing and not Google Translate – clearly, monetary and power-play considerations played a role in the choice here – and often you get the sort of funny-sounding text that such machine-translation is still known for, but it’s clearly a big step forward nonetheless.

So check out some of these Twitter-feeds that Bisozzi mentions. Warning: some are from the “bad guys” (e.g. ex-President Mohammed Morsi’s cabinet – boo!). Just be sure to click “Expand” and you’ll get Bing’s translation.

There’s Wael Ghonim, whom many considered as the catalyst of the Egyptian Revolution with his “We Are All Khaled Saeed” Facebook page: @Ghonim

Prof. Pakinam El Sharkawy, Assistant to the [former] Egyptian President for political affairs (a lady, but this gal still didn’t do such a good job, eh?): @Dr_pakinam

Ahmed Shafik, former fighter pilot, former Egyptian Prime Minister (under Mubarak), and Mohamed Morsi’s head-to-head opponent in the second round of the presidential elections in June last year: @AhmedShafikEG

And finally the star of our show, Nobel Prize winner and former International Atomic Energy Agency head Dr. Mohammed El Baradei: @ElBaradei

It’s true, Dr. El Baradei hasn’t tweeted much lately – not since 28 June, at this writing – but he’s a busy man these days. Plus, he might be headed for something even bigger:

Bonus benefit from this HuffPoIT piece: It appears that “to tweet” in Italian is twittare! Io twitto, tu twitti, eccetera . . .

So another Head of State departs (after Egypt’s, I mean), but not in quite as controversial circumstances.

Albert II will abdicate in favor of his son, Philippe, on 21 July, which happens to be the Belgian National Day. This was no surprise to faithful @EuroSavant Twitter-feed followers, since I had flagged in that forum some months ago the rumors that had emerged that this sort of thing would happen.

And yes, that particular tweet above has to begin by specifying “Belgique,” because it’s from the French media, not the Belgian, but I wanted to give props to Le Point for their accompanying story-behind-the-story piece, namely WHY the Belgian King is abdicating.

For this is unprecedent, it’s the first time a King of Belgium has voluntary stepped down. (Not that Belgian monarchs go back that far in history – only back to, yes, 21 July 1831 – and indeed one had to vacate the throne involuntarily for misbehaving during World War II.) But it’s not so novel a thing to do just north over the border in the Netherlands, as the last three monarchs (all queens) have in fact relinquished their crowns prior to their deaths, the latest famously being Queen Beatrix just this past April 30, which indeed was the Netherlands’ National Day, Queen’s Day. (more…)

One leading complaint about the ongoing NSA data-collection scandal from those truly in the know is how the press has focused so much on Edward Snowden’s own story (e.g. his views towards his native land, his struggle to find asylum, etc.) to the detriment of setting out and analyzing for the public just what it is that American intelligence agencies have been getting away with and why that matters.

Unfortunately, we can today see a further example of this from no less than Die Welt. The headline to their particular piece reads “Kofi Annan was also spied upon”, and the lede:

The NSA eavesdropping scandal continues to enrage minds. But the past shows us that large-scale spy-actions are nothing new. Even UN General Secretary Kofi Annan was spied upon.

And sure enough, there he is: a head-shot of Annan looking serious and pensive is right there at the top.

It’s really rather bizarre if you go on and read into the article that reporters Ansgar Graw* and Julia Smirnova actually wrote, though. “Kofi”? Who’s that? It’s Snowden, Snowden, and more Snowden. Will he get asylum? Will he just stay in Russia? What has happened to change Ecuador’s mind about accepting him? Did he himself even write the letter which was recently made public in which he complained about how the US government was treating him? (It is riddled with British spellings which he presumably would not use.)

In short, there is this strange, wide cleft between headline and lede (and picture) on the one hand, and the article’s actual body of information. Of course, it is editors who generally provide the former as a piece is whipped into shape for publication. It’s also true that the fact that Kofi Annan (and all other UN Secretaries-General) were spied upon by US authorities is returned to at the article’s very end (under the section-heading “Eavesdropping happened always and everywhere”).

But that attitude of “nothing new here” itself seriously downplays the sheer ignominy of the new surveillance developments that Snowden revealed, e.g. how wide-ranging the survellance abuse was (including its coverage of leading European allies), to what lengths Obama administration officials were willing to go to lie about them, and the like. As does of course the People magazine-style obsession with Snowden’s own personal tale – we are being let down by our journalists, in whichever language.

* Doesn’t his name seem like it got mangled in a spelling-machine somewhere? Or that perhaps it should really be spelled backwards?

Hooray, the Union is now 28! Surely Croatia’s accession should be the occasion for great rejoicing! Well, here at €S we go against the flow whenever possible, and in this case that is rather easy. Here’s TINA, in case you were never introduced to her by Margaret Thatcher:

Right: “there is no alternative.” Not the most cheery attitude to take, is it? Nonetheless, according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Balkans correspondent Florian Hassel, that is the prevailing outlook behind all the ceremony – and for both sides.

For the Croats (George W. Bush would call them “Croatians”), polls now show only 45% supporting accession, as they reason that the new freedom to move wherever in the EU they want won’t really help against the much greater incoming economic competition they will face, which henceforth cannot be warded away by tariffs and other restrictions. Hassel: “In contrast to Europe of a decade ago, before the crisis, the EU is no longer a shining guarantee for personal and economic success.”

True, they can now look to pressure from Brussels to help drag the country into the 21st century economically and administratively – for example, there is widespread corruption, Croatian courts routinely take years to settle cases, etc. – but that is not likely to be painless. Similarly for the EU Hassel sees no alternative but to take in Croatia, help make it a success as a member state, and so go on from there to include the rest of the Balkan countries. It is a troubled region that cannot be allowed to fester.

Another German daily, Die Welt is scarcely more enthusiastic to see the Croats as new EU members.

Talk about a party-pooper: what else can you call it when the headline reads “Croatia is already the EU’s next problem-child” and the top of the article is dominated by a chart listing its current 4.0% government budget deficit? (Admittedly, that is placed next to another graph showing that its government debt as percentage of GDP, at 53.7%, compares quite favorably to the current EU average of 92.7%.) (more…)