Radical Chic: Times Relaunches Mag With Hagiography of Terrorist Helper “Such an outpouring of rage at a 40-year-old woman, mother to a toddler, who was convicted in her mid-20s of abetting a terrorist plot that never took place, is a measure of the degree to which Peruvians are still traumatized by the violence that convulsed their country during the years when the Shining Path warred with the military and nearly 70,000 Peruvians were killed….The M.R.T.A. was a much smaller insurgent group than the dominant Shining Path, and historically less violent….” – From novelist Jennifer Egan’s sympathetic March 6 Sunday magazine cover profile of Lori Berenson, middle-class Manhattanite turned terror collaborator, paroled after being sentenced to life in prison in Peru in 1996 for housing Marxist terrorists of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (M.R.T.A.). “The New York Times Magazine is based on long-form narrative journalism, and this week’s cover article, by Jennifer Egan, is a prime example. It is about Lori Berenson, a New Yorker who moved to Latin America as a young adult, got mixed up in revolutionary politics in Peru and was promptly thrown in prison, where she spent the next 15 years before being paroled last year. Egan traveled to Lima, where Berenson must remain until 2015, and tells the story of a wounded but resilient woman struggling to sort out a place for herself in the world. It is in every way a classic Times Magazine story.” – From New York Times Magazine editor-in-chief Hugo Lindgren “Editor’s Letter” in the March 6 edition.
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Protest planned against introduction of Lord Hutton’s pension reforms and will affect a third of universities in England Lecturers at a third of English universities will go on strike over changes to their pensions. Thousands of academics at 47 universities and higher education colleges will form picket lines to protest against changes to the Universities Superannuation Scheme pension fund. From next month, the retirement age for academics will be raised from 60 to 65 and there will be an end to final salary pensions for new members. An even bigger strike is planned for Thursday when tens of thousands of lecturers from 63 universities are expected to stop work over what academics say is a growing sense of insecurity over their jobs, as well as anger at their pay and the pension changes. Lord Hutton has recommended that public sector employees retire later with pensions based on average pay over their career, rather than their final salary. The academics’ pension scheme is private, but some qualify for public pensions. Lecturers from Bradford, Essex, Liverpool, Oxford and Birmingham universities are among those taking part in the strike. The University and College Union (UCU) said some institutions were wrongly warning academics that they had to tell the heads of their faculties if they wanted to take part in the strikes. An email sent to staff at City University, from the institution’s director of human resources, states that colleagues will have their pay deducted if they go on strike and will be breaching their contract if they do not fulfil all their work duties. It asks staff to inform their dean or director if they intend to go on strike. UCU said academics were under no obligation to inform management. However, the union has told its members that if their managers ask after the strike whether they took part, they should answer truthfully. The Employers’ Pensions Forum said the retention of a final salary pension was an “exceptionally good benefit” and the changes were “in line with what looks to become the norm in all sectors”. Brian Cantor, the forum’s chair, said UCU had repeatedly failed to engage in the established process for agreeing scheme changes. But the union’s general secretary, Sally Hunt, said employers were refusing to talk to the UCU. Aaron Porter, president of the National Union of Students, said employers had forced lecturers towards strike action by not agreeing to negotiate. “Huge cuts to university budgets ideologically imposed by this government pose a massive threat to jobs and education. “NUS has worked closely with UCU throughout our campaigns to oppose government cuts and stands in solidarity with their strike action next week.” Meanwhile, graduates are giving in record numbers to UK universities, a survey has found. A poll conducted by university fund-raisers of 172 universities and colleges found more than 185,603 people or organisations had given to a higher education institution in the academic year 2009-10. In total, they gave £506m in cash and £94m in pledges. The previous year – 2008-09 – 165,682 people and organisations donated a total of £526m in cash and £22m in pledges. Joanna Motion, vice-president for International Operations at the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, which conducted the survey with a network of university fundraisers called the Ross Group, said there were early signs of a culture shift towards higher education philanthropy. Donations to US universities and colleges have only increased by 0.5% in the last year and are down to 2006 levels. Lecturers Higher education Lecturers’ pay Pensions Pay Jessica Shepherd guardian.co.uk
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Air strikes hit Gaddafi’s forces hard, but revolutionary leaders appeal for more The dozen or so men clustered behind the last smouldering tank looked as if they had died while they slept. Their blankets bore no burn marks so perhaps it was the force of blasts – powerful enough to rip the turrets off the Russian-made tanks and toss them 20 metres or more across the open field near Benghazi – that killed Muammar Gaddafi’s soldiers. The air attack came at 4am , after the tanks pulled back from a day-long assault on the rebel stronghold of Benghazi. The crews chose to rest in a field about 10 miles from the de facto capital of the anti-Gaddafi revolutionaries. It must have seemed safe to the soldiers. The rebels were far away and the tank crews would have seen any threat approaching by road. They gathered to eat and sleep behind the tank furthest into the field. But it was no protection from the threat in the sky. The tanks and their operators were sitting ducks in the open and probably never heard the planes. The French pilots did not even have to be concerned about the risk of harming civilians. Within moments, three of the four tanks in the field were shells. What was not immediately incinerated was mangled, thrown into the sky and dumped in bits on the earth. Machine guns twisted into grotesque shapes, broken engine parts and flattened shells lay among the wreckage. Four hours later, two of the tanks were still smouldering. A flatbed lorry used to haul them to the edge of Benghazi was on fire. A handful of pickup trucks, one carrying tins of food for the troops, had been burned out. Scavengers were picking over the corpses of Gaddafi’s dead soldiers. Wreckage was strewn in similar scenes along nearly 15 miles of road beyond Benghazi, the result of air strikes on targets across the country that turned the struggle between Gaddafi and Libya’s revolutionaries on its head in a moment. The barrage of attacks led by France, Britain and the US on Libya’s army, air bases and other military targets drew threats of a prolonged war from Gaddafi himself. But on the ground many of his forces were in disarray and fleeing in fear of further attacks from a new and unseen enemy. The air assault halted and then reversed the advances by Gaddafi’s army on Benghazi and other rebel-held towns. But the revolutionary leadership wanted more. On Sunday it appealed for an intensification of the air assault to destroy the Libyan ruler’s forces and open the way for the rebels to drive him from power. The first of the decapitated tanks sat just three miles outside Benghazi. Its turret lay flipped over a good distance away. The missile had torn out the heart of the armoured beast. But perhaps its crew was luckier than others. There were no bodies to be found and from the boxes of dates and long life milk lying on the ground a short walk across the field, it appears they may have been far enough away to survive the blast and flee. Another seven miles farther on lay a larger tank graveyard, at al-Wafia, and beyond that many more miles of destruction on the road toward Ajdabiya. Eight tanks, brought up to Benghazi to continue the terrifying assault on the city that began on Saturday, were destroyed altogether. More than a dozen other armoured vehicles of various kinds were wrecked, their remnants scattered on the scorched tarmac. A couple of multiple rocket launchers sat at the road side. One appeared to have no damage at all. Perhaps it broke down, or maybe its driver decided to get away from it fast – part of the intended effect of the air strikes to break the will of Gaddafi’s army to fight. Scattered among the ruined armour were thousands of bullets and empty tank shell boxes. Young rebels, known as shabab , danced on the armoured carcasses. They fired guns and chanted: “Here come the shabab. Gaddafi is finished”. Western powers leading the air assault said again that the attacks are about protecting civilians from Gaddafi, not regime change. But many of the revolutionaries see the coalition forces as fighting on their behalf. The air bombardment is regarded among rebel military commanders as creating a more level battle field by removing Gaddafi’s advantage of heavy armour. “There must be more attacks, to destroy his forces and heavy weapons,” said Kamal Mustafa Mahmoud, a rebel soldier on the edge of Benghazi. “Then they can leave Gaddafi to us. We know how to fight him but we are afraid of his heavy weapons. I want them to destroy the ground forces of Gaddafi.” A rebel commander in Benghazi, Ahmed al-Diwani, said that the air strikes open the way for the rebels to retake the towns they have lost in recent fighting and then continue their campaign toward Tripoli. But he acknowledged that it would be wrong to assume that the government’s army is a spent force because of the air strikes. “Gaddafi’s advantage was tanks and rockets. That was what was defeating us. When we did not face them we were winning. Now we can go forward again. We will still have to fight, but when they see that they cannot win, it will be over,” he said. As Gaddafi’s soldiers fled from around Benghazi after the air assault, the rebels seized the advantage to move back toward Ajdabiya, a town the two sides have battled over for nearly a week. Late today, people in the town said Gaddafi’s forces could no longer be seen. The revolution’s political leadership shares the fighters’ view that the air assault is about regime change. Salwa el-Deghali, of the national transitional council, said: “I’m happy the air strikes have started, but at the same time I’m worried that the international community will not keep up the attacks long enough to remove Gaddafi. There must be more attacks on Gaddafi’s forces, and fast. We need these attacks until he is crushed.” Asked if she thought the goal of the air attacks was regime change, she replied: “Yes, it’s to push him from power”. Deghali said that the revolutionary leadership is counting on the air assault to destroy Gaddafi’s army, either by killing its soldiers or encouraging them to desert. She said that when the threat of violent repression is removed, the council plans to call on Libyans to rise up in cities across the country. “When Gaddafi’s forces are destroyed, he will have no power. It will be easy to press forward,” she said. Essam Gheriani, a spokesman for the national council, said that with the air strikes destabilising Gaddafi, the revolutionaries would organise fresh popular uprisings in cities still under the Libyan leader’s control, in the belief that it will be difficult for him to find the forces to put them down. However, beyond the broad plans to blend popular uprisings with armed resistance, the revolutionary council does not appear as yet to have decided how to take advantage of the shift in the military situation. Some of its members fled Benghazi during the government’s assault on Saturday. Others remain trapped in Gaddafi-controlled areas. For all the revolutionaries’ appeals for foreign help, there are limits. Deghali reiterated the condition laid down since the beginning of the uprising: the air assault is welcomed, but foreign troops will not be accepted on Libyan soil. The country’s history of occupation by the Italians and strong views about the invasion of Iraq have created a deep-seated suspicion of foreign armies. “We don’t want what happened in Iraq with international intervention,” she said. “Foreign troops on the ground, no. Just the air strikes.” Middle East Libya Muammar Gaddafi Chris McGreal guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media Not everyone on the right thinks that U.S. involvement in the operation against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is a good idea. ABC News invited Iraq war architect Paul Wolfowitz and conservative columnist George Will Sunday to discuss the attack on Libya. Will seemed to have the Iraq war in mind when he warned Wolfowitz against “mission creep” in the Middle East. “Do you think this was the right thing to do?” ABC’s Christian Amanpour asked Will. “I do not,” Will said. “We have intervened in a tribal society in a civil war. And we’ve taken sides in that civil war on behalf of people we do not know or understand for the purpose of creating a political vacuum by decapitating that government. Into that vacuum, what will flow? We do not know. We cannot know.” Wolfowitz quickly disagreed. “I understand George’s hesitations,” Wolfowitz said. “If you follow George’s hesitations, you say, it’s better to keep this devil we know than getting in someone new. I don’t think anybody new could be worse than the devil in Tripoli right now.” “Wouldn’t you say the hesitation, you can trace it write back to your operation in Iraq?” Amanpour pressed Wolfowitz. “There was such a pendulum swing against trying to intervene because of the chaos that was unleashed.” “We’ve paid the price of intervention sometimes,” Wolfowitz admitted. “We’ve paid the price of non-intervention, in Bosnia, for example.” Amanpour noted that there seemed to a “double standard” when it came to taking military action against Libya, but ignoring the regimes in Bahrain and Yemen. “You can’t compare the regime in Bahrain or even the regime in [Yemen capital city] Sanaa to Gaddafi,” Wolfowitz argued. “Yes, there is a certain — there’s something in common here, which is regimes that don’t represent their people, they’re not only wrong their ultimately unstable.” “I think what we should be working for in Bahrain, what we should be working for in Yemen are governments that are much more representative of their people so we can work with them better. But they’re not — it’s absolutely wrong to compare what’s happening there to what Gaddafi is doing and has been doing for 40 years,” he added. “There is no limiting principle in what we’ve done,” Will countered. “If we are to protect people under assault, then where people are under assault in Bahrain, we’re logically committed to help them. We’re inciting them to rise up in expectation.” “The mission creep here began, Paul, before the mission began,” he told Wolfowitz. “Because we had a means not suited to the end. The means is a no-fly zone. That will not affect the end, which is obviously regime change.”
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Click here to view this media The operation to create a no-fly zone in Libya has just begun, but already conservative Fox News pundit Bill Kristol is wishing the U.S. would send in ground troops “sooner rather than later.” Fox News Chris Wallace asked Kristol Sunday if it was a mistake to limit the mission in Libya. “Let’s talk about the mission,” Wallace began. “You heard Admiral Mullen, earlier in the show, say his orders are clear: protect the civilians, don’t overthrow Gaddafi. That’s not the point. Is that a mistake? Can we live with Gaddafi in any sort of power? He can create a lot of trouble.” “No, we cannot leave Gaddafi in power,” Kristol agreed. “And we won’t leave Gaddafi in power.” “The immediate military mission, Admiral Mullen correctly described but the political goal is to remove Gaddafi and ultimately military assets will serve that political goal.” “First we protect civilians and destroy his military capability. And then we help other remove him indirectly, presumably. Though I, unlike the president, would not rule out ultimately having to go in with peacekeeping and nation stabilizing forces. And I wouldn’t be surprised if we do that at the end of the day,” he added. The neoconservative pundit held up the Kosovo conflict as a model for action in Libya. “President Clinton ruled out ground forces in Kosovo. And finally, the threat of ground forces caused Miloševic to capitulate and we ended up sending in peacekeeping forces and we eventually got rid of Miloševic.” “I hope that happens sooner rather than later here. We need to get rid of Gaddafi,” he said.
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The French president certainly needs something to prevent him coming third in next year’s election It would surely be poor taste to accuse Nicolas Sarkozy of leading France into combat for purely selfish political reasons – but that won’t stop some in the president’s inner circle wondering if Operation Odyssey Dawn might just save the skin of a man who, a matter of days ago, seemed destined for electoral humiliation. Ever so discreetly, they will be hoping Libya can do for Sarkozy what the Falklands did for Margaret Thatcher – anoint a successful war leader deserving of re-election. “The French do like to have their president play world statesman,” mused one diplomat in Paris last week, before France’s Mirage and Rafale fighter planes had taken to the skies. “A good crisis,” he added, might be just what Sarkozy needs. He certainly needs something. A week ago he was staring at polls so ominous some analysts wondered if he’d even make it into second place in next year’s presidential contest. One survey put Sarkozy behind both his most likely Socialist opponent and Marine Le Pen, the new leader of the far-right National Front founded by her father, Jean-Marie. Sunday’s cantonal elections were expected to bring more bad news for the president’s UMP party. Two cabinet reshuffles in quick succession produced no bounce, with the president’s numbers stuck stubbornly in the doldrums. He’s never quite shaken off the depiction by Les Guignols de l’Info, the French Spitting Image, as manic and hyperactive, constantly popping pills either to calm or lift his mood. A poster spotted in the fashionable Marais district of Paris has Sarkozy wearing a dunce’s cap, smiling gormlessly. The chatter among Parisian political types centres on whether the president would even make it to the second round in next year’s two-stage contest, with some suspecting he might choose to preserve his dignity and not seek re-election at all – talk instantly dismissed, it has to be said, both by aides and by more neutral observers who swear that Sarkozy is a fighter, not a quitter. But how did it come to this, that a man who crushed his Socialist rival in 2007 and who was hailed as an instant star on the European stage – complete with supermodel wife – is now fighting for his political life? The answer says much about the state of European politics after the crash of 2008, but rather more about France itself – in particular how a mentality presumed abandoned in the revolution of 1789 lives on. The immediate explanation is not complicated and it is one familiar to most world leaders. The French economy is stalling, with unemployment stuck at 9.6%. The deficit does not equal Britain’s, but its accumulated debt is just as heavy. The mood, says Socialist party spokesman Benoît Hamon, is despondent, especially among the young. “Graduates are doing jobs below their qualifications; young people owning their own property is unimaginable. They believe they will live less well than their parents and that the country is in decline.” Sarkozy’s allies hardly disagree. Housing minister Benoist Apparu told me that, according to comparative polling, “the French are the most pessimistic nation in Europe” – that they are, incredibly, more worried about their future than the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan. All incumbents will struggle amid this kind of crash-induced gloom, but it has hit Sarkozy especially hard. First, it has entirely derailed the programme on which he was elected. Out went the early, breathless talk of Thatcherising, or Blairising, the still-statist French economy, injecting a dose of neo-liberal Anglo-Saxonism. Whatever appeal that message might once have had vanished in the rubble of Lehman Brothers. Sarkozy, who at first dreamed big, has had to make do with more modest achievements – the signature one being his pension reform, raising the minimum retirement age from 60 to 62 in the face of a howl of protest. He promises tax reform is coming, but those on the right who yearned for red meat on crime or welfare feel disappointed. Other politicians might be able to survive on such a thin record, but it’s harder for Sarkozy, who started with such grand ambition. “He didn’t say, ‘I
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Chinese government’s crackdown on activists thought to be behind what Google calls ‘politically motivated attacks’ Google has accused the Chinese government of hacking into its popular Gmail email system. The move follows extensive attempts by the Chinese authorities to crack down on the “jasmine revolution” – an online dissident movement inspired by events in the Middle East. According to the search giant, Chinese customers and advertisers have increasingly been complaining about their Gmail service in the past month. Attempts by users to send messages, mark messages as unread and use other services have generated problems for Gmail customers. In the wake of the catastrophic earthquake in Japan, Google set up an application to help people find relatives and friends lost in the disaster. This service too seems to have been compromised. “Relating to Google there is no issue on our side. We have checked extensively. This is a government blockage carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail,” said a Google spokesman. China’s embassy in Washington was not immediately available for comment. The announcement follows a blog posting from Google on 11 March in which the firm said it had “noticed some highly targeted and apparently politically motivated attacks against our users. We believe activists may have been a specific target.” The posting said the attacks were targeting a vulnerability in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser. The two firms have been working to address the issue. At the time, Google declined to elaborate on which activists had been targeted or where the attacks had been coming from. Last January Google said it had been the victim of highly sophisticated attacks originating from China. At first the firm thought its intellectual property was the target. The company’s investigations found at least 20 other internet , financial, technology, media and chemical companies had been similarly targeted. Google said it had uncovered evidence that the primary goal of the attacks was the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. The search firm is not commenting further on this latest attack, but technology experts said it seemed to show an increasingly high degree of sophistication. “In the wake of what is happening in the Middle East I don’t think China wants to be seen making heavy-handed attacks on the internet, that would draw too much attention,” said one internet executive who wished to remain anonymous. He said making it look like a fault in Google’s system was extremely difficult to do and the fact that these attacks appear to come and go makes the attack look “semi-industrial and very, very sophisticated.” In February dozens of political activists were arrested in China after an anonymous call online for people to start a jasmine revolution. The crackdown came as China’s president Hu Jintao called for tighter internet controls to help prevent social unrest. Much of the unrest in the Middle East has gone unreported in China, where the internet is already heavily censored. Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube are all blocked in China. Google first opened for business in China in 2005. But after announcing that it had been hacked in January last year the company said it was no longer prepared to censor its search results and moved its operations to Hong Kong. “We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement,” David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, said at the time. According to WikiLeaks cables, China’s political elite have a love hate relationship with the internet. On the one hand the authorities want the information they can obtain via the web and on the other they are extremely concerned by the threat they perceive it presents to their authority. The cables suggest China has successfully hacked the US and other governments as well as private enterprises. The leaked cables also chronicle the pressure put on Google to comply with Chinese censorship. As well as removing references to the Dalai Lama and to 1989′s Tiananmen Square massacre, Google was asked to censor images of government facilities displayed on the Google Earth mapping service. Last month the Chinese authorities launched Panguso, a search engine joint venture between Xinhua news agency and the state-owned telecoms giant China Mobile. The site appears to be even more heavily censored than Baidu, the largest search firm in China. Searches on Panguso reportedly produced no results for Nobel peace prize laureate Liu Xiaobo. Google Gmail Email Search engines Internet China Dominic Rushe guardian.co.uk
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Low six-figure investment will aim to help combat censorship of TV and internet services in countries including Iran and China The BBC World Service is to receive a “significant” sum of money from the US government to help combat the blocking of TV and internet services in countries including Iran and China. In what the BBC said is the first deal of its kind, an agreement is expected to be signed later this month that will see US state department money – understood to be a low six-figure sum – given to the World Service to invest in developing anti-jamming technology and software. The funding is also expected to be used to educate people in countries with state censorship in how to circumnavigate the blocking of internet and TV services. It is understood the US government has decided the reach of the World Service is such that it makes investment worthwhile. The US government money comes as the World Service faces a 16% cut in its annual grant from the Foreign Office – a £46m reduction in its £236.7m budget over three years that will lead to about 650 job cuts. The money will be channelled through the World Service’s charitable arm, the World Service Trust. The deal, which is expected to be formally announced on International Press Freedom Day, 3 May, follows an increase in incidents of interference with World Service output across the globe, according to its controller of strategy and business, Jim Egan. BBC Persian television, which launched in early 2009 and airs in Iran and its neighbouring countries, has experienced numerous instances of jamming. The BBC Arabic TV news service has also been jammed in recent weeks across various parts of north Africa during the recent uprisings in Egypt and Libya. “Governments who have an interest in denying people information particularly at times of tension and upheaval are keen to do this and it is a particular problem now,” said Egan. Another area in which the BBC World Service is expected to use the US money is continuing its development of early warning software. This will allow it to detect jamming sooner than it does currently where it relies on reports from users on the ground. “Software like this helps monitor dips in traffic which act as an early warning of jamming, and it can be more effective than relying on people contacting us and telling us they cannot access the services,” said Egan. The BBC also expects to use state department money to help combat internet censorship by establishing proxy servers that give the impression a computer located in one country is in fact operating in another, thereby circumnavigating attempts by repressive governments to block websites. “China has become quite expert at blocking websites and one could say it has become something of an export industry for them – a lot of countries are keen to follow suit,” said Egan. “We have evidence of Libya and Egypt blocking the internet and satellite signals in recent weeks.” Egan added that the battle against jamming is likely to be an ongoing one because repressive countries are likely to develop methods to counter any anti-censorship technology that is developed. “It is a bit of a game of cat and mouse,” said a BBC source. BBC World Service Television industry BBC Radio industry United States US politics Censorship Internet Ben Dowell guardian.co.uk
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• Six items on sale had been removed in last 10 years • Find hints at international network of smugglers Six stolen icons discovered in an art gallery near the Greek embassy in London have become the focus of a police inquiry as Athens tries to unravel how the religious works ended up on the international art market. The magnificent pieces, painted over 200 years ago in typical Byzantine fashion, adorned Orthodox monasteries and churches in remote northern Greece until they were snatched by thieves. “We have indisputable photographic evidence of their existence and it goes without saying that we want them back,” said police chief Dimos Koursilos, who heads the country’s art squad. “All of them were reported stolen in the last decade,” he told the Guardian. The plundered art was revealed after a telephone call from a woman claiming to recognise one of the icons – a famous rendition of the Virgin – on the website of the Temple gallery in west London. Further investigation showed that the immaculately preserved gold-edged painting was among six icons reported missing from Greece that the specialist was selling for up to £5,000 each. Richard Temple, who owns the gallery and is acknowledged as London’s foremost dealer in icons, said that when he bought them he had “absolutely no reason” to suspect they were stolen. “I’ve been in the business for 51 years and I’m too well known as a gallery to take any risks at all,” he said. “We are an obvious target. We had gone through the correct protocols, but one has to have a certain amount of trust as business is conducted in good faith. I know the seller – he is somebody I deal with and I think he, in turn, was duped.” Upon presentation of documentation showing them on display in Greece, the art dealer voluntarily gave up his rights to the icons last week. “They left last Thursday in the hands of Scotland Yard,” he said. “It was very painful and unfortunate.” Athens has vigorously stepped up its campaign against the illegal art trade, homing in on the dealers, curators and collectors that are the source of demand. In recent years, it has sought repatriation of hundreds of looted works, including such masterpieces as the Parthenon marbles, on display at the British Museum, that date back to the 5th century BC. The J Paul Getty museum in Los Angeles has returned four prized antiquities under Greek pressure. As part of the renewed efforts to crack the increasingly sophisticated underground market, electronic databases have also been updated. Around 150 icons, many revered as holy relics, have been listed as missing from unsupervised churches and monasteries around the mountainous area of Epirus in northwestern Greece. “There has definitely been an increase in thefts of icons,” said Nikos Manouris at the Epirus Prefecture, which compiled the catalogue with the help of concerned citizens. “But since we put up the database in February last year, there has also been a decline.” Recently, the online list helped police track down an icon that had found its way to an antique store in Athens’ flea market. Greek authorities say the discovery of the icons in London is further proof that an international network of dealers and smugglers are behind the thefts. “This case raises more questions than answers,” said Koursilos. “The gallery owner is being very cooperative but the fact remains that the right documents were missing and, what’s more, never asked for. These icons are very valuable and they should never have left Greece without export permits from the ministry of culture. There is a lot of work still to be done before we find out the real story behind these thefts.” Art theft Greece Helena Smith guardian.co.uk
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And of course, when you’re bombing from the air, you’re also bombing civilians — which tends to upset the survivors and further undermine any strategic gains. Plus, the Gadhafis are crazy. So there aren’t any good options here: In an exclusive interview with ABC News “This Week” anchor Christiane Amanpour, Saif Gadhafi, son of Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi, expressed surprise at the Western coalition attack launched against Libya, and said that his father has no plans to step down from power. “Yesterday, we were surprised that … the Americans and the British and the French attacked Libya, attacked five cities. Terrorized people, and especially children, women, were so afraid yesterday,” Saif Gadhafi said. “So it was big surprise that finally President Obama — we thought he was a good man and friend of Arab world — is bombing Libya.” He denied the Libyan government had continued attacks against resistance forces in Benghazi, telling Amanpour the city was controlled by “terrorists” and “armed militia” who are attacking civilians and the Libyan army. “Our people went to Benghazi to liberate Benghazi from the gangsters and the armed militia,” Gadhafi said. “If the Americans want to help the Libyan people in Benghazi … go to Benghazi and liberate Benghazi from the militia and the terrorists. “No country in the world will allow the second-largest city to be controlled by gangsters and armed militia,” he added. “Of course not.” Gadhafi dismissed the notion that his father would step down from power because of the air strikes against Libya. “Step aside, why?” Gadhafi said when pressed by Amanpour. “Again, there is a big misunderstanding. The whole country is united against the armed militia and the terrorists. Simply the Americans and the other Western countries, you are supporting the terrorists and the armed militia. That’s it.” Gadhafi said Americans will regret the military action against Libya, comparing Western support for opposition forces in Libya to inaccurate claims of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq before war began there in 2003. “It’s like the WMD, the fiasco of WMD,” Gadhafi said. “WMD in Iraq, and armed militia in Libya. You would understand that in Libya it’s not about peaceful demonstrations or people talking about democracy. …We are fighting the terrorists.”
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